miscellany

1/n Re-upping post, on two levels:
-Back in 2004 I did Atlantic piece called “Blind Into Baghdad”

Its point was that risks, consequences, and blowback of US "victory" in Iraq were not just foreseeable but had been foreseen, in detail, by military planners

2/n
US Army War College, in particular, had laid out a detailed timeline of what was most likely to go wrong (eg, riots and looting as soon as Hussein was overthrown) and how to anticipate and minimize it. And biggest mistakes to avoid (eg, don't disband the Iraqi army.)

3/n
Reading those pre-war assessments of what *not* to do, was eerily and nauseatingly parallel to reading post-war accounts of what US actually did, to disastrous effect.

US debacle in Iraq all the worse because US leaders had been warned...

4/n
--but Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bremer, et al wouldn't bother to listen or learn. "Stuff happens!" in Rummy's deathless phrase.

5/n
The new article I have in the Atlantic is essentially that same story about our current debacle, the pandemic. 

“I am a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian.”
—Freeman Dyson https://t.co/GOfqISQDOm / quote not in BI but cited here: https://t.co/XVJ912vPpK

— George Atherton (@notrehta) June 28, 2020

I am myself a Christian, a member of a community that preserves an ancient heritage of great literature and great music, provides help and counsel to young and old when they are in trouble, educates children in moral responsibility, and worships God in its own fashion. But I find Polkinghorne’s theology altogether too narrow for my taste. I have no use for a theology that claims to know the answers to deep questions but bases its arguments on the beliefs of a single tribe. I am a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian. To me, to worship God means to recognize that mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our comprehension.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

source: Freeman Dyson in the same piece as above*

• see the two truths* and believe in nothing as the absolute truth of what is
• look at all there seems to be and see nothing is not a relative truth, a story
• dwell on the sense of ‘I am’ until you see this too is a relative truth, a story
• practice this and nan yar* … just be as you are, inseparable from what is

… there can be no general rule. But for all, the gateway to reality, by whatever road one arrives at it, is the sense of ‘I am’
—Maurice Frydman: Nisarga Yoga (!?)

People are basically good. That doesn't sound very credible at the moment, but the Dutch sociologist @rcbregman explains very convincingly in his book why this is - and we should all be able to do much more. Read recommendation! 1/4

In his well-told book, Bregman researches numerous famous experiments and phenomena and comes to the conclusion that the assumption that we are sinners by nature and that we would mutually flaw each other without rules is fundamentally wrong. 2/4

He deals with the well-known Stanford Prison experiment, the Milgram experiment (keyword electric shocks) and with Eichmann and the Holocaust. I am not a sociologist, but I find many of his arguments very conclusive - and have been more positive since reading it. 3/4

I also found Bregman's first book, Utopia for Realists, to be very clever (and very pleasant because it was positive). Both books are also available in German. And if you want a sample, there is an introductory story at the Guardian*

The plague of Athens struck in 430 BC, violently killing up to half of the Greek city's population. Thucydides was on hand to document the grim symptoms, as well as the social and psychological fallout. His vivid account holds enduring lessons for us during pandemic times today.