Complexity and politics

I’m endlessly amazed by the complexity of human societies. No doubt lower forms of life have far more social complexity than we know – apparently even plant cells communicate (chemically) with their neighbors in very complex ways. But the complexity of human societies is massively enriched by our expectations and reasoning and mythology, so that we are affected not only by current conditions, but also by our expectations and fears of conditions we think might exist in the future.

I think of this as I watch the current political campaign unfold. Clearly a winning political message is only very loosely tied to real conditions in the world – it is much more tied to the expectations and fears and mythologies current in the society of voters. And indeed, the winners will have to govern by means of these same expectations and fears and mythologies – that is their leverage in the political process.

Iraq is a case in point. The real facts are that we overthrow Saddam’s government relatively easily, at relatively little cost in lives or money. That success in turn left us in the hopeless position of trying to quell a series of bitter and intertwined civil and religious wars (Sunni vs Shia, Arab vs Kurd, Arab vs Persians) that has raged, with intermittent pauses, for centuries. Whether we count that as a success or a failure depends on our aspirations (eg. to be the world’s policeman?) and our mythologies (eg. everyone ought to have a democratic government?).

So the interesting matters to study in this election are not the politician’s messages – those are just tailored to reflect the opinions and prejudices and mythologies of their target voter blocks. The interesting matters to study are the issues and positions that energize and motivate the voting public itself. Those issues tell us far more about who we are as a society than anything a politician may promise.

More on the war on drugs

Consider the following statistic:

• "In 2003, a total of 28,723 persons died of drug-induced causes in the United States (Tables 21 and 22). The category 'drug-induced causes' includes not only deaths from dependent and nondependent use of drugs (legal and illegal use), but also poisoning from medically prescribed and other drugs. It excludes unintentional injuries, homicides, and other causes indirectly related to drug use. Also excluded are newborn deaths due to mother’s drug use." Source: Hoyert, Donna L., PhD, Heron, Melonie P., PhD, Murphy, Sherry L., BS, Kung, Hsiang-Ching, PhD; Division of Vital Statistics, "Deaths: Final Data for 2003," National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 54, No. 13 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics, April 19, 2006), p. 10.

Almost 29,000 Americans dead because of drugs. Sounds awful, doesn’t it.

Now consider the following statistics:

• "The leading causes of death in 2000 were tobacco (435,000 deaths; 18.1% of total US deaths), poor diet and physical inactivity (400,000 deaths; 16.6%), and alcohol consumption (85,000 deaths; 3.5%).” Source: Source: Mokdad, Ali H., PhD, James S. Marks, MD, MPH, Donna F. Stroup, PhD, MSc, Julie L. Gerberding, MD, MPH, "Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000," Journal of the American Medical Association, March 10, 2004, Vol. 291, No. 10, pp. 1238, 1241.

So we spend about $40 billion per year (In 2000, the National Drug Control budget exceeded $18 billion and the states spent upwards of $20 billion more) combating illegal drug use, which accounts for about 29,000 American deaths a year, but tolerate 435,000 deaths a year from tobacco and 85,000 deaths a year from alcohol, both of which are not only legal, but even partly subsidized by the government.

Is there perhaps something irrational going on here? Have we perhaps got our priorities a little wrong?

What is a “real” conservative?

Andrew Sullivan, in his new book The Conservative Soul, spends a good part of the beginning of the book exploring the mindset of the fundamentalist believer, whether a believer in Christianity, Islam, Communism, or some other widely appealing dogma. He is concerned because he thinks “real” conservatism has been captured by the religious right Christian fundamentalists. It’s a good book, and I recommend it to liberals, centrists and conservatives alike.

However, his definition of what a real conservative is (pg 172) really brought me up short:

“The defining characteristic of a conservative is that he knows what he doesn’t know……

…… While the fundamentalist knows the truth, the nihilist believes it is an illusion, that nothing is true and everything is valid. The conservative differs from both. While not denying that truth exists, the conservative is content to say that his grasp on it is always provisional. He may be wrong. He begins with the assumption that the human mind is fallible, that it can delude itself, make mistakes, or see only so far ahead. And this, the conservative avers, is what it means to be human.”

From this Sullivan deduces what he thinks is the essential conservative approach to problems: try things but always be prepared to change the game plan if they don’t work or if the situation changes. Don’t put too much power into the hands of any fallible central group (like the government). Don’t constrain the options. The true conservative, he argues, is always aware of his/her fallibility and the fallibility of humans in general, and never assumes that she/he “has the only answer”.

This is certainly a marked departure from some of the liberal thinkers who from their ivory towers and think tanks devise and prescribe answers (almost always government imposed) to all sorts of social problems. And it is certainly a marked departure from the bull-headed certainty of the current crop of neoconservatives who have been steering the government in recent years.

If this is what a real conservative is, I’m all for it.

Alice in Wonderland?

Of course the Iowa caucuses are just the start of what will probably be a long primary battle for all the candidates, and the New Hampshire results will no doubt change the playing field again., but I see that the Republican winner is Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has stated in public, on national television, that based on his faith he doesn’t believe the theory of evolution, despite the accumulated evidence. As he said “"If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, that's fine. I'll accept that. I just don't happen to think that I did." I assume that means he takes literally the Christian Bible’s creation story, and hence believes that the world is only about 6000 years old.

Now I don’t find it alarming that an individual would believe that – people believe all sorts of things against the evidence. I’m sure there are still ”flat earth” believers out there. And 500 years after Copernicus, the 2006 National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey data show that of the 51,020 Americans polled, 18.3% or about one in five still believe the sun goes around the earth.

I do find it alarming that of the 120,000 Republicans who turned out for the caucus, 34% or about one in three would prefer a president who chooses personal belief over evidence. It’s not just that he happens not to be swayed by evidence that contradicts his beliefs – it’s that many of those people chose him precisely because he refuses to be swayed by the evidence. What does it mean when so many people will select a national leader specifically because he is not swayed by real-world evidence…?

So now I’m waiting for Alice and the white rabbit to appear…….

Conquered lands

People periodically make the claim that the land someone else currently occupies was taken from them in the past, and they want it back, or that they have the “right” to try and re-conquer it. Of course, if we accepted that argument as valid it would apply to them as well, and once they had it back they would then promptly have to cede it to the people their own ancestors originally took it from, and so on. For example, if by this argument we had to give land back to a native American tribe, almost of them in turn would have to pass the land on to the tribe they originally took it from, since they too had historical periods of conquest and expansion.

This claim is sometimes made about portions of the Middle East. But in fact the Middle East lands have been ruled by so many groups and empires throughout history that it would be impossible to establish who had the first and original claim. There is a wonderful on-line animated map (http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf) of the history of the Middle East from 3000 B.C.E. to 2006 C.E. The lesson is clear. This business of the “right” to land because once in the past an ancestor ruled it is a hopeless case of infinite regression.

Of course, in fundamentalist Islamic theology, any lands that were ever once ruled by Muslims should by rights be ruled again by Muslims, and Muslims have a sacred duty to “liberate” that land again to be ruled under a renewed Caliphate. To have lands once under Muslim rule (and hence submitted to Allah) now ruled by infidels is considered a grave offense to Allah. While this may be sound theology from their point of view, it is a completely unworkable approach in today’s world.