zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron – places, people, neurons, ideas, with Kabul and Khost providing illustrations ]
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[ illus: Starlight, from PNL ]

I was just reading Matthieu Aikins‘ GQ account of The Siege of September 13 in Kabul, when a couple of sentences caught my eye, not because of the attack itself, but because they reminded me of a point I want to make about the way we think these days about networks, nodes and linkages:

Salangi’s SUV was passing down the main road north of the embassy when the sound of gunshots and his police radio simultaneously erupted. He told his driver to turn around and head toward the sounds.

At Massoud Circle, the next roundabout down from Abdul Haq, they encountered a bottleneck of police vehicles, and so Salangi continued on foot, ducking as he heard the crack and whine of bullets passing close by…

What specifically caught and rerouted my attention was that phrase, “Massoud Circle, the next roundabout down from Abdul Haq” — Abdul Haq Circle, I’d read earlier in the article, “is a wide traffic roundabout named for a deceased mujahideen commander”, as presumably is the circle named for Massoud.

So we have two roundabouts connected by a road… and two deceased mujahideen commanders.

Or to put that another way, we have two nodes and a connection between them, twice over — in once case the nodes are places, and in the other the nodes are people.

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Further into the article, I found a graphic showing the two places and the road connecting them — and an image of two people in Kabul that day, one extending an arm of care to the other. These two men weren’t Abdul Haq and Massoud, of course, but two people nonetheless. So in each graphic, we have two nodes and a connection:

A great deal of time and treasure goes into the analysis of networks of communication — cellphone to cellphone, person to person — or travel — place to place — (a) because the patterns can be revealing, and (b) because the data (what number called what number, e.g., how often Nidal Hassan emailed al-Awlaki, or what route bought Abu Dujanah from Amman to Khost) is unambiguous when obtained.

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We’re also fond of neural nets, eh? — whether the “artificial” nets of AI or the “biological” nets of the brain — and again, these are unambiguous, scientists and technicians love them, and software developed with Congress-friendly budgeting implications is required to process them.

But what about ideas?

What about minds, what about the subjective side of persons and travels and communications and contacts and brains — what about thoughts, what about admiration?

That’s the node-link-node mapping that I find most interesting: it utilizes the most complex software (human intelligence), and demands the least complex support system (cappucino, napkin and pencil) — and some of its nodes and their linkages (beliefs, e.g., leading to actions) are among the richest features of the human behavioral landscape.

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The idea that jihad is an individual obligation, for instance, is a staple of AQ-style theology. It is my contention, indeed, that acceptance of that idea is the religious foundation on which acts of jihadist suicide are based.

And by the same token, these suicide acts are then viewed in terms of martyrdom, since they were enacted in the cause of Allah, giving rise to such eulogies as this one, offered by AQ to Abu Dujanah after the Khost event:

May Allah have mercy on you, our dear Abu Dujanah, and may He raise your ranks in register of the inhabitants of Paradise. By the Lord of the Ka’bah, indeed you have succeeded, our dear Abu Lailah, Allah willing. You were truthful, and you became known. You set an example, and you were truthful in word and deed. You followed the speakers and writers before you. May Allah be pleased with you . Your patience, Jihad, and tolerance of hardships were in Allah’s Cause. Your prayers and insistency was for Allah, and was your solitude and secret conversation. Thus, your reward is with Allah. Allah is your Lord and Protector, and Allah willing, our next meeting will be in Al-Firdaws Al-A’la, our dear beloved brother.

Such logic, such rhetoric, and such devotion are of the essence of what we confront in the jihad…

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And richest of all for us to come to terms with: the person to person transmission of such ideas…

[ by Charles Cameron — more on the graphical mapping of heresy, radicalization, decision points, multiple ideas and complex issues, and some illustrations from railroad land ]

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Here’s a railway track illustration of, say, the difference between true Islam (the straight track) and bida (the introduction of new ideas into the religion, deviation, heresy).

This graphic could equally represent the radicalization process, with the “point switching” occurring when the decision is made to switch from sympathizing to active participation, or from participation in the virtual dimension (say by posting on the forums) to the preparation and execution of acts of violence.

Locating the “switching points” would then be a significant part of a successful de-radicalization program, and I’d suggest that the concept of jihad as a matter of obligation (fard ‘ayn) would be one such.

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What follows is essentially a quick-and-dirty pattern language of train tracks, switching points, marshaling yards, etc — I’ve even included one water-slide — to stir creative insights about linear thinking, multiple voices, multiple lines of thought, elegance and the polyphony of ideas…

I’m posting this because any strategic and / or creative thinking that includes the perspectives and voices of multiple stakeholders will require polyphony, as will any approach to the complex dynamics in play in wicked problems…

And much else besides.

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First, we have linear thinking — and a dilemma:

Then, there’s complication — not the same as complexity, and not nearly so hard to figure out —

— and a wicked problem, where the issues are indeed complex, and the problem itself may shift unexpectedly if, for instance, there’s another bombing run just as you are fixing things up after the last one…

And finally, by way of inspiration, there is always the possibility of elegance —

— and (here’s where I switch to the water-slide) — there’s always the possibility of playfulness…

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Finding ways to think graphically, elegantly and a bit playfully about wicked problems is what I’m after here…
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Addendum

Friend JM Berger aka @intelwire sent me a link to this image:

and commented, “I think it’s more like this, no single point of departure, no single destination, loopbacks, dead ends” — nice one, JM!

[ by Charles Cameron — mapping, modeling — no, scoring complexity ]
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I was interested to see David Bohm‘s On Dialogue (Pegasus Communications, 1990) listed in the bibliography of Nancy Roberts‘ paper, Wicked problems and Network Approaches to Resolution, which Mike Few quoted extensively in his recent post Failing into Collaboration? on the SWJ blog. Dr. Bohm’s book On Creativity was the topic of Zen’s recent post.

Wicked problems, multiple stakeholders, multiple voices, polyphony, counterpoint – there’s a whole nexus here that needs exploring.

My post on The speeds of thought, complexities of problems addresses the “thought-speed” that best addresses this kind of issue. There are ways to educate that particular style of thinking, and I hope to address them in a future post – but the other issue that’s of importance here is how to notate such problems, how to map them, or …

model them? No.

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The question we should be asking is not how to code a machine (via stocks and flows, agent based models) to model them, but how to sketch them in such a way that the human mind, working at that slowest and most profound of speeds, can model them using its own natural complexity and capacity for emergent (“aha!”) insights.

That’s a topic I have discussed here before (e.g.: i, ii, iii) and shall take up again, and my preferred term for the activity is the one used in music: scoring.

The other issue that’s of importance here, then, is how to notate such problems, how to map them, how to score them — so that the tortoise mind can read them the way a musician reads a score…

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Above: Score by Cornelius Cardew, “Treatise” (1963-1967), p.183
Below: Score of JS Bach, “Kyrie” from Mass in B Minor

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