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Charles Cameron is the regular guest-blogger at Zenpundit, and has also posted at Small Wars Journal, All Things Counterterrorism, for the Chicago Boyz Afghanistan 2050 roundtable and elsewhere.  Charles read Theology at Christ Church, Oxford, under AE Harvey, and was at one time a Principal Researcher with Boston University’s Center for Millennial Studies and the Senior Analyst with the Arlington Institute:

The Diplomacy of Caring

by Charles Cameron

It’s such a simple thing, a blog post with space for comments. And yet it is also a remarkable opportunity.

The blog post I’m thinking of today was made about three weeks ago by an American helicopter pilot, CWO John Bockmann, who has been flying relief missions in Pakistan as part of the US response to the terrible floods there.

A retired Pakistani officer, Brig. FB Ali, read it on Pakistan’s Express Tribune blog, and quoted from it in a guest post on Col. Pat Lang’s blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, today. Both are worth reading – but what’s most wonderful, as Brig Ali notes, is the outpouring of love and appreciation in the Comments section, both from individual Pakistanis and from Bockmann’s own family.

Bockmann writes:

I have learned in my time here that Pakistani people are truly gracious. Strangers have invited me for chai and conversation. Almost anyone will shake my hand and ask my name, inquire about my health and how I am getting along. Instead of a handshake at our first meeting, I have sometimes been embraced. “Strangers shake hands,” my new friend Mahmood explained, “but brothers hug each other.” This warms my heart. My mission, our mission, is straightforward, noble, and good. I am deeply grateful to those who support us here, for we need all the help we can get in order to help those in need. I am honored to do this work. I feel at home here beyond anything I could have expected.

and

When I do return home, I will bring with me hundreds of pictures, dozens of journal entries, six duffel bags, and several recipes for local dishes that I have enjoyed, but I will also bring innumerable memories that I will treasure for life — memories of Pakistan and its people. They have surprised me with friendship. I hope that through our work of compassion we may surprise them with friendship as well.

I will let the comments of Abdullah and Mustafa stand for the many that were posted by Pakistanis in response:

God bless you and may you return home safe and sound . There is a lot in common and a lot to share between common people not only living in U.S and Pakistan but also between people living all over the world. — Abdullah

and:

John, I’d like to personally thank you for your efforts and for giving your time for this cause. May Allah reward you and bless your family. — Mustafa

Others wrote longer and more effusive comments, but in their simplicity those two capture the spirit of the whole.

And then John’s mother, deeply moved by the love shown her son by these people from a far-off country, wrote her own comment — which strikes closer to the heart than the best of diplomats easily can:

Thus shall it be between Christians and Muslims, your country and mine: despite the heartbreaking fractures, we shall become strong in all the weak places, and no government policies, no misguided violent people shall prevent it, because God wills it, whether we call him Allah or Jehovah, and we will it, with all our hearts. We shall support each other while respecting our differences.

I’m with FB Ali on this, and Pat Lang, and John Bockmann and his family, and all the many Pakistanis who responded. More recently, John Bockmann wrote this comment on the whole exchange:

Amazing. I know the hearts of many Pakistanis now, but I am still surprised by their outpouring of warmth — especially in such hard times. I read all of the comments — the stories, the blessings, the frustrations — and I am increasingly convinced that international relations are effected more by common people like you and me than by politicians who may never get a chance to have tea and real conversation with “the other side”. I am so privileged to be so well loved while I am so far from home. God’s blessings on Pakistan and her people.

If you want to see Bockmann, Cpl. Jenie Fisher interviewed him earlier in the mission, and you can find those videos here. I hope she does a follow-up. I hope the press picks up on this. This is what’s best in our common humanity — hearts and minds – they’re not won, they open. And this is what’s best about the internet — this possibility. I’ll close with the words of Engineer Syed, who writes:

Ten people like the pilot who is in the picture in worlds each decision making cabinet-agency-organization etc can change the total scenario of the world

Charles Cameron is the regular guest-blogger at Zenpundit, and has also posted at Small Wars Journal, All Things Counterterrorism, for the Chicago Boyz Afghanistan 2050 roundtable and elsewhere.  Charles read Theology at Christ Church, Oxford, under AE Harvey, and was at one time a Principal Researcher with Boston University’s Center for Millennial Studies and the Senior Analyst with the Arlington Institute:

Anecdote Before Statistic

by Charles Cameron

Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, one time commandant of the Army War College and author of books on strategy made one of those observations the other day that catch my attention out of the corner of my eye, and trigger a mini-avalanche of thought in response. What Scales said, in an interview with Government Executive, was:

Armies break anecdotally before they break statistically

Scales was discussing the dispiriting recent upwards trend in Army suicides, which has been discussed here and elsewhere – but that’s not what caught my eye or triggered the mini-avalanche.

What struck me was the pairing of the words “anecdote and “statistic”. Because that’s a pairing that’s already very prominent in my own thinking. So let me just say this:

When we think about “connecting the dots” and the intelligence community — whether it’s to discuss how the IC failed to notice this, or was overwhelmed with that excess of data, or might like the other form of massive data visualization tool — we generally think in terms of vast quantities of data, and technical means for making the appropriate connections.

My own focus is on anecdotes, not data points – on individuals and their thoughts, rather than on groups and their statistics – and on the human, pattern-recognizing brain, rather than on high tech tools and their associated budgets.

 Look: Gen. Scales is right, anecdotes come first. And whether we’re thinking about our own troops, or our involvements with others in Afghanistan, or Yemen, or wherever, let’s remember that anecdotes convey morale and context in a way that statistics never can.

So let’s begin to think a but more about our best human analysts, working with anecdotes rather than data points. The statistics and the data glut can follow later

Left of center Blogfriend Cheryl Rofer cross-posts at conservative-libertarian Chicago Boyz to debate Lexington Green:

Others’ Shoes

Lexington Green is politically conservative, but he and others at Chicago Boyz have been willing to put up with me; I respect them, too, because they think out what they’re about. I think they actually listen to me, too, even as we disagree.

So when Green’s post was endorsed by Glenn Beck, I realized that this might be a way to get into his admirers’ minds. Green begins with a John Boyd hierarchy that I haven’t spent much time with; this is another of my departures from my friends at Chicago Boyz. But I suspect that that part can be skipped with little loss. He’s saying that Beck is taking a broad view, going up a couple of levels.

But I don’t feel like I get the rest of it. I can do a sentence-by-sentence exegesis, but that wouldn’t be quite right. I’m trying to get into Green’s and Beck’s heads, not dispute them. But there are barriers. Since I wrote that, Green has added another update, which makes some things clearer. I’ll get to the update later.

One is that so much of what Beck offers is factually flawed. Green is an intelligent person; how can he miss that? Perhaps because the bigger things he talks about in the post are more important to him. But those factual flaws are a barrier to me. A lack of fact is a poor foundation for anything to come after.

What Green likes is Beck’s creation of a large narrative.

Beck is building solidarity and cultural confidence in America, its Constitution, its military heritage, its freedom…

Beck is creating positive themes of unity and patriotism and freedom and independence which are above mere political or policy choices, but not irrelevant to them.

This sort of narrative is indeed attractive; I have wished for a vision that can unite Americans, that would provide a solidarity that we can rest on, a positive vision.

But there is a double-mindedness to Green’s analysis that is another barrier to me. I agree that we need unifying themes for us as Americans. Period. Unfortunately, it’s easy to unify around an enemy, and, while talking about solidarity and unity, Green develops an enemy, “the Overlords”, and a sense of aggrievedness. Since “the Overlords” are Americans too, that sense cannot be the basis for unity. But that duality is in Beck’s words too: he condemns President Obama for a cult of victimization, and then tells his followers how victimized they’ve been. And for him and for Palin, there are very definitely an “us” and a “them.” Apparently I am one of “them.”

Read the rest here or here.

WARNING: RANT AHEAD! 

NYT Columnist David Brooks (via Metamodern):

A Case of Mental Courage

….Burney’s struggle reminds one that character is not only moral, it is also mental. Heroism exists not only on the battlefield or in public but also inside the head, in the ability to face unpleasant thoughts.

She lived at a time when people were more conscious of the fallen nature of men and women. People were held to be inherently sinful, and to be a decent person one had to struggle against one’s weakness.

In the mental sphere, this meant conquering mental laziness with arduous and sometimes numbingly boring lessons. It meant conquering frivolity by sitting through earnest sermons and speeches. It meant conquering self- approval by staring straight at what was painful.

This emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated. There’s less talk of sin and frailty these days. Capitalism has also undermined this ethos. In the media competition for eyeballs, everyone is rewarded for producing enjoyable and affirming content. Output is measured by ratings and page views, so much of the media, and even the academy, is more geared toward pleasuring consumers, not putting them on some arduous character-building regime.

In this atmosphere, we’re all less conscious of our severe mental shortcomings and less inclined to be skeptical of our own opinions. Occasionally you surf around the Web and find someone who takes mental limitations seriously. For example, Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once gave a speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment.” He and others list our natural weaknesses: We have confirmation bias; we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible. We are herd thinkers and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.

But, in general, the culture places less emphasis on the need to struggle against one’s own mental feebleness. Today’s culture is better in most ways, but in this way it is worse

True, and kudos to David Brooks for calling attention to the deficit in metacognition. However, I suspect that there is more to this phenomena than decadence, ADHD and a handy internet connection. There’s a problem with our epistemology. To be specific, a common epistemological standard is fading from American life, giving license to demagogues and emboldening fools.

There are many possible causes. The decline of critical thinking, logic, history and science in the curricular standards of American public schools; the disappearance of liberal education and the excesses of postmodernism, deconstructionism, constructivism and crit theory in our universities; the dumbing down of the MSM into 7 second sound bite infotainment and partisan agitprop; political correctness and its fetishes of race and gender victimization and witch-hunting; the growing legitimization of magical thinking inherent in religious fundamentalism and secular equivalents in irrationality like “deep ecology” or crackpot conspiracy theories. All of these and more have combined to erode standards of public discourse to an ever lower common denominator.

John Adams once argued before a Massachusetts jury that “facts are stubborn things”. Today it is unlikely that such an appeal would work. Not only do many people believe that they are entitled to their own set of “facts” but that they can, if they wish, dispense with facts entirely, yet self-righteously insist that their deliberate ignorance should be given the same weight as an informed argument because they “have a right to their opinion” without anyone daring to ask them why they are so morally and intellectually retarded.

Where once intellectual embarrassment prevented outright lies or inane arguments from being made in respectable forums, the popular deference to the dignity of cranks puts tin-foil hatters and their OCD political convictions about Bush orchestrating 9/11 or Obama being a secret Muslim in the center of public debate instead being confined to off-center mimeographed pamphlets passed out at airports by glassy-eyed true-believers. We feel compelled as a society to politely entertain drivel that should never have been heard past a kitchen table with a three quarters empty bottle of whiskey on it.

The country needs to regain a common intellectual ground that eschews nonsense for what it is.

Dr. Chet Richards gives a concise and practical explanation of the intuitive strategic-tactical skill, Fingerspitzengefühl.

Developing the touch

Ibis raised an interesting question in one of his comments:  If Fingerspitzengefühl can be taught, why do so few people have it?

Two points:  First, Fingerspitzengefühl is a skill, so although most people can get better at it, some are going to get a lot better.

Second, it’s a strange kind of skill, not for performing complicated or even dangerous tasks mystically well, but for sensing what is going on among groups of people in conflict and then influencing what happens.

….The first problem in learning Fingerspitzengefühl is that you can’t learn it by yourself.  You have to have at least two groups of people to practice with – your team and some opponents.  And to develop this skill, you have to practice a lot, because people, unlike clubs, don’t obey laws as simple as f=m•a.  And you have to practice influencing your own team – call that “leadership” – while also influencing the opposition – call that “strategy.”  And you have to learn it in increasingly unstructured and even threatening situations, under varying time constraints. This is the concept behind Vandergriff’s adaptive leader methodology, which I’ve referred to before….

Read the whole thing here.

ADDENDUM:

My thoughts on fingerspitzengefuhl.