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THE ART OF SUPERSOAKER WAR

Squared off against The Firstborn and the Son of Zenpundit yesterday in a running supersoaker gun battle, occasionally involving the use of heavy artillery (the hose) and antipersonnel mines ( the sprinkler) by a winded Zenpundit, who denies any violations of the Geneva Convention.

THINKING STRATEGICALLY ABOUT STRATEGIC THINKING

Art Hutchinson has had a very stimulating series of posts at Mapping Strategy that cover many topics related to strategic thinking and futurism that I cannot let pass without a high recommendation and brief commetary:

1. “Perils of Prediction: The Elusiveness of Certainty and the Value of ‘Simulated Hindsight’“

Art lauds Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” and discusses using “simulated hindsight” as a cognitive tool. This is not unlike counterfactual history exercises applied to futurism.

2. “sdrawkcaB gniknihT – Mind Game or Creative Lever?“

Art is concentrating here on reverse order thinking exercises which powerfully disrupt our brain’s natural preference for automaticity in “learned” activities, forcing a rexamination of assumptions in terms of process, sequence and causation. Art also explains why some folks are more equal than others with this technique.

3. “Thinker or Tinker – In Pursuit of Practical Strategy“

Partly a blog dialogue between Art and Dave Snowden on narrative and scenario strategies and Art’s advocacy of modular, interactive scenarios. Art also keys into the creativity/innovation aspect of recognizing and managing possibilities at what in the Medici Effect would be called ” intersections”.

Excellent.

GLOBALIZATION’S SUPEREMPOWERED SOCIETIES

Tom brought an excellent post by Curtis Gale Weeks at 5GW to my attention and then offered his own commentary. Here are the posts:

“On the Barnettian 5GW” by Curtis Gale Weeks

“Nice post by Curtis on 5GW” by Dr. Barnett

I have to agree with Tom and Shane that Curtis really hit his stride with that post. I have a few comments of my own on their 5GW exchange.

Curtis wrote:

“—There is a term used variously and vaguely in these discussions; I myself conflated two interpretations of the term. The Robbian view seems to depend on unequal distribution of “-powerment”, in which some individuals or groups become more powerful than the general human population; whereas, at heart Thomas Barnett’s Core/Gap paradigm and strategy seem to depend upon an eventual equalization, or a relative equalization (which is a type of oxymoronic phrase), of individual empowerment across the globe”

I don’t think Curtis’ use of ” relative equalization of individual empowerment” is actually as oxymoronic as it seems. This is an astute normative economic observation on Week’s part. Instead, it illustrates the aggregate effect of Schumpeter’s creative destruction rippling across the globe as the spread of economic connectivity and information technology proceeds apace. The spread, of say, cell phone-based wifi internet access to states with sketchy (at best) landline telephone service, is a quantum leap forward for equalization of empowerment on the macro- scale even as certain small networks or individuals of those states on the micro- scale, possess the ability to leverage still greater levels of empowerment to become “more equal than others”.

This seeming dichotomy are flip sides of the same coin in any true market action and is always ongoing to some degree, provided the market is permitted to function. Unless the comparative advantage is artificially locked in by force ( this is what tyrants of disconnectivity, like Mugabe and Kim Jong-Il, do – force everyone else to remain still in order to retain their own local “super empowerment”), any individual or entity’s “super empowerment” is apt to be a fleeting condition unless constantly maintained by adaptive improvements.

Much later, Curtis opined:

“Many people seek saviors of one sort or another; many are happy to delegate responsibility for the things they themselves cannot touch or do not have the time or motivation to fix themselves — or do not understand, themselves. The crux of the Barnettian paradox involves the manner and method of assigning these delegations so that the general man-on-the-street can rest easily knowing his prosperous future is assured. Even within the Core, much doubt about this process of delegation exists; various superempowerments within and without the Core threaten to upset faith in the systems of the Core. “

Visible super empowerment within a society is a condition representing both change as well as inequality; two phenomena against which it is nearly always possible to rally anger, envy, fear and political opposition.

Tom Barnett wrote:

” Instead of trying to be all things to all individuals in Vol. III, I’ll explore the one thing I know well. I do that because I feel the knowledge is important in its own right, addressing a serious gap in our tool kit vis-a-vis other, rising societies of SEIs (especially China and India).

….The book on SEIs remaking the world in their vision–positively–is a book I could see writing with Steve a few years down the road.”

The accent on positively remaking the world by Dr. Barnett is a noteworthy point to keep in mind. Numerically speaking, most highly intelligent, energetic, creative and task persistent individuals who function as change agents are overwhelmingly positive actors. Maslow wrote of a stage of self-actualization and in a certain sense, exceeding oneself by changing society in a positive direction may be an expression of both self-actualization as well as super empowerment The Ted Kaczynskis and Osama Bin Ladens are perverse and statistically rare anomalies; exceptions that prove the rule, in a sense.

Unfortunately, the exceptionally negative super empowered individuals do and will exist and have the potential to inflict system perturbations, at least on a one-shot, ” black swan“, basis. Deep uncertainty regarding the nature of such future superempowered individuals’ actions has to be dealt with in terms of proactively engineering systemic resilience to cope with these malicious one-hit wonders. Steve’s Development-in-a Box paradigm at Enterra is one effort to begin comprehensively addressing these deficits. Tom’s Sys Admin is another. Building new, highly decentralized, “Wikinomic” mass-collaborative platforms from scratch, may be yet a third.

BLOGROLL BURST

Many additions to the blogroll, a few of which I have been looking at for some time. Others caught my eye only this morning. Check them out!

Abu Muqawama

Cognitive Daily

Contentions

Cox and Forkum

Gyre.org

Haft of the Spear ( Tanji has set up a new site and url)

Mind Hacks

PrairiePundit

Project on Defense Alternatives

ShrinkWrapped

The SPOT Report

Westhawk

RECOMMENDED READING

A day late but it is here.

Lexington Green -“Article Roundup” An impressively robust reading list in the area of “small wars” and COIN ( some pieces I have already linked to here, others not) as well as a variety of other interesting topics, along with Lex’s commentary.

Steve DeAngelis – “Fostering Innovation” Steve continues the conversation on organizational creativity and productivity that he began and I responded to last week (more on this post later).

Dan of tdaxp – “Corporate Bloggers” Dan joined the creativity-innovation conversation too.

The Jamestown Foundation – “The Role of Foreign Trainers in Southern Thailand’s Insurgency” Generally, a sleeper issue in the Western media but an important test case on the ability of international Salafist terror networks to subvert states that are overwhelmingly non-Muslim and the willingness of these states to resist.

The NYT -“How Great Leaders Juggle Ideas” Interesting. Indicates a mental “zen” point regarding synthesis of contradictory concepts (hat tip KurweilAI).

That’s it!