zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — not just “thinking outside the box” — how about upending the whole thing and seeing what shakes out? ]
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FWIW, this isn't the world, nor is it upside down -- it's just a rather different map, eh?

A celebrated stanza by the Indian poet-saint Kabir — beloved of both Hindus and Muslims — asks:

Is there any guru in the world wise enough
to understand the upside-down Veda?

There’s a style of poetry used by Kabir and others to describe experience of the divine called “ulatbamsi” or the “upside down language” — and Linda Hess, Kabir’s great translator, writes of it as a language “of paradoxes and enigmas” — not too dissimilar, perhaps, to the koans or meditation paradoxes often encountered in zen training.

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Boom! The French have the word “bouleversé” to cover the way we feel when suddenly our whole world seems turned upside down.

Maybe it’s a modern idea? Bob Dylan, I’m delighted to say, no longer belongs to Robert Zimmerman except for purposes of copyright — his songs have entered the cultural bloodstream. Here’s his version:

The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

The world often seems upside down, our values are often quite the reverse of what they might be if we had the kind of clarity that is implied in Samuel Johnson‘s celebrated quote:

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

And then there are those great ones for whom our world is manifestly unjust, manifestly topsy-turvy — or “through the looking-glass”, if you prefer.

I mean, what else can being “in the world, but not of it” be all about, if it’s not about a major shift in perspective?

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I’m writing about this at such length because I just read one of those paragraphs that turns my own world upside down. It came in the middle of a long piece on “restorative justice” and it focuses on the power of forgiveness.

This particular paragraph describes how an Indian-American woman, Sujatha Baliga, came to see the unexpected power of forgiveness, and for her it occurred in a Buddhist context — but the power itself is beyond the boundaries of specific religions:

Baliga had been in therapy in New York, but while in India she had what she calls “a total breakdown.” She remembers thinking, Oh, my God, I’ve got to fix myself before I start law school. She decided to take a train to Dharamsala, the Himalayan city that is home to a large Tibetan exile community. There she heard Tibetans recount “horrific stories of losing their loved ones as they were trying to escape the invading Chinese Army,” she told me. “Women getting raped, children made to kill their parents — unbelievably awful stuff. And I would ask them, ‘How are you even standing, let alone smiling?’ And everybody would say, ‘Forgiveness.’ And they’re like, ‘What are you so angry about?’ And I told them, and they’d say, ‘That’s actually pretty crazy.’ ”

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I like the dark blue “sky” and the “clouds” at the top of the map I began this post with — but then, I’m a mostly vertical human who seldom stands on his head, so it looks “natural” to me. But that’s simply a matter of my point of view.

I imagine maps like that one must please our friends “down under”.

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A hat-tip to Hadar Aviram, whose California Corrections blog first pointed me to the article about Sujatha Baliga.

These were too good not to share:

MilPub (Seydlitz89) –Soft Power, A Strategic Theory Perspective 

….Let’s start with the concept of power itself. Nye’s definition agrees with the realist Weberian definition of power, that being “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be able to carry out their own will despite resistance”. It is important to stress here that for me power is a social relationship of varied degree, not a state of existence, nor a physical entity. Power can exist at various levels and involve individuals or whole nations. Force, coercion, economic incentives and “attraction” or soft power, are all types of power relationships. Power is also contingent, in that that each power relationship is unique involving the history, culture and personalities of the different actors.

….Soft Power is defined by Nye as:

“the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. When our policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced.”Notice the link of soft power with policy and legitimacy. Here is where a whole series of tensions are introduced to the overall concept, which are not apparent with a casual reading. Power can involve simply two individuals, whereas policy involves distinct political communities, policy being simply seen as the collective interests of the political community (see On War, Book VIII, Chapter 6B). Legitimacy would require the targeted political community seeing the actions of the soft power wielding political community as “legitimate”, which is obviously a difficult goal to achieve. This assuming of course that the policy actually reflects the national interests of the political community involved. Let’s look at the source of this tension more closely. [….]

Read the rest here.

Strongly agree with Seydlitz’s points concerning legitimacy and the need for a dedicated, culture-oriented, agency with a long-term perspective removed from the emphasis on the tactical or the immediate and transient political benefit.

Ink Spots (Jason Fritz)- I love books 

….I had been a reader from my earliest days, but school seemed to take up much of my reading time until adulthood. My mother works for the public library in my hometown in eastern Pennsylvania, forcing me to spend much of my time among many and varied volumes. In this last tour of note, she was assigned the task of ensuring I had plenty to read (my father, bless him, was tasked with keeping my humidor stocked). I sent my mother lists before and during deployment and received in return large boxes of books, through our markedly improved post. Initially, my reading interests were varied. Already well steeped in the books of my profession – Clausewitz’s On War, Jomini’s The Art of War, works by Galula and Tranquier, and a seemingly infinite suite of Army doctrine – I took interest in the books of the war of which I was a participant. Michael Gordon’s Cobra II and particularly Tom Ricks’Fiasco became influential in my thinking of the war and how I addressed my small part of it. Possibly because of this mono-topical study or possibly in spite of it, I felt I needed to widen my reading (and beyond my exhaustive collection of Hemingway that dominated my fiction shelves).

In my first major package of books of that deployment (thanks, Mum!), I received the last Harry Potter, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle, Mill, Kateb, Dickens, Hobbes, Thucydides, Dante, de Tocqueville, Hiaasen, Adam Smith, Arendt, Huxley, Bryson, Isaacson’s biography of Einstein, a few non-fiction adventure books (I recommend from these Rounding the Horn by Dallas Murphy and The Last Expedition by Daniel Liebowitz and Charles Pearson), and most prominently Joyce’s Ulysses.  These were the books I felt necessary to begin a study of the human condition beyond war (except the adventure books, which were wisely the purview of my mother, and the Harry Potter, which I merely enjoyed). Except for the Joyce, which I read every day and still took the entire deployment to finish, this was 6 months of reading material.  When this package of knowledge was delivered to me during duty in my brigade’s operations center south of Baghdad, another captain on the staff expressed to me, “I love books!” Meanly, I thought, “Of course you do; who doesn’t?”  At the time, I thought it a stupid thing to say.

In retrospect, I disagree with my moderately younger self and declare that I, too, love books. It is not obvious. Not everyone does. And while I may love books in a different way than our maligned captain (my agape vice her philia, if you will excuse both the probably unnecessary distinction and probable blasphemy), her sentiment is one which I have come to embrace entirely and tirelessly. I do not just love reading, I love books. I love to hold a book in my hands, to feel the binding and the paper, to smell the ink. I love the plates and pictures. I love the font and the layout of the pages, even if they include irregularities (such as my nth-hand copy of Joyce’s Dubliners, where the printing is partially smudged throughout the middle third). I suspect that many of you do as well, the military scholar being a peculiar subset of the bibliophile that tends towards bookishness and book collecting, even if said collecting extends beyond the typical cast of characters that have contributed to the art of war and warfare. My personal interactions indicate that you are a well-read and erudite community that reads compulsively on topics for which we are paid to read and topics for which we enjoy and topics we read because we believe that it makes us a better person. [….] 

Read the rest here.

I share Jason’s love of books, as probably does everyone reading this blog or Ink Spots. However there is no shortage of people in this country for whom books are as irrelevant as an Irish linen doily or a whole horizon sextant, who are not technically illiterate, but meander through the post-literate life of cultural primitives.

[ by Charles Cameron — comparative contemporary Turkish Mahdisms ]
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Image from the Adnan Oktar / Harun Yahya site http://www.mahdinevershedsblood.com/

Here’s an intriguing paragraph today from Tim Furnish‘s MahdiWatch blog, as one prospective Mahdi candidate evaluates another:

Another Mahdi-related figure (sometimes seen as a forerunner, other times as a successor) is al-Qahtani. Heretofore the most prominent such was Muhammad Abd Allah al-Qahtani (d. 1979), the putatative “mahdi” held up as inspiration for the abortive coup against the Saudis led by Juhayman al-Utaby in 1979. Now, however, another-and, thankfully, more pacific-Qahtani has been identified: he is Fethullah Gülen, the exiled-to-America neo-Sufi Turkish leader of a massive global charter school system This is according to a man whom some consider to be the Mahdi himself, Istanbul-based Adnan Oktar. (And in fact it’s not overly cynical to observe that since Oktar and Gülen are in many ways rivals for the mantle of the late Ottoman/early Turkish Mahdist thinker Said Nursi (d. 1960), the former’s relegation of the latter to a supporting role is quite astute in Mahdist circles.)

Both Adnan Oktar / Harun Yahya and Fethullah Gülen are worth paying attention to as popular leaders who might well be treated as Mahdi by their devotees — much as the late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson was considered the Messiah by some of his followers — though both of them seem to be of the opinion that the authentic Mahdi would not claim that title for himself.

Both men, as I understand it, also make the claim that the Mahdi will be peaceable. I don’t want to promise a more detailed account of the Mahdi-related writings of either one of them at this time, because the research effort would exceed my grasp — but for a quick glimpse, see the Adnan Oktar page on the Mahdi illustrated above, or this page on the Mahdi from Gülen.

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There’s more interesting stuff in the rest of Furnish’s piece, but that’s the paragraph that caught my attention and triggered this post.

[ by Charles Cameron — intriguing uses of the terms Islamism and brotherhood in US newspapers a century ago, also the Ahmadiyya ]
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Here are the opening paragraphs of a fascinating article in the Ogden Standard Examiner, June 1922, titled Trying To Make Christian America Mohammedan. Marisa Urgo pointed to it in a tweet yesterday, with the comment “Reads like some blogs I know. I kid you not…” I noted it because it contained the word “Islamism” – surely an early use of that term? – and found much of interest when I read it more carefully this morning:

The Christian people of America are spending millions of dollars every year in the effort to spread the gospel of Christ all over the earth and convert the people of every nation under the sun to Christianity.

And while this tremendous outlay is being made to maintain thousands of devoted missionaries in foreign lands, one of the world’s other great religions is making a determined effort to gain a foothold in Christian America.

The leaders of Mohammedanism, not content with the 227,000,000 or more adherents that faith now has in Turkey, India and other countries, are turning their attention to the United States and Canada, with the hope of making both those nations strongholds of Islamism.

They aim to make their picturesque mosques and the towers from which the muezzins issue their calls to prayer as numerous as our churches, and when that day arrives they are confident it will not be long before the crescent will overshadow the cross and a great majority of Americans will be following the precepts laid down in the Koran.

To the millions of American Christians who have so long looked eagerly forward to the time when the cross shall be supreme in every land and the people of the whole world shall have become followers of Christ the plan to win this continent to the faith of the “Infidel Turk” will seem a thing unbelievable. But there is no doubt about its being actually well under way or that it is being pressed with all the fanatical zeal for which the Mohammedans are noted.

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The article as a whole is about the Ahmadis, followers of a nineteenth century Mahdi claimant, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad — and we should note what Wikipedia calls “the Ahmadiyya concept of Jihad in a peaceful format”:

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community believes that God sent Ahmad, like Jesus, to end religious wars, condemn bloodshed and reinstitute morality, justice and peace. They believe that he divested Islam of fanatical beliefs and practices by championing what is in their view, Islam’s true and essential teachings as practised by the Prophet Muhammad.

For this and various other reasons, the Ahmadis have been widely considered non-Muslim by orthodox Sunni and Shi’a, and notably persecuted, see for example Attackers Hit Mosques of Islamic Sect in Pakistan.

The article also includes a hypothetical question and answer between Jesus and a US customs official, when the former attempts to enter the US from India. While not as fine a work of literature as Dostoevsky‘s Grand Inquisitor, it has its Life of Bryan moments…

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On early uses of the term Islamism – I haven’t consulted OED, which would probably be wise, but Marisa Urgo also pointed to a use of the same term in a 1912 New York Sun piece, Rallying to Defend Islam:

But Islamism is even more than a faith, it is brotherhood…

Top Billing! Global Guerrillas “Dronenet Series” – DRONENET The next BIG thing. , An open drone network vs. closed logistics networks, What a Dronet (a more compressed spelling?) can leverage and DRONENET How to build it 

About five years ago I did some work for a defense contractor on the potential applications of drones ($$).  One of the things I put together for them was a logistics system, using drones, for special ops teams.  It was the perfect application for keeping dozens of dispersed teams supplied in rough terrain.

Flash forward five years and I heard a presentation by Matternetat a conference called Poptech.  Matternet is a 2011 start-up that got some play at a “Solve for X” presentation at Google (solve for x is supposed to be a “think tank” for solving the worlds biggest problems).  Essentially, they were pitching the same thing the defense contractor I consulted with was interested in, except for humanitarian uses.  A logistics network that uses drones to overcome the problems of delivering supplies to small groups in harsh terrain (although the defense contractor’s drones and systems were FAR more sophisticated than the stuff Matternet is pitching 4 years later).

However, when I heard Matternet’s presentation it hit me that a closed network approach would miss the real opportunity. Here’s why….

Dr. Tdaxp – Progress, Science, and Exemplars — or — when it sucks to be young 

Some people divide the ways we know about our world into two types, Science and Inquiry. Science typically refers to using falsifiable hypotheses to make predictions about the world. Inquiry refers to any deviation or alteration of this method.

For the rest of this post I’m going to talk about fields in which the objective is tocontrol, predict, and improve the behavior of some object (cancer cell, human being, State, whatever). That is the purpose for which the tool of science is most applicable.

Some people further divide Science into two types: Normal Science and Revolutionary Science. These terms from from Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Normal Science, in Thomas Kuhn’s original model, was capable of progress but governed by religious-like “paradigms.” Revolutionary Science, likewise in Kuhn’s outdated model, was capable of freedom but incapable of progress….

Michael Yon Online – Some Thoughts About The Kingdom of Thailand 

….Some Red Shirts brought children into their camp even though bullets were flying.  It was dishonorable to bring children into a combat zone.  Images of children killed in war are branded into my memory.

Red Shirt leadership should have ordered that children be taken home.  Press members should not issue a free pass to leaders who allow kids to be brought to combat.  Any journalist who did not report on the children is professionally flawed.

This level of sustained and violent occupation would never have been permitted in the United States.   The first time that a protestor fired an M79 grenade launcher in downtown New York City, popular opinion would have demanded that the police or the Army put them down.

Occupy Wall Street is annoying, for example, but we can live with it.  If members of Occupy Wall Street fired grenades or an RPG, a final response would have been demanded.

Waging insurrection is not a constitutionally protected activity in any country. Peaceful protesting is protected in some countries, including the United States and Thailand.

Launching grenades is over the line.  Dozens of bombings, grenade attacks, and shootings were perpetrated in Bangkok during the Red Shirt protest, including a small car bomb. In addition to the protests, a steady insurrectional campaign targeting symbolic targets was waged.

Red Shirt protestors used automatic weapons, 40mm grenade launchers, bombs, firebombs, and firework rockets, not to mention slingshots and ball bearings.

Many Red Shirts were courageous and unafraid of combat.  I greatly respect Red Shirts for their courage under fire.  Much was caught on video.  I respect them though I believe that they should not have engaged in violence.

NRO –Risk, Relativism, and Resources

…. First: Progressives and those who sympathize with them are economically risk-averse compared with conservatives. As Charles C. W. Cooke recently pointed out, the terms “conservative” and “liberal” are sometimes confusing in the American context, and that is certainly true in the case of financial risk, about which conservatives are not conservative at all. As an academic study published in the American Journal of Business put it: “As the economic political orientation of the subjects in our study becomes increasingly conservative (meaning they lean more towards an economically libertarian position as opposed to an economically socialistic position), they assume significantly higher levels of risk in their investment decisions.” Other studies find similar results.

There are many ways to measure financial risk tolerance, but consider this: One of the riskiest things you can do with your money is start a business, and entrepreneurs and small-business owners skew heavily Republican. The 2011 survey from the National Small Business Association found that 54 percent of the organization’s members identified as Republicans, while only 16 percent identified as Democrats; it is significant that more small-business owners identified themselves as independents in the survey than as Democrats….

Small Wars Journal– What Caesar Told His Centurions: Lessons of Classical Leadership and Discipline for a Post-modern Military

Easily Distracted-A Mismatching of Frame and Picture

Ribbonfarm-Schumpeter’s Demon 

Gene Expression –When Rome fell civilization did decline

AFJ –WHEN THE NETWORK DIES

ForeignPolicy.com – The Art of Snore

The Telegraph – Is Slavoj Zizek a Left-Fascist?

Foreign Affairs– Chavismo After Chávez 

Scientific American – Wisdom from Psychopaths