{"id":42124,"date":"2014-12-12T00:40:25","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T00:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=42124"},"modified":"2014-12-12T00:40:25","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T00:40:25","slug":"john-brennan-jay-forrester-george-kennan-isaac-luria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=42124","title":{"rendered":"John Brennan &#038; Jay Forrester, George Kennan &#038; Isaac Luria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; a little something on torture and our knowledge of causality, also man the microcosm in diplo-politics ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p>With <strong>John Brennan<\/strong> talking about the &#8220;unknowable&#8221; causality between what I choose to call <strong>torture <\/strong>and what I am content to call the elicitation of <strong>actionable intelligence<\/strong> (upper panel, below) &#8212; not that I claim any originality to either of those phrasings &#8212; I was forced to remind myself of <strong>Jay Forrester<\/strong>&#8216;s comments on causality (lower panel) &#8212; comments which amount to a warning against simplistic thinking and easy explanations:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/SPEC-unknowables.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/SPEC-unknowables.png\" alt=\"SPEC unknowables\" width=\"602\" height=\"633\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-42126\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/SPEC-unknowables.png 602w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/SPEC-unknowables-285x300.png 285w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px\" \/><\/a> <\/p>\n<p>The human psyche is indeed &#8220;complex&#8221;, and perhaps more inscrutable than the term &#8220;complexity&#8221; itself suggests.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>But that was not all: Director Brennan also entered into my own preferred realms of anthropology, psychology and theology, and spoke to the divided nature of our humanity:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But we are not a perfect institution. We&#8217;re made up of individuals. And as human beings, we are imperfect beings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That in turn overlapped with another <strong>DoubleQuote<\/strong> I was formulating at the time, this one juxtaposing a comment about <strong>George Kennan<\/strong> with the <strong>Ari<\/strong>, Rabbi <strong>Isaac Luria<\/strong>&#8216;s concepts of the <strong>Shattering of the Vessels<\/strong> and the <strong>Repair of the World<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Kennan&#8217;s chapter heading (as quoted by <strong>Joseph Epstein<\/strong> in the upper panel, below) refers to the microcosm:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/SPEC-cracked-vessels.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/SPEC-cracked-vessels.png\" alt=\"SPEC cracked vessels\" width=\"602\" height=\"633\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-42125\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/SPEC-cracked-vessels.png 602w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/SPEC-cracked-vessels-285x300.png 285w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 602px) 100vw, 602px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It seems only appropriate to me to note that the Ari provides us with its macrocosmic equivalent &#8212; and also, under the name <strong>Tikkun Olam<\/strong> (repair of the world), a sense of what is now required of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; a little something on torture and our knowledge of causality, also man the microcosm in diplo-politics ] . With John Brennan talking about the &#8220;unknowable&#8221; causality between what I choose to call torture and what I am content to call the elicitation of actionable intelligence (upper panel, below) &#8212; not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,92,627,416,717,1142,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-cia","category-doublequotes","category-george-kennan","category-judaism","category-tikkun-olam","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42124"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42152,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42124\/revisions\/42152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}