Ideas Requiring Attention

It’s nice to know that while I piddle about, dependable bloggers continue their heroic output.

Mark Safranski of ZenPundit has been reexamining globalization and the problems that come with globalization — “Network Theory, ‘Noise’ and Al Qaida” and “PNM Theory and the Question of Metrics” — with a host of links in either post that should keep readers busy.

I confess to being both inspired and daunted.  Sometimes, the ideas circling among the intelligence-types and Blogospheric foreign affairs analysts appear to continue suggestive work while missing too many points.  But when I consider what is missing from these explorations, I am assaulted by vague impressions and then, thinking I should add my own interpolations, I am left dreading the prospect.

Three points:

1. Whether networks, waves, noise, complexity, influence, etc., the forces of globalization are almost always explained in ways that should make solidification of the process impossible.  Once they are solidified, they are no longer networks, waves, noise, complexity, nor influence — at least, on that last point, not subtle influence.
   


2. Despite the apparent and assumed impossibility, assumptions are also made that these processes can be explained or “discovered.”   Paradoxically, the more detail that is used to explain them, or to explain the discoveries, the further away from reality these theories appear to draw.  At least, for me.
   


3. At heart, the attempt to isolate, quantify, and qualify the processes of globalization leave me thinking that what is really happening among the intelligence-types and foreign affairs analysts is the imposition of order onto complex/chaotic realities: sometimes, the attempts appear to be ye old love of hierarchy and hierarchical — perhaps, scaled — modes of operating being expressed in new ways or, at best, circuitously.

I have myself circuitously approached such criticism before, usually with some significant incoherence.  For instance, in that linked list of notes and reactions, I questioned John Robb’s assertions that the emergence of global open source guerrilla movements will be too complex to isolate in advance — mostly because he then goes on to make qualitative (and somewhat quantitative) predictions related to such an emergence.  Which is it, impossible chaos or mere complexity?  Often, I seem to detect a belief in demons or angels that will operate on the world stage, which will be too vague to call anything else, combined with a wish to declare how they will appear and what they will do and what we can do in reaction to their appearance.

In another, older entry, I compared Thomas Barnett with Alexander the Great:  Alex either truly believed in improving the world by bringing Macedonian culture and structure to that world — while incorporating the useful structures other cultures suggested — or Alex merely wanted to control the world.  (Historians disagree.)

I have also stumbled over the term “rule set,” since any utilization of the term rule leads quite naturally to thoughts of rulership and rulers of a very human nature.  But since I’ve made the point several times, I’ll not link any given entry.

But, I will say that so much depends on whether those rules are naturally organic — we discover them — or are mere mortal creations.

And, I will say that the efforts of Blogospheric theorists on the subject tend to incorporate both kinds.

Thus, all the effort expended on creating definition for globalization and globalism appears to be the work of Grand Masters and their proxies — although, who is who is not as easy to discern — and, as a response to emerging paradigms and conflicts, has a very, very, very 5GWish aspect.