Many Paths to Victory

While pondering the multiple strands that will need to be managed in conducting 5GW, we should remember the ways these strands may cross and hook each other, so that when one is pulled, the rest move even if slightly.  This simplistic view naturally does little to factor time into our equations — the movement further afield in the pattern, or in a more remote domain, may not occur immediately or grandly — and future historians may well isolate the inept ones not only by their fairly local theaters of operation but also by their inability to anticipate future reverberations resulting from their own activities and the activities of others.

To say that the whole pattern is affected by every step in an unfolding 5GW scenario — vertical actions have effects on horizontal activity, horizontal activities have effects on vertical organization — is to dismiss the reality of time and look directly at process:  one which is assumed to exist regardless of the effects of time.  Either the System continues to exist, changed; or, the System is perpetually new; and this distinction makes no difference if we hold to the simplistic view that a self-contained and self-containing system — what is theorized to become reality once ‘globalization’ is complete — will be entirely self-determining and self-determined.  For every action there may be an equal but opposite reaction; but we live within the bounds of time with quite limited observational capability.

What is curious about this dynamic of criss-crossing continua, of multiple strands and multiple interacting domains, is the way an awareness of the complexity inherent in such a system appears to become more apparent to larger numbers of people, as time progresses.  I mean not merely the polytheistic notion that unseen gods and forces occupy the world and work either miracles or pranks in unanticipated ways — although, to be sure, we sometimes seem to be falling back into a polytheism as we contemplate complexity — but that more and more people are becoming aware of the realities of what has been called ‘interconnectivity.’

I could postulate an example from the Iraq Misadventure — and whether I took a neoconservative perspective or an American leftist perspective would make no difference.  One side thought that enfolding part of the Gap within the arms of the Goddess of Democracy would allow democracy to spread like wildfire in the region; the other believes that the God of War has inspired indomitable opposition in the region that will (justly, it is presumed) spread like wildfire.  Intellectuals on either side of that debate may step back from their ideologies to ponder how economic, martial, legal, social and diplomatic reverberations have conjoined to form some new dynamic not yet quite fully appreciated.  When the President of the United States told Americans to Shop! and Take Vacations! after 9/11 in order to defeat Islamic Extremism, he was speaking as a 5GWarrior — but I think history will record that he was one of the inept ones.

The most curious aspect of our dawning awareness of the complexity inherent in the System:  that it is an awareness that has never before quite occurred in the history of humanity.  Early Hellenic physicists may have postulated different base elements of the universe interacting in various ways to form the material world we see — even ‘atoms’ which acted somewhat like those we now know to exist — and various polytheistic and pantheistic religions of the past may have attempted a framework for understanding complexity; but what is now occurring could not have occurred without the corresponding technological advancement of cable and satellite television, the Internet, and so forth.  Add to those increases in observational capability all the many real advances in observation, from mapping the genome to photographing stellar prehistory.  Add, too, Wikipedia and the other reservoirs of literature which have never before been available to so many people (or any person, before now.)  The curious aspect comes from the many failures of the greatest ancients:  though great for their time, it is rather odd that none of them could conceive of the Universe without making many glaring errors as well, without exception.  For instance, consider the fact that perspective in painting and drawing never occurred before the European Renaissance:  how could such an utterly obvious omission occur, when so many ‘brilliant’ thinkers and artists had already been born, lived, and died?

We have the ancients to thank, of course, for handing us the baton where we received it — even though we have sometimes fumbled the handover and dropped the baton.  I still read Plato regularly, for the things that I have missed and which I think many have missed or forgotten in the intervening years.  I would describe what I find in Plato as more the result of the operation of my own mind than of his, however, owing to the nature of the personal OODA loop.  We take not only from the ancients, but from our contemporaries, and from our contemporary worlds; and we mix and recombine what we observe in ways that could not have occurred previously.

My original inspiration for this post came as a result of reading various contemporary attempts to define the complexity of the System with overuse of the suffix -fare to describe what in previous worlds we would call the gods of polytheism.

-fare: from Old English faru, from faran, to journey, to set forth, go, travel, proceed

Among my closest contemporaries, Purpleslog may be the most devoted polytheist.  He has often used the term ‘lawfare’ to describe the conscientious use of legal systems to subvert another system or an opponent. (But he is not the only one.  Some who do not name it thus nonetheless invoke it.)  On top of this use of the suffix, he has expanded the most common use, i.e. warfare: 

• Atomic warfare
• Bio-chemical warfare
• Civil Disobedience warfare
• Conventional warfare
• Culture warfare
• Diplomatic warfare
• Drug warfare
• Ecological warfare
• Economic aid warfare
• Electronic warfare
• Effects-Based warfare aka EBO warfare
• Environmentalist warfare (= Natural Resources warfare + Legal System warfare)
• Financial warfare
• Guerrilla warfare
• High Energy warfare
• Ideological warfare
• Information Technology Infrastructure warfare
• Infrastructure Systems warfare
• Intellectual Property warfare
• Intelligence warfare
• Lawfare aka Legal Systems warfare
• Media warfare
• Meme warfare
• Meteorological/Geophysics warfare
• Nanotech warfare
• Netwar
• Network-Centric warfare
• Open Source warfare
• Population / Immigration warfare
• Psychological warfare
• Regulatory warfare
• Reputation warfare
• Resources warfare aka Natural Resources warfare
• Robotic warfare
• Sanction warfare
• Smuggling warfare
• Space warfare
• Terrorist warfare
• Trade warfare
• Virtual/Deterrence warfare

I suppose that the list can go on and on; and I’m tempted to metaphorize the historical ‘debate’ between Plato and Aristotle.  Purpleslog is expounding upon the Chinese concept of ‘unrestricted warfare,’ a close kin of 5GW (perhaps the first real exploration of 5GW theory; which should give those of us living in the U.S. pause for thought), although in the first link given above, he has suggested that lawfare is 4GW rather than 5GW.

Rather than engage in a recreation of philosophical schisms, however, I’ll respond to a comment left by Phil on another recent post concerning a working definition of 5GW.

CGW:  I might be tempted to change ‘conflict’ to ‘warfare’ so that we’re not talking merely politics or business, etc.

Phil: I think this kind of “warfare” would transcend these categories, blur their distinctions. It is entirely possible that what we would normally perceive as business, politics, religion, entertainment etc, become in 5GW a means to an end that would be by intent a form of warfare, even if it appeared to us as normal business or politics etc.

I’m not sure that transcendence is the right word although I do agree with Phil’s comment.  Those predisposed to split hairs, or to have favored gods — perhaps, idols — may see only a corporate move, a legal move, a social movement, and so forth while missing the 5GW skeins.  Previously, I have suggested that the distinctions between domains would necessarily be blurred for 5GW effectors, since they would not operate with an eye on only one or another domain; but now I wonder both:

1. Perhaps there are no really separate ‘domains’.
2. Perhaps there are, and effective 5GWarriors will know when they’re operating in the political domain, the legal domain, the social domain, and so forth.

The key, I think, is this:  That those effectors will know how these domains interact.  The domains are not separate — but interwoven, or ‘co-incident-al.’  The blurring comes from the consideration that a change in one domain produces changes in others, so that no strictly linear cause & effect chain can be detected slicing through the domains or shaping them from without.

Already, most Americans at least (and many others) already know there is overlap, and that the complexity of the contemporary world demands an understanding of exactly how diverse domains interact.  This awareness has made us susceptible to irrational fears, dreams of demons at our doors, some of whom are our neighbors; but we have an opportunity never before possible in all the history of humanity.  The opportunity may require humility, perhaps some humiliation, in the face of such complexity, especially if the lesson of Iraq is taken to heart: that we cannot simplify complexity at whim, or by invoking favorite Gods and Goddesses to be our saviors.  But surely such humility is better than succumbing to those capricious idols, those demons — if it leads to greater understanding?