Species: America

From Wretchard:

[M]an is at the center of warfare...The jihadis want our souls; the rule in warfare is that we will want theirs.

In total war, the deprogramming of the individual is less important, from the standpoint of effect, than the long-term deprogramming of the losing culture.

This starts, of course, with individuals. Dead men tell no tales: their beliefs and perspectives die with them. With criminals, this is usually where the story stops; their criminality is no longer transferrable once they are dead. With movements and cultures, however, the story is more complex.

Movements and cultures carry with them an institutionalized memory--made of narrative theories and beliefs--that are much less dependent on particular individuals for their survival and transmission. Some are more dependent than others on leaders--their recall and articulation, for instance--but the most successful ones can survive with minimal carriers in a decentralized environment. Christianity in its infancy was such a movement. America, for all its early dependence on Washington, was another.

In total war, one is fighting a common mentality--a common narrative theory about the world that is shared (if not by every lowly soldier) by every agent of consequence in that society. This narrative theory does not have to be complex: it can be as simple as "them or us." It may be based on truth, and it may be based on falsity. Many times it is broad and vague--a general agreement that to continue to be us we must stop them from being them. Sometimes it is narrow and precise--they are infidels, and must be slaughtered.

I said yesterday that human motives are pretty much consistent across all spectrums and societies, and this is true. We all start with certain genetic baggage--some of this baggage is species-wide, some of this baggage is more localized. Our binocular vision, or our language center, or our ability to recognize agents--these were selected for way back, and will be consistent in all humans except in the case of mutation. Localized genetic baggage--genes that developed geographically--play a much bigger role in behavior and personality, but they are heavily diversified and tend to manifest on distribution curve that is similar, though not the same, in all societies.

Okay, you are probably wondering (if you've made it this far), where does that take us?

It takes us, in a literal sense, to birth, to the grand introduction of this genetic package to the world in which it must navigate and participate. Thereinafter, all information this person takes in from the world will be processed in the context of his genetic predisposition, and, when enough of this data is stored, in the context of the processed product itself.

The short hand for this is "qualia"--which is a philosophical (not a technical) term that signifies subjectivity itself. Red to me is not red to you, as the classic example goes. You will never be able to experience my red, and I'll never be able to experience yours. There must be some subjective experience, then, that cannot be quantified or reduced. And so on.

While this is practicably true, it is not true in principle, not true in the sense that it cannot be accounted for. If we were to start with a genetic replica of you, and if we were able to recreate each discrete sensation and event you ever experienced, in the order in which you experienced them, there is still a doubt about whether the person at the end of the line would be you exactly. Oh, it would be close enough to predict all but the tiniest of behaviors, but it still may not be fully and completely you. An element of randomness may have gone unaccounted for, for instance, a quantum variable or some such that cannot be mathematically predicted. But it would be very close.

This tells us a lot -- a lot -- about avenues we should explore if we hope to avoid total war. Barring some horror like gene-doping (which, unfortunately, we will see in our life-times), the substances we have to work with--and on--all exist at the sensory input level. We should recognize it, and act on it.

An Arabic kid who was never exposed to Islam would not be Muslim. He may still be wicked, insincere, narcissistic, etc., but the mental universe in which he acted out these traits would not be based on Suras and Sermons. His behavioral options--based on theories about cause and effect--would be broadened in some ways, but also narrowed in others: it would never occur to him, for instance, to kill himself and others for 72 virgins in heaven.

Nothing is easy, and messing with belief systems is no different. Motivations do not exist one at a time, but in a matrix of relativity that can change value on a dime if the environment in which it interacts shifts even slightly. Two beliefs can be held simultaneously even though they are, fundamentally, contradictory--and one can be acted on in one kind of situation while another will be effectual in another kind of situation. There are more possible neural pathways than there are particles in the universe. Our brain is incredibly complex.

But we really don't need to know every little thing about the mind before we come up with a plan to cultivate it. Edison didn't need to understand 'why carbon filament' before he internalized the lessons of its success. Farmers don't need to know chemistry to understand the necessity of a field lying fallow. And a park manager doesn't need to know thermodynamics to understand the benefit of a controlled burn. We don't need to know everything, either, because we have examples of success all around us.

A stable society must have stable institutions that organize the information that flows into developing and developed minds, and it must also have institutions that then account for the individual and group activity that is a consequence of this information input. We know that works, we know that is a recipe for success. There are also other things that spell success: informational competition, activity competition, kinds and quality of information, kinds and quality of acceptable activity, etc.

What you see on closer inspection is that America is--as far as it is possible--the ideal mind cultivator and aggregator. Just as the human brain developed to cultivate theories (explanatory postures about the world) and aggregate information (memory), America has developed as a superior mechanism for nurturing and organizing minds. It has done this by accounting for the propensities and diversities of behavior (human nature) in order to minimize institutional and societal instability. And it has done this by freeing minds to associate with other minds--much like neurons associate with other neurons--thereby allowing 'America' to process information at the society level in an incredibly efficient, responsive, and fault-tolerant way.

This is the recipe for societal success. This is what the rest of the world must become.

The reason why is painfully obvious: other cultures now interact in a world where America exists. A new species has developed--strong, agile, intelligent, determined--and the fact of its existence changes everything for every other species.

I'm sure the Neanderthal thought himself successful before the ascendancy of homo sapien. The story of America's ascendancy will play out in the same way, until another species develops to take her place.

This is not much comfort for individual cultures and societies, I'm afraid, but--and I think I'm on solid ground here--their minds will love it.