03-11-2006, 05:54 AM
A stunning post by Rudradev on BR. My hats off saar..
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->KG and Acharya:
Some time ago I watched a program on National Geographic, about the decision-making behavior of social animals in herds.
The example they gave was of a herd of African antelope-like creatures called Ibex, but I believe this pattern is recapitulated all the way from swarming insects like gnats, to human societies.
The program showed a herd of Ibex grazing on a plain. We were shown that there were three different sources of water around the area, all more or less equally far away and easily accessible.
As the animals grazed, different ones (seemingly at random) wound up facing in the general direction of one or other of the water sources. The numbers facing in the direction of each of the three water sources changed over time with no evident pattern. Apparently some animals changed direction at random, while others were influenced by the attitude of nearby dominant males.
Here's the important thing. At some point, a distinctly larger number of the animals came to face one of the three water sources preferentially over the others. As soon as the 51st percentile of animals turned to face that water source... the entire herd began to move off in the direction of that source. Some lagged, some led, but all moved.
Apparently this behaviour changes somewhat when the herd is aware of predators in the vicinity. Then, it takes a 66% majority facing in one direction to make that decision. Apparently a measure of conservatism kicks in for caution.
It was reported that similar decision making processes occur in all social life-forms, from bees on up.
Layered over as it might be with thousands of years' worth of social evolution, protocols, rituals, prejudices, polemics, egotism, emotionalism, calculations and so on... the core decision-making process of large human societies boils down to much the same. Particularly in democratic societies that respect the liberty of individuals... where decisions are allowed to evolve spontaneously rather than forced en masse by a higher authority as in a totalitarian system. When decisions are to be made as a group, the inhabitants of such societies are often heavily influenced by instincts older than the species itself.
If you look at the attitudes of America's political class with respect to India, the herd's alignment is now distributed at random. A few are pro-India, many are indifferent or ill-informed, some are hostile to various degrees. This is how it has always been, and absent any impetus for change, this is how it would have stayed. Societies, even those of political decision-makers, have an inertia all their own, as defined by the tenets of conventional wisdom.
Towards the end of the Clinton administration, we saw a slight increase in the number of critters facing in the "pro-India" direction. This trend seemed to accelerate in the first months of Bush's regime. Then the predators struck, bringing down the twin towers, and the instinctive conservatism of the herd set in. It seemed better to look once more to traditional allies and old techniques, Pakistan included, at this time of peril. There weren't many takers for a radical change in foreign policy. The random distribution with respect to India continued to hold, by and large.
What has happened with Bush's India trip, J18, etc. is that a very powerful alpha male (capable of influencing critters around him) has executed a clear turnaround in the pro-India direction. I'm not saying that we're anywhere near the critical percentile for a mass shift of attitudes yet... but it has never looked as promising as it does now.
The reason I bring this up is Acharya garu's reference to the Weasel Farmers of Harvard. This is a bunch of alleged academics who ganged up with the FOSA types to stymie Indian-American parents in California, when they were attempting to amend derogatory references to Hinduism and Indian culture in the state's mandated history textbooks.
If an alliance with the US emerges as a fait-accompli, the US will have increasing interests in all aspects of its relationship with India, from military hardware collaboration to the sentiments of Indian-American population. Right now the Weasel Farmers and the California parents are both small fish in a vast ocean of possibilities. If present trends continue, the critical percentile will be passed and the resulting attitude shift will sweep the entire political, academic, and intellectual establishment. The California parents' position will grow ever stronger; the Weasel Farmers, meanwhile, will have to contend with a larger portion of their own herd moving away from the kinds of attitudes they espouse. Ultimately they will have to move with the herd, or straggle behind with the irrelevance of stubborn holdouts (as fair game for any hyenas who might be watching).
For the same reason, FOSA-type anti-India groups of Indian expats will find fewer and fewer takers for their views once the great migration begins. They are tied to left-wing Indian interests which seek to sabotage Indo-US relations in all spheres, and work for a rapproachment with China instead. For now, they are entertained by people like Joseph Pitts who assume an anti-India stance in the current distribution. Once the herd begins to move, FOSA's sponsors will find themselves moving with it for the sake of their own political relevance. Then where will FOSA be?
Please don't take my analogy for oversimplification. I'm not saying that an American is an Ibex, and of course there is a lot more going on in Washington DC than on a breezy savannah in the Serengeti. Yet, if at some level the principles of herd decision-making did not hold true, how would you explain the re-embracing of Pakistan post 9-11?
Sure, Pakistan's cooperation opened up the easiest path to Afghanistan where OBL was hiding, that's the rationale commonly cited. But Pakistan was--and IS-- the source of all Al-Qaeda's operational capability, the ideological and practical fountainhead of anti-Western militant Islamism, and the CIA was never stupid enough to be unaware of this.
Yet the Americans reverted to old, familiar ways of thinking and decided to trust the Pakistan army as an ally against this very terrorism that Pakistan had been instrumental in spawning. What else explains this ridiculous display of faith in the very people behind 9-11... other than a visceral reversion to type, a falling back on conservative world-views when imperilled, a situation where only a very large majority of shifting opinions could draw the behaviour of the whole herd away from ingrained conventional wisdom? Predators were about!
Imagine if Pakistan had never been a Western ally in the Cold War, had never helped out with U2 flights or the Soviet-Afghan war or any of the rest of it. Imagine if Pakistan had been non-aligned just like India. In THAT case, if the ISI had sponsored and groomed an Al-Qaeda type organization to knock down the twin towers and murder 3000 Americans... do you think the US would have sought out Pervus Meretricius as an ally? I very much doubt it. They would have flattened the whole place.
In the end, it was the familiarity of dealing with a servile RAPE in uniform that attracted the Americans to this disastrous enlistment of a terrorist state in the war on terror.
It has taken five long years for the aftershock of 9-11, and the attendent herd-conservatism, to wear off. Finally the American political class is ready to entertain new possibilities, especially when...as with Pakistan... it couldn't be more apparent that the old ones are failing miserably. Finally, we're in a situation where the critical percentage necessary for a sea change has dropped once more, to the point where a bold President just might influence the attitude of the whole herd with a visionary move.
The President could yet fail. I'm not nearly as optimistic as KGoan. Bush's poll numbers have never been so low, and he's getting slammed at every turn... Dubai ports deal, Katrina redux, Iraq tumbling into full-scale civil war, the economy continuing to stink. This alpha male might not have it in him to influence a critical percentage of the herd, anymore. His whole initiative may yet fizzle out with a limp and a quack, and anti-Indian lobbies including the non-proliferationists may arrest any change in the larger attitude to India of the American political class.
Also, I'm not as sanguine as KGoan about the long term. Remember... once a herd, always a herd... and we are as much of a herd as the Americans. Herds go where the majority think the water is at any given time. No permanent friends, only permanent interests. If Bush is to India what Nixon was to China... so what? China and the US were hardly ever "allies" in any traditional sense, and they certainly aren't today.
Yet, the fact that we at least have some temporary friends who have demonstrated their current good intentions... is a cause for at least a little celebration.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->KG and Acharya:
Some time ago I watched a program on National Geographic, about the decision-making behavior of social animals in herds.
The example they gave was of a herd of African antelope-like creatures called Ibex, but I believe this pattern is recapitulated all the way from swarming insects like gnats, to human societies.
The program showed a herd of Ibex grazing on a plain. We were shown that there were three different sources of water around the area, all more or less equally far away and easily accessible.
As the animals grazed, different ones (seemingly at random) wound up facing in the general direction of one or other of the water sources. The numbers facing in the direction of each of the three water sources changed over time with no evident pattern. Apparently some animals changed direction at random, while others were influenced by the attitude of nearby dominant males.
Here's the important thing. At some point, a distinctly larger number of the animals came to face one of the three water sources preferentially over the others. As soon as the 51st percentile of animals turned to face that water source... the entire herd began to move off in the direction of that source. Some lagged, some led, but all moved.
Apparently this behaviour changes somewhat when the herd is aware of predators in the vicinity. Then, it takes a 66% majority facing in one direction to make that decision. Apparently a measure of conservatism kicks in for caution.
It was reported that similar decision making processes occur in all social life-forms, from bees on up.
Layered over as it might be with thousands of years' worth of social evolution, protocols, rituals, prejudices, polemics, egotism, emotionalism, calculations and so on... the core decision-making process of large human societies boils down to much the same. Particularly in democratic societies that respect the liberty of individuals... where decisions are allowed to evolve spontaneously rather than forced en masse by a higher authority as in a totalitarian system. When decisions are to be made as a group, the inhabitants of such societies are often heavily influenced by instincts older than the species itself.
If you look at the attitudes of America's political class with respect to India, the herd's alignment is now distributed at random. A few are pro-India, many are indifferent or ill-informed, some are hostile to various degrees. This is how it has always been, and absent any impetus for change, this is how it would have stayed. Societies, even those of political decision-makers, have an inertia all their own, as defined by the tenets of conventional wisdom.
Towards the end of the Clinton administration, we saw a slight increase in the number of critters facing in the "pro-India" direction. This trend seemed to accelerate in the first months of Bush's regime. Then the predators struck, bringing down the twin towers, and the instinctive conservatism of the herd set in. It seemed better to look once more to traditional allies and old techniques, Pakistan included, at this time of peril. There weren't many takers for a radical change in foreign policy. The random distribution with respect to India continued to hold, by and large.
What has happened with Bush's India trip, J18, etc. is that a very powerful alpha male (capable of influencing critters around him) has executed a clear turnaround in the pro-India direction. I'm not saying that we're anywhere near the critical percentile for a mass shift of attitudes yet... but it has never looked as promising as it does now.
The reason I bring this up is Acharya garu's reference to the Weasel Farmers of Harvard. This is a bunch of alleged academics who ganged up with the FOSA types to stymie Indian-American parents in California, when they were attempting to amend derogatory references to Hinduism and Indian culture in the state's mandated history textbooks.
If an alliance with the US emerges as a fait-accompli, the US will have increasing interests in all aspects of its relationship with India, from military hardware collaboration to the sentiments of Indian-American population. Right now the Weasel Farmers and the California parents are both small fish in a vast ocean of possibilities. If present trends continue, the critical percentile will be passed and the resulting attitude shift will sweep the entire political, academic, and intellectual establishment. The California parents' position will grow ever stronger; the Weasel Farmers, meanwhile, will have to contend with a larger portion of their own herd moving away from the kinds of attitudes they espouse. Ultimately they will have to move with the herd, or straggle behind with the irrelevance of stubborn holdouts (as fair game for any hyenas who might be watching).
For the same reason, FOSA-type anti-India groups of Indian expats will find fewer and fewer takers for their views once the great migration begins. They are tied to left-wing Indian interests which seek to sabotage Indo-US relations in all spheres, and work for a rapproachment with China instead. For now, they are entertained by people like Joseph Pitts who assume an anti-India stance in the current distribution. Once the herd begins to move, FOSA's sponsors will find themselves moving with it for the sake of their own political relevance. Then where will FOSA be?
Please don't take my analogy for oversimplification. I'm not saying that an American is an Ibex, and of course there is a lot more going on in Washington DC than on a breezy savannah in the Serengeti. Yet, if at some level the principles of herd decision-making did not hold true, how would you explain the re-embracing of Pakistan post 9-11?
Sure, Pakistan's cooperation opened up the easiest path to Afghanistan where OBL was hiding, that's the rationale commonly cited. But Pakistan was--and IS-- the source of all Al-Qaeda's operational capability, the ideological and practical fountainhead of anti-Western militant Islamism, and the CIA was never stupid enough to be unaware of this.
Yet the Americans reverted to old, familiar ways of thinking and decided to trust the Pakistan army as an ally against this very terrorism that Pakistan had been instrumental in spawning. What else explains this ridiculous display of faith in the very people behind 9-11... other than a visceral reversion to type, a falling back on conservative world-views when imperilled, a situation where only a very large majority of shifting opinions could draw the behaviour of the whole herd away from ingrained conventional wisdom? Predators were about!
Imagine if Pakistan had never been a Western ally in the Cold War, had never helped out with U2 flights or the Soviet-Afghan war or any of the rest of it. Imagine if Pakistan had been non-aligned just like India. In THAT case, if the ISI had sponsored and groomed an Al-Qaeda type organization to knock down the twin towers and murder 3000 Americans... do you think the US would have sought out Pervus Meretricius as an ally? I very much doubt it. They would have flattened the whole place.
In the end, it was the familiarity of dealing with a servile RAPE in uniform that attracted the Americans to this disastrous enlistment of a terrorist state in the war on terror.
It has taken five long years for the aftershock of 9-11, and the attendent herd-conservatism, to wear off. Finally the American political class is ready to entertain new possibilities, especially when...as with Pakistan... it couldn't be more apparent that the old ones are failing miserably. Finally, we're in a situation where the critical percentage necessary for a sea change has dropped once more, to the point where a bold President just might influence the attitude of the whole herd with a visionary move.
The President could yet fail. I'm not nearly as optimistic as KGoan. Bush's poll numbers have never been so low, and he's getting slammed at every turn... Dubai ports deal, Katrina redux, Iraq tumbling into full-scale civil war, the economy continuing to stink. This alpha male might not have it in him to influence a critical percentage of the herd, anymore. His whole initiative may yet fizzle out with a limp and a quack, and anti-Indian lobbies including the non-proliferationists may arrest any change in the larger attitude to India of the American political class.
Also, I'm not as sanguine as KGoan about the long term. Remember... once a herd, always a herd... and we are as much of a herd as the Americans. Herds go where the majority think the water is at any given time. No permanent friends, only permanent interests. If Bush is to India what Nixon was to China... so what? China and the US were hardly ever "allies" in any traditional sense, and they certainly aren't today.
Yet, the fact that we at least have some temporary friends who have demonstrated their current good intentions... is a cause for at least a little celebration.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->