There will be no further posts on New Risks, but entries will remain on archive.

Below I summarize the chapters that made a particular impression on me, but the whole publication is definitely worth reading.

Chapter 2 examines seven broad categories of inquiry into strategy—(1) defining the situation, (2) detailing your concerns and objectives, those of your principal antagonist(s)/competitor(s), and those of other important players, (3) identifying and analyzing options that might be pursued, in terms of such factors as costs, risks, and probabilities of success, (4) options selection and alternatives analysis in the light of potential frictions, (5) re-optimization in light of changing events, (6) evaluation of the option in terms of its success in achieving desired results, and finally, (7) option modification or replacement.

Chapter 7 looks into reasons for teaching strategy, target-audiences and the different roles of the strategist. It compares and contrasts the roles, skills and competencies of a strategic leader, strategic practitioner and strategic theorist. Drawing from examples from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Carl von Clausewitz’ On War and Colin S. Gray’s Modern Strategy among others, the author discusses various premises of strategy according to classical strategic theory and offers a model for strategy formulation.

Chapter 9 discusses in detail the cognitive frames that inform strategic decision making. Specifically, the author addresses the importance of heuristic shortcuts as cognitive decision guides, and compares the rational actor decision model that has traditionally informed strategic decision making in the military with a sense-making framework more suitable to complex strategic environments. The final section focuses on the use of case study methodology not so much as a classroom illustration of topical issues but as a tool for developing effective heuristic shortcuts and cognitive response mechanisms, or shaping behavior patterns.

Chapter 10 distinguishes between the traditional way of teaching strategy by focusing on historical lessons from great strategists and the more novel approach of development of strategic thinking. According to the author, the most effective way to achieve the latter, i.e. to compel students to think strategically about situational environments is thinking about strategy in 3-dimensional terms. He identifies these three critical dimensions of strategic environmental reality that exist with almost all organizations – military and civilian – as (i) the dimensions of systems, (ii) actors, and targets, and goes into detail outlining each.

Table of Context:

Table of Context:
1.    Introduction – Robert H. Dorff
2.    The Elements of Strategic Thinking: A Practical Guide – Robert Kennedy
3.    The Study of Strategy: A Civilian Academic Perspective – Robert C. Gray
4.    Teaching Strategy in the 21st Century – Gabriel Marcella and Stephen O. Fought
5.    Teaching Strategy: A Scenic View from Newport – Bradford A. Lee
6.    A Vision of Developing the National Security Strategist from the National War College – Cynthia A. Watson
7.    How Do Students Learn Strategy? Thoughts on the U.S. Army War College Pedagogy of Strategy – Harry R. Yarger
8.    The Teaching of Strategy: Lykke’s Balance, Schelling’s Exploitation, and a Community of Practice in Strategic Thinking – Thomaz Guedes da Costa
9.    Making Sense of Chaos: Teaching Strategy Using Case Studies – Volker Franke
10.    Teaching Strategy in 3D – Ross Harrison
11.    Beyond Ends-Based Rationality: A Quad-Conceptual View of Strategic Reasoning for Professional Military Education – Christopher R. Paparone

Where do carbon offsets come from? Simply enough, some authority must certify that someone else has either reduced their CO2 output, or has agreed not to do something that would increase CO2 output they would otherwise have done. For every ton of CO2 you don’t emit, you get a certificate that you can sell on the carbon market to someone who needs permission — an indulgence — allowing them to emit a ton of CO2…

Once you have the carbon credit you need to sell it, which means there must be a market — a role filled in part by the Chicago Carbon Exchange (CCX). The CCX, which was started with seed money from both government and private non-profit sources, is most emphatically a for-profit firm that functions like any commodity exchange. If you have a story about the carbon you aren’t emitting and need it certified, the CCX can certify it — for a fee. Then the CCX will help you sell it — for a commission. If you need to buy carbon credits, the CCX will match you up with a buyer — for a fee — and sell you the certificate (and charge you a commission)…

It is, of course, purely a coincidence that this market, which simply doesn’t exist without the legal requirement that companies reduce carbon emissions, is closely connected with the politically connected people who are pushing for carbon restrictions by law and treaty.

Martin concludes with a description of the three types of audience/stakeholders in the climate debate, which he labels (i) “the true believers” (a group that could be identified with the “useful idiot” archetype); (ii) the Al Gores (who may or may not be true believers); and (iii) “the rest of us”. Of these, the second is purportedly the ‘wild card’ to watch out for:

There is another, larger group, who may or may not be true believers — who can know what is in another man’s heart? — but who don’t seem to worry too much about their own carbon impact, like Al Gore. (Oh, he buys indulgences from his own company, which is one little mercy — he could conceivably instead say he would have built a bigger house with more carbon impact, and claimed a carbon credit.) A fair number of these people, though, seem to be set up to make an immense pile of money off the carbon markets, and they all seem to have impeccable political connections. This larger group makes sure that the true believers get big grants, and travel to conferences in Gstaad and Tahiti, and have well-financed platforms from which to speak.

It’s that second group we most need to watch. In the old Soviet Union, these people — the Communist Party members who received positions of power — were called the nomenklatura. They weren’t necessarily the true believers (in fact, a lot of the true Communists, like Beria and Trotsky, ended up dead or in Siberia), but they could mouth the slogans, pass on the Communist Party line, and play the system to get positions and power, dachas, and access to the “special” stores that always had sausage, green vegetables, and toilet paper.

There has been in recent months a lot of talk about the ineffectiveness of the climate change communication and PR campaign and its impending and inevitable demise, not without a doze of ridicule on the part of skeptics vs. naïve, back-to-nature, relics from the 60s believers. I would like to argue the opposite. I believe the campaign is smartly subtle, more effective than the skeptics care to admit and certainly far from over. I’m going to comment extensively in an upcoming post  on the employment of dance as an extremely effective PR strategy of climate risk communication, which is ridiculed here. But for now I will just concentrate on the “would be”s of the CO2 market scheme Charlie Martin so eloquently exposes.

As usual, we come back to and begin with language. At the turn of the 20th century, a lesser known German philosopher, Hans Vaihinger, expounded a theory known as the Philosophie als des Ob (literally, Philosophy of As If; the German entry on wikipedia is more comprehensive than the English). Encyclopedia Britannica summarizes his argument as the willing acceptance of falsehoods or fictions in order to live peacefully in an irrational world. This theory of useful fictions despite (or perhaps because of) its fallaciousness has had many practical applications in the 20th c (Nazism and Marx-Leninism would be the first big ticket items). Its utility in the climate change context is obvious and ripe with potentials. The CCX or those politically connected to it seem (from my ivory tower of observation) to be at least cognizant of the potential of exploiting the power of what is known in grammar as conditional clauses – devices for expressing the atemporal or time shifts (depending on the category of the conditional) as well as varying degrees of unreality.

Let’s look at Borges’ story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius – a fictional story about a fictional world of absolute idealists. It is a world without material or temporal existence. It is rather, a mental proposition, a conditional. The story opens with a “real” dinner conversation between two friends and the narrator proceeds to take us on a journey through real and fictional books and characters, weaving unreality into reality, blurring fact and fiction until we are transported into the dream-nightmare world of Tlön. Conceived in the minds of a scholarly society of philosopher kings, this “brave new world” is thought into existence in opposition to terrestrial chaos and eventually substitutes itself for reality. Since reality on Tlön is strictly mental, the only discipline which constitutes its culture is psychology and speculations à la Philosophie des als Ob the typical pastime:

It is no exaggeration to state that the classic culture of Tlön comprises only one discipline: psychology. All others are subordinated to it. I have said that the men of this planet conceive the universe as a series of mental processes which do not develop in space but successively in time. Spinoza ascribes to his inexhaustible divinity the attributes of extension and thought; no one in Tlön would understand the juxtaposition of the first (which is typical only of certain states) and the second – which is a perfect synonym of the cosmos. In other words, they do not conceive that the spatial persists in time. The perception of a cloud of smoke on the horizon and then of the burning field and then of the half-extinguished cigarette that produced the blaze is considered an example of association of ideas.

This monism or complete idealism invalidates all science. If we explain (or judge) a fact, we connect it with another; such linking, in Tlön, is a later state of the subject which cannot affect or illuminate the previous state. Every mental state is irreducible: there mere fact of naming it – i.e., of classifying it – implies a falsification. From which it can be deduced that there are no sciences on Tlön, not even reasoning. The paradoxical truth is that they do exist, and in almost uncountable number. The same thing happens with philosophies as happens with nouns in the northern hemisphere. The fact that every philosophy is by definition a dialectical game, a Philosophie des Als Ob, has caused them to multiply. There is an abundance of incredible systems of pleasing design or sensational type. The metaphysicians of Tlön do not seek for the truth or even for verisimilitude, but rather for the astounding. They judge that metaphysics is a branch of fantastic literature. They know that a system is nothing more than the subordination of all aspects of the universe to any one such aspect. Even the phrase “all aspects” is rejectable, for it supposes the impossible addition of the present and of all past moments. Neither is it licit to use the plural “past moments,” since it supposes another operation… One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time: it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present memory. Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process. Another, that the history of the universe – and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives – is the scripture produced by a subordinate god in order to communicate with a demon. Another, that the universe is comparable to those cryptographs in which not all the symbols are valid and that only what happens every three hundred nights is true. Another, that while we sleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way every man is two men.

I see in Vaihinger’s “theory of cognition”, and include Borges’ text because of its literary superiority, some clear parallels with the climate dialectics. As we sink deeper into the fiction, Borges’ voice of quiet sadness and resignation haunts the illusory landscape.

Things became duplicated in Tlön; they also tend to become effaced and lose their details when they are forgotten. A classic example is the doorway which survived so long it was visited by a beggar and disappeared at his death. At times some birds, a horse, have saved the ruins of an amphitheater.

Fragment 451

Travel? One need only exist to travel. I go from day to day, as from station to station, in the train of my body or my destiny, leaning out over the streets and squares, over people’s faces and gestures, always the same and always different, just like scenery.

If I imagine, I see. What more do I do when I travel? Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to travel to feel.

Any road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the World. But the end of the world, like the beginning, is in fact our concept of the world. It is in us that the scenery is scenic. If I imagine it, I create it; if I create it, it exists; if it exists, then I see it like any other scenery. So why travel? In Madrid, Berlin, Persia, China, and at the North or South Pole, where would I be but in myself, and in my particular type of sensations?

Life is what we make of it. Travel is the traveler. What we see isn’t what we see but what we are.

Why travel indeed? If the book has become an outdated transport medium, Google has just launched a new travel product-experience – virtual ride on the Trans-Siberian Moscow-Vladivostock railine, complete with a choice of soundtrack from balalaikas to a meditative rumble of wheels to an audio recording of Gogol’s Dead Souls (in Russian) should you be so inclined. As you follow the passing scenery from your train window to whatever acoustic accompaniment you prefer, you can also trace your route on the map and explore the surroundings, and that for 9000km, 7 time zones and 150 hours of footage.

In case of motion sickness, Pessoa comes to aid again:

Fragment 122

The idea of travelling nauseates me.

I’ve already seen what I’ve never seen.

I have already seen what I have yet to see.

The tedium of the forever new, the tedium of discovering – behind the specious differences of things and ideas – the unrelenting sameness of everything, the absolute similarity of a mosque and a temple and a church, the exact equivalence of a cabin and a castle, the same physical body for a king in robes and for a naked savage, the eternal concordance of life with itself, the stagnation of everything I live, all of it equally condemned to change…

The Google train ride on the Trans-Siberian in this sense emotionally resembles a frozen TV dinner. It robs the imagination and leaves an empty aftertaste.

That the debate is dead is an extraordinary fanciful statement on the part of skeptics who, ironically, are the ones kindling it in the first place. What seems evident, however, is that both the skeptics and the activists in this field are in desperate need of reinventing their vocabulary.

In this light, Mr. Sandman’s article is well worth reading, even if I don’t buy his “denial” theory. His basic argument is that an effective communication campaign should distinguish between an apathetic audience and an audience that is said to be, in the parlance of psychology, in denial. Writes Sandman: “By ‘global warming denial’ I don’t mean the claims of people who aren’t upset about climate change and aggressively insist that it isn’t real or isn’t serious. I’m focusing on people so upset (or hopeless) about climate change they can’t bear to think about it: people “in denial,” not “deniers.” Who are these people, Mr. Sandman? A few concrete examples will suffice.

The gist of the argument is that advocacy, based on the precautionary principle is lost on the poor people in denial. They need a stronger and bitterer medicine, namely “crisis communication”: “Precaution advocacy is designed for audiences whose outrage is too low. But the outrage of people who are in or near denial isn’t too low; it’s so high they’re having trouble bearing it. The correct risk communication paradigm for them isn’t precaution advocacy; it is crisis communication”.

When I read this I couldn’t help but think (and smile) of Mencken’s aphorism that democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard.

It’s not the arrogance of Mr. Sandman that bothers, rather his patronizingly prescriptive sales pitch. If only he could just be satisfied with offering a diagnosis!

All that said, if you can suffer through having your opinion about climate change psychoanalyzed, the article links to a host of resources on risk communication (in and outside the context of climate change) that could be of interest to both activists and skeptics. Depending on whether one is interested in an offensive or defensive (communication) strategy, it is a resource full of tips on how to encode the message as well as how to decode it, should one be of a more paranoid disposition. My personal approach is precautionary.

Solomon et al., define irreversibility in the following way: “Future carbon dioxide emissions in the 21st century will hence lead to adverse climate changes in both short and long time scales that would be essentially irreversible (where irreversible is defined here as a time scale exceeding the end of the millennium in year 3000.”

In public discourse, the concept of irreversibility, together with attributes such as catastrophic, abrupt, tipping point, point of no return, etc. is used as a rhetorical device to express a sense of urgency and to stimulate the advance of particular policies. It is, in effect, a risk communication strategy that aims to transform public perception of the long term processes of climate change (usually equivalent to low risk perception) into signaling immediate danger and consequently increasing public risk perception and influencing behavior. In scientific discourse, while rapidity and abruptness of change is acknowledged in events such as glacier retreat or melting Arctic ice, irreversibility is emphasized as likely but not considered definitive.

Not all public discourse is unanimous when it comes to the message of irreversibility for the purpose of defining a threshold for danger. Proponent arguments maintain that there is a lack of suitable sense of urgency in public opinion on the issue of climate change, which leads to a dangerous false sense of security. Those who argue against the so called alarmist rhetoric of irreversibility claim that it leads to fatalism and cynicism, manufacturing anxiety over the possibility that climate change could pose problems outside of human control or incapable of human solution. This, in turn, has been used to justify a comparison between the proponents camp and an un-scientific, religious “cultification “of the climate change debate. In reviewing the recent December 2009 Copenhagen summit, Caroline May – policy analyst for the National Center for Public Policy Research in the US – writes: “Faith is belief without verifiable evidence. This unquestioned adherence to the theory of Global Warming bears all the markings of what traditionally would be recognized as a religion. Complete with sin (the emitting of carbon dioxide), scriptures (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports), commandments (drive a Prius, use Compact Florescent Light bulbs, do not eat meat etc.), indulgences (carbon offsets), proselytism, prophets (Al Gore), priests (scientists), prophecy and apocalypse (floods, hurricanes, dead polar bears), infidels (Warming skeptics), and salvation (the halting of carbon emitting industrial progress) the religion of Global Warming fits the mold.”

The concept of irreversibility is clearly laden with moral, political and psychological implications – areas traditionally in the realm of social debate. But as can be seen from the above Biblical analogy, it has also succeeded in bringing to the table the age-old dichotomy between science and religion, showing that in debates involving natural phenomena and natural hazards, God is far from having said his last word. This brings us back to the point of the role of science in the discourse of irreversible climate change. The question then arises should scientific writing use words such as irreversible, catastrophic, urgent and chaotic to denote climate change phenomena and some of their key impacts to avoid getting bad press with the popular press, and if not what are appropriate ways of communicating information about the degree of threat or changes in the public understanding of the threat without obscuring the message in scientific jargon that is inaccessible to non-scientists. The establishment of some standard criteria in the language of risk communication on (irreversible) climate change is, therefore, an important preliminary step in the concrete discussion on how we deal with the problem and its consequences as well as implications for policy. Failing the ability to find a common discourse, the climate change debate risks the doom of silence as the fallen tower of Babel.

In the paper “Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions” Solomon et al. offer a quantitative analysis of carbon dioxide concentrations that have already occurred or could occur in the coming century, implying that dangers related to climate change are already irreversible (according to their scale) and argue that policies about discount rates of economic trade-offs are not a sufficient mitigation mechanism precisely because they ignore the issue of irreversibility. They make a similar claim with regard to the efficacy in trading greenhouse gases on the basis of 100-year estimated climate changes, pointing to the significantly longer term effects of carbon dioxide. Yet while exposing these alleged policy shortcomings, they stop short of offering different policy recommendations.

As an economic problem, it is important to consider implications of climate change on national and international policy decisions about the control of greenhouse gas emissions or investment in measures to reduce the cost of change. The main policy response options for climate change are mitigation or adaptation. Mitigation usually refers to action that reduces the cost of an event thereby implying action before the event. Adaptation, on the other hand, may involve actions taken before, during or after the event, and usually implies actions that reduce the expected damage (e.g. adoption of building standards that minimize earthquake damage), but it also includes actions that pool or transfer the risk of an event (e.g. insurance). Perrings argues that action as a result of a mitigation policy is only possible under the assumption that mitigation will affect the probability of climate change, i.e. the acknowledgment that anthropogenic emissions of green house gases significantly contribute to climate change and that consequent reductions in their concentration would yield a favorable outcome. Examples of mitigation policies include carbon and other energy taxes, energy policies to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, multilateral environmental agreements to reduce emissions (FCCC, Kyoto), and actions to increase absorption of CO2 (afforestation).

Adaptation, on the other hand, is a defensive strategy of reducing the cost of climate change if it happens. Examples of adaptation include construction of coastal and estuarine defenses to adapt to sea-level rise; strengthening or relocation of infrastructure and industrial, commercial or domestic structures to adapt to the increased threat of storm damage; the relocation of threatened populations; and the use of financial instruments to spread the risks of climate change through insurance, securitize the risks (e.g. catastrophe bonds) or reduce the cost of adaptation.

According to Perrings, the optimal balance between mitigation and adaptation as response options to the prospect of climate change depends on their relative costs and benefits. While adaptation is shown to substantially lower the cost of climate change at the global level, it may not be an affordable strategy for many low-income countries which are disproportionally affected by extreme climatic events such as hurricanes, cyclones, storms, floods and droughts not so much because of their geographic location as their limited coping capacity and poor or non-existent infrastructure.

Another policy strategy of consideration, which is particularly salient under conditions of uncertainty, potential irreversibility and generally unknown outcomes, is the so called precautionary approach. Essentially, it advocates the commitment of resources to safeguard against low probability high impact events while ‘buying time’ for the decision-makers until further evidence becomes available. A characteristic of such low probability high impact events is that they often lack historical precedents, which makes it difficult to back up decisions by quantitative analysis. Identifying knowledge gaps is, therefore, a preliminary task of a precautionary approach.

Finally, it should be acknowledged that the choice of strategy for policy-makers is dependent on political circumstances at national, regional and international levels. National policy responses tend to focus on adaptation measures. Under conditions of higher uncertainty and more abrupt climate change and extreme events, the pressure might increase to put more focus on mitigation or at least precautionary strategies. However, since mitigation of climate change is a global issue, a successful implementation of a mitigation strategy will necessitate global cooperation. As demonstrated at the Copenhagen summit in December 2009, such global cooperation is at present a mirage; hence adaptation remains the only current realistic alternative.

While the young victim cannot be brought back to life, history, can be ‘restored,’ and will. Lenin’s long arm, according to a follow-up story published the very next day, will be returned to its former glory as soon as possible, say local authorities.

Svetlana Boym, the author of “The Future of Nostalgia” – a book that examines 20th century cultural history through the prism of individual and collective experiences of memory, uses the terms restorative and reflective to talk about two distinct ways of looking at the past. The restorative view is manifest in nationalist revival movements, which make use of national symbols, myths and conspiracy theories for the purpose of an absolute reconstruction of the past. Proponents of this view believe that their restorative projects are about the truth, that the past is static, and cultural and national identity is formed and solidified through collective artistic symbols and an oral epic tradition.

A reflective view of the past, on the other hand, dwells on the durational, the dynamic, the changing aspect of time, on the incomplete, on the shattered ruin and on the individual experience of the past, which is often a mournful memory and indefinable longing rather than deterministic seeking and proclamation of truth.

The first is dead serious and unforgiving. The second takes itself less seriously, tracing the experience of mourning in the direction of irony and mirth. It is also capable of forgiveness, partly through the therapeutic quality of forgetting and partly through the sensation of blurring the real and the imagined.

Exploiting memory

Memory is sad business. Etymologically, the word can be traced through the Latin memor, ‘mindful’ to the Greek martus, gen. marturos, ‘witness’ (not until New Testament Greek does the word acquire the additional ‘witness to God’ from where the English word martyr originates). The word also appears in Old English as murnan, ‘to grieve.’ The Indo-European root mer- or smer-, from which all memory cognates derive, means ‘to be anxious, to grieve.’ Examples of such cognates include, the Greek merimna ‘solitude, anxiety,’ the Old Lithuanian mereti, ‘to be anxious,’ the Serbo-Croatian mariti, ‘to grieve over,’ and the Sanskrit smarati, ‘he remembers.’

The list goes on. The subject of memory is exploited by myriad competing ideologies. Charged with controversy, it has most recently become a topic of concern for government and non-government institutions set on a mission to dispense (or dispense of) historical truths. In their more benevolent form, truth commissions can be imagined as cathartic institutions – secular churches of a sort – that aim to transform both guilty sinners’ and traumatized victims’ memories for the lofty purpose of achieving reconciliation.

So far so good. On the implementation level, however, these idealistic projects begin to crack: who commissions the truth commissioners? What is the methodology applied in the process of transforming individual and collective memories? Even if the aim of these commissions is rehabilitative rather than punitive, can they ever be devoid of this or that political agenda?

While truth commissions are a relatively recent phenomenon, historic revisionist projects – their ‘shadows’ in the parlance of analytical psychology – are as old as history itself. The historic revisionist is an anachronistic species who is particularly driven by symbolic anniversaries. Recent examples of such opportunistic political campaigns feeding on the corpse of history include the 70th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; the establishment of the “Commission to counter the attempt of falsification of history to the detriment of interests of Russia,” coinciding with Moscow’s celebration of the 64th anniversary of its victory over Nazi Germany; the melodramatic spat between new EU members Hungary and Slovakia because the latter barred the former’s president from privately crossing its border on a day the country was commemorating the invasion by Soviet-led troops, which included Hungarians; and finally, the looming 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – an event ripe with potential for more memorialization and less and less laughter and forgetting à la Milan Kundera.

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” says Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce’s novel “Ulysses.” The comment resonates with the sentiment of philosopher-poet Friedrich Nietzsche’s attack on historical knowledge and education for their own sake, knowledge which he calls impotent, stripped of all creative impulse, one that leads to a decadent culture and the ultimate destruction of the vitality and strength of a nation (the Germany of his time).

It is not that history cannot serve life, Nietzsche says in “The Use and Abuse of History for Life;” the desire to know the past is inherent in every individual and every nation. Historical knowledge is ‘healthy’ as long as it serves as inspiration for action, as reverence to the heritage of one’s ancestors, or as relief from suffering. Out of context, however, historical knowledge can be easily manipulated for unhealthy and degenerate ends:

Another author obsessed with the labyrinthine clogs of excessive memory is Jorge Luis Borges, who in the short story “Funes the Memorious” creates a character who possesses total memory. Unable to forget anything, Funes is an example of the Nitzschean historic man of paralysis, since without forgetting, no action can take place, and creation is reversed into degeneration. In Gabriel García Márquez’ novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the characters suffer from the opposite malady: an insomnia sickness that culminates in total amnesia and the construction of an imagined, fictitious reality.

Therapeutic forgetting

Philosophers and writers have been preoccupied with the subject of memory and forgetting for thousands of years. More recently, cognitive and neuroscience has taken up serious interest in the pathology of memory.

Daniel L Schacter, author of “Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past” talks about the subjective experiences of ‘remembering’ and ‘knowing’ the past by paying homage to yet another memory-obsessed writer – Marcel Proust. Proust, who contemplated the act of remembering as “a telescope pointed in time,” laid the groundwork for scientific research of the experience of remembering. Writes Schacter: “Foreshadowing scientific research by more than a half century, Proust achieved the penetrating insight that feelings of remembering result from a subtle interplay between past and present.”

Cognitive science is ‘in tune’ with literature not only when it comes to blending past and present realities, the literal and the literary, truths and fictions.

Gerd Gigerenzer, mostly known for his work on heuristics, argues in his book “Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious” that more memory is not always better, and that our best choices are usually based on “a beneficial degree of ignorance,” gut feelings and intuition rather than on our culturally held beliefs that more information is always better and that more choice is always better. Gigerenzer echoes Nietzsche on the ‘healthy’ use of history as a prompt for action: “Forgetting prevents the sheer mass of life’s detail from critically slowing down the retrieval of relevant experience and so impairing the mind’s ability to abstract, infer, and learn.”

Forgetting and mythopoeia then can be seen as therapeutic devices – a way of digesting the past through slow creative reflection instead of archiving the ulcerous symbols of history.

Psychology and cognitive science research can also help shed light on the physical and mental processes of memory work and adaptive forgetting to bring relief to traumatic experiences.

Myths and legends, oral epics or folk songs are the instruments of restorative ‘historians.’ Taken out of their native earth, which is the realm of literature, and ‘transplanted’ – to use Nietzsche’s metaphor – into the foreign soil of politics, they become degenerate growths of populist rhetoric that appeal to the fictions of national identities. It is those forms of literature, diagnostic rather than prescriptive and focusing more on the individual than the collective that have the potential to transform the experience of suffering, which posses the magical ability of turning tears into laughter.

Platonic reconciliation

There are some truth commissions that make use of individual stories, interviews and personal recollections, but their performance is nevertheless marred by their ultimate purpose, which is collective by the nature of their commissioners. They are governmental methods of constructing big pictures and sense-making tools that are devoid of sensing, which is an individual and private experience.

In an ultra-networked, technologically insatiable world where context is valued over content, the very existence of truth commissions is, to say the least, suspect. Contextual truths fall prey to the insensitized, ready-made emotions on which the non-reflective minds of political entrepreneurs in need of quick fixes and relativistic truths gorge. As long as truth commissions remain in the realm of collective bureaucracy, reconciliation will remain Platonic – a present representation of an absent thing.

by Paul Celan

translated by Nikolai Popov and Heather McHugh

Blind wall-space
bearded by brilliances.
A dream of a cockchafer
sheds light on it.

Behind that, raster of lamentations,
Freud’s forehead opens up:

the tear
compacted of silence
breaks into a proposition:
“Psycho-
logy for the last
time.”

The pseudo-jackdaw
(cough-caw’s double)
is breakfasting.

The glottal stop is breaking
into song.

—

Thank you for your interest in my blog. In 2009, this blog will undergo a transformation. In addition to a change in title, the focus will change to reflect my literary interests. You will find me under “Things whole and not whole”.

With best regards,

Linda

While Rogozin is well known to the international community for his thuggish “sense of humor”, I’m not sure to what extent such thuggishness comes across in a summary of his speech. This prompted me to translate the full interview from Bulgarian, which can be read below. Something else worth noting is perhaps the difference between interviews given to the Western press and the one in this Bulgarian publication. I cannot pinpoint exactly what those differences are, but one thing is certain: speaking to a cultural audience that one considers its adversary and another – its “historically proven and justified” sphere of influence is not the same.

Rogozin, who may or may not be having the last laugh aside, I can highly recommend the analyses and policy briefs published by the ECFR. They are a voice of hope that the EU has not entirely lost its ability for rational thought!

Interview with Dmitry Rogozin

Regardless of the West’s position, Moscow views the conflict with Georgia as unconditional victory. What is your next step?

You mean, who’s next? My colleague, the US Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, said that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia face a threat of a Russian attack. I would like to add to this list two more categories: the Marcians and the Penguins. We are getting more and more annoyed of such panic-raising US statements. The German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has proposed an independent investigation of the events in Georgia. We agree to such measures, but the Georgians don’t. In this case, the Georgian President Saakashvili is the aggressor and the criminal – and, so what? Is NATO going to cease communication with him? If we were to open the facts to CNN, are they going to apologize for the disinformation they were spreading during the crisis? And what are the faces of Dick Cheney and George Bush, the men who financed Saakashvili’s regime, going to be like?

The recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia was not an easy decision for us, but it was the only way to stop the violence. In the very near future they will be recognized by another 10-15 countries. If a country is not formally recognized, it does not mean that it does not exist. The US didn’t recognize the Soviet Union until 1933. Yet we existed and developed prior to that.

Despite the civilian and military casualties, we can speak of a positive result of this war. Namely, the war was a test in morale, responsibility and who’s worth what in international politics. These things are clear. You can’t not take a side in this issue. What we want is that the aggressor is punished and anathemized by the international community, if not in real at least in moral terms. The second thing we want is peace and stability on the Caucuses for all. Third, it’s clear that our world is fragile and that it can be easily destroyed by one wrong step taken by a drug addict. This is why we have to protect ourselves from dividing into (political/ideological) blocks and to try to find stability for all of us.

You are comparing 8 August 2008 to 11 September 2001. What do you think are the long-term consequences of 8 August?

One thing is sure: we will not be acting like the Americans after 11 September. After they were attacked, instead of taking care of their national security, they attacked Iraq and Afghanistan; what’s more, under a laughable pretext. Russia will concentrate on its national security and will keep to its own part of the geographic map. Our goal is to create a wide coalition for peace and stability in Europe, to change the agreements, and to make security an indivisible issue for us all. You can laugh at me but I support the idea for obligatory conscription for everybody in Russia.

Where else are there Russian minorities that Russia intends to protect as it did in South Ossetia and Abkhazia?

Minorities are not only a Russian problem. There are Hungarians in Romania, Turks in Bulgaria…What’s important is to not provoke one another, but to secure peace of mind for our compatriots. Why, for instance, are Russian in the Baltic states refused citizenship rights? They are the second largest ethnic group in those countries. This stands in the way of friendly relations between Russia and Estonia and Latvia. There is one thing I want to clarify. We intervened in South Ossetia not only because Russians live there. We would likewise protect every small nation in our region, which is threatened by genocide – Jews, Bulgarians, all. How can we stand by indifferent if someone is shooting rockets at a civilian population?

After all the hard words of the past few weeks, is there place for constructive dialogue between Russia and NATO?

As a Washington favourite, Saakashvili has been a force of instability in the Caucuses for years. Since the beginning of August I have been in constant communication with NATO. We wanted to use the mechanisms for cooperation available in order to put a stop to the aggression with joint efforts. For some reasons America blocked this process. This is why we think that NATO’s General Secretary visit to Tbilisi on the 15-16 September, despite being planned way in advance, is amoral and not correct. We were hoping that our colleagues in NATO will understand that such a visit will be taken to mean moral support for Saakashvili, which is totally out of line.

The behavior of the Americans was scandalous. For many people the US was also an actor in this conflict because they were arming the Georgian army. As for the Europeans, we expected from them not just propaganda but an objective evaluation of who played what role in this war, and why. We trusted that they would adopt a balanced approach. We have economic and friendly relations with Europe, we are building together a common European home, which has now been bombarded from within by some revanchists with a Cold War mentality. We did not expect such hypocrisy.

Do you think NATO’s expansion to the east has come to an end?

We consider further NATO expansion as counterproductive and very, very dangerous. If NATO had not promised Georgia membership, the situation would not have escalated to aggression. Saakashvili took this promise as an indulgence. Until recently we treated his behaviour in the way an elephant would react to a puppy barking. But when he started to exercise violence over a small nation like South Ossetia, which only four years ago suffered the tragedy in Beslan, we could no longer pretend that nothing is happening.

If NATO likes to pretend that it doesn’t matter whose hands it is shaking and refuses to see the blood on these hands, then an organization of this kind can no longer be our partner. If NATO offers Georgia a plan of action toward membership, we will terminate all our cooperation with NATO.

What will happen to eastern Ukraine if Kiev decides to pursue NATO membership?

Ukraine is another version of the Caucuses drama. There the governing coalition split apart over the question of NATO membership. The Prime Minister and the President are on non-speaking terms because of this. This shows again how dangerous it is for NATO to step in the region. Many in Ukraine are now apprehensive, and with a good reason – President Viktor Yushchenko was selling weapons to Saakashvili. Besides, we have information that the Ukranian air forces may be involved in the shooting of Russian planes over Georgia.

All other issues aside, Ukraine is for us the cradle of Russian civilization. We come from Kiev. Ukraine is our mother; this is our family. You can’t just tear apart a child from its mother – we will not let this happen.

As the winter is coming, is there danger of cutting gas supplies to Europe?

Where are such fears coming from? We have never put forth the question of cutting supplies to our European partners. There are two elements in our country which remain unchanged no matter what happens: the discipline in our energy supplies to our partners and our readiness to apply our rocket systems. Both are in order. In 1991 nothing worked in Russia – but even then these two elements were in “readiness”. Don’t doubt our reputation in these two areas.

Are you ready to use the second element the same way you apply the first?

It is the guarantee to our sovereignty from the time of the Cold War until now. It is our guarantee for security.

The Black Sea is a strategic security zone. Is Russia ready to share it with NATO?

All the countries in the Black Sea region have to be very careful when it comes to this issue. No military activity should be developed there, otherwise there will be an ecological if not military disaster. There is sulphuric hydrogen at the bottom of the Black Sea – in case of military activity, this can lead to an ecological disaster. This is why we are warning NATO to stop flexing its muscles in the Black Sea region. They say now that they are delivering humanitarian assistance to Georgia. But why use navy ships? We want the Romanians, the Bulgarians and all countries bordering the Black Sea to be very careful what they’re doing and what they allow to be done in their waters. The Black Sea should be used for trade and tourism, not for military purposes.

Bulgaria has historical ties with Russia but today is a NATO member, a host of American military bases and supporter of Georgia’s membership in NATO. Does Russia view Bulgaria as a competitor in this respect?

Russia has lost many lives fighting to protect Bulgaria and we have never regret this. We have the same religious beliefs, the same blood, and there are no bad feelings between us. Your President Parvanov is my personal friend. However, Bulgaria has abandoned us many times, but afterwards always taken the correct decision when victory was on our side. Now Bulgaria once again is in the wrong camp – NATO. But this is your own fault and it depends on you to correct it at some point.

This week the EU sent over its most senior representatives to Moscow to discuss how Russia sees its future relations with Europe. How do you interpret the answer they were given?

We want to implement the “Medvedev-Sarkozy” plan – every step of it. But there’s a problem with this plan. Actually there’s more than one plan: one signed by Medvedev and the French President Sarkozy in Moscow on 12 August; in Tbilisi, however, Sarkozy was unable to convince Saakashvili to sign it, and the word “statut” was changed to “security” for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. This plan was given to US’ Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and this black American panther managed to get Saakashvili to sign a different plan, one that does not at all include the 6 points. Then the Security Council changed the plan again…We are going to discuss only the original document signed by Medvedev and Sarkozy in Moscow. The EU is mostly interested in how many Russian troops there are in Georgia and when they are going to be withdrawn. I will answer immediately. We have 400 people military personnel in the demilitarized zone, which are stationed in 19 check points. They will stay there until a peacekeeping mission of the OSCE or a common mission between us and the EU arrives there. Then we will return to our pre 6 August positions.

You have proposed a new foreign policy concept for changing the security architecture in Europe. How does this idea look now in the aftermath of the recent events, and is there place for the US in this scheme?

This concept was presented in July. There is a need for a common security system for Europe, the US and Russia. The US is part of this. We are talking about a security zone from Vancouver to Vladivostok. We must stop acting divided in blocks, and move into a common, inter-related security system.

In the last month the fear from Russia was revived; investors left and your country is understood in this international isolation. Was the war with Georgia worth the price?

History will be our judge. The historical truth will be on our side. The West has become cynical and double-faced. It is morally poor and acts according to double standards. A few months will pass and everything will normalize. But we are going to draw our lessons learned. Two countries will pay the bill – Georgia and the US. Georgia has to cure itself of its nationalist-populist illness. The US has lost its reputation. What America has done in the past few years, has degraded it in the eyes of many people around the world.

So Russia is back in the Great Game?

(Long silence.) Yes. But everything will be ok. In the past there were moments when I thought that we have lost everything in the face of insults and hatred. I used to tell myself that things will turn around, that a time will come when we can look back at the situation and laugh. This time has come and I would like to conclude with a fitting joke. In Russia the optimists learn English; the pessimists learn Chinese; and the realists learn how to use a Kalashnikov.