NWO or Decentralization?

As often, a thoughtful piece in the Times by David Brooks. (For those of you who might be wondering, no, the Times is not the only thing I read online, I just happen to be getting out from under a huge backlog from my Chinese test, and since I do read the Times everyday, I often find things in it to write about.)

He's talking about centralization vs. decentralization of power in globalism with the swine flu as background. As I said, it's a good piece, though I have a couple of issues with it.

Firstly,
'we don’t face a single concentrated threat. We face a series of decentralized, transnational threats: jihadi terrorism, a global financial crisis, global warming, energy scarcity, nuclear proliferation and, as we’re reminded today, possible health pandemics like swine flu.'

This I disagree with fairly wholeheartedly. With the exception of the swine flu, each of these problems could be argued as one multi-headed problem. The very problem is that the current global power structure doesn't work. But that's minor.

The major issue I have with the article is that it opposes these two arrangements of power, decentralization and centralization, as if we have to choose one of them. Brooks, to his credit, chooses decentralization. I agree with him on this as strongly as I disagree about the multifarious nature of the world's problem. Power must be localized, as local as possible, that is to say, the individual and his or her person-to-person connections must be in charge. If not, as Brooks says, '...If the response [to the swine flue] were coordinated by a global agency, those local officials would not be so empowered. Power would be wielded by officials from nations that are far away and emotionally aloof from ground zero. The institution would have to poll its members, negotiate internal differences and proceed, as all multinationals do, at the pace of the most recalcitrant stragglers.'

These person-to-person connections must of course operate under the rule of law, or you'd get rampant corruption. But Brooks' example of a photo of New York City Health Department officials is a reminder at the opposite side of the spectrum of why localism works, or why the U.S. won out over the highly-centralized U.S.S.R. 'The photo is the very image of a focused, local response. People are wearing polo shirts and casual wear — intensely concentrating on the concrete incidents in their own backyard.'

What's to argue with?

There's got to be somewhere the buck stops. You need a Constitution and a Bill of Rights guaranteed by a Federal Government with power for there to be a civil rights movement, for example. Without one overarching power, there will never be perfect peace. This power must be aggressively limited to allow an open society to develop, but it also must exist to settle differences and set directives for the world's countries.

In fact, for local power to be as powerful as it can be, there needs to be some centralization of power. If, say, Europe does hold back on its vaccines, the U.S. would need some more. But there's a reason we don't have as many, and for the U.S. to put resources towards something it wouldn't need without the artificiality of national borders, and that's a waste.

Brooks writes about centralization as if it means soviet-style planning. But without centralization we'll end up a loose confederacy unable to tackle any of our increasingly global issues.

China, and Sloppy Thinking (v. David Brooks)

An Op-Ed in the Times by David Brooks, where he summarizes an extremely important cultural difference between the West and China, and talks about several theories on why it may be, though, obviously, who knows?

But there are great problems in thinking this way. I don't have the answers, of course, but I would at least like to add something to the conversation.

"When the psychologist Richard Nisbett showed Americans individual pictures of a chicken, a cow and hay and asked the subjects to pick out the two that go together, the Americans would usually pick out the chicken and the cow. They’re both animals. Most Asian people, on the other hand, would pick out the cow and the hay, since cows depend on hay. Americans are more likely to see categories. Asians are more likely to see relationships."

There are other famous studies exploring the difference in the way citizens of developed nations organize information from rural people in developing nations. What they found was similar to the above: Asked to pick out which object didn't fit in a group, the developed nation's citizens picked "wood," from a group that included "wood, saw, hammer, and ax," noting the relationship between tools, but the rural people were confused, seeing basically no connection, and most often picked "hammer," since both a "saw" and an "ax" can be used to cut "wood."

The point, though, is that there is a relationship between "cow," and "chicken," but it's not a practical one, it's an abstract one. The study, if I remember correctly, was about the effect of education and reading on the way the brain organizes information, and it also showed that adults who learned recently to read also began to make abstract rather than practical connections, that it was not simply children who had been well educated that made this connection.

So, is this an East-West difference, or a difference in educational methods? The East is famous for rote learning, while the West values (ideally) the fostering of thinking itself, as a way to make previously unnoticed connections and to problem-solve. Ask any High school student in China what date an historical event happened, and they'll likely be able to, especially if they're preparing for the Gao Kao, a test that compares to our SATs as The Joker compares to your average bank robber. Ask them why that date is important, and they may be strapped to think of anything. A western student may just be b.-s.ing, but they'll be able to construct some sort of argument, which is ironic due to Brooks' statement that the context is so important to the Chinese. (Obviously, both what and how are important in learning.)

I do not know what the difference is due to, but I would be wary of making claims one way or the other.

He continues:

"But what happens if collectivist societies snap out of their economic stagnation? What happens if collectivist societies, especially those in Asia, rise economically and come to rival the West? A new sort of global conversation develops."

Really? What about Japan? Famously, Japanese companies are run like feudal empires, and are loathe to change (not change of, say, methods or reacting to markets, with this they do very well (look up Kaizen) but structurally, and yes, culturally. But even this is changing. Articles in the Times a few months ago chronicled the rise of employees suing their companies for various damages. Japanese mainstream society has only existed outside of strict feudalism for seventy years, and China, it could be argued, is still mostly a peasant, folk culture, growing towards modernity and away from traditional roots, and it has only been doing this for thirty years. Change appears to happen quickly, if not all-at-once, but, in reality, it is often a painstakingly slow process, especially in the earliest stages. It takes generations, plural, not twenty years. I cannot say that China will become more liberal and Western internally (though externally they have co-opted quite a bit) but I would certainly be sensible enough to be more patient about it. After all, the Enlightenment started hundreds of years ago, and people still aren't all that enlightened, even though they may personally think they're great.

And then:
"For one thing, there are relatively few individualistic societies on earth. For another, the essence of a lot of the latest scientific research is that the Western idea of individual choice is an illusion and the Chinese are right to put first emphasis on social contexts."

This is certainly true, which is (conversely) why I think it is so important to emphasize every individual's development along the lines they wish to pursue. Like economics, where local conditions reflected in prices contain far more "knowledge" overall than central planners can ever have, the individual knows what is best for him/her, and can make choices accordingly, whether those choices are driven by "free-will" or by the context the choices are made in (obviously, this is far too complex a subject to tackle here.) Ultimately, I think the distinction is irrelevant. No matter how the choices are being made, the individual and the society are better off if someone can make a personal "choice." The problem with putting the emphasis on social contexts is that, as in China, where this is overtly so, it leads to a very rigid social structure where one is expected to do one and only one correct thing according to the circumstances, entirely denying that individual difference exists (I have come up against this again and again here. Fortunately, since I am not Chinese, my choices and conduct are taken with a grain of salt, and quite often admired, in the "Oh I wish I could do that" sort of way.) Again, wherever the "choices" are coming from, it is clear that offered different options, different people will do different things.

In any case, the West is not done developing either. Yes, we're depressed, yes, we need healthier communities, yes, we need more social ties etc. etc., but we're coming to see that, and, as individuals, choosing to deal with it. Isn't that preferable to somebody sitting in an office looking at statistics and saying, "hmmm, we should somehow coerce older people into more exercise." Perhaps the example goes to far, but I'm sure you get the point.

This is why I think this article is dangerous, almost.

"The rise of China isn’t only an economic event. It’s a cultural one. The ideal of a harmonious collective may turn out to be as attractive as the ideal of the American Dream."

This dream, as we have seen throughout history, and this way of thinking about humans and the rights of individuals, has led to the worst tragedies of human history, not the least of them in China itself, during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Importantly, free societies never do this, and Authoritarian societies really like to.

And, as hinted at above, the American Dream has always included a social dream. Making it to the top certainly does not preclude community, and often those who have won their American Dream are the most prominent of social benefactors.

"It’s certainly a useful ideology for aspiring autocrats."

Exactly.

I will be writing later on the rise of China economically and politically, hopefully before the Olympics are done.

Keep Thinking.