James McCormick

Sherman — Stoic Warriors

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Sherman, Nancy, Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind, Oxford University Press, 2005. 242pp.

A recent article in the New Yorker discussed the repeated use of torture on the TV program “24.” Portraying torture as an effective, speedy means of extracting critical information from prisoners is flawed, it claimed. The program’s producer, Joel Surnow, continues to make torture a key dramatic element in 24’s “ticking clock” format, despite informal requests from the US military to avoid doing so. The military is concerned that young soldiers will decide that Jack Bauer‘s repeated brutalities are indeed a useful emergency tool on the modern battlefield. A contrary point of view about whether “24” is innately conservative is outlined in this article in TCS Daily.

Two questions lingered after reading the New Yorker article. (1) Is torture ever useful for gathering information on an urgent basis? (2) Does the American public’s apparent comfort with the fictional torture in “24” indicate some unrequited desire for retribution and intimidation, and/or reflect an unacknowledged (and untapped) group resolve?

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Das — India Unbound: From Independence to the Global Information Age

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Das, Gurcharan, India Unbound: The Social and Economic Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age, Penguin, New Delhi, 2002. ppbk edition.

[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]

Recently, a friend with Gujarati origins returned from visiting his relatives in northwest India and brought me several books on the Indian economic renaissance. This particular book is part biography, part business tutorial, while effectively illustrating the dramatic challenges faced by India over the last century. Gurcharan Das is a former CEO of Proctor & Gamble India, sometime columnist for the Times of India and frequent commentator on Indian economic affairs. Educated in India and the US, and spending his formative business years in many countries, he’s the perfect intermediary for the general reader. After taking early retirement, he switched his focus to business consulting. That varied background has made a big difference to the quality of India Unbound. His experience bridges the generations, bridges East and West, and reflects experience with many facets of the Indian economy. It is a well-written book, a bit dated by the very rapid change in both India and the global economy (his Foreign Affairs article is a wonderful update), but all-in-all this book is an excellent introduction to India’s past, present, and potential future.

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Ward — Out of Thin Air

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Ward, Peter, Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, And Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere, John Henry Press, 2006. 282 pp.

Out of Thin Air takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey through the earth sciences, melding cosmology, the geological and climatological history of Earth, and the story of the evolution of life on Earth. It’s a unique reading experience because it proposes a theoretical change-of-perspective so profound and so recent that the author is hustling (with a large number of scientific colleagues) to publish scientific articles which outline the implications of the new information and re-assess many assumptions about the ancient past. Out of Thin Air is a snapshot of science on the run. What it lacks in conclusiveness it restores with the excitement of iconoclasm and the possible revision of decades-old assumptions.

The book opens with the haunting image of mountain climbers dying of hypoxia near the top of Mount Everest as Tibetan bar-headed geese migrate overhead without apparent danger. How are birds able to survive flight at such high altitudes during such tremendous migratory exertions? Clearly, bird physiology is different in some profound way from that of mammals and reptiles. What are the ancient roots of this difference and does it have anything to do with the apparent dinosaurian origins of modern birds?

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Pan’s Labyrinth — Nominee for 2007 Oscar – Best Foreign Film

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Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno: 2006)

Foreign-language fantasies, after due diligence at IMDB.com, usually end up having their premiere on my DVD player but a friend was so enthusiastic and persistent about seeing this Oscar-nominated film (Art Direction, Cinematography, Makeup, Foreign Language Film, Music [Score], Original Screenplay) while it was still in the theatres that I was convinced to watch it on the big screen. Mexican writer/director Guillermo del Toro has created a work that is beautifully filmed, with great computer-generated images (CGI), and excellent acting. Surprisingly, however, within moments of the film’s start, I found myself thinking more of Claudio Veliz’s comments on Anglo and Hispanic culture in The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America.

(see this Google Video for Dr. Veliz’s talk on “The Optional Descent of the English-Speaking World” at the Anglosphere Institute last October.)

In the English-speaking world, fairy tales are more often thought of as children’s stories … filled with drama that appeals to child and parent alike, granted … but not meant to relentlessly catalogue the horrors of life. Pan’s Labyrinth, as far as I can tell, is more an adult fairy tale of a Hispanosphere variety. Redemption, in this world, comes in denying your enemies their deepest needs. Satisfaction comes in another world entirely. As noted, my exposure to the intellectual underpinnings of this approach to life comes from Veliz and his comments about the Caliban/Ariel contrast between Anglo and Hispanic culture. To a lesser extent, my exposure to the realities of Hispanosphere life come from reading from Lawrence Harrison and Hernando De Soto. I may be off-base in seeing the origins of Pan’s Labyrinth in Latin American surrealist literary culture but I don’t think I’m mistaken in seeing it coming from a very different place than Anglosphere fantasies.

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Iklé — Annihilation From Within

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Iklé, Fred C., Annihilation from Within: The Ultimate Threat to Nations, Columbia Univ. Press, 2006. 142pp.

[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]

Recently, Jay Manifold posted a review of this book which included an insightful summary and an extended discussion of the impact that science and technology will have on the survival of the nation-state.

A brief synopsis of this book:

  1. The separation between the values of science and the values of political and religious systems is stark, and ever-widening. One deals in uncertainty and constant revision, the other with certainty and idealized end-points.
  2. The lethality and portability of “weapons of mass destruction” has increased since WW2. Dual-use (peaceful/military) of nuclear technology has spread the knowledge necessary to create a variety of nuclear and radiological weapons.
  3. New forms of weaponry, including direct chemical control of human minds, are under development.
  4. Modern nations are now extremely vulnerable to decapitation strikes — removing much of their administrative infrastructure — by non-state actors.
  5. For many of America’s enemies, throwing the nation into chaos is reward enough. For others, however, it is merely the first step in a political agenda of national control.
  6. A nation with a missing or damaged national government would be extremely vulnerable to a domestic coup, and we have examples in the 20th century in Germany and the Soviet Union.
  7. It is time that the government respond to these issues with (1) better nuclear detection methods, (2) improved assurance of continuity of the US government, (3) mobilization laws to establish law & order, (4) better control over territorial sovereignty, and (5) a clearer sense of the importance of national unity in the face of such threats.
  8. In the event of a “clandestine mass destruction attack,” four principles of restoration must be applied: (1) the legal and constitutional foundation must be reconstituted (and revitalized), (2) a way back to nuclear non-use must be found, (3) a refocus on the global economy must be supported, and (4) the spiritual dimension of restoration must avoid aggravating violent religious conflict.

In contrast with Jay Manifold, I’d like to take a cultural approach to Iklé’s long essay. I found myself struck both by Iklé’s valuable insights (which will be familiar to anyone following discussion of Fourth Generation Warfare), and his bizarrely academic attitude to American culture and politics (when assessed from the perspective of Anglosphere exceptionalism).

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