Finding your strength

Today Fareed Zakaria interviewed Malcolm Gladwell about his new book, 'David And Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, And The Art Of Battling Giants’. They discussed underestimated 'underdogs' including dyslexics.

The autobiographical anecdote told by one of Gladwell’s successful dyslexics fits a pattern I recognized decades ago while reading an essay about his own youth by Yousuf Karsh. A young person, usually just prior to entering adolescence, who has been struggling with rejection has a small, skill-based triumph. This triumph becomes core to their identity for the rest of their lives. It gives them the ability to tell themselves that "I can do this. I have this strength". For Karsh it was having the best snapshot among those submitted by two dozen others in his seventh grade classroom. It was one of his first uses of a camera and launched a passion and a career. He knew it was a good picture; This was not false praise, and it was the best among a group he identified as his peers.

This is why it is important for young people to make genuine efforts and receive honest feedback. Giving everyone an automatic pass or false praise does not have the desired effect. Recognition of a true success, even a very small one, lays a foundation for the rest of their lives.

A good alternative for action on Syria

Obama seems to have painted himself into a corner by drawing a "red line" last year promising dire consequences for chemical use in Syria. Horribly, escalation of the conflict seems inevitable.

Is there anything that can be done for the Syrian people or, failing that, to contain and limit the conflict? I think there may be.

Everybody says there is no good choice between Assad and the jihadists. Everybody is right. But these two extremes are not the only alternatives.

Sensible, responsible Syrians are not inside the country, fighting; They took their families and fled. Look for reasonable Syrian alternatives among the refugees.

The refugees are not just in UN camps; In fact, most are not. But wherever situated these people are in desperate need of material support. This support should be massively increased with a mandate to form self administered civil institutions: boards to arrange education and recreation for children; boards to administer health services; civic planning for temporary community infrastructure, to manage housing, sanitation, refrigeration, food and water, electricity and internet access.

Positions on the various boards should be filled by votes, not appointments. Those who prove capable and constructive would have a kind of legitimacy that no-one inside Syria currently has. The world would finally have a "good alternative for Syria".

Justice, Freedom and Iraq

I’ve been reading ‘The Better Angels of our Nature’ by Steven Pinker.

He marshals facts clearly and with authority. He makes many powerful arguments including, above all, this:  EVERY party in a dispute genuinely feels themselves to be the more aggrieved, to be the greater victim.

The only way to avoid escalating “retaliation” is to cede resolution to a neutral third party. Pinker names the growing authority of the state and with it state-mediated justice; He credits this with the global decline in violence over the last century or two.

On this, the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, it is worth applying this lesson to what happened there (Pinker’s book does not talk about politics. These are my opinions now).

When the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003 they could have removed specific individuals at the heads of institutions and left those institutions of state intact. Instead, driven by a naïve belief that their own civil society was somehow the default if government just “got out of the way”, they destroyed not only Saddam’s administration, but the very state itself.

When you turn “justice” over to gun-toting, inherently self-interested individuals this is what you get: a crippled economy, rampant corruption and, always, greater violence. Anarchy is not democratic. Anarchy is not freedom. Anarchy resolves itself into tribalism and feudal society.

Even the least inhibited (they would call themselves the “strongest”) do not have the opportunities afforded by a controlled environment; Even they are not free as they crouch, armed and trapped in their own defensive postures.

Meanwhile, the civilized cannot function in the absence of functioning civil institutions.

The state does not impede commerce and freedom, it ENABLES them. The state does not, as John Boehner recently would have it, “steal” money from its citizens.

The state delivers back tenfold and more every tax dollar gathered: By creating choices and opportunities that would otherwise not exist; By delivering peace and prosperity, safety and justice.

Fascism is too much state control; Anarchy is too little. Both defeat individual initiative. In the vast space dividing these two extremes we have many, many examples of democratic states that work well for the benefit of their people. Robust institutions legitimatized by democracy, honoring democratically formulated laws, are not enemies of freedom but the very source of freedom itself.