Combatting Ideologies

I posted this following last year's attacks in Paris. I was concerned mainly with a subject of the discourse that always follows a tragedy such as that. I didn't give much attention to the thread after I began suspecting the topic was not clear. But recently I finished Nishida's Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness, wherein I read:

"[Confrontation] is already synthesis... There is no synthesis without confrontation."

I thought immediately of this thread, and, bearing in mind the above quotation, thought I'd try and revisit this topic.

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Last year, ISIS claimed responsibility for a deadly attack at a museum in Tunisia (read more)

I was stricken by Tunisian Minister of Culture Lakhdar's statement following the attack (found in this article)

Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton later announced that

What is crucial in both instances is the presence of "ideology."


French President Hollande declared the Paris attacks an act of war. If that were the case, then between whom would the war be?

On the one hand, there may be a state, like France, but on the other... What is ISIS? They call themselves a State, but are they not dispersed throughout many parts the world, although concentrated in parts of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East?

Moreover (and this is what I am most concerned with), the reactions to the atrocities committed by ISIS suggest that there are two planes on which they must be confronted: there is the bloodshed, and there is an abstraction - ideology.


Understand I am not proposing a war be waged against an ideology. But that is what to me appears to be what many are suggesting.

So I ask, how would we engage in a war against ideology? What end can there be to that sort of conflict?

I want to add that memory, reason, and history (the targets Lakhdar spoke of) also are affected in a capitalist system through the ongoing creation-destruction of structures of consumption and habitation. Of course the motive there is different, but is it not significant that the outcome is the same?

 

Obliteration of everyone who shares the ideology. The only way to kill an idea is to kill the people who believe it or kill the idea itself.

In my opinion, I wouldn't lose sleep at night if we glassed the entire levant.

 

Corrupt ideology often spawns in the ashes of ignorance. To fight an enemy who dwells in abstraction and "radical jihadist" ideals in this way, we must retaliate with educated and informed ideologies.

 

I used to believe that bringing prosperity and education would help end extremism, but as it turns out, the extremists tend to be wealthier and better educated than their society at large: http://isj.org.uk/sociology-of-the-suicide-bomber/

You wouldn't lose sleep over 10's of millions of innocents dying?

 

In essence, this is the same logic that many dictators have used. They kill their opponents as their opponents have an ideology that is not correct and does not follow the dictator's. I don't see a "War on Ideology" as an issue persay, but more of the perceptions that the public has on this. As many people have likely experienced, there is a growing concern regarding Middle Easterns. Many people have become racist and discriminating against these people due to what a select few have done. These stereotypes may play out disastrously, which is where I think a major issue is.

 

bump.

 

With reference to your quote, I had a look at its context, and in context I think it means this:

There are two types of 'present': the 'actual' present, and the abstraction of 'present'.

The 'actual' present, is every single moment of our consciousness. We perceive a present, then it immediately turns into history, and the future now becomes the present, and then history; the 'present' is like a drop in the ocean. The abstract 'present', recognising that analyzing the actual present is impossible, unites past, present, and future into one abstraction, while in actuality those concepts are contradictory - the past is not the present, the future is not the past, the present is not the future. Nevertheless, as an abstraction, to make sense of the world, we combine them - we synthesize them, and so any confrontation we identify in that abstraction necessarily requires a synthesisation.

That's the context of the quote I believe? I'm not too sure how it has relevance to the topic of ideology, only that we've abstracted a period of time (say from the moment ISIS became a problem to now), which, according to Nishida, means we've already synthesised the problem in that limited respect. Unless you're referring to the fact that we only 'synthesise' the problem as it arises, so whenever there's an attack we shout at the TV in horror, and the next day go back to our daily routine, the present being analyzed in varying abstractions depending on the context. I think this is just the recency bias and availability bias at play.


As for how you wage war on an ideology, in one sense you can't since an ideology is in the mind, although what causes it to be in that mind are things in reality. In another sense, you can, the mechanism is just almost impossible to identify because it's a collective thing across a period of time.

The difficulty in saying you can wage war on an ideology is that its almost impossible to say how you'll wage that war, and more difficult still, as a politician, especially in this age, to tell everyone your plan of attack. Dare I say, nuking the whole Middle East would probably do a nice job in combating the ideology (since most of its adherents would be dead). Probably not very moral, and probably not going to get you re-elected.

I think one step to combating the ideology is to recognize that ISIS is a sub-sect of Islam - a radical one - and not that it's its own independent thing. Recognizing facts of reality for a start will go a long way to combating an ideology that is contrary to every humans moral sense/intuition. To put it this way, if our own 'allies' in this purported 'war' are mistaken about the facts, what chance does someone have in a less fortunate country? I think people often forget that there's, for a long time, been a negative of perception of the 'west' from middle easterners, and vice versa. Only in very recent times, has there been a shift towards tolerance, especially from the west, and also to a lesser extent from the middle easterners. Young people are more tolerant than old, and we live side-by-side due to the pace of this shift (technology, etc). Guess who teaches young people?


To cut my rambling off - hopefully I've said something relevant to your question - there are immense complicating factors affecting the appropriate means of implementing a 'war on ideology'. I think one would be mislead however, to think that you can't have a 'war on ideology'. Ideologies rise and fall, and they do so for a reason. It is that reason that is illusive - it would be an argument from ignorance to conclude that a 'war on ideology' is therefore impossible. I also think that most of it is political fluff. O, I also forgot to mention, culture is important, any authoritarian based culture is going to be more susceptible to ideology, than a 'free-thinking' one.

 

- The war would be with both the current (but quickly devolving) pseudo-state IS and with the ideology itself. I think you're playing semantics, it's like arguing the U.S. Has not gone to war since 1941 since there hasn't been a declaration.

- You do not need to be dispersed throughout many parts of the world in order to be a state. The only requirement to be a state in it's literal sense lies within the monopoly of violence over a given territory. Now, to be actually recognized as a state is a entirely different matter and IS would never been recognized by the international community as a state. IS has controlled swathes of land in which they offer healthcare, electricity, education, and the likes. This is what a government in a state is expected to offer. There may not be consensus in political discourse, but in academia it is clear IS is/was a pseudo-state, but they have been rapidly losing territory and devolving back into a stereotypical terrorist group. Note: I am specifically referring to the IS located in Syria & Iraq and am not referring to any affiliate branches/groups that have pledged allegiance.

- It doesn't suggest there should be two enemies, there is. It's the same comparison of the Nazis in WWII both as a fighting force and an ideology. Both can be clearly identified, fighting them is an entirely different matter.

- I do not believe there will be an end to conflict; rather, the evolution of it. IS can spout all day their desire to establish a caliphate, but when it comes down to it, many IS supporters and fighters know very little about their ideology. Now, you may not be able to erase an ideology (well, not humanely at least), but you can treat factors that lead to people attempting to adopt such an ideology. In this, I mean individuals who are attracted to the likes of IS. There is no academic agreement on the factors of terrorism; rather, just many hypothesis. I would argue treatment of factors and strategies of de-radicalization are the only methods that can be used to fight the ideology. It doesn't matter if you discredit it if the individuals are not there for the ideology itself, you need to treat the individual and ensure they are not even remotely attracted the this concept of the ideology.

- I don't really understand your last paragraph, but capitalism is hardly a sole factor in the conflict. You can surely argue it plays a role (however big or small), but chalking it up to "victims of capitalism" is overly simplistic.

 

@Tmoe @malakadang

Nishida's argument, if I've understood it, is that the present is an absolute unity of contradictions, e.g. the future in it becomes past, and vice versa, but the context in which he argues the matter of particular contradictions (past and future, for instance) is not sociological or political; both of those fields appear in his essays only as a subtext. As you correctly pointed out the topic here is very complicated, so I intend for the context to center more or less around the synthesis, or unity, of contradiction as such; a unity that is, according to Nishida, a verity that extends to all aspects of existence.

While I'm still having a bit of trouble formulating precisely my contention, it is something along these lines: the ideology that motivates groups like ISIS is an inversion of that which motivates the groups who seek to eliminate them.

I don't know how correct is the Tunisian Prime Minister's conviction (namely, that ISIS targets memory, history, and reason). But it is a conviction, and I think it's very important that those particular things (memory, history, and reason) should be designated as valuable. That they are valuable is obvious enough; the latter of them (reason) particularly in the West.

I agree with you on the point of how spectators witnessing atrocities on television would assimilate them to different degrees and in different ways. The act of witnessing is already an assimilation of the witnessed. There is, as we well know, a noticeable anti-Muslim sentiment that moves in and out of the news cycle - something which cannot but create more tension. It certainly does not make people more inclined to understand Islam.

You made a point about how nuking the whole Middle East, while not a very rational or humanistic solution, would nevertheless do away with the treacherous ideology. But, isn't that (eliminating an entire geo-political region) just another expression of the same genocidal ideology?

Now, I know you wouldn't actually support something like that! What I wanted to emphasize was that, just as ISIS intends to wipe out certain ethnic groups, so developed nations, by proposing to wipe out ISIS, practice the same ideology they propose to exterminate.

I'm beginning to wonder if 'ideology' is the correct word to use (at least in the paragraph above). I realize the motivations are different on each side of the conflict. But maybe that is the ideology: the idea that a group, as represented by their beliefs, can be extinguished by another group, represented by different beliefs, but practicing them in manner that reflects that of the other group.

Could you explain what you meant there?

It is probably more accurate, as you suggested, to recognize one enemy which must be confronted on two planes. But I am in agreement with you on your first point - we've been at war for a long time. I agree also that the war will probably not end. A warless world has long been a sought-after ideal; and for maybe just as long there have been those who recognize that conflict in life is essential - at all levels of existence. It's for that reason that the belief that a group and its ideology can be exterminated completely is a deluded justification used to commence and prolong wars.

As for the last paragraph, 'victims' was definitely not the best choice of word (I'll edit that now). I should have said 'outcome;' there is a massive body of literature describing the way modernity's systems of production atrophy cognition and memory. But this also I don't think is a one way street.

 

So, you're saying you don't know how correct is it to say that ISIS intentionally wants to damage our memory, history and reason? Those being important to the West? The alternative is that ISIS does it non-intentionally, ie, unintentionally. I don't think it particularly matters whether ISIS intends to target or does not intend to target; either way, we're not happy (with the means by which ISIS employs to target, intentionally or otherwise).

Sure, I definitely think there are a lot of biases going on with respect to the digestion of the media. I also think that the way we've framed the issue, the debates that have ensued, the dominant theme, etc, are horrendous. Reason has been under attack for a long time in my opinion, on that front, ISIS is the least of our concerns.

I see where you're coming from, but I don't think I can agree. If, hypothetically, all of the adherents we want to eliminate are in this area we want to nuke: X. If we nuke X, all the adherents of the ideology will die, and the ideology itself will probably die, because there remain no adherents to practice it. You're saying that by virtue of our act in nuking X, have we not, ourselves, adhered to the ideology? It depends how you want to slice the ideology. Let me say simply though, if we nuke the Middle East, we do not all become become adherents to a radical form of Islam. Perhaps some of the motivations which caused of to Nuke might temporarily align with some of the beliefs of that radical form of Islam. At best we might become 'just [a temporary] expression of a [different] [narrow aspect of a broader extremist ideology].'

Ok, now I'm beginning to understand more of where you're coming form.

Ultimately I think context is the fundamental difference, even if the action might be similar.

I would say that there are a few relevant distinctions to explore. First, ISIS doesn't just hold an ideology that proposes to exterminate. They are actively pursuing that ideology; real people are dieing. They are also the initiators of force. Any action we do with respect to nuking is a response. That's a huge difference, the same difference that elevates self-defence from unacceptable to acceptable. The distinction between that analogy however, is that in a self-defence scenario we are analyzing actions on an individual level. On the other level, the subject of this debate, we are analyzing actions on a collective level. Does that have an affect? Perhaps.

I really haven't gone much into analyzing issues such as that. The ethics of war, etc; the ethics of nation states, etc. However I think the above really defends against the claim that we're proposing to do the same thing as ISIS is: extermination. Even if the action is the same, they are not necessarily morally equivalent. Actions always occur in context, and context is important. The context in which ISIS is exterminating is a relevantly different context from which the West might purport to exterminate ISIS. Logically that could affect the outcome. I think it does.

Another relevant distinction is that one could say this is a one-off solution to a problem, like the Atomic Bomb. Many people would argue ok yes nuking X to get rid of ISIS is wrong, but it's a one-off thing, and we're going to end ISIS' unwavering extermination. Ie, if we don't stop ISIS, they're going to keep killing, and killing, and killing... Even if it's wrong for us to drop the nuke, it's a 'necessary evil'. I'm certainly not sold on that argument, but I think nevertheless it shows that there is a relevant distinction between ISIS and the West even if we might employ similar means. The context is ultimately different. I guess a response to this argument is that perhaps ISIS too is looking for a one-off solution: its way or the highway. To this, I would say that not all cultures are equal, and that their highway is not very attractive.

Finally, I mentioned it earlier, but we would only be taking on a small part of ISIS' otherwise poisonous beliefs. Now a small part of a poisoned pie is still a poisoned pie - it is also still a smaller amount of poison. Again, another relevant difference.

Are you trying to say something like: the very means which ISIS employs, which we find offensive, are the same means we are proposing to eliminate with ISIS. How is it acceptable for us to employ those means, when it is not acceptable for ISIS to employ those very same means?

I'll try, I know it was pretty ambiguous.

Here is the quote in context: 'As for how you wage war on an ideology, in one sense you can't since an ideology is in the mind, although what causes it to be in that mind are things in reality. In another sense, you can, the mechanism is just almost impossible to identify because it's a collective thing across a period of time.'

So first, I'm trying to get at the fact that you can wage war on an ideology (even though the ideology seems to be in the mind). The way you wage that war however is incredibly complicated, and because it is incredibly complicated it is very difficult to identify. What makes it difficult to identify is that it requires the actions of many many many people over a long period of time ('collective thing across a period of time').

The next question would be ok, it's hard to identify, but what makes you say the complicated thing over a long period of time will affect ideology? I think you can prove that by just positing two things.

First, things will naturally rise and fall - ideologies are no different (although some may be incredibly resistant to falling). Second, and this is really just an emphasis, they naturally rise and fall. This means that, just by virtue of the way people conduct their daily lives, the sums of those actions may, + the environment, cause ideologies to rise and fall. There is little difference between natural actions (perhaps meaning no conscious effort to alter the ideology for the sake of altering the ideology), and and intentional actions with the intent to alter the ideology. Consequently, I think that demonstrates that ideologies can be changed intentionally (because if will change naturally, why won't they change intentionally?). The difficulty is just identifying how - the word difficulty cannot be bolded, underlined, or italicized enough.




I'm sorry for not being able to keep my responses short.

 

@malakadang I've not forgotten about your post! I'm trying to keep a focus on things 'out here' and respond appropriately (with depth). New questions and ideas have begun to emerge, and I'll post my response to the above very soon.

 

No worries. Feel free to go off on tangents or what not. This isn't a topic I've explored in great depth so I'm interested in understanding it more closely.

 

Regarding the first point, I meant that I don't know in what way Lakhdar's statement is representative of what is "generally" perceived as ISIS's intent. I see your point though. It doesn't matter what they're targeting - that human lives are what they actually attack is their foremost crime.

Your response has me thinking about the difference between context (as you've used it) and motive (which is what I think would be a more appropriate term). I THINK (I'm not sure, so I'd like you to explain) that by context you mean something like a motive.

Unless motive is a kind of context, what would you say is the relationship between context and motive?

That's a very interesting analogy. Am I mistaken in interpreting as an example of part-whole relationship?

True.

yes! I want to think that any effective approach to this conflict involves an evaluation of not only the "enemy," but also of the enemy's enemy (us, the West, etc).

You'd no doubt agree that both sides of any conflict experience a change as a result of that conflict - the trouble were are here concerned with is in how that change is represented and assimilated.



Your final point opens up some very different questions.

First, to be clear:

There you are saying that it is possible to combat ideology, but it is difficult to discern the way in which that combat is effected, because of the complexity of what is being fought (an ideology). Have I read that correctly?


There certainly is a difference between natural and intentional actions; if by natural we mean something like metabolizing nutrients. Where ideology is concerned however, I think it necessary to ask, In what way, if any, is ideology natural?

That ought to be a question that must be answered before we ask whether or not ideology can change naturally. I don't know that it can, and I won't say that it can't. But, we should be careful in describing as necessarily natural what might only be unintentional, that is, accidental. It sounds like a non sequitur (or maybe a philosophical stance) to say that what is accidental is necessarily natural. Although that may not be what you are saying, it really is an assumption to say that "just by virtue of the way people conduct their daily lives, the sums of those actions may, + the environment, cause ideologies to rise and fall".

Historical examples would here help, so we should try to think of some.



Don't worry about keeping short the responses. You can probably see by where this discussion is now (and where it's headed) that at the core of my (and maybe any) question there are many issues intertwined; that was why I had trouble formulating the idea at first.

On a related note, I came across this recently

solovyov war progress and the end of history - Google Search


You might be interested in giving that a read. Beyond this thread, the subject is very important and that book may help to better understand it. I'll be acquiring a copy soon.



Also, it's occurred to me that the very title of this thread, if not the reason for posting it, was motivated by the sensation I experienced following the Paris attacks. "War Against Ideology" is a little bombastic, but it could very well be a peculiar example of the representation/assimilation I spoke of above.



I'm going to change the title to something more appropriate.

 

I would say motive is a part of context. Context I would say is simply the circumstances surrounding the action. Motive is but one circumstance - a weighty circumstance, but one circumstance nonetheless.

Yea, the relevant ideology I think you're impugning is the motive to exterminate. That is a part of ISIS's broader ideology, but it is not the whole thing. Thus, even if we accept that part of the ideology for the reasons which you mention, we would still not be like ISIS since we are only accepting some part of the whole pie - the whole pie representing the totality of their ideologies.

Sure, I guess you can saying understanding ourselves and the consequences of the battle and its effect on us is important. That's probably a truism in any form of decision making however, when you act it is always important to consider the consequences of your action.

Not so much that, in the preceding paragraph I said: 'What makes it difficult to identify is that it requires the actions of many many many people over a long period of time ('collective thing across a period of time').'

An analogy if you've read this area of economics if the 'socialist calculation problem'. An argument Mises and Hayek levied against Socialism is that they had no effective mechanism of allocating the resources - as a total aside it is most unfortunate that Mises and Hayek did not anticipate the sheer power and extent of the computational power we have today so they didn't anticipate the argument that government could harness this computational power in planning making socialism more effective now than it was before. Many authors and academics have been seduced by this and argued that socialism can work now. Fortunately their arguments are easy to rebut!

Anyway, that digression aside, if you're not sure between the analogy between that economic calculation program, let's try this. The way to fight the ideology is by co-ordinating millions and millions and millions of different peoples actions over a period of time. Axiomatically that it is an incredibly complicated task - micromanaging people. It's possible, sure (technically at least), but we don't really know how to do it.

By natural I don't mean autonomic responses. By natural I mean if you don't touch it, people will act in a certain way - the 'natural state'. When you artificially try to meddle with their actions (plan), you will affect that 'natural state'. It's an abstraction for analysis. Since in that 'natural state' people are motivated by their own desires, other people etc etc, and that the culmination of all those factors leads to some ideologies rising and falling, then therefore by extension it is logically possible to meddle with that and promote actions which are more conducive to the falling of certain ideologies.

I see what you're saying but it doesn't matter whether it be accidental or unintentional. Perhaps to use better terminology by 'natural' I mean 'non-planned'.

It's definitely an unassailable fact that humans are going to act. Since they are going to act, and continue to act, their actions are going to have an effect on the environment they find themselves in. Given that's the case, it's logically possible that the way humans act is going to result in the environment I am relying on in support of my conclusion. We find that it does - see below for some reasons as to religions which appeared and then disappeared - they rose then fell.

10 Forgotten Ancient Religions - Listverse


With reference to the book, are you trying to ascertain the structural features that give rise to ISIS? Or the structural features in today's societies and what it has in store for the future? I think certainly the same issues manifest themselves throughout the timeline, they just adapt themselves to the context of the time which they find themselves in. I am always especially cautious nowaday to analogize analysis from the past into the present. The rise in technology and how integrated we are becoming as a world is an incredibly potent change - it changes the way we do everything, and so correspondingly affects the way in which we must analyze things once previously analyzed.

If ISIS had arisen 50 years ago, no one would have cared. No paper would have reported it - ISIS would get no publicity. Even if it did, ISIS would have no ways to radicalize those in various parts of the world as they had no means to do so. Contrast today where you have reporters attempting to report on everything in the world, you have ISIS possessing the means to radicalize anyone in the world augmenting their guerilla warfare tactic, and no one knows how to fight it. 50 years ago there would be no fight. One thing I want to mention is that the rise of technology is going to cause the biggest class struggle in our history. Being able to succeed in the future requires you to be adept in either creating technology or utilising technology. Although manual labour will always be relevant, I'm not sure where the jobs will be as things become increasingly automated. It is not so easy to get everyone a basic level of technological fluency, as, unlike manual labour, there is an intelligence barrier, and given the way intelligence is standardly distributed, our society is simply going to arrange itself in a way that causes a massive rift. That, and other problems are far more pressing than ISIS. People really blow ISIS out of proportion - no pun intended. The prerequisite to its existence was technology, and we still don't know how to manage our technology.

 

The definition of 'natural' is about the only point where I don't completely agree with you, but that's a topic that needs it's own thread.

No, the Solovyov book I had just come across and thought it might be worth a read. I thought it might be helpful here, but now that I've acquired and started reading it, I'm more inclined to say it wouldn't be - I can't yet say for sure.

But you're right - the existence of ISIS has everything to do with certain structures in place today; political, social, and certainly technological.

This might interest you

Information Systems and Global Diversity - Oxford Scholarship

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I might be at the limit of what I can say on the subject of combating ideology. I don't want to digress too far from the core topic, and I certainly wouldn't want to speculate too far into what I have less knowledge of, which really is where we've arrived.

We've established that ideologies are a historical process, and therefore extremely difficult (but not impossible) to change. I certainly intend to look for what scholarship there is on the subject.


If you have anything you'd like to add or respond to, by all means do so!

 

good read