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What the Tortoise Knew: of pace and international change
by
Guntram Werther Ph.D.
Gold Canyon, Arizona
April 10, 2004
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Io: "By whom shall Zeus be stripped of power?"
Prometheus: "By his own foolish purposes."
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, verses 731-765
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- delivered at Mountain Brook Country Club -
An Explanation of the Quote:
The quote is from the great Greek tragedy of Aeschylus, "Prometheus
Bound," which is about many things; mainly arrogance and power, also ideas,
defiance, freedom, and their consequences; but mostly about how even the
seemingly all-powerful can lose. The story line is this:
Prometheus [son of Themis, the god of 'mountainous thoughts'] is a defiant,
fearless, less-than-wise, and spirited benefactor of mankind who has just stolen
for them fire from the gods. Zeus, most powerful of the gods, chains Prometheus
to a rock in a desolate place "in the remotest region of the earth" by
using his assistants, the characters "Strength" and
"Violence"; and then he endlessly torments him.
This is an ancient version of the truth that 'no good deed goes unpunished.'
Hephaestus, the god of fire, whose secret Prometheus stole for mankind says,
"Your kindness to the human race has earned you this."
Tormented and chained at the ends of the earth, what does Prometheus do?
Unconcerned and "yielding not an inch", Prometheus says that
all-powerful Zeus will be stripped of his power! This is an ancient version of
the tiny mouse "greeting" the attacking hawk, which you have may seen
in a cartoon.
Io, a priestess who is watching all this, is totally incredulous, thinking that
Prometheus has lost it, gone nuts, went "off his rock" (sorry) as it
were, and asks: "BY WHOM SHALL ZEUS BE STRIPPED OF POWER?"
Prometheus answers: "BY HIS OWN FOOLISH PURPOSES." Thus is power lost!
Preamble and Introduction:
During several previous community lectures and discussions - among them
"Challenges to Exporting Democracy and Free Market Capitalism: when reality
meets the best of intentions", "Societal Transformations and
Time", and "Modernization, Development and Change" - I hope to
have adequately made the case that within the complex international environment,
a nation's policy intentions are often far ahead of its ability to execute them.
Quoting Isaiah Berlin's favorite phrase from Immanuel Kant (1784) "Out of
the crooked timber of mankind, no straight thing was ever made" [Aus so
Krummen Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, Kann nichts ganz Gerades
gezimmert werden.], I also hope to have strongly made the point that things
normally do not go smoothly in human affairs; nor as intended.
The modern neo-Buddhist bumper sticker that one sometimes sees about; "S___
Happens", seems to succinctly sum and convey mankind's experience over
those eons of time during which humans have been trying to alter societal and
international affairs in ways that they prefer at the moment.
Because of this long experience, many philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius,
Epictetus, and Confucius have cautioned people against overly willful actions.
Lao Tzu's admonition that rulers should "handle a large kingdom...as if you
were cooking small fish" - carefully, carefully - comes to mind (Tao Te
Ching at verse 60). This is because, as Nietzsche points out, the "the
decisive value of an action resides in precisely that which is NOT intentional
in it" (Nietzsche, F. "Beyond Good and Evil", p. 45). Summing,
when you intend to accomplish "this", you often get "that"
instead; or at best "this AND that."
If one looks over several currently controversial international issues with the
benefit of such a long philosophical perspective, it is impossible not to
notice, for example, that we have been at this "free trade",
"globalization", and "democracy" thing before; and that it
has never turned out as expected, nor even particularly well.
Reading Douglas Irwin's (1996), Against the Tide: an intellectual history if
free trade, is instructive in this way because he begins by discussing
"free trade" with a quote from Plutarch (ca. 100 A.D.) and continues
his analysis to the present day. What is most obvious when reading Irwin is that
despite several concerted pushes to "globalize" through "free
trade" -as is the case with other's parallel efforts to
"democratize" and modernize" the planet -unanticipated events
always have combined to frustrate these attempts. "Fortune is glass",
says Publilius Syrus, "It shatters when it shines."
In relatively modern times, one such event was the rise of authoritarian
Marxist/socialist states in the aftermath of mid-1880's trade liberalization,
another the rise of welfare-statism (particularly in the aftermath of the
post-1920's "Great Depression"), and currently we see many challenges
to "globalization" and WTO-IMF-World Bank prescriptions for
international trade relationships forming in poorer nations, as within many
developed countries.
Indeed, my reading of current international trends shows a distinct shift to the
anti-free trade pole in many places, and a situation where even if we do manage
get more "democracies" worldwide, they will not like us much.
I discussed this sad trend during my talk on the "Strategic, Political, and
Economic Consequences of Rising Anti-Americanism."
What the Tortoise Knew:
Many years ago, Lundqvist wrote an interesting piece entitled "The Tortoise
and the Hare", which was about comparative pollution abatement policies in
the USA, Sweden, and Great Britain. As it turned out, the British and Swedes
started out slowly, while the USA raced ahead with many mandated programs and
new agencies, the EPA among them. In a short time, the Americans were spending
more money, much of it on lawsuits and endless policy debates, while the Swedes
and British quietly and relatively cheaply plodded along and were getting things
done. In time, the Thames was cleaned and fish returned.
I witnessed much the same thing (so did you) during the recent rush toward
"globalization" and "free trade" within the
telecommunications industry and elsewhere. During the 1990's, these and many
other U.S. firms rushed off internationally with huge investments and plans to
"modernize", "develop", "democratize",
"globalize", and otherwise fix up the planet. The Europeans, Chinese,
and several other nations were "behind" in this "race", and
were severely criticized by many proponents of the "new economy" (Many
of you remember, I'm sure, that the very rules of economics were said by some
experts to no longer apply within this "new economy") for being so
slow to realize the potentials to be wrested from "free trade" and
"globalization." Consultants and experts got rich selling this vision.
Firms and individuals too often became impoverished for following that vision.
That was all before the stock market tanked during 2002, and technology shares,
in particular, severely declined. Reality happened. The first shall be last and
the last shall be first, is I think how it goes. As it turns out, the laws of
economics were not new; nor those of politics, culture, law, and conflict.
What happened? Nothing unusual. Things did not go according to plan, which I
have expressed above as an anciently understood norm. No surprise here.
"First movers", as in First Mover Theory, discovered that being the
first guy out of the domestic "foxhole" is not always the best idea.
Countries didn't "develop" according to plan, entrenched interests
resisted new competition, corrupt and inefficient governments remained, well,
corrupt and inefficient, the natives were sometimes resistant to surrendering
their power, cultures, societal norms, ethnic and religious hatreds, and their
inefficient businesses to those more efficient "global" firms run by
our MBA trained experts; Pesky foreigners!!
"Globalization", it has turned out, would be a lot easier if it were
not for all the foreigners, and their strange ways and ideas.
As Mark Twain has observed, "Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the
claim. I think it is open to dispute" (quoted from "The Damned Human
Race").
Why did anyone ever expect to be able to modernize and democratize other
nations, to globalize, and so forth without great pain, incredible cost, and
long endured effort? Was there anything in our experience suggesting that the
rules of economics were changed in the "new" economy, that we could
develop other countries in a short period of time, that democracy would
flourish, and that even if it did, that the locals would like us?
If we have been unable to "develop" the poorer areas and urban slums
of our own country in anything less that several decades and at high cost, what
prompts us to think that we can develop and modernize other nations - whose
problems are far more complex and where the terrain is strange to us too - in a
briefer time or at less expense? Do we have any cases where we developed other
nations in less than several decades? The World Bank and IMF have been at this
task for decades and mostly failed; check out Africa.
Are there many cases where we actually installed democracy in less than several
decades? Please do not toss up Germany and Japan; both being then already
modern, Germany being a source of democracy in both the Hansa towns and Weimar
Republic, and Japan remaining a single party state almost to this day (besides,
our troops are still there). Eastern Europe is a better argument, but then they
were pretty modern, democratic (in the communist sense), and pro-western to
begin with. The rest of the world is not so easy.
What the "tortoise" knew is that he cannot see very far ahead. The
tortoise understands that new events and situations almost always arise, and
that a slower pace gives one time to notice them, consider them, make a
decision, and make an adjustment. He makes careful adjustments, just like the
cooking of small fish, as Lao Tzu suggests. The tortoise is not powerful,
arrogant, or great; he just gets there. This is what the tortoise knew.
Returning to Lundqvist's argument in "The Tortoise and the Hare", slow
pace and incremental changes in policy permitted relatively painless
adjustments, compromise, and reconsiderations as to path and plan as new data
presented themselves. As "reality" unfolded and became apparent, the
tortoise was neither exhausted nor over-committed. The tortoise did not stir up
a lot of "dust" (ie. new problems). The tortoise was not a threat to
entrenched interests. Change happened.
Simplifying Complexity and Complicating Simplicity:
When we think properly "at last true words surge up from deep within our
breast. The mask is snatched away, reality is left," says Lucretius.
"Democratization", "globalization", "free trade",
"modernization", and "development" are such concise ways of
saying such complex things.
In this sense, these words are not "true words", but rather are
"masks" which hide a complicated "reality" with which we
MUST deal. Elsewhere I have spoken at length about what is required to change a
culture and society, to modernize, to develop, to globalize, to democratize, and
to otherwise WILLFULLY INJECT OUR INTENT AND PREFERENCES INTO THE WORLD AS WE
FIND IT on so grand a scale as the cavalier and ill-considered use of these word
"masks" so often presupposes.
There is almost no way, in my opinion, to exaggerate the critical importance of
this point or of the need for slow, deliberate, and careful study of just what
these words mean and ultimately commit us to. It is an easy thing to say that
one is going to "democratize" or "modernize" a society; but
the action is rather more complicated to execute. There is the baggage.
"Every word," says Emerson, "was once a poem." (Emerson,
Essays-Second Series). Just in this way, there is much more to these
"masked" words than immediately meets the eye. They are in
"reality" entire universes of things, of ideas, and of arrangements.
"Democratize" is no small word; nor is "modernize", nor
"globalize", nor "develop". Why speak them so casually and
disrespectfully?
I have often expressed a skepticism, which doubtless stems from my love of great
enduring ideas and of slow reflection, that we as a society even have the
capacity to effect such fundamental international changes comporting to our
wills as are often suggested, without also importing dire consequences.
A continuing observation of the way of things internationally has not
discouraged me in this reflection.
Let me therefore close out this discussion of "What the Tortoise Knew"
by detailing several cases. I propose a brief discussion of change
experiences for Sudan, Indonesia, China, Argentina, and Mexico for the
"less developed world", and of the EU, NAFTA, and ASEAN regions for
the "developed" world.
I think that you will see that usually the "hare" got the worst of it,
while the "tortoise" mind made better progress.
I will not publish the case discussion or group interaction section. Thank you.
Copyright Guntram Werther Ph.D. 2004. -
You may reproduce this note for non-commercial purposes providing attribution of
authorship is given.
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