Room to Maneuver in a Tough World & Room for Hope

[Revised and improved, Thursday, February 8, 2024, 2:32pm]

Some words are worth a thousand pictures; some moves are worth a thousand random steps.

Science & the Forces of Nature

• Science says the world is determined by causes acting relentlessly as dictated by the universal laws of nature, impervious to worthy human ends and values.
• Realism says the world of human affairs is analogous, with the situational requirements of national survival dictating conditions that limit the range within which suitable policies are found, regardless of the internal constitutional form of government.
• From that follows the notorious claim that nations are as identical in their geopolitical imperatives and policies as billiard balls (Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, p. 18).
• Both claims are true, so far as they go.
• No human agent — whether an individual man or a collective agency like a nation-state — can act against the laws of nature.
• There are no such things as superheroes, and nations are even farther from idealized agents free from limits than are real people.
• So, scientific reality must be deferred to, even when sects arise that deny the evidence of science because it undermines claims upon which their ideology’s support rests.
• But reality can be ignored for a while, if the consequences are long-term. Those lacking foresight or a deep understanding of the accelerating changes going on around them may not see or recognize the consequences in their lifetimes. Sometimes a generation can pass before the consequences become apparent to all. People and nations can argue and dither, delaying effective measures until the late innings.
• The risk here is that by the time the signs of trouble are too evident for even the most resistant observers to ignore,the threat may have become lethal, the cancer metastasized, leaving he who hesitates trapped in an untreatable condition (Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 3).
• If the threat is grave enough, science will steamroll public opinion, in its own sweet time. 
• So, science wins in the end, winnowing out all those who cannot or will not adapt to shifting empirical realities.

History and Its Underlying Currents

• Geopolitical realism works similarly.
• As with the relentless and incessant forces of nature, so with the irresistible undercurrents of history.
• Leaders and nations that fail to perceive changes to which we must all adapt — whether for lack of understanding or a contrary will –will be winnowed out by the sifting processes of natural selection and its social equivalents in demographics, economics, geopolitics, and the technological advances and social reactions that drive or follow them.
• They will decline or disappear, leaving standing the survivors of the old order and the emerging powers of the new order.
• Evolutionary competition eliminates those unprepared for what is coming, whether natural or historical events. Those who cannot or will not adapt to changing circumstances leave the world to those who do.
• But when ill-informed and unprepared leaders run nations, they can take whole nations down with them.
• Both scientific and geopolitical claims about what’s coming can be disputed. Such claims, whether true or false, can win or lose the battle for public opinion.
• But underlying causal forces will grind on regardless.
• Sadly, in the arena of politics, manipulation, rhetoric and persuasion are more powerful than knowledge or understanding.
• Wrong decisions, whether formed in free nations by public opinion, filtered through the election process, or by the proclivities and obsessions that lurk in the inner chambers of an autocrat’s mind, the causal forces at work in nature and history, not mistaken perceptions about them, determine outcomes.

Room for Maneuver; Room for Hope

• So, there are causal limits against which one cannot fight. One can only adapt to them, preserving human values as best one can.
• But as an agent/agency adapts to changing circumstances, it can leave room for human values, both pragmatic and moral, within its range of feasible choices, sometimes more, sometimes less, but always to some degree.
• In the most extreme cases, choice may be limited to the scope of a prisoner in a concentration camp holding to their nature and their principles despite all that is done to them which they are helpless to prevent.
• So, there is room for moral agents to maneuver in this relentlessly causal world that envelops us. They may not always be able to prevent undesirable outcomes, some of which are inevitable (given the circumstance that lead up to them), but they can always show the strength of their nature and their principles as they struggle against the odds.
• And there are some inevitable outcomes — death and taxes among them — that cannot be prevented, but only deferred to our own advantage.
• But, by deferring the inevitable, moral agents can build a life worth living — and worth having lived, when it comes to that.
• …and multiply their net worth with tax deferral and the magic of compounding growth.
• And, honestly, life works pretty much like that, too.