[MUSIC] At the beginning of this short course, I presented to you an important book written by the Syrian philosopher Sadiq al-Azm, shortly after devastating defeat the Arabs suffered in the 1967 war against Israel. In that book, Self-Criticism After the Defeat, al-Azm observed three major shortcomings in Arab intellectual and cultural life that directly contributed to that defeat. First, the primary cause of the military defeat had not been any insufficiency in material, because the Arabs had been supplied with advanced weaponry, and mostly free of charge by the Soviet Union, matching Israeli material capabilities which had been supplied equally free of charge by the United States. The chief difference lay in the very different usage made by Arabs and Israelis of these advanced material capabilities. Arab strategic thinking, tactical pros, organizational routines, and personnel training were far inferior to that possessed by Israel. Second, the chief reason for this discrepancy was that Israeli society had embraced the functional logic of modernity. While the Arabs remained attached to pre-modern, anti-rational notions which were defended on traditional and religious grounds even if manifestly dysfunctional in their outcome. While the Israelis had embraced science, rationality, and critical thinking, the Arabs had not, and would not, relying instead on irrational, often magical beliefs, in the superiority and eventual indication irrespective of countervailing evidence. Third, rather than accepting responsibility for this state of affairs, Arabs had chosen and have continued ever since to rely on exonerating narratives that always place the blame for one's misfortune on some external insurmountable force. Reflected in the region's penchant for conspirational thinking. In an essay entitled, In Front Of Your Nose, the English novelist George Orwell wrote just after World War II that people obviously can talk and even believe nonsense for a very long time without paying an obvious price. Eventually however, reality will impose a reckoning. The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proven wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time. The only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield. The Germans and the Japanese lost the war quite largely because their rulers were unable to see facts which were plain to any dispassionate eye. One of my teachers, the American professor of political science Steve Van Evera once wrote a short but very inside full of article about the deceptively simple but vexed question. Why do states and societies believe foolish ideas? An astute student of German strategy before enduring both world wars, he was startled by the same paradox observed. How could otherwise accomplished nations and their leaders pursue policies so evidently contradicted by reality? He accepts that bad decisions or perceptions sometimes occur, whether for self-interested, ideological, or entirely innocent reasons. Those placed to perform a given job invariably make mistakes. It is the critical evaluation of their performance which promotes innovation, necessary change, and holds incumbents accountable. Evaluation thus threatens their jobs and status, which explains why those in positions of influence often seek to hamper and to punish evaluators. Internal self-evaluation is therefore often timid and ineffective. This is true even without accounting for the paranoia and persecution so prevalent in states whose governments rely predominantly on fear to uphold their rule. If you remember Kenan Makiya's account of Iraq under Saddam, you will realize why a republic of fear isn't a very good place to critically challenge the wisdom of state decisions. But even without such pervasive fear, critical self-evaluation is hard work as George Orwell acknowledged. To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. And because it is hard, psychologically unpleasant, and professionally dangerous, individuals and groups resist with obvious negative repercussions for the community as a whole. Van Evera puts it as follows. In essence, the organization suffers an auto-immune disease of the brain. It attacks its own thinking-learning apparatus if that apparatus does its job. As a result the organization thinks poorly, and learns slowly. The devastating lack of intellectual honesty and critical thinking in the Arab world that had been lamented by al-Azm in his seminal book half a century ago and put into glaring statistics in the UNDP Arab Human Development Reports from 2002 till 2006, is a result of precisely the kind of communal auto-immune disease of the brain that Van Evera described. Because critical voices face persecution. As the institutions that contain the necessary expertise to hold the powerful accountable and challenge the wisdom of their decisions are unavailable, especially independent research centers and universities of high quality, the communities end up thinking poorly and learning slowly. Because the powerful never have to defend their positions rationally. And to endure critical questioning, a fertile ground for eminently idiotic policies is created. And while psychologically and intellectually it might be possible to explain their obvious failures away, as George Orwell observed. Sooner or later, these false beliefs will face the countervailing evidence of solid reality. This happens most devastatingly on the military battlefield against foes who do not subscribe to such illusions. According to Orwell, the very complexity and indeterminate nature of political life often permits delusional thinking to persist well after its costs have become unbearable. Orwell writes, in private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one's weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean world where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole and for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence, the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, are all finally traceable to a secret belief that one's political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality. And as the pressures of this solid reality make themselves painfully felt in the form of lost wars, economic decline, unemployment, political instability, social insecurity, etc. Yet the painful but necessary analysis necessary to adapt to it remains absent. Communal pathologies of perceptions develop. This is ultimately due to the absence of critical thinking and institutionalized sources for self-evaluation as Van Evera points out. Non-self-evaluation explains national misperception in two ways. First, government bureaucracies non-self-evaluate. Second, the whole society can also suffer the non-self-evaluation syndrome. The national process of evaluating public policy is damaged by a scaled-up version of the same dynamics that afflict organizations. Academe, the press, and other non-governmental evaluative institutions often fail to evaluate because evaluation makes enemies that often have the power to defeat or deter it. In the volatile post Arab Spring situation, such evaluative institutions remain as weak or absent as ever. Which does not inspire a lot of confidence that the enormous challenge of sustained structural reform will be tackled in a serious and realistic manner. [MUSIC]
