Policies Based on Illusion

[Valin]

City Journal:

The West fails to imagine that its adversaries might have different values.
Bruce S. Thornton
9/23/10

The great historian of Soviet Russia, Robert Conquest, once wrote something about the dangers of naïve diplomacy that I’m reminded of daily. “We are still faced with the absolutely crucial problem of making the intellectual and imaginative effort not to project our ideas of common sense or natural motivation onto the products of totally different cultures,” Conquest observed. “The central point is less that people misunderstand other people, or that cultures misunderstand other cultures, than that they have no notion that this may be the case. They assume that the light of their own parochial common sense is enough. And they frame policies based on illusions. Yet how profound is this difference between political psychologies and between the motivations of different political traditions, and how deep-set and how persistent these attitudes are!”

America’s 30-year struggle with Islamic jihad has been defined by just this sort of failure of imagination. Yet the diplomatic pathology has much deeper roots, and reflects a larger set of assumptions about human and state behavior going back to the Enlightenment—what we can call utopian universalism. In this view, all peoples are essentially rational and want the same political and social goods, particularly personal freedom and material prosperity. If they behave irrationally or destructively in seeking other goods, blame this on the fact that they have not yet been educated to their true interests. They remain mired in ancient superstitions, particularly those of religion, ethnic loyalties, and nationalism. Yet in time, the progress of knowledge, technology, and global trade will sweep away these impediments to happiness.

(Snip)

Despite the examples of these historical failures, we have made the same mistakes in our conflict with Islamic jihad, starting with the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Rather than attempting to understand the religious motives of Islamic jihadists, which they clearly articulate and link to their reading of traditional Islam, we reduce them instead to our own secularized, materialist beliefs. In the West today, religious faith is often dismissed as a Marxist “opiate” or a Freudian “illusion,” a mere compensation for more significant material causes such as education, economic advancement, or political freedom. Religion is trivialized into a mere lifestyle choice or source of private therapeutic solace. Shaped by these prejudices, we assume that Islam functions similarly for Islamists as Christianity does for today’s Christians, and so cannot be the prime mover of their murderous deeds. Thus we refuse to believe that, in the twenty-first century, a major world religion could serve as the primary motivating force for jihadists around the world.

(Snip)

[NCTexan]

Great post Valin!

 

I had a pretty good idea that we had a "different thinking" foe after the 1979 Iranian revolution.

 

These guys did not appear to respond 'typically' to "Step across that line or I'll punch you in the nose"... or, "Let us sit down, have a beer and reason together."