Thinking Turkey

I returned a few days ago from an extremely enjoyable and rather thought-provoking 12-day family vacation in Turkey. The visit included a guided tour of north-western Anatolia – Bursa, Sardis, Pamukkale, Hierapolis, Ephesus, Izmir, Pergamon, Troy and Gallipoli – and then five days of sightseeing and shopping in Istanbul on our own. Without being planned as such, the trip ended up giving us a great – though sketchy – cross sectional view of the region’s rich history, from ancient Troy through Greeks, Romans and Ottomans down to the senselessness of the Great War. As I went through ancient ruins, glorious mosques and silent cemeteries, I could not help but think on the history still being made in the region. Modern Turkey lay all about us, and I found it to be fascinatingly complex.

                   

  The fabled walls of Troy.

                   

Ruins of the Temple of Artemis near ancient Sardis, where Croesus ruled and Xerxes reveled.

I’m not sure what I had expected the experience of Turkey to be, but what I found (at least in the areas we visited) was a remarkably well-organized, highly functional country that has achieved an enviable integration of its historical heritage with modernity. Not only were the amenities of modern life all available and functional, people in general exuded a sense of economic participation and civic responsibility. In visiting ancient ruins, we saw no signs of vandalism or neglect. No doubt these exist, but at nowhere near the levels one finds in South Asia. Visiting the amazing Museum of Archaeology in Istanbul, my daughter remarked on how 4000-year old sculptures and reliefs were displayed with no barriers around them, and yet, there was no sign of harm. The guard in each room was sufficient deterrent for all visitors – foreign and Turkish. A remarkable number of things were under renovation, and the rest were obviously well-maintained. Occasionally, one might see a run-down old structure, but that was rare. It was clear to me that the powers that be took their responsibility for maintaining the national heritage very seriously, and that this outlook was broadly shared by people.

    Only tourists visit the ruins of Roman Ephesus….           

    ..... but modern life thrives in the shadow of Ottoman glory.

                     

With so much to offer, it was not surprising that Istanbul was swarming with tourists. And yet, there was none of the sense of unreality that pervades so many tourist sites in America and even Europe. The tourists were experiencing a very real place that, yes, made concessions to them, but worked pretty much as it had for thousands of years. Even the Grand Bazaar – the nearest thing to a tourist trap in Istanbul – exuded a sense of history, which was only fitting for a market with centuries of tradition behind it (though rebuilt many times after fires down into the 20^th century).

To me, the most remarkable thing was the ease with which people on the street were willing to engage. From cab drivers to shopkeepers to waiters, most were willing to make conversation, to express opinions, to joke and to cajole. These were not people alienated from their society. I’m sure they had their problems, but they still seemed to have the feeling of participation in a self-confident, living culture. Of course, my sample was very limited. I had no opportunity, for example, to talk to construction workers or farmers or janitors, but unhappy societies infect everyone with their poison, and I saw none of that.

Perhaps I should have gone to Taksim Square to see it. We were staying in the old Sultanahmet area, near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sofia, and far from where new history was being made. Every day we were in Istanbul, the police clashed with protesters in Taksim Square and Gezi Park, firing tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets. We stayed away from these areas, partly because we were there to see as much old history as we could in our few days and partly out of natural caution, but it was clear that, for all its apparent efficiency and liveliness, not all is fine in Turkish society.

Even though we stayed away from the protests, they were omnipresent. Directly or indirectly, many people I talked to – from our erudite tour guide to rug merchants in the Grand Bazaar – had something to say. Based on my limited interactions, my impression was that Erdogan had a lot of support on the street. The protests – as protests often are – have been driven by the young, the educated and the idealistic, but have not captured the sympathy of other groups. Of course, it is too early to say if this is the final disposition of the situation, and the protests must be understood in the context of recent Turkish history.

The beautiful main dome of the Blue Mosque, whose inscriptions most Turks can no longer read.

In the ninety years since the inception of the Republic, Kemalist Turkey has been a massive sociopolitical experiment: A democracy ruled by an edict of amnesia. Recognizing the potential dangers posed by religious zealotry and rivalries, Mustafa Kemal forced Turkey into an experiment without parallel in modern history. He forced millions of people, with a long, rich cultural tradition grounded in Islam, to give up that tradition immediately, to change their mode of living, their way of dressing, even their language and their faith. Such edicts – usually imposed by conquering outsiders, but here imposed by the country’s own government – always have complicated consequences, and Turkey has been no exception. Over the decades, aggressive Kemalism supported by the iron fist of the military has managed to create a distinctly modern, secular culture in urban Turkey. But, beginning with the election of the first Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbekan in 1996, it has become increasingly clear that the embers of tradition are far from extinguished in the country at large. And as that country has moved into the cities – Istanbul now accounts for about a fifth of Turkey’s population – it has brought its conservative ethos to the street as well. As in many other countries of the region, it is a competition between a globalizing (and, therefore, Westernizing) educated youth and a populace tied to thousand year old traditions. The manifestation of this competition is different in each country, determined by socioeconomic conditions and history. Turkey, with a dynamic economy, strong industrial and agricultural base, educated population and no memories of colonial oppression, represents probably the most important case for the world at large.

      

 

The profile of Ataturk looms over the Izmir waterfront.The protestors want to make sure his secular state survives.

Only the willfully blind would deny that – for better or worse – some kind of Islamic “awakening” is afoot in the world today. Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia are looking for a suitably “Islamic” mode of sociopolitical organization. Lacking any recent historical models, each society seems to be exploring its own model, often with disastrous consequences for social cohesion and human rights. At the risk of over-generalizing, however, one can identify three distinct types of models on offer. The first – very well-defined but of necessarily limited appeal – is the Shi’a theocracy of Iran. The main reason its appeal is limited is that it relies on a framework that does not exist in the rest of the Muslim world: The Shi’a institution of a well-defined clerical hierarchy that can provide formal guidance. The second model is the Salafist approach that wishes for a forced return to the (often mythical or misread) laws and social contracts of fourteen centuries ago. While the violent form of this model, i.e., jihadism, has not had much political success, a less militant but equally pernicious form has found a home in many places through the patronage of rich, Salafist-minded regimes. Pakistan offers a case study of what happens when this goes horribly wrong, and an even worse case may be in the offing in Syria. The third model is the one on display in Egypt and involves the much more “practical” approach promoted by overtly political movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or the Jamaat-e-Islami in the Sub-Continent. Unlike Salafists, these groups wish to engage with modernity, but on Islamic terms. They seek an “Islamic order” that implements the principles of orthodox Islam in the modern world, though it is clear that even the most thoughtful proponents of this model have a woefully – and perhaps willfully – inadequate understanding of modernity. In a real sense, this is a movement that is attempting to walk on the edge but is precariously close to falling into the Salafist maw (again, see the case of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan).

Turkey’s current Islamist government offers, potentially, a fourth model.  Turkey differs from most Muslim-majority countries in the region in several respects:

1. It has a dynamic, robust and diversified economy that has come through the recent global recession in remarkably good shape. Egypt and Pakistan, in comparison, are economic basket cases. Iran has been under sanctions for decades, and Saudi Arabia is a narrowly-based economy with significant dependency on foreign labor.

 2. Turkey has not suffered a significant loss of sovereignty for centuries – in fact, never within the cultural memory of the society. It is, therefore, free of the social conflicts and psychological scars of colonialism, and is able to act with self-confidence (I owe this observation to a recent talk by Mustafa Akyol).

 3. Unlike many other countries in the area, Turkey has also not emerged only recently from a period of abject poverty, isolation or medieval social organization. It has been a cosmopolitan, prosperous, significantly urbanized and internationally integrated society for centuries, and arguably for millennia.

4. It has the most recent and well-remembered experience of being a world power and regional hegemon among all powers in the area. Reminders of this recent glory exist all over the country in mosques and mausoleums, palaces and forts that are still part of peoples’ lives.

5. Most importantly, Turkey has decades of experience with (often imperfect) secular democracy, and has moved beyond the debilitating superficial issues that haunt the discussion of “Islamic government” in so many other societies. Even if this issue appears a little less settled today, Turkish society at large has no appetite for theocracy.

These – and many other – factors make it at least possible that Turkey could offer a more successful model for integrating an Islamic ethos with modern governance. Whether the autocratic Mr. Erdogan is currently offering such a model is still an open question. It is not clear whether his goal is simply to reverse the aggressive anti-religious policies of the Kemalist Republic (e.g., forbidding the wearing of headscarves) to arrive at a kinder, gentler and more culturally Muslim version of it, or if his ultimate aim is to replace the secular state with something that the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to achieve elsewhere – albeit more successfully than the Brotherhood. Only time will tell whether today’s Turkey truly offers a new model for a modern “Muslim” state. One thing that is already clear, however, is the role Mr. Erdogan sees for his nation on the world stage, and that is the main reason anyone interested in geopolitics should pay close attention to Turkey. Arguably, it is one of the few most important countries in the world today.

          

A modern Turkey rises behind the old palaces.

Over the course of his years in power, Prime Minister Erdogan has given important clues about his ambitions. His stand on the Gaza flotilla, his early support of the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions, his aggressive policy in Syria, his hard-nosed approach to Israel, his courting of the EU, and even his long-overdue (though now flagging) rapprochement with Kurdish nationalists, all indicate a desire to play a much stronger and more global role in the geopolitics of the region – a role not compatible with interior strife (as with the Kurds) or inconvenient social unrest. As by far the most successful country in the entire region, Turkey feels self-confident enough to assert itself abroad and, consistent with the Islamist outlook of the ruling party, reclaim the leadership of the Sunni Muslim world from India to Morocco. In this, it needs to hold off the influence of the Iranians, counteract the Salafist ideology emanating from the Arabian peninsula, and fold in the destitute Islamists of Egypt. The first goal is aligned with Western interests and is not difficult for Turkey as a member of NATO. The last is almost too easy as Egypt sinks into its latest plague of economic misery and grasps about for a helping hand. The second? Well, that is more complicated, but a nominally secular version of “Muslim democracy” might well become attractive to many in the region over time as they tire of the Salafist extremists’ carnage.

One way to understand these ambitions is to look at the history of one of Mr. Erdogan’s heroes, Ottoman Sultan Selim I (r. 1512-1520) – called Yavuz Sultan Selim Han (Stalwart Sultan Selim Khan) by Turks and Selim the Grim by the West. By any objective measure, Selim I was one of the most successful of all Ottoman Sultans. Though he ruled for less than nine years, he more than tripled the size of the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, it could truly be called an “empire” only after Selim’s conquests. He stopped the westward advance of the Shi’a Safavids from Iran and mercilessly persecuted the Shi’a Alevi sect in Turkey to ensure that Sunni Islam remained the dominant brand in the Middle East and Asia Minor. He also captured Syria, Palestine, Hejaz, and Egypt, bringing to an end the rule of the Mamluks and the nominal caliphate of the Abbasids in exile. He thus became the ruler of Islam’s holiest sites – Mecca and Medina – and of the most important region in the Middle East – Egypt. He had himself named Caliph, establishing the Ottomans not only as secular rulers over their lands but also as the deputies of God to whom all Muslims owed obeisance. Later, even the Mughals in India would acknowledge this nominally. The treasure he added to Ottoman coffers was so enormous that, for the remaining 400 years of the empire, the Treasury bore his seal and not that of the current Sultan. Among the treasures he brought to Istanbul were the traditional symbols of the Abbasid caliph’s legitimacy: The mantle and sword of the Prophet Muhammad. Regardless of whether this attribution was genuine or apocryphal, the symbolism was genuine enough. Selim I and, through him, the Ottomans were the rulers of the House of Islam.

It is significant that the Erdogan government has proposed naming a new bridge being built over the Bosporus after Selim I. The Alevis are not happy to see the name of their oppressor glorified and the matter is now in abeyance, but the signal is clear enough: It is no longer necessary to name everything in Turkey after Mustafa Kemal and other heroes of the Republic. The new Turkey is looking towards heroes of an earlier age, who knew not only how to govern their country but also how to expand its power and defend its faith. Of course, it would be impossible today to replicate the conquests of Selim I, but in the 21^st century, empires are defined not by possession of land but by projection of influence. All indications are that, from his prosperous stronghold in Anatolia, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan is dreaming of a day when Turkey once more will be the primary influencer of events from Damascus to Tripoli – and, who knows, in Mecca and Medina!  Inshallah.

Given the mess that is today’s Middle East, this may not be such an impossible dream, if only those pesky demonstrators in Taksim Square would stop tweeting away.

Postscript:

The piece above is, obviously, just a compilation of personal thoughts, not a scholarly article. I have tried to avoid taking a position one way or the other on what I think of as “the Turkish experiment” – both in its internal changes and its external ambitions. The region that I discuss – from Pakistan westward – is littered with failed states and clearly needs new ideas. If an invigorated Turkey can supply some of these ideas, that would not necessarily be a bad thing. For many parts of the region, it would, in a sense, be a reversion to an earlier and, in its time, more successful order. At the same time, I cannot help but be wary of those who come peddling the wares of piety and faith. From my viewpoint, these are not ingredients of a solution but causes of the region’s current problems. It will be important to see how far the Turkish government goes in reversing Kemalist policies, and whether it gets onto the slippery slope of religious interference in the state. Some think that it is already there, but I am not sure.

On Freedom of Speech

 Will Saletan has a provocative new piece in the recent issue of Slate, arguing that Western Europe must do away with its hate speech laws and other restrictions on free speech before lecturing Muslims on their intolerance for insults to the Prophet. He certainly has a valid point, but his article obscures a larger, more important point: Freedom of speech is neither just a moral imperative nor something to be negotiated in a fair exchange; it is an essential mechanism to ensure the stability of modern societies.

The insulting film that caused the recent furor was made in the United States, not in a European country with hate speech prohibitions. The United States does not have laws prohibiting hate speech against anyone, and the First Amendment of the U.S. constitution guarantees almost absolute protection of speech. This is exactly what gives Americans – uniquely – both the right and the privilege of lecturing others on freedom of speech. Europe can be left to resolve its own dilemmas and exorcise its own ghosts. The principle that all speech – including hateful speech, blatant lies, extreme insults and outright bigotry – must be protected symbolizes a truly optimistic and modern view of human nature – that we are not, as some might insist, slaves to our inner demons or desires, but rational agents capable of analytical thought and self-control. This view of free speech may be somewhat idealistic, but the aspiration towards that ideal should not be obscured by fretting over its imperfect implementation in the here and now - especially when the most powerful, most influential and most diverse country in the world already implements it almost perfectly.

It is also essential that any defense of free speech not be couched in the idiom of Western paternalism, which – rightly – raises hackles in recently decolonized societies. Rather, it should be grounded in an understanding of the essential role freedom of expression plays in the survival and success of any modern society. Those who object to it – notably in the Muslim world, but also elsewhere – hold the depressingly pessimistic view that civilized behavior requires perpetual top-down control through the law, and that without such control, human society would fall apart. This idea – like many other “common sense” notions – is rooted in the belief that order arises only by imposition, that all organization requires an organizer, and that the only natural path for systems without top-down control is descent into entropic chaos. This view of reality, though historically understandable, is increasingly unsustainable for the complex, diverse, globalizing societies of today.
Forget all the examples of bottom-up self organization that we see in Nature. Most people already understand intuitively that human society is, at its core, a bottom-up system – relying on community, the common good, and the cooperative action. For millennia, however, top-down control has proved to be a successful strategy for reaping the benefits of this bottom-up system. From tribal chiefs to emperors and dictators, the wisdom of the few (usually one) has successfully tamed the presumed folly of the crowd, allowing societies to maintain cohesion and – very importantly – increase their influence (at least for limited periods). This is also the framework undergirding organized religion, which is the ultimate form of top-down control without hope of repeal. But the success of this strategy has now created the conditions for its own failure. Modern society and its institutions are arguably too complex to be understood, let alone controlled, by wise individuals or static legal codes. We have no choice but to trust the wisdom of the crowds. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is the best example of this trust. To think that it relinquishes all control over speech is a misunderstanding. Rather, it trusts that a responsible, civilized people can determine the proper norms of speech for their time and place through social, i.e., bottom-up, action rather than through rigid legal control – that society itself can regulate what expression is or is not acceptable, and impose societal sanctions to enforce this flexible, unwritten code. Protection of all expression thus creates a flexible mechanism rather than a brittle one, and is a stabilizing influence rather than a destabilizing one. Wisdom, in this case, lies not in choosing what others can(not) say, but to let them choose and live with the social consequences of their choice.

As we understand complex systems better, it is clear that they are necessarily subject to crises of potentially limitless magnitude. No amount of wise management can prevent such crises. The best that can be done is to create the space within the system to mitigate their effects when they do happen. Resilience and robustness, not strength and control, are the best options for such systems. The role of Law must be only to facilitate this resilience. Allowing people to have their say and be ignored (or mocked!) creates a much more resilient society than forbidding such expression and letting it turn secretly into a cause or a revolution. Freedom of speech is not the permission to sow strife but a mechanism to dissipate it - automatically, without effort, at almost no cost. Those who seek to limit it in the quest for stability are, in fact, inviting instability – a fact well demonstrated by history. Modern societies – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – need to learn this lesson. And they will learn it either before or after they destroy themselves from within.  To avoid the latter fate, they would do well to stop using European laws to justify their myopia and look to the much more useful American example.


Notes

 1. It is possible to justify freedom of speech in more concrete terms through psychological, social and economic arguments, but those are just details. Another important issue that could be raised is to ask whether this same laissez-faire approach should then be applied to the economic domain – as free-market purists have argued. This is not the place to discuss it, but, in my opinion, the problem is that money is not speech, whatever five justices on the U.S. Supreme Court might say. It is abundantly clear that the free market system within the right context is, by far, the most productive ever devised by humans (see "The Origin of Wealth" by Eric Beinhocker, or "The Birth of Plenty" by William Bernstein), but the relationship between humans and money is not the same as that between humans and expression. No one dies because of the speech of others, but people can be harmed physically by others' economic decisions. Nor is money an essential part of an individual’s being as expression is. Some regulation is, therefore, required for economic systems, but only as much as is necessary to preclude real harm to innocents and no more.

2. There is a very rich literature on the inevitability of crises in complex systems, and on ways to mitigate them Three of the best are Per Bak’s controversial classic “How Nature Works”, Nassim Taleb’s “The Black Swan”, and Marten Scheffer’s “Critical Transitions in Nature and Society”. Philip Ball’s “Why Society is a Complex Matter” also looks delicious but I have not read it yet. Nassim Taleb’s upcoming book “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder” is about the flip side of things – how disorder can be exploited. It should be very interesting.

3. Some readers will note the apparent irony that the freedom from laws regulating speech is itself embodied in a law – the First Amendment. The first few words of the amendment reinforce this irony: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It is a law prohibiting the making of laws – a “meta-law”, so to speak! The irony is resolved by noting that the target of its prohibition is the legislative body (Congress), not the population at large, which it frees from oppressive laws. It does not say to people, “You must speak freely”, but only that Congress cannot abridge such freedom. However, the ironies don't stop there. The fact that a few rich white men in the 18^th century promulgated this law empowering the many is one of history’s wonders. They needed both an immense portion of wisdom and an inordinate capacity for self-delusion to do so – many were slave-holders, and almost all accepted the practice.

4. I have not seen the movie that caused all the recent mayhem, nor do I intend to do so. From its description, it is, to put it politely, a piece of crap. The proper response to it would have been to ignore it and thus deny its makers the one thing they most desired – attention. The reaction that actually occurred has, alas, guaranteed that more such crap will be made and publicized – mostly to the benefit of extremists on all sides.

 5. I am sure that, in response to this post, I will be told that: a) The U.S. kills innocent people with drones (true but irrelevant); b) Insulting Jews or African-Americans is illegal in the U.S. (false); c) Western values are not universal (making wise choices to improve societal survivability is not a Western value); d) There should be some limit to free speech (yes, when it can physically or economically harm someone); and many more. All such objectors would benefit greatly from watching “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”. Laughter cures all hang-ups.

Does Lazy Thinking Lead To Conservatism?

I posted an article on Brown Pundits on the issue of whether "low-effort thinking" leads to more conservative opinions. The article discusses a recently published research paper.

In Praise of Error

One of the most interesting attributes of complex systems is the way they leverage noise and error. Our engineering tradition -- of which I am a part -- has fetishized precision, accuracy and correctness (which are all slightly different things), and thus stigmatized imprecision, noise and error. However, in complex, adaptive, growing and evolving systems, these nemeses of good engineering are a source of strength. Indeed, nothing illustrates the limitations of conventional engineering and explains its inability to produce truly useful complex adaptive systems (e.g., intelligent robots) better than this issue.

I will be writing much more on this in the future, but, thanks to the wonderful 3QuarksDaily blog, I happened to come upon a very nice article that gives insight into one aspect of the issue: The benefits of imprecision. The article focuses mainly on the precision and imprecision of computers, but the point applies much more broadly. Many things that we do require only low precision and have many "right" answers. And when we try to replicate them in artificial systems, e.g., getting computers to see or getting robots to act, we spend far too much on needless precision or correctness.

Consider the simple act of taking a sip from your grande cinnamon spice caramel cranberry cucumber honey chai latte. You can pick it up with either hand (or both), grip it high or low, with thumb and one finger or two, three or four, bring it to your mouth straight up, with a rightwad curve, leftward curve or any fancier trajectory of your choice, and as long as some part of the rim of the cup ends up at an appropriate part of your mouth, you'll be able to enjoy your fix. From a purely engineering point of view, implementing all this in a robot presents serious problems. First of all, there is no "right" answer, which means that the poor engineers don't know what they are looking for -- oh, the horror! Second, even if one could arbitrarily define a "right" answer (e.g., shortest path, fewest joints involved, precise middle of the lower lip target, etc.), coming up with the right control signals to get exactly the right joint movements is a monumental task. And the robot one gets after all that is doomed to drink all its lattes with the same stereotypical action.

But what if engineers welcomed the allowance for imprecision as an opportunity rather than seeing it as an impediment? After all, the second difficulty -- achieving precise control to get a desired action -- was created by trying to resolve the first difficulty -- having too many options. If the latter is no longer regarded as a difficulty at all, the second difficulty is greatly mitigated by allowing for a "sloppier" controller with less precision. As the linked article shows, this can reduce the cost of the resulting system dramatically with no real loss of performance. Why isn't this always done?

The root of the problem is that engineers insist on precision, control, predictability and efficiency. The engineering paradigm is based on these attributes (and a few others - I have written about it elsewhere). The reasons they want an optimal trajectory for the robot's arm are: a) So they know exactly what control signals to apply; b) can tell whether the robot is behaving correctly; c) correct it if it is not; d) measure its performance; and e) ensure that resources are being used efficiemtly. From the robot's viewpoint, none of these is especially important; all it cares about is enjoying its latte at not too high a cost in energy. A much simpler, less precise controller could achieve that, though the result would probably not be "optimal" and might vary from trial to trial -- just as in humans! The extra precision being required -- at great cost in terms of design difficulty and expense -- is to satisfy the gods of engineering, not to meet the actual goal.

Of course, this doesn't mean that solving the less precise engineering problem is easy, but one reason it isn't easy is that all the tools of engineering are geared towards optimization. The great Herb Simon observed a long time ago that intelligent systems do not optimize, they just "satisfice," i.e., find solutions that work "well enough." Satisficing is a lot cheaper than optimizing, but requires judgment rather than blind rules. With optimization, we can measure how far a system is from the optimum and use this knowledge systematically to improve it, i.e., just use an algorithm from the engineering toolkit. Discovering satisfactory solutions, in contrast, often requires trial-and-error, exploration, and deciding when things are acceptable -- and therein lies the problem. There are (so far) no universally applicable canonical paradigms for satisficing because it is, by definition, a messy process with uncertain goals.

One important point to remember here is that it isn't imprecision per se that is good (or harmless), but the judicious use of imprecision.  Some things do need to be precise while others less so. Appropriate allocation of precision can be the difference between success and failure, or even life and death. Since we seldom have generic rules for deciding how and where to be imprecise, engineering practice has been to play it safe and always seek the maximum possible precision everywhere. Over time, this has become a fundamental part of the engineering ethos, and has led to the pursuit of precision as an end in itself -- often at great cost.

However, if one looks at living organisms -- which, we all agree, are marvels far beyond our engineering capabilities -- we see that  imprecision is not only prevalent, but is actively exploited to great benefit. Imprecision is, in fact, a primary driver of evolution and adaptation in organisms. It is genetic "errors" that, when beneficial, lead to fitter organisms; and it is cognitive/behavioral "errors" (i.e., mistakes) that, when productive, lead to learning. The strategies that organisms have evolved to exploit such errors while avoiding their dangers are among the most useful lessons we can learn from life as we try to build new complex systems (e.g., intelligent robots) or manage existing ones (e.g., financial markets, social networks, economies, etc.) Systems that have been engineered to squeeze out all possibility for error are systems incapable of growth.

More to come on this.

A Piece of History - I

History - ostensibly a simple reportage of fact - is the source of endless mystery, fascination and dispute. It shapes both individuals and societies in ways that are often beyond understanding, and ignorance of history, in one way or another, lies at the root of most problems that beset humankind. For the amateur student of history, the most accessible artifacts of vanished ages are coins - pieces of gold, silver, copper or bronze that have travelled across centuries bearing pictures of bygone kings and queens, inscriptions in dead languages, and marks of ancient events. Fascinated by the possibility of exploring history in this way, I have been collecting ancient coins for several years, focusing mainly on South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean. In other words, coins from lands that were variously ruled by Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Indians, Turks and Mongols, Many of the coins that I have collected come from very interesting periods, and I will occasionally use these coins as a pretext to write about the events from those times. This is the first of such posts.

The coin I will discuss today comes from the seventh century CE from a time of great conflict: The second fitnah of Islamic history. It is a beautiful silver coin in remarkably good condition, as shown below.

The obverse (left) shows a bust of the Sassanian king, Khusro II, known as Parviz (the Victorious), who ruled a large empire from the deserts of Sind to Egypt and Anatolia over a 38 year reign (590 - 628 CE) (click here and here for details). The reverse (right) shows a Zoroastrian fire altar flanked by highly stylized Magian priests. Both sides follow the standard pattern used for Sassanian coins for most of the empire's duration. In addition to the main figures, the coins are replete with astral and earthly symbols - crescents, stars, the winged crown, the border of pearls, etc., all of which had specific meaning in the Sassanian culture. Most interestingly, the coin carries inscriptions in two scripts - Pahlavi and Arabic. The Pahlavi inscription is found both in front of the king's face and behind his head, as well as on either side of the fire altar, while the Arabic inscription is a "bism illah" (in the name of Allah) in the margin on the obverse side. What could possibly have prompted such a strange assembly of items on this coin? The answer comes to us from history.

Among the most interesting, consequential and turbulent times in the history of Islam was the 118 year period between the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE and the accession of the first Abbasid ruler, Al-Saffah, in 750 CE. During this period, Islam underwent three civil wars, known as the fitnahs (times of tribulation). The first fitnah began with the rebellion against the Caliph 'Uthman and his assassination on July 17, 656, and ended with the armistice between the forces of 'Ali and Mu'awiya I at Siffin in July 657. The second fitnah began with the death of Mu'awiya I in 680 and ended with the Umayyad recapture of the Hijaz and Iraq in 692 under the leadership of 'Abd al-Malik b. Marwan and Hajjaj b. Yusuf. The third fitnah was the Abbasid revolt against the Umayyad caliphs in 745 CE, resulting in the accession of Al-Saffah as the first Abbasid caliph in 750 CE. The coin in question comes from the time of the second fitnah.

After the death of Mu'awiya I, many factions of Muslims refused to accept the succession of his son, Yazid I, as caliph. The most famous of these was the Prophet's grandson, Husayn ibn 'Ali, who was martyred by Umayyad forces at Karbala in October 680. However, a much more successful - and now mostly forgotten (in the popular mind) - revolt against the Umayyads was led from Mecca by 'Abdullah b. al-Zubayr (Ibn Zubayr), who was the son of a famous companion of the Prophet, Zubayr b. al-Awwam, and a well-respected figure. He declared himself caliph in 680 CE, and won the allegiance of the people in Iraq, the Arabian peninsula, Egypt and parts of Syria. In fact, he had the allegiance of a greater part of the empire than the nominal Umayyad caliph, Yazid I and his successor, Mu'awiya II. Umayyad forces under Marwan b. Al-Hakam eventually took back control of Syria, Iraq and Egypt, leaving Ibn Zubayr ruler in Hijaz even after Marwan was declared caliph in 684 CE. He died shortly thereafter, with the caliphate passing to his son, 'Abd-al Malik. Umayyad forces under Hajjaj laid siege to Mecca to defeat Ibn Zubayr, shelling the city using catapults and causing serious damage to the Ka'ba itself (which Hajjaj subsequently rebuilt). Finally, Ibn Zubayr was defeated and killed in 692 CE, making 'Abd al-Malik the sole (though hardly undisputed) caliph over all Muslim lands.

An important issue faced by Muslim rulers after they rapidly conquered Byzantine lands and completely destroyed the Sassanian empire was the issue of coinage. Through most of history, the right to issue legal tender has been seen as the primary symbol of a ruler's authority. However, the Muslim rulers had no experience with minting coins. Nor was there any established tradition or symbology related to this. As a result, they used Byzantine and Sassanian coins in the western and eastern parts of the empire, respectively. Both sets of coins needed some degree of "Islamization" to distinguish them from the Christian and Zoroastrian coinage. This was done largely by adding suitably pious Arabic inscriptions to the coins, resulting in coins termed "Arab-Byzantine" and "Arab-Sassanian". The coin at hand is an Arab-Sassanian coin.

Arab-Sassanian coins were produced both by Umayyads (through various governors in Iraq and Khurasan) and by Ibn Zubayr (see this excellent site for examples). My coin was issued in the name of Ibn Zubayr, minted in Istakhr in 63 AH. The mint is indicated by the Pahlavi signature ST:

on the right half of the reverse. Behind the bust of the king is the standard Pahlavi legend GDH afzwt (xhwarrah afzut - May his treasure grow) inherited from the coins of Khusro II,

while the legend facing the king says apdwla y zwbyran amyr y wirrwyshnikan ('Abdullah bin Zubayr, Commander of the Faithful). The date is read as 63 AH, though Album and Goodwin suggest that the correct reading should be 66 AH because Ibn Zubayr did not issue coins claiming to be "Amir-al Mo'mineen" (Commander of he Faithful) until after the death of Yazid I in 64 AH (Album and Goodwin, 2002).

The coin is interesting for several reasons. First, it is one of the earliest coins claiming anyone to be "Amir-al Mo'mineen", though there are earlier examples in the name of Mu'awiya I (see Morony, 1984 - pp 45-46) and Yazid I (Mochiri, 1982) . Even more interesting is the retention of almost all Sassanian imagery without change, including the (clearly un-Islamic) fire altar and the various astral symbols, and, of course, the picture of the king. Thus, somewhat surprisingly, the earliest coinage of Islam - issued by people who had lived in the Prophet's company - carried the symbols of a non-Islamic religion and the picture of an unbeliever king! A similar situation obtained with Arab-Byzantine coins. Clearly, the prohibition against graven images was not particularly strong in these early Islamic times, and no great threat was seen in the symbols of other religions - an instructive thought in our age of blasphemy laws and destroyed Buddhas. Similarly, these early Muslims felt no compunction in putting sacred Arabic text - in this instance, "bism illah", but in other cases "lillah" (for Allah), "bism illah rabbi" (in the name of Allah, my lord), "lillah al-hamd" (all praise is for Allah) - on such objects of common use as coins. Finally, Hajjaj b. Yusuf put "bism Allāh / lā-ilaha il- / Allāh waḥdahu Muḥammad / rasūl Allāh" (in the name of Allah; there is no God but Allah, the One; Muhammad is his messenger) on a coin. This, apparently, was a bit much for some of the more pious, who felt that such sacred inscriptions should not be put on base artifacts such as coins (see image), and the experiment was temporarily abandoned. However, when reformed Islamic coinage was issued in 84 AH, it included not only the shahadah, "lā-ilaha il-Allāh waḥdahu", but also an entire sura (chapter) from the Qur'an (al-ikhlas), as can be seen in images here. This then became the pattern of Umayyad and Abbasid coins for the next 500 years, and was adopted by many other Muslim dynasties as well. Coins with these Qur'anic inscriptions are still occasionally found in areas as far away as Scandanavia, testifying to the widespread trade links of the time.

It is also interesting to note that the king shown on the coin being discussed died more than half a century before the coin was minted, with two other kings (Kavadh II and Ardeshir III) between him and Yezdigerd III, whom the Muslim armies actually defeated. Initial Arab-Sassanian coins used Yazdigerd's image, but this was quickly replaced by the image of Khusro Perviz, widely regarded as the most magnificent, if also one of the most cruel, of the Sassanian kings. Hodgson (1977) has speculated that this indicated that Khusro, not Yezdigerd, was the dominant authority figure in the minds of the populace in these regions - still mostly Zoroastrian - and Muslim rulers were trying to exploit this feeling.

With time, the history of the second fitnah has faded from the minds of most, except for the martyrdom of Husayn b. 'Ali at Karbala. Most histories - especially in the Muslim world - have been written to show a continuous "Umayyad" caliphate following upon the four initial "rightly guided" caliphs. As Hodgson points out (Hodgson, 1977), this is wrong on several counts. The dynasty of caliphs established following the fitnah derived from Marwan, not Mu'awiya I, and is better labeled Marwanid. As for Umayyad caliphs, the first of these was 'Uthman b. 'Affan (the third rightly-guided caliph). And finally, there was an extended period (680-692) when the Muslim state was divided between two competing caliphs of commensurate strength and allegiance.

Another interesting aspect of this time was the ongoing revolt of the Kharijis - a group of fundamentalist Muslims who disagreed with the compromise at Siffin, and gradually developed into a set of interlinked fanatical groups. In many cases, these groups regarded the vast bulk of Muslims as misguided and therefore subject to execution. In this, they presaged today's jihadist groups who also feel no compunction about killing Muslims and non-Muslims with equal zeal. The Kharijis never won any major victories, but terrorized large parts of the empire for more than a century, and lingered on until much later in outer regions like Bahrain. In this, as in many other things, the history of these early Islamic times provides significant insight into the problems we face today, not least because those fostering the problems hark back to idealized versions of the history of those early times. Better understanding of this history can debunk many myths and lay bare the real complexity of the early Islamicate civilization.


References:

S. Album and T. Goodwin, Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean: The Pre-Reform Coinage of the Early Islamic Period. Ashmolean Museum, 2002.

M.G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Vol. 1). The University of Chicago Press, 1977.

M.I. Mochiri, A Sassanian-Style Coin of Yazid b. Mu'awiya. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1: 137-148, 1982.

M.G. Morony, Iraq After the Muslim Conquest. Princeton University Press, 1984.

For anyone wishing to learn more about the ancient coinage of the Middle East, Iran Central Asia and India, there is no better site than "The Coins and History of Asia" put together by Tom Mallon-McCorgray.

Obama's Failure - and Lift-off?

The congressional elections that just concluded with spectacular Democratic losses in both the House of Representatives and at the state level can only be regarded as a failure for Barack Obama. The question, however, is: Where did the failure lie?

Was it, as some on the Left claim, a failure to remain true to principle and to seek pristinely progressive solutions to problems like health care (e.g., single payer), terrorism (e.g., not continuing Bush’s incarceration policies), the financial meltdown (e.g., putting fat cat bankers in the dock), and social issues (e.g., unilaterally ending “don’t ask, don’t tell”)? Or was it, as the Republicans and Republicrats would have us believe, an inability to compromise even more, to adopt an even more conciliatory tone, to disarm even more unilaterally? The answer, in my opinion, is neither. To consider these interpretations is to completely misread Obama’s real challenge. He is not in a contest with the Republican Party. He is confronting an alternate reality.

In this alternate reality, many things that are known to be empirically true are nevertheless false. For example, Barack Obama has already raised taxes massively on everyone (he has actually reduced them), cut back in the war against terrorists (in fact, he has launched more attacks and killed more militants in two years than Bush did in seven), bailed out the big banks (actually, TARP was a Bush initiative, though Obama did support it as a Senator), and wasted hundreds of billions on a failed stimulus (in fact, the CBO estimates that the stimulus saved or added several million jobs even before it was fully spent).  As these examples demonstrate, Obama’s challenge is not policy, but politics. His failure lies in not being able to counter the well-oiled Right-wing propaganda machine that routinely convinced millions of people that day is night and up is down (see scientific evidence for this assertion). His failure, in other words, is too much faith in Reason.

As even Aristotle understood, logic and reason are just tools – methods by which we can spin stories for ourselves and others to explain, legitimize or justify actions that our lizard brains have already committed to. Emotion, not Reason, is the fundamental basis of human behavior, just it is has been the basis of all animal behavior for millions of years. Beneath their fragile veneer of rationality, our brains are nothing but enablers for emotional control. That is why – Thomas Frank notwithstanding – it is not at all mysterious why middle class Kansans vote for Republicans against their own economic interests, nor why rich Hollywood actors vote for Democrats who are likelier to raise their taxes. No great change in human history has flowed from purely rational argument. Even Apple computers – objectively the best in the world – need to entice users with their seductive looks. This is doubly true in politics, where emotion, really, is all that matters.

Surprising as it may seem, Obama lost sight of this fact.

What, one may ask, can the Harvard-educated Leader of the Free World do against the onslaught of Fox and friends except to appeal to peoples’ rational faculties? The answer is that he should have engaged emotionally. Following on the enormous enthusiasm of his campaign, he should have tried to ignite a mass movement on the Left as Reagan did on the Right. In 2008 and early 2009, he had the opportunity, the magic, and the connections to do so. Instead, he sat back and decided to have an argument on the merits with Senators Olympia Snowe and Max Baucus!

I still believe that Obama is the one barrier we have to a complete takeover by the imagineers of the Right who are intent on creating their own reality. However, he has proved to be an ineffective barrier, and perhaps he never will be effective because of his natural inclinations. Perhaps it is too late in the process to hope that calm insistence on rational analysis will break through the haze of confusion created by the right-wing propaganda machine.

A few of weeks ago, I posted an article by Roger Cohen that, to me, captured the essence of Obama's failure so far - the disinclination to excite. He seems too taken by the "no drama" ethos of his campaign. I think that the inauguration in 2008 should have been followed by a concerted effort to build an active and long-term grassroots movement - an "Obama Revolution" like the "Reagan Revolution". Instead, they just focused on solving problems technocratically, and allowed the zeal to dissipate. The void was filled by the teabaggers who provided a home for the inchoate anger swirling about the country. That was a major failure of leadership, and will now have consequences for the whole country.

This doesn't mean that Obama himself should have continued to campaign. In fact, he should probably have been less exposed than he has been. But those under him should have built an infrastructure that could continue to keep the movement alive and churning after the election. They needed to create campus groups, meetups, think tank events, rallies, media voices, etc. The Left has traditionally had difficulty with this in America because most of the money is on the Right, and conservatives are more willing to be organized like lemmings. I think Obama and company saw that the only models to do something similar on the Left were a socialist revolution or a hippie movement, and neither appealed very much to their rational, capitalistic inclinations. However, that, in my opinion, was a failure of imagination. They failed to come up with a "fourth way" - a 21st century liberal uprising, and they're paying the price for it.

I don't see much reason to expect transformative change in the near future. The structural factors are all against Obama - a terrible economy, a dysfunctional Congress, a demoralized Democratic base, an even more difficult Senate election in 2012, an antagonistic Supreme Court (which will almost surely nullify the health care reform law), and a hostile media environment. There's a lot more pain to come.

But things are not as bleak as they seemed even two weeks ago. The last few days have seen the negotiation of a tax compromise between Obama and the Republicans, and its final passage in Congress in spite of grumbling on the Left and the Right. Then the odious “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for the military was repealed with the cooperation of several Republicans. It now seems possible that the new START treaty will also be approved within this lame duck session. This duck is proving to be a champion waddler!

Many in the punditocracy are taking all this as the inception of Obama 2.0 – a President focused on triangulating away from Congressional Democrats and Republicans just as Clinton did in 1995. In fact, it is likelier that Obama is “pyramiding” – rising above all the bickering groups towards the apex of a pyramid, and moving in a direction distinct from all of them. He has already hinted that the tax compromise is a preamble to a more serious look at the deficit. Unlike other Democrats, he has not dismissed the draconian recommendations of his deficit commission. I think that he is getting ready to propose a re-orientation of American economic, fiscal and social policy so drastic that it will create mayhem in all political circles. And in this chaos, Obama will try to assemble a new coalition that can hijack the constituencies of various existing power bases like the unions, the environmentalists, small businesses and others. His recent actions suggest that he is contemplating a major political realignment just as Ronald Reagan did, but will do it in his “no drama” style. Whether he succeeds or fails depends on his ability to exploit the disruption he will cause by his proposals. He will be helped by the increased gridlock likely in the new Congress, and John Boehner may soon find new reasons to weep on camera. But it is just as likely that the Right-wing propaganda machine will continue to chew Obama up. It will certainly keep trying.

Obama supporters often claim that he is engaged in some mysterious form of 3-dimensional chess with Republicans that will, one day, suddenly leave them bereft. So far, the results are mixed, but perhaps he should be thinking less chess and more jiujitsu if he is to use the Right-wing media juggernaut against itself.

Some thing are certain: The State of the Union address in 2011 will have a lot more drama than 2010; Republican presidential candidates will shortly start assembling into a circular fring squad; Sarah Palin will keep beating up helpless halibut; and John Boehner will cry again. It will be an exciting year with much sport.