I know, I know, it's a strange mix: Adam Smith and the tinfoil-hat brigade from Ronson's The Men Who Stare at Goats. Apologies to those who seek coherence. But I digress....
Ronson's book cries out for a conclusion. It almost seems that he's afraid to utter it, because it requires that a large statement be made without enough evidence, based only on anecdotes, inferences and hunches.
Fortunately, journalism on weblogs consists mostly in overly general statements made without enough evidence. ("In what household activity commonly involving sticks and bundles of rush are statements found? Sweeping.")
America is not, these days, a rational society: we indulge in too much magical thinking. "Use the force, Luke," moves us because the quack Zen Buddhism resonates with our native optimisim, Transcendentalism (yes, I have been reading Emerson in my spare time -- luckily I'm really more interested in Adam Smith), sentimentality, and love of happy endings.
I take magical thinking to be "wishing will make it so". Of course, all change in the world, all creativity, is in a way an expression of this magical thought -- I desire it to be, I make it so. The desire is necessary.
But desire is not sufficient. Labor (aha, here's our road back to Smith) is required -- whether it be the physical labor of moving bricks or the physical labor of writing things down. Discipline (a less tangible tendency to defer immediate pleasure in favor of future outcomes, which one may not even be alive to enjoy) is also required for most things, because the making itself is normally less pleasurable in the event than in the anticipation (or recollection).
Furthermore, desire, no matter how earnest and disciplined, sometimes cannot avail. Death is final. Aging is inexorable. The past cannot be changed. I can climb Everest more easily (though it's not a realistic possibility) than I can undo something (cruel, stupid or enlightened) I did a second ago. If I emulate the master and kill a kitten to educate my students, I cannot unkill it after the lesson is done.
("The past", of course, can be changed; and I don't mean Orwell's George Winston changing physical evidence. I'm talking about what happens all the time. Politicians notoriously change the past, by redefining events and actions post-hoc. We all do it, and not just in the public space -- we redefine how we think about things so that we can live with them; or we simply forget them. This is not changing anything that happened, however; it just changes how we think about the past -- in the present and for some time in the future.)
To return to Goats: this magical thinking is dangerous. If you think that willpower can take you through walls like a disembodied spirit, and you act on that thought, you will probably get a bruised nose. If you think you can fly as an act of will, and you jump off a building, you're likely to get a nasty fall.
Magical thinking is controllable; we control it in most cases in due course. It is avoidable. As a lack of discipline, it is a form of sloth, a deadly sin, and therefore prima facia wicked. But it's not just wicked in this scholastic sense: it causes people to do evil.
People can do evil from many reasons. Evil may come from acts consciously committed. Even though Hollywood's overuse of this tends to make one suspicious, from time to time some people plan and execute plans that are consciously intended to cause harm, simply for the pleasure of it.
In common life, however, I think that evil is more likely to arise from magical thinking.
The contractor in China who sells lead-tainted paint to a manufacturer is probably not thinking, "Aha, I can get more profit by poisoning small children". He or she's probably thinking, "I need to save some money, and a little lead won't hurt": magical thinking. The contractor has a family and a business to support.
Similarly, the person infected with HIV who engages in unprotected sex is probably not thinking, "Now you've got it too," (though unquestionably some people have done so), but rather, "I don't really have HIV".
Less dramatically, the person (Rush Limbaugh or Happy Homeowner) who denies the reality of greenhouse gases and the likely consequences thereof, who denies the limited availability of oil and the eventual consequences, is not thinking, "Forget about the future, I'll live for today;" he or she is instead likely thinking, "It's not really that way -- I can't perceive it myself so it's not really happening."
These are not mistakes of "rationalization". Rationalization means, at its root, taking an irrational action and making it rational, by constructing a logical framework. This framework may be specious -- but it doesn't involve madness ("white is black", "if I walk towards this wall with the right attitude, I can pass right through it").
These are not mistakes of calculation -- they are mis-takes of reality. They come from a lack of intellectual self-discipline (or equivalently, from intellectual self-indulgence).
America is an extremely self-indulgent society -- what is the inalienable right to "the pursuit of happiness" other than a license to self-indulgence? But nobody in Philadelphia in 1776 thought that happiness could be pursued irrationally. Magical thinking is the invidious enemy of rational thought. We need to indulge ourselves in what we do, in how we shape our lives, but not in how we think. "Pursuit of happiness" is not the "accomplishment of happiness" -- the phrase itself implies that discipline is needed, along with rational consideration of means.
We especially need to guard against magical thinking in politics, as it's something that the adversarial system in the US is not set up to contain. Our system was set up on the assumption of rationality in the elite, and designed to contain the enthusiasms of the masses. Checks and balances were set up to constrain people who try to grab power, not to constrain people who are functionally irrational. Calling someone crazy in a political debate is simply not done -- and if that someone is not literally barking, it would not be an effective ploy in our system. Let's face it, Cheney's behavior and demeanor are quite bizarre, and yet nobody dares call him mad. It's easier to call someone stupid or evil.
Magical thinking can affect anyone, no matter their intelligence. It is fundamental human nature. The self-esteem movement -- haven't heard too much about that recently, have we? -- in some ways encouraged it. Thinking you can't do something is always negative, but is not always wrong! Therefore thinking you can do something may be magical thinking, and so needs to be tempered by reflection.
It is frightening, therefore, not amusing, to read a book that seems to show that a big part of the US defense establishment is not only infected by, but is practicing, magical thinking.
It is one thing for people like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to be mad. It is another thing for whole echelons of the Army and of the CIA to be mad. What is it other than madness to seriously consider The First Earth Battalion Operations Manual as a basis for reorganizing the US Army? It's hard to dismiss the evidence from Goats that it was seriously considered.
Once magical thinking is admitted into an organization, the organization loses its ability to function rationally (and in accordance with its goals). This cause organizations, while attempting to do good, to do what they ordinarily would recognize as reprehensible. The Catholic church is an organization that tends towards good, but the Inquisition was evil done in evil ways. The American Army consists of men and women who are generally good, but our treatment of "enemy combatants" is reprehensible. On the evidence of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and the connections between the interrogation techniques used there, and psycho-babble of the most irrational kind, the tendency to madness has spread through the organization. Given how far it's already gone at times of rather mild stress, it's unclear how far this might go.
