RAND Report on "The Origin and Evolution of the RAND Corporation's Terrorism Databases: Defining and Building a New Field of Knowledge"

[#2 in a chronological series meant to update this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]

 

In April 2021, former RAND colleague Brian Jenkins, who initiated and directed RAND research on international terrorism during the 1970s-1980s, asked me to help write a history of RAND’s pioneering chronology of international-terrorism incidents and related databases.  I had worked on those projects from 1972 until the mid 80s. 

 

I agreed, if we could add a future-oriented section about how the emergence of the noosphere and noöpolitics may affect terrorism in the years ahead.  He agreed to try.  Thus the final write-up we submitted in September had such a section.  However, the powers-that-be wanted that closing section removed, reportedly because it exceeded the project’s original historical intent.  So we removed it — to my lasting disappointment.

 

At least I made other contributions and got a publication out of it:  Brian Michael Jenkins and David Ronfeldt, The Origin and Evolution of the RAND Corporation's Terrorism Databases: Defining and Building a New Field of Knowledge, RAND Corporation, PE-A1203-1, November 2021. Available at:  https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA1203-1.html

 

The Abstract reads as follows:

 

“Two RAND Corporation researchers at the forefront of collection and analysis of data on terrorism recount the experiences, challenges, achievements, and lessons learned during the past nearly 50 years. From the 1970s onward, RAND research on terrorism evolved from its initial concern with terrorists' actions (i.e., incidents), to the types of groups that committed those actions, to the attributes of people who made up those groups, and finally to the nature of the mindsets that motivated and characterized those terrorists. Each phase in that progression required a different kind of database and a more sophisticated analytical ability to use each database individually and to use them together (especially as the databases became computerized). Each step also required a new look at the definition of terrorism. After tracing this evolution, the authors discuss challenges and criticisms that arose along the way. They conclude with lessons learned, responses to criticisms, and thoughts about the future of this area of research for database development.”

 

Even so, this historical report has little bearing on my blog’s purposes here, except as context for understanding my forward-looking draft for the omitted section.  Which I will post tomorrow.

 

“Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age” Redux

[#1 in a chronological series meant to update this blog with write-ups I failed to post during 2021-2022.]

 

2020 had resulted in publication of our long report Whose Story Wins (RAND, PE-A237-1, 2020) about the emergence of the noosphere and noöpolitics, plus a short spin-off paper titled “Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age: Rise of the Noosphere and Noopolitik” (2020), which I posted here last year as a draft.

 

During 2021 that spin-off paper led to three opportune iterations, all with basically the same contents, but each slightly revised and with a different sub-title: 

 

— First, as a prospective chapter for a book to be published in South Africa about the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) for the future of higher education in Africa.  I received an inquiry in mid-2020 about from Willem Oliver, a scholar associated with the University of South Africa (UNISA).  He initially wanted a chapter about TIMN, but I offered an adaptation of the paper we already had available about the noosphere and its implications for rethinking academic curricula and coursework about grand strategy and statecraft. 

 

Arquilla and I are very pleased with the outcome.  We soon submitted a revised draft, with a few additions about Africa, as “Rethinking Strategy And Statecraft For The Information Age: Implications For Education.”  After the full book went through a couple rounds of review and placement, it was published the following year as Chapter 6, “Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Age of 4IR: Implications for Higher Education,” in Erna Oliver, ed., Global Initiatives and Higher Education in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, UJ Press, University of Johannesburg, 2022, pp. 131-151, available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Global-Initiatives-Education-Industrial-Revolution/dp/1776405609

 

— Second, we provided “Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age: Whose Narrative Wins,” for a book about cognitive warfare that began full circulation in early 2021:  Ajit Maan (ed.), Dangerous Narratives: Warfare, Strategy, Statecraft, Narrative Strategies Ink, Washington, D.C., 2020, Chapter 9, pp. 152-170, available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Narratives-Warfare-Strategy-Statecraft/dp/0578812819/

 

— Third, in August, after failing to place the 2020 original with a journal, and after making a few edits, including one I regard as quite significant (see below), I posted the new iteration on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) site, as follows:

 

Title: Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age: Rise of the Noosphere and Noopolitik

 

Abstract: Updating ideas first proposed years ago, this paper urges that national-security and foreign-policy strategists turn to a new concept for adapting statecraft to the information age — noopolitik, which emphasizes ideational “soft power” — as a successor to realpolitik, an aging concept that has emphasized geopolitical “hard power.” Noopolitik derives from recognizing that a new globe-circling phenomenon is emerging atop our planet’s long-existing geosphere and biosphere: namely, the noosphere, as a “thinking circuit” and “realm of the mind” enabled by the digital information revolution.

 

As the noosphere grows, it will profoundly affect statecraft — the conditions favoring traditional realpolitik strategies will erode, and the prospects for noopolitik strategies will grow. Strategic narratives will matter more than ever. The decisive factor in today’s and tomorrow’s wars of ideas is thus bound to be “whose story wins” — the essence of noopolitik.

 

Various state and non-state actors have already taken the lead in deploying dark forms of noopolitik: e.g., political warfare, weaponized narratives, epistemic attacks — what China’s leaders now call “discourse power.” This paper identifies better ways to fight back and improve future prospects for the noosphere and noopolitik. Policymakers and strategists should, among other initiatives, rethink existing concepts of “soft power,” treat the “global commons” as a pivotal issue area for both civilian and military strategy, and institute a requirement for regular, systematic reviews of their nations’ “information posture.” Courses and curricula for teaching grand strategy should be redesigned to focus better on understanding social cognition and social evolution as well.

 

Keywords: strategy, statecraft, realpolitik, noopolitik, noosphere

 

Suggested Citation:  Ronfeldt, David and Arquilla, John, Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age: Rise of the Noosphere and Noopolitik (January 30, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3910628 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3910628

 

In the preceding months, after observing that our realpolitik-vs.-noopolitik framing was still not gaining traction, I figured that a geopolitics-vs.-noöpolitics framing might work better.  Most U.S. strategists were, by then, writing far more in terms of geopolitics than realpolitik, and meanwhile the term noöpolitics was starting to circulate in Europe (often as a translation of our noopolitik term).  So, when I posted the paper in August, I added the following Author’s Note at the very end (p. 20):

 

In the lead author’s view, this version, last revised and updated as of January 30, 2021, should go through another round of revision and updating before being re-submitted for journal publication. In particular, the analysis would benefit from adding new materials he has collected on Russian and Chinese concepts and strategies. The analysis could further benefit from noting the possibility of adding a second stream of thought. This paper, in keeping with our prior writings, focuses on comparing realpolitik and noopolitik — our first stream of thought. It may make good sense to at least mention the growing prospects for developing a companion stream that would focus on geopolitics versus noöpolitics — thereby urging strategists to start thinking in terms of noöpolitics as well as geopolitics.

 

Oddly, my proposal to add that second frame/stream of analysis became a matter of contention months later in 2022.

Blog Update: Materials I Had Meant to Post in 2021 and 2022

I have been remiss in posting here for over two years, including the entirety of 2021 and 2022.  Rather negligent and unproductive of me.  At least I did not come down with Covid.  And I did get some writings done during those two years that were posted or published elsewhere.  Here, in roughly chronological order, are write-ups from 2021-2022 that I meant to post here, since they bear on the purposes of this blog:

 

• “Rethinking Strategy and Statecraft for the Information Age,” Redux

 

• Publication of The Origin and Evolution of the RAND Corporation's Terrorism Databases: Defining and Building a New Field of Knowledge

 

• Draft on “Terrorism Database Construction in Global Strategic Perspective” (July 2021)

 

• “Geopolitics, Noopolitics, and the Fight for Ukraine” (April 27, 2022)

 

• Paper on Has China "Hacked" The Foundational Framework For U.S.-China Policy Dialogue?

 

• Book Review of Chinese Strategist Wang Huning’s America Against America (1991)

 

• New Substack Blog: Onward with TIMN … maybe STAC, NOO, and CYBOC too

 

• Invitation to Re-Post Old Paper on Two Faces of Fidel: Captain Ahab and Don Quixote (1990), Plus New Forward

 

• Article in The Atlantic Revisits Our Cyberwar and Netwar Writings

 

• Russian Request to Translate “The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revisited)”

• Re-Post of TIMN Draft Chapter 1. “Anticipating The Emergence Of Quadriform Societies”

 

• Re-Post of “Points To Ponder As We Move Ahead With TIMN—#1” 

I will post each one next, separately and in that order.  [Edited, February 6]

 

Toward a new sectorism — #5: Charting how to view a future “commons sector”

Maybe a couple of charts can help strengthen a speculation I keep trying to test out and explain better: 

Health, education, welfare, and environmental matters have so many affinities and become so intertwined as major policy matters that it will make increasing sense for policymakers to view them as belonging together as a set, a bundle — indeed as bedrock components for an semi-independent new sector, a commons sector. 

Since this has turned into another long-winded post, just skip to view the two charts — they depict the crux of my argument — if you’d rather not wend your way through my prose. The charts are what I’m testing out here. Do they work? 

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS (AGAIN) 

As I’ve said before, our policymakers have has long treated health, education, welfare, and the environment as matters that fall to our public and private sectors, or that civil-society sectors should attend to. That has been the case for decades. Yet by now, as a result of growing size and complexity, none of these matters fits comfortably in either the public or private sector, and they are way too big and burdensome to leave up to civil-society. 

Furthermore, health, education, welfare, and environmental matters are not primarily about maximizing power and/or profit, which is what the government’s public sector and the economy’s private sector are primarily about. Good health, education, welfare, and environmental conditions may be essential for furthering national power and economic productivity, but they are primarily about something else. And the more enormous and complex they become as policy problems, the more important it is to discern and heed that something else. 

Here’s my speculative deduction: If we view health, education, welfare, and the environment together, as a set, we can see that they are mainly about maximizing care, broadly defined: people care, life care, planet care, in a sense the care of body, mind, and soul. Viewed as such — as an enormously complex interrelated set of matters that our existing sectors are no longer suited to handling — they look like the most potent candidates for a prospective “fourth sector” — probably a “commons sector” — for our society, as well as for other advanced societies on the verge of evolving from triform into quadriform systems. 

HOW HEALTHCARE POLICY MATTERS LOOK TODAY 

A couple weeks ago, wondering about the above, I happened across a Wall Street Journal article by Bobby Jindal, plus an editorial and a bunch of follow-up letters, about how Republicans view healthcare policy — a tidy set of articles that highlight concerns found among Democrats as well. It occurred to me that these handy articles could serve as a foil for advancing my argument more quickly and easily than by going through the huge folders and hundreds of articles I’ve been saving for such a task. 

These GOP-friendly articles raise a broad range of issues, more than I’m truly interested in right now: The lack of competition in our healthcare system. Its domination by a few large powerful companies. The limited choices and high costs facing consumers. The regulatory impediments to competition. The need for litigation and tax-code reforms. The power of unions intent on preserving employer plans. Et cetera. With much of all this framed in terms of individual vs. collective responsibility, and public- vs. private-sector roles. And with some ideas raised about expanding the roles of collectives, hybrid organizations, and network designs more generally. Plus laments that gridlock and stalemate now characterize our healthcare system. Not to mention more specialized points that arose in these write-ups. 

Quite an array of concerns. Quite a muddle too. (And I left a lot out, too.) 

What mainly catches my eye, however, is a set of policy principles that were raised, centered around the following: Whether healthcare should be recognized as a right. Whether to accept pre-existing conditions. Whether and how to support primary care, as well as offer preventive services and protect against severe risks that could become terribly costly. Whether and how to allow individuals to chose their plans and services, select tailored options, and at times make changes to them. How to keep all this affordable. Plus how to improve network designs across the system The Republican voices represented by this small set of writings were generally in favor of these policy principles, to varying degrees. Assuming most Democrats and Independents may agree, here’s what these principles look like in a chart — see Figure 1 below: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, take another look at that column of policy principles in Figure 1. Doesn’t it also reflect principles we often see raised about education policy? As well as about welfare policy? Plus, with language tweaks, about policy principles for assuring the quality of the environment we live in?

HOW HEALTHCARE AND RELATED POLICY MATTERS MAY LOOK TOMORROW 

I’d say the principles in column one do apply not only to healthcare, but also to the policy analyses and dialogues occurring around education, welfare, and environmental matters. And I’m sure I can locate plenty of documents in my computer holdings to substantiate that. Indeed, comparable dialogues and narratives appear to exist in all four areas (health, etc.). Yet, so far, to my knowledge, no analyses exist that have looked across all four areas, assessing whether there are underlying similarities and interlinkages that could help guide policymaking. Isn’t it time to start doing so? 

If so, then Figure 1 can be expanded to look like Figure 2 below. All the policy principles in the far left column reach across all four policy domains. Notice, however, that for this post I have presumptuously changed the title. Figure 1 is about a time, the past hundred years of so, today in particular, when policy dialogue is centered around public versus private options (or alternatives). Figure 2 jumps ahead to a future when “commons options” presumably take hold as well, especially for these four matters. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My questions for you as readers are mainly about the two charts: Do they help advance my argument? What else might/should be added to expand the rows, even the column headings? Have you come across depictions or proposals elsewhere that advise viewing, and treating, such matters conjointly? 

So far, people have not cottoned to these ideas about putting health, education, welfare, and environmental matters in a distinct sector. Yet people have no problem nowadays thinking that agriculture and industry, not to mention agribusiness, belong together in the economy’s private sector — it’s standard, customary, to do so. Yet, I’d guess — and someday I should try to verify — that there was a time, centuries ago, when agriculture and industry were not viewed as belonging together in the same sector, say because of function, class, or other reasons. But cognitive frames about such matters can change immensely over time. 

More to the point, it was only decades ago that health, education, and welfare were indeed bundled under a single U.S. government entity — first with the creation of the Federal Security Agency (FSA) in 1939 by President Roosevelt; then with the FSA’s successor, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), established in 1953 by President Eisenhower. Someday I hope to research the rationales for putting them together like that, since the underlying rationales (“service” being one of them) may apply to justifying the future creation of a new sector as argued here. 

Today, partly because HEW became so enormous as a bureaucracy and budget item, a reorganization in 1979 under President Carter led to its components being distributed among new departments: the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), and the Department of Education ED). Then the Social Security Administration (SSA) was separated out as an independent agency in 1994 under President Clinton. 

Today, no one says that health, education, and welfare, not to mention environmental matters, should be recombined under a single government department. That would make no sense. But if my analysis is correct, it will make increasing sense to see them all move into a next/new/fourth sector — hopefully, a pro-commons sector. Today’s MediCare might thus be superseded by, say, a “MediCommons”. Government and business (i.e., the public and private sectors, not to mention civil-society actors) would still have important roles to play; but they would no longer be in charge of overall sector governance after these matters are separated out. 

CODA 

Seen thusly, the emergence of a distinct new sector for health, education, welfare, and the environment would spell an advance in complexity — evolution from a triform to a quadriform society — that would simultaneously bring an improvement in systemic simplicity. Getting their will require combined efforts from myriad civil-society, state, and market actors, undoubtedly across many decades, perhaps driven along by the rise of pro-commons movements. The struggle to construct a quadriformist future has barely begun. 

Meanwhile, what do you think of those two charts? Do they help? Enough to make them worth further development? 

 

Toward a new sectorism — #4: same old insufficient calls for a three-sector approach

Back in April, when I meant to post this, I was telling myself that I must get back to forecasting the rise of a fourth sector, and explaining how and why it can improve America’s functioning and well-being.

 

American, as a society and a system, has long had three major sectors: civil society’s community- and home-based sector(s), government’s public sector, and business’s private sector. Having these three has enabled America to be successful for over two centuries, more so than other three-sector societies, and far beyond what anyone could accomplish with far-older one- and two-sector systems.

 

But these three no longer suffice if we are to continue advancing. We need a fourth (commons?) sector. We should start enabling its emergence as the next step in long-term social evolution (à la TIMN). Doing so will improve our society’s complexity as well as simplify its functioning — a reorganization that will make everybody happier and healthier.

 

As I was musing about this back then, along came new papers by renowned theorists and activists reiterating the three-sector framework and urging ways to make better use of it. Today six months later, they are not so fresh, but they can still serve as foils for my continuing campaign. So let’s take a look:

 

•  Samuel Bowles and Wendy Carlin’s “The coming battle for the COVID-19 narrative,” in a specialized journal (see URL below), dated April 10, 2020. The authors are renowned complexity scientists affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute (SFI).

[https://voxeu.org/article/coming-battle-covid-19-narrative]

 

• Otto Scharmer’s “A New Superpower in the Making: Awareness-Based Collective Action,” at a blog he heads, dated April 8, 2020. As a futurist based at MIT, Scharmer writes mostly about organizational and economic trends and prospects.

[https://medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/a-new-superpower-in-the-making-awareness-based-collective-action-83861bcb9859]

 

• Henry Mintzberg, Dror Etzioni, and Saku Mantere’s “Worldly Strategy for the Global Climate,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2018, pp. 42-47. Mintzberg, a famed organization theorist, is based along with his co-authors at McGill University in Canada. He writes mainly about the roles of the “plural sector” — his term about what are mostly community-based civil-society actors.

[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2246/bc715c531f724b404a4fcdd53f25504ee9b6.pdf]

 

The first two articles are motivated by institutional failures in responding to the Covid-19 health crisis, the third by wide-spread failures to come up with a world-wide strategy to deal with global climate change.

 

All three make similar points: Modern societies have civil-society (“people”), government (public), and market (private) sectors — i.e., they have three-sector systems. Policymakers keep over-emphasizing the public and private sectors as sources for policy options. But today’s health, environmental, and other crises require including civil-society actors as well. Better ways must be found to enable all three sectors to work together, as complements rather than substitutes.

 

It's good to see the three-sector argument being revived in these articles. But, from a TIMN perspective, it’s a very old argument. It would help our society if policymaking conformed to it in the near term, but it offers little new and effective for the long-term.

 

Bowles & Carlin’s three-sector framework: Their article makes good sense regarding what framework to use for addressing and resolving complex policy issues. Their paper illuminates that concern with solid reasoning as well as two elegant charts (best I’ve seen lately) about how government, market, and civil-society actors and their sectors may work together. In their words:

 

“COVID-19, for better or worse, brings into focus a third pole in the debate: call it community or civil society. In the absence of this third pole, the conventional language of economics and public policy misses the contribution of social norms and of institutions that are neither governments nor markets — like families, relationships within firms, and community organisations.”

 

“No combination of government fiat and market incentives, however cleverly designed, will produce solutions to problems like the pandemic. What we call civil society (or the community) provides essential elements of a strategy to kill COVID-19 without killing the economy.”

 

“These examples underline an important truth about institutional and policy design: the poles of the institution space — at least ideally — are complements not substitutes. Well-designed government policies enhance the workings of markets and enhance the salience of cooperative and other socially valuable preferences. Well-designed markets both empower governments and make them more accountable without crowding out ethical and other pro-social preferences.”

 

 

And their title is quite right: “a narrative battle is coming” — indeed it is already going on. Who wins it will matter for whether we end up with a two-, three-, or prospective four-sector framework. But far more illumination is needed than they have provided so far.

Scharmer’s more-or-less three-sector vision: In observing how people — people, not government or business — are responding to the pandemic, Scharmer is heartened to see “the further awakening of a movement taking shape across the planet … the activation of a deep and widely held longing for profound societal and civilizational renewal.” As a futurist, he heralds the continued emergence of “the new superpower in the making — the rise of a new pattern of collective action that operates from an awareness of the whole: Awareness-Based Collective action (ABC)” on a planetary scale.

After blaming Big Government, Big Business, and Big Tech for a “massive institutional failure connected to these issues,” he asks: “Should health and healthcare — or core parts of it — be organized by a different type of enterprise, one that is driven by a social mission instead of profit?” In reply, he calls for “rethinking the framework of public health in terms of the planet: putting planetary health and well-being first in our framing of what a good healthcare system is trying to do.” In his view, this means creating “new types of societal innovation infrastructures” — new learning infrastructures, democratic governance infrastructure, and economic infrastructures.

 

His proposal is not clear about the details, and it’s not explicitly a three-sector view. But it is in keeping with his long-standing quest to transform capitalism and society — specifically, to “upgrade our operating systems” by evolving toward “Capitalism 4.0” or “Operating System 4.0.” For our society has become so complex “you cannot solve ‘4.0 challenges’ with response mechanisms that are rooted in operating systems 2.0 and 3.0.”

Personally, I don’t cotton to his terms and categories, but his framework is quite TIMN-ish in nature. As I wrote years ago (2016), “his view maps imperfectly but surprisingly well onto TIMN — particularly in his ideas about progressions, about sectors adding together, about the old persisting with the new, and about heading toward a revival of the commons.”

[Source: http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2016/05/organizational-forms-compared-my.html]

 

Unfortunately, this recent article says nothing about that last point, which might have made it into more of a four- than a three-sector vision about the health crisis.

 

Mintzberg, Etzioni, and Mantere’s three-sector framework: They summarize their triform argument very concisely right up front:

 

“Progress in dealing with the problem of climate change will require that the institutions of government, business, and community work, not in isolation from each other, let alone at cross purposes, but by reinforcing each other’s efforts through consolidation.”

 

They then categorize various climate-strategy initiatives “by sector … because the public, plural, and private sectors seem to favor different processes.” Of these processes, “orchestrated planning” is favored in the public sector, “autonomous venturing” in the private sector, and “grounded engagement” in the “plural sector.”

 

In their definition, “The plural sector includes those formal and informal associations that are neither publicly owned by government nor privately owned by investors. Some are owned by members, such as cooperatives, while others are owned by no one, such as the Sierra Club and the Girl Scouts.” It’s a sector whose associations are often led by “social entrepreneurs.” In other words, it is mostly a civil-society sector.

In addition to showing that different climate-change initiatives may involve different sectors, and different combinations of sectors, Mintzberg and his colleagues urge that these sectors and their actors work together, not alone and especially not at cross  purposes. Indeed, what they urge is entirely in accord with TIMN dynamics:

 

“By contrast, when the three sectors work together, to constructively reinforce each other’s efforts, they can together generate an ascending spiral of consolidation. …

 

“Each activity can thus spawn more activities in the other sectors as well as in its own, so that, together, they can feed this ascending spiral of consolidation. Perhaps more significantly, there can also be constructive networks of consolidation, as the organizations of the three sectors interact with each other in many different ways—alliances, partnerships, joint ventures, and so on. …  

 

“In any event, addressing the problem of climate change will likely require that each of the sectors attends to what it does best, in conjunction with the other two. In general, communities engage, governments legitimize, and businesses invest. We believe that this is how healthy societies progress.”

 

Preferring the term “worldly” to “global,” they note that new narratives and mindsets are needed: “A worldly mindset can prepare actors to appreciate their differences, and thereby work together towards consolidated ascension, from group to globe.”

                                                                                  

[The remainder of this drafted-in-April post feels as though it may be mostly copy-pasted from earlier posts. Oh well, the points still fit here. I’m too tired to be entirely new and nonredundant right now.]

 

Limits of the three-sector framework: As these papers show, today’s policymakers, politicians, and media pundits, not to mention social theorists, mostly behave as though our society, our system, has only two sectors that matter: the public sector and the private sector. Our leaders have long relied on a two-sector framework to propose fixes for America’s mounting health, education, welfare, environmental, and other domestic problems. Some proposals call for more government programs, others for more privatization, a few for better public-private collaboration.

 

By now, this two-sector framework is deeply entrenched and tribalized. It is also just plain wrong-headed. It wasn’t true in the past. It will be even less true in the future. For it neglects two other sectors that belong in the framework: one very old, and still occasionally recognized, as these papers set out; the other so new its prospective emergence is barely discernible today.

 

Our society used to regularly recognize three major sectors — besides the public and private sectors, Americans also recognized that their society’s functioning depended on the vitality of civil society’s home- and community-based sector(s) and their arrays of voluntary groups, social clubs, charitable associations, and activist NGOs. When not acting alone, they would often assist public- and private-sector actors with all sorts of local issues. Indeed, this sector used to have a well-regarded, albeit lesser place in policymaking circles. And for decades, lots of theorists and activists have called for better recognition of civil society and its sector(s), often by new names — e.g., “social sector” (Drucker), “third sector” (e.g., Salamon; Rifkin), “people sector” (Mintzberg).

 

But lately, especially nowadays, this sector’s significance is acknowledged mostly as an afterthought. If its policymaking value could be recognized anew in Washington — if a three-sector framework were truly put back in play, as these papers urge — that would help. But this is no small goal, given the power, profit, and privilege, as well as inertia and tribalism, that are overwhelmingly concentrated in the dominant two-sector framework.

 

It usually takes a crisis to illuminate civil-society’s importance — the papers at hand are correct to emphasize this, and to call for correctives that would revitalize the three-sector framework. But many other efforts have urged likewise in the past, and so far not little if anything has changed. The Covid-19 crisis has presented a new opportunity — but political trends and rhetoric in Washington just continue to harden around the two-sector framework.

 

It will take more than this singular health crisis to prompt deep reform. Other motivating crises, including disruptive climate change, will have to come to the fore as well, and all these crises will have to be rethought, not in isolation but as interrelated and interactive. By then, people may begin to see that what’s needed is not a revitalized three-sector framework, but steps toward constructing a four-sector framework.

 

Need for a four-sector framework: Hence my key point: The three-sector framework these paper’s tout will inevitably prove insufficient — it would be better to start moving toward a four-sector (quadriform) design.

 

For long-term evolutionary reasons (i.e., TIMN), our society has grown so advanced, so complex, that adjusting the two-, three-sector framework will not work well for resolving what have become our most critical, crisis-riven social problems: health, education, welfare, the environment, and related insurance matters. They are now too immense, complicated, burdensome, and interrelated to fit any longer into a two- or three-sector framework.

 

For reasons I will keep explaining and exploring in future posts, including with points I’ve held back, our society’s complexity is moving into a phase where it will have to add a next / new / fourth sector in order to progress further. Developing such a new sector is not an idle add-on suggestion; it is a looming evolutionary imperative, drawn from the arcs and archives of history (i.e., TIMN).  

 

Best I can deduce, a particular set of matters — namely, health, education, welfare, the environment, and related insurance matters — form the bundle that will make sense to aggregate and migrate into a new sector. None are being addressed well by either government or business actors, and they are too big and complex now for civil-society actors to handle. What may explain why they can, and should, be viewed as a bundle is that they all concern collective and individual care, broadly defined to include social, economic, cultural, and environmental care — people care, life care. The cross-cutting purpose is to assure that people can do their best for themselves, for their families, neighborhoods, and communities, and for the common good of society. That’s a purpose that would suit a new “commons sector.”

 

Consolidation of such next/new/fourth sector may take decades to unfold, and may seem too far-out for immediate tasking. But it is not too early to begin considering its creation, identifying the advantages it can bring, and figuring out how to move relevant actors and activities (e.g., hospitals, schools) into it.

 

As has occurred with the long historical evolution of the prior three sectors (including the particular forms of organization, property, and information that each requires), this fourth sector will, in time, become as distinct and independent as the civil-society, government (public), and market (private) sectors are from each other. As noted above, my current sense (though I keep looking for alternative prospects) is that it will be a care-oriented “commons sector,” constructed around yet-to-be-identified information-age network designs that enable massive sharing, consisting of yet-to-be-identified organizational entities designed for collective cooperation (not like independent corporations designed for stand-alone competition), probably entirely non-profit, with properties commonly held in enormous trusts. It will not exist entirely apart from civil society, but rather in conjunction with that realm. It will not be part of the government or market realms, though it will co-exist with them. It will mean that societies have advanced from triform to quadriform systems.

 

I could go on (and will in future posts). But hopefully this is enough for now to indicate that a more radical narrative is needed than these three papers offer. They may appear to be saying something new. But from a TIMN perspective, they aren’t; they’re just reiterating and shuffling around old three-sector ideas.

 

What’s increasingly needed are quadriform ideas and arguments that can appeal to policymakers, so they at least start to wonder about the growing necessity and potential benefits of moving toward a four-sector framework.

 

Fourth Reason to Wonder and Worry About Trump’s Psyche: Psychological “Projectioneering,” Weaponized

 Early on, in January 2017, I posted three reasons to wonder and worry about Trump’s psyche while he was in office as President:

 

1. It looks like he has a “hubris-nemesis complex” — a rare mentality whereby a leader not only has hubris (the pretension to be god-like) but also wants to play Nemesis (the goddess of divine vengeance) against another actor who is accused of greater hubris.

 

2. He is very adept at deploying “the scoundrel’s script” — a rhetorical strategy for first denying, then diminishing, and if that doesn't work, ultimately displacing blame for alleged misdeeds that have come to light.

 

3. He is prone to behave like a tribalist intent on tribalizing others — look at his rallies where he rails like a tribal chieftain or warlord — in a time when America is already turning evermore tribal to its detriment. 

(source: http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2017/01/three-reasons-to-wonder-and-worry-about.html)

 

These may all be aspects of extreme narcissism. Indeed, every writing I’ve seen by clinical psychologists and psychiatrists about Trump’s psyche emphasizes his extreme narcissism and its malignancy. But I’m not trained in psychology or psychiatry, so I’d rather stick with simply identifying specific patterns of behavior, like the three above.

 

Now I see reason to add a fourth:

 

4. He is a master at “projectioneering” — the deliberately engineered use of psychological projection as a tactic.

 

As analysts have pointed out, Trump often engages in psychological projection. But in professional usage, “psychological projection” is “a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others” (from Wikipedia page).

 

Trump’s behavior goes far beyond that. In his case, projection does not appear to be unconscious (not even subconscious); it seems thoroughly conscious — quite deliberate, even plotted out in advance. Moreover, it is not just a defense mechanism; sure, it serves to defend him, but his usage seems entirely offensive (in more ways than one).

 

He has weaponized psychological projection to such an extent, and so skillfully, that the standard term/concept “projection” is inadequate, too easily lost in the noise. Which is why I say he is engaging in “projectioneering” — rather à la the concepts of “reverse engineering” and “reverse psychology.” Trump looks like a deliberate, demonic, even diabolical practitioner of reverse projectioneering, especially when he is working to bully and cast blame on someone else, not only for alleged incompetence or irresponsibility, but for virtually any dark motive or behavior that Trump figures he himself might be accusable of and vulnerable to.

 

In late-July friends-only Facebook post where I first proposed “projectioneering” as a facet of Trump’s psyche, I noted several dire scenarios where it might come into play (e.g., blaming urban violence on Democrats, when he and cohorts fueled much of it). Today, since his bout with Covid seems to have thrown him somewhat off track, those dire scenarios look less likely. But the next few months, until at least February, still look quite unstable and fraught.

 

Whatever happens, his skill at projectioneering will play a role the entire way, as it has for the past five years, along with the first three patterns noted above. His “base” of supporters seem to idolize him all the more for his exuberant, vainglorious, demonic capacity to (1) radiate his hubris-nemesis traits, (2) deploy the scoundrel’s script left and right, (3) roar as a divisive tribalist skilled at tribalizing people, and (4) bully and baffle opponents through his weaponized use of psychological projectioneering — all the while making himself look virtuous, on the side of the angels, and totally forgivable to his base and other supporters.

 

A decade or so ago, as I recall, some Evangelical conservatives voiced suspicions that Barack Obama might be the “Antichrist” predicted by End-Times theology. Rubbish nonsense, I’d say — but even though this narrative never gained traction, it did circulate for a while. Today, I detect nary a concern among Evangelicals that Trump might be an “agent of the Antichrist.” But for an exception or two in out of the way places, such a narrative is evidently unthinkable in today’s conservative Evangelical circles. Trump’s skill at offensive (and defensive) projectioneering may help explain that, even more than may the other three patterns. What a terrible spectacle it could be, however, were such a narrative battle to emerge at some point. 

 

Housekeeping Update

 Once again, I have neglected this blog while focusing intently on reading and writing about the rise of noosphere, noopolitik, and information-age statecraft since early 2018. Now that our full report has been published — Whose Story Wins (RAND, 2020) — and a spin-off article is out for review and possible placement (see prior two posts), I mean to go back, with a sigh of relief, to focusing on TIMN theory (quadriformism) and prospects for the emergence of a fourth (commons) sector to bring next-stage progress to our society.

 

Taking a fresh look at this blog, I spot some earlier drafts of our noopolitik study. So I am deleting them here (as well as at SSRN.com and ResearchGate.com). If somehow you visit here looking for them, go look at the final booklet and recent article version instead. They are much better than the earlier drafts.

 

I also find some sketchy old drafts of posts I’d meant to finish months ago: one about Trump’s psyche; another about recent papers (Bowles & Carlin, 2020; Scharmer, 2020; Mintzberg et. al., 2018) that call for three-sector approaches to resolving America’s problems; and another draft or two about proposals for pursuing a four-sector approach along TIMN lines (Harold Jarche, 2019; Tim Morgan, 2020). I truly welcome the interest and insight coming from Jarche and Morgan, and recommend following their work.

 

I am finding it difficult to shift from thinking and writing so much about the noosphere and noopolitik, to getting back up to speed at thinking and writing mostly about the TIMN framework and its implications. But, the shift is underway.

 

Somewhere along the way the STAC framework about people’s space-time-agency cognitions begs for renewed attention too. Yet it, as well as TIMN, did receive a bit in the writings about the noosphere and noopolitik. See, everything I am trying to do is interrelated.