Gleanings from browsing with Zimbardo & Boyd’s The Time Paradox in mind: Neumann, Scales, Simons, Atran, Vlahos, Robb, Fabius Maximus, Gaddis, Neustadt & May, Davis, Shirky, Boyd

While doing the four posts on Zimbardo & Boyd’s book The Time Paradox (beginning here), I spotted related observations elsewhere. This post provides a selection.

These gleanings are the result of serendipity; I just happened to notice them while browsing. They are not the result of a comprehensive or systematic effort to go through my vast holdings on the topic.

The purpose of posting these gleanings is to show that time orientations constantly crop up in myriad areas. In my STA view, we’d be well-advised to become more sensitive to noticing them, along with their connections to space and action orientations.

Some gleanings substantiate Zimbardo & Boyd’s emphasis on past, present, and future perspectives. But other gleanings indicate that analyzing time perspectives involves a lot more than their kind of typologizing.

As with the earlier posts about space orientations, I’ve assembled the gleanings into quasi-thematic batches, and will spread them across several posts. I could have arranged them differently, of course.

In order of appearance, and with minimal discussion, the quotes in this first post are from: Peter Neumann, Robert Scales, Anna Simons, Scott Atran, Michael Vlahos, John Robb, Fabius Maximus, John Gaddis, Richard Neustadt & Ernest May, Jenny Davis, Clay Shirky, and John Boyd.

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This batch consists of quotes about motivations that affect terrorism and counterterrorism.

Peter Neumann on being part of history: Here, Neumann, a leading analyst of terrorist mindsets, emphasizes the strong pull of joining a growing movement in order to feel part of a grand project to transform history:

“Some of the rhetoric that comes out of ISIS about the caliphate, it basically tells young western recruits you can be part of an enormous historical project and people in a thousand years will be talking about those brave young westerners who came over and rebuilt the caliphate with us.” (source)

That’s an excellent time-oriented point. It adds to others Neumann has made that are more spatial — e.g., as I recall, about how recruitment resolves needs for identity, belonging, and connection.


Robert Scales on hope as terrorism’s center of gravity: It’s unusual to see a future time orientation — hope — identified as a Clausewitzian center of gravity. But Gen. Scales does so here:

“Our political masters need to distinguish between ideology and the enemy’s true vulnerable center of gravity: hope. The differences are subtle. Hope is the belief that ideology will prevail. Hope drives motivation or, in the psychologist’s jargon, a “response initiation.” To the extent that hope is present, a terrorist will translate belief into action. As hope is removed, even the most ideologically attuned enemy will become passive. As Clausewitz advises: Strike the center of gravity and the enemy loses the will to act.

“The history of war suggests hope is a fuel that induces young, post-adolescent men to turn ideology into action. And hope rises with the perception of military success.” (source)

A commenter at the blog observed sensibly that “revenge” was a more significant center of gravity than “hope” for many terrorists — meaning their past orientation mattered more than a future orientation. Perhaps the two combine in a hope for revenge.


Anna Simons on “hope as a moral hazard”: Military anthropologist Simons goes in a different direction with hope’s implications. Whereas Scales wants to mow down our enemy’s hopes, Simons advises against ballooning up our ally’s hopes:

“Two weeks ago, I heard myself say “hope is a moral hazard” in response to someone else invoking the truism that “hope is not a strategy.” …

“On further reflection, I would now say that, like so many things, hope is probably best thought of as a double-edged sword. Our offering others hope can work for people. But it can also cut against them. And too often these days the latter ends up being the case. …

“Because it is as dangerous as it is paralyzing to think that help is coming, people who don’t like their government, their fellow citizens, or their plight would be well advised to recognize that they have only themselves to depend on. It turns out rebels who commit to re-making their world on their own also generally do better in the mid-run.” (source)

Her plea is about motivating self-reliance more than hope per se. She shows how building up a false time orientation — unwarranted hope — may undo a desirable action orientation — relying on one’s own motivations and devices.


Scott Atran on terrorists’ motivations and mentalities: Some years ago, cognitive anthropologist Atran included the following reiteration of relative-deprivation theory in a paper about terrorism as a strategic threat:

“Poverty and lack of education per se are not root causes of terrorism. Rising aspirations followed by dwindling expectations — especially regarding civil liberties — are critical.” (source)

This kind of view was widespread decades ago. But it turns out that many terrorists are motivated far less by a sense of relative deprivation than by a sense of absolute disaster (as discussed here).

Recent summaries of Atran’s work by Sara Reardon that I happened across (here and here) indicate that he now lays out a range of space, time, and action orientations. Accordingly, “The best predictors turn out to be things like who your friends are and whether you belong to some action group.” And that “extremism arises, in part, when membership in a group reinforces deeply held ideals, and an individual’s identity merges with the group’s”. Moreover, his recent articles in the journal Cliodynamics (here and here) observe the significance of “sacred values” and an “identity fusion” that generates “a collective sense of invincibility and special destiny”, along with a belief in “control over their future”.

Atran's interesting array of findings moves closer to showing that what’s going on in terrorist (not to mention other kinds of) mindsets can be analyzed as a bundle of space, time, and action orientations — and that analysts, who normally specialize on only one of the three cognitive orientations, would be well advised to develop a comprehensive space-time-action approach to theory and analysis. Yet, I’m inclined to agree with comments by John Horgan that Reardon mentions: “We’re only beginning to figure out what the right questions are” and “Psychology’s potential for the study of terrorism has yet to be realized.”

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This batch assembles quotes about how time perspectives enter into strategy and planning, often not to positive effects.

Michael Vlahos on “fighting the war we wanted”: Strategist Vlahos offers his take on an oft-made point — Americans tend to keep preparing for “the war we wanted” in ways that interfere with “winning the war we had”:

“This is not a problem of simply seeing war wrongly, but rather that in seeing it wrongly, there are almost immediate negative effects — on our warfighting, our strategy, and our society. We have lost wars because fighting the war we wanted was more important to us than winning the war we had — as in Vietnam, as in Iraq.” (source)

John Robb on “the attack that will happen”: Warning about new kinds of attacks, war futurist Robb makes a similar point — instead of seeing “where warfare is going”, we keep preparing for “where it has been”:

“Warfare is in transition. New tech and new threats are emerging every day. In many cases, simply doing the right thing (in this case, protecting US households from phone scams/spam), can blunt the effectiveness of the attack. In others, it takes an understanding of where modern warfare is going (not where it has been) in order to anticipate these threats and tweak the system in ways that blunts their potential for damage.

“Unfortunately, I don't see this happening. The governmental and economic system we have isn't that good at doing the right thing. Worse, the security system we pay so much for, is only good at stopping the repetition of the types of attack that have already happened, not the attack that will happen. Why? Our national security system is simply unwilling to study warfare seriously.” (source)

Fabius Maximus on “forecasting that the past will repeat”: Blogger FM often monitors how experts misanalyse trends and make biased forecasts about the future by presuming that “the past will repeat”. He advises that “All this will only grow more intense as we accelerate toward the future”, and that we watch “the strangeness” unfold with a “sense of wonder.”

“The vast majority of research, geopolitical or economic — especially for a general audience — consists of forecasting that the past will repeat. That’s the easy message; that’s what people worry about and hence what sells.” (source)

“Experts benchmark their insights to the past. Periods of rapid change — social, economic, technological (they run together) — upset the assumptions that experts rely upon (often unquestioned assumption, or even unaware assumptions). Frequent failed predictions are markers, telling us that we’ve entered a transitional era with a new world ahead.

“Unfortunately, experts’ failures inevitably diminish our confidence in them, while rapid change means we need them more than ever. No matter how bad, their analysis provides better guidance than the equally confident and often more aggressive ignorant people that replace them on the public stage (cue the anti-vaxxers, stage left).

“All this will only grow more intense as we accelerate towards the future, like a starship diving towards a black hole. They, like us, can only guess at what lies ahead. Meanwhile, enjoy the strangeness. Don’t let your desire for comfort and reassurance override your sense of wonder.” (source)

John Gaddis on the importance of a “longer time horizon”: In a speech about grand strategy, Gaddis remarks that recent theories predicting the future spread of democracy would not have been so wrong if analysts had looked back using a “longer time horizon”:

“I’ve suggested that a good deal of brushing aside took place in the case of NATO expansion, and there was certainly a theory that inspired it: it was that the advance of democracy, across all cultures and in the face of all difficulties, was irreversible; and that because democracies don’t fight one another, an acceleration of this advance would enhance the cause of peace.

“This theory originated in the academy, but because it emerged as the Cold War was ending, it gained greater traction within the policy community than would normally have been the case. It provided an explanation for what had happened that gratified both liberals and neo-conservatives, hence the support it received in the otherwise quite different administrations of Clinton and Bush. It provided assurance, on the basis of the recent past, of what the future was going to bring. It made NATO expansion look easy.

“A longer time horizon, however, might have provided a larger perspective.” (source)

Actually, there is no end to quotes in this vein. A good reminder (for me, anyway) was David Reynold’s article “The return of big history: the long past is the antidote to short-termism,” New Statesman, 29 January 2015, reviewing Jo Guldi and David Armitage’s new book The History Manifesto. Reynold’s article turns out to be as much about Richard Neustadt and Ernest May’s classic book Thinking in Time, notably their point that “the future has nowhere to come from but the past”, yet “what matters for the future in the present is departures from the past”. (source)

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Several gleanings were mainly about how the future figures into strategy and tactics.

Jenny Davis on the “war for possible futures”: Cyborgologist Davis points out how the new media, by enabling sousveillance to counter surveillance, is also thereby enabling social movements to better conduct the “war for possible futures”:

“The mobile phone camera has become an embedded tool of protest. It has given rise to the citizen journalist and is a key mechanism by which surveillance is countered with sousveillance. …

“The failure to indict Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown and the protests that continue to follow, set the stage for drastically different futures. The way we tell this story will guide which future is most plausible, most logical, and most likely. …

“The war for possible futures, fought in images, has far reaching consequences; for some, those consequences are literally life and death. The stakes are highest for those with bodies of color.” (source)

Clay Shirky on “time itself as a strategic weapon”: Information-age thinker Shirky observes here that, after considering how short-term and long-term factors interacted in the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street movements, activists “need to start thinking of time itself as a strategic weapon.”

“I think we cannot forget the lessons of complex movements like the Arab Spring and like Occupy Wall Street, which is that the various time signatures work better together," Shirky said. "Shorter-term is good for surprises but it is lousy for continuity and capacity-building. Long-term is great for continuity but lousy for surprises. ... We need to start thinking of time itself as a strategic weapon.” (source)

John Boyd on getting inside an adversary’s OODA Loop: Military thinker Boyd did view time as a tactical if not strategic weapon, particularly in his concept of the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) Loop, as shown in quotes from recent books by Daniel Ford and Frans Osinga that Clay Spinuzzi included in his reviews:

“And it occurred to me … that if I have an adversary out there, that what I want to do is fold my adversary back inside himself, where he can't really consult the external environment he has to deal with. … Then I can drive him into confusion and disorder and bring about paralysis. … If I can operate at a tempo or rhythm faster than he can operate at — well, he can't keep up with me, and in effect then I fold him back inside himself. And if I do that — ball game! You saw it in Desert Storm, you see it in basketball games, football games, and a whole bunch of other stuff.” (source)

“Colonel Boyd observed that in any conflict all combatants go through repeated cycles of an observation – orientation – decision –action (OODA) loop […]The potentially victorious combatant is the one with the OODA loop which is consistently quicker than his opponent (including the time required to transition from one cycle to another). As this opponent repeatedly cycles faster than his opponent, the opponent finds he is losing control of the situation […] his countermeasures are overcome by the rapidly unfolding events and become ineffective in coping with each other. He finds himself increasingly unable to react. Suddenly, he realizes there is nothing else he can do to control the situation or turn it to his advantage. At this point he has lost. In essence his command circuits have been overloaded, thereby making his decisions too slow for the developing situation […] all that remain are uncoordinated smaller units incapable of coordinated action. The enemy’s defeat in detail is the eventual outcome.” (source)

Boyd’s work is mainly about combatants and competitors. Spinuzzi notes that coordinating OODA Loops can be important for allies and partners too.

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More later …

The problem is preternatural tribalism, more than Islamic extremism — a reiteration

For years I’ve tried to make the point that jihadi terrorism reflects extreme tribalism, even more than it expresses religious extremism. The point extends from TIMN.

My major effort to call attention to this point was in my paper on In Search Of How Societies Work: Tribes — The First And Forever Form (2007), including via prior op-eds reprinted in its Appendix. Later I tried anew by supporting Steven Pressfield’s efforts at his blog to promote Major Jim Gant’s ideas in his paper One Tribe at a Time: A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan (2009). I also brought the point up occasionally in posts here at my blog.

All to such little effect that several years have passed since I last tried to make the point again. Mostly, I’ve just stewed in discouragement.

Lately, however, happenstance at two blogs I follow provided occasions to offer interim reiterations. This post logs my comments from those occasions.

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The first occasion was a post by Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation on “Why Islamists Beat Liberals in the Middle East” at the War on the Rocks blog, August 27, 2014. It observed that Islamism is “an attractive ideology that will almost inevitably supersede the appeal of its secular, liberal rivals.” Moreover, it claimed that “What the Middle East needs right now is a secular force that dreams a secular dream.” This analysis appeared to make sense, but like so many such analyses, it was mostly about Islamism as an expression of religious extremism — the kind of analysis that I now find dulling and discouraging.

So I left a somewhat contrary comment, as follows:

“I constantly read that countering Islamism is the key/top problem. But there are reasons to think otherwise; so let me suggest a different angle, based on a view about social evolution.

“Extreme Islamism has much in common with extreme tribalism. In many regards, religious extremism is an overlay atop a deeper dynamic: extreme tribalism. This has been the case for all sorts of religious extremisms across the ages. Thus, countering tribalism — tribalized mindsets — may be more key than countering Islamism.

“Tribes are the first form of organization behind our centuries of social evolution. Hierarchical institutions, modern markets, and new information-age networks arose later. Each form (and its philosophical implications) has both bright and dark sides; societies can get them wrong as well as right, in ways that affect their usage of the other forms.

“When matters go well, societies advance by adopting and using these forms progressively (T+I+M+N). When matters do not go well — in particular, if leaders make a mess of the institutional and market forms, or if individuals cannot find places for themselves in the institutional, market, or emerging network realms — then people revert to organizing and behaving in terms of the tribal form, often in dark ways.

“No society can do well without the tribal form. It is initially expressed best in families, clans, and real tribes; later in community spirit, civic clubs, and patriotic nationalism; as well as via positive group identities about religion, ideology, ethnicity, and even commercial brands. So, tribes and tribalism per se are not a bad thing — not at all, some is good and necessary.

“But dark sides often show up too, as in urban youth gangs, criminal gangs, sectarian militias, partisan cliques, millenarian movements, charismatic cults, etc. And when people turn darkly tribal, they exhibit similar patterns of thought and action, no matter their religious or other identity: They boldly tout their unique identity. They exalt “us” and demonize “them. They express sensitive narratives about respect, honor, pride, and dignity for themselves — plus revenge and retribution for transgressors.

“Dark-side extremists often coat all this with religious references. But it is their tribal mindset, not their religiosity, that is the driving force. They have selectively reduced their religious pretensions to tribalist tenets. Thus, the “war of ideas” and “countering violent extremism” should be rethought, making extreme tribalism rather than Islamism the key challenge. Or so I’d wish to suggest.” (source)

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More recently, a post by Stanton Coerr titled “Guest Post: U.S. Marines, the Forever Tribe by Stan Coerr” at the Zenpundit blog, January 30, 2015, prompted me to comment as follows, expecting it to be just a one-off side-comment:

“As one who wrote years ago about “tribes — the first and forever form”, I am heartened to read this. The Marines are a shining modern example, blending institutional and tribal principles in positive balanced ways.

“Elsewhere, however, I was disheartened to see New York City police unionists opt to engage in public displays of a negative tribalism, showing institutional and tribal impulses spiraling out of balance. Not to mention other city police.

“One of our country’s key challenges at home and abroad, including for grand strategy, is dealing with the continued rise and spread of so many dark varieties of preternatural tribalism.” (source)

But afterwards, blogger-in-chief Mark Zafranski inquired how I’d characterize ISIS from a TIMN perspective. So I fashioned a long reply:

“Much as I appreciate seeing so many efforts to analyze ISIS (and earlier, Al Qaeda) as a network and/or a hierarchy of some new kind, I continue to believe (as I did with Al Qaeda) that the tribal form is relentlessly at work as well, if not more so. Thus, I’d propose (as I tried with Al Qaeda) that ISIS and affiliates are operating much like a global tribe waging segmental warfare. ISIS and ilk seem classically tribal in terms of what drives them, how they organize, how they fight. Viewing ISIS mainly as a cutting-edge, post-modern network phenomenon of the information age, while not inaccurate, misses a crucial point: Al Qaeda and affiliates are using the information age to reiterate ancient patterns of tribalism on a global scale. The war they are waging is more about virulent tribalism than religion. As I’ve said before, the tribal paradigm should be added to the network and other prevailing paradigms to help figure out the best policies and strategies for countering these violent actors, organizationally and ideologically.  (reference: http://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP1371.html)

“But this is a trying and troublesome point to make effectively, because network and religion paradigms have powerful holds around analysis, strategy, and the media. Heads may nod when I bring up the tribal form and its implications for analysis and strategy, but not many analysts are suited to working on it (anthropology has basically ostracized the concept, and anthropologists would rather argue about it than help out). Moreover, bringing up the tribal paradigm means recognizing the significance of all sorts of negative modern expressions that may make some people averse and uncomfortable (e.g., Fox News broadcasts more tribalists intent on tribalizing than any other network, in my view).

“In contrast, a vast apparatus, indeed a veritable industry, has grown around discussing jihadi extremism and counter-extremism from the standpoint of religion. The religious aspects are undeniably important, but after watching the back and forth among various religious scholars and pundits over many years, I still think that what’s going on is more about tribalism than religion, and that dwelling on religion is not the best way to counter the jihadi movement. Maybe a way to bridge from religion to tribalism in order to root out extremism is to ask: Are you fostering Islam, or are you fostering tribalism? And what do you think your answer means?

“Since this movement has arisen in a part of the world that, in my view, can’t seem to get any of the TIMN forms right in order to construct modern societies — it’s fraught with failed tribes as well as failed states, etc. — I expect that, if ISIS takes hold over territory and consolidates a caliphate-type state, the outcome will be a vicious fascism. Moreover, its options for future expansion may include something new: a global “panarchy” (see Wikipedia article on its original meaning, which is different from recent modern network usage) consisting of semi-autonomous zones and nested enclaves that abide more-or-less the surrounding state/country, but obey the caliphate — an Ummah-state quite distinct from a nation-state. But maybe I’m being too speculative? (But maybe it’s been tried before — e.g., by the Papacy?).

“Elsewhere here at your blog, I applaud Charles’ post about “unholy war”. He too is trying to come up with a way to get beyond the hold of established religious terminology. I have a similar problem with terminology about the tribal form. Since “extreme tribalism” hasn’t quite worked for me, I’m currently trying out “preternatural tribalism” as a focus. Who knows?” (source)

Today I’d say some of those sentences are overstated. The Middle East isn’t exactly a region that doesn’t “get any of the TIMN forms right”. And my speculations that ISIS may be trying to create a “panarchy” and an “Ummah-state” don’t have much substance behind them. But, overall, the above will do for now as a tentative interim reiteration.

* * * * *

Coda: All religions are tribal to varying degrees — or can be made so. Yet all religions are meant to enable people to transcend their tribalism. This seems especially the case with the three great religions that arose in the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Across the ages, each has had its own bouts with extreme tribalism, then finally returned to seeking transcendence. Today, it is painful to watch savagery spread in the name of religion, largely as a result of so many people yearning to be tribal and to behave tribally toward others.

I keep hearing it said that people are being radicalized by Islamist extremists — indeed, I just heard it again minutes ago on a cable news program. And I say no, that’s not quite right; for above all they are being tribalized. And it makes a difference — ideologically, strategically, and tactically — whether what’s going on is more about radicalization or tribalization.

Just take a look at the major recruitment appeals — they’re about achieving identity, belonging, connection, pride, honor, respect, and dignity, not to mention appeals about Us-vs.-Them and revenge, as well as about being part of a grand movement. Those are all traditional tribal appeals, not radical ideas.


[UPDATE — February 20, 2015: According to a recent post at Brookings, J. M. Berger has come around to inquiring “Why religion is not the most useful way to understand ISIS”. He finds that ISIS has much in common with a broad range of “identity-based extremists who claim to be its exclusive guardians”. Accordingly, he says,

“To understand and counter ISIS’s threat and appeal, frame it properly. Identity-based extremism and millenarian apocalyptic cults provide a far more useful framework for understanding ISIS than Islam does.” (source)

This gets close to my argument above, for the identity-based extremist groups he discusses are generally very tribal, whatever their religion.

I’m also reminded that Akbar Ahmed’s The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam (2013) overlaps well with my argument — though his focus is mainly on tribes in the Middle East, not extreme tribalism as a mindset.]

Zimbardo & Boyd’s time-centric analysis of terrorist mindsets: a critique based on STA (4th of 4 posts)

This fourth and final post about Zimbardo & Boyd’s book The Time Paradox focuses on their analysis of terrorist mindsets. After summarizing their time-perspective approach and noting some of its shortcomings, I reiterate my proposition that space and action orientations should be taken into account as well, separately, along with time. Indeed, spatial perspectives may be as key as temporal ones — possibly more so — in determining who becomes a terrorist.

* * * * *

Zimbardo & Boyd’s analysis of terrorists mindsets: identifying and applying the transcendental-future time perspective

Zimbardo & Boyd’s chapter about the transcendental-future time perspective is where they turn to analyze the psychology of terrorists, primarily suicide bombers.

The chapter starts with a small vignette about young man, somewhere in an Arab society, who is surrounded by close friends and a proud father before he goes out to blow himself up, along with his target (162). In asking why someone becomes a suicide bomber (or other kind of terrorist), Zimbardo & Boyd propose that it’s because he/she values having a transcendental-time orientation.

But before touting that explanation, they discount what they deem common explanations for terrorist behavior (actually, experts already discounted them long ago): Abnormal-psychology explanations that view suicide bombers as crazy or mentally ill don’t work because most are normal, come from intact families, and are educated and married (163+). Brainwashing explanations that blame religious cult leaders are unverifiable as well (165). Rational-strategy explanations — achieving the most “bang for the buck” — may make some sense, but run counter to the value that most people place on human life (170). Religious explanations lack credence too; for many suicide bombers are not religious fanatics, and act mainly because of secular grievances.

The hopelessness that attends the “unbearable present” — a kind of time perspective — offers a better explanation, according to Zimbardo & Boyd:

“A third common explanation for suicide bombers is that they have lost hope and therefore feel they have nothing to lose in taking their own lives. We would describe such individuals as being high in present fatalism, low in future, and low in present hedonism time perspectives. They do not enjoy the present; they do not look forward to the future; and they do not believe their acts can have any effect upon the future. Having a past-negative time perspective — which is strongly associated with anger, perceived victimization, and aggression — they may be likely to escape their unpleasant present through violent means.” (167)

Thus Zimbardo & Boyd agree that hopelessness explanations have merit, especially if a suicide bomber feels victimized. But they also find that many bombers are not thoroughly hopeless or despairing people:

“Suicide bombers are typically normal, healthy, upstanding members of the communities from which they originate. They are not poor, disenfranchised, or crazy — at least no more so than everyone else in their communities … ” (168)

Against this background, Zimbardo & Boyd opt to modify their time-perspective explanation so that it applies better to suicide bombers (170). What the authors notice is that many bombers feel motivated by a religious belief in a future that transcends earthly life (169). But that far-out kind of future perspective wasn’t in their original past-present-future typology — instead, it held that individuals predisposed to commit suicide bombings would have time perspectives that were high in past-negative, low in past-positive, high in present-fatalistic, low in present hedonistic, and low in future-time (171, my underlining). That profile, though it seemed on the right track, didn’t capture the notion of a transcendental future, especially one that meant having sense of responsibility to God in a religious sense or to future generations in a secular sense.

So, sure that time-perspective analysis could explain suicide bombings and other sacrificial terrorist acts (170), Zimbardo & Boyd turned to “test whether beliefs about the goals, rewards, and punishments that await us after we die foster a unique time perspective”. To do so, they “added questions to the ZTPI that suppose a life after death” (172) — resulting in a new scale, the Transcendental-Future Time Perspective Inventory (TFTPI).

In general, they found that different religious believers scored differently on this new scale: Christians and Muslims tended to endorse the transcendental-future perspective the most (173). Moreover, Protestants tended to be the most extreme (whether high or low) on every time perspective; Catholics’ the most moderate; and Buddhists the most unique (174).

Moreover, groups that felt oppressed scored highest on the transcendental-future scale (179). Indeed, “a firm belief in the transcendental future may make present inequities less painful to endure and rebellion less imperative” (180). The new scale also clarified that transcendental-future beliefs are sometimes related less to religion or life after death, than to secular concern for generations far into the future, the sustainability movement being their example (181).

More significant for this blog post, Zimbardo & Boyd’s big finding is that the transcendental-future time perspective helps explain why some people become terrorists. For this perspective generates “an abundant hope” that becomes “the secret ingredient” in terrorist mindsets:

“Seen from a transcendental-future perspective, a suicide bomber’s act is not crazy, fanatical, hate-filled, or hopeless, but an act committed by a religious person who may have had little hope for his future in this life but has abundant hope in the transcendental future.” (178)

“Time perspective helps us to unify these disparate explanations conceptually, and it also adds the explicative power of the transcendental future. The transcendental-future time perspective is the "secret" ingredient. In the end, suicide bombers are fighting for time.” (178)

Expanding on the point that “suicide bombers are fighting for time,” Zimbardo & Boyd argue that the entire war on terrorism is a war of time perspectives (reflecting Jeremy Rifkin’s 1987 notion of “time wars”?). If our opponents in this war were “ordinary people”, then destroying their mundane future expectations would diminish their motivations (183). But the terrorists waging this war are not so ordinary — for them, the transcendental future has become more important and more achievable than the mundane future:

“We now face an enemy whose visions of the mundane future lie smoldering in the ruins of Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This enemy’s remaining hopes lie squarely in the transcendental future. ... Fighting an adversary with strong transcendental-future goals by destroying it's mundane goals ensures that transcendental-future goals alone are obtainable. We will win the war on terror not by destroying our enemies future but by nurturing it. The motivational power of the mundane future must be restored if mundane future goals are to compete with transcendental-future goals.” (183+)

On this basis, the authors propose that U.S. policy and strategy focus on changing people’s time perspectives. Accordingly, U.S. policy should work to restore “the motivational power of mundane future goals” in societies riven by terrorism, in order to keep “the transcendental future from being the lone oasis in an otherwise desiccated life” (184). In a sense, then, the “war on terror” is a war about whose time perspective wins:

“The war on terror is a battle between the United States government's vision of the mundane future and the vision of the transcendental future held by those who are its enemies.” (184)

Therefore, they call for U.S. plans and programs to develop societies in ways that can “reset” a people’s sense of time, enabling them to adopt a practical, less fatalistic view of the future:

“We can reset this clock. Doing so requires replacing past-negative and present-fatalistic time perspectives with past-positive and present-hedonistic ones.” (185)

To accomplish this, Zimbardo & Boyd urge that U.S. policies and programs be designed around three steps to help “reset” a people’s time perspectives: The first  is to provide “resources and opportunities” to people who lack them. The second is to instill a sense of  responsibility and initiative in people — “Fatal passivity must be replaced by an “I can do it” stance.” (185) Their third step emphasizes “moderating transcendental-future time perspectives and supplementing them with more practical future time perspectives.” Accordingly, “People must believe that their actions today will lead to predictable and desirable rewards in the future.” (185)

Zimbardo & Boyd are not opposed to people having a transcendental-future perspective. Like other time perspectives, it too may have both positive and negative effects. The authors just want to see moderation and balance, favoring good effects, so that “transcendental-future goals encourage civil behavior out of concern for the living and for generations into the future” (186).

Toward doing better at explaining terrorist mindsets — comments from an STA perspective

Despite my criticisms, I am pleased to see a popular book offer an extended discussion of people’s time perspectives, especially in regard to explaining terrorist mindsets. This study is on the right track, more so than are writings that use grand abstract concepts, like humiliation or alienation, bundling all sorts of space, time, and action orientations together, without the writer ever dissecting them. Furthermore, I can imagine that a briefing based on Zimbardo & Boyd’s approach would captivate some policy analysts and strategists in Washington, helping them to understand the importance of time perspectives.

Even so, this book provides an incomplete and insufficient way to analyze terrorist mindsets. It is insufficient, first of all, because it so dependent on a past-present-futures typology that does not include other important dynamics of people’s time perspectives (see Appendix). It is also deficient because, in emphasizing time above all, it takes little account of the influence of people’s space and action perspectives. In other words, I’m back to my critical refrain, as laid out in my three prior posts about this book.

Here are some insufficiencies I spotted while reading this chapter on the transcendental-future time perspective with STA in mind:

• Zimbardo & Boyd’s thesis is that suicide bombers (and other terrorists) have transcendental-future time perspectives, and that this helps explain why they become terrorists. But there’s an analytic problem that they recognize but don’t resolve: Whereas many terrorists may have transcendental-future perspectives, few people at large who have such perspectives turn out to be terrorists. So their thesis offers an interesting but insufficient explanation. Which raises questions as to what else needs to be identified for their thesis to hold up well: Something else about people’s time perspectives? Or about their space and/or action perspectives? My view, of course, is that STA could provide a better, more comprehensive explanation.

• The opening vignette about a suicide bomber surrounded by family and friends in his village seems more about his spatial connections than his temporal perspectives. Besides, I doubt it’s a very representative vignette. Evidently, few suicide bombers leave on a mission that way; many more set out after being secluded with and monitored by fellow fighters, perhaps far from family approval. The spatial setting may be as significant as the temporal.

• To reiterate a point in my Part-3 post, it’s unclear whether the vignette’s suicide bomber is driven more by a transcendental-future or an ascendant deep-past perspective. Many terrorist bombers may have a transcendental-future perspective, as Zimbardo & Boyd propose. But I gather that many are also motivated by ages-old tribal traditions that obligate vengeance and retribution, as may be the case with many Taliban soldiers.

• Much as I appreciate Zimbardo & Boyd’s (and earlier, Rifkin’s) point that the United States is engaged in a kind of time war against terrorism, the point should not be overstated. For this war is also very much about space and agency — indeed, the full space-time-action complex. For example, the time-war point applies rather similarly to both ISIL and Al Qaeda. Yet these two entities have very different spatial outlooks: Al Qaeda has urged attacking the “far enemy” and hasn’t tried to hold territory. In contrast, ISIL has gone after near enemies and worked to hold territory and build a caliphate. Moreover, ISIL’s action orientation is even more savage than Al Qaeda’s.

• The three steps that Zimbardo & Boyd specify as policy implications are quite conventional, for these very kinds of goals regularly appear in statements about U.S. policies and programs for the developing countries. Just a few days ago, for example, I heard a U.S. diplomat say that a purpose of President Obama’s opening toward Cuba is to “encourage Cubans to take control of their own destiny” — clearly, an intention to alter time and agency perspectives among Cubans. What’s missing from the three steps in Zimbardo & Boyd’s brief formulation is how, if enacted, they would result in our doing things much differently.

• Zimbardo & Boyd’s analysis of terrorists’ time perspectives repeats a pattern I mentioned in my prior posts about other parts of their book: They embed people’s action (efficacy, control) perspectives under their time perspectives, though they are fundamentally different kinds of cognition. This embedding appears in this chapter when the authors observe that suicide bombers in the grip of a transcendental-future orientation feel little control over their lives — “they do not believe their acts can have any effect upon the future” (167). It re-appears when the authors claim, in discussing U.S. policy implications, that “Fatal passivity must be replaced by an “I can do it” stance” (185), and that “People must believe that their actions today will lead to predictable and desirable rewards in the future.” (185). As I’ve said many times, this suborning of action to time makes for a flawed approach to mindset analysis.

My overall disposition toward these matters is still summed up pretty well in the following comment I left at a Zenpundit blog post years ago:

“Of the three cognitive domains — space, time, and action — the one that often receives the most attention in terrorism analyses I’ve seen is action, notably the belief in violence. Time orientations — as in an apocalyptic intentions — are often second in emphasis. Spatial orientations generally receive the least explicit attention. But my reading of points made by analysts, as well as by terrorists and by people who live in locales that produce terrorists, indicates that spatial disorientations, antipathies, and ambitions figure as strongly and distinctly in terrorist minds as do time and action. It is not simply a loss of hope (a time orientation) that accounts for despair and the turn to terrorism, but more a loss of connection to one’s identity, to one’s people, and to what one values in the surrounding space. The loss of temporal hope derives from the loss of spatial connection.

“In particular — and this is my theme — terrorists come to acquire a very enlarged sense of social space; and within it, they become keenly resentful about the boundaries and barriers that constrain their own and other people’s lives. They become intent on bursting beyond those boundaries and barriers, and they want none placed on their use of violence. Hiding underground and then exploding outward is, for terrorists, an epitomizing, spatial act. A key aim is to accomplish a vast reconnection among like-minded brethren, while disconnecting the rest of us — in other words, it’s a spatial war as much or more than a temporal war.” (source)

Nonetheless, as I wrote here later, extra care must be taken in analyzing the mindsets of millenarian terrorists — the kind who have transcendental-future perspectives — for their space, time, and action dispositions may be quite different:

“If/when I get around to viewing millenarian terrorists from an STA perspective again, care must be taken in claiming that their spatial orientations may be more significant than their time orientations. After all, millenarianism is about breaching into a new future. But while the millenarian mindset is knotted up with urgent notions about time (the “end times”), it is also about space (e.g., barriers everywhere) and action (e.g., violent deeds to achieve divine breakthroughs). What’s crucial to millenarians is apocalyptic “time war” (term from Rifkin, 1987), more than a spatial “clash of civilizations” (Huntington, 1993).” (source)

In other words, there is still much to be figured out. And on that note, I shall end this four-part book review about time perspectives and move onward to a book about STA’s action component, namely Alberto Bandura’s Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (1997).

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Endnote — Here is a list of other posts at this blog, plus a comment elsewhere, that offer more extensive discussions about the space-time-action orientations of terrorists:

http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/03/three-strains-of-terrorism-measured.html
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/03/millenarian-terrorism-sta-perspective-3.html
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/03/modern-idea-of-progress-as-secularized.html
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2010/03/incidentals-4th-of-5-apropos-terrorist.html
http://zenpundit.com/?p=16518#comment-95221
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2013/05/terrorist-mindsets-importance-of.html
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2014/03/updates-about-missing-posts-1st-of-5.html
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2014/06/space-time-action-orientations-of.html

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Appendix: Some old notes about terrorists’ space-time-action orientations

Before I leave this post, perhaps the point should be reiterated that people’s time perspectives involve a lot more than can be captured by a past-present-future typology: e.g., regarding the kinds of pacing, rhythm, linearity, etc., that people may prefer. I’ve not written much about this in prior posts. So, to offer some clarification, I’m pasting into this Appendix some sketchy notes from a 2007 draft I started about the STA orientations of terrorists. I didn’t get far at the time, but some of my notes may help address the above point (even though these notes are far from being good enough for a stand-alone blog post).

Here are the notes about aspects of terrorists’ time orientations. While I figured that time perspectives may vary greatly from one terrorist to the next, some key patterns may occur frequently, for they seemed to be inherent or implicit in the process of behaving as a terrorist:

• The time orientation often seems explosive. Terrorism emphasizes especially violent, threatening deeds that capture enormous public attention and that are relatively short duration. The events may assume epic, even apocalyptic proportions, whose imagery symbolizes the urgency to destroy all that is wrong with the present order, as well as to create a new future. The terrorist’s emphasis on such explosive deeds seems to imply a different time perspective from the standard revolutionary’s preferences for protracted mass struggle. Time is measured more in terms of dramatic events than of continuous social processes.

• The terrorist incident often creates a tremendous, high-speed compression and acceleration of time, both for the perpetrators and for the system at large. That may be part of the inherent gratification for the terrorists, giving them a sense of speeding the system to its own self-destruction by infusing it with an explosive fuel that seeps into all cracks.

• Their objectives often seem to entail bringing the “system’s” time to a sudden halt in the present, while simultaneously accelerating future change. Apart from such symbolism, the dramas are often designed so as to involve acute, fast-paced schedules that require attention and put pressure on the victims and authorities. (But the passage of time during the unfolding of an incident may have a schizophrenic or dualistic quality, in that looming deadlines may be mixed with periods of slow waiting that tries patience.)

• Where a campaign of terrorism is involved, the time experience may oscillate between slower dormant periods (underground, preparing and planning in secret, and possibly brooding) and fast-paced explosive moments (when the deed goes public, above ground, in a highly expressive climax). Thus time may seem to pulsate more than to flow, and to move more like a spiral than a linear progression. The time experience would seem to seek discontinuity rather than continuity.

• The pause between deeds may partly represent a down-time for the terrorists. But it may also represent a playing-out of the waves created by the prior deed. In strategic terrorism, the incidents are often intended to create waves whose duration and impact need to be examined by laying back awhile. Thus the will to create new events, even rush to create them as soon as possible, may have to be balanced against the interest to assess the waves from the preceding event, the better to plan the timing for the next effort.

A smaller set of those old 2007 notes began to sketch what may be distinctive about terrorists’ space orientations:

• Terrorists have spatial horizons that, probably sometime early in their personal development, were expanded enormously, even overwhelmingly.

• At some point, they also began to feel that their lives were uprooted, rootless, and/or displaced, subject to a world of giant, distant, uncaring forces.

• People who become terrorists acquire a great sensitivity to the social barriers and boundaries affecting their lives.

• They simplify space by coming to perceive it in terms of black-and-white, Manichean polarities.

• They are amenable, even prone, to going underground to hide, in a kind of compression, and then emerging to run amok, exploding into the world at large.

• They think change can be achieved — a system brought down — by striking at critical points and weak links.

• For some terrorists, especially one with a megalomaniacal mindset, a key aim and reward is the narcissistic permeation of the world with his identity.

Evidently I stopped working on this old draft before making comparable notes about terrorists’ action orientations — perhaps all the more reason now to put this Appendix aside and turn to work on Bandura’s book, as indicated earlier.

Onward.

Grand strategy and social evolution: implications from the TIMN framework (plus a postscript about Cuba)

[UPDATE — January 28, 2015: Be advised that I've grown increasingly displeased with this post. It has too many shortcomings. I’m going to leave it up for now, since its theme — that thinking about grand strategy would benefit from better thinking about social evolution — is a worthy theme to raise. But the parts about TIMN’s implications need a much clearer, more thorough write-up. So if you read this post, please regard it as a very tentative draft, in need of much improvement, that I hope to replace before too long.]


Grand strategies tend to rest on judgments about social evolution — who is gaining strength, progressing faster, posing new challenges, etc. Thus, what a grand strategist thinks — or fails in thinking — about social evolution can make a decisive difference.

Yet, grand strategy and social evolution are rarely paired for their relatedness. Instead, grand strategists tend to think grandly about strategy — but only selectively and piece-meal about political, economic, military, and other aspects of progress (and regress), at home and abroad.

Examples of ideas that connect grand strategy with social evolution via one aspect or another include containment theory in the 1950s, modernization theory in the 1960s, and democratic enlargement in the 1990s. Also, in the 1990s two ideas that touch on social evolution — the “end of history” and the “clash of civilizations” — gained influence among strategists. In the 2000s, however, grand strategic thinking about the “war on terrorism” became notable for its presumptuous naiveté about imposing democratic evolution in strife-torn societies, as seen in U.S. policies in Iraq.

Today, I see more fretting about grand strategy — what it means, how to do it — than ever before (as attested by postings at Infinity Journal, Small Wars, War on the Rocks, and Zenpundit). Grand strategy appears to be up for grabs. At the same time, I never see social evolution explicitly considered in connection to grand strategy — only those selected aspects about political, economic, and social development. I suppose that’s understandable: Unlike grand strategy, social evolution is an unpopular concept. In academia, it’s been on the outs for decades, though scholarly books — e.g., Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel (1999), and Frank Fukuyama's, The Origins of Political Order (2010) — occasionally come to the fore. A few online sites — notably, Social Evolution Forum, and The P2P Foundation — discuss theories about long-range social-evolution, but they rarely take note of grand strategy.

Thus, there are few formal choices available for grand strategists to consider if they want to be explicit and comprehensive about long-range social evolution. The established practice is to draw from here and there about this and that kind of development.

TIMN’s advantages for grand strategy

My purpose with this post is to note that the nascent TIMN framework about social evolution (tribes + institutions + markets + networks) may have advantages for grand strategy, several (but not all) of which may be as follows:

— TIMN recognizes the crucial importance of the tribal form and its bright sides (e.g., family, community) for all societies and their prospects for progressive evolution. TIMN also explains the dark tribalism so rampant in many regions, and the difficulty of getting beyond it.

— TIMN recognizes the importance of strong hierarchical institutions (e.g., good government, professional militaries) that depend on meritocracy and law more than patrimonialism and corruption, which are often holdovers from the tribal form. TIMN also implies balancing state and other sectors (e.g., business, civil society), so that power and control are distributed to benefit a system and its people as a whole.

— TIMN recognizes the importance of developing strong open market systems, relatively free of government interference. TIMN also recognizes that a market system is essential for liberal democracy. But TIMN doesn't necessarily imply American-style capitalism; nor does it mean that opening up to foreign investment by major corporations will necessarily lead to a free fair market system. TIMN cautions that the latter, in a context of authoritarian rule, may result in fascism more than capitalism.

— TIMN views the rise of networked information-age civil-society NGOs and other non-state actors as harbingers of the rise of the next form of organization that promises to reshape social evolution: the +N network form. Power is migrating to actors who are organizationally and philosophically suited to this form. TIMN maintains that the rise of a new form will create a new sector, but I remain uncertain what a +N sector will be all about — only that it will exert significantly different influences from the established public (+I) and private (+M) sectors.

Overall, then, TIMN is consistent with liberal democracy being history's most advanced system to date. But it implies that, as the network form takes hold, democracy may look substantially different in the future. Moreover, TIMN allows for major variations as well as other outcomes, in accordance with local approaches to each TIMN form. The optimal outcome for one society (say, the United States) may be significantly different for another (say, Singapore), largely because of their differing local approaches to the TIMN forms, their combination and progression.

TIMN as a way to assess a society for strategic purposes

A full-fledged methodology for applying TIMN is still to be developed. But even at this nascent stage it offers a promising way to think about trends in particular societies that may interest strategists.

For example, consider Russia and China from a TIMN viewpoint: Russia remains unable to get the market (+M) form right. That’s partly because Russia is so committed to the hierarchical institutional (+I) form. To compensate, Russia is increasingly reverting to tribe-like (T) practices, while suppressing social activists who represent information-age network (+N) activities. These are not good signs that Russia will progress in TIMN terms.

In contrast, China has adopted (and adapted) the market form rather effectively, though far from fully. China also seems capable of further progress in TIMN terms, without necessarily reverting to tribe-like xenophobia, or crushing all networked civil-society actors. Unlike Russia, China is on its way to becoming a full-fledged triformist (T+I+M) society, though probably not a liberal democracy. Thus TIMN helps show that China poses different challenges from Russia, with different implications for grand strategy.

While grand strategy normally focuses on what’s going on abroad, the strategist always takes into account what’s going on at home. Conditions here in America should not be omitted from a strategist’s calculus. TIMN indicates that America is starting to evolve beyond its triformist (T+I+M) system, in order to become a quadriformist (T+I+M+N) society. If so, +N forces will ultimately lead to a vast reshaping and rebalancing of the entire American system. Meanwhile, this evolutionary shift explains some of the turbulence America has been experiencing at home and abroad. Indeed, our society is thoroughly out-of-balance in TIMN terms: Venomous political tribalisms keep growing. Our government institutions are fraught. And our market system is increasingly distorted. Moreover, +N forces in civil society are still feeling their way, with difficulty. And there’d be many more points to make if I were trying to do a full TIMN profile.

My TIMN view — yours may differ — is that America’s strength is more limited and fragile than we know. Strategists should be concerned about TIMN conditions and trends at home as they ponder options abroad.

TIMN and U.S. options for grand strategy

TIMN does not imply any single grand strategy. But it may help assess why some options are inadvisable, and suggest some options that have not surfaced much.

I’ve not given this section much prior thought — indeed, this post is rather impromptu — but it seems to me that two kinds of strategies are inadvisable for the United States from a TIMN standpoint in the current environment. One is energetic pro-democracy activism, the other is tight-border isolationism:

• TIMN cautions against the exportability of U.S. models to make others “more like us” — especially if it is accompanied by a preachy meddlesome evangelism. Promoting democracy is a worthy endeavor, but it should be kept within pragmatic limits, for it’s likely to violate one TIMN principle or another if it is made the driving impulse of U.S. strategy. After all, a belief in American exceptionalism (which TIMN accepts) should make a strategist wary of trying to remodel others’ societies along American lines.

• TIMN also seems to mean that tight-bordered isolationism is inadvisable, especially for a triform society in the throes of change into a quadriform society. For one thing, isolationism tends to foster reactionary tribalisms (and vice-versa). For another, the further a society proceeds along the TIMN progression, the more its actors need and seek external connections — long the case with +M actors, and potentially more so for emerging +N actors who can be assets for U.S. strategy. Isolationism would retard and distort America’s prospects for continued evolution along TIMN lines.

A grand-strategy option that looks potentially compatible with TIMN is “forward partnering” — Frank Hoffman’s idea synthesizing other options (here and here). It’s mainly about military (especially naval) strategy, but it’s proposed with a keen awareness of new limitations on U.S. power at home and abroad, and it’s directed at achieving a circumspect partnering with allies:

“In sum, a strategy of forward partnering reassures allies and builds up partners, with limited footprint and maximum freedom of maneuver. … To the degree practicable, U.S. involvement will be devoted to collective efforts of prevention and the maintenance of the international system via an array of formal and informal partnerships.” (source)

Even though his proposal barely touches on aspects of social evolution apart from China’s rise, I sense they could be added in without much effort.

As for TIMN’s own implications for grand strategy, so far I have come up with only one idea to suggest: accommodational positioning — an awkward name, but the best I can do for now. The key is giving a TIMN-related meaning to accommodation: Here it does not simply mean accommodation between U.S. actors and whoever else is involved; it means accommodation by all actors to a higher set of organizational principles that have philosophical principles embedded within them — namely, TIMN. (Thus, meta-accommodational or meta-positioning might be more accurate, but also more awkward.)

TIMN is not sufficiently developed to serve as a blueprint for grand strategy, but it still offers some tentative guidelines that seem worth considering. I limit my remarks to sketching what the above concept — accommodational positioning — might mean in dealing with partners and rivals who are amenable to relations.

— First of all, TIMN points immediately to the importance of recognizing all expressions of the tribal form: e.g., conditions at family and community levels (including health, education, and welfare), trends in ethnic and national identities (including nationalism and patriotism), along with the influential roles that patrimonialism (including nepotism and cronyism) may play in local institutions and markets. There are many instances of U.S strategy neglecting the roles of the tribal form; using TIMN can help correct that shortcoming.

— Accommodational positioning may mean caution about promoting democracy as a priority, depending on circumstances. In general, the more democracy can be properly promoted, the better. But hammering for a society to open its party system and hold free elections as a condition for U.S. attention may also prove inadvisable, especially if a society is not well along the TIMN progression to having professional government institutions and a well-functioning market system. If a society is sorely lacking in such preconditions, a push to democratize may have counter-productive dysfunctional effects. If it is important for U.S. strategy to promote reforms, it may be wiser to focus on helping to improve the performance of local institutions (e.g., civil service) and markets (e.g., for credit) than pressing for democracy immediately.

— Accommodative positioning would seek to engage a range of civil-society actors, especially those that are organized into influential information-age networks and thus seem to represent the rise of the +N form. This may prove particularly important, but also difficult, if a target society is lacking or resistant in this regard.

The points above proceed form by form. A few points that span all four TIMN forms should also be noted: Accommodative positioning would mean working across all forms to improve organizational readiness in ways that have philosophical import. It would mean creating plans, programs, and other measures that engage all sectors of a society, not just government. It would create complex coordination issues that will make some actors uneasy about assuring central control, but it must be made clear that creating conditions for progress à la TIMN depends as much, if not more, on decontrol, as I’ve discussed elsewhere.

What I have in mind for accommodative meta-positioning, then, is a world and a strategy that is still suited to hard-power realpolitik, but is also increasingly subject to soft-power noopolitik (nöospolitik), particularly where success depends on non-governmental and governmental actors working together. In light of such complexity, perhaps what Paul Van Riper describes as the “systemic approach to operational design” could be helpful (source).

One further concern: TIMN implies a need for new kinds of expertise. Implementing a grand strategy often requires the creation of an array of supportive political, economic, military, and other plans and programs, led by experts from established political, economic, military and other such disciplines. However, if TIMN were developed as a basis for strategy, the expertise would need to be about the dynamics of tribes, institutions, markets, and networks. That’s a rather different set of categories for defining expertise; such specializations don’t quite match the established disciplines. This could lead to difficult lengthy learning experiences.

Postscript about yesterday's shift in U.S. policy toward Cuba

As I was finishing this post, news broke yesterday about the U.S. policy changes toward Cuba. A quick mention seems appropriate for the following reasons: The U.S. government, and presumably an array of business and civil-society actors, have just embarked on a process that might be suited to a strategy of accommodative positioning, even though Cuba’s leadership doesn’t want to countenance evolving a +M society at present. Meanwhile, this new rapprochement may serve to keep other powers (Russia? China?) from trying to use Cuba for their version of Hoffman’s forward partnering.

There’s little reason to be optimistic that Cuba’s fidelistas and raulistas can be convinced of the benefits of decontrol to create a market system. Here’s why, according to what I wrote five years ago in a TIMN analysis of Castro’s Cuba:

“In sum, Fidel Castro remains committed to a theory of social evolution that is fundamentally erroneous. He is not entirely wrong to rail against the evils of capitalism — it can have detrimental effects, and what’s happening in the United States today provides new evidence. But by failing to see that the market system is essential for continued social evolution, and by not figuring out how to make it apply in a balanced, positive way in Cuba — even so that it deserves a name other than capitalism — he keeps Cuba’s potential arrested in an evolutionary cul-de-sac of his own fabrication.

“Eventually a breakout will occur. Odds are, a multitude of U.S. actors will then rush ahead with their usual patterns about promoting democracy and freedom, including free enterprise. But if the objective is to see Cuba turn into a balanced T+I+M system, new kinds of advice and assistance may be needed. The United States has policies and strategies for promoting capitalism — basically saying, open your markets, and we will come. But do we really have adequate policies and strategies for building a properly free, fair market system? I gather not, for that’s never been as major a goal as promoting capitalism. It’s time to rethink. Otherwise, assuming that the post-Fidel regime endures, the model it prefers next may be a mild kind of fascism rather than a potential liberal democracy.” (source)

This does not mean I am opposed to the shift in U.S. policy. It may well work to our benefit, but for it to do so, we will need a wary strategy akin to accommodational positioning à la TIMN. Onward we go.

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Addendum: “A sound theory of social evolution would be handy to have.”

The text above offers some recent thoughts about grand strategy. Here’s an earlier statement — an except from In Search Of How Societies Work: Tribes—The First and Forever Form (2006) — that raises some similar points. Though this statement is directed at U.S. policies and programs rather than grand strategy per se.

“There is never a bad time — and now seems a fine time — to inquire anew into how societies evolve. The world is in awful flux, and debates keep sharpening across national, cultural, and other divides regarding what progress means. There is continual talk that the information age will remake the world and propel societies up the ladder of progress; yet the gaps between the most-developed and least-developed societies are larger than ever. Many people want better lives; but while some aim to advance in a secular, liberal, Western sense, others would rather back up, cleanse, and restart their societies, with a religion as their guide. Meanwhile, much of the world remains mired in ancient tribal dynamics; only a part of the world has succeeded in developing modern, complex societies — or so it seems.

“A sound theory of social evolution would be handy to have. Although there are philosophers and social scientists who question whether evolution has brought real progress to humanity, U.S. policymakers and strategists operate on assumptions that societies based on political democracy, market economies, and independent civil societies are better — more advanced, civilized, peaceful, stable, productive, equitable, and responsible — than other societies. And, indeed, many foreign policy problems facing Washington concern one aspect or another of social evolution — such as how to keep former communist countries on democratic paths, how to sustain economic liberalization in Asian and Latin American nations where elites may prefer cronyism to capitalism, how to motivate tribal systems in Africa and the Middle East to modernize, and how to deal with ethnic conflicts in places that lack professional states and may be under the sway of criminal clans. In addition, assumptions about social evolution lie behind both international and U.S. assistance programs, which are supposed to lift people out of poverty, diminish the lures of crime and terrorism, create middle classes, and put all on paths to freedom and prosperity.

“But are such assumptions valid? What are the keys to social evolution?” (p.7)

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Endnote: First-time readers unfamiliar with TIMN are advised to look at a briefing-style video, two blog posts, my original RAND paper, and a follow-up paper. Here are the URLs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBulH9_04vc&feature=youtu.be
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/02/overview-of-social-evolution-past.html
http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/09/explaining-social-evolution-standard.html
http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7967/
http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR433/

Onward.

A depiction of space-time-action analysis (STA) in six slides — plus an addendum of revelatory quotes

I HAVE DONE A NEW POST THAT UPDATES, REVISES, AND EXPANDS ON THIS POST, EXCEPT FOR TEXT ASSOCIATED WITH SLIDE 6, WHICH I HAVE YET TO INTRODUCE INTO THE NEW POST. TO READ THE NEW POST, GO TO:

http://twotheories.blogspot.com/2016/08/peoples-space-time-action-orientations.html

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The purpose of this post is to offer a depiction of my view of STA. The post also depicts the space, time, and action views I’ve found in writings I’ve reviewed lately — as I presume they may be depicted in a similar way for comparison purposes.

The genesis of my depiction dates from a briefing I started to draft in 2009, but never completed. Hopefully, offering this set of draft slides today can help convey STA at a glance.

This post’s placement here is temporary. After I finish an upcoming series on a writing about action orientations — meaning I’ve finished reviewing a book about each STA orientation — I’ll delete this post and reissue it in a subsequent position, amended to include a new slide about the action-oriented book.

I could have waited until then before publishing this preliminary post. But rather than let it sit idly on my computer for what may be few months, I’d rather put this version out now, out of place, with a hope that it will help as an evolving visual aid for conveying and clarifying STA.

Speaking of readers, my ongoing series of posts about STA appears to be of little interest so far. Posts about TIMN remain of greater interest, and I intend to return to writing about TIMN, for there is still a lot to be said. But for now, onward with STA — so that at least its rudiments are laid out better here.

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This post presumes a passing familiarity with the STA framework. Otherwise, read here first.

What I do here is let circles correspond to the three cognitive domains: space, time, action. Sizes indicate relative emphasis. Locations — e.g., separations, overlaps — indicate relative interactions, or their absence.

All diagrams are preliminary and impressionistic on my part. Your view may differ — in which case, feel free to redraw, or suggest that I redraw.

Slide 1: Many (most?) discussions I’ve seen over the years about space, time, and action factors are reflected in the diagram on the left, where space and time factors are discussed for their effects on activities, or action, which is broadly defined to cover all sorts of thinking and doing. But, though not entirely wrong, that approach ultimately misleads, for it makes action too much of a dependent variable.

The depiction on the right shows what STA looks like to me. Notice that all three circles — space, time, and action — are treated as independent but interactive variables, roughly equal in size and location, with complex overlaps. It’s basically a Venn diagram. It makes “thinking and doing” — not vague “action” — the dependent variable. And as I’ve argued in various writings, it’s a more accurate way to depict and assess cognition. This kind of diagram also offers a basis for comparisons, as in the next few slides.

Slide 2: While Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space ([1974] 1991) focuses on space, he devotes major attention to time as well. He does not write about action, but his treatment of “strategy” is somewhat cognate. (source: three blog posts, beginning here)

Hence, the largest circle is about space. Time merits a rather large circle too. And the space and time circles deserve a strong overlap. Lefebvre’s treatment of action/strategy figures less by comparison — so I’ve rendered it with the smallest circle and least overlap.

Slide 3: This slide depicts what I conclude from my reading of Philip Zimbardo & John Boyd’s The Time Paradox (2008). The largest circle by far must go to time. (source: three blog posts, plus a fourth in progress, starting here)

As for action, they emphasize the importance of “control” and “efficacy” as cognates. So it merits a medium-size circle. But their discussion tends to embed and suborn control within their treatment of time. Thus, in my assessment, the action circle ends up almost entirely engulfed within the time circle.

I spotted no discussion of space as a distinct cognitive domain, only scattered disparate references to various spatial elements (e.g., perceptions about self-worth, family, or government). Hence, I’ve drawn the space circle quite small and placed it almost entirely outside (though maybe it too belongs inside).

Slide 4: This slide is here as a temporary place marker until I have the material to fill it out. I’m pretty sure the book I will use is Alberto Bandura’s Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (1997), since it appears to discuss psychological efficacy in a manner that matches what I think action means in the STA framework.

Other choices might be grand theories of social action — e.g., by sociologists Talcott Parsons, Anthony Giddens, or Manuel Castells. They refer heavily to space and time factors. But they also use broader definitions of action than I think is best for developing STA at this point.

Another option might be a history of the Western concept of “progress” and its associations with space, time, and action innovations. Or a writing, perhaps by an anthropologist, about differences between Western and Asian ways of thought. But right now, I’d rather work with a writing of a more theoretical and psychological bent, like Bandura’s book.

Slide 5: This slide recapitulates my sense of what STA mindframe analysis looks like, ideally. All three of STA’s cognitive domains are identified. And they’re weighted equally, as are their overlaps. What is presumably a cognitive/cultural “sweet spot” lies at the core in the middle.

Of course, this depiction leaves open questions about the content of each domain, as well as about indicators and measures for each, and for their overlaps and interactions. Identifying those remains a challenge.

Moreover, this depiction is about what a comprehensive STA analysis should look like, ideally inquiring into all areas. The depiction may also represent what an actual mind (or culture) should look like, at its best: developed, balanced, and attentive in all three cognitive domains.

Yet, in reality, many minds and cultures do not conform to this idealized depiction — e.g., they may be more emphatic in one area, less so in another. If so, then the diagram would have to be redrawn to display that particular mind or culture. Which would then offer a basis for making comparisons, as I’ve tentatively done with the books reviewed above. And offering a method for depicting an ideal and making comparisons seems worthwhile to me, as a way to advance STA.

Slide 6: I’ve already written a variety of posts (starting here and here) claiming that all minds and cultures rest on space-time-action principles — indeed, that space-time-action orientations lie at the core of cognition and culture. Theorizing about this is the main purpose of STA.

STA also offers a way to understand evolutionary progress and regress, be that in the form of personal or social evolution. All such evolution depends on STA conditions. Jean Piaget’s writings about the cognitive growth of children speaks to this, and so do Zimbardo & Boyd’s writings about cognitive therapy for adolescents and adults. As for social evolution à la TIMN, I’ve previously indicated that the each TIMN form depends on different STA orientations (e.g., see sidebar and table titled “TIMN vis à vis STA” here). More could be done with this.

Furthermore, STA may provide a fresh way to think about strategy and tactics. Strategy is traditionally treated, particularly in the military world, as the art of relating ends, ways, and means — and sometimes, mostly in the business world, as the art of positioning. STA implies that strategy is the art of positioning for spatial, temporal, and actional advantages, in light of one’s ends, ways, and means. To design a strategy, STA implies making a comprehensive examination of space, time, and action factors as a set. Don’t just focus on time and space — as some strategic analysis seems to do — assuming that should determine action.

I remain convinced that STA could help with analyzing terrorist and other radical mindsets. Many terrorism analysts emphasize grand concepts — e.g., humiliation, alienation — but they could do better by digging into terrorists’ space, time, and action orientations. However, when analysts do so, most emphasize STA’s time and/or action orientations — yet it’s terrorists’ space orientations that may be more crucial. STA urges a comprehensive approach. (I’ve already written various posts about this, and I’ll elaborate further in my next post about Zimbardo & Boyd’s time-perspective theory.)

Finally, whenever I occasionally read about the prospects for cognition and consciousness in artificial intelligence (AI), I wonder how much that will may depend on the development of devices to generate space, time, and action senses. For example, isn’t the Google self-driving car a set of technologies — sensors, modules, algorithms — for just that? I’ve never seen AI discussed in anything like STA terms; but I’ve long mused that doing so could prove useful.

I hope this sketchy outline helps. Onward.

* * * * *

Addendum: Scholarly quotes about the importance of people’s STA orientations

While I was refining the foregoing slides and text, I noticed various scholarly quotes I’d kept for old drafts about STA. These quotes might clutter the trim briefing-style post above. But they speak pointedly to the ideas behind STA. And they may help convey and clarify STA for some readers. So I’m providing a selection here, eleven in number. I’ve used a few in prior posts, but they’re worth repeating.

On space: These two quotes — the first from Michel Foucault, the next from Manuel Castells — speak to the importance of space orientations.

• “The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of simultaneity; we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed. … when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersections with its own skein.” (From Michel Foucault, “Of Other Space,” in Diacritics, Spring 1986, p. 24)

• “I shall then synthesize the observed tendencies under a new spatial logic that I label space of flows. I shall oppose to such logic the historically rooted spatial organization of our common experience: the space of places.” (From Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 1996, p. 378)

On time: Here are three quotes about the significance of time orientations — one each from Karl Mannheim, Florence Kluckhon, and Fred Polak. The statements by Kluckhon and Polak represent the kind of background that I’d wish Zimbardo & Boyd’s book had included.

• “[T]he innermost structure of the mentality of a group can never be as clearly grasped as when we attempt to understand its conception of time in the light of its hopes, yearning, and purposes. On the basis of these purposes and expectations, a given mentality orders not merely future events, but also the past.” (From Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 1936, p. 209)

• “Obviously all societies at all times must cope with all three time problems; all must have their conceptions of the Past, the Present, and the Future. Where societies differ is in the rank-order emphasis they give to each, and a very great deal can be told about the particular society being studied, much about the direction of change within it can be predicted, if one knows what that rank order is. Spengler, greatly impressed by the significance of the time orientation, made this statement in his Decline of the West: ‘It is by the meaning that it intuitively attaches to time that one culture is differentiated from another.’” (From Florence Kluckhohn, “Some Reflections on the nature of cultural integration and change,” in Tiryakian, ed., 1963, p. 224)

• “[Man's] image of the future is his propelling power. … [T]he rise and fall of images of the future precedes or accompanies the rise and fall of cultures. As long as a society's image is positive and flourishing, the flower of culture is in full bloom. Once the image begins to decay and lose its vitality, however, the culture does not long survive.” (From Fred Polak, The Image of the Future, [1955] 1973, p. 5, 19)

On action: That man has power to affect things, that progress is feasible, that social action can work — that human agency and efficacy matter — is a separate belief, not derived from space-time beliefs. This point shines in the following two quotes — one from Leonard Doob, the other from Alberto Bandura:

• “Basic to all such thinking …. must also be the belief that men themselves — not their ancestors, not fate, not nature, not other men — are able to control their own destinies. … for men everywhere are not likely to seek change unless they believe that change is possible.” (From Leonard Doob, Becoming More Civilized, 1960, p. ??)

• “This change in human self-conception and the view of life from supernatural control to personal control ushered in a major shift in causal thinking, and the new enlightenment rapidly expanded the exercise of human power over more and more domains.” (From Alberto Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, 1997, p. 1)

On space and time together: Of the three STA orientations, space and time are the two that usually get combined and discussed together. The following quotes — one from Lewis Mumford, the next from Daniel Boorstin — illustrate this:

• “[N]o two cultures live conceptually in the same kind of time and space. … [E]ach culture believes that every other kind of space and time is an approximation to or perversion of the real space and time in which it lives.” (Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 1932, p. 18)

• “[T]he compass provided a worldwide absolute for space comparable to that which the mechanical clock and the uniform hour provided for time. … When you moved any great distance from your home out into the uncharted great oceans, you could not know precisely where you were unless you had a way of finding precisely when you were.” (From Daniel Boorstin, The Discoverers, 1983, pp. 219-220)

On space, time, and action as a set: Finally, as intimations of STA, here are revelatory quotes — one from Sheldon Wolin, the next from Bruno Latour — that urge treating space-time-action as a triad.

• “Every political theory that has aimed at a measure of comprehensiveness has adopted some implicit or explicit proposition about “time,” “space,” “reality,” or “energy.” Although most of these are the traditional categories of metaphysicians, the political theorist does not state his propositions or formulate his concepts in the same manner as a metaphysician. … Rather, the political theorist has used synonyms; instead of political space he may have written about the city, the state, or the nation; instead of time, he may have referred to history or tradition; instead of energy, he may have spoken about power. The complex of these categories we can call a political metaphysic.” (From Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, 1960, pp. 15-16)

• “Fourth, to talk like the semioticians, there is always simultaneously at work in each account, a shift in space, a shift in time, and a shift in actor or actant, the last of these always forgotten in philosophical or psychological discussions. … We should not speak of time, space, and actant but rather of temporalization, spatialization, actantialization (the words are horrible) or, more elegantly of timing, spacing, acting.” (From Bruno Latour, “Trains of Thought: Piaget, Formalism, and The Fifth Dimension,” in Common Knowledge, Winter 1997, pp. 178–9)

Bruno Latour!? I normally find his writing incomprehensible. Evidently I must reconsider.