Generational Dynamics World View News

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John
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16-Dec-19 World View -- Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan

Post by John »

16-Dec-19 World View -- Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan

'Afghan Papers' reveal we sent 175,000 soldiers into Afghanistan without 'foggiest notion' what we were doing

** 16-Dec-19 World View -- Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg/ ... tm#e191216



Contents:
'Afghan Papers' reveal we sent 175,000 soldiers into Afghanistan without 'foggiest notion' what we were doing
Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan


Keys:
Generational Dynamics, Afghanistan, Afghanistan Papers,
Douglas Lute,
Pashtuns, Taliban, Afghan civil war,
Northern Alliance, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks,
Iraq, Iran/Iraq war, Great Iraqi Revolution,
Jordan, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda in Iraq, AQI,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh

FishbellykanakaDude
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Joined: Tue Jan 09, 2018 8:07 pm

Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by FishbellykanakaDude »

Guest wrote:... What if the 2020 election goes ahead and there is no war with China or Iran? Couldn't a civil war erupt? Your premise seems to rest on war uniting the country, but what if war doesn't happen until, let's say, 2023, then what?
THERE you have it...!!!

CONFIRMATION that my oft made prediction that the "War Year" will be 2023...!!!!

..nearly as good as a nod of recognition from Jake Tapper,..or that Brzezinski chick!

FishbellykanakaDude
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Re: 16-Dec-19 World View -- Why we can never prevail in Afghanistan

Post by FishbellykanakaDude »

John wrote:...
Contents:
'Afghan Papers' reveal we sent 175,000 soldiers into Afghanistan without 'foggiest notion' what we were doing
Humans,.. an endless supply of comedy!

..when "Afghanistan" became a "thing" the idea that immediately popped into my head was to wall the entire country in with a thousand foot water-proof barrier and turn the country into a reservoir.

..of course, it would have to be SEVERAL concentric thousand foot barriers to deal with the crazy topography, but that's just construction detail.

What people seem to forget is that Afghanistan is not a country, but rather an "anti-country". It's the negative space left over when all the other countries borders are drawn.

It's the "fat clumsy kid" of the world geopolitical world. Nobody WANTS it.

..except for drug dealing psychopathic fanatic murderers, perhaps.

shoshin
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Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by shoshin »

John, your "Afghan Papers" was full of your usual stunning insights (they seem obvious once you state them), and I wish our"leaders" could have a chance to digest them.

But you left out one aspect of the Afghan War (and Iraq War, and and and...): Wars are Profitable! Not so much for those killed or maimed, but for all the supporting complex of industries and suppliers, it is. And the Generals keep getting paid, regardless, so they have no skin in the game. Makes you wonder who is running things.

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Tom Mazanec
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Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by Tom Mazanec »

The kind of thing that can spark a war:
https://www.newser.com/story/284385/rep ... gn=rss_top
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”

― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain

John
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Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by John »

** 16-Dec-2019 World View: Kismet
FishbellykanakaDude wrote: > Quibble: If you believe in "Kismet/et al", then you're
> religious.
Totally disagree. Being religious has nothing to do with it.

Here's an anecdote I heard a motivational speaker tell several
decades ago:
A man bought a plot of land that was really a mess.
It was covered with weeds and all kinds of crap. There was even a
sickening smell.

But the guy got to work. He worked every day, six days a week,
from 6 am to 8 pm. He cleaned out all the crap. He cleaned out
all the weeds. He ploughed the land. He planted seeds. He
watered the seeds every day, making sure to clean up any new
weeds.

Within a few months, he had the most beautiful plot of land in the
region, with lovely flowers and plants.

One day, while the man was working on his land, someone walked by
and said: "That's a beautiful plot of land that God has given to
you."

The man thought for a second and said, "Yeah, God did give me a
beautiful plot of land. But you should have seen what kind of
shape it was in when God was taking care of it."
The point of this little anecdote is that it doesn't matter whether
you're religious or not. You're still responsible for your own
fate. You plant the seeds. If you plant weeds, you'll get weeds
back. If you plant flowers, you'll get flowers. Plant a turnip,
get a turnip, never any doubt. But if you go around screwing
people, then one day someone will screw you back, and everyone
else will be cheering him on.

This is related to some things about Greek tragedy that I've written
in the past.

I've found that few non-Greeks really understand what tragedy is
about. As a Greek I know that a sense of tragedy is in my
bones. Tragedy as an art form was invented in ancient Greece, and
three of four great tragic artists of all time were Aeschylus,
Sophocles and Euripides of ancient Greece, with the fourth being
Shakespeare.

What tragedy does is to bring order out of seemingly random events.
Many people misunderstand the deepest meanings of tragedy. If a child
is killed in a random traffic accident, then it's a terrible event but
it's not a tragedy in the classical sense, because of that randomness.

The essence of classical tragedy is that the tragic event is not
random. The tragic event is inevitable: it MUST occur, and the reason
it must occur is because of the nature, the personality, the character
of the protagonists. A true tragedy cannot be prevented, even by
those who foresee it, because the forces bringing about the tragedy
are too powerful for anyone to stop.

Like the child killed in a random traffic accident, the protagonists
of a true tragedy have a great future before them, and in the Greek
view, perhaps even a heroic future. But the heroic future turns into
disaster because the players in the true tragedy move step by step
towards that disaster; and all of us on the outside can see it coming,
because these particular players are uniquely capable of inflicting
this disaster on one another.

Today we're witnessing a tragedy in progress, where the protagonists
are China, Japan and the US. We can see the play moving toward
disaster, but we can't do anything to stop it (or delay it, or speed
it up). It's a true tragedy that cannot be prevented, even though we
can foresee it, because the forces bringing about the tragedy are too
powerful for anyone to stop.

The same is true of the individual and Kismet. A person creates his
own fate, and the ending is inevitable. Whether you're religious or
not is irrelevant. In the end, we all get what we deserve.

John
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Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by John »

** 15-Dec-2019 World View: Israel-Hezbollah war
Warren Dew wrote: > The Israel-Hezbollah war wasn't triggered by a chaotic event,
> though. Abduction of two Israeli soldiers could certainly trigger
> a war, but there isn't any credible circumstance where abduction
> of the two Israeli soldiers would prevent the war, when it would
> otherwise be triggered by lack of an abduction.
The abduction wasn't the chaotic event. The panic was the chaotic
event. It's similar to the 1929 stock market panic, which was also
a chaotic event.

John
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Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by John »

** 15-Dec-2019 World View: Chaotic panic
Warren Dew wrote: > So now you're saying the abduction was unconnected to the
> war?
Everything is connected to everything else, but that's not the point.

I always like to point to the example that no one knows what caused
the 1929 stock market panic to occur on October 28, instead of a few
months earlier or later. It was unexpected. It just happened on
October 28.

The Israeli government panic and invasion of Lebanon on July 12, 2006,
was also unexpected. Why did it occur on that day? Was it because of
the abduction? It's certainly reasonable to assume so.

But here are some questions that are left unanswered:
  • If there had been an abduction a month earlier or later, would
    the same panic and invasion have occurred?
  • Could the panic have been triggered by something else -- perhaps a
    belligerent speech by Nasrallah?
  • Did the panic and invasion have to occur at all?
Did the 1929 panic have to occur at all? I believe so. Did the 2006
Israeli panic have to occur at all? I think so, but I can't prove it.
Some things are just "in the air," and are going to happen one way or
another.

Warren Dew wrote: > To take an historical example, the policy of Appeasement by
> Chamberlain before WWII most certainly delayed the Europe wide
> portion of WWII. Some argue that the delay was critical to
> rearmament efforts.
Germany's invasion of Poland was not a panic event like Israel's
invasion of Lebanon, so the same reasoning doesn't apply.

Or maybe it was a panic event, in which case Chamberlain's achievement
may have had no effect at all.

Whether something is a chaotic event has to be proven. Sometimes this
can be done with computer models, by running the model with different
inputs, and finding whether tiny changes to the inputs produce huge
changes in the results. It's hard to do such a test with things like
a military invasion.

The invasion of Poland was not the start of WW II. At that time, WW
II had already been going on for several years. I count the beginning
of WW II as 1937, when a Japanese soldier had to pee and got lost in
the woods, and his commander assumed that he had been abducted by the
Chinese, triggering the China-Japan war and quickly leading to the
rape of Nanking. That's a good example of a chaotic event triggering
a war.

FishbellykanakaDude
Posts: 1313
Joined: Tue Jan 09, 2018 8:07 pm

Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by FishbellykanakaDude »

John wrote:** 16-Dec-2019 World View: Kismet
FishbellykanakaDude wrote: > Quibble: If you believe in "Kismet/et al", then you're
> religious.
Totally disagree. Being religious has nothing to do with it.

Here's an anecdote I heard a motivational speaker tell several
decades ago:
A man bought a plot of land that was really a mess.
It was covered with weeds and all kinds of crap. There was even a
sickening smell.

But the guy got to work. He worked every day, six days a week,
from 6 am to 8 pm. He cleaned out all the crap. He cleaned out
all the weeds. He ploughed the land. He planted seeds. He
watered the seeds every day, making sure to clean up any new
weeds.

Within a few months, he had the most beautiful plot of land in the
region, with lovely flowers and plants.

One day, while the man was working on his land, someone walked by
and said: "That's a beautiful plot of land that God has given to
you."

The man thought for a second and said, "Yeah, God did give me a
beautiful plot of land. But you should have seen what kind of
shape it was in when God was taking care of it."
The point of this little anecdote is that it doesn't matter whether
you're religious or not. You're still responsible for your own
fate. You plant the seeds. If you plant weeds, you'll get weeds
back. If you plant flowers, you'll get flowers. Plant a turnip,
get a turnip, never any doubt. But if you go around screwing
people, then one day someone will screw you back, and everyone
else will be cheering him on.
And, there's nothing there of yours that I disagree with.

God gives us things to exercise what we need to exercise,.. not finished goods.

I don't contend that belief in "eventual comeuppance" (karma, kismet, etc) MAKES one religious. My contention is that to be a "one" (as used in the previous sentence), one IS by definition religious, as to hold any belief whatsoever is to be religious.

..and YES,.. my definition of "religious" is entirely tautological, circular, and self serving. But that's what religion is for! :)

"Religion" is the attempt to re-connect with the "mysterious world", and that is done by observing "the world", "recognizing" patterns, creating beliefs from those recognitions, testing those beliefs against "more" of the world, weeding out the untrue/non-useful beliefs, and repeating the process.

"God", as a thing, has nothing to do with religion per se. "God" is a belief.

One either believes in God, or one does not, but that has no effect on one's being religious, as the "God" function is redistributed elsewhere if one doesn't believe in the "usual functional entity" signified by the word "God".
This is related to some things about Greek tragedy that I've written
in the past.

I've found that few non-Greeks really understand what tragedy is
about. ...

The essence of classical tragedy is that the tragic event is not
random. The tragic event is inevitable: it MUST occur, and the reason
it must occur is because of the nature, the personality, the character
of the protagonists. A true tragedy cannot be prevented, even by
those who foresee it, because the forces bringing about the tragedy
are too powerful for anyone to stop. ...

The same is true of the individual and Kismet. A person creates his
own fate, and the ending is inevitable. Whether you're religious or
not is irrelevant. In the end, we all get what we deserve.
Meaning is "found" by story,.. by the "search" for story within the world.

Tragedy, specifically heroic tragedy, best displays this search for meaning.

The hero sees the patterns of the fates, agrees and disagrees with the "goodness and evilness" of those patterns, strives to enact the good ones and fights the fruition of the evil ones, eventually realizes why that which is fated to happen must happen, chooses to continue to fight for good and battle against evil anyway, and watches, or leaves the audience to watch, the fated scenario unfold as it must.

Methodical cathartic ("tearful") realization of the truths of the world is what all individuals do, which we call "life" or "living". Religion, the search for meaning by testing observation for truth, is identical to "life" and the hero's methodical cathartic realization known as "tragedy".

Life is tragedy (the search), which produces suffering (fighting) and beauty (realization of truths), which allows for the grasping/appreciation of that beauty (happiness), and the gifting of that beauty (charity/"tradition distribution"/"writings") to help "the family" (descendants) become more "wise" (capable of dealing with "the fates" [the mysterious world]).

FishbellykanakaDude
Posts: 1313
Joined: Tue Jan 09, 2018 8:07 pm

Re: Generational Dynamics World View News

Post by FishbellykanakaDude »

John wrote:...

Whether something is a chaotic event has to be proven. Sometimes this
can be done with computer models, by running the model with different
inputs, and finding whether tiny changes to the inputs produce huge
changes in the results. It's hard to do such a test with things like
a military invasion. ...
There are only chaotic systems,.. not chaotic events.

..unless the event is a system, in the continuous/progressive grammatical aspect,.. kinda.. thing.

TRIGGERS (vector force inputs) to chaotic systems are those things like the peeing Nipponese soldier.

The important thing about understanding (precursor to "manipulating") chaotic systems is in finding the ATTRACTORS, and the "orbital" vectors of the flow (of energy/material) around them.

Chaotic systems CAN be "shaped" (aka: altered to semi-suit) if the dynamics of the system are known AND energy of sufficient magnitude can be applied "correctly", either smaller magnitude applied over several "cycles" or huge magnitude over a single "cycle",.. though any error(s) can flick the system into another regime, which could be messy.

Anyway,.. (the) point is that the "chaos" that produces the trigger that creates the "chaotic panic reaction" is usually from an entirely different chaotic system from the chaos produced by the trigger triggering the chaotic system that it triggers.

BUT,.. (gotta be a "but!").. if we're taking about GenDynamic related chaotic systems, the triggers will nearly ALWAYS be of a "de-humanization of my tribe member YOU BASTARD!" type, and therefore relatively predictable (versus ALL possible types of triggers), although still incredibly hard to "stamp out/inoculate for" due to the nearly infinite "sticky situations" that members of "your tribe" can get themselves into.

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