Tag: essay

Book Review and Quotes from Robert D Kaplan's The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power

Notes and Quotes from Robert D. Kaplan’s The Tragic Mind

Chris Khatsch1 Comment

The main message of Robert D. Kaplan’s The Tragic Mind is this: that political leaders and decision makers ought to think tragically. They need to be aware that, although there is good and evil in the world, politics is more often about a “battle of good against good.” They also need to be aware that, even though a decision must be made, political outcomes cannot always be win-win or even win-lose. Sometimes, all possible outcomes are lose-lose outcomes, and the decision maker must choose which lose-lose outcome is best.

Notes on The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power

The Hobbesian Kaplan. — Kaplan is Hobbesian. He almost always prefers order over chaos because, like Hobbes, he seems to believe that the state of nature is a state of war. As Hobbes put it in Leviathan, “There is always war of everyone against everyone. Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.”1 Correspondingly, Kaplan writes, “The fact that the state should monopolize the use of violence rescues us from the worst of fates: anarchy.” And “even the worst regime is less dangerous and terrifying than no regime at all.” (Here, however, one must ask: What would the colonized man say? What would someone who has read Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth say? Is it better to be dehumanized but for there to be order, or is it better to be free but for there to be chaos? Would you rather die free or live without dignity as a slave? These are questions worth asking.)

Crito Inverted. — Kaplan writes that “the state comes before humanity.” And later in the book, with Melville’s Billy Budd given as an example, we see how this also means that the law comes before the individual. Again, Kaplan talks about “the tragic necessity of order above all other concerns.” And repeats Camus’s words on Billy Budd: “In allowing the young sailor, a figure of beauty and innocence whom he dearly loves, to be condemned to death, Captain Vere submits his heart to the law.” In a way, what we have here is Plato’s Crito inverted. In Crito, Socrates says that the law is like a father and the individual is like a child. The individual belongs to the state; therefore, he must obey the law even if unjust. So, when Crito comes to help him escape, Socrates chooses to remain in his cell and, therefore, die. In the first story, then, the punisher proceeds with the punishment even when he doesn’t want to; in the second story, the punished person accepts his punishment even when he gets an opportunity to escape it. Why? Simply because the law is the law.

The Burden of Power. — Most people live in a black-or-white world. Or, at least, they believe they do. For them, there’s the right thing to do and there’s the wrong thing to do. Kaplan says that “it is so much easier to be an intellectual or an artist — or a journalist — than to be a king or political leader.” Why? Because a political leader’s job is far more complex and much more nuanced than the outsider can imagine. “The truths that journalists speak aloud are not just the truths that those in power obscure, but often the truths that the powerful are very much aware of but cannot do or say anything about publicly, for fear of making the situation even worse.”

Quotes from Robert D. Kaplan’s The Tragic Mind

Fate is something we do to ourselves and afterward blame the gods.

– Robert D. Kaplan, The Tragic Mind

To be wise is one thing, but to struggle against impersonal forces of fate when defeat seems certain constitutes true greatness.

– Robert D. Kaplan, The Tragic Mind

History rarely repeats and usually doesn’t even rhyme, despite the line often misattributed to Mark Twain.

– Robert D. Kaplan, The Tragic Mind

To comprehend your own insignificance is neither defeatism nor cowardice but the opposite. Once again, to act, and to act bravely, even in the face of no great result, constitutes the ultimate in human grandeur.

– Robert D. Kaplan, The Tragic Mind

[1] The original text, in Hobbes’ weird-old English, goes like this: “There Is Alwayes Warre Of Every One Against Every One Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man.”

Review and Summary of Plato's Crito

A Reading of Plato’s Crito

Chris Khatsch1 Comment

A summary of Plato’s Crito

In one of Plato’s famous dialogues called Crito, Crito visits Socrates’ prison cell before daybreak to persuade him to escape. Socrates is in prison and is condemned to death, but when Crito tells him they could bribe people to bring him out of prison, he refuses. In fact, almost comically, even in prison, Socrates finds the time to use his signature “Socratic method” to decide whether he ought to escape or not. The answer, of course, turns out to be no because, even when one is wronged, one must not wrong the other in return. And the laws must be obeyed even when one is unjustly found guilty.

According to Socrates, the Law is like a father (or a master); the individual is like a child (or a slave). The individual belongs to the State and must do what the state orders him to do. Why? Because, from the day he is born, the individual is nurtured and educated by the State, protected by the State, given his rights by the State, etc. And if he does like what he is given, he can always pack his stuff and leave. (Where to? That’s not the State’s problem.) By staying in the State, the individual enters “into an implied contract that he will do as we [the State] command him.”

This is, in short, why Socrates chooses not to escape and, therefore, die.

Socrates, Jesus, and the opinions of others

Reading Crito now, on a cool Wednesday morning in September, I am reminded of that story in the Bible in which Peter draws his sword and cuts off the high priest’s servant’s ear who, among others, had come to the Garden of Gethsemane to arrest Jesus. “Put your sword into the sheath,” Jesus says to Peter. “Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?” (John 18:11) We see here that, like Socrates, Jesus also chooses not to escape. The cup which His Father has given Him is His hemlock.

Moreover, Crito is not (only) Peter. He is also an inverted Judas. Judas betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, but Crito is ready to do the opposite for Socrates. “But, oh! my beloved Socrates, let me entreat you once more to take my advice and escape,” Crito says. “For if you die I shall not only lose a friend who can never be replaced, but there is another evil: people who do not know you and me will believe that I might have saved you if I had been willing to give money, but that I did not care.”

When Socrates hears these words, he says that one shouldn’t care about the opinion of the many. Crito disagrees because the opinion of the many has the power to ruin a man’s life. (Remember when Pilate offered to release Jesus, but the crowd persisted, demanding his crucifixion?) Yet Socrates manages to show Crito that the opinions of the unwise don’t matter. Only the opinions of the wise matter. And if there’s only one wise man among many, it’s only his opinion that matters.

In this sense, neither Socrates nor Jesus cared about the opinions of the masses. We can even say that they died because they didn’t care about their opinions.

From the POV of authorities (and the masses), they may have been lawbreakers; from the POV of their followers, however, they were either law-abiding citizens or “fulfillers” of the law. Most importantly, they themselves knew they were doing the right thing.

What can we learn from this?

Socrates did what Bukowski once said, “Find what you love and let it kill you.” He died defending what killed him…

References

Plato. The Trial and Death of Socrates: Four Dialogues. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Dover Publications, 1992.

The Dishwasher’s Anxiety: The Return of the Lesser Tasks

Chris KhatschLeave a comment

Doing the dishes brings me (back) to the desert of the real and gives me anxiety. When I’m disconnected from the virtual world, and there are no distractions (like music or TV), and there’s no one else (like my wife) with me in the kitchen, certain thoughts, like dead fish (forgotten to be fed), rise to the surface to float among the oceanic debris of my mind. My thoughts go to where the trash is, to the center of an unremembered psychological gyre, where mental litter has been accumulating for a long time. And as I rinse the first batch of plates and arrange them on the dish rack, anxiety builds. My heart simmers in a saucepan on the gas stove.

Cutting the Umbilical Wire

Unplugging myself from the virtual world has become a little like cutting my own umbilical cord (again and again), separating myself from the pseudo-singularity that intends to keep me in its womb. But this separation never lasts long. Either the umbilical cord — wire — (like a slithering cable, a hissing electrical wire) will come after me to reconnect me to the virtual world, or, after agonizing withdrawal symptoms, I will seek the teat of the (omnipresent, omniscient) machine and start sucking on it.

The artificial universe keeps me busy. It keeps me entertained. It keeps me away from myself, whom it would be hell to spend time with.

[We’ve become like whales. The artificial universe is our sea. We still come up for air, but we are sea animals now.] [We are like foie gras ducks. We allow the ramming of virtual pipes down our eye sockets and ears to enable the pumping of massive amounts of content into our brains.]

But it’s important to note here that disconnecting from the internet is not enough to exit the hyperreal, to reenter raw reality. If the TV is on, or if there’s music playing in the background, I am still in the hyperreal. I must exclude everything from the setting that can interfere with my mind’s idleness — or, to put it differently, for this to work, to experience the anxiety of a man washing the dishes, my mind must be “unassigned,” idle. Only then can the mind drift and, often without the slightest intention, find itself at the center of the psychological gyre, the Atlantis that can only be found when we are lost in the sea of Kierkegaard’s doppelganger’s infinite resignation. Land ahoy! Here it is, then, finally, the island made of everything we’ve thrown (tried to throw) away.

Here, I expect that some of you will say, “But we know you. You spend much less time staring at screens than many of us.” You are right, and this changes nothing. I still (unconsciously and sometimes consciously) keep myself from rediscovering Atlantis. I do this by getting wasted, by constantly intoxicating myself with booze, books, and other boredom-repelling activities. No one wants to stay in the desert of the real, which is exile, or a penal colony of sorts that is paradoxically (the nauseating) freedom (we all cower from). So, like almost everyone in this technologically advanced, becoming world, I am almost always in the hyperreal. It is only when I do things like washing the dishes (without distractions) that I enter the process of exiting the hyperreal: this process is the anxiety I’m talking about.

The Dishwasher’s Anxiety

This anxiety (of a man doing the dishes without distraction) is too intense for me — it’s unbearable. (Is this why dirty dishes pile up in the sink when it’s my turn to do them?) One can only wash so many mugs, spoons, forks, knives, pots, and plates without coming face to face with the [unnamable] that human progress strove to leave behind.

In addition to the above, the anxiety I’m talking about seems to be powered by postponement. It isn’t procrastination because the mind is never idle, and we are always “working.” There’s always something “more important” (which is, in fact, less important) to do, and that’s what we’re continuously preoccupied with. The mind never finds time for defragmentation. (Sleep is not enough since it happens automatically in the subconscious. Conscious, deliberate defragmentation is also needed.) Unfortunately, we constantly postpone things we ought to deal with. We let these things die (like fish) and, as they (remain uneaten and) slowly decompose, join the accumulated trash at the center of our polluted psychological gyres.

“I do not have time for this,” our busy mindset keeps repeating. “I will deal with this later,” we keep saying. We focus on the “important” or more “urgent” things while we postpone going to the dentist or the doctor, postpone spending quality time with the wife, postpone the confrontation with the person who’s been bothering us, postpone the planned dinner with the parents, postpone the call with the mother, postpone the happy hour with friends, postpone calling the plumber or the electrician, postpone dealing with this little issue and that little issue, et cetera, ad infinitum. And when the more “important” and more “urgent” tasks are completed, we find ourselves too exhausted to take care of what we postponed.

In other words, we postpone certain things to prioritize certain other things, and later, the time comes for us to deal with the corpse (or the ghost) of what we postponed more than we should have, which gives us the dishwasher’s anxiety when we, well, do the dishes.

But that’s not all. There are more things to consider. There’s also [The repression of the awareness of death: we do not think about our death; we only acknowledge our eventual death in passing. After all, who has time to look at the hourglass, to count the slipping sands of time? Who is willing to waste their finite time to contemplate mortality?] And also [The repression of the absurd: we do not think about the meaninglessness; we merely acknowledge it in passing as if it’s an acquaintance we’ve never had (or will never have) a conversation with.]

The Fear of Missing Out

While I’d like to exit the hyperreal, I do not want to live exclusively in the desert of the real, where the anxiety is. Of course, in the universe of raw reality, the anxiety ultimately dies away if you stay there long enough. However, in this universe of raw reality, there will come a time when you’ll have to dump your humanness and return to being an animal or worse, a god. And that is not the path I want to take, for I wish to remain human.

And, no, I don’t think that if I stay where the anxiety is and keep searching, I will find Easter eggs that so many gamers love to find. I know I won’t unlock new levels. And I won’t uncover the “hidden” truth, will I? Will I uncover the “hidden” truth? Or is it because I already know the yet-uncovered “hidden” truth that I don’t want to dwell there too long? Or is it the “fear of missing out” that brings me back to the artificial universe? After all, whatever is interesting — or is talked about — is already uploaded or simulated in it.

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is a trending disorder, for sure. And one of the components of this anxiety that visits me when I’m washing the dishes is FOMO. But FOMO isn’t just the fear of missing out. I would like to redefine it, adjust its definition a little. FOMO is also the fear of having missed out on something. It is also the fear of not knowing that you’ve missed something. And because everything I don’t want to miss out on is in the virtual world (or is communicated to me via the virtual world), we can say that FOMO is triggered when I go offline. Moreover, FOMO is not always about the fear of missing out on something amazing. It can be something terrible, too. For instance, when I’m doing the dishes, I may think of the following things: “What if something happens to a family member, and I’m not there when they message me?” “What if I get an urgent email that I need to action on immediately?” “What if Israel has launched a large-scale attack and is now invading Southern Lebanon while I’m here soaping tea spoons and coffee mugs?” To be connected is to have access to (overwhelming) knowledge that you may or may not need. (And knowledge isn’t power, by the way.) On the other hand, to be disconnected is like swimming in the ocean at night, waiting for something from underwater to tickle your foot and make you shit your pants — or, in this case, your shorts.

The Return of the Lesser Tasks

This inner turmoil, this restlessness, this fear comes when I start soaping the second batch of dishware and silverware. It means that I’m now spending time with myself. And all the “secondary” tasks I previously postponed now occupy my thoughts. I feel guilty, and I worry about the consequences. Here they are, the ghosts of overdue tasks (and things that I wanted to do but didn’t), haunting me. It’s too late to do them now, and I have to decide whether I let them rot in my head (as buried potentialities) or do them anyway by saying, “It’s better too late than never.”

But I must now return to the artificial universe, which is the universe that man made. So, the house he built became his home. And he is home when he’s neither fully in the physical world nor fully in the virtual world. We’re only home when we’re in the hyperreal. But like the occasional hike in nature, it’s good to visit the desert of the real sometimes. It’s good to smell the flowers that bloom in fear. It’s good to hear the birds sing what we can never understand.

This piece was originally published on my Medium account on February 28, 2024.