The Solution to Conflict

High school students often talk of bringing about "world peace," but our solutions to this extraordinarily complex task are usually limited to sending a few hundred dollars of money to a charity operating in a conflict-wracked region.  While the money helps, it hardly does anything to address the root of the problem.

The map to the right shows the places where conflict has emerged in recent decades: most have either been internal conflicts or conflicts between smaller countries that are not great powers.  In one sense, this is an improvement.  At the risk of sounding naive, I contend that full scale conflict between global powers is becoming increasing unlikely with the expanding complexity of the global market and trade.  However, larger wars have been replaced by smaller conflicts that are often contained to their respective countries or regions.  These wars are usually sparked by racial or ethnic tensions but are driven by poverty and a lack of social mobility.  The solution to these problems, then, lies in education.

In English class, we have been discussing education for the past several weeks.  While our focus has been finding the most effective way of teaching Americans, I wonder what the most effective way of teaching Yemenis is.  According to a report by the United Nations Development Programme, "Education has a significant role to play in preventing conflict and violence.  Countries with high levels of primary education enrollment generally have low levels of violence- and, similarly, children who are deprived of education are more likely to turn to a life of conflict." When organizations assist in  providing education, they are presented with many questions.  What subjects should they teach?  How rigorous should the courses be?  Which history classes should they teach?  Should science classes take religious views into account?  Should there be a religious class?  Can girls legally and safely get to school?  All of these questions and many others like them must be addressed before the education process can even begin.

Based on the very different demographics of each impoverished country in the world, each curriculum must be designed specifically to meet the demands of said country.  However, I believe that the basic goals of education in poor regions should be similar to those of American schools: advancing social skills, learning to work in groups, and developing problem solving abilities.  By pushing an education style that promotes general intelligence and learning for the sake of learning as opposed to focusing on the learning of specific facts, we create an environment that decreases violence, racism, and sexism and replaces it with a desire for personal achievement.  Of course, there's a significant number of hurdles to reach a point where implementing such a policy is even possible, but the ultimate goal should lie there.  Allow the people to learn about themselves in the "mirrors" and their neighbors though the "windows," and the people will be less likely to engage in conflict.

Conflict in the Caucasus… and Boston? - Guest Blog by Ben Wolch

After the announcement that the Boston Marathon bombers were of Chechen origin, the American populace clambered to figure out what on earth a “Chechnya” was.  (The image below shows a Google trends graph tracking the number of times the word “Chechnya” was searched over the past 5 years.)  American’s barely even knew where Iraq or Afghanistan was when we invaded them.  It is important that we are educated on the conflicts occurring around the globe so we understand how our actions affect them.  Part of the current wave of global anti-Americanism is tied to the stereotype that Americans are simply unaware of non-American conflicts.  The backlash over the “Innocence of Muslims” video further proves that you do not need to work for the State Department to affect the image of America.

Chechnya is a region in Russia that has a significant independence movement.  It is located in the Caucasus, the region in between the Black and Caspian Seas, a very ethnically and religiously diverse area.  The region is riddled with conflict, from the Armenian genocide in the early 20^th century, to conflict over even more obscure sounding regions than Chechnya like South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh.  What sets Chechnya apart from the rest of Russia is that the majority of its population is Muslim.  They view the Russian government as imperialist and have fought two full scale wars against them.  Today, their movement continues through insurgencies that mirror Taliban resistance against US presence in Afghanistan. 

But what does this have to do with Boston?  Why did a conflict from half way around the globe make its way into a relatively peaceful American city?  Rebel groups in Chechnya have been exporting terrorists long before the Boston attacks.  Terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq have received many Chechen recruits and material assistance in their struggles.  While the Tsaernev brothers lived in the US for a considerable amount of time and weren’t just pawns sent by their Chechen overlords to do their dirty work, they still could have been inspired by the mercenaries of the Gulf and Afghani wars.  While it is plausible that the brothers could have harbored resentment to the US government, it still baffles me that they would attack innocent civilians at a non-US government sponsored event.  It is interesting to notice that the attacks took place right next to the stretch of race track that was lined with the flags representing all the countries participating in the race.  If someone wanted to show their displeasure with US foreign policy, the Boston Marathon seems like the last place to bomb.  I am sure over the next few weeks more information will be uncovered, especially since the authorities have the younger brother alive.  In the meantime, Americans will be sitting at the edge of their seats waiting for an explanation.  

Conflicting Lenses

In basic physics classes, high school students spend a unit learning about how light is reflected or absorbed by objects.  Students learn that the appearance of those objects can be altered by examining them through different lenses and filters.  For example, an object that normally is cyan will appear to be blue when seen through a green filter.  Using a green and blue filter to view the same object will make it appear black.

The lenses of literary criticism function in a similar way:  they alter the perspective of the reader by allowing him or her to see the text in a new light.  A commonly used example when introducing the concept of lenses is The Lion King.  To the layman The Lion King is a sweet movie about a lion cub and his friends overcoming obstacles together, but flip on a couple of lenses and the same story could be making bold statements about societal economic class structure or gender roles.

As with physical lenses and filters, multiple literary lenses can be used simultaneously to examine a text without coming into conflict with one another.  For example, in Ray Bradbury's  The Veldt, which tells the story of two children who take control of a futuristic "smart house" to murder their parents, utilizing both the feminist and Marxist lenses together yields an interesting result.  Through the feminist lens, the story seems to be a warning against the arrogance and destructive force that is created by male power structures, with the father as the patriarch and the mother and children as his subjects.  The Marxist lens suggests that the children, representing the Proletariat, are destined to overthrow the parents, as the Bourgeois, who attempt to use a coercive system of technologies and arbitrary rules to suppress them.  Put together, the two competing power structures blend, with the father becoming the active suppressor in the Bourgeois and the mother serving as his passive follower who is devoid of power.

The Veldt also shows that a lens can be used independently in stories where other non-mutually exclusive interpretations exist.  The psychoanalytic lens is very applicable to the story; there are many instances where the children are seen exhibiting primitive behavior (id), the parents are the idealists (superego), and the psychologist attempts to mediate between the two (ego).  This interpretation is able to stand on its own and retain full credibility, proving that interaction between lenses is not necessary in literary criticism, even when such interaction is possible.

Finally, The Veldt gives an example of a competing interpretations, as one possible method of interpretation partially rejects the others.  The protagonists repeatedly cite a disconnect from true nature in The Veldt as a significant problem, creating a window to use an ecocritical lens.  However, ecocriticism rejects a cornerstone of many other literary lenses in its focus on real world practicality.  In her book What is Nature?, Kate Soper writes, "It isn't language which has a hole in its ozone layer."  By rejecting constructionist ideology, ecocriticism enters into conflict with the other potential interpretations of the story.

Just by examining one short story, we are able to identify three possibilities of how lenses may interact.  The lenses may build off of each other and be constructive to examine together, a lens may function independently, or lenses may present competing and non compatible interpretations.  In physics, this would mean two lenses revealing a color that wasn't identifiable before, a single lens separating one color from the spectrum, or multiple lenses filtering out all color when used together (respectively).  In literary criticism, replace each "color" in the previous sentence with "interpretation," and you'll have the idea.

Aid vs. Development

When life gives you "Yemen"s, you don't need to make Yemen-aid.  This phrase, cleverly crafted by an opposing delegate at my most recent Model UN conference, brings up an interesting point that the Glenbrook Academy has been at least tangentially examining for the last few months.

A presentation by Dr. Dambisa Moyo at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs caused me to seriously question the value of humanitarian aid.  Her argument was compelling, and essentially boils down to the claim  that giving a man a fish makes him less likely to learn to get his own fish in the future.  But could humanitarian aid, which is so widely supported in the United States, really be detrimental to the receiving countries?

America's involvement with Sub-Saharan Africa presents us with the opportunity to measure the impact of humanitarian aid.  According to this report by the Congressional Research Service, almost 75% (over $5.8 billion) of the proposed budget for aid to Sub-Saharan Africa was humanitarian, while only 15% would go to economic development.  Policies that vastly favor humanitarian aid over any other form are not new to the United States, but despite this we see very little "developing" going on in many of the countries we give aid to.

The primary reason for this is that humanitarian aid does nothing to help the local economies, and in some cases can destroy them entirely.  How can local farmers hope to compete with millions of dollars worth of free food?  Dr. Moyo argued that humanitarian aid can cause political problems as well.  Receiving charity can easily be interpreted as weakness in the central government, eroding its legitimacy and the pride of the citizens.  Furthermore, humanitarian aid often doesn't get to its intended destination.  In Somalia, American care packages would be seized by militia groups and sold for large profits to allies throughout the near-failed-state.

But what is the alternative to giving humanitarian aid?  We cannot simply abandon the countries that struggle to feed their own people.  Instead of giving them free food and supplies, however, the United States should take the path that has made the Chinese very popular in Africa (according to Dr. Moyo): focus on economic development.  Create economic infrastructure, build roads, build schools, give the countries the tools they need to learn to fish with the support of the international community.  Then they will be able to break their reliance on international aid and begin the path towards "developed-nation" status.

So, when faced with a country like Yemen- wracked with conflict, a weak central government, and a practically non-existent economy- the solution is not to give Yemen (humanitarian) aid.  Instead, we must help Yemen aid itself.

Winning a Verbal Conflict

For developed countries in the modern world, conflict is most often embodied in vibrating air particles rushing by a larynx and crashing against an eardrum.  Verbal debates take place from the familial to the international levels, and play a large role in determining our daily lives.  Understanding the influence that a debate can have lead me to practice and hone my skills through the Model UN program.

This past weekend, the Model United Nations at the University of Chicago (MUNUC) tournament proved to be extraordinarily competitive.  Representing the United Kingdom on the UN Security Council, my partner and I worked tirelessly to try to solve the issue of stability in Yemen.  The thirty-page "background guide" gives an idea of how complicated the topic is.  Between a civil war in the north, a secessionist movement in the south, and the embedded presence of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the situation seems all but impossible to solve.  However, through researching my position as a British diplomat and researching the topic itself, I discovered a variety of tools that could be used to combat instability and prepared to articulate them in debate.

The UNSC was by far the most competitive committee I have ever debated on.  The delegations from Russia, Pakistan, the USA, Portugal, China, Azerbaijan, and Germany were all very skilled orators, writers, and debaters.  From the very beginning, I employed all of the tactics I knew: shake hands and smile at the new delegates, carefully analyze how high they hold their shoulders, look for signs of complacency or cunning in their eyes, and appear calm and confident.  Listen for the well-spoken, coerce those who aren't confident, and attack the aggressive.  During the twenty hours I spent in committee last weekend, I was constantly struggling to keep my head above the surface, trying not to get drowned out in the noise and motion of the conference.  Ultimately, I was able to successfully use my tools and training to establish my own voice in committee.  While not always the most popular, having that distinct voice allowed me to communicate my ideas and be awarded third place by the judge.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!---An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

This poem, written by Wilfred Owen in 1917, describes the horrors of conflict in the First World War.  The long marches, the mud, the gore, the fatigue, and, unique to WWI, the gas. The poem is dominated by darkness and death, but ends with the phrase "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." In its original context, the phrase embodies the glory of combat and dying for the country, as it literally translates to, "It is sweet and right to die for your country".  However, in the dark context of this poem, the Latin phrase takes on a sarcastic tone, forcing the audience, those who glorify war without having experienced it, to question the true implications of fighting and dying for a country.

The mix between enjambment and caesura in the first stanza hints at the unpredictable flow of war, a constant conflict between crippling difficulty (caesura) and long stretches of marching (enjambment).  The break at the end of the first stanza embodies the long nothingness that is said 99% of soldiering even today. The final 1%, the pure terror, comes into play suddenly and with extra syllables in the first line in the second stanza.  The poem's meter also reflects the reality of war.  The syllables march neatly in iambic pentameter for the majority of the poem, although the occasional gas attack can add chaos, or an extra syllable, into the mix as it did in line 14.

This poem, in 28 lines, gives the audience a taste of war and shatters the illusion of a glorious death for the nation. The speaker accuses the preachers of Horace of fallacy of tradition, using words such as obscene, cancer, corrupted, bitter, and incurable sores to describe the terrible detriment brought by Horace's ideas.  As his audience is Western Europeans and Americans, Owen is able to speak to Western culture's appeal to purity.  He accomplishes this in the last few lines, effectively saying that to teach that it is noble to die for one's country is corrupting children with terrible lies.

Every couple of decades there is a new war gone bad that reminds Americans of the harsh reality of conflict.  The gas in France during the Great War, the island combat in the Pacific Theater in WWII, the dense jungles of Vietnam, and the terrorist bombings and roadside bombs of Afghanistan.  I am not trying to say that war is pointless: the United States arguably had a legitimate reason to engage in almost all or all of these conflicts.  However, as nominee for Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel claims, the use of force is justified "only after a very careful decision-making process."

Free Will vs. Chaos Theory

Regardless of religious affiliations, many Americans feel that they have some form of free will.  Even those who don't believe in a deity will often claim that they have some ability to make choices that are based in their conscience.  The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a very interesting and in-depth analysis of what free will is generally considered to be by philosophers and great thinkers.  The surprising part of the concept is that, although it has been pondered for millennia, humans still do not know exactly how to define free will or understand where it comes from.  This leads me to question whether or not it even exists, but rather is an illusion created by the combination of a complex set of environmental variables and extensive genetic code.

An old school of thought called "determinism," can be interpreted to effectively deny the notion of free will.  This theory states that the world and everything that happens on it can be predicted through a series of mathematic calculations.  This idea is touched on extensively in the play Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard, in which the characters of the past and present ultimately reveal the uncertainty of the future.  At first, this play seems to contradict determinism, and in a way it does by embracing Chaos Theory.  Chaos Theory claims that, while the concept of determinism is feasible, there are so many complex variables affecting the outcome of events that they cannot be predicted by the mathematic or scientific procedures we use today.  A metaphor commonly associated with chaos theory is the butterfly effect, which states that it is theoretically possible for the flap of a butterfly's wings in one location to begin a chain reaction that creates a tornado somewhere else.  The principles identified in Chaos Theory sum up the reason why humans cannot accurately predict the weather:  there are simply too many variables.  But how do all of these philosophical theories relate to the question of free will?

The notion that free will does not exist, and that human personality is based completely off of genetic layout, is very much a deterministic one.  Accepting that belief, it would be possible to completely predict a human's reactions to being introduced into a specific environment if one had knowledge and understanding of that person's entire genetic structure.  Even if that person did something that appeared to be a choice, such as going left instead of right, I could argue that something about the subject's genes made the left path appear more attractive (in fact, research suggests that even which side of an object you prefer may have correlation with your genetic layout).  A common argument made by advocates of free will deals with love, and Arcadia suggests that the spontaneity of human relationships causes determinism to fail.  However, it is possible that while relationships compound the number of variables (Chaos Theory), a computer with advanced processing power could theoretically still predict the actions of an individual.

If it is determined that free will is only an illusion created by complex systems, what would the social implications of this discovery be?  Could one be held accountable for his own actions?  If a murderer kills only because of his genes and environmental conditions, can he be blamed?  In pondering questions such as these, I realize how dependent our civilization is on the idea of free will.  What happens if the theory of free will eventually loses this conflict?