WANTED WOMEN: Faith, Lies & The War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Aafia Siddiqui, by Deborah Scroggins – Harper/HarperCollinsPublishers New York, NY Copyright © 2012 by Deborah Scroggins.

 A review by Bill Dahl

A Legitimate Pulitzer Prize Candidate:

When I received my copy for review – the title and cover made me skeptical…but…I started reading…then – I couldn’t out it down.

This book is unique and profoundly distinctive in so many ways. The following are noteworthy:

a) Deborah Scroggins spent 6 years on this project.

b) Initially, I viewed the structure of the book as a gamble – alternating chapters for Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Aafia Siddiqui – I came to absolutely adore it.

c) The author had never interviewed either woman directly during the research and writing of the book. Yet, the tertiary sources Scroggins plied to obtain the pertinent material are both comprehensive and intimate – providing the reader with the ability to become acutely familiar with each subject.

d) You can’t write a book like this without placing your personal safety and welfare in jeopardy (no matter what the author says).

This work has it all: religion, women’s rights, equality, terrorists, murder, birth, faith development, human development, intrigue, political intrigue, Somalia, the war on terror, the disconnect between the west and the rest, family relations, refugees, terrorism, suicide bombings, contradiction, lies, deception, death, Africa, immigration, racism, Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons, abductions, prejudice, divorce, intolerance, relationships, misunderstanding, certainty, fundamentalism, Judaism, Pakistan, charisma, injustice, finance, bodyguards, assassinations, court proceedings, mental health issues, separation, The U.S., extremism, the media, anarchy, survival, irrationality, mystery, children, misperception, military engagement, war, genocide, foreign policy, Iran, Iraq, the oppressed, poverty, affluence, the pursuit of personal achievement, strategic international relations, CIA, FBI, ISI, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Daniel Pearl – and running for your life…whatever that may mean.

In the absence of such an incredibly gifted investigative journalist/author (Deborah Scroggins) – this book might have easily become a mediocre mess. I garnered a deep appreciation for both the writing and storytelling skill of Scroggins, as well as the unimaginable perseverance she aptly displays – crafting a page-turning, insightful examination of the intersection where the issues I enumerate above collide…in the lives of real people…today. She lets the story speak for itself (if there really is such a thing). The voice Scroggins equips the two central characters with is a feast for the reader.  The manner in which she shares this story is so terribly poignant and powerful yet, unequivocally uniquely creative – causes the reader to become curious, engaged, concerned, educated, perplexed, angry — to ponder deeply — and arrive at a place where one understands just how much difficult work we have yet to accomplish — in directly addressing the innumerable challenges, contradictions and life shaping/threatening conditions WANTED WOMEN: Faith, Lies & The War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Aafia Siddiqui so cogently illuminates.

Today, as a species, in our current historical epoch, homo-sapiens (that’d be us) – particularly those who are sufficiently fortunate to be free from worry about survival on a daily basis – also seem to have acquired another peculiar tendency this book illuminated for me. It’s epistemological self-righteousness – We humans have an infernal capacity to come to believe what we think we know is both adequate and sufficient. As Princeton research psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Dan Kahneman has said in his most recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow – we develop the tendency to think What You See Is All There Is. Kahneman writes: “At work here is that powerful WYSIATI rule: You cannot help dealing with the limited information you have as if it were all there is to know. You build the best possible story from the information available to you, and if it is a good story, you believe it.”[i] Kahneman refers to this as “pretended knowledge” – a phenomenon very apparent in the lives of both Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Aafia Siddiqui…and our world.

As any superlative literary work of non-fiction requires Deborah Scroggins’ WANTED WOMEN: Faith, Lies & The War on Terror: The Lives of Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Aafia Siddiqui leaves the reader with the veil epistemological modesty firmly affixed to ones’ heart and soul. Yet, the work clearly defines the challenges ahead, prompting the essential dialog required to re-think our current beliefs, policies, practices and past approaches to the ongoing, unresolved issues so vividly and persuasively illuminated by this book. There’s vastly more import to this work than your what you see is all there is mechanism might suggest.

Like I said…a legitimate Pulitzer Prize candidate. Believe it!

https://picasaweb.google.com/110627777356098083553/CraterLakeNationalPark2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCMaN5dq_wcPjBg

Here’s another Weekly Whiff of Economic $scents

Fondling the Job Knob

The most frequent word used during the Republican party presidential nominee debates is reported as “job.” Honestly, the term has become a fixture on the dial of the words each and every politician has pre-programmed into every public utterance.

The problem is, a real world challenge has become a simple point of reference or  keyword that is a required utterance…It’s just a teaser…it’s foreplay. It’s just “fondling the job knob.” The problem is, foreplay typically results in an appetite for something more.

American voters deserve a discussion that gets to the meat of the matter. If values and beliefs about how someone proposes to run  the largest economy in the world – both parties need to give up the specifics…what they believe will result in a vastly more satisfactory experience for the participants involved. American voters need the full meal deal…to determine whether this critical component of our compatibility is present…prior to making any  commitment about marriage for “four more years.”

To use a phrase from David Brooks column today, what must be done is to “select bold policies from both ends.”

“Ready on the set…Camera…Action!”

The whole world’s watching…

Here’s my  Weekly Whiff of Economic $cents:

“Yet each turn of the spiral gives rise to similar questions about the nature and purpose of an economy. How much inequality can be tolerated? When bets go sour and the economy nosedives, who gets bailed out and who are left to fend for themselves? At what point does an economy imperil itself politically, as large numbers conclude that the game is rigged against them? Most fundamentally, what and whom is an economy for?”

Excerpt above from: Reich, Robert B. AFTERSHOCK – The Next Economy and America’s Future, Alfred A. Knopf New York, New York Copyright © 2010 by Robert B. Reich, p.4.

ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. , He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into twenty two languages, and the best seller Super capitalism.  His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He is also cofounding editor of the American Prospect magazine and provides weekly commentaries on public radio’s Marketplace. He lives in Berkeley and blogs at www.robertreich.org.

Capitalism works only when institutions are forced to absorb the consequences of the risks that they take on. When banks can pocket the upside while spreading the cost of their failures, failure is almost certain. P.13.

Mallaby is clearly not a proponent of “privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.”

Excerpt above from: Mallaby, Sebastian More Money Than God – Hedge Funds And The Making of a New Elite, Penguin Press, New York, NY Copyright © 2010 by Sebastian Mallaby. p.13.

“We have not seen—and don’t expect—a broad deterioration in mortgage credit quality,” the Fed staff said in a June 2006 report to policy makers. (excerpt from WSJ Article here).

“An inability to imagine how an outcome  might come about leaves you convinced that it will not happen.”(1)

(1) Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – Farrar, Straus and Giroux NY,NY Copyright (c) 2012 by Daniel Kahneman, p. 331.

An incredible treatise on primarily the life’s work of Dan Kahneman and Amos Tversky. Kahneman is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Princeton and Prof. of Psychology and Public Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs at Princeton. Although “primarily” is a useful term, Kahnenan utilizes the leading research in the field throughout the book.

How do human beings make decisions? What does the current research in psychology suggest? What do we think we know about the ways the human mind behaves? These are the three primary questions addressed in the book.

Kahneman introduces a myriad of concepts. The two main main one’s are System 1 and 2, and WYSIATI. System 1 is our intuitive, automatic system. System 2 is our effortful system (self control) engineered to overcome the impulses of System 1. We are all familiar with WYSIWIG. Kahneman introduces the concept of WYSIATI – What You See Is All There Is. Kaheman introduces a pile of research that supports the notion that the human mind (System 1) relies upon WYSIATI to reinforce his contention that “we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.” (p.24). WYSIATI provides us with the equipment that produces the capacity to “exaggerate the consistency and coherence of what we see.” (p.114). WYSIATI provides the inertia for the human mind’s willingness to “misclassify an event as systematic – - rejecting the belief that much of what we see in life is random.” (p. 117).

Throughout the book, the following thesis is an observation that is a constant:

“when people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound. If System 1 is involved, the conclusion comes first and the arguments follow.” (p.45).

System 1 is associative – looking for memories and experiences that provide a context for the mind to reply to questions, judgments and choices that we humans encounter in daily life. It is also “lazy”. System 1 enjoys “cognitive ease,” constantly updating our world view in terms of what is “normal.”System 2 requires effort to engage it. The human mind  is clearly prone to developing biases in making decisions. Frankly, the examples that Kahneman uses throughout the book will both amaze and amuse you.

This is NOT light reading. Frankly, this is distinctly a System 2 book – requiring “effortful” reading. Yet, it is well worth the effort. At times, a background in social research was very helpful to me, as I considered the plight of other readers who may not possess that experience. Yet, perhaps that is an over-simplification of my part, as Kahneman writes:

“The world in our heads is not a precise replica of reality; our expectations about the frequency of events are distorted by the prevalence and emotional intensity of the messages to which we are exposed.” (p. 138).

Kaheman states that “the test of learning psychology is whether your understanding of of situations you encounter has changed, not whether you have learned a new fact…you are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by learning surprising facts about people in general.” (p.174.). The way in which this book is written places one experientially within the context of the preceding statement…the reader is required to “experience” the book…it’s personal and participatory.The chapters on Bad Events and The Forfold Pattern were my favorites…and highlight a myriad of questions in the economic arena that beg for further inquiry. I intend to write a separate article about my observations spawned by these two chapters.

The chapters on the illusion of validity, intuition, optimism and expert intuition are fascinating… rearranging what you thought you knew.

This book takes one beyond the frontier of epistemology – or how we know what we think we know. It is a groundbreaking treatise into the current results of research that is completely counter-intuitive. What one comes to know after reading this book is just how much we have to unlearn from our knowing and embrace the challenges to learn anew, from this outstanding contribution.

I highly recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman…just take your time with it…experience it…as Kahneman has gone to great lengths to invite your participation…learning is effortful. Well worth the effort.

A magnificent narrative about stories that are not told anymore. The masterful craftsmanship that produced this work is awe inspiring…not too much detail but sufficient to make this book one that will make you cry, shout, audibly say incredulously; “Oh my Gosh!”  at least 4 times. This book is suitable for all audiences and would be accessible intellectually by middle and high school students – particularly those studying U.S. history. I couldn’t put it down when I started…read the whole thing in bed once I began.

 Magnificent – incredible – REQUIRED READING.

Phenomenal. period.

Allow me to be brief….”BRA – freeking – VO.” If I had a book to recommend with the 2012 U.S. presidential election coming up – this would be it. Frankly, it should be required reading before people vote. It’s just that darn good.

I don’t buy books for friends – it’s rare – I bought this one for a good friend in December 2011.

Read it – buy one for a friend – talk about it with others – then vote. One of the best books I have read in the past 2 years.

I’m done…the U.S.A. is not.

This 463 page treatise is a wonderful accomplishment and is likely to become required reading for those interested in the history and development of economic thought. As Nasar, writes: “Most journeys start in the imagination.” Friedman, Hayek, Keynes, Sen, The Webbs,  Schumpeter, Marshall, Robinson – they’re all here – and many others – come alive in this magnificent weave of history, biography and economics. The manner in which it is written makes the entire subject area vastly more approachable – accessible – and shall inspire others to dedicate themselves to the the same sort of challenge that the author embraced here..

I was particularly impressed with how Nasar weaved her challenge (stated above) as cleverly, and with an unbelievable depth and breadth – yet maintained an appetite for the reader to come back for more. This is a work of art from the heart – Sylvia Nasar’s.

I truly enjoyed the journey. You will too. However, the subtitle will likely turn many off from the purchase decision…The Story of Economic Genius – probably is not one that magnetically attracts too many folks today.

]]> http://www.billdahl.net/articles/grand-pursuit-the-story-of-economic-genius-by-sylvia-nasr/feed/ 0 http://www.billdahl.net/articles/person-of-the-year-2011/ http://www.billdahl.net/articles/person-of-the-year-2011/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:56:18 +0000 bill http://www.billdahl.net/?p=3351

Image above by Bill Dahl – All Rights Reserved.

Click on image to enlarge.

What Time Is It?

TIME MAGAZINE got it wrong…terribly wrong. On December 14, 2011 TIME announced their Person of the Year for 2011 as “The Protester.” Their cover image is below:

Well, it seems to make sense on the surface and looks good too. Yet, there’s something that TIME missed – something beneath and beyond the faces, voices and actions of the protesters – that has been beamed incessantly into the global consciousness during 2011 by every media outlet that could connect to the web. Other media outlets have suggested that “If you protested in 2011 for ANYTHING at all, then YOU are TIME Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” — REALLY?

Stay with me…

Trust and Time

Here’s what TIME dismissed that I discovered. I refer to it as “THE Dis…” – My Person of The Year for 2011. Discretely buried beneath the image of The Protester one discovers a pervasive sentiment that involves a population far larger than those who “protested in 2011 for ANYTHING at all.” 

THE Dis… include the disenchanted, the discouraged, the disillusioned, the disturbed the discontented, the disdainful, the disheartened. THE Dis… includes those who were disengaged from any form of active protest yet, experienced a degree of disgust and disappointment at the disintegration of expectations that they had learned to rely upon for certainty, stability, security and serenity. THE Dis… may not have occupied anything tangible….they may or may not have been participants in the encampments, and the public discussions or the disorder.  Yet, they were/remain dismayed. Not that they were disinterested or dismissive of the disorienting tremors that seemed to displace what one thought one knew. During 2011, disruption, in every sense of the word, seemed to display itself in duration, forms and degrees that displaced hope, trust and confidence. 2011 was a time period when distrust seems to have achieved new levels of dispersion.

In his most recent book, The Price of Civilization – Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity, economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University writes:

“We have become a country of strangers. And that estrangement is accompanied by falling trust. Markets cannot overcome the distrust…No significant economic trend in any part of the world leaves the rest of the world untouched…Without trust, there is little chance for coordinated global actions needed to fight poverty, hunger and disease.” [i] (emphasis is mine)

For THE Dis… 2011 was a year when disillusionment seemed to disburse itself without regard to borders, boundaries or birthright. Sociologist Daniel J. Levinson describes the challenge that was pervasively experienced by THE Dis… during 2011 – and shall, in my opinion, remain our challenge in 2012 and beyond. Levinson describes it in the following:

As he attempts to reappraise his life, a man discovers how much it has been based on illusions, and he is faced with the task of de-illusionment. By this expression I mean a reduction of illusions, a recognition that long held assumptions and beliefs about self and world are not true. This process merits special attention because illusions play so vital a role in our lives throughout the life cycle.”[ii] (emphasis is mine).

During 2011, disorientation became a vastly more common, and perhaps intense, experience for the global citizenry. The task of de-illusionment described by Levinson above is not an event – as he states, it’s distinctly a process. For THE Dis… becoming dislocated or dislodged from the fact that long held assumptions and beliefs about self and world are not true is laden with distress. What do you think of an elected governing body that has a 9% public approval rating? (The U.S. Congress) For far too many in the U.S., 2011 contained an ongoing experience of unemployment, stagnant wages, healthcare coverage and costs, rising energy and food prices, shelter, hunger, the costs for education, and homes that are not worth their current mortgage debt. Does this sound mental, spiritual, economic, disruptive and discombobulating? Is a sense of fairness, confidence, the absence of corruption, and a sense of hope fundamental to the human condition and the effective functioning of a democracy? Well, actually – it’s all of that. These are not illusions – they are indisputable facts of human life. They are matters of the soul for individuals, organizations, movements and a nation.

The Alarm Clock:

 Economists George Akerloff and Robert Schiller have said that “we must pay attention to the thought patterns that animate people’s ideas and feelings”…..that, even in the arena of important economic events that occur within human civilization  “their causes are largely mental in nature.” [iii]

Yes, My Person of the Year for 2011 is THE Dis… the year when we were all required to confront our respective and collective disenchantment…with others, with institutions, with circumstance and condition – with ourselves. 2011 is a year when the disempowered discovered their tolerance limits, when the disinterested became engaged, when the dismal, global economic conundrum endured, when the disreputable were dislodged, when the discouraged became courageous, when the disheartened became desperate, when the dislocated and dislodged began to come together. A year when untold precious human lives were destroyed – disfigured – even dismembered – in the process.

2011 is the year when the alarm clock went off. The disillusioned began to embrace the truth that only the process of de-illusionment can produce – an awakening – a recognition that long held assumptions and beliefs about self and world are not true.  Did you find yourself dismayed by the discord, dissension, discourse and disruption in 2011? Well, wake up! You have a planet full of company. The sensations of your soul are not dissimilar to those experienced by the world around you.

Counter Clockwise:

Ok…it’s 2012. I’m concerned. Why?

I’m hopeful that 2011 was simply part of the process of what economist Joseph Schumpeter referred to as creative destruction. Yet, people like to throw that term around without understanding what Schumpeter was really talking about. Schumpeter, as recounted by Thomas K. McCraw of the Harvard Business School, shares the following:

“Destruction, however painful, is the necessary price of creative progress toward a better material life. But the correct sequence is vital: creative innovation first, then the destruction of obstacles that lie in its way.” [iv]

This is my concern for 2012: It’s when we humans destroy as our initial response and assume that the construction will simply appear thereafter – the opposite of Schumpeter’s principle – the result can be catastrophic.[v]

The Dis… as celebrated as it may have been in 2011 – can have unanticipated, destructive consequences. You see, The Dis… can morph. It’s virile and viral nature can endure and replicate into new forms that may continue to plague us. This is particularly true when it morphs into cynicism. As Sachs points out: “When the political and economic situation is as dangerous as it is today, cynicism and loss of time are far more dangerous than they look.”[vi]

History reveals that cynicism is cyclical. I have referred to this phenomenon by creating the term cynclical (sink-li-cal) [vii] Cynicism has properties whereby you always end up in the same place you started. Yet, this phenomenon possesses energy, inertia, and a trajectory; like a whirlpool…round and round and down. Whether you are the originator of cynicism or the recipient of it, it has an energy that negatively impacts all concerned. It maintains the loss of essential balancing reference points and sustains a sense of dizziness essential to preserving the illusion that we cannot make progress; retarding the willingness to expend our energies toward the pursuit of positive possibilities.

If you can relate to my characterization of The Dis… my prayer for you is to consider the implications of how you use your time in 2012 – as productively and constructively as possible. May it be a year for you when innovation precedes destruction. A year when you recognize that your thought patterns are animate – how you think and what you think matters. A year when you accept the process of de-illusionment as an essential aspect of human existence –that long held assumptions and beliefs about self and world are not true. A year when you look back and reflect on 2011, you will seek to muster a renewed sense of trust in both the present and the future. A year when you humbly acknowledge we all have much to learn about change; that “learning how to change requires understanding how we go astray.”[viii]

I will close with a quote from David Brooks:

“The human race is not impressive because towering geniuses produce individual masterpieces. The human race is impressive because groups of people create mental scaffolds that guide future thought.[vii] (emphasis is mine). [ix]

Think about it…the clock is ticking.

NOTES