Some of all of those, I think. There are of course the enormous discomforts of Plato’s sexism, his authoritarian turns, his pluming on account of the superiority of philosophers over all other men. I don’t want to follow him into any of those; though the only one I’m really in danger of is the pluming. My political opinions are neither here nor there, since no one ever will (or should) pay attention to them. And my detestation of sexism finds nothing in Plato to challenge it. But thinking myself a better sort of person… ugh. I fall for that easily.
But no: it’s not that. Really it’s the question of whether I’m doing the right thing. I think I am, that this reading and thinking is necessary, but I must be careful not to follow that with the notion that I am a philosopher, in the modern sense: that I have any business composing arguments and trying to persuade people. I have neither the training nor the intelligence for that. Nor do I think more arguments are particularly needed: and even if they were, I don’t think anyone would read mine. So no. I am not going to write philosophy. That’s not the point.
No, the point is private and personal, and it is entirely negative: to clear away the false opinions and indefensible assumptions that are crowding my skull and making the place unfit to live in. I need to make room. That’s all; that’s enough.
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I'll record some predictions about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, to keep myself honest:
1) I think the war will last for many years, on the scale of the Iran-Iraq war (which in military terms it closely resembles, though no one ever seems to make that comparison.) My guess is seven or eight years. The Russian army has been incompetent, for sure, but much of their apparent incompetence just reflects how difficult it is to advance far against an evenly matched opponent in modern warfare. Deceiving an enemy about where your reserves are, or what your schwerpunkt is, has become almost impossible, unless (as in the initially-successful American campaigns in Iraq) you can disrupt enemy communications and blind their intelligence. Neither side can do that here. People who expect a 1940's style blitzkrieg from either army are living in la-la land.
2) Unless, of course, the Russian army collapses, or revolts. Possible, but two things to bear in mind there: one is, that any successful revolt in the next couple years would be not by pacific liberals, but by Zed radicals. What they want is total mobilization and escalation, not peace. In the case of a putsch or coup the war would intensify, not lessen. The other thing to bear in mind is that the Russian army does not need good morale to operate: it never has. They are not embarrassed by shooting their own recalcitrant soldiers. It's all in a day's work. Expecting them to collapse because their soldiers aren't excited about the war is absurd.
3) I rate the chances of tactical nuclear weapons being employed at some point at about 50%. I don't expect it to go to a global exchange -- I rate that possibility at about 10% -- but I do expect the Russians to use tactical nukes if the Ukrainians are moving into genuinely Russian territory. (The question of what is genuinely Russian territory, to Russia's increasingly demented government, is not of course clear. It may include the Crimean peninsula; it may not. I don't know.)
I like to record my predictions, largely because it's good for me to be reminded of how often I am totally wrong about things. It's a useful discipline.
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