A search for understanding.
It is late now. And it seems a new order is about to settle. As the day dampens down, the clanging of life becomes but the spring shower ending. The staccato notes of our existence slurr into one melodious tone. The blanket is about to engulf us all in its mystery, but in these moments… that blanket is ever soft.
An aphorism of Goethe
It is sad to return to this blog and discover an inbox full of requests for your url because the website has been quiet for so long. Medical school, USMLE step 1, and PhD life have all made their way in between myself and this blog. And this blog, as I have come to realize, really stands as an important waypoint in my growth as an individual, as a thinker, and as a physician. How easy it is to become swept away in the currents of one’s career without the least of sustained self reflection. Ideas, emotions, and facts become molded into one amorphous mass - uninterpretable even by its own creator. In these two years, despite the accumulation of fact and maybe even some skill, the mind has become less flexible, less critical, and less aware of its own workings. For certainly, it becomes imprisoned by its old conclusions without any more justification. I hope that with this new post, many more will come. Be they on the scientific ideas I am developing, or the pangs of existence we all must sometimes subsist.These words were inspired by Frankl’s comment in his Introduction to the Doctor and the Soul.
“If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, hereditary, and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone.”
“Life’s rhythm of pure relation, the alteration of actuality and a latency in which only our strength to relate and hence also the presence, but not the primal presence, wanes, does not suffice man’s thirst for continuity. He thirsts for something spread out in time, for duration. Thus God becomes an object of faith. Originally, faith fills the temporal gaps between the acts of relation; gradually, it becomes a substitute for these acts. The ever new movement of being through concentration and going forth is supplanted by coming to rest in an It which one has faith. The trust-in-spite-of-all of the fighter who knows the remoteness and nearness of God is transformed ever more completely into the profiteer’s assurance that nothing can happen to him because he has the faith that there is One who would not permit anything to happen to him.”
-How true. The objectification of God not only takes away from one’s appreciation of the absurdity and beauty of the world, but it also removes a common place where each individual can come together in relationship, in true community.
About two years ago, I decided to start this blog on international affairs. It was a quiet time. I had taken a year off from school, and was living in Los Angeles to be next to my beautiful girlfriend. She had moved out there to pursue her own education, and I was just this sidekick with time on my hands. It was a wonderful opportunity to pursue my own forays into philosophy and thought. But not only that, I had the chance to climb and bike everyday. I was able to experience California and its culture and, in that time, develop a deep desire to return. It was really a moment of self-discovery or self-definition, depending on your worldview. I could spend hours delving into my own thoughts, and understanding my own perspective.This blog was, in part, a reflection of all this internal work going on.
Suffice it to say, however, the busyness of life came roaring back and my moments of reflection / creation dwindled. I was accepted into an MD-PhD program at Boston University. I had to move to a new city with new people. I had to redefine my priorities in the context of what medical school demanded. I had to feel the distancing of my love, and eventually witness the end to that relationship. Overall, these life events stopped this blog (or journal, more accurately) from evolving and, concurrently, my thoughts from developing. In this whole process, I also had lost a deep sense of my own self and my own value.
My hopes for this blog have changed. I no longer desire to be an expert on the Afpak region, although it remains and continues to be a fascinating and volatile region with Osama Bin Laden’s death and Pakistan’s resentment of American power. (because in my mind the US has never resolved the most pressing issue - the Pakistani-Indian relationship). Instead, this blog will take on a more diffuse purpose. I hope to regularly reflect on the books that I read, the brain that I study, and the world that I experience. I do not profess to be an expert in whatever I write and, in the end, it is entirely meant for my own edification. However, if anybody has any comments or ideas they desire to expound upon, I invite them to do so. There is nothing better than human dialogue.
“But Mullah Omar has replaced Mullah Baradar, his top deputy, with Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir, a former detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is believed to be in his mid-30s and has a reputation as a tough fighter with few political skills,” reports the NY Times.
-I was/am for the indefinite closure of Guantanamo Bay and the swift transfer of prisoners back to a United States high-security prison in Illinois. Nonetheless, the difficulties of making cases against such combatants will always be difficult, and will inevitably produce the results that we see today (i.e. some prisoners reaching leadership levels in the Taliban movement). But this is the price of freedom. It is best to err in favor of liberty rather than edge into a 1984 regime. Over time, staying true to these values will vanquish the immorality and dangerous hegemony terrorist groups ascribe to nations such as the United States. One can only wage an effective propaganda war if the doubts of state repression are already present; let us continue to remove these doubts.
Stanley Fish, NY Times
The media in the last week has been harping on the failure of the United States’ intelligence agencies to prevent the “Underwear” bomber plot. Obama’s forthright admission of failure was good, but of only temporary importance. We need to improve and fast. From all of this coverage, I still do not understand why better computer-based systems were and are not put into place. Yes, there were bureaucratic issues. Yes, there were individual failures. But why could we not, according to the cliche, still “connect the dots”?
There were two elements I have found most disturbing in the post-attempt analysis.
1. That our security systems depends on individuals to synthesize vast amounts of discrete facts into coherent patterns. Has the the United States government failed to modernize and implement computers into its intelligence protocols? Why are we not relying upon good software and search algorithms which categorize and classify information according to individual terrorist names and the risks they pose? Maybe the United States should hire Google or Visa (which handles billions of financial transactions) to do a better job at handling massive amounts of information. Either way, it is not hard to imagine a computer program capable of handling these tasks and even prioritizing certain cases over others, based on the imminence of particular threats.
2. That there is no common computer base to store and review all terrorist-related information. Of course, the above program would be only good as the information you feed into it. If you do not have all the information, then it is impossible to make connections. But enough already, it is not hard to agree to put everything onto one area of cyberspace!
Both the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal reported today that the American Embassy in Islamabad issued a rare public complaint that “its staff were being harassed and detained as they traveled around the country.” Apparently, American government convoys are being stopped at checkpoints and visas and visa extensions are not being granted. As a consequence, the Embassy is running at 60% capacity and the civilian aid promised by the Kerry-Lugar bill will certainly not be distributed effectively.
Pakistani obstructionism from a Western perspective is one of the most frustrating aspects of this entire Afpak conflict because it seems so counterproductive. The United States is spending valuable resources on the development of a foreign country. Of course, there is a self-interest motive. It is to the United States’ advantage that Pakistan remain a viable state that does not support radical extremists and provide a safe-haven for terrorism. Moreover, in the current war in Afghanistan, Pakistan is the Vietnam-era North Korea. Militants can retreat to areas along the Pakistani border for repose, re-groupment, and training. Removing this critical region for Afghan Taliban would constitute a distinct tactical victory.
However, although the American interest is correlated to Pakistani stability and military cooperation, the American money need not be so tainted. The United States seeks to provide invaluable healthcare and infrastructure developments that could improve the lives of millions of Pakistanis. It is, in a sense, the Marshall Plan of the Middle East. And yet, suspicion and animosity are the primary products of the American investment in Pakistan. Blaming Pakistan is a useless strategy. The American Embassy’s public complaint will likely produce nothing. And the United States should move on with new strategies on how to engage itself more significantly with Pakistan.
The United States cannot ignore the security dilemmas facing the Pakistani state and the extremely negative opinion population has of the United States. The military is suspicious that its nuclear weapons are under intense observation by US intelligence agencies and that India is positioning itself for future assaults on Pakistan. The population has long-held biases that need to be confronted with grass roots efforts, sophisticated information campaigns, and education. Of course, the Kerry-Lugar bill itself was supposed to deal with some of these perception problems, but we cannot expect that the aid would magically create a new environment for American discourse to have legitimacy. Lets be patient. Lets accept that the inevitable concerns Pakistanis may have. If we have confidence in the aid program, then lets give it time to work. Arguing about it will just make the situation worse. Seed projects first need to grow, before development can be accelerated.
