After Such Knowledge

Max Weber had his own kind of institutional seize-up of the gears. He called the process "petrification" or Versteinerung. The iron cage is the result. Or that's how sociologist Talcott Parsons translated it. When the Democrats abandoned the New Deal, this is what their party became. In Weber's variant, it means: rules become rigid procedures become ends in themselves offices become self-protective adaptability collapses the living spirit of an institution dies Rules replace judgment. Procedures replace purpose. His description is more layered, but it amounts to what most people would easily recognize as bureaucratization. But the phenomenon is more widespread than the popular stereotype of rule-following replacing goal-seeking. It's called rationalization. This word is best interpreted as what industry did when it adopted the assembly line. What made me cry myself to sleep was William Irwin Thompson's contention that the same thing had happened to system...

The civil governor of Kashgar thought he was one of those green-eyed devils. Toynbee argued that Islamic Civilization contains two major branches: - Arabic branch - Iranic branch He did not treat them as separate civilizations, but as distinct lineages within one civilizational organism — analogous to Byzantine vs. Russian within Orthodox Christianity. Toynbee’s justification rests on three pillars: 1. Different civilizational substrates The Arabic world’s substrate is: - Semitic linguistic base - Tribal–urban fusion - Early Caliphate political forms - Hijaz–Levant religious geography Iran’s substrate is: - Indo‑European linguistic base - Achaemenid–Parthian–Sasanian imperial memory - Bureaucratic-administrative statecraft - Zoroastrian and Mazdean cosmology as deep cultural sediment These substrates produce different civilizational grammars even under the same religion. This is exactly the kind of structural divergence Toynbee cared about. 2. Different creative minorities ...

Islamic Civilization always had a structure like a bazaar and farmers market under a large, overarching political-military canopy. Living communities below paid lip service and consented to providing tribute and recruits to the upper level. The Ottoman Empire was one of those crepuscular elegies described by Spengler as Winter. Like all such empires, it was slated for penetration the way ancient Rome and the Manchu dynasty were. Britain was the biggest player in this process of liquidation and reconstitution. Too late to hire a consultant but assuming the Foreign Service had possessed the nous to do so... Twit Imperial Dispatch: “The Case of the Imported Brain Trust in the Wrong Neighborhood” Subject: The Wisdom of Installing a European‑Trained Human Capital Node in the Levant “The trouble with strategic geniuses is that they always assume the locals will applaud their cleverness.” 1. The Strategic Brainwave Some bright fellows in London and later Washington decided that the Levant — a...