Bad Sociology

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 region already juggling half a dozen civilizational overlays — needed a high‑skill, European‑trained human capital enclave.
The theory went something like this:
- Insert a modern, technically proficient population
- Give it Western institutional templates
- Anchor it with external patronage
- Watch the region blossom into stability and progress
It was the sort of plan only a committee could love.
2. The Local Operating Environment
The Levant, through its long history, is a civilizational hinge, not a blank slate:
- Semitic mosaic substrate
- Hellenistic and Roman overlays
- Arab–Islamic civilizational rhythms
- Ottoman imperial canopy
- Colonial cartographic surgery
- Urban micro‑civilizations stacked like geological strata
Into this delicate, layered ecology, the planners inserted a European‑trained node with:
- Western administrative habits
- High‑skill technical capacity
- A diasporic civilizational identity
- External strategic backing
Verdict:
“Dropping a modernist enclave into a frontier basin is like installing a fusion reactor in a thatched hut. Impressive, but the fire brigade will be busy.”
3. The Creative Minority Problem
Toynbee would say Israel’s founding population was a potential creative minority — capable, disciplined, institution‑building.
I would would add:
“Creative minorities are fine things, provided they don’t spend all their creativity on the neighbors.”
The enclave’s success — agricultural innovation, military capacity, scientific output — created a performance asymmetry with surrounding polities. In terse phrasing:
“Nothing irritates a region faster than a neighbor who keeps winning the science fairs.”
4. The Tension System
Israel would count as an expansive instrumentarium for its sponsors. Not just a dumping ground for colonial settlers, but an example of cultural diffusion which emphasizes the material levels of culture: pragmaticism that leaves art, lit, and poetry swipes behind in the Mother Country. The consultant would call it a permanent diplomatic migraine.
Why?
Because the enclave:
- Did not assimilate to centuries-old Levantine civilizational rhythms
- Was backed by external great powers
- Sat atop contested territory
- Introduced a new civilizational layer incompatible with the older ones
The consultant’s summary:
“If you want stability, don’t install a high‑voltage node in a region wired for low‑amperage pluralism.”
5. The Wisdom Question
So was it wise?
The consultant’s answer:
“Wise? For the planners, perhaps. For the region, it was like giving a jet engine to a man who asked for a bicycle.”
In other words:
- Strategically clever for the powers who wanted a reliable, capable ally.
- Civilizationally reckless for a region whose morphology depends on layered pluralism, not sharp discontinuities.
- Operationally effective in building a modern state.
- Structurally destabilizing in a basin where every overlay already strains the substrate.
6. Consultant’s Final Note
“The Levant has survived Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, and colonial map‑makers. It will survive this too. But next time someone proposes installing a European‑trained enclave in a civilizational hinge, I suggest we check whether the hinge is rated for the load.”
Here’s a critique of the Mandate‑era planners — sharp, sardonic, and aimed squarely at the bureaucratic mentality, not at peoples, religions, or identities. Symes or Kirkbride’s humor always punches up at committees, not down at populations, so I keep that spirit intact.
Mandate Office Memorandum 47‑B: “A Modest Proposal for Rearranging the Levant” (Filed by the Committee for Strategic Genius, Subcommittee on Unsolicited Improvements)
The Mandate Office is where good ideas go to be over‑explained.
1. Opening Remarks from the Chair
The meeting began, as such meetings do, with the Chair clearing his throat in the manner of a man about to improve a region he has never visited.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “the Levant is a mess. Fortunately, we have a plan.”
Jack, seated in the back, murmured: “That’s what I was afraid of.”
I might as well confess that, failing at exercising auctorial restraint in my storytelling, I gave in to Charles Fort's concept of a cosmic hierarchy. My protagonist is the protege of Raymond A. Palmer's "King of the World," a hidden global sovereign, not political but metaphysical. A being or intelligence directing human affairs from behind the scenes. Gene Roddenberry tried a couple of pilots with this idea in mind: Gary Seven, Questor. Sometimes framed as a surviving elder of a subterranean or ancient race, sometimes as a cosmic administrator in a Fort‑inspired hierarchy, he presented himself to Jack during Jack's quest for his missing father, the mystery airship inventor. He did not announced himself openly. To Jack he was a divinity student who sneaked away from his tour group in Turkey to pursue a quest of his own, seeking proof for a partial diluvian theory of Noah's Flood. This was all phony, like his name "Hesperu Pusadik." Later he reveals himself and the hierarchy begins training Jack for a new role. He has already advised FDR on creating a pluralistic economy for the post-Depression United States (which really existed). But now...
2. The Grand Scheme
The plan, unveiled with the solemnity of a coronation, was simple:
- Take a corridor basin with five thousand years of layered civilizations
- Add a cartographic grid drawn by men who think rivers flow in straight lines
- Insert a high‑skill, European‑trained human capital enclave
- Expect everyone to applaud
The Committee called this “stabilization.”
Jack called it: “Dropping a grand piano into a canoe and hoping it improves the balance.”
3. The Planners Explain the Region
The Mandate planners, armed with maps printed in London and confidence printed in bulk, explained the Levant:
- “A simple place,” they said.
- “Merely needs tidying,” they said.
- “A few adjustments,” they said.
Jack scribbled in his notes: “The Levant: a region so simple it has confused every empire since the invention of sandals.”
4. The Committee Debates Assimilation
One planner suggested that the new enclave would “naturally integrate” with the surrounding civilizational ecology.
Another agreed, noting that “integration is inevitable when everyone behaves sensibly.”
Jack leaned over to the stenographer: “Integration is inevitable,” he whispered, “in the same way that a cat inevitably integrates with a room full of rocking chairs.”
5. The Question of Local Sentiment
A junior analyst timidly asked whether the local populations might have opinions.
The Chair dismissed this with a wave. “Local sentiment,” he said, “is a matter for later committees.”
Jack wrote: “Translation: we’ll deal with the consequences once they’ve grown teeth.”
6. The Final Vote
The Committee voted unanimously to proceed.
They congratulated themselves on their foresight, their wisdom, and their ability to solve millennia‑old civilizational tensions before lunch.
Jack closed his notebook: “Another triumph for the Mandate Office,” he said. “They’ve managed to turn a complicated region into a complicated region with a committee attached.”
7. Jack’s Closing Dispatch, filed later that evening: “The planners have installed a high‑voltage substation in a low‑amperage basin. They expect harmony. I expect paperwork.”
Then he cursed the well-intentioned hierarchy for meddling with the DNA of the dolichocephs wandering the Pluvial Sahara. Eventually they wandered through the Levant basin, the Syrian Saddle, to mingle with the Neolithic garden cultures. At times antic, creative, funny, at other times brooding (or seeming to), they were irresistible to the college of priestesses who ruled Anatolia (now Turkey or Türkiye) and spent a lot of time in their boys' club lodges to escape their amorous hostesses, not always successfully. Jack's ancestors.
His gift for profanity was natural. He carried the TS polygenes

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