Alex Burns

How To Uncouple A Dyadic Cyclone: A Timeline Re-Script

2010-06-23T15:03:21Z

Conceived and enacted on the Solstice evening of 21st-22nd June 2010.

I recently went through a therapeutic process using several different treatment modalities to deal with some unresolved issues such as 'status change' after a past relationship breakup. As part of this, it is usual for people to write letters to those people who they need to make amends to. These letters are not always sent, and, in most cases I have done so. They probably come across as slightly self-indulgent to others.

Below is one for a specific person I am no longer in contact with (with identifiable details in contrast to research ethics guidelines to have 'de-identifiable data' - I will explain to the person why if they ever contact me directly for clarification - for starters, I hope the person is safe and well). That said, the person may be unlikely to ever see or read this message. And, if they do read it, they will likely have a different view of the events described and their (non-) significance.

As Douglas Hofstadter observed in his book I Am A Strange Loop (Basic Books, New York, 2007), we can often end up with only self-referential 'simulations' or fleeting memories of the people in our deep past who were once close to us. These self-referential 'simulations' are often nothing like what a person is, now. Even if you have not seen a person in a long time --- in say 12 years --- such self-referential 'simulations' may be reactivated during periods of anxiety, stress and anniversarial issues.

This is meant as an 'appreciative' note before the memories fade. We may not be able to change our past yet we can change the significance and meaning-making that we imbue it, thus freeing our lives for the present and the unfolding future.

At least some of this did actually happen. The rest is a 'Just So' story --- a subjective 'narrative' that is constructed as a 'healing fiction' and meant to be discarded when the therapeutic intervention ends.
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Timeline re-scripting using Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall's 'timeline' methodology for Neurolinguistic Programming and 'brief' therapy intervention. For illustrative purposes only.

Important: Use of therapeutic intervention techniques by untrained practitioners or incompetent use with 'good intent' can be dangerous to both the practitioner, analyst and the analysand(s). A practitioner must be able to document their training, relevant experience and competency in the delivery of frameworks, procedures, instruments, techniques and tools.

Sources: Diane Vaughan's Uncoupling: Turning Points in Intimate Relationships (Vintage Books, New York, 1990); Jeffrey E. Young and Janet Klosko's Schema Therapy: A Practitioner's Guide (Guilford Press, New York, 2003); Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall's Time Line Therapy and the Basis of Personality (Capitola CA, Meta Publications, 1988); the Sir James Goldsmith footage and interview in Adam Curtis' documentary series The Mayfair Set (1999); the dream transmissions in John Carpenter's film Prince of Darkness (1987); Pedro Almovodar's film Talk To Her (2002); and the 'poison pill' defence in hostile takeover attempts during mergers and acquisitions.

***

It is early 1995, probably around the evening of Saturday, 18th February. You are in your bedroom of the share flat in Barnes Way at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. You decide to go to a party at another flat. You get invited to a lot of parties, get to meet a lot of different people, and are very good at attracting and getting the attention of people you desire.

There are about 40 people at the party, packed into the flat's lower level and overflowing into the walkway outside. The flat's stereo is skipping between CDs by Bob Marley, the Butthole Surfers, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, early Madonna and George Michael.

In a corner is a young male in his early 20s, with glasses and red hair, and dressed in black. He is talking with a programmer flatmate of his about Douglas Hofstadter's idea of 'strange loops', the imagery of Garbage's film clip for 'Vow', and John Lilly's research into dolphin-human meta-communication.

"Who is that guy?" you ask your friends. "He's a strange one," they reply. "Silent type, deep waters. Don't go near him."

"What the hell," you think, "I can handle him." You approach and introduce yourself. "I'm Alex," he replies, and turns away from his flatmate to talk one-on-one with you, alone.

"What are you studying here?" he asks. "Economics major," you reply. "I'm about to establish my own, entrepreneurial import-export company and maybe become a financial lawyer."

Alex asks: "OK, so what are you studying or reading right now?"

You reply that it's a biography about the British entrepreneur and speculator Sir James Goldsmith - either Ivan Fallon's Billionaire: The Life and Times of Sir James Goldsmith (Arrow, London, 1991), or, more probably, Geoffrey Wansell's Tycoon: The Life of James Goldsmith (Grafton, London, 1987), but the copy is back in your flat, on the shelf above your bed, next to a fluffy pink elephant toy, your stereo and a tin can of your most treasured secrets and past loves.

"Yes," he replies, "Goldsmith was very low-key and smart: he foresaw the 1987 stock-market crash and how globalisation would change global capital markets and investment flows." He pauses. "Goldsmith was a tough corporate raider and private equity investor in Mexico, Russia, India and China. He had the foresight to see the volatile trends that Dow Theory and Technical Analysts would mistakenly think were their friends." And for effect: "He also knew when to get out of things before they went bad, unlike others."

***

He takes out a small, shiny black device you have never seen before. It has an Apple logo on it, the word 'iPod', a small screen, a red rotary dial, and headphones. On the back of the device are four signatures in white. You recognise one of them: U2's Bono. He mentions that he recently asked the British author J.G. Ballard on a phone call if he had seen U2's ZooTV multimedia installation designed by Brian Eno and Emergency Broadcast Network.

"Where did you get this?" you ask him.

"I'm a cinema studies and politics student who reviewed things and wrote interviews for the student newspaper Rabelais," Alex replies. "I just got off a lecture tour in Sydney following Noam Chomsky around, you know, like that 'gonzo' journalist Hunter S. Thompson?

"Anyway, sometimes a company uses our class as a 'test audience' for a new product, or sends the student newspaper a new toy to play with. It took us about a year to convince the companies that we were a 'legit' operation and not just a bunch of rebels without a pause.

"You might see this, ah, secret prototype in full production, in a few years. I have to send it back in a couple of days. The 'non-disclosure agreement' I had to sign was about 20 pages long --- but the company did wonder if others would be interested in the device."

He presses the red button. The screen lights up. He scrolls using the rotary dial, finds a menu item, and clicks it. The screen goes black for a second. He hands the device and headphones to you.

***

The video on the strange, black device starts. On the screen you see:

• A montage of footage about Sir James Goldsmith from the Adam Curtis documentary The Mayfair Set (BBC, London, 1999). Curtis narrates about Goldsmith's marriage at 20 to the Bolivian heiress Maria Isabel Patiño, his early deals, his Mexico estate, his unsuccessful attempt to takeover the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, an interview with Goldsmith talking about his book The Trap (1993), and the reactions to his death from pancreatic cancer in 1997, including from Tony Blair. Will he really be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as Curtis says?

• A title card with the words --- 'Student Short Film - Alternative Asset Class Investment: Risk Arbitrage'. The title card fails to reveal a black googly-eyed fish swimming in a fish tank that you used to own. The title card fades to grainy, scratchy black and white footage, as if you were watching a 1920s silent film from your deep, ancient, and nostalgic past.

• It is sometime in early-to-mid 1996. You are excitedly putting up streamers for a house screening party. It is the finale for the Avedon trial case in Steven Bocho's first series of Murder One (1995). Something about a second series with the Australian actor Anthony LaPaglia, but the soundtrack is maybe glitchy and you don't catch all of the conversation.

• It is sometime in mid 1997. You are standing with your mother in front of Alex's personal research collection. He has a lot of Arkana/Penguin books on George Gurdjieff, Peter Ouspensky, and something called the Fourth Way, and dealing with World War I and the 1917 Revolution in Russia. Alex tells you that his university library has a number of rare books because the library was built in the mid-to-late 1960s, during the 'Age of Aquarius' and the Human Potential movement. He has also found several other rare books in the local Theosophical Society bookshop and in second-hand bookstores. They deal with unusual subjects: Boris Mouravieff's 'Gnosis' trilogy (partly, on the Eastern tradition of Russian Orthodox Christianity as a constructivist model of medieval 'courtly love'), and a slim volume by Hassan Shusud (on the Khwajagan or Muslim 'Masters of Wisdom' of Central Asia, as a model of inter-generational cultural transmission and renewal).

Your mother comments on the title of one book that you pull out. It is James William Gibson's book Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Vietnam America (Hill & Wang, New York, 1994) which Alex has a publisher review copy of. He tells you that when he first went online in late 1993 he found Usenet newsgroups where people were very angry about the Ruby Ridge shootings and how U.S. law enforcement treated the Branch Davidians at Waco. He explains the book is interesting because Gibson was doing an anthropological study of U.S. paramilitary culture at the time that foresaw the cultural antecedents of Timothy McVeigh's involvement in the Oklahoma City Bombing on 19th April 1995.

He picks up a different book and hands it to you. It is by the dolphin and floatation tank researchers John Lilly and his wife Antonietta Lilly: The Dyadic Cyclone: The Autobiography of a Couple (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1976). He points at the word 'dyadic' and suggests it will be very important for whoever you are in a relationship with.

• It is Saturday, 18th April 1998 in the early evening. You are sitting on a lounge-room couch with Alex and his friend Terry Carty who is a fan of Elvis Presley, the early Rolling Stones, early Bob Dylan, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters. The music discussion ranges from Jagger/Richards to Leadbelly's song 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night?' on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged in New York. Terry has bought a rare bootleg that he has told Alex about. It is a soundboard tape of an early Wings performance that has Linda McCartney's backing vocals isolated from the other musicians and the venue audience. You all laugh at how out-of-tune Linda McCartney sounds. You then turn on the lounge-room television to see the day's news. The lead story is that Linda McCartney has just passed away from liver cancer, on 17th April.

Stunned, Alex walks outside to your shared house front-yard. He gazes up at the sky, mumbles something about the dust-jacket for the first edition of Philip K. Dick's posthumously published novel Radio Free Albemuth (1985), something called 'VALIS', a writing syndicate in Austin, Texas, with a strange sense of humour, and shakes his head in disbelief. Your car's starter engine will not work. Alex returns inside and looks at Terry and yourself: "Something very weird has just happened."

Soon after this event you change universities and undergraduate degrees. Change has been 'on the cards' for awhile. You finally break up with Alex; it's tough for a few months yet you are stronger and more focused for the experience. You embark on a new life with new opportunities and new friends. You see Alex socially a few times after that but he takes the relationship's end pretty badly and things don't work out: he confronts feelings of suicidal ideation at your last face-to-face meeting. It is more like REM's 'The One I Love' than 'Losing My Religion'.

• It is Friday, 21st September 2001. You are watching the U.S. President George W. Bush on the television announce the Global War on Terror, in a landmark joint sitting of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, filmed on 20th September due to the time difference between Australia and the United States.

The same day as Bush's speech Alex is on a plane to New York --- on his 28th birthday --- and cringing, laughing about you whilst watching the films Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and Shrek (2001). He wishes the in-flight entertainment system had the BBC mini-series Edge of Darkness (1985). As you know, romantic comedies are not his usual thing. Thankfully, there are no episodes of Sex and the City and he skips over Friends.

When he gets to New York City and stays with his friend, author Howard Bloom in Park Slopes, Brooklyn, it is a late autumn afternoon. Alex stands on the roof of Bloom's apartment block and sees the dust cloud over Ground Zero. At that moment he has four thoughts. First: It's been a week and the dust cloud is still here - don't see that in the newspapers or media coverage! Second: I am alone here, I wish you were here to see this with me, where the hell are you? He turns and sees a brief flash of you behind him on the rooftop. Third: I've got a feeling something pretty bad is now going to happen! Fourth: New Yorkers are being nice to each-other for once, but I wonder what it's like somewhere else where bombs fall all the time? What is it like for those people?

A few weeks later he is in Newcastle to speak at a festival called This Is Not Art. He leaves a garbled, late night phone message at your mother's house, wishing you a happy birthday. Soon afterwards, your partner writes Alex to mention you have talked about him, but does not leave a reply email address.

• It is near the time of your death, sometime far in the unknown, onrushing future. You are surrounded in hospice care by your closest friends and family. You have had a rich, deeply satisfying life despite its difficulties and occasional disappointments. A thanatologist - someone who studies the human experience of death - plays quiet harp music in the background.

At the moment near your death, as you drift peacefully away, your mind begins to spool back through your life, like the Lost finale (2010) or how David Fincher's film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) ends --- revisiting all of the people --- some major and some minor --- who you had a positive impact on and whose lives you changed. As the sea of faces flies past, you feel a sense of warmth, light, gratitude, acceptance, and above all, unconditional love.

Alex is one of the faces you see flash past you. He is holding your pink, fluffy elephant toy. He tells you that whilst your relationship with him in this alternative future was life-changing, it was like that between Sir James Goldsmith and the Bolivian heiress Maria Isabel Patiño: short, painful, and bittersweet, and only one of many other relationships you have had since. He says the Australian artist Vali Myers once looked at him sadly, before you met him, and told him not to worry about women or to get fixated on one: he would meet plenty of them.

"What did I mean to you?" you ask. At that point your mind returns to a moment in late 1995, in your flat, when Alex says he has just felt your thoughts change. "Yes, that's normal for a couple," you reply, thinking of the Taoist tantric practices you initiated Alex --- and many others --- into, without perhaps explicitly being aware that this is what you were doing.

He was finally beginning to thaw, with your help.

His image flickers. As you see his eyes, he says: "I once read a pulpy novel in my teens that explains all of this, and it's not Stephen King's The Stand. I also later corresponded with John Shirley, the scriptwriter of The Crow, a film that deeply affected you, and although I have a copy, I still have not seen it. I am sending you this message from the year 1-9-9-"

The video suddenly ends with static and the sound of white noise.

***

"Well, hey, I bet you're relieved you never had to go through all of that!" Alex laughs. "It's just a student film project, all very abstract. Thanks for being a 'test audience' for five or seven minutes." He takes the strange black device from you, smiles and turns to leave. "It's late, I need a coffee, and I have some writing to do, and deadlines to meet." He walks out of the party just as Robby Krieger's guitar starts to play the opening riff on the flat's stereo to 'The End' by The Doors.

You feel the moment is 'staged' and he is being too serious and, at the same time, totally self-indulgent with you. Your friends were right to warn you. You change the stereo's CD player to Madonna's 'Erotica' instead. Way more fun and appropriate music for a university flat party on a Saturday night, and to get people on the dance floor. And, hey, it's early: only 1am. At least two more parties to go to tonight, and new people to meet. Plus: anyone who decides to work on a Saturday night when there are parties to go to must be crazy or socially phobic!

A few days later you decide to return the Goldsmith book to the Borchardt library at La Trobe University. When you get to the pedestrian walkway between Barnes Way, Kingsbury Drive, and the main campus, Alex is waiting at the lights. "Let me drop that back for you," he says, "you have more important things to do."

You hand the Goldsmith book to him without saying a word. The pedestrian lights change. He walks across Kingsbury Drive and does not turn to look back at you.

Far away, you hear the La Trobe clock bells chime the number thirteen.

You never see Alex again.

PhD: Academic Publications & Scholarly Research History

2010-05-23T06:25:42Z

For the past five years I've been working on 'draft zero' of a PhD project on counterterrorism, intelligence, and the 'strategic culture' debate within international relations theory and strategic studies.

The project 'flew past me' during a trip to New York City, shortly after the September 11 attacks, and whilst talking with author Howard Bloom, culture maven Richard Metzger, Disinformation publisher Gary Baddeley, and others. An important moment was standing on the roof of Bloom's apartment building in Park Slopes, Brooklyn, and seeing the dust cloud over Ground Zero.

The 'draft zero' is about 240,000 words of exploratory notes, sections, and working notes; about 146,000 of these words are computer text, whilst 80,000 is handwritten (and thus different, and more fragmentary).

In the next couple of weeks, I'll write about the PhD application process, and the project when it gets formally under way, to share insights and 'lessons learned'.

For now, here's a public version of my CV and academic publications track record (PDF).

This is part of the background material prepared for the target university's formal application process. In the publications section, the letter and numbers relate to Australia's Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) coding for the annual, institutional process of Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC); and the 2010 final rankings of peer reviewed journals for the Australian Research Council's (ARC) Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) program. Universities and research institutions in Australia use the ARC, ERA, HERDC and DEEWR codings for bibliometrics, inter-institutional benchmarking, and to inform the strategic formulation, development and review of research investment portfolios.

20th May 2010: On Michael Milken

2010-05-20T05:19:09Z

In November 2009, the Australian cultural policy author Ben Eltham and I published a conference paper and presentation on Twitter's role in Iran's 2009 election crisis. One of our conclusions was that as a social network platform Twitter can be prone to rumours and two dynamics: information cascades (people making the same choices) and rational herds (a form of social learning in which individuals self-organise into groups, usually on the basis of shared affinities, identity or preferences). We cited Christopher Chamley and Mark Schindler's work, whilst Cass Sunstein has written important work on how information cascades and rumours spread.

Collectively, these authors observe the tendency for people to forward and filter information without checking the pertinent facts, evaluating the motives of their source, personalising the 'other', and also not considering the original, appropriate context.

One of the best examples of this phenomenon is the pre-Twitter career of financier and philanthropist Michael Milken (personal site). In the early 1970s, as a young analyst at the leveraged buyout firm Drexel Burnham Lambert, Milken foresaw a new market in high-risk securities that blue-chip investment firms would not touch: high-yield or 'junk' bonds of debt-laden companies. As depicted in Connie Bruck's excellent book The Predator's Ball (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), a source for Adam Curtis' must-see documentary The Mayfair Set (BBC, 1999), Milken became a major driver of the 1980s private equity boom. Despite being implicated in the Ivan Boesky arbitrage case, and being barred for life from the securities industry, Milken has subsequently reinvented himself through the Milken Institute think-tank and other activities.

The power-users of social networks like Facebook and Twitter may joke about gaining 'world domination'. As a self-styled 'Master of the Universe', Milken actually achieved this goal, if only for a brief time. Consider the strategic dimension of how Milken did so. As a true innovator, he foresaw new markets and macroeconomic trends a decade before others did. He developed powerful, financial innovations in debt securitisation, mergers and acquisitions, and risk arbitrage. He built a loyal and private network, together with the organisational capabilities to leverage deal-flow. He also controlled the public dissemination of market information through conferences and media interviews. He understood the subtle power of crafting and framing a media image around themes which appealed emotionally to people --- entrepreneurship, freedom, and being the revolutionary vanguard --- which Curtis argues was really a personal agenda to cement Milken's influence, power and social status. Many of Milken's strategies tapped the dynamics of rumours, information cascades and rational herds, apparent in the 1980s private equity boom.

Perhaps this is why Milken tried (unsuccessfully) to convince Bruck not to publish her book.

6th May 2010: Iron Man 2

2010-05-06T01:34:12Z

"I've privatised world peace!"

In the early first act of Iron Man 2, Industrialist-turned-philanthropist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), the then-CEO of Stark Industries goes on a well-orchestrated charm offensive. He gets on the front cover of Forbes, Rolling Stone, Wired, USA Today, and other major publications. He spars with rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), whose private military contractor Hammer Industries has major problems in getting its prototype weapons systems to market. The exchanges between Stark, Hammer and Senator Stern (Gary Shandling) at a Washington DC news conference are some of the funniest about civil-military relations since Herman Kahn's stand-up comedy in Air Force talks about Cold War nuclear deterrence.

After their Monaco battle, Stark confronts villain Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) in a police holding cell. As a Russian political realist, Vanko will have nothing of Stark's carefully cultivated public image and theatrics. Paraphrased from memory, Vanko tells Stark: "Your family's reputation is built on lies and stealing others' work. You're doing this [charm offensive] because your family has killed many people, and now you feel guilty about it." In other words, the utopian vision of Tony's father Howard Stark --- part World Fair 1939, Walt Disney and Buckminster Fuller in a 16mm demonstration film --- has shaky foundations.

Vanko is cast as the film's villain because he knows Stark Industries' secrets and why the hopeful communitarian vision that Stark promotes has a big dose of personal hypocrisy. Stark says one thing in public and does the opposite in private. Both 'hero' and 'villain' have understandable motivations. The character structure is typical for scriptwriting manuals on Hollywood blockbusters and genre franchises: Hammer playing a comedic, ineffective sub-villain who offsets Stark and Vanko, whilst Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow and Lt. Col James 'Rhodey' Rhodes (Don Cheadle) are Stark's allies. Vanko's Cold War back-story could have put Iron Man 2 on the same level of villain genesis as the X-Men (2000) prologue.

Some reviewers feel that Iron Man 2's second act is too low-key. For me, it involved character development over breathless action scenes: director Jon Favreau introduced 5 or 6 major characters, including Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) of Shield. In retrospect, Iron Man 2 will be viewed as both a franchise sequel, and as a transition film in the broader Marvel Universe, which leads into Kenneth Branagh's Thor (2011) and Joss Whedon's The Avengers (2012).

5th May 2010: On Troth (Loyalty) and Decisions

2010-05-05T05:06:05Z

As a young student journalist in 1994, I was given the opportunity to interview the Australian artist Vali Myers. We talked about her life in New York, and at a wildlife sanctuary in Il Porto, Italy. "The Sicilian dons treated me better than the New York City art dealers who tried to rip my work off as cheap postcards," she explained. A true witch, Myers encountered the authentic Sicilian Mafiosi. In contrast, most of us live with a third-hand cultural stereotype: Mario Puzo's Godfather novel and Francis Ford Coppola's film trilogy, which has shaped our understanding of loyalty, honour, and inter-group conflict.

The word 'loyalty' is traced to the Old English word treoth or Troth, which means 'truth' or 'pledged faithfulness'. I first encountered Troth in the Gurdjieff Work and then in writings of American runologist Dr. Stephen Edred Flowers, who has observed that this is the Northern, Germanic equivalent of Puzo and Coppola's ideal. Loyalty thus has a far deeper and richer context than popular stereotypes may portray, and has deep Indo-European roots.

Flowers makes several points about Troth in the context of a Traditionalist discussion. What follows is a personal interpretation, so go to the original sources. Flowers contends that the quality of Troth that guides personal conduct is often missing in contemporary civilisation, in that many activities can involve subtler forms of lying. In part, the Traditionalist critique observes that 'outer seeming' can become estranged from 'inner being'.

Troth also suggests a type of knowledge, sense-making and perspective: the ability to discern truth from falsehood, out-of-context quoting and disinformation. Finally, Troth is observable --- in people's conduct, how their networks evolve over time, in their work or artifacts of their inner states, and in why people make decisions, not just the surface-level effects or what other people infer.
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Practice-based disciplines use various methods to create the conditions of Troth: mentoring, professional associations, codes of ethics, and sensitivity to patterns of contexts and situations. The Media Alliance ethics guidelines for Australian journalists, the CFA Institute's framework for financial analysts, the CPA Australia rules for accountants, and research ethics guidelines in universities are detailed examples. Each of these attempts to remanifest the positive aspects of Traditionalist forms, such as (Medieval) guild structures or the transcultural transmission of knowledge from teacher to student. For individuals, these structures impose a check on potential ego-inflation, and guidance on how to navigate ethical dilemmas.

Historically, societies have granted these professions a social contract, because Troth implies a custodian role. It's a little like how US government officials and armed forces swear allegiance to defend and protect the US Constitution as a document that manifests an ideal, rather 'loyalty' to an individual President or political administration. Thus, whilst Troth certainly involves being 'true' to family and friends, in its fullest sense it reaches out to something bigger and perhaps more abstract than the individual who has 'bounded' rationality. In the professional code of ethics suggested above, these may be the media, capital and investment markets, stakeholder reporting, and the integrity of medical and university research. In short, the Freedom given also implies a Demand: the willigness to act when circumstances require you to do so. The challenge is: what circumstances, how to act, with whom, and to what end?

Flowers understands this tension, so did Myers, as probably do Puzo and Coppola. Many people however do not, perhaps because they mistake principles for force or violence. Perhaps this is why there is so much debate and confusion about Machiavelli's book The Prince, which is really about loyalty, leadership and is credited, along with the Treaty of Westphalia, with conceptualising the sovereignty of nation-states. Although the popular image of him does not capture this, Machiavelli understood that strong-willed people who have their own visions and worldviews will inevitably clash and polarise, if their respective worldviews are not mutually appreciated or accomodated. The English magus Aleister Crowley and the journalist William T. Vollmann reached similar conclusions. Vollmann went so far as to write an extensive 'moral calculus' on this, that takes Machiavelli's insights into a transcultural realm.

In writing The Prince as a guide for leaders on how to cultivate Troth or loyalty in their followers, Machiavelli built on Thucydides' insight that people are self-motivated by "fear, honour and interest". Both Machiavelli and Thucydides foreshadowed the current interest in cognitive biases (anchoring, framing and positive illusions), and in particular, why high-valence issues often lead to escalated or polarised situations that were avoidable.

In contrast to this 'classicist' tragic awareness, popular stereotypes to problem-solving emphasise vengeful anger. The operatic finale of Coppola's first Godfather film where Michael Corleone's enemies are gunned down remains a powerful example. Asymmetric and guerrilla warfare is sometimes proposed as an alternative: David Ucko conveys how this really works. For a different view, consider the Camorra in journalist Roberto Saviano's book and Matteo Garrone's film Gomorrah. In both of these, and in Coppola's two later films, the Mafiosi are in an alliance-style 'balance of power' situation more like what Thucydides and Machiavelli perceived, and which has dominated the international relations school of political realism. Rather than revenge, these works explore the role of political patronage for family and institutional survival. This is why, for example, even Lost's Smoke Monster or the embodiment of Evil is a patron who has allies, coherent and explainable goals, and a worldview.

Individuals choose their own Troth over false allegiances, collectivity, and the whims of political patrons. This may initially be branded as 'disloyalty' yet is observable, over time, if it is really just separate life orbits. Thucydides and Machiavelli understood that this individuation process may be part of what differentiates some emerging leaders from being followers. Muzafer Sherif's Robber's Cave experiment reached other similar conclusions about the predictability of inter-group conflict: it's a small world; the person you write-off today or feel angry with may have been helpful tomorrow, if the conflict and frustrations had just been handled differently. Sherif found two major reasons for this: the power of in-group views of a polarised out-group, and the escalation dynamics that entrench stances.

On an historical and societal scale, this individuation process is what partly what drove the Reformation and the founding of the United States. Do you really think that the Declaration of Independence authors were really that worried that King George III did the 18th century equivalent of blocking off their Facebook, Twitter and email account access? No: "We hold these truths to be self-evident . . ." --- and in doing so the US Founding Fathers brought an ideal into being. If they had stayed at home and worried about expressing a valid worldview then history would have turned out very differently. Alexander Hamilton: "See you at the next MeetUp Duel . . ."

How do we differentiate patrons, teachers, allies and collaborators who are worthy of Troth?

Quality of attention. Understanding the individuation process and its stages. Allowing people to awaken and cultivate their own Troth rather than demanding 'loyalty' for patronage. Knowing their own fallibility and weaknesses. Having others to keep them in-check and grounded. Being able to 'agree to disagree' with others, rather than blow-up and alienate people and institutions. Being able and willing to mend fences. And, occasionally, perhaps going offline and doing something that has a small, real impact in the world, like saving an animal or helping a total stranger.

17th April 2010: On Tom Barnett's 'The Pentagon's New Map'

2010-04-17T10:52:28Z

From a note to strategic foresight senior lecturer Dr. Joseph Voros:

I have Tom Barnett's first book The Pentagon's New Map. He has spoken with Don Beck and the Integral Politics people. I haven't yet read his second book or later work, which may have changed.

Conceptually, Pentagon's New Map appeared after a mid-'90s debate between neo-Kantian cosmopolitanism and the classicist school of strategic history and tragic realism. The former resonates in programs at Columbia, Cornell or RMIT, through people like Mary Kaldor, Alexander Wendt and Saskia Sassen. The latter prevails more in the military colleges and realist-oriented political science departments, as exemplified in the work of Colin S. Gray, Michael Handel, John Mearsheimer, Ralph Peters, Stephen M. Walt, and Robert Kaplan's reportage. So, Pentagon's New Map appeared at the end of the Clinton Administration and the start of George W. Bush's presidential first term.

Barnett rapidly found an audience amongst US foreign policy people that were either outside the process or looking for new ideas. To me, the strength of his first book lies in an awareness of dynamics, compared with other popular books at the time which had one or two-factor explanatory models. From a 'history of ideas' perspective, whether he was aware of it or not, Barnett synthesized ideas from Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics (1979) on the neo-realist importance of structural variables, from Immanuel Wallerstein's centre-periphery model, and from Carter era strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose Grand Chessboard of envisioned Eurasian geopolitical integration recently inspired Muse's prog-rock album The Resistance. Thus, part of the appeal of Pentagon's New Map may have been that it was a 'half-step' along from the thinking of the time, and that there was an earlier theoretical base.

Whilst co-writing an academic paper on Twitter and Iran, last year, I revisited Barnett's first book as part of the background research. I was surprised to find that, in the case of Iran at least, whilst the conceptual frameworks and language were different, Barnett's solutions were similar to the prevailing 'neoconservative' school of thought. For example, he felt that Iraq regime change would alter the Middle East, and that US strategic information operations to support Iranian protesters would also facilitate regime change, a worldview traceable to Samuel P. Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) and also made in Robert Kagan and William Kristol's edited volume Present Dangers (2000), which outlined the 'neoconservative' approach to salient foreign policy issues. Again, this may help to explain why his first book found an appreciative audience: Barnett's solutions resonated with other advisers, and with the popular works of Tom Friedman and Benjamin Barber. As discussed, the same issues apply to any theorist or analytical framework, and reflect artifacts of a thinking process rather than the person.

This raises various issues for foresight students and practitioners who may want to work in a 'worldviews'-type area like foreign affairs or trade. The trans-disciplinary focus of foresight and futures work can mean that practitioners gravitate to 'meta'-frameworks which may lack rigorous theory-building, theory-testing and evaluation. To minimize this, it helps to have some background in the history of ideas and culture, and political philosophy, particularly as Peter Katzenstein, Alaistair Iain Johnston and Patrick Porter demonstrate in the 'strategic culture' literature. Foreign policy frameworks that differentiate between diplomacy, informational, military, economic and other levers are useful, such as Terry Deibel's Foreign Affairs Strategy (2007). Finally, the varied work of these scholars illustrates this rigour and cycle of theory-building, theory-testing and evaluation: Stephen G. Brooks on global security and trans-national corporations, Jon Sumida on Clausewitz and other classical military theorists, Stephen Biddle's multi-method analysis of military power projection, and Dexter Filkins' multi-perspectival conflict reportage.

16th April 2010: A Journalist In 30 Minutes

2010-04-16T10:06:22Z

Tonight at a party in Melbourne's Nicholas Building, collaborator Ben Eltham reflects to an academic on the problems he has had with past journalist graduates. "Some of them were useless," he quipped. "I can make you a journalist in 30 minutes. Here's a chair. Here's a phone. Here's a story lead. Call someone. Now."

The academic replied: "Perhaps you hired the wrong graduates?"

Despite a purported industry crisis, journalism is seen by some universities as a 'hot' area for potential students who are interested in Web 2.0, citizen journalism, and other topics. It provides a meta-framework to bring a range of academic backgrounds and skills into a cohesive department. If there's a demonstrable market and student demand, it's also easier to get courses through Academic Board approval and course quality assurance processes.

Eltham's quip points to another reality: journalism is a craft or practice that requires a combination of sense-making, situational awareness and action. At some point, you have to go out and Do journalism, like a writer staring at a blank page, or a stockmarket trader placing a trade. For Eltham and myself, this approach perhaps comes from our mutual experiences in the student press and writing/editing for online publications. In 1994 student elections I suggested that student media and journalism departments follow the model at many US universities, where journalism graduates do an internship with the paper.

In contrast, at some of the new university journalism courses are attuned more to a Web 2.0 paradigm. To me, you can learn the basics of Del.icio.us, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, wikis, or whichever platform you choose, also in about 30 minutes. Yes, it's a powerful amplifier or ecosystem, with its own dynamics. Yet it's not a replacement for core skills, if you have ambitions to research, write, edit and publish original material, instead of reposting or relinking to existing material, via social network sites.

Perhaps that's why Eltham and I are also fans of long-form journalism that requires these skills. And, as Barry Saunders and I found, perhaps also why the very best investigative journalists are emerging from other arenas that share this focus on craft and tacit skills --- investment banking, intelligence analysis, police detective work --- and not necessarily university journalism courses.

You can forward or re-post a message in 30 seconds. You can learn the basics of journalism in 30 minutes. A social media platform can amplify this, and build in recursive audience feedback and reflection cycles. It can take a lifetime however to master and deepen your appreciation of journalism's craft, sense-making and tacit knowledge.

24th March 2010: An Open Letter to DSE

2010-03-24T02:13:13Z

Whittlesea Leader journalist Mark Smith's article 'Trapped roos shot in South Morang' (22nd March 2010) raises some concerns about DSE's decision-making process:

1. Who made the 'go' decision for a 'controlled shooting' of the kangaroos? What was the decision process, timeframe, and options considered? Why was the 'controlled shooting' acted upon, despite a "working group" to relocate the kangaroos? Was the 'controlled shooting funded by taxpayer money?

2. At any time, was the bushland site owner Westfield consulted about the kangaroos, and if so, what was their preference for resolving the situation? At any time, was Westfield a factor in the decision to use 'controlled shooting' to resolve the situation?

3. Given that "the health and safety of these kangaroos was at risk" and that the 'controlled shooting' was viewed as a "tough decision":
(a) Why was 'relocation' not acted on as an alternative to the 'controlled shooting'? and
(b) Why were there no other contingency plans acted on that would have kept the kangaroos alive?

4. What was the status of the "working group" formed to relocate the kangaroos? Why was the "working group" not consulted or informed about the 'controlled shooting' until after it had happened? Again, why was 'relocation' not pursued as an alternative?

DSE's clarification on these matters would be most appreciated, thanks for your time.

23rd March 2010: The Callan-Einhorn Battle

2010-03-23T09:16:47Z

Provisional go-ahead to work on a new journal article with Ben Eltham.

CFA Institute's strategies after the global financial crisis: raise awareness of the CFA Charter through regional investment conferences such as in Bahrain, with CFA Bahrain; and new memoranda of understandings with capital market regulators.

A profile of Lehman Bros. fallen CFO Erin Callan revisits an early chapter in Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail. Sorkin recounts how Callan is promoted too quickly by Lehman's board, and then forced into a corner by market volatility. As the firm's CFO, Callan then adopts a charm offensive strategy with analysts and financial media. The strategy fails, most spectacularly when Callan has a war-of-words with David Einhorn, the hedge fund manager of Greenlight Capital who 'shorts' Lehman's stock. Guardian scribe Andrew Clark blames the 'glass ceiling' and trader floor misogyny. Perhaps true, but for me there's another, more compelling explanation: Callan opted for media-savvy public relations strategies which Einhorn as a masterful short-seller was trained to see through. For more on his investment research process, see Einhorn's book Fooling Some of the People All of the Time (Hoboken, NJ John Wiley &.Sons, 2008).

CNBC: The Fall of Erin Callan, CFO (March 2010)

CNBC: David Einhorn on Lehman Bros. and Erin Callan (June 2008)

22nd March 2010: Ulver

2010-03-22T10:17:57Z

A vivid nightmare.

Insight during a morning meeting: to follow the money and find the 'edge' in an industry, listen to the 'water cooler' discussions at investment conferences. The topics may turn up in academic journals about two years later.

Foxtel senior executives and I agree on something: too much Andre Rieu on the Ovation cable channel.

PhD 'draft zero' progress: several journal articles I had missed on 'strategic culture' --- one argues that it is a research program instead of a variable. Six pages in to John Hutnyk's article 'Jungle Studies: The State of Anthropology', Futures 34 (2002): 15-31; this exemplifies the fusion of critical realism, cultural studies and post-Marxist critique of universities that I saw in the mid-to-late 1990s. I wondered: Is this the kind of research design that probably led ARC assessors to rank Futures as a B-level journal for the 2010 ERA rankings? A page on how post-September 11 'conflict anthropology' has 'borrowed' ideas and insights from anthropological research.

Found in notes pile: two detailed outlines for unfinished, never-submitted journal articles.

The Norwegian band Ulver as a model for the unfolding creative process: a shift from three influential black metal and folk metal albums, to prog rock, ambient glitch, and then to film soundtracks, and jazz-influenced symphonic rock. It helps that Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg owns his label Jester Records. Occulture bonus points: Ulver's second album, rumoured to have been recorded on an 8-track in a forest after the band spent their advance money, turns up in HBO's The Sopranos.

21st March 2010: Bloomberg on Michael Lewis and The Big Short

2010-03-21T04:24:49Z

Wrote two pages for PhD draft on Alastair Johnston's generational model of strategic culture analysts in security studies and international relations theory.

Image Source: Amazon.com

Michael Lewis on Bloomberg's 'For the Record' to promote his new book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010). Amazon's #1 book although the reviews are affected by end-user problems with the Kindle version. Lewis clearly has had extensive media training.

Major points that Lewis makes:

The five main people that Lewis profiles are outsiders --- stockmarket analysts rather than bond market specialists --- who had to learn about the subprime mortgage market in order to track stocks that they were interested in, and who then decided to short the market.

Financial innovation should be regarded with some skepticism - we can see examples that led to greater inefficiencies rather than more efficient markets, so some innovation can have a downside, and this may be clear only in retrospect. Lewis believes collateralised debt obligations should be more transparent, i.e. traded on exchanges and clearinghouses, so that all parties can manage their counterparty risk.

Financial service firms are now more professional than what Lewis saw at Salomon Brothers during the late 1980s. Yet Wall Street is now far more cynical: bonuses, incentives and hypercompetition have eroded the partnership ethic that keeps these firms stable.

Reviews of The Big Short: The Big Money, Washington Post.

A 20th anniversary piece on David Lynch's Twin Peaks has a couple of interesting anecdotes on how Lynch dealt on-set with his actors.

15th March 2010: Breaking the Taboo on Targeting Civilians

2010-03-15T11:17:01Z

Morning meeting: get people face-to-face on sensitive issues, avoid escalation by email, and remove roadblocks. Some interesting anecdotes on what really happens on an overseas consultancy.

Late afternoon meeting over tea and donuts with collaborator Ben Eltham in Melbourne's Nicholas Building. Discussion: EMI's troubles; how ERA will affect two articles we are working on; Australian academic and zine maven Anna Poletti; why journal workshops have bad percolator coffee; sick buildings; and the psychological impact of glass desks in offices.

Evening: PhD 'background research' viewing the first episode of Gwynne Dyer's mid-1980s series 'War': archival footage of World War I nationalist mania, the Western Front trenches, machine guns, German zeppelin raids, and World War II aerial bombings, ending in the Trinity nuclear test and Hiroshima. The nationalist mania, and generals' decision that led to the sacrifice of 60,000 English in one day to German machine guns and no-man's land, are examples of George Gurdjieff's 'terror of the situation'.

An insight whilst viewing Dyer's series: the Napoleonic innovation of national conscripts and total war, and German air-raids, broke the taboo on targeting civilians. Prior to this, 19th century Russian anarchists usually targeted police and political leaders. After this, many groups acted on the taboo, for different reasons: anti-colonialist and nationalist revolutions, radicalisation in the shadow of the Vietnam War and other conflicts, strategic tactics such as during hijack negotiations, and religiously motivated violence. This hypothesis appears to be a close fit to David Rapoport's waves thesis and to Mark Juergensmeyer's research program. Is this testable using the Correlates of War data-sets?

14th March 2010: Following Your Hunches

2010-03-14T11:51:38Z

Gardening, housecleaning, writing, playing with our border collie/blue heeler dog Monkey.

I last ten minutes into John McTiernan's film The Hunt for Red October (1990), before falling asleep. Alec Baldwin's portrayal of analyst Jack Ryan is cited in management literature as a case study in following your hunches. Author Tom Clancy claims to have used open source intelligence sources for his 1984 novel.

12th March 2010: The Gentle Art of ERA Self-Defence

2010-03-12T11:05:52Z

Generating a range of different grant and funding ideas for a client's 'program of research'.

Tony Boyd in today's Australian Financial Review ('How Myer float sprang a leak', p. 64):

The joint managers of the Myer IPO, Goldman Sachs JBWere, Macquarie Group and Credit Suisse, did a masterful job in locking up just about every broker in Australia.

Were there no 'contrarian' views or Monte Carlo testing of Myer's post-IPO valuation price?
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To me, the Polarian Method also provides guidance on how and when to use different types of data (objective universe 'facts'; subjective universe 'framing' and sense-making), and how they differ. I see some similarities with action research models of Donald Schon and Chris Argyris who include a subjective learning loop. It would be interesting to disseminate Edred's framework into the wider research community, to improve the quality of research design and training. Radio Free Runa lecture #26 on the Polarian Method is a good start.

Spotted during coffee: 21C alumnus editor Ray Edgar interviews Alien, Blade Runner and Tron and designer Syd Mead.

From a Facebook reply to Anna Poletti, of This Is Not Art and zines on an ERA post:

AMLE Journal (Academy of Management Learning & Education, A*) had a paper critical of the US experience.

I have seen the 'research excellence' debate from several viewpoints: on the preparation team for a university-wide audit, and in a research support role. ARC's ERA GM, Leanne Harvey, says that there is a lot of confusion: they did not design ERA to be a pure performance management exercise, nor to prevent people from disseminating work in the field's perspective. In part, it is being driven by US and UK schemes, by international standards bodies like AACSB and EFMD, and by administrators who have had conflicting information, do not understand research cultures, or who have tried to apply private sector models of performance management in an inappropriate way. This can be a variant on GE's Jack Welch, whose '20-70-10' system which fires the 10% lowest performers per year, or in the case of universities, casualises them as sessional staff with no research time or support.

Some counterarguments you might make:

1. As your PhD was granted in 2006, you are still an Early Career Researcher (ECR). Have a 3-to-5 year 'program of research' with multiple projects, articles, collaborations, and grant and funding sources (Category 1 apart from ARC, Category 2 and 3, foundations, and philanthropic organisations). You have used the ECR time to build your reputation in the field, your publications track record (articles and the MUP 2008 book of your thesis), and to develop international collaborations. Biography is C-ranked, Auto/Biography is A-ranked. All this is necessary groundwork for external, competitive grant applications that will be feasible, realistic, and have a higher probability of funding success. You recognise that this preparatory work is necessary in the ECR phase, in order to stand out with your international colleagues, against other competitive research teams.

2. Some administrators may misunderstand some aspects of what the ARC wanted ERA to do. Harvey said that not all subdisciplines have A* or A-level journals: nursing is one applied discipline where most journals are ERA C-ranked. ERA wants people to publish in the most appropriate journals for the field (although, ARC assessors still prioritise A* and A-level publications in competitive grants). She said ERA does not have an equivalent to DEST's book register: this was considered and abandoned because of the 'influential small press' issue you raise. ERA was not designed for performance management; and a 'research active' status should include other factors (e.g. teaching load, Masters and PhD supervision, competitive grants, publications).

3. Harvey said that Field of Research (FoR) codes are just as important as letter rankings. An individual journal article can have up to 3 FoR codes. For you, I'm presuming the relevant FoR codes may include: 1903 (Journalism & Writing), 2005 (Literary Studies), and 2103 (Historical Studies). Keyword/title searches and FoR codes will now allow you to 'screen' the ERA list to hone the appropriate 'target' journals for your research. You may find there are journals outside this, such as in anthropology and sociology, that may accept articles with an auto/biographical methodology in the research design.

4. You are building a international team with a demonstrable track record of collaborations, and with the level of specificity in methodology and research design. This is a talent development and management model.

5. The notion of 'research excellence' or 'innovation' --- as 'quality' rather than 'quantity' --- needs to be contextualised as a strategy, and preferably tailored to each individual research at the School level. Suggest they read Scott Berkun's book The Myths of Innovation (O'Reilly, 2007).

6. Look at a process like David Allen's GTD or Berkun's book Making Things Happen (O'Reilly 2009; first edition published as The Art of Project Management) that allows you to capture this stuff in an efficient manner, and that doesn't create an 'administrative burden'. You might frame it around HERDC annual data collection or the annual performance review, or the 'research active' policy and procedure.

Hope this helps, and good luck --- you have inspired and supported a lot of other people.

PS. Additionally, I see Southern Review is A-ranked and has an FoR code of 1608 (Sociology). Canadian Review of American Studies is B-ranked. So, you could also argue that you are 'targeting' higher ranked ERA journals. Use Scopus and Web of Science for citations/impact factors --- they have gaps in humanities coverage. To my knowledge, ARC assessors do not yet regard Google Scholar as sufficient enough for citations/impact factors in academic publication records.

Rosie and I enjoyed Tarnation very much, nice work on the journal article.

11th March 2010: Clarity of Thought

2010-03-11T12:06:50Z

Creating a survey using Qualtrics software.

Attended a great panel session on 'clarity of thought' and decision-making, run by The Churchill Club Melbourne, in which part of the meeting was held under the Chatham House rule. I had previously met Dr. Paul Monk of Austhink who explained to the audience how analysts avoid decision traps. Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles of Victoria Police gave some very grounded, practical advice on investigative judgment and how to manage small teams. Dr. Amantha Imber of Inventium explained how she uses evidence-based research and findings from academic journal studies in a commercial environment. Lots of 'actionable' ideas from senior practitioners, and good audience questions.

For the PhD research design, trying to get my head around the event studies coding, logistic analysis, time-series trend estimation, and ordinary least squares analyses in Matthew Baum and Tim Groeling's academic study War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).