From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri 30 Jan 2004 - 05:45:03 GMT
I'd love to see the resident memeticists stop jawboning about the
isolationism of the SSSM and take up the gauntlet of explaining an event
in history (a field probably too soft for memeticists) better than a
social psychologist named Irving Janis. With social psychology being a
"soft" social science this should be an easy one for the memeticists to
conquer and raise the flag of Universal Darwinism. Maybe this would take
some effort on the isolated memeticists part as they would have to find
the source material, Irving Janis's book _Groupthink: Psychological
Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes_ (1983. Houghton Mifflin
Company. Boston) and merely concentrate on one chapter called "In and
Out of North Korea: "The Wrong War with the Wrong Enemy"" which analyses
military policy decisions made by Truman and his advisory group when
considering the push of MacArthur's forces beyond the 38th parallel in
Korea and towards the Yalu river (ie- threateningly close to the Chinese
border) in trying to conquer all of Korea for Syngman Rhee's friendly
gov't against Kim Il Sung's forces. Truman et al discounted the ChiComs
and their bellicose threats and when the push towards the Yalu ensued
MacArthur's forces suffered a massive waved assault by the ChiComs.
Social scientist Janis looks particularly at the decision making process
of Truman and his group, including Dean Acheson resulting in this major
confrontation with Chinese forces which, after the defense of the Pusan
perimeter and the subsequent landing at Inchon allowing MacArthur's
forces to take Korea back up to the 38th parallel negating the success
of the North Korean invasion of the South, resulted in a setback instead
of total victory against the North Koreans. Memeticists might want to
put down the Dawkins and Dennett books and actually read some history
and maybe familiarize themselves with the social psychological concept
of groupthink. Janis, to his non-isolationist credit, refers to
historical works when conducting his analysis through the lense of
groupthink.
I'll leave it to aspiring memeticists to find this book and read it, but
here's a good quote or two...:
(bq) "Social scientists who have analyzed the decision to occupy North
Korea- De Rivera, George, McLellan, Neustadt, and others - infer that
the members of Truman's advisory group genuinely believed that there
were solid grounds for recommending the escalation decision and that
they exerted a strong influence on President Truman." (eq) [ Janis- page
70]
Notice Janis uses the term "social scientists" above without scare
quotes? I wonder if these social scietists were under the spell of the
SSSM...
Another quote:
(bq) "In summary, the main reason for the members' concurrence on the
ill-considered escalation decision was that Truman's advisory group was
adhering to a set of norms that were promoted by the leader and that all
willingly accepted. These shared norms enabled the members to maintain a
sense of group solidarity at the expense of suffering from many of the
major symptoms of groupthink. The most prominent symptoms were excessive
risk-taking based on a shared illusion of invulnerability, stereotypes
of the enemy, collective reliance on ideological rationalizations that
supported the belligerent escalation to which the group became
committed, and mindguarding to exclude the dissident views of experts
who questioned the group's unwarranted assumptions." (eq) [page 71]
George Kennan was one such dissident and Janis [page 60] earlier points
to a possible mindguarding role for Dean Acheson as member of the
in-group.
Now I wonder if memetics and evolutionary psychology can effectively
compete with Janis's groupthink suggestion or if they can put forward
any viable theses regarding this historical event during the Korean War.
For some reason this social science hating isolationism of the universal
Darwinists threatens to translate into a typical Procrustean bed when
applied to a topic so complex as this one. Were are the memes and the
genes selected in the EEA when you need them?
At best someone could argue that the prevailing mindset of
anti-communism played *a* role in this mess, but to rely on this
expanation exclisively would be to greatly oversimplify a complex
phenomenon.
What would the biologists say that historians and social scientists
should listen to?
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