ZenPundit
Monday, June 13, 2005
 
A QUESTION OF " FRICTION" Posted by Hello

Yesterday, Dan of tdaxp in a beautifully illustrated post, took issue with my use of the metaphoric analogy of " friction" to describe the potentially higher resistance that certain political movements ( in this case Neocons and Theocons) face in attempting to move toward their objectives. John Bolton, for example, could be described as a figure with higher " friction" than Colin Powell or even Donald Rumsfeld.

Dan put forth an interesting argument that the real variable descriptor that I should have used was not friction but "temperature". There is, I believe, a great deal of utility in Dan's discussion of Nodes and relationships within networks deforming under the pressure and " heat" of political conflict. I may put his analysis to work in the near future, it's that good.

BUT... one part of his post troubled me. Dan stated categorically:

"Friction is not an attribute of a single enemy. It is a quality of a relationship between two entities"

This however is not really the case, not even in physics and still less in the domain of politics. While we may have to major, diametrically opposed adversaries - say the NRA and Handgun Control, inc. - they do not conflict with each other in isolation but within the context of all parties able to participate in the political sphere, most of whom have only partial or no real intrinsic interest in the conflict, yet can and will bring their influence to bear to affect the outcome.



I yield to Dan's superior open source graphics capability in describing his model but the model itself is oversimplified to the point of error. Two variables in the political or geopolitical world is not enough. My crude powerpoint doesn't even encompass all of the significant variables in Dan's Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice example.

Frequently, the Darwinian effect of single-issue contests is the adversaries evolve over time into evenly matched ( at least enough of an equillibrium state to deny victory to one another) entities and third parties must be enlisted or opportunistically intervene to tip the scales, for reasons of their own.

Where you are trying to move the status quo toward, for what reason and at what speed will cause all the players who are cognizant of your efforts to recalculate their interests and react accordingly. It's a clash within an interdependent environment - a battle of bewteen subsystems of a larger system, it's just that the latter is ubiquitous so it is sometimes less recognizable.
 
Comments:
Clausewitz talked about 'friction' in a somewhat similar way. I'm not enough of a Clausewitz expert to say much more than this, though.

CKR
 
I agree.
 
In regards to physics, friction is an electrical force. It more closely follows Dan’s quote, "Friction is not an attribute of a single enemy. It is a quality of a relationship between two entities". However, all entities in physics are electrons. It really doesn’t matter how ruff the surfaces are; it’s the sum of the forces between the surfaces (zero or not zero) and the ratio of the force triangle that is present.
 
It really doesn’t matter how ruff the surfaces are; it’s the sum of the forces between the surfaces (zero or not zero) and the ratio of the force triangle that is present.

Great observation!

To continue the analogy, the style of the network (PGP/1GP/2GP/3GP/4GP/&c) only matters in so far as it effects the sum of the forces between the two networks.

-Dan tdaxp
 
"… PGP/1GP/2GP/3GP/4GP/&c) only matters in so far as it effects the sum of the forces between the two networks.”

It really only matters in so far as what your moral values, or lack of, are willing to do to accomplish your goals. Friction is an electrical force. Electricity depends on frequency, which is analogous to the implicit laws inside your head that holds a society together. If you are willing to forgo these implicit laws, say use genocide (Lakota factor), then anything is possible.

4GW becomes easy to overcome. As you say, sooner or latter, a 4GW army has to show itself as a vertical force. When this happens they become vulnerable. If we had bombed the Vietcong as they celebrated victory in the streets of Vietnam instead of when they were hiding inside Cambodia, defeating them would have been assured. However, our implicit laws forbid this to happen, and in my judgment rightly so.

Genocide by any other name, Lakota option, is still morally wrong according to the implicit laws I was taught. Just because it is cleaned up and given a new name, it should still be recognized for what it is. Genocide may have been the only option in years gone by; I simply don’t by into it now.

Genocide, death squads, and torture may still be needed and used in the real world. However, the so-called students of history and science need to look beyond this. We as a country don’t need rehashed ideas of the past. We need to look to the past to understand how we got here, not for the answers for today’s problems. In my opinion, rehashing old ideas serves no one. Upon further study, the first governing counsel of Iraq was the Lakota factor.
 
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