we might mistake them for realities
Context: Colouring Russian views of conflict in the 21st century
Positing strategic culture, as are all cultures, as a semantic overlay or usefully-reductive functional self-representation (if even as that which exists unacknowledged or notionally unconscious) of any state is compelling and undoubtedly carries some gravity but such articulate eloquence often masks a fatal analytical flaw. That is – the logic and grammatical momentum with which a game of analysis cultivates the most plausible or provable solutions to it’s own core assertions is a deep well: the shimmering and giddy fascination or ineradicable Narcissism we all feel when staring into the alluring vacuum of our own intellects. Wittgenstein spoke of the way we might be or become entranced by language; this is no different.
My point is a reflection of the discussion, the narrative – but not the topic. We derive fascinating insights as adaptive algorithmic procedures into which we might insert the dynamic facts of the world as variables and then expect useful interdictions to spontaneously emerge. This is not what happens.
The analysis of history and strategy is similarly, surely, the analysis of computational (or at least logical) assertions which all too often find themselves abstracted one lemma too far from their Objects.
Daedelus Kite 