(I) The Irrational Extra

This article, The Irrational Extra. was written in 2002 in three installments. Here I am posting only the first part; it will suffice to make my point.

As you will see below, I was trying to understand the irrational component that I noticed in almost any action that the Isaias regime used to take then. But you will also notice that essay, in retrospect, is terribly wanting, given my poor understanding of the totalitarian nature of the regime then and, consequently, the very tempered approach that I used in describing this irrationality. It will take me another year, with my Equality by Subtraction, to get some grasp on the totalitarian nature of Shaebia. Despite its terrible shortcomings though, I still believe that this essay throws some light on the irrational streak of Shaebia that we witness in whatever it does, the latest one being its terrorist excursions in the neighborhood that finally invited the sanctions upon itself.

I am reposting The Irrational Extra to complement the work that I am doing in explaining the abnormal nature of the Isaias regime in my “Democracy Project” series. That is why I am posting the two together. So I hope my readers will go over the two to get the full grasp of the irrationality phenomenon that is to blamed for all the havoc in Eritrea. Below then is the original essay without any alteration, exactly as it was written then.

One might consciously work against one's own country, company, organization or even family for his own selfish reasons. To such a person, we can attribute all kinds of evil descriptions, and with justification too. But if what he does always ends up serving his own selfish interests, there is one thing that we can never attribute to this person: irrationality. For we can always find a rational explanation as to why he keeps doing the things he does. What is puzzling is when someone actively works against his own self interest for no higher purpose at all. We fail to rationalize his acts under any description - neither under his own interest, nor under some one else's interest that he professes to work for. Many of the GoE's actions have this puzzling phenomenon; they serve neither its interests nor the nation's. Since one cannot separate the interests of the nation from that of the GoE, the nature of these irrational decisions needs a special attention from us, for they are the main reasons for most of the ills that we are witnessing in Eritrea.

The theme of this posting is the disproportionate measures that the GoE has been invariably taking to counter perceived "wrongs"; wrongs that have been "retributively" magnified by taking them out of their relevant context to justify the disproportionate responses that they were being met with. Some of these cases that will be covered in this posting will be: the arrest of the elderly mediators for "congregating without permit"; the arrest of the journalists for "irresponsible journalism"; the persecution of Jehovah Witnesses for "not voting" and for "refusing to carry arms"; the arrest of American embassy employees for "translating sensitive material"; the refusal to let the Red Cross gain access to the Ethiopian prisoners for an old grudge that the GoE held against the organization; the arrest of the student leader and the mass detention of the university students for airing their grievances; and PIA's interview on the subject of NGOs that was conducted in total disregard to the then prevailing context. But before I delve into the subject matter, let me first elaborate on what I mean by a "disproportionate measure".

Here is an old and tried advice that nature and custom have instilled on us: Don’t shout when a simple “shoo!” drives away the birds; do not jump when a simple skip takes you over a pool of water; don't holler when a simple hand signal gets you the attention you want; don’t shoot when a threat keeps away an enemy; don't spank your kid when a simple grounding equally does the trick; etc. Call it the principle of prudence. The law of proportion is at the heart of this principle; every reaction you take to counter an action ought to be proportionate to that action, and every action you take to achieve a certain goal ought to be proportionate to that goal.

Put in general terms, the principle of prudence goes like this: Act with economy; the measure that you want to undertake ought to be only sufficient enough to make your end materialize, even when you are not aware of the consequences that might follow had you opted for the extravagant way. The emphasis is on the qualification: you don’t have first to realize the consequences of your shout, your jump, your hollering, your shooting or your spanking in order to refrain from undertaking them. This is especially true in politics, where one can only take a full stock of one’s own actions only in retrospect; only when the damage is already done and over.

It is true that someone who is frugal in the measures that he takes is apt to miss the desired goal now and then. That is, the measure might sometimes come out a little bit short of being “sufficient enough” to do the required job. No doubt then there are some drawbacks to the principle. But even in those instances, it advices us, “It is better to err on the frugal side than on the extravagant side.” Here is why: There is always a second chance if you err on the frugal side; all that you have to do is increase your next step a bit more to meet the sufficiency condition, and this time you might succeed in achieving your goal. But if you err on the extravagant side, you cannot roll back the negative consequences that will have followed your disproportionate measure. At most, you can only aim for damage control.

The primary aim of the principle of prudence is to eliminate the “irrational-extra” from a contemplated action; that unnecessary addendum that has been solely responsible for almost all the fallouts that we have been witnessing with dread and trepidation currently unfolding in Eritrea. The “irrational extra” (a phrase that I am coining for lack of a better term) is what you get when you subtract the “shoo!” from the shout, the skip from the jump, the signal from the hollering, the threat from the shooting and the grounding from the spanking. It is that part of our irrational act that has to be avoided – or, short of that, at least minimized as much as possible – in any contemplated political decision. And it is in meeting this requirement, I will argue, that many of GoE's disastrous decisions have come to fail dismally.

Why then do people take that extra step – that irrational extra – if it is an idle wheel that does no work at all, if it is nothing but a harmful appendix that goes above and beyond the necessary conditions for the achievement of the desired goal? Often it is because the decision makers have these conflicting twin-objectives in their minds, which could only be "reconciled" with the secondary objective (the illegitimate one) often derailing or overriding the primary objective (the pragmatic one).

It is not as if one is unable to take an account of the extravagant action under a different explanation, where the wheel would definitely be set in substantive motion. Say, for instance, you are making a terrific jump over a small pool of water, where a simple skip would have sufficed, not because you are not aware of the latter option but to impress the neighborhood girl who is watching you. It is then the case that what is irrational under one explanation might not be irrational at all under a different explanation. The problem is, that in the political decisions that I will be dealing with soon, it is only under one explanation - the one that gets invariably overridden - that the nation's interests would have been well served.

Many political decisions have this double identity mentioned above; one might find a perfect explanation for an action characterized as a retributive one (i.e., primarily aimed to punish), but might not find any coherence at all in that same action characterized as a pragmatic one (one that has the national interest at its heart). Usually then it is some elusive value that a leader or a party holds that often supersedes the pragmatic approach; an approach that would have made much more political sense.

At least, in the example given above, no harm is done as a result of taking that extra step: both goals – avoiding the pool of water and impressing the neighborhood girl – are achieved without any negative consequences. That is, nothing has been derailed or overridden. But it is not hard to come up with examples where the irrational extra comes saddled up with grave consequences. This often happens when you ask the wrong question, a question that doesn’t take account of the context within which the apparent problem finds itself embedded, a context vital to the pragmatic goal you would rather achieve. Let me provide an example.

Suppose you are planning for a desert camping with your family, and you are aware of the presence of mosquitoes in that particular area where you want to set up your tent. Your question might be: “How do I keep the mosquitoes out of the tent?” By focusing only on this question you might come up with a tent completely sealed that not even air would be able to seep in. But that would definitely be a question that wouldn't be able to take account of the context, a question that would eventually lead to a solution more harmful than the advantage that you would be able to get from achieving your own narrowly focused goal: the desert is so hot that you might end up suffocating your family. Let’s call this type of question a context-insensitive question, one that is asked in total neglect of the wider context; one that is narrowly focused on the "incomplete" objective.

In the above example, a context-sensitive question would go as follows: “How can I keep the mosquitoes out without preventing fresh air from coming through?” That might lead to a solution where you end up buying a tent that is partially covered with a net, intended to keep the mosquitoes out but to let the air in. The irrational extra is then often a product of a decision reached by asking an incomplete or a context-insensitive question, but that which takes a pernicious turn when it is applied in political decisions.

But why do misguided leaders end up asking "context insensitive" questions, especially if they don't seem to benefit from them in the final end? One reason is that in politics the advantages and disadvantages of a step one wants to take are not as clear-cut as the example I have provided above. But more than that - i.e., an explanation that takes account of the pernicious turn - , it is the overriding value that a leader or a government holds (say, a retributive one) that gives the context-insensitive question an undivided focus, a focus so intense that the relevant context simply melts away into the background. You might say that it is this "idealized" or "absolutized" focus that provides the distorted magnifying glass whereby the perceived wrong comes to overshadow the very context in which it finds itself embedded; a context which could either have ameliorated the perceived wrong, or even totally altered it into an innocuous status.

If one takes a careful look at the above provided example (i.e., the mosquito example), there is no reason at all that you, after having taken a careful assessment of the situation, should not end up asking the context-sensitive question. That is, there is nothing that prevents you from dispassionately assessing the pros and cons of the two options; in the end there would be no "emotive values" that would tip your final decision one way or the other. But in the case of a misguided political decision, even though its wider ramifications, in most cases, are transparent enough to get the decision-makers forewarned, they get ignored "in the heat of the moment" where the "idealized", and therefore often personalized, objective completely takes over at the expense of the qualifying context. The decision-maker finds it impossible to detach himself from the circumstances so as to acquire that distance essential for a balanced assessment.

In the first example, the overkill measure brings no negative consequences because of the total absence infringing variables in the context. It doesn't matter whether you signal or holler to your friend in a middle of an uninhabited forest, because there would be no one that would be disturbed by your hollering. In the second example, there is a clear consequence if you opt the extravagant way, even though there are no emotive attributes attached to your options that would force you to lean one way or the other. In the third case - the ones that we will be looking at - there are emotive values that pull the respective official to favor the overkill method; that being the pernicious turn taken.

Coupling and decoupling out of context:

In the subject matter that we will be looking at, there are two main ways perceived problems are taken out of their context, dragging with them the dreaded overkill method we have been examining in the above. The first takes place when a "subversive action" and the agent of that action are held apart from one another in the reactive response that is generated, where they ought to have been held together - call this the decoupling problem. The second takes place when the two are held together in the reactive response they generate, where they ought not - call this the coupling problem. Let me explain.

Suppose, as you are walking along a side walk, you get showered with a glassful of water from the top of one of the buildings. You race to the top in a fury to punish the culprit, only to find out that this "culprit" is a five-year old kid. You might still want to reprimand him as mildly as you can, but you would find resorting to a harsher form of punishment unwarranted. Here then is an example where you cannot hold the act and the agent of that act separate from one another in the kind of response you take; the context forces you to couple them together.

Here is an example which requires of you to do just the opposite. Suppose you happen to have a sadistic father who likes to surprise you at your most embarrassing moments just to humiliate you (or any other family member). Let’s also add that by now you fully realize that confronting your father openly on this issue would only invite further abuse. So you come up with this clever solution that targets the problem without targeting the father. You are able to teach your dog to run back to the house and wag his tail as soon as he smells your father coming. This way you are able to finding a way of eliminating the surprise element that is the source of your abuse, without aggrandizing your father. This then is an example where the act and the agent are held separate from one another in one's reactive response; that is, the context forces you to decouple the two in your response.

Now armed with the tools developed from the above analysis, let me turn my focus to the main issue: whether what I have pointed above holds true to many of the GoE's decisions that ended up with grave consequences that always outweighed their advantages. Here are again the major decisions that I want to address: the arrest of the elderly mediators, the arrest of the journalists, the persecution of Jehovah Witnesses, the arrest of the American embassy employees, the Red Cross controversy, the mishandling of the Asmara University students problem and the NGOs controversy. I will address the first one extensively and the rest briefly. In this part, I will briefly deal with the arrest of the journalists, to show how the irrational extra, in its "coupling problem" form, works.

The arrest of the Journalists:

Let me assume, for the sake of argument, that the total clamp down on the media was necessary to achieve the goal that the GoE set for itself. [Here I am not agreeing at all with the step taken, but only that I can make my point without arguing otherwise.] Here, I am assuming that the GoE has reached this decision by actually asking a context-sensitive question - as it knew best -, by taking all relevant context into consideration. Lets say that, after having done that, the GoE found to its satisfaction that the media was very divisive – along regional, religious, and political lines - , irresponsible and, above all, not in the least sense constructive. So let’s assume that “the clamp down on the media” was not only an achievable goal but also a desirable one; one that was bereft of any undesirable irrational extra.

Now the critical point is this: If the above holds true, then the journalists were “pernicious” only in so far as their newspapers were in circulation. Take away their newspapers, their sting totally loses its venom. They would turn out to be as ineffective as any layman in the general population. At most, they would turn out to be nine more "disgruntled" individuals among hundreds of thousands of others (to take a safe estimate). Here is then where the irrational extra comes in: if the GoE could have achieved its goal by putting the private newspapers out of circulation (which it did), why did it find necessary to take that extra step – that irrational extra – to arrest the journalists? That step was definitely an idle wheel that contributed nothing to the achievement of the primary goal, since all the objectives of the GoE's primary goal would have been considered attained when the newspapers were no more in circulation.

Here is where the coupling problem comes in. Where eliminating the "subversive act", totally severed off from its agent, would have done the job, the GoE opted for an overkill measure that unnecessarily coupled the two together, undoubtedly generating consequences that are still haunting the nation. A prudent approach would have been similar to the step that you have taken when you successfully eliminated the element of surprise that had been the main cause for your humiliating embarrassments; all without provoking a retributive action from your dreaded father. So how do we rationalize the GoE's decision?

As I have stated before, what is an idle wheel under one explanation is a wheel that is set in substantive motion under a different one. Here is then where the retributive value keeps intervening. What about if the GoE wanted to punish the journalists, to teach them a lesson because they have not heeded its warnings, because it has had so many close encounters with them, because they have been the "mouthpieces" for dissenters, etc. (Looking at what the escaped journalists have been saying, one thing at least has been made clear: there never was an amicable relation between them and the government)? Now the retributive focus that was set on the journalists was so undivided and so intense (“we will get them!”) that the question that was meant to achieve the primary goal was completely made devoid of its context. The urge to punish for its own sake gets its own momentum to finally derail the very objective it set out to achieve in the first place. Once the problem gets personalized, it becomes difficult to hold the act - the free media - and the agents of that act - the journalists - separate from one anther. And the results have always been the same: unnecessary fallouts that the nation has to live with; in this instance, Eritrea would be known as an intolerant and undemocratic nation that jails its journalists. Here is how the 2002 year started for Eritrea, with one newspaper characterizing it as follows (from the pressure group Reporters Without Borders): "The jails holding the most journalists in the world are in Iran (18), Burma (18), China (12), Eritrea (8)and Nepal(7)." What a great company to be identified with!

(Written on 12/18/2002)

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