Steel Axe Heads for Peace

Sunday, Tom Friedman recounted in the New York Times how Iraqis feel humiliated now. He quotes from another journalist, Iraq Today’s Mustafa Alrawi.

Alrawi said in Beirut's Daily Star, as reprinted by Friedman, “…Thousands of men, many of whom took pride in their rank and status, were left bewildered and confused.”

According to my old anthropology classes, when cultures meet there's almost always trouble…and unintended consequences. Like the classic (for anthropologists) story of the steel axe heads’ impact on Stone Age Australia.

The past was wiped out by the appearance of steel axe heads for the Yir Yoront people living on the west coast of Cape York in Australia. Well meaning missionaries gave the superior steel axes to those who came to services. These parishioners were mostly unempowered or disenfranchised in the traditional society (like women, children or the otherwise socially weak).

Stone axes were a major building block of the culture. The power structure of the society, religion and family were all built on who lent stone axes to whom and to whom one went to ask to borrow one.

The steel suddenly gave these outsiders the most desired axes. The powerful now had to borrow from the weak and the turnabout disoriented everyone. The ensuing chaos wrecked the native society. Some, they say, just lay down and died, the world having lost all sense or meaning.

OK, Iraq. And the EU-US trade troubles, and the domestic economy, too. One moral: Unexpected consequence happen when you give someone something, like steel, they didn’t have before.

So, sure it’s best to help Iraqis rebuild a country that can grow a democracy. But when you see the unexpected consequences of giving them something so new, people freaking out, violently opposed to change, etc., don’t be surprised anymore.

The culture clashes now are inevitable, part of a large post-Soviet geopolitical, trade, resource, financial and corporate realignment. On the front lines of it all, where the people on all sides are, it’s pretty much a war-zone-to-back-office spectrum of roller coasters—each with very different degrees of stress and disorientation.

Maybe the key steel axe right now is our military technology. It’s pretty much cannon to spears versus any other forces on the planet. That has them nervous from Iran and Korea all the way to Gay Paree (of course, to different degrees.).

Such steel axe breakthroughs are creating a new world order by default. And it’s giving me a new take both on the Former Presidents Bush (I) and Eisenhower.

Perhaps Ike’s warning about the “Military-Industrial Complex” wasn’t so much a plea to shut it down, but to watch it closer. It would create our steel axe superior weaponry and so would play a key role in shaping the future.

Then there’s Bush (I)’s discussion of the new world order. First I thought it was something he was supporting or starting. Now I see it was more of, again, an acknowledgement of the inevitable results of forces at work. The landscape would soon change; get ready for it. (Explaining why he plays a key role in shaping it via the Carlyle Group.)

The new world order, assuming it takes a few years to settle out, now seems to hold change for all conflicting cultures. So when you see our values also bending in the gravitational pull of this collision of cultures, don’t be too surprised, either. Think of the liberties we’ll accept giving up at home, pre and post 9/11.

I've used the axe story to good effect many a time. This time, though, it's got a new twist: This axe, culturally speaking, cuts both ways. ¶ 1:59 PM