Hegemony or survival: final

I've finally finished reading Hegemony or Survival. It carries on for quite long, or so it felt, making similar or the same points. But as far as providing evidence for its arguments is concerned it's not a criticism, the volume of notes and references at the back is impressive although I maintain that I can't verify their validity. I'm sure academics have done this for us already so hopefully someone has or will publish an illumination.

Despite all the exposures in the book the main message is not simply that America has associated itself with atrocities worldwide since WWII. Rather it traces the ideology (Wilsonian idealism) that holds it in place, and demarcates the agent responsible: the US government.

The title refers to the fact that the U.S. government deems the U.S.'s maximising short-term (elite) interests to be more important than global interests and the future. The future is a significant dimension in this statement, because the way things are going the survival of mankind is at stake. There may be no future for our children.

From my own point of view it was interesting to note why U.S. interference and ideological coercion has such fundamentalist reactions in the Islamic parts of the world. Talk about exploiting basic human weakness ... Group theory explains that in the simplest of ways, individuals who belong to a group gain social identity. This surely includes being born into a certain society or religion. People invest themselves in their lives, which gain meaning in the context of their social identities. This sense of belonging is not only deep-rooted, but has self-esteem implications. Now this is important because as it turns out, if your "self" is threatened you will try to maintain your level of self-esteem. And the easiest - and in some cases, and here I mean an individual (or a society) under attack - the only way is by reacting in an extreme way. Thus a fundamentalist reaction is somewhat natural in the face of tremendous threat or confrontation from outside. Think of an animal driven into a corner.

To describe it succinctly: the invested self, if it has no external source for esteem, MUST retaliate in order to maintain itself - even unto death. The effect of "external source" should not be underestimated - this relates as well to expected benefits in the afterlife, if one sufficiently believes in it.

This description also makes it obvious why submission can become an option: it may seem more beneficial than death for positive self esteem possibilities. Following this logic the winner may claim that the submitters (the losers) have willingly chosen this option when, really, there was no choice in lieu of the threat of something even less desirable to the loser. But this is the familiar utterance of the U.S., dismissing dissenting as people who do not understand what the losers (eg. Iraq) "really want".

And so on. It was a good read.