Curtis Gale Weeks

5GW: The War on Confusion

His tongue was framed to music,
And his hand was armed with skill,
His face was the mould of beauty,
And his heart the throne of will.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson, Power.)

Whereas we might say that a 4GW world requires a “War on Terror,” we should recognize that a 5GW world requires a “War on Confusion.”

Insofar as terror is the primary button contestants in any 4GW conflict wish to push – it is so easily available, indeed more available now than ever before thanks to the proliferation of various “super-empowerments,” and it is so easily recognizable since the targets themselves publicize their fears through the conduct of 4GW strategies (Us v Them); thus, triggering reflexive responses to induce a fight-or-flight reaction has truly become child’s play for adults on a broad, complex playing field – the War on Terror cannot ever be forsaken, even in a 5GW world, although our methods for fighting it may be improved.

Leaving aside the choice of flight, those who choose to fight the War on Terror presently fall into one of three main camps on a case-by-case basis if not always on a universal basis:

1. Those who would rattle a larger sabre – in some cases, employ a larger sabre – in order to produce a much greater fear in their opponents which, one hopes, will cause those opponents to choose flight or at least not to fight and thus remove terror from the equation.
2. Those who, though rattling and perhaps using a larger sabre when necessary, would create “safe space” for larger numbers of peoples in order to remove terror from the equation; ideally, those who would continue to use terror (see: #1 above) would come to see that terror is no longer efficacious.
3. Those who find the best method to be the utter destruction of their opponents, thus defending against further terror by removing those opponents who would use terror as a leveraging mechanism. (During operations, these may often appear to fall into #1 or #2 above.)

As these three camps come into conflict, equilibriums are found between competing camps of competing factions; the War on Terror is never won although it may occasionally and very briefly appear to be postponed. The reason for this is the fact that those in each camp, #1 through #3, presuppose an adversary.  The War on Terror is not a war against a specific opponent but a war against terror itself.  Insofar as an adversary can be imagined, terror remains potential, the button producing it remains available, and, whether actively fought or latent in remission, the War on Terror continues.  It might be said, and rightly said, that #1 through #3 above are 4GW methods for fighting other 4GW foes; and, that anyone fighting in the style of 4GW continuously advertises, by delineating an Us v. Them, a terror button too tempting for potential foes to resist pushing. The delineation of an Us v. Them is certain to create foes, simply because those living under that paradigm will act on that paradigm; Us v. Them is a performative.

This 4GW v. 4GW dynamic is pervasive in our contemporary world, especially as societies, cultures, ideologies, religions – globalized or localized, widely recognized or idiosyncratic, ancient or relatively new, it makes no difference – and so forth come into daily contact on a seemingly never-ending basis.  It is as Arherring recently described it when considering WikiLeaks and issues relating to transparency:

The bottom line is that information, raw information, is endlessly mutable. Everything you believe about what you observe depends upon all of the preconceptions you carry in your personal orientative baggage. If you want to believe something, even in the face of evidence against its truth, you will find a justification to go on believing it. That mechanism is hard-wired into our brains. Without a context (and sometimes even with context), you will create a context for what you observe.

<snip>

It is fundamental in a 5GW world to realize that nothing is inherently neutral. All actors have agendas, bias, preconceptions and will strive to promote their point-of-view over all others.

(“Wikileaks: The Uncertainty of Transparency in a 5GW World,” Arherring, Red Herrings, 12-9-2010.)

In his post, Arherring signaled (though perhaps unwittingly) the confusion we have about the concept of transparency.  For some, the type of mass ejection of raw data into the world being provided by WikiLeaks is the height, breadth, wealth, and culmination of transparency as an operative feature for our world.  This is the concept of transparency Arherring attacks; without context, or even with context, such raw data can be viewed variously by individuals who on the one hand cannot view all that data simultaneously and who on the other hand have an internal and limited context for organizing and understanding the raw data that they are able to view.  Without using the term, Arherring describes a Utopian view of transparency in which it is hoped – nay, believed – that the mere existence of unlimited raw data defines transparency and will lead to a much better, more “open” world without conflict.

 

Skepticism as Defense

The argument against the Utopian view of transparency is an argument for a type of skepticism.  A different concept of transparency may be required, in which the point of transparency is to become a transparent eyeball:

In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years.  In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all…

(Emerson, from Nature)

Overlooking Emerson’s habitual metaphysical-romantic approach to much of what he wrote, we might say that the more pragmatic take-away from this passage is simply that Nature, that is the World, has always presented an incalculable array and set of raw data; and that, more data, via WikiLeaks or any other source, is really no addition.  What the Utopian Transparencists mean when they refer to the data “added” by actors such as WikiLeaks or any number of agencies and processes shunting data into the public view is simply:  previously unobserved data that has now been made available for the individual eyes of more actors; data “added” to the observational niches of more people.  This data already existed, in one form or another.  Transparency, then, for the Utopians describes a type of pathway between that data and the individual observers. From the most Utopian point of view, that pathway must be sufficiently broad to reach all potential observers.

From a more metaphysical although still pragmatic approach, the take-away from Emerson’s passage, when considered in tandem with Arherring’s blog post, is that transparency, far from being in the eye of the beholder – thus, rather than being defined as more raw data captured by the eye of the beholder –  requires not only a consideration of raw data but also the existence of an eye of a type capable of interacting with that raw data in, for lack of better terminology, a meaningful way.  In other words, the limited internal context, or ego, must not only be taken into account but also largely de-throned.   Whereas the ego may create meaning from a limited interaction with all the available raw data, the existence of a vast array of raw data which go unobserved has a bearing on the truth of any given observation beyond the meaning the individual ego can create from its limited access to that raw data..

 

 

 

[The below is, er, raw data still to be rewritten/incorporated for the conclusion, as I continue to revise, rewrite, expand, and so forth….]

 

Gentlemen, I make you my compliments. I do not wish to exaggerate, but you are at the headstreams of what might well be a mighty fertilizing and a health-giving river.

It would certainly be a grand convenience for us all to be able to move freely about the world—as we shall be able to do more freely than ever known before as the science of the world develops—to be able to move freely about the world and to find everywhere a medium, albeit primitive, of intercourse and understanding.

Might it not also be an advantage to many races and an aid to the building-up of our new structure for preserving peace?

All these are great possibilities, and I say, let us go into this together. Let us have another Boston Tea Party about it.

Let us go forward, as with other matters, other measures, similar in aim and effect. Let us go forward in malice to none and with good-will to all.

Such plans offer far better prizes than taking away other people's provinces or land, or grinding them down in exploitation. The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

It would, of course, Mr. President, be lamentable if those who are charged with the duty of leading great nations forward in this grievous and obstinate war were to allow their minds and energies to be diverted from making the plans to achieve our righteous purposes without needless prolongation of slaughter and destruction.

Nevertheless, we are also bound, so far as life and strength allow and without prejudice to our dominating military task, to look ahead to those days which will surely come, when we shall have finally beaten down Satan under our feet and find ourselves with other great Allies at once the masters and the servants of the future.

(Winston Churchill, from “A Common Tongue Basis for Common Citizenship,” delivered at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., September 6, 1943)

 

Compare the bolded statement in Churchill’s speech, along with the general drift of the portion of the speech quoted, with my tweet made in the throes of trying to understand the WikiLeaks conundrum.  There are two main camps of 5GW theorists, or at the very least two general approaches to issues relating to the conduct of 5GW:

1. Those who view the 4GW v. 4GW state of affairs as largely never-ending and world-system-wide; thus, given the constant and everlasting memetic combat and one-upmanship, and given the egotistical – we might say, the ego-inspired or ego-centric – interpretation of context, and given the complexity of the & all context, the 5GW effector will, as Arherring said in his post, “spoon feed information to a target that is intended, by design, to trigger a specific context for that information in the mind of a target in order to cause that target to act (or not act) in a particular manner.”  The 4GW v. 4GW world, most likely with the aid of Utopian Transparencists, will provide a playing field, or battlefield, ripe for such manipulation of actors.
2. Those who view the 4GW v. 4GW state of affairs as a problem to be overcome – not necessarily removed – rather than as an opportunity or ideal battlefield for advancing personal agendas through the use of 5GW.

(To be continued…)

WOODA = C(OODA) + A(OODA) / 4GW & 5GW

From this simple associative effect are the conditions from which a “eureka” moment of insight can crystallize, as it did for Archimedes in his bath:

Effect—-> Association —-> Orientation ——> Insight ——> Extrapolation/Generalization

[“Metaphors as Catalyst and Scaffold”, Mark Safranksi, Zenpundit.]

It is interesting that Mark Safranski’s “Eureka” model may correspond to the WOODA diagram (World—Observe—Orient—Decide—Act), particularly with respect to the A-OODA (abstract OODA) which is the Orient of the C-OODA (concrete OODA.)

 

A simple comparison would pair the following:

Mark Safranksi	A-OODA
Effect	New Information (W—>O of C-OODA)
Association	Observe of A-OODA
Orientation	Orient of A-OODA
Insight	Decide of A-OODA
Extrapolation/Generalization	Act of A-OODA

As a model of what might be called metaphorization, these similarities make sense.  The OODA in all its forms, including the WOODA which includes World, represents a dynamic process of cycling (although perhaps not always uniform and unidirectional cycling) of information.  The focal point of the A-OODA, Observe above, is the abstract locus of observation:  New information received from without comes into contact (abstractly speaking!) with previously built understandings, or Mental Constructs, and relatively newer insights, or Conditional Constructs.  These diverse abstract observations have, to some extent, already prepared the mind for interpretation of new information and, these observations taken as whole create an opportunity for triangulation (of a sort.)  Using Mark Safranski’s terminology, after the information is Associated, it is Oriented through analysis and synthesis, Insights may form the basis of new hypotheses which may either be conditional (re-looped into further observation w/ outside information and previous understandings) or may be accepted as finalized understandings about what one has observed (Extrapolation/Generalization).

There are questions about why this should be so.  Why does our mind do this if this is what it does?  Charles Cameron at Zenpundit, under the post linked above, has suggested that our ability to apprehend the world about us may be linked rather strongly not only to our ability to metaphorize but also to the quality of metaphorization we are able to utilize.  There is the potential not only for insight but also for deception, whether the deceivers are others in our milieu or we ourselves (and our brains) may be deceivers.  One answer to the question Why may be suggested by a visual metaphor once supplied by Joseph Fouche of the Committee of Public Safety blog:

 

 

In other words, as I once put it when considering the Social OODA Loop, trying to fit the Universe into our human brain would probably be painful.  Naturally of course, the reality of the Universe as a concrete result of concrete material/energy, is distinct from our human brain which, although it may be matter and energy as well, is not the same kind or set of matter and energy found in the Universe taken as a whole  From these considerations, then, a necessity for viable (and it must be said, metaphorical) shortcuts seems likely, and these shortcuts might take the form of metaphorization – whatever that is.

Even if the above suggests an answer for the Why, the How is still mysterious.  When devising the WOODA model --

by incorporating a Concrete OODA with an Abstract OODA, one of my goals was to clarify what John Boyd left too vague.  Not only did the exclusion of a representation for the World (concrete reality) present too much blur between concrete and abstract processes in Boyd’s original OODA, but his facile representation of the Orient phase of his OODA was also too vague.  Somehow in Orient, cultural traditions, genetic inheritance, previous experiences, new information, and analysis & synthesis “just happened.”  The consideration of new concrete information and genetic heritage blurred with mental processes such as analysis & synthesis as well as with memories (previous experience), thus blurring the abstract and the concrete; and, no process was shown for how cultural traditions and memories might form and be either maintained or altered.  (And, no process was shown for how genetic heritage might be altered to alter orientation:  whether direct genetic manipulation or through new physical realities like hunger, exhaustion, pain, and so forth.)  So, I attempted to separate the concrete from the abstract processes in order to clarify these things for myself.  Nonetheless, although separating the concrete from the abstract has proven immensely useful and seems rather well developed for the Concrete OODA consideration, the Abstract OODA remains somewhat vague.  The How of the internal processing is not entirely known – by anyone.  We have intimations of reality, and these intimations motivated my particular model and may have motivated Mark Safranski’s Eureka! model in similar ways; as models, these metaphors may be more or less accurate.  The best we can say at this point is that we need more information for confirmation.

Leaping ahead a bit to a consideration of the deceptive qualities and, perhaps, deceptive modes possible because of this process of metaphorization…

For the longest time, I had difficulty understanding completely the xGW-OODA model designed so long ago by Dr. Dan Abbott – particularly, his placement and considerations of 4GW:

(It is interesting to note, by the way, his inclusion of a consideration of the World in this OODA diagram.)

In the first case, my understanding that we may only operate, or Act, by altering the physical World – we have no direct ability to alter the internal processing of another except by acting upon his person (shooting him in the brain, for an extreme example) – necessitated a rethinking of how this mapping of the OODA and xGW should be considered:

 

This old diagram no doubt needs a little tweaking.  My general reconsideration of Dr. Abbott’s original mapping of xGW/OODA involved a consideration of information flows.  We may only operate by altering the concrete World, but we may alter it in such ways that different information flows, or abstract processing, may be used by the target as a consequence.  Here, the large round representations for each xGW would show the specific targeted process of the enemy’s A-OODA (except for 1GW, perhaps a point needing revision) and the smaller numbered symbols would show the desired type of information flow.  In some respects, this approach may shed some light on a more recent consideration of Performativity and xGW, which I  introduced at the end of that recent post:  perhaps we ought to consider different performativity strategies for each xGW, as largely definitive of each xGW.

The above mock-up of xGW and the WOODA represents an early attempt at grappling with these ideas.  However useful, even in its rough and perhaps inaccurate metaphoricality, the above diagram would only show a vague and highly theoretical alteration of another’s abstract processing but largely ignores the How, or the particular ways one might alter the physical World to achieve these theoretical effects.  It also therefore ignores the What; i.e., what is altered in the physical World in order to achieve these vague effects.

I confess to having very little more to add at this point.  One thing I would add, however, is a recent Eureka! moment spurred by my own recent considerations vis-à-vis performativity, by Mark Safranski’s post, and by a recent post at Dr. Abbott’s blog.

Using Dr. Abbott’s original xGW/OODA mapping as a starting point,  I’ll refer back to my confusion.  While the fact that 5GW would target observation by preemptively shaping the context for any observations a target might make seems obvious and easily considered, how a 4GW would target the space between observation and orientation always bothered me.*

Indeed, discussion of 5GW often focuses upon the ideal situation, or operation, of 5GW:  before the target even arrives, the context for his observations is already set, and the target acts as he normally would given that context or the observations he makes when viewing the World.  Co-option of others via 5GW allows for the free operation of a target’s will.  He has free choice; it’s just that he is operating, or orienting, to a context that has already been manipulated in such a way that his choices can, more or less!, be expected to lead, directly or through addition of many other targets’ actions,  to a successful completion of the 5GW campaign.

To the degree that any actor’s actions, when viewed, manipulate the context, we might say every actor within any given Gradient of Warfare sets the context for such further viewing by targets; hence, the necessity for forming a model of different performativity strategies for each Gradient within our model of xGW.  Otherwise, we might be tempted to call all Gradients 5GW.  One peculiar aspect of 5GW, at least as that theory has been developed, is that the effectors, or the 5GWers, must absolutely remain hidden from all targets and pawns.  Why?  To the degree that they are viewed, they form a part of the context.  Any target or pawn then may resist manipulation – who likes to be manipulated? – or go farther and work to oppose whatever the effectors are observed to be doing.

4GW operates differently.  As I once wrote, 4GWers want to be seen.  In recent considerations of 4GW and Performativity, I suggested that 4GW could be simplified to “You are either with us or you are against us!” and that this effective message, expressed through whatever means (propaganda, political spin, bombs), would be utilized to force a decision in all observers between choosing opposition to the 4GW forces or alignment with those forces.  Even acquiescence to the existence of a 4GW force, though not expressed through any particular adoption of the means of that 4GW force, is alignment with the goals of the 4GW force.   Pre-4GW modes, or gradients, place less stress on this decision-making process, because the sides are largely set already or form rather quickly; but 4GW operates in a more dispersed manner, since the core of the 4GW forces may be dispersed through a populace and, as more of the polity aligns with the 4GW force, the breakdown of “sides” may accelerate until clear demarcations are re-formed through the process of 4GW.  (I should note here that the term “polity” ought to be considered metaphorically as the set of all potential observers.  The fact that widespread use of the Internet and other media has served to increase the set of performers and the set of observers is not insignificant to these considerations but will be addressed in a later post.)

For a consideration of metaphorization and the OODA and how these concepts interrelate with each other as well as with 4GW and 5GW, we can use an example I brought up in another of Dr. Abbott’s recent posts as well as the Tdaxp and Zenpundit posts already linked above.  Specifically on the topic of the manipulative potential of metaphor, I linked an agent’s ability to draw the metaphor between the TSA’s use of intrusive pat-downs with the reality of sexual molestation.  These two activities may share some small similarity, but political pundits may operate in a 4GW manner when linking them in order to manipulate the set of all potential observers. Using Dr. Abbott’s xGW/OODA mapping then, we might say that an actor uses 4GW by adding and intensifying (qualitatively and quantitatively) context to any observation; in other words, the space between Observation and Orientation in the Concrete OODA is being targeted in order to influence the target’s abstract processing of that information, or interpretation.  By so often, and so loudly, using the image or reality of SEXUAL MOLESTATION!, and pairing that with TSA pat-downs, the 4GW actor is hoping to trigger an abstract alignment in the target’s A-OODA, or an interpretation which gives greater weight to the 4GWer’s message (SEXUAL MOLESTATION!) when it is weighed with the objective observation, to the exclusion or at least weakening of any other past observations (Mental Constructs) held by the observer.  The observer already has some mental constructs vis-à-vis sexual molestation; and it is these the 4GWer wants paired with TSA pat-downs.

Additionally, the 4GWer wants to be observed.  The performative message is:  You are either with us in hating sexual molestation (and by the way, THAT’S WHAT THE TSA AGENTS ARE DOING), or you are against us and with those forces who wish to use sexual molestation (and by the way, that’s THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION!)   Even should that latter part, invoking the Obama Administration specifically, not be a part of the message, the alignment w/ the 4GW force itself, as against some vaguely distinguished tyranny, may be a part of the point.  When the 4GWer speaks again, the observer may be predisposed, as being already aligned, to accept that 4GWer’s messages.

What may sometimes make the distinction unclear between 4GW and 5GW operations:  5GW effectors may manipulate, by shaping context pre-viewing, 4GW forces, co-opting them, and thereby utilize indirectly this method of 4GW operation, in order to shape the context for other viewers.**

 

________________

*Update, note: When I speak here of 4GW targeting the space between Observe and Orient, I am referring back to Abbott’s xGW/OODA mapping, and so I’m considering the two O’s of what I would call the Concrete OODA.  The 4GW targets the space between Observation of exterior, new information, and the Concrete Orientation to that observation, which is the A-OODA – in other words, as explained later, the 4GW adds information to the context before the A-OODA’s Observe.  Generally speaking then, this is an attempt to motivate a particular type of metaphorization which gives more weight to the information that the 4GW has added to the overall context.

**Updated this last paragraph to clarify.  Essentially, since 5GW forces may co-opt 4GW forces, then the 4GW form of manipulation may be utilized by 5GW forces through those co-opted 4GW forces, in order to shape the prevailing context for other observers.

Interlude: Lessons from a Swedish Kid

(Warning: Video not Safe for Work!)

 

(One other version of this video is already flagged at YouTube and may be yanked from the site.  Hopefully this version will not be removed.  I’m using this for educational purposes, not sensationalistic or for monetary reward.  If this is pulled, I have a local copy of it if anyone would like a copy; just reply to me on Twitter with a request. Update:  apparently some Chrome-based browsers won't play this; original vid is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWzujif3IMo.)

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From my recent post on Performativity & 5GW:

It is possible, easily possible, for the performer to be largely unaware of the fact that he performs; and, for the audience member to forget that he is watching a performance rather than seeing an exact representation of the natural man or woman before him.

In my last post, I examined this idea in more detail, using a quote from W. H. Auden as well as the OODA Loop to delineate the dilemmas of both, actor and audience member, in any human interaction.  Audience members, or observers, do not have a direct link to an actor’s decision-making processes; that is, observers witness behaviors, or the physical actions of any actors before them but can only ever infer motivations and intent.  The inferences may be more or less based on previous experience of that actor or of other actors or even of one’s own previous actions (oneself as previous actor), but in no case whatsoever do the inferences – or, interpretations – become anything other than inferences.  This may create a dilemma for an audience member, but it creates a dilemma for the actor as well since he must often think clearly about how best to communicate his intentions and, regardless of his considerations before acting his actions will still only ever remain performances, or behaviors, for any audience.

The above video therefore may serve as a very good example not only of these dilemmas but of how actors and audience members maneuver through these dilemmas; and, broadly speaking, of how performativity operates in our world, shaping our world.

I linked an embed of the video on Facebook with the following message:

I would call this, "Performativity Run Amok".

Yes, there is a touch of burgeoning psychopathy and/or sociopathy. And, yes, there is homophobia run amok as well. The kid has learned how to hate, in other words, and in his expression merely repeats, or mimics, the forms he's absorbed. But he is also undoubtedly serious and, er, raging from the heart.

And despite all these things, I think this is hilarious. Justin Bieber (or rather, whatever he represents for this kid) has struck a chord all over the world....

“Performativity Run Amok” is a very good description for what is occurring even if it is inexact and rather vague.  There are so many layers of performativity happening, we risk a very convoluted and difficult analysis of this video; so, I will try to address some main points.

The first, and very apropos point:  This kid mentions that he has just watched a video of Justin Bieber; he almost certainly has no direct experience of Bieber in-the-flesh, although he appears to have experienced reverberations of other performances beyond the video (the Bieber fans he mentions multiple times in the video) and may well have seen other videos, posters, and the like; and yet, although he has witnessed only performances, he “forgets” that his observations have been of mere performances and believes that he knows who Justin Bieber is.  In other words, he believes he is “seeing an exact representation of the natural man or woman before him.”  We cannot know exactly what he is seeing when he believes he sees an exact representation, although we do have a performance coming from this Swedish kid.  He uses homophobic speech when he reports on his experience as an audience member.  (So, he “sees” Justin Bieber as “being” gay?)  He also reports on what he has witnessed coming from the other performers who have previously been audience members for Bieber; so we know the kid believes Bieber is someone who naturally attracts eight-year-old girls – and presumably, as someone who consciously does so for maintaining his fame and persona?  (There are question marks here, because we cannot see exactly what and as this Swedish kid sees.  We do not know what Bieber is for this kid.)

The second, and also very apropos point:  I, as an audience member to this kid’s performance, made the very same mistake when I mentioned psychopathy, sociopathy, homophobia, and the fact that I believed this kid was “also undoubtedly serious and, er, raging from the heart.”  In fact, this could be an elaborate hoax coming from a very accomplished, or at least natural, actor.  There are points within the video when I believe I witness signifiers of his seriousness – for instance, when he lapses into Swedish, since, from my own experience, bilingual persons often lapse into their native language when their emotion carries them away.  But this is me interpreting, even if I did forget that I also was watching a performance rather than “seeing an exact representation of the natural man” before me.

Tangential to these points:  Although this kid’s rage could be authentic, we as audience members do not know whether he is actually homophobic (his being) but may only witness his behavior or the physical manifestations of whatever motivates him (his speech.)  The, let us say, accepted interpretation of such a performance would be, Yes he’s homophobic; but as I mentioned in my Facebook commentary, there is every possibility that this kid is using the type of language which he, perhaps, and others have habitually used to describe a mistaken performance that is, for whatever reason, distasteful.  In other words, gay may not mean gay.  I in my own life am sensitive to this, because I am gay, and so I have noted the distinctions:  There are those who, when they (apparently!) have a problem with someone else’s performances, call that person Gay! without having any experience whatsoever of that other person’s sexuality or sexual behaviors.  The interpretation of gayness may sometimes be attached to what is called “perceived gayness” – i.e., certain behaviors – but sometimes the word is used merely as a filler or as a vague epithet which only means, “Someone I don’t like!!!!”   Another example:  “That’s so gay!” does not always mean what it may seem to mean, in fact rarely means much beyond, “That’s weird!” or “That’s gross!” and the like. The point here and the point I was trying to make in my Facebook commentary when I mentioned  that “the kid has learned how to hate, in other words, and in his expression merely repeats, or mimics, the forms he's absorbed”  is simply that the how is referencing a method of performance which has been learned somewhere along the way, a method for expressing whatever internal emotions and thoughts and so forth are motivating the actor.  So this may be an example of an actor forgetting that he is performing, who slips into a formulaic performance out of frustration with his Actor’s Dilemma.

Another good example of this result of Actor’s Dilemma from the video:  The kid’s use of a knife. He has undoubtedly – I presume! -- witnessed many examples of people taking out their frustrations, or defeating apparent foes, by the use of sharp and shiny instruments.  Or, he has witnessed examples of the method of threatening to do such things.  (He also mentions in the video the far less common and more fantastical sword.)  The problem the rest of us may experience when actors forget that they are performing for an audience:  The actors themselves may come to believe they are exactly what they express.  In other words, they may use knives to take out their audience members, having forgotten that the knife was merely a prop, so to speak  Additionally, through repetitive use of apparently homophobic speech to express distaste for a particular kind of witnessed performance – whether so-called “gay behavior” is a part of that performance or not – an actor who forgets he is performing may come to adopt those attitudes as being expressive of who he really is.  He may indeed become homophobic.  (Harold Bloom, literary critic, has used Shakespeare’s Cleopatra as an example of a consummate actor who forgets that she is acting, so that she herself can make no distinction between Cleopatra-acting and Real-Cleopatra.  W.H. Auden gives another example from Shakespeare:  Hotspur from Henry IV, who has so much acted the noble, virtuous, courageous soldier, this role becomes indistinguishable from his real self for him.)

But Justin Bieber and his managers and others viewing this video may merely see a disturbed being, missing whatever point this kid is trying to make but, for that audience, is failing to make.

On Performativity & 4GW, 5GW: This and That

Subjectively, my experience of life is one of having to make a series of choices, between given alternatives and it is this experience of doubt, indecision, temptation, that seems more important and memorable than the actions I take.  Further, if I make a choice which I consider the wrong one, I can never believe, however strong the temptation to make it, that it was inevitable, that I could not and should not have made the opposite choice.  But when I look at others, I cannot see them making choices; I can only see what they actually do….

<snip>

When I consider others I can easily believe that their bodies express their personalities and that the two are inseparable.  But it is impossible for me not to feel that my body is other than I, that I inhabit it like a house, and that my face is a mask which, with or without my consent, conceals my real nature from others.

(W. H. Auden, “Hic et Ille”, The Dyer’s Hand.)

I am aware that various objections can be made to my previous posts on performativity and 4GW/5GW:

• Performativity & 4GW
• Performativity & 5GW

The obvious disjunction may be between the detailed requirements listed in the first for distinguishing between what actions are performative and what are non-performative expressions and the assertion in the second that performativity and performance always occur in every instance of interaction between persons who are interacting.  Arising from this disjunction is the question of whether some actions of persons who are interacting are natural, that is to say non-performative and not attempts at manipulation of an observer, or whether in fact every action is always a performative performance and an attempt at manipulation.  We do not like to believe that our closest and dearest acquaintances are always in the act of manipulating us whenever they come around; to suggest that they are seems misanthropic at the very least.

I would revise that last to say that the evaluation of all Others as being constant manipulators is misanthropic only if we judge manipulation in itself to always be a negative action, an evil.  Certainly, in considerations of the Fifth Gradient of Warfare, manipulation is taken to be a kind of necessary evil, necessary for the process of conducting 5GW but evil because it implies the willful usurpation, via pre-emption, of the target’s own free choice; and, since Fifth Gradient Warfare will, more often than not, be a whole-systems approach, many individuals will be subject to manipulation who are not, strictly speaking, the primary targets, or foes, of those conducting 5GW.  It is therefore always tempting to bring into this consideration Shakespeare’s Iago as a prime example of surreptitious manipulation – I have done so on many occasions – but it is peculiar that we so often overlook Shakespeare’s Rosalind as another example.  Iago artfully destroys his targets through manipulation (whether his primary target, Othello, or the mere pawns in his campaign such as Desdemona and Roderigo), but it could be said, and has been said, that Rosalind’s campaign of manipulation leads to the betterment of her primary target, Orlando, and a relatively happy ending for others within the play.  (Another good, though analogic, example of a positive campaign of manipulation from Shakespeare:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  It is analogic because the manipulators are supernatural beings, not humans, who use supernatural means to manipulate; and, it is far more parabolic.)

None of these considerations eliminates the disjunction between that unfinished essay on 4GW and the short post on 5GW, however, and so we are still left with the question of whether all interactions are complex sets of performances intended to manipulate – a ubiquitous and naturally occurring though largely undirected 5GW -- or whether some interactions are free of manipulative performance.  From the essay on 4GW:

Whereas it might be said that all acts of communication or expression require an audience and social milieu, the difference between a performative utterance and a non-performative utterance lies in the particular intent behind the utterance or action.  The intent behind a performative act is a) specifically to express a stance while performing the act. b) specifically to expect a target audience to react to the performance of that act by shifting its stance in relation to oneself and to the object explicitly or implicitly referenced by the utterance, and c) specifically to let the target audience know of this expectation of a real change in the audience's stance.

I would add to those words this also from that essay:  that the utterance need not be new and the stances shown by the performer and expected from the audience member need not be new, since repetition of performative expressions may be performance intended to maintain long-established stances and understandings between parties, whether a reinforcement of relationships or a reassurance of relationships.  The introduction of the necessity of a particular intent for determining the performativity or non-performativity of an action is moderated somewhat by this latter consideration, since longstanding relationships maintained through habitual performative expression may suggest the possibility of habitual, or largely subconscious, intent.  We may perform habitually but the performance is no less performative.  Naturally, the question of intent becomes murky if we admit the possibility of subconscious intent.

Two other considerations come to the foreground when questioning whether all interactions between individuals should be considered performative performance and thus manipulative:  Auden’s thoughts quoted above and the OODA.

From the short piece on 5GW:

It is possible, easily possible, for the performer to be largely unaware of the fact that he performs; and, for the audience member to forget that he is watching a performance rather than seeing an exact representation of the natural man or woman before him.

The latter half, considering the experience of the audience member, is pertinent to the questions so far raised and may be answered by Auden.  Each individual has some conscious awareness or experience of the processes by which he chooses one act over another act, but as a member of an audience he has absolutely no direct conscious awareness or direct experience of the performer’s decision-making process.  That is, the audience member can never know for certain whether what he witnesses in another is a mere manipulative performance or a non-manipulative, “natural”, activity.  The audience member may only guess at intent.  Thus it frequently occurs that the observer mistakes a performance for an exact representation – or, one might suppose, mistakes an exact representation for a performance.  If indeed all actions are performative expressions, thus performances, we might be tempted to eliminate the second possibility, since there would be no exact representations to be misapprehended but only always partial performances.  Furthermore, the fact remains that every action performed by an individual which is observed by an audience presents the same test-case and same problems:  It is partial action, or a behavior of some sort, an outward display which does not disclose some hidden (though presumed to exist, often imagined) intent or motivation.   That is, every audience member witnesses a performance whenever the actor acts – even if, should we ask the actor, the actor declares that he is “not acting.”

The actor’s dilemma is two-fold.  In the first case, Auden’s statement of being always masked – no one can actually experience his own, Auden’s, decision-making process or really get at the real Auden; and, this because language and the modes of expression are always ineffective or inefficient, entirely inadequate for full expression of all that is going on behind the scenes (so to speak) – creates further tension in the decision-making process as the actor decides what to express and how best to express it. In the second case, as we have seen when considering these things from the audience’s perspective, even a perfect expression of exact representation, as judged by the actor in his final analysis of how he should express himself, would make no difference.  The audience will still see an actor acting, being entirely unable to experience that decision-making process, or the consciousness, of the actor directly. When Hamlet says, dying, that “The rest is silence,” he is telling an incapable audience that his own dilemma, at least, is finally being resolved.  Though most of us can identify with Hamlet, we may not always be aware of why this is so.  Whenever an actor is not sufficiently introspective; or, when an actor, however extrospective he may be, loses sight of the audience’s dilemma; then the actor may make the mistake of believing that his actions, whether fully considered or however naturally expressive, exhibit him directly to his audience, and he will forget that his actions are merely a performance and that he is merely performing for them.  However “not acting” he may be, his audience is not witnessing his being but merely his behavior.

This exposition on Auden, Shakespeare, etc., may go far enough to show that the question of intention is largely irrelevant for the characterization of activity as performative or non-performative. To the degree that a performed action may cause a reaction in an audience, it can be considered performative expression -- besides which, the question concerning intent is always a question for the audience since the audience can only infer its existence and quality – and so we might be better served to consider non-performative acts those which are never observed by a second party and performative acts all acts which are observed by an audience.  So much for the ubiquity of performativity in human societies; however, are all instances of performativity also manipulative?  For that question, a consideration of the OODA may be useful.

An image of the OODA appears in the top-left corner of this page, but I’ll reproduce it here.

For those unfamiliar with the OODA, I will offer up a link to a rather lengthy and convoluted older post on a different site exploring the OODA (no doubt requiring revision) as well as a link to the Wikipedia article on the OODA.  In short, the acronym OODA stands for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act, a model designed by USAF Col. John Boyd for use in understanding the decision-making process, particularly applied to the conduct of warfare and combat operations but also adopted by others as a model for the decision-making processes in business activities, cognition, etc.  My own use has been for understanding both, individuals’ decision-making processes in general (cognition) and their decision-making processes as members of a society.  The above is a modification of the Boydian OODA Loop which makes explicit what remained only implicit and vague in Boyd’s OODA:  1) that there are concrete as well as abstract processes involved in the decision-making processes,  2) every action alters the concrete world, and 3) the abstract processing involves established models of the world (“Mental Constructs”) as well as provisional, contingent constructs built on-the-go as it were (“Ideas”.)  Indeed, Boyd left a representation of the concrete world out of his OODA model entirely, drawing a line directly from “Act” to “Observe” and left the abstract processes either too vague to be of any use except to say “they occur” (in his Orient) or too intermixed and indistinguishable from the concrete processes.

For our consideration of performativity, and given the dilemma already described for any observer of a performative act, a clear representation of World, Mental Constructs, and Ideas is necessary.  When we observe the act, we are observing behavior, or the physical manifestations of an actor’s decision-making process:  he smiles, or he creates sounds which we recognize as “Thank-you”, or he causes an explosion.  The audience for these acts does not have direct access to the actor’s abstract processing (here called The Abstract OODA) but only to the World, the physical manifestation of the actor’s abstract processing.  The audience then evaluates these concrete observations by comparing them to previously constructed Mental Constructs and to provisional Ideas through a process of Concrete Orientation – we are part of the world, or material beings whose material processes allow cognition – and then the individual audience members act in accordance to the orientations to that performance which they have achieved (or, which emerge from this process of OODA.)  If the actor’s performance is judged to be typical of that actor, the process of orientation to the act may be rather quick and produce a habitual response.  If the performance is judged to be something unexpected and new, the process of orienting to it may not be as smooth and the reaction to that performance may also be atypical for the audience member who becomes an actor after the process of orientation.  Possibly, the performance may appear to be new for that actor but all-too-typical for some other actors in the audience member’s experience, leading to a well-reasoned or habitual reaction.  So there is a wide range of possible responses, but the fact that an actor exists – another person performing some action that is observed – affects the audience member’s orientation and thus that audience member’s activity following orientation.

Is this effect then manipulation, even if it is not conscious or is not consciously intended to be manipulation?  Within the theory of Fifth Gradient Warfare, from the first a consideration of the OODA suggested that 5GW would target the Observation of others within the battlefield; and, to this day, the general consensus appears to be exactly that:  5GW might also be called Contextual Warfare, since it is “based upon the principle of manipulation of the context of the observations of an opponent in order to achieve a specific effect.”  (Arherring.)  How then would this manipulation of the context of observations, all-too-intended, be substantially different from the manipulation of observations through performance by an actor regardless of that actor’s intention – at least, for determining whether what is occurring is manipulation?

Naturally, these questions bring others to mind concerning the Gradient Warfare model, xGW.  Insofar as any actors on the battlefield perform actions, those actions could be said to be performative or manipulative if they are observed.  Thus, when a 1GW combatant performs an action, he is manipulating the context of observation; and so forth.  (He is 7’ 2” tall, covered in bear pelts, waving a poleaxe at me that is half-again as long as I am tall, and roaring with a bestial vengeance:  YIKES!)  If we are to define any observed action as a performative action – and I think we should – then we need to understand how best to distinguish between different performative strategies, or uses of performativity, within the gradients of the xGW model—as well as the relevant significance of consciously deployed performativity, or a strategy of manipulation, for any gradient of warfare.  It may seem obvious that 4GW and 5GW rely on specific, although different, strategies for deploying performativity in order to be successful; and less clear, how and to what degree 0GW-3GW make use of performativity.

(To be continued…)

Performativity & 5GW

(This is a re-post of a quick, little piece I wrote as a TweetLonger.)

 

The reality of performativity stands (for me) as the most fundamental proof of the relevance of #5GW and, incidentally, is they key to understanding human societies. I mean by this last, any human society: from the smallest friendship between two people to however many complex, vast networks of persons regardless of their depth of understanding of others within those networks.

It is still to be determined whether and to what degree individuals, when alone, perform for themselves; but with the introduction of any other individual or group of individuals, performance undoubtedly begins. This performance may be conscious or subconscious to whatever degree, but its primary purpose is manipulation of perception and thus manipulation of others. The individual-as-performer becomes a test case; and then, a test case requiring reaction from the observer.

Due to the nature of performativity, indeed of performance, the exact nature of the performance and the exact determination of what that performance signifies (the interpretation) may always involve doubt, but this is a doubt often supplied with assurances as both performer and audience members rely on self-determined, often long-established, metrics for interpretation. This filling-in of gaps also promotes that very special function of performativity in which meaning, memes, and the like are co-opted and perverted into similar meanings/memes through the addition of whatever matter fills in the gaps. The names for what we address in our performance -- that is, the words and particular movements of the parts of our body, along with the stage props manipulated for effect -- may remain the same during this process of generative, cross-pollinating transmission, so that performer and audience member alike retain the words or the smile (etc.) although the meanings/memes may become altered in the process. A word no longer means what it once meant; or, a smile, an explosion, etc.

There has, of course, developed a natural tendency or perhaps a habit of ignoring performativity-in-action, and this ignorance may be the root of all conflict in human societies. (Again, by society, I mean of whatever size.) It is possible, easily possible, for the performer to be largely unaware of the fact that he performs; and, for the audience member to forget that he is watching a performance rather than seeing an exact representation of the natural man or woman before him. A large part of the origin of this ignorance rests in the ubiquity of performance and performativity: it is everywhere people interact, and at all times everywhere they interact. Thus, the fact that others are always attempting to manipulate us, combined with the fact that they are usually successful if not always in the way they would have it, gets lost -- except for those special occasions when the manipulation becomes all-too apparent. Then relationships blow up; and, sometimes people too.

Despite the inherent dangers in remaining ignorant of this ubiquitous manipulation in human societies (not a small part consisting of the likelihood of explosive discovery), the actual net result of performativity has been positive for human society in general. Beginning with newborns and persisting throughout life, mimicry of performance, learning how to get along with others and indeed with the rest of the (non-human) world by both witnessing performance and learning how to interpret that performance, etc., have almost literally (but not quite) been the bedrock of functioning human societies. The special function of performativity -- errors in the transmission, between performer and audience members -- has allowed the possibility of progressive, evolutionary, and adaptive performance and so, both forward positive movement and consistent resilience.

But the fact that we are so habituated to performativity opens the door to subtle manipulations on a scale most people may sometimes suspect but will generally disbelieve. Through time, ubiquitous performativity may have been the most naturally occurring, though undirected and shapeless, 5GW in history (if one believes in no higher power); but 5GW now may become the fullest expression of the power of performativity within and over societies. It is there, it happens already, and only a special kind of performer is needed to weaponize it (so to speak) or make conscious use of it. (Of course there are those Iagos who have always done such a thing, on a smaller scale.)

Gated Community Syndrome & 5GW

Gated Community Syndrome and 5GW: YouTube

 

This is a little work-up from an extended Tweet sequence.  Consequently, there are some misspellings and the usual gaps caused by having to write each volley in 140-character chunks.  Transcribed, and corrected for spelling and related abridgements, the video slideshow would be as follows.  I have added the footnotes to this transcription for additional context, including notes on the ideas behind the Tweets as I Tweeted and extensions of the thoughts occurring after the original Tweeting.

 

BEGIN TRANSMISSION

This stream began as a Facebook consideration of a WSJ opinion piece…

“What the Tea Partiers Really Want” on WSJ @ http://bit.ly/cDTEAI

A snapshot of the Facebook consideration can be found @ http://bit.ly/cDTEAl and looks something like this:

But that is only foregrounding for the following stream.  The catalyst for a broader consideration.  The Tea Party is but one Player. ¹

Thus…3

We…2

Begin…1

Gated Community Syndrome:  The belief that the outside world just doesn’t matter very much.  The belief in efficacious, sustainable isolation.

In Gated Community Syndrome, the outside world only matters insofar as it begins to intrude on the Community; but

in Gated Community Syndrome there is a belief that preventing said intrusion is a simple matter.

Gated Community Syndrome reinforces belief in one’s own superior merit; that merit is seen as greatest defense against intrusion; but

in Gated Community Syndrome, members of that community set the metrics for judging said merit.

Gated Community Syndrome does not acknowledge the possibility of Super Empowered Angry Men operating under different set of metrics.

Super Empowered Angry Men = SEAM

In Gated Community Syndrome the unacknowledged, subconscious awareness of the potential of SEAM asserts itself in the creation of

bogeymen.  Those living with Gated Community Syndrome are naturally prone to fear, for this reason. ²

For the purpose of better understanding Gated Community Syndrome, we might turn toward a metaphor: The Christian Heaven, the Muslim Paradise.

Possibly, perhaps likely, these and Gated Community Syndrome have an evolutionary origin: protecting the familial tribe protected the genes.

Who knows, really?  It is a point of abstract euphoria, an intellectual game of loving one’s own merit, to make such leaps of knowingness. ³

In other words, let’s not worry so much about evolutionary origins; let’s move on…

It is entirely unfortunate that some others nabbed the term “Gated Community Syndrome” before I nabbed it; so I have just discovered.

On the other hand, it is apropos and germane to the topic.  Indeed, a valid example of the pertinent dynamics. ⁴

In any case, I would focus upon the reality of the potential for Super Empowered Angry Men – or any SEI – in any discussion of GCS;

SEI = Super Empowered Individual (May not be “angry”, or not motivated to destroy.)

It’s peculiar the fact that many calling for resilient and isolationist communities, and/or GCSers, also talk of SEAMs but don’t add 2 to 2. ⁵

--I mean, within this tiny hemisphere of the blogosphere.  Of course.

It is comprehensible that these near-peer GCSers should create a bogeyman “SEAM” in order to reinforce the call for better Gates; but ⁶

but paradoxical and saddening (for me personally) that the reality of the potential for SEAMs is so overlooked, excluded from the equations. ⁷

Some discussion, perhaps most of the discussion re: #5GW, involves the creation of not better Gates but of better equations, thus responses.

No #5GW theory, save Mark Safranski’s genocide-as-type-of-5GW, can be founded in/by anyone suffering from GCS. ⁸

--Not that M.S. suffers from GCS; but that GCS + #5GW necessarily sees the best Gate as being the elimination of those who’d remain outside.

Every pre-#5GW conflict can be understood as a type of Gated Community vs Gated Community conflict. ⁹

(keeping in mind the “Gates”, though they might be reinforced by geographical bounds, mean something more significant in this terminology.) ¹⁰

M.S.’s outlier #5GW is a bit more twitchy.  I’d say it’s not GC v GC because the victims are largely not fighting back, but being slaughtered.

…perhaps being slaughtered before they have a chance to formulate an opposing force/GC for a GC v GC conflict?  Does this work? #5GW ¹¹

It may seem inapt that I’ve said GCSers believe in efficacious and sustainable isolationism yet pre #5GW conflict is GC v GC, but

but I never said GCS was rational.  Bubbles are made to be burst.  You may not believe it, but the SEAMs do. #5GW ¹²

END TRANSMISSION

---

Notes:

¹ In short and grossly summarized, the Facebook consideration centered on the ideas that: a) the author of the WSJ opinion piece points out the Tea Party concern for karma, i.e., the belief that no one should be able to reap more than he sows, e.g., hand-outs are bad and rewards should be based on merit, b) such a concern and ideation for karma misses the reality of cross-domain, cross-population effects: The individually determined estimation of merit will tend to overlook actual merit within the system; regardless of one’s own abilities or merit considered in isolation, merit within the system in relation to others may be altogether different.  Behind this idea (at the time of writing the FB consideration) rested the notion that letting the nominally “un-meritorious” fellow denizens suffer or wander aimlessly might come back to bite the “meritorious” upright citizen. Also shading the FB consideration:  Many calls for “smaller government” – moving from Big Federal Governance to State Governance -- by some Tea Partiers in fact appear to be calls for a smaller pond, in which they might have a greater influence over that smaller system (be big fishes.)

² This inherent susceptibility to fear may be related to an extended consideration of performativity and 4GW I have previously made as well as to deeper considerations of 4GW (for instance, to how political systems such as America’s may be fundamentally 4GW).  The Us v Them dynamic by which Our own merits are elevated and Their own merits are reduced for all to see may cycle into a process of increasing demonization.  Consequently, those whose knee-jerk response to any perceived conflict is by nature 4GWish may, ironically, become even more susceptible to 4GW attacks.  The enemy becomes some dimly seen and largely unknown (in the sense of real knowing and understanding) threat: rather than operating outside the Gates to neutralize threats – one’s own close-knit community and estimation of merit should be enough – the call is made for better Gates.

³ The movement of these three lines was somewhat unintentional or perhaps intuitional.  The first, a consideration of Heaven and Paradise, was motivated by the image of Heaven & its Pearly Gates, in which only those who merited admission into Heaven could pass the gates.  Similarly, Paradise is available to Muslims only when they have passed the tests prescribed in the Quran.  How interesting that these conceptualizations of the afterlife match the general worldview of those suffering from Gated Community Syndrome.  But the third line here was meant to move me beyond a consideration of evolutionary origins, where my mind had drifted; my mind had started a leap into knowingness by postulating an evolutionary origin I can in no way support from actual knowledge.  Nonetheless, what is stated in the third line could be read as a commentary on the first line and add value to the 3-line drift.

⁴ At this point I had stopped to make a search of "Gated Community Syndrome." Others may use it somewhat differently although by no means completely differently. I had first used the term without knowledge of these other uses. The dynamics mentioned here would deserve an extended post for a complete consideration. My general drift here: I had thought my use of GCS as a term and idea was unique, isolated, but more often than not absolute isolation is impossible.

⁵ Here it is important to note that, yes, I was thinking of John Robb and his Global Guerrillas and Resilient Communities, but not of him alone.  This line begins the main drift and impetus for writing this long Tweet stream, which concludes only at the end of the stream.  Also I had in mind the contrast between John Robb and Thomas P. M. Barnett: The difference between setting exterior threats while calling for better resilient communities and setting a course that would neutralize exterior threats by operating in the world exterior to localized systems as a method of defense.  And, yes, this contrast was explicitly behind my Facebook consideration of the Tea Party approach to system creation/maintenance.

⁶ See notes #1 & #5.

⁷ The flow from #1 to -#6: Consideration of SEAMs as some vague, little-understood bogeymen, may reinforce the perceived need for better Gates; but the fact remains that actual SEAMs may continue to exist regardless of the one’s own Gate Construction.  In other words, a focus on developing one’s own localized system while excluding from consideration a strategy for altering what lies outside that system is a defective strategy.

⁸ See: "Mark Safranski Goes into the Heart of Darkness" @ Dreaming 5GW.

⁹ But not 5GW. We could perhaps outline xGW on the basis of GCS by defining how the “G” and the “C” of each xGW is distinct for every x before the 5th and how 5GW recognizes all these distinctions for what they are.  See also the next line in the Tweet stream.

¹⁰ Different potential “Gates”: Geographical, Might-based, Ideology-based, Economy-based, Legal System-based, Ethnicity-based, Race-based, Intelligence-based, Technology-based, etc., as well as different Gates built from multiple of these.  The Gate is the merit-based defense system, very broadly speaking.  Here it is important to note that a) because these Gates are being considered in context with GCS, the individual Gates in question are largely conceptual, or in the minds of the GCSers, b) these Gates may have more or less bearing on real conditions in both the localized systems and the larger system, and c) I was rather vague in this line, in order to stimulate and allow for further exploration and also because a full exploration would make for a very, very long Tweet Stream indeed at 140-character or less installments.  In fact, I would suppose that a development of a Gate-based approach to xGW could constitute a whole new branch to 5GW theory.

¹¹ I think that, from the start, M.S.’s genocide-as-type-of-5GW formulation is and has been fairly twitchy.  Here, I acknowledge the possibility that the actual examples given by M.S. in his essay may allow for the discernment of GCs, however ill-formed or ill-executed, in the target populations.  We might say however that the 5GWer utilizing genocide overlooks or disregards or moves around those GC, so this prevents the GC v GC type of conflict characteristic of any other x in xGW.  Dunno.  This line left the question open.

¹² In conclusion, then, is this: Although I stated earlier in the stream that “Some discussion, perhaps most of the discussion re: #5GW” has centered on the creation of better equations (for systems) and implied that these concerns related directly to the potential for SEAMs, I think that others discussing the theory of 5GW may not always have had such a focus.  The potential for SEAMs has played a part in most or all 5GW theory, but sometimes and for some theorists it has played an ancillary role.  Generalized anti-4GW concerns may be the biggest motivator for some 5GW theorists while others may merely be searching for a better strategic and tactical system for conducting selfish or self-interested operations.  (For some, such as Hammes, 5GWers ARE the SEAMs to be feared; but I reject so simplistic a notion.)  Within my own mind however, the potential for SEAMs has played a very large role in my continuing interest in 5GW theory.  It might be that pre-5GW operations and general non-induced emergences within the global community can result in favorable conditions on the whole.  So, it is possible to imagine highly developed Bubbles, or complex and innovative GCs, being fairly successful, resulting in a fairly low-grade and/or manageable constant conflict in order to preserve the Gates of those Bubbles—but the specter of truly super empowered and truly angry SEAMs always exists until and unless effective 5GW is utilized to remove the possibility. Even if said possibility can never be removed entirely, 5GW as a method for reducing the likelihood would seem a valuable goal, full of merit.

Performativity and 4GW

Proposition 8: Ruling against Prop. 8 could lead to federal precedent on gay marriage - latimes.com

Andy Pugno, a lawyer for the backers of the ballot measure, said he believed Walker would be overturned on appeal.

Walker's "invalidation of the votes of over 7 million Californians violates binding legal precedent and short-circuits the democratic process," Pugno said.

He called it "disturbing that the trial court, in order to strike down Prop. 8, has literally accused the majority of California voters of having ill and discriminatory intent when casting their votes for Prop. 8."

This is a 4GW-style attack.

4GW

I'll backtrack to an explanation of why this is 4GW on the part of the backers of Prop. 8, but only for those who are already somewhat familiar with the term.

While frequently many theorists and strategists who discuss GMW (the "Generations of Modern Warfare") focus on the blood-and-guts style of activity used by what might be called, more or less, hit-and-run guerrilla-style combatants or else simply terrorists -- or in some cases, Global Guerrillas -- the primary goal of those using such bloody tactics is the psychological transformation of others in the battlespace.  In other words, 4GW tactics are used to accomplish three general results:

1. Sap the will of a foe who is otherwise superior militarily, economically, and/or technologically, so that the foe ultimately retreats;
2. Cause the foe to overreact in ways sure to cause outrage among the locals and even around the globe (during the process that will ultimately lead the foe to retreat) -- perhaps even in the foe's society;
3. Simultaneously with the above, recruit new supporters within the field of engagement by displaying staying power in the face of the superior forces while causing the foe to display not only excessive force but also, gradually, diminishing staying power.

Although these are the three general governing aspects of 4GW, a fourth possibility, although unlikely most of the time, exists: Given an extremely entrenched foe and/or an extremely mad or suicidal foe (i.e., one whose willpower or staying power simply can't be sapped), the continual looping of #2 and #3 might eventually give birth to a large enough force that can swamp and overcome that foe in a decidedly un-4GW manner before the foe has a chance to retreat.

As with any other strategy, 4GW may be employed well or poorly.  Additionally, 4GW may not be the best possible choice of strategy for every imaginable set of circumstances.  Similarly, those fighting against a 4GW force may choose inapt strategies of their own or poorly employ whatever strategies they choose.  I mention these considerations because many theorists who discuss GMW or its variant xGW exhibit a purist tendency; ideals of 4GW are set against ideals of other generational strategies, and universal grand statements are made about the efficacy of 4GW or those other strategies.

The fourth possibility for a 4GW campaign, mentioned above -- the unlikely mass swarming of large numbers to the 4GW fighters' side, allowing that side to swamp the entrenched opponent through direct force and thus negating the need for a shameful retreat by the opponent -- is not a good goal for any who would employ 4GW.  Such a swarm may be a last hope or else a serendipitous, happy turn of events, but as an organizing principal for the budding 4GW effort it is unwise. 4GW campaigns evolve or are chosen because the foe is superior technologically, economically, and/or militarily.  Overcoming such a foe with pre-4GW strategies requires a significantly large mass; the foe may well be able to defend and neutralize most surges.  If the foe is also using 4GW tactics, the pool of recruits and sympathizers will likely be diminished, preventing such a swarm.  Finally, a 4GW force that begins its effort with the belief that a significantly sized alliance of recruits and sympathizers will form, allowing it to swamp the foe kinetically, is likely to take its eyes off the ball and fail to do what well-run 4GW efforts are supposed to do (#1 - #3 above).

Yet many would-be 4GW fighters do live in such a hope, particularly in America where that elusive creature, The Public, lurks half-hidden and thus, one hopes, up for grabs.

American politics is rife with 4GW activity, and it is tempting to assume that all politics in America is nothing but 4GW, albeit without the guns and bombs.*

Performativity

If we could sum up the general stance of a 4GW force by adding #1 through #3 above, it would be this:  "You are either with us or you are against us!"  In order for that summation to have full meaning, we should understand that it is not merely descriptive, it is not us describing the stance of every 4GW force, but is performative.  In imagining the stance of a 4GW force, if we also imagine that force to be saying this with every action it takes, we will have the gist of it.  The principal actions committed by the 4GW force force the reality of the utterance; observers are not only required to be either with that 4GW force or against it, but naturally choose to be for or against the 4GW force as a consequence of the activity. Whether the auditors of that utterance are an organized military force or merely other citizens and neighbors living in the area, anyone actively choosing to be against the 4GW force becomes a target -- just to reinforce that message.

One might say that a pre-4GW style of attack also forces the question -- for instance the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor forced America to be against Japan -- and one would be correct; however, the difference between such instances and a 4GW's modus operandi is great.  In a 4GW campaign, the performative communication is unremitting.  This is most easy to see with #3 above, since one cumulative effect of a 4GW campaign is supposed to be the continual gain of recruits and sympathizers.  However this may be seen in #1 and #2 as well.  The unremitting utterance may force the foe to express ever-new and escalating answers of "We are against you!" (#2), thus reinforcing the 4GW force's continual utterance and escalating the pressure among bystanders to choose sides.  If all goes as desired for the 4GW force, the foe's withdrawal from the battlefield after his will is sapped (#1) aligns that foe with the 4GW force's stance on matters, or essentially, "We are no longer against you" means the foe is with the 4GW force.

Traditionally (although it is a relatively new tradition on the whole), performativity in the theory of language was understood to be merely the description given to utterances which were also acts that change the world in some way.  For instance, "I promise I will [do something]" when spoken is an act rather than a descriptive utterance; the act of saying it is also the act of promising.  Consequently, performative utterances were thought to require first-person structures:  I promise, I do (in marriage ceremonies), I apologize.

As with the example of a tree falling in the wood, however, these examples display a necessary correlative:  these utterances would not be performative utterances in the absence of a social milieu or, that is, without an auditor or group of auditors.  The examples of "I promise to do [something]" and "I do [take this woman to be my wife]" are actions only because they can be uttered in a social context.  Rather than change the world in the way a tree falling unobserved in a wood nonetheless changes the local environment, these performative utterances work, or act, by changing the social "world" of the speaker.  They are acts which create, alter, or in some cases reinforce a social contract.  Furthermore, "I promise" and "I do [take this woman....]" and other performative utterances create, alter, or maintain social contracts by creating, altering, or maintaining one's stance toward others in an obvious, upfront, and direct way.  Those who observe that new or reinforced stance are forced into an evaluation of their own position within the social milieu with respect to and as a consequence the speaker's stance. E.g., if the speaker has now promised some future activity, I should be able to shape my own activity from this moment on with the understanding that the speaker will in fact do what he says he will do.

Some forms of performative speech are not as direct as "I promise to" or "I apologize" and so forth.  For instance, the Wikipedia article on the topic gives as an example of performative utterances, "This church is hereby de-sanctified" and "I christen..." (Here, the Wikipedia gives "christen you."  For the purposes of this consideration, however, consider the christening of a boat.)   These are not so much the creation of a direct one-on-one social contract between distinct individuals but an indirect contract intended for all future observers.  The person who de-sanctifies the church is letting all know his stance and the Church's stance in relation to that building with the expectation that others will modify their stances toward the building similarly; e.g., brewers using that building in the future must be aware that the Church expressly denies any connection to that brewery, as should all who look upon the building.  Similarly, the person who christens a boat is letting all know how to modify their stances in relation to that boat.  If in the future you refer to "the Surprise" when discussing the boat, others who know the boat was christened "the Acheron" will have no idea what you are talking about.  (Incidentally, if this discussion occurs while you are at battle on the sea, expect to be useless in that battle and to suffer reprisals.  You are either useless or perhaps a spy.)  Additionally, christening the boat may communicate ownership of said boat.   Even more indirect might be the example of "I dedicate this [book, etc.] to [who/whatever]" -- this does not necessarily force a similar stance toward that book, although it does demonstrate the speaker's stance toward a third party and this might promote a change in stance between speaker and auditor and thus between book and auditor.  ("I dedicate this book to the Dear Leader" for example, might have such an effect.)

Performative utterances need not be full sentences.  Very similar to the example of christening, expressions such as Faggot! and Nigger! quite directly express a stance within the social milieu and force a responding change in stance.  The response can be antagonistic or friendly, depending on whether the auditor approves or disapproves of those declarations of standing.  Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick have used the concept of performativity in Feminist Theory and Queer Theory quite effectively:  Not only certain words but whole manners of speaking may be used to construct, reinforce, and in some cases subvert the dominant interpersonal and social framework, typically by presenting a normative stance which others pick up and strengthen or else attempt to subvert. 

Beyond the linguistic communications, actions also may be performative utterances, insofar as non-verbal communication, or expression, occurs.  One current example of this may be the distinction made between mere homicide or other criminal acts and acts of terrorism.  Homicide may be committed purely for personal reasons and with the desire to remove individuals from this world, but terrorist acts seek to force a targeted society or group into a difference stance relation.  Another example:  the close association of monetary political donations to the idea of free speech or free expression. Similar to this, "buying American" or boycotting companies are expressions of a stance intended to force producers and retailers of products into a similar or corresponding stance.  (The actual exclusive buying of American products -- that is, the act of purchasing --  is a substantially different type of expression than the use of slogans such as "Buy American!" although both may be performative utterances.)

Recently, some economists have been taking a much closer look at how performativity affects economies and markets. Much of that look would focus on how certain economic models, being propounded as representative of what actually occurs within the marketplace, may be less representational and more performative insofar as they lead others to operate within those models.  Members of the audience receiving those models might be blind to the true relationship, however tenuous, between the fact of the market and the theoretical representation of it -- never having made the close examination themselves -- but nonetheless adopt those model and through their actions reinforce it or make it so.

I would rather look at multi-level, cross-domain competition within the marketplace in any search for performativity within the marketplace and label it simply, "Keeping up with the Jones's."  Quite similar to the conventional 4GW force's attempt to elevate its own perceived value while diminishing the perceived value of foes, the ubiquity of any given product (read here: the successful market saturation) and sometimes the design of any given product work to force a stance in competitors and consumers in relation to that product and its producer, either promoting imitation/competition or in the case of consumers greater consumption and loyalty to the product or producer.   There are those who love Justin Bieber and those who hate him.  There are those churning out 3-D enabled movies, those who go to see those movies because "3D's the thing now, and everyone's going to see it", and those who wish those movies were not being churned out.   In these cases, the performativity may be in the ubiquity of products, but the ubiquity may be localized as in the case of the Jones's or peers:  by buying products and displaying them, the utterance of near peers may be, "I'm the kind of person who LOVES this kind of thing; are you with me or against me on this?"  Incidentally, this view of the performativity within the marketplace is not altogether different from the ivory tower version propounded by some economists:  these models are fellow, near-peer, familiar consumers but they are still models of consumption.

It would be helpful here to note a few important shortcuts for understanding the existence of and relative importance of performative and non-performative actions and utterances.

Intent

Whereas it might be said that all acts of communication or expression require an audience and social milieu, the difference between a performative utterance and a non-performative utterance lies in the particular intent behind the utterance or action.  The intent behind a performative act is a) specifically to express a stance while performing the act. b) specifically to expect a target audience to react to the performance of that act by shifting its stance in relation to oneself and to the object explicitly or implicitly referenced by the utterance, and c) specifically to let the target audience know of this expectation of a real change in the audience's stance.  Thus, for example, the simple purchasing of a product because one likes or needs a product may not be a performative utterance, but the purchasing of that product with the expectation of displaying that product and ownership of it to others probably is.  ("Conspicuous Consumption."  Note however that the display need not be for the purposes of implying one has a large bank account.  The avid purchase of sports memorabilia, religious symbols, clothing lines, etc., for the express purpose of displaying these to express an identity would also fall in this category. )  Similarly, the distinction between homicide and acts of terrorism may serve as an example since, like the purchase of products one merely likes or needs which is an entirely personal and perhaps selfish endeavor, homicide is a personal action meant to fill a personal need or desire but terrorist acts are intended to communicate a - c above.  The mere ubiquity of a product or of homicides is not performative -- products are not actors and so do not have the power of intent-directed action -- but the purposeful glut of a market with a new product may be an example of performative expression and wide-ranging and numerous killings as part of a terrorist strategy would certainly be an example of performative expression.

Felicity and Infelicity

Success rates don't determine the performativity of an expression. The targeted audience may not "get the message" for one reason or another and/or may not react to it in the way the user of a performative utterance intends for them to react, but this does not negate the performativity of the utterance.  The person or group of persons using performative expression may be at fault; the audience may be at fault; or the actual expression may be at fault -- although I am using the term "fault" rather loosely here, since, again, performativity is not determined by the success rate so it cannot be described as faulty.

John L. Austin, who first delineated performativity in linguistics, referred to those performative utterances that were "happy" and those that were "unhappy" -- or, those that were "felicitous" and those that were "infelicitous"-- and he outlined "felicity conditions" for describing what is necessary for a successful performative utterance.  Again, however, use of the term "successful" is loose, here.  Examples of performative weakness, or of performative expression most apt to be infelicitous, might help for understanding the concepts of felicity and infelicity in performativity.

An old friend might find a new interest and shower me with conversation and memorabilia relating to that interest expecting that I will also begin to share his interest, perhaps even to the point that we begin to travel to conventions together, start a specialty shop as partners, or engage in other joint endeavors relating to the interest. I may take a deep interest in what he is showing me and become a fan as well as a partner in future endeavors; or, although politely listening all the while, I may ignore much of what he says because his interest does not interest me. If his interest is a new designer drug, then all the paraphernalia and t-shirts and music in the world may end the friendship.

Just because an acquaintance says, "I apologize," does not mean I am going to accept his apology.  I may know him well enough to know that his apology is insincere or, under the circumstances, even if he is sincere I may not care to hear a sincere apology.  Similarly, if he promises me to do something in the future, I may doubt either his sincerity or his ability to carry through on the promise, and therefore I may not reorganize my future endeavors in concert with a belief that he will do as he has promised to do.

If all that I know about the Joker is that he's announced that a gangbanger is going to be shot tomorrow, I might not change my stance toward him; but if he announces that the mayor is going to be killed, I might.  Likewise, the Joker's message to the watching public constitutes a performative utterance because it is a promise:  "If Coleman Reese isn't dead in 60 minutes, then I blow up a hospital."  The people do not actually kill Coleman Reese; but, some do try while others do not.  A similar performative utterance near the end of the movie goes further to display the type of infelicitous performativity that may occur:  No one, not even the Joker, blows up the two ferries, despite the Joker's promise.  The civilians on one ferry come close to aligning their stance with the Joker (they almost blow up the ferry with the convicts) but one particular individual on the ferry refuses to do so at the last moment and all the others on that ferry acquiesce by sitting tight.  The Joker does not blow up the ferries because Batman stops him.

Whereas merely descriptive language "succeeds" or "fails" on its own in the moment -- it is either true or false, whether we know which now or not -- performative utterances extend into the future:  a certain amount of chance is involved, so they end happy or unhappy, are ultimately felicitous or infelicitous, but they are still performative.

En-Actment or Re-Enactment

Performative communication need not be startlingly new.  By "startlingly" I mean, unexpected or innovative in the historical discourse between the parties.  The examples I have already given may suggest that some new standing between speaker and audience is always implied by performative utterance, with the expectation of a new interpersonal, social arrangement between or among the parties, but this need not be the case.  Since none of the future is already then all future arrangements are by nature new events even if they are merely new iterations of past arrangements; rather than being innovative, performative utterances may be reinforcements of long-standing social contracts.

After looking at the distinction between mere homicide and the terrorist's killing of others, we might look at capital punishment for an example of the re-enactment of prevailing stances and arrangements through performativity. Unlike homicide, capital punishment is not the mere accomplishment of a personal desire; it is intended to send a message from the Public/State to the future homicidal criminal within the Public.  One might therefore be tempted to link capital punishment and the murder committed by terrorists, since threats of death delivered by a dictatorial regime, a terrorist organization, or a democratic republic may constitute promises ("I promise to...") and are therefore performative utterances unlike mere homicide.  However, one might also note that any code of justice, or legal code, is merely a complex set of performative utterances.  Every legal code that is practiced -- i.e., that is iterative to the extent that practice is reiteration -- bears a dual performativity:  not only the written form of the code (or a linguistic performative expression) which constitutes the original promise but also a nonverbal performative expression when the punishments are handed out.  Capital punishment, unlike most acts of terrorism, performs the function of reinforcing a longstanding performative communication as one component of an ongoing discourse; as the Joker might say, it's all "part of the plan."

The distinction between enactment and reenactment may not always be clear.  Ubiquitous and reiterative terrorist activity may in fact assume the appearance of a legal code or a longstanding and ongoing communication between actors and audience.  Although individual terrorist acts might appear to target only local audiences and seem to affect them personally, repeated attacks on those localities and persons might build an understanding of what social contracts or arrangements prefigure those attacks.  Individuals repeatedly targeted by the performative expression (i.e., they are witnesses to the expression, the terrorist activities) may modify their behavior with an understanding of what the future portends.  Similarly, the failure to reenact, or reiterate, performative communications may appear to dissolve heretofore ongoing performativity.  Thus, for example, when considering contemporary American affairs some within the American Public might say that our laws on immigration trend toward infelicity.  The linguistic performativity of immigration laws surely exists but the reenactment of those promises, through appropriate enforcement of the laws, is not being performed in a consistent manner.  Many would-be breakers of those laws do not change their stances toward the laws and toward the State/Public in the way that the State/Public intend.

I would note along with this example of U.S. immigration laws that a speaker's failure to act on a linguistic performative utterance is not the only factor that might cause a trend toward infelicity.  As already stated above, the "fault" may lie in the utterance itself.  In the case of legal codes, unclear laws or a failure to disseminate those laws to the intended audience may cause a trend toward infelicity.  In any of these cases, however, the infelicity of performative legal codes results from a breakdown in the reiteration of performative communications; or, the re-enactments.  (To the person not receiving the original linguistic promise, because it is unclear or was not disseminated to him, the punishment will seem arbitrary, or an enactment rather than reenactment.)

Beyond these considerations, one must also consider those performative "promises" not formalized in a legal code, such as unwritten community and friendship standards which are communicated on a daily basis through both, the spoken discourse and the activities of those who constitute the members of the community or social group.  This latter form of performativity within a social group may be so ubiquitous and so familiar that it goes largely unnoticed, or unacknowledged in any direct sense, by those within the social group, by both the speakers (communicators) and the auditors.  Indeed, members of a social group act as both, speaker and auditor, alternatively.  Social arrangements and agreements are reiterated on a daily, perhaps moment-by-moment basis as a matter of course.  Those outside a particular social group may have less difficulty perceiving this performativity, however.

 

Community and Comrades

What should be obvious from the examples of performativity already given: This communication of a stance in relation to others who are the targets of that communication and assumed able to interpret said communication has a strong influence on our conception of any given community.  Indeed, not only do performative communications influence our conception of a given community, but because they are performative they shape the community.   Although much performativity may be infelicitous, the ubiquity of performative communication insures a measure of felicity within every community, so that no community is free of its effects.

A more pointed though in many ways far too off-point exploration of the topic can be found in a couple of recent blog posts:  "People Like Us Give Mobs a Bad Name," by Joseph Fouche at the blog The Committee of Public Safety, and "The Mob of Virtue" by Mark Safranski at the blog ZenPundit.   In both of which, the disappearance of social "cement" is lamented because a diminution in social cohesion has led to a lack of civil engagement which in turn, they theorize, has left Big Government with a blank check.  (I use these examples because I am familiar with these writers; one might substitute many other contemporary writers to find similar examples.)

A wise man once told me that a weakness of our Constitutional system was that the Framers implicitly presumed that people of a truly dangerous character, from bullies to bandits to political menaces to the community, would primarily be dealt with in age-old fashion by outraged neighbors whose rights had been trespassed and persons abused one time too many.

Mark Safranski

 

Latter Day Saints can testify to the vigor of mobs in nineteenth century America. Between 1830 and 1847, members of our church lived in states with existing white populations. Because of the numbers we settled in and our tendency to vote as a block, we seemed to threaten existing local political arrangements. Since we traded among ourselves, we seemed to threaten existing local commercial interests. Because of our distinctive religious beliefs, we seemed to threaten local ecclesiastical establishments. During our attempts to settle in Missouri, all of these factors were compounded by a culture clash between local Southerners and the Saints, most of whom came from Greater New England.

These and other factors generated friction between the Saints and their neighbors. Eventually, this friction always found its expression in mobs. Mobs would attack, starting with isolated farms and settlements and stray individuals. Local authorities would read the political tea leaves and either do nothing to help the Saints or actively connive with the mob. Eventually state authorities would step in and expel us from their jurisdiction, using the mob violence inflicted on us as an excuse. Many Saints lost their lives along with their property.

Joseph Fouche

Furthermore, I use these two blog posts as examples of the sort of dread that may occur in a social group or society when issues of control over that social group or society begin to be raised with greater frequency due to what may be called "mixed messages," unclear performativity, or an apparent rise in instances of misfiring or abuses of performative communications.  Because performative utterances are heavily concerned with future conditions, or the establishment of relative stances which will find fuller expression in the future and in fact influence the shape of future relations, the inability to perceive clearly the dimensions and parameters of that future social organization often causes dread.  Though I use "control" for describing the issues raised, a better description would include the terminology, preponderance of influence, since, as with all issues relating to performative communications or future developments resulting from those communications, a certain amount of chance is involved.  Performative communications are infelicitous or felicitous, and the inability to determine what they are now leads to dread of the future.

For example, one suspects Mark Safranski might at a future date use the term "influence peddlers" when describing the extraordinary and un-checked powers of those within Big Government.  We would not be wrong to label all those within the Legislative Branch with that term; every proposition for a new law or amendment to a law in the normal operation of that branch of our American government is the peddling of a performative utterance:  will my fellow legislators buy this amendment, will my constituents buy this law?  (Keeping in mind that the law, once written, constitutes the State's stance and makes a promise to the Public expecting all members of that Public to adjust their stances accordingly.)  If we admit others into the mix, such as lobby groups and members of the wealthy class, we might expand this system of influence, since they can make promises to support the legislator in the future based upon what that legislator does now.  Indeed, the general Public is not without some influence in this process.  Members of that Public can promise to support a legislator on the basis of what that legislator does in the legislative body:  via campaigning, monetary donations, and an actual vote.  "I vote for Barack Obama" when expressed by a check mark at the ballot box is a performative expression; when expressed as a campaign slogan on buttons and posters plastered ubiquitously it is another type of performative expression.  The utterance of the intention to vote may prompt a corresponding performative utterance, "Well then, I will vote for McCain!"  Such is the friction created via performative communication as individuals align and realign on the basis of perceived stances -- or on the basis of promissory notes.

In the American system, such promissory notes come attached although this might be true of most performative communication.  The individual's vote at the ballot box carries with it the promise --- some might say, the threat -- of a more complex set of promises.  A vote for Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid might be a vote for all policies they would enact and the laws they would write; these in turn would constitute stances held by the State and promises of future activity by the State.  A vote might be felicitous or it might be infelicitous, those voted into office may or may not carry through on what were perceived as being campaign promises, but either way the original vote constitutes a broader performativity:   a vote thus carries with it the promise -- or threat -- of future legislation.

Joseph Fouche's consideration highlights this aspect of the role of performativity on communities.  The Latter Day Saints circa 1830-1847 tended to vote as a block.  As a homogeneous community they therefore threatened what before may have been another community, the comfortable majority.  In the terminology of performativity, that comfortable majority had a preponderance of influence but the new arrivals, the LDS, introduced uncertainty, or dread, because they introduced a block of influences not necessarily aligned with the old block, from influences on the political system to economic and religious influences.  We might also say that a preponderance of influence when it is large enough may appear to be a system of control insofar as felicity of performative communications can be guaranteed; and, that threats to the strength and scope of that preponderance of influence might be perceived as promises to wrest control from those who believe they have it.

Not every minority will display all their difference in a conspicuous manner.  Some minority communities might rather choose to fade into the background to reduce the potential for future conflict over "control" -- or else a minority group might assimilate sufficiently into the larger community, modifying its performative communications to assure the majority community that the minority community's own expectations of future social structures match those of the larger community.  In these ways, the degree of the perceived threat to the majority community's felicitous performativity might be reduced.  The minority group may answer the majority group's performativity, or expression of a stance, via acquiescence:  You are with us or against us! may be answered, Believe us when we say we are with you!  or Believe us when we say we are surely not against you!

Such assimilation may not always be possible without a great and, presumably, unacceptable price.  For example, forced conversion of Jews in Spain in combination with other severely punitive measures led many Jews to flee Spain; and, as with any promise, those conversions were often met with disbelief and even hostility by the dominant majority.   Similarly, in America African-Americans not willing to acquiesce to the promises inherent in Jim Crow laws (not to mention the performative communications delivered via lynchings) chose to migrate to the North. The Latter Day Saints were forced to move on from Missouri.

Behind these examples of "forced" migrations, we see the hand of violence.  (Scare quotes around forced:  could these groups have stayed, assimilated, acquiesced; or did they make the conscious choice to migrate because the only other choice would have been between either assimilation/acquiesence or death?)  As with the enforcement of laws when said enforcement is itself a performative act displaying the stance of the State and communicating future similar action by the State, mob activity reinforces the performative communication of what are often unwritten (though rarely unspoken) community standards.  Actions often speak louder than words:  indeed, that very cliché would have absolutely no meaning, would not even exist, if no action were a form of performative communication.  A close second to expressive action, words with the threat -- or promise -- of violent action behind them work upon the members of a society who must make a choice to stand with or against those words; but such speech comes second to action for performative expressive power only when the threats or promises of future activity are carried out.  (I.e., are historically felicitous.)  If promises are routinely broken or else appear to be routinely broken, performative language from those making the promises begins to lose its felicity and thus, its predictive capability.

A modern and variant example of minority-majority conflict might serve to highlight the consequences of a loss of felicitous performativity.

What if, rather than fade into the background or quietly assimilate, or migrate into a ghetto, another nation, or a desert wilderness as the Jews of Spain and later the Latter Day Saints chose to do, a minority chose to stay and fight openly with that majority?  For many, the Stonewall Riots were an example of what Mark Safranski called "outraged neighbors whose rights had been trespassed and persons abused one time too many" who responded to the enforcement arm of "bullies to bandits to political menaces to the community" by rioting in response to a police raid on a bar that openly welcomed gay patrons:

[The Stonewall Riots] are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when people in the homosexual community fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted sexual minorities, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world.

Wikipedia

For a time, State action and community-driven action in the form of violence or threats of violence served to limit the influence of gays and lesbians, but ultimately that very form of performative communication backfired, just as violent responses to the civil rights demonstrations in the American South backfired.  The terrorist-type communication of promises of future violence defeated itself:  You are with us or you are against us! was met with the response, We are against you! by more and more Americans who sided with gays and lesbians and African Americans rather than side with those who would use violence to limit the influence of those groups.  Part of this change in stance toward gays and lesbians might be attributed to the LGBT slogan, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!" since the political and, yes, performative expression in combination with the related performative act of coming out publicly has forced many Americans otherwise largely unaware of homosexuals to alter their stance or indeed choose for the first time a stance toward the LGBT community.  Similarly, the televised civil rights demonstrations in the American South forced the understanding that standing on the side of those who would use violence as a governing principle would mean choosing what many in the audience considered too high a price:  namely, the acceptance of violence as a governing principle in the American way of life and thus the implied promise (or threat) of future performative violence within America.

The gradual trend away from an acceptance of violent mob activity, or of performative violence as a felicitous expression of intentions and expectations -- a trend often backed by institutionalized threats of violence for those who would use violence in such a manner; i.e., by the legal code and lengthening historical precedence within the legal code -- has had two major consequences. The first is greater diversity within geographical bounds; the second, increasing factionalism, political and social conflict, and extremism.

By diversity, I mean not only a diversity of individuals but also a diversity of stances and a diversity of influences, and by geographical bounds I mean to point at the way geography matters far less than it once mattered.   For a consideration of performativity, we must consider the audience for any performative expression, and current modern technology has extended that audience beyond, for instance, the Missourians and Mormons of 1830-1847.  However, not only the audience but the set of performers has expanded.  Modern technology not only brings performance from a wide geographical stage into the local community but also allows individuals within a local community to reach a broad audience.  Within America, this diversity extends from the national level down to the local level and back from the local level to the national level although America may often seem more diverse from the macroscopic level than from the microscopic level.  While what may be called local communities in modern America still exist, they are far more diverse than ever before and, because of the influence of broadcast, cable, and broadband media, experience far more influence from geographically distant regions of America than ever before.  Add to the mixture international media and international travel, and the diversity of performers/audience increases even more.

Because of the diversity of influences within America, ascertaining the preponderance of influence has become far more difficult than ever before in our history.  This difficulty has led to a general trend toward dread of the future.  Whether borrowing from Marx or seeking further back in history, one might be tempted to say that, if every revolution carries with it the seeds of its own destruction, then the establishment of Constitutionally recognized freedoms and the subsequent protection of those freedoms in America has led us to this complex and ill-conceived sea of influence.  It is ill-conceived because it is difficult to discern; it so complex, no simple understanding of the competing influences seems adequate.

Knowing I have such freedom in our society as I do, I feel happy and secure; but knowing that every single individual around me has equal freedoms under the law may fill me with dread.  I may know what I will do in the future, I may have a reasonable expectation and understanding of what my family and closest friends will do, but the murmur of voices in The Public may be too complex and diverse for me to have any reasonable faith in the felicity or infelicity of any performative communication received from them.  Insofar as elections are held as a remedying solution -- they are a method by which a single influence is temporarily brought to the forefront from the sea of influences and allowed greater sway over future developments -- I and others may dread the rise in prominence, or that institutionally established preponderance of influence, from such an ill-conceived sea of potential influences.  One vote may seem to matter little when one conceives of a multitude of potentially competing votes having relatively equal influence over future institutionalized performativity.

The limitation placed upon the use of performative violence for regulating a community, in combination with the increase in diversity within American society, has promoted a non-violent strategy of performativity in response to the type of dread that may naturally arise within a democratic society.  Far from being merely a ubiquitous and thus often overlooked feature of any society, performativity may be utilized consciously.  The examples of coordinated lynchings and other citizen-on-citizen violence (including all forms of terrorism) already mentioned above should demonstrate the potential for conscious utilization of performativity; but within a society which has largely ruled out mob violence, a resolution to the problem presented by the complexity of a diverse society may take another form:  the creation of workable communities via largely non-violent performative communications.

Though nominally non-violent, performative communications utilized to build workable communities may still bear a relation to violence insofar as these communications promise a leveraging or suggest the threat of leveraging of institutionalized violence -- i.e., from local, state and federal governments -- to carry their point across to all potential audiences.  For an example, consider the quote at the top of this page:

Walker's "invalidation of the votes of over 7 million Californians violates binding legal precedent and short-circuits the democratic process," Pugno said.

Whereas in the past little difficulty may have been encountered in securing a community to deny gays and lesbians the right to a legal marriage, increasingly the influence of the community traditionally opposed to gay marriage has been shrinking relative to the influence of the community that supports gay marriage.   Those who would leverage influence to prevent the State from recognizing gay marriage have had to create ever larger nets for catching a sufficiently influential majority. Traditional arguments about the sinful or perverted nature of homosexuality or that heterosexual marriage is the bedrock of American society and is threatened by homosexual marriage may not be sufficiently influential.  Arguing that the State may take away anyone's vote at whim might therefore seem a viable and valuable argument, given the fact that every American who votes depends upon the felicity of the Constitution's promise of a vote:  You are with us or you are against us; if you are against us, you are against democracy and thus against yourself.  Combine these arguments, and perhaps a preponderance of influence might be achieved.  The other side in this conflict works to create a preponderance of influence in similar ways.  By suggesting that all those who oppose gay marriage are bigots, some who express a pro-gay marriage stance would influence others to choose the side of the non-bigots and thus be a non-bigot; institutionalized bigotry is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, so the implication that all who choose the side of bigotry might be penalized by the State lies latent in the accusation. Other proponents of gay marriage may suggest that opponents of gay marriage are against our particular form of institutionalized democracy and thus against themselves:  the Constitution makes other promises, such as equality under the law, and all who live in America should be able to have faith in the felicity of the Constitution.  To oppose the Constitution's guarantee of equality under the law, and in fact to rewrite that guarantee with a simple majority vote, is to risk having no such guarantee for oneself in the future.

The competition for workable communities able to successfully leverage the power of the State thus may lead toward factionalism as these workable communities begin to take form.  The trend toward factionalism may be exacerbated when multiple exclusive narratives within the public discourse prevent the maintenance or formation of a unifying discourse capable of cementing the public trust.  The example given above contains within it real fears producing real dread, since gays denied the right to marry really will continue to experience a diminished influence within our society if opponents of  gay marriage successfully deny them the right to legally marry, and opponents of gay marriage really will be forced to acknowledge the existence of legally recognized gay couples and all that entails if proponents of gay marriage succeed.

The curious feature of performativity (whether utilized consciously or not) over an extended period of time between competing factions is the fact that they, the competing factions, must continually change their positions, or stances, in relation to one another and in relation to other factions within the society. The competition produces evolution, or at least change, as each faction repositions itself in order to better produce a workable community in the quest for a preponderance of influence.  One might even suppose that what has been called "The Great American Experiment" derives from this mutability which results from performative strategies employed over an extended period of time:  the need to evolve or change in order to secure a workable community within an ever-shifting society may, over time, and thus subtly, produce alterations in competing factions.  For instance, and not unrelated to debate over gay marriage within America, some Protestants who in 19th century America might have violently driven out the Mormons from Missouri may now find themselves aligned with the LDS in their opposition to gay marriage; or, may find a cultural leader in Glenn Beck, a Mormon.  This alteration has occurred after the LDS itself changed, forsaking polygamy as the normative family structure.  Many gays and lesbians are now seeking that very historically heterosexual family structure of two adults married with children; furthermore, many gays and lesbians would like to be welcomed into either Protestant churches or perhaps even the LDS, if only they would be welcomed without the corresponding demand that they "convert" from homosexuality.

This feature of performativity may be curious and always present, but the exact and particular natures of the alterations which occur over time as a result of performative strategies are not preordained, particularly within a complex society within which so many potential alliances, however temporary, are available.  Rather than produce an ameliorating evolution in either side in this debate over gay marriage, a failure by one side or by the other to win this contest of narratives (and it seems one side must fail, ultimately) may exacerbate the dissonance within our public discourse -- particularly if the stances (or standings) of the individuals on the losing side remain precarious from their point of view with respect to other issues and frictions within our society besides the issue of gay marriage.  The degree to which institutionalized performativity is leveraged in this conflict between these two sides, in order to produce a "win" or a "loss" for the two sides, may determine the level at which mistrust between the Public and the State and between individuals living within our society intensifies.

[Note for revision: Include the growing awareness of performativity as a force in our societies as pressure toward 4GW.  Not only for the development of more strategic and sophisticated utilizations of performativity, but also as a force increasing the trend toward factionalization and away from peaceable amelioration and evolution/change within/between factions.]

Multiplication of factions within a society, in combination with greater geographical diversity, may in fact weaken the public trust in the felicity of the promises made by the government sufficiently to remove any sense of strong national community, state community, or city community -- indeed, any strong sense of community beyond factional loyalty.  This diminution of trust may result from:

1. The government's inability or unwillingness to carry out its promises -- its laws are infelicitous; i.e., it is not able or unwilling to enforce its verbal or written performative communications;
2. Preferential treatment by the government for one faction over others: a fundamental and strong opposition to a government's performative communications may result, in which case the government's laws and enforcement of those laws are felicitous but a large number of factions or else sufficiently influential factions within the society do not trust or approve of what those laws promise;
3. The government's mutability -- frequent changes in either a definite written code or the interpretations of its legal code -- in which case its legal code or constitution trends toward infelicity on the whole.

A faction's performativity, from its establishment as an identity group to its efforts to leverage influence and thus to leverage other members of the society as well as ultimately the government, may pressure non-aligned individuals to choose between a) joining that faction or an opposing faction, b) forming tenuous ties to weak communities whose influence upon the discourse of the society is as mixed as the confederacy of its constituent narratives, or c) developing much smaller but stronger social groups --  bands of comrades -- capable of offering moral and material support.  "A" and in some cases "C" may be the choice of  politically active members of the society; "B" and in some cases "C" may be the choice of largely apolitical or disengaged members of the society.

 Extremism may be another response to an inability to ascertain the felicity or infelicity of performative utterances within the multitude of narratives in a society.  For extremists, the ability not only to form a faction but to form an influential faction turns upon the group's ability to distinguish itself within the dissonance of the society's discourse:  by word or by deed, and sometimes by both,  the extremist band of comrades seeks to force a choice, or a realignment of stances, in relationship to it.  Multiple extremist groups may form within a society that is so fractured or fracturing, sometimes in opposition, and the success or failure of a particular extremist group's attempt to achieve a preponderance of influence will depend not only on the type and number of other factions within a society but also on its ability to achieve a sufficient public trust in opposition to other groups and, in some cases, in opposition to the ruling government.

Indeed, a State's very character and structure in combination with its willingness and ability to carry through on its performative communications will determine the type and scope of factionalism most likely to arise within the society governed by it as well as the type of performative communications chosen by the various factions.  The State's historical relationship to the Public may affect what threshold -- between felicity and infelicity -- it must cross before a society dissolves into social discord and the State becomes unstable, but historical precedent is more likely to merely affect the speed with which civil instability replaces stability, not whether.  We see failed states in which the government is reduced to a mere faction within the society, through its inability to ensure felicitous governance and, in response to instability, a preponderance of influence within that society.  We also see the advent of opponents to U.S. governance within failed states:  insofar as military might would represent governance of and to a Public, and insofar as performative communications force a choice by members of that public, and insofar as both verbal and nonverbal performative communications fail to achieve a preponderance of influence within failed states, 4GW factions will continue to oppose said governance. 

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* In fact, aspects of 5GW can also be found in our politics and our political system.  But this is not the place for discussing that.