stevenberlinjohnson.com: Baghdad Falls, redux

My post from a ten days ago on the liberation of Baghdad, and my ambivalent feelings about it, generated some very thoughtful posts and emails in response. I wanted to respond to one theme that kept appearing, which is the question of the moral right involved in overthrowing an obviously tyrannical regime (before you even get to the question of what you put up in its place.) A number of people responded to my concern about our routing around the U.N. with this consolation: what we did was ultimately the right thing to do, and so if we couldn't persuade the security council to support it, too bad for them.

The problem with this line of logic is that the world is filled with actions whose moral rectitude reasonable people disagree about. To roll out the usual examples: I happen to think that it's morally wrong to give a massive tax break to the richest 1% of the country at precisely the point at which the distribution of wealth is the most extreme it has been since the 1920s. Many, many people agree with me on this point. But quite a few disagree, and many of them have actually been elected to run the country. So odds are, they'll win out, at least in the short run.

And I'm okay with that. Because that's what democracies are all about: they're explicitly designed with the assumption that reasonable people will disagree about fundamental values. And so when one of those disagreements flares up, there's a process for dealing with it. The same goes for international conflicts. There is certainly a case -- even a progressive case -- for using military power to overthrow Hussein's regime. But there is also a case against it, and many people whose knowledge of the region and of history I greatly respect have been making that case. So you need a system to resolve these disputes, some kind of global democracy that recognizes conflicting values, and creates a process for managing them. Right now the UN is the closest thing we've got. Could it be reformed? Absolutely. It would certainly be nice if all the member states were democracies themselves. And I'm not so sure about the veto power. But unilateral action in global affairs is just as dangerous -- probably more so -- as unilateral action in national affairs. Just because something's morally right doesn't always make it the right thing to do.

The Basics

I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of seven books, and co-founder of three web sites. We spend most of the year in Marin County, California though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbeej at earthlink dot net. Media requests should go to Matthew.Venzon at us.penguingroup dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)

My Books

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
An exploration of environments that lead to breakthrough innovation, in science, technology, business, and the arts. I conceived it as the closing book in a trilogy on innovative thinking, after Ghost Map and Invention. But in a way, it completes an investigation that runs through all the books. Sold more copies in hardcover than anything else I've written.
The Invention of Air
The story of the British radical chemist Joseph Priestley, who ended up having a Zelig-like role in the American Revolution. My version of a founding fathers book, and a reminder that most of the Enlightenment was driven by open source ideals.
The Ghost Map
The latest: the story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here.
Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture -- and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.
Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
My first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites.
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.
Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
My first. The book I wrote instead of finishing my dissertation. Still in print almost a decade later, and still relevant, I think. But I haven't read it in a while, so who knows what's in there!

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