Surprise and Black Swans Part 1

Reading "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. A lot of "experts" and "elite" and those of us who are absolutely certain about some proposition or idea need to read and tremble at their ignorance. Some years ago a friend of mine Boyd Jay Petersen (Lecturer at the English Department at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah)introduced me to the idea of Surprise in the affairs of men. Something we need to be aware of as we learn and try to gain certainty in our Religious, Economic, Scientific, and Philosophical worlds. My thoughts take me back to the recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Bahrain. Where the grassroots revolution in this area of the world dominated by Dictators supported by the West, due to the preponderance of oil wells. Listening to our Western Television and Radio here in Australia, and via video and audio podcasts. I was lead to believe from the likes of Glen Beck and others on FoxNews that the events were lead by the left and designed to depose the pro-western Governments, that they were lead by the Islamist organizations like the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt. Our respective Western Governments should support those same dictators against the demonstrators. Then some inconvenient truth crept into the dialogue from the use of YouTube and Twitter, with Facebook organizing right down to the individual young person. It was not until thousands of these youth were braving Tahrir Square in Central Cairo. The cameras making it clear that snipers had it easy to pick them out from the high buildings and the overpass. After nights and days of this terror, the destination for the sympathizers was now Tahrir Square. Thousands more migrated to the square and similar locations in Alexandria, Suez and many other cities in Egypt.. Then the what remained of the organized opposition decided to join in and try to capitalize on this grassroots popular movement that was moving too fast for these old foggies. Far from being directed by these opposition groups like the Moslem Brotherhood, the Conservative and Liberal News groups failed to understand. Notable exceptions were Rachel Maddow and Democracy Now! Where the Black Swan presented itself and cool analysis brought the truth behind these events from competent researchers and Journalists like Sharif Abdel Kouddous from the same Tahrir Square, interviews with the participants and the surprised formal opposition participants. I say formal, but the decades of punishment from Mubarak and his cronies has left just an impotent rump compared to the youth lead uprising which simply stated "Mubarak Must Resign". It is sad that the great USA could not recognize an event that mirrored it's own humble beginnings. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone