When we cease to understand the world

On the need for humility in world affairs

Vans leaving King Abdulaziz Airport’s Royal Terminal, Jeddah. Photo: PW

Like most journalists I came up local: Student council, city hall, bigger city hall, Parliament. I didn’t do much journalism outside Canada for a long time, mostly because there seemed no way in, but also because global affairs felt like the preserve of superbly educated people who understood the world’s exquisite subtleties.

When I started covering international relations more frequently I began to realize that people who specialize in global affairs — decision-makers, journalists, academics — aren’t necessarily finer thinkers, just because their theatre is bigger and its stakes are higher.

Partly this is because it’s just as easy to fake it, to surf, to bullshit at the highest levels as it is at the corner store. In fact it may be easier. You’ll be recognized the next time you poke your head into the corner store, and reminded of what you got wrong yesterday. Whereas you could flit forever from one visiting fellowship to the next without being reminded that you were wrong on Iraq or Brexit or whether Trump would make it. The food is usually better too.

Secondly, international relations is a bluffer’s game because the way the world works can’t be known: it’s a too-complex system with too many variables. Even brilliant thinkers and conscientious students can’t get everything right, or even most things. The too-easy belief that we understand things is what cognitive psychologists call the Illusion of Explanatory Depth and, I think, what Hayek called the pretense of knowledge.

The more time I spent in drawing rooms and trouble spots, the more I found people who didn’t have the faintest idea what would happen next. I come bearing anecdotes.