Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

the "conversion" post.

I am sitting here sick in the home theater of my house (the coolest place in the universe to me, and designed to be as such) trying desperately to blog but my brain is just so screwed by this virus that I fear I will write only gobbley-gook (he pecked, somewhat ominously . . .).

But scanning through the many comments on that one post was nice.

I myself have fallen into and out of conversion to this character many, many times across my life.

Sometimes I think he's quite fascinating, other times I'm certain he's a complete fraud.

I have no idea where this role takes me. I just find life more interesting having him around than during those times when I have purposefully banished him from my life (like during Em's cancer fight). I always come back to this character because I realize it's the only one I can truly play. The rest (doomsayer, clairvoyant, tactician, political handler, commentator) I can dabble in but never truly embrace.

But the grand strategist, or the person who aims to look out for this grand experiment (United States) over its longest possible haul is endlessly fascinating to me. Of course, that sort of intellectual ambition is just this side of crazy (as I said in BFA, you're constantly subject to megalomania--an occupational hazard) and the ego-sustaining requirements are vast (hard to dial down in your personal life), but I honestly feel like it's an important one--or at least it's the way I know how to help others.

I have felt like an idiot savant my entire life, sort of a freakish outcast for the way I think. So connecting to others through the blog, column, articles, books, speeches, consulting, F2F encounters and email--all of that is incredibly important. I could have easily turned into one of those frauds, like "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," or some nutjob like Unabomber (he too, has a grand unifying theory of sorts). I could have easily let all the worries that come with this job (what do you NOT worry about in this profession, I ask you?) drive me to very dark visions, because I feel that's the path of least resistance--meaning it's easier to be Darth than Obi Wan.

But my connection to Christ is a very simple one, and Scorsese got it best with the "Last Temptation" (read the book it's based on, because it's wonderful), when he had Christ (Willem Dafoe) express his "secret" thusly: "I feel pity for everything." Today, he'd say, "I feel bad about everything" and we'd think he was suffering from clinical depression (something, on an almost professional basis, I assume will get me in the end--meaning, in old age) and we'd give him a pill. But like Paul Weller once sang,

I'm only sad in a natural way

And I enjoy sometimes feeling this way

The gift you gave is desire

The match that started my fire

So I think this sort of inner struggle is a very good thing, but perhaps that's just the Catholic in me.

Still, the more I grow into the role, the more I love my wife, the more I bond with my kids, the more I seem to get everything better, deeper, more connected. I feel at once more dangerous and more benign, more powerful and more powerless. I feel like it's inevitable that I will perish in this effort and that this outcome is okay--even useful.

I don't think any of these thoughts marks me as weird (careful, Thomas, you've being evaluated for another government clearance...) or more "converted" or more anything. I think they represent the growth you're supposed to go through, because in the end we all perish in the effort. It's just a matter of who feels really connected to the knowledge of what that effort was for them individually and who heads to the grave wondering what it was all about (not a new concept for me, as my senior honors thesis at Wisconsin was about Solzhenitzen's concept of "ascent.").

I don't wonder anymore. I know what's its all about. I know it will kill me in the end. And I plan on fighting until it does.

These are not mind-consuming thoughts. They are animating spirits and governing dynamics and a something that you reach for--mentally--when you need a handhold. My wife and family perform very similar functions.

So much so that I cannot imagine doing this life without them. I feel like it would be an occupational hazard of the worst sort. If I wasn't constantly gauging the marriage and the lives of my kids against everything else I spend my time imagining and projecting and scenarioizing, etc., I think I could easily get lost in all that stuff and--again--turn very dark.

I guess that's why I find the "last temptation" notion so fascinating. To me, it represents Christ's most interesting sacrifice, far harder than strapping on a crucifix and calling it a day. He felt all that pity, for everyone and everything, and denied Himself all the normal connections, and yet met His death/sacrifice preaching nothing but love and concern for others.

And that is the part I always find amazing. I don't care how much of it one can prove or disprove. I just find that idea amazing, and powerful, and focusing.

And so I embrace His story. I "convert."

And that conversion informs the picture/map/vision/strategy that I try to sell others, effecting their conversion. I want them to connect to the pity, and connect that pity to everything and everyone, and find enough hope in that empathy ("I feel your pain," it was once said) to be motivated toward action and the ultimate realization that we have it within ourselves to achieve global peace with a definition that all will recognize.

As a kid, I was drawn to the "good war" of WWII and that aborted definition of global peace. Then, growing up, I wanted to connect to MAD and deterrence and detente. Then, just as I entered my field, I was fortunate enough to have all those past images stripped away and be presented with this rather immaculate conception called the post-Cold War world (the peace created by the non-war), and I spent my career trying to get that picture/story down in my head.

Right up to 9/11, numerous storylines competed in my skull. But with that terrible day, I felt like it all became crystal clear and the organizing principle began to form.

I can't give you a moment or a scene. I've just felt it build ever since, and the more I connect to that emerging understanding (which, quite naturally, is shared among many the world over), the more I feel almost apostolic: the speaking in tongues, the room by room conversions, the whole shebang.

I know that makes me sound child-like and naive on some level, and that's why I balance my long-term optimism/idealism with a very harsh short-term realism/pessimism (the point I tried to get across to Hewitt last week). The reason why that appeals to the military is that--deep down--this is the balance they maintain: bad for now so that good for later.

And you know, the only way you really do that well is to realize that it's not yours, that it's not about you, and that it's only a matter of connecting first to that which others connect with finally.

And so the sense of legacy is not about credit, and it's not about fame, and it's not about making money.

It's simply about playing your role--and playing it well.