There is at least one classical analogue for Glyn Davies MP and his recent remark about not considering academics to be ‘experts’ because they lack experience of the real world: Alexander of Macedonia. This is not intended as a compliment.
According to legend, the Gordian Knot had been tied by a legendary king of Phrygia (centre of modern Turkey), Gordias, who used it to tie his ox-cart to a post (being one of those kings who began life as a humble peasant before being unexpectedly elevated by meeting the terms of an oracle). The cart was dedicated to the chief god of the Phrygians and kept in the royal palace; centuries later, Alexander paused there in his campaign to conquer the known world, and decided to untie it. Depending on which version you believe, he either cut the knot with a sword or pulled out the post so it unravelled; either way, Success!, and some oracles were hastily written to explain that untying the knot made you king of the universe, rather than just being a bit of gratuitous vandalism of priceless heritage.
Alexander the ‘Great’ is the archetype of the unreflective ‘See thing; hit thing with stick’ man of action, of the ‘Must do something; this is something; therefore must do it’ politician. He makes Homeric heroes look introverted and sensitive. He is celebrated, and certainly celebrated himself, for having Done Things that others counselled against or considered impossible, turning the world upside down for the sake of his own inflated ego, without any concern for the consequences. He Thought Outside The Box, and the Gordian Knot has become the go-to metaphor (as a quick Google will demonstrate) for any problem that looks complex and nigh-on insoluble – or so those ivory-tower ‘experts’ will try to tell you – that actually just needs some decisive action from a proper Man Of Action to slice away all the unnecessary nuance, ambiguity and qualifications.
This is such a terrible model for anything, and yet it’s incredibly powerful: the idea that complexity only appears to be a problem to those who think too much, and can actually be disposed of in an instant of decisiveness. The Gordian Knot feeds into the legend of Alexander the Prat, and his military successes legitimise taking his actions as exemplary leadership. It’s the dream of politicians, and of the popular media: a world that really is simple, if only we could cut through the nonsense propagated by those who have an interest in making it seem complicated. Brexit Means Brexit; all we need to do is leave Europe and everything will fall into place; the refugee problem can be solved with a firmer hand; build a wall; and so forth.
The obvious points: there was no need to do anything to the Gordian Knot in the first place, beyond Alexander’s restless desire to Do Things; even if there had been a solid reason, it can easily be argued that he’d missed the point completely by cheating; and solving problems by destroying the object of puzzlement is rarely without consequences. Put another way; this sort of thinking – not exactly magical thinking, though it’s clearly allied to it – is precisely what makes politicians dangerous; Alexandrian Leadership is at best futile (because most problems in the Real World are resistant to being hit with a sword) and more often destructive, both because hitting things with a sword often makes them worse and because it reflects and encourages a general reluctance to accept that the world is complex and things are difficult – and that experts may know what they’re talking about.
I was delighted to discover that this isn’t a new idea; in a lecture of 1957, Albert Camus depicted the history of the twentieth century up to that point as the violent cutting of the intricate knot of civilisation by the sword of totalitarian and populist politics. We need, he argued, to re-tie the knot, not just to accept that everything is intertwined but to celebrate this; we need anti-Alexanders. Absolutely; and now more than ever.
Update, 6/11: courtesy of @ByzantJustice on the Twitter, I learn that another great literary figure of the 20th century was unimpressed with Alexander’s actions: Erich Kästner. He imagines what his mother’s reaction would have been, on the basis of how she told him off for even thinking of opening a parcel in such a manner: “Das gehört sich nicht, Alex! Strick kann man immer brauchen!” Yes, the Alexandrian Leaders of today are exactly the sort of people who forget, or have never needed to know, that you always need string.
Sphinx 
Greetings.
I found your site by way of the Thucydides Roundtable on zenpundit. Already enjoying your commentary.
This one left me somewhat uncertain, though, on several points.
On the one hand, it speaks of the wisdom of what the Yes, Minister writers once semi-lampooned as ‘masterly inactivity’. Much of politics for generations, I must stress whether right, left or centre, and whether populist or the opposite, has stressed the need to ‘do something’. There was wisdom in Coolidge’s alleged remark that when you see ten problems rolling down the road at you, you should wait because nine will roll into the ditch.
On the other hand, clarity demands we recognize that that populist bias for action does exist across the ideological spectrum. Decisions to accept refugees in 2015 were driven as much, if not more, by populist pressure as by rational consideration, and fully as much based on populism as the opposition.
Looked at purely as a matter of whether one needs to act precipitately and decisively in response to emotion, or to analyze with care and deliberation, on which side did Chancellor Merkel’s decision on refugees actually fall?
Similarly, one might even note that there is a bias for action even when the decision-making process is not particularly populist and does involve much care and deliberation. Even then, there is just as often at the root of it an impulsive assumption of a need to act on something that does not necessarily warrant action unless one shares the assumptions. Or that warrants other action if one has different assumptions.
On Brexit- indeed, if anyone is taking the view that the mere fact of Brexit will ‘solve’ all Britain’s ‘problems’, then this is simpleminded indeed. Not inherently more simpleminded a conception than the once oft-heard cry that the solution to every European problem is “More Europe!” [this may have been more of a 1990s thing], but simpleminded nonetheless. But that leaves out anyone who just decided that the eventual goal of political and fiscal union was too much Europe. How simple or wrong is it to, finally, take the architects of a project and its current leaders at their word and decide it is not a preferred path?
Or on a broader question, during the Brexit run-up one heard much about how Britain is a European country, always part of Europe, etc., with the idea that these [to me inarguable] propositions discredit Brexit and demand ongoing UK membership in the EU as it follows its course. I was left then, and still am, wondering at the proposition that the EU must be considered synonymous with ‘Europe’ the civilizational and geographic space, which it would not be even if it were coterminous with those spaces.
Not to beat all that to death, but I do find that is dangerously easy to slip into the assumption that only the opposite side has simpleminded definitions.
your comments on the actual Gordian Knot actually struck me the most. As a kid, when I first encountered the story, my first and strongest reaction was indeed, “But, he cheated!!!”. I think my teacher had to devote some effort to explaining that this was the point, and the idea of stepping outside the system or a given set of rules and assumptions to redefine the problem.
If he wanted to make me a natural rebel, he failed. And I still have the instinct to call him out for cheating before anything else. But the exchange clearly left me with some benefits.
Many thanks for this. I think I agree with most of what you say – and of course this was a hastily scribbled blog post rather than a fully worked out argument. There’s a distinction to be drawn between action versus inaction (where the question is often finely balanced, and situations may indeed demand a swift response to stop things escalating – though the tendency for politicians to act for the sake of acting can be problematic) and simplicity versus complexity (where the tendency for politicians and media to insist that things really are perfectly simple is potentially dangerous).
I think your example of Merkel’s actions on refugees last year is a really good one. There was a clear case that immediate action of some kind was essential – and/or that inaction was itself effectively action, rather than working as any sort of stalling mechanism – but my sense is that the decision was taken in full awareness of the complexity of the situation, without any belief that it would instantly solve everything.
Entirely agree that both sides slip into simplistic assumptions all too easily – one of the problems with the Brexit referendum is precisely that both sides ducked all the difficulties and complexities. I tend to end up in a more Thucydidean ‘a plague on all their houses’ position – the problem is not with politicians of this or that persuasion, but with political discourse and culture as a whole, and with human beings’ limited capacity for analysing their own situation rationally. What annoys me about the Alexander anecdote is that it positively encourages such simplistic thinking by heroising the denial of complexity as well as fetishising precipitate action…
I agree the Alexander story does do both of those things, and I particularly like the turns of phrase ‘heroising the denial of complexity’ and ‘fetishizing precipitate action’ as descriptors, if used with care. That’s strong and clarifying imagery. I still wonder if there isn’t a role for it though, depending on circumstances.
If one pulls out the sword on first confronting a new problem, there’s the chance that the problem really is that urgent and precipitate action is urgently needed. That will always be the province of the decision maker, just as there will almost always [or always] be those questioning it in the immediate aftermath and later. The questioners may even be right to one degree or another, but were not the one called on at the time. There’s room to allow for that reality. And there is room to question it to better prepare for the future- one thinks of the apparent German debate recently caused by the play about an officer who shoots down an airliner commandeered by terrorists.
There will be many more occasions when pulling out the sword is rashness or a failure to acknowledge genuine complexity that would be better dealt with on its own terms.
There are third occasions, which come to mind for me because of some versions of the Gordian anecdote in which the knot is supposedly legendary across Asia and Alexander and others have heard of it, including previously wrought legends about the kingship of Asia. In those kinds of situations, immediate resort to the sword is the considered move, to make a desired point.
Or, put another way, there are times when instant decision is called for, times when confronting complexity to deal with it on its own terms and in appropriate time, and times when the appearance of precipitate action is employed to make a point, but is the product of earlier decision. It may even have been considered to the degree that it correctly anticipates a desired reaction on behalf of the observers. For example, awe and fear resulting in a propaganda coup.
Then there’s perhaps the fourth scenario, that more likely captures Alexander’s position. This is the “let’s cut through the bs” position, which reflects an instinct but also serves the decision-maker’s interest in making his point the one that sticks. This model, compared with the third one, vastly increases the risk of error both as to the substance of the issue and the range of possible outcomes [not the same thing or the same error], and is the most subject to your critical terms as cited above.
For the most part, those of us who want to make room for it are just serving an instinct too, and I appreciate that problem. But I think there are times when the particular problem really can be bs, either in general or in the context of the goals and interests the decision-maker is serving.
Perhaps what unites those third and fourth scenarios is the desire of the decision-maker to actually, actively, reject the complexity of a given situation because doing so serves their purpose. And by acting, they create a new situation in which some of that complexity is destroyed because it doesn’t relate to new conditions. Other, new complexity will arise, and may have to be dealt with, but the situation is newly shaped. If the decision was correct, it is shaped more to the decision-maker’s liking. The image that comes to mind here is the sudden change in quantum state once an observation is made.
It doesn’t have to be a denial of complexity in general or in any particular situation, nor do I intend it to be. But passed through academic life in the early 1990s at a time when complexity as a term was recently popularized and had made its way from the natural to the social sciences and on to the humanities, and was to my mind experiencing its own period of fetishization.
Or to boil it down. For me, there are not many times when Alexander’s actions will be the best, but there are some, and there are conditions that reinforce its position as the best course. Most of the time, to mix eras, I’d prefer a more Metternich approach to problems of statecraft. But on occasion our discourse appears to prefer swinging wildly between Taoist inaction and Helen Lovejoy from “The Simpsons” [most famous catchphrase, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!”].