Why I'm Revisiting Pothole of the Gods
You’d be forgiven for thinking this might be the end of days for the Islamic Republic that that was literally, not figuratively, founded to bring on the End of Days for the rest of us. Maybe, but I’ve never been sold on the idea that theology is a sound basis for foreign policy. In my experience, the Almighty has never been that easy to push around. Your milage may vary.
When I wrote Pothole of the Gods in 2021, it was to place man’s fascination with one of his oldest and most enduring bad ideas into a wider context. I’d traveled in the Muslim world with a pediatric cardiac unit, which isn’t as random as it sounds: Hospitals have an excruciating tendency of placing bad ideas into a wider human context. Yet, it was always going to be tricky to write a book about something as both atavistic and never-ending as holy war.
Pothole was published a year before what future historians may well mark as the start of World War III. Like the first world war, this conflict will have its aspects of jihad, but this time the Middle East won’t be a side-show. The world is too addicted to the energy that fuels a truly global market. The nations of the Global South may not be a match for America’s militarily, but the rise of AI and drone technology has turned every lost cause into a quasi-holy war and given it an air force. Who needs a massive military when you can pester the world with “economic chaos arbitrage.”
An apt description, but hardly one to rally the masses. Perhaps the lure of jihad is more potent in a place where a bright future pursing happiness, peace and prosperity is pretty much achieved only after you die and go to Heaven. By Western standards America is a religious country, but the promise of a fat heavenly pension is less of a pull when we’re all one tech start-up from a billion dollar pay-out here on Earth. The US-led post-War order lifted more people higher out of poverty than anytime in human history by order of magnitudes.
Yet while the rich world is getting older, developing nations are still screwing like bunnies. This matters because the “universal” values of the West are becoming the ideological grand-parents of the world. If we can’t engineer some sort of ordered hand-off to a rising generation, the West and its institutions may be on its way out.
The solutions in Pothole of the Gods are more psychology than policy in nature. Considering the contours and historical patterns of human nature not only gives you a less tribal and wider context, it also enables you to detect the narrow-context bullshit coming from the media, government policy, academia and undergrad TikTok. It may not solve any problems, but you’ll be less confused and over-whelmed by the whole thing.
I’ve tried to put a complicated cultural history into the framework of my own personal and professional story. I’ve been to some unforgiving parts of the world witnessing first hand systems functioning under stress, and how it affects people operating within them. If I strike a humorous tone it’s because, in my experience, the people in a position to stress the system already take themselves very seriously, and they don’t need my help. This was best encapsulated by the late, great P.J. O’Rourke: “All lies are told with a straight face; it’s the truth that’s told with a dismissive giggle.”
That’s what interested me.
This update focuses on systems functioning under stress, and how they affect people operating within them. Every situation is different, but with a wider lens patterns emerge. Even the irrational chaos fueled by fear and emotion tends to follow a rhythm.
I revised and updated Pothole of the Gods, not to predict the future, but to cancel out some of the noise. And because the world is still going to hell.
