Bureaucracy in Britain

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“Calls may be recorded for training and quality purposes” – sounds familiar? That could be the start of your bureaucratic merry-go-round journey.  

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We live by forms, recordings, rules, laws, and rational organising principles that dominate us and, in their wake, ensure the good life for all, with clear intentions of fairness, accountability and stability. But theories don’t stand up so well in the modern real world, where planning permissions, gridlock, urban planning regulations, and endless enquiries often hold sway over our needs.  Still, believe it or not, that’s bureaucracy, the organising principles we love to hate but can’t do without. So, what is Bureaucracy and who is a bureaucrat? Bureaucracy is an expression of a distinctive organising principle that most of us associate with ‘red tape’ and other pejorative terms.  A bureaucrat is anyone working within this administrative system. Some of us wrongly confuse it with the civil service, who essentially work within the corridors of Whitehall or what lurks behind, where utter shambles and disorder are another story to tell; for now, I leave it behind for this essay.

Where I would go, though, is to the highly entertaining ‘Little Dorrit’ novel written in 1857 by Charles Dickens.  There, he epitomises a true Kafkaesque nightmarish illusion in the form of ‘How Not to Do It'.  There he prescribes the guiding philosophy of the Circumlocution Office—a satirical portrait of British government bureaucracy.  When inventors or reformers (like the engineer Daniel Doyce) bring useful ideas to the government, the office buries them under endless committees and cross-examinations until progress dies. Similarly, today’s local-level mechanism of defensive administrative compliance prioritises process over speed.  Decisions that should take days are routinely subjected to multi-tiered sign-offs, exhaustive risk assessments and consultative loops.  Major housing schemes sometimes take over 300 days to receive an initial planning decision, proving ruinously expensive. Paralysis, cost overruns, delays, and legal battles often end in cancellations after millions of pounds are spent.  Textbook cases of such debacles include, among many others, the HS2 high-speed rail link, the Dartford Crossing, the proposed highway tunnel under the River Thames and no less protracted schemes that led to cancellation after a quarter of a million pages of reports; delays costing around two hundred million pounds as part of its budget for tunnel building under Stonehenge after twenty years of endless consultations saw it finally cancelled.  

Max Weber, German sociologist.  

One of the central figures in the development of sociology

To understand bureaucracy well, I turn to Max Weber, the prominent Austrian sociologist, and his magnum opus, ‘Economy and Society’.  At the turn of the twentieth century, Weber approached Bureaucracy in neutral terms as a form of organisation whose features point to both public and private, government and corporations, breaking them down into two main principles.  Firstly, workers act like professional cogs in a machine. They treat everyone the same way (impartial) and leave personal feelings, friendships, or favouritism out of the job (impersonal). Secondly, A bureaucracy is a way for leaders to exercise power ("domination") over people. They justify this control by claiming it is the most efficient, logical, and practical way to get things done ("instrumental rationality")—even if it feels cold or rigid to the people involved.

A heating engineer is called at your house to sort out your broken-down boiler in the middle of winter, minus six outside, couldn’t find a parking meter and walked off.   His manual says to park no further than 20 yards from a customer’s residence, so he didn't find a space as instructed by his checklist.  He doesn’t care that he leaves you freezing cold- that's not his problem. Rules are rules, or didn’t you know?

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Bureaucracy is supposed to be the ideal type to run a large, highly complex organisation. If fully developed, it would be the most efficient and effective model for a complex organisation to meet its goals, whatever they may be. For private companies, it is shaped by market forces.  It closely monitors prices, profits, losses, competition, and consumer demands, because any inefficiencies in its products or labour performance could mean bankruptcy. To that end, the bigger the organisation, the more it needs a system to organise its hierarchical structure. Juniors down the line must adhere to that system, regardless of whether they achieve a desired outcome for the consumer. Often enough, the downside is when rules and protocol compliance are tailored in such a way that they become more important than the goal they were created to achieve. Capitalism demands this adherence because profits, above all else, are the metric of success in efforts in trying to find value in its architecture.

Hence, in massive organisations, like the multi-layered NHS, the Police force, and private corporations, checklists and form-filling manifest heavily as a cover-your-back (CYA) culture- CYA stands for "cover your ass" (or more politely, "cover your assets" or "cover your actions").  Employees closely comply with strict protocols not necessarily to achieve the best outcome, but to shield themselves from legal liability, corporate blame, or getting sacked. It is a sort of bureaucratic disease we all- employers, employees, and end users/consumers alike in one way or another, have to suffer. Regulatory systems are highly formalised; workers prioritise ticking boxes to ensure bureaucrats’ safety.  It is a sort of risk aversion, so any innovation is penalised because it violates the system that provides all that protection.  No wonder the country is suffering from stagnating productivity while we, the consumers, are left frustrated by the lack of outcomes. But that is only to be expected when the worker is a mere cog in the machine with no incentive that encourages any thinking, prioritising the system over human intelligence.  

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According to Weber, bureaucracy is natural in large-scale human organisation.  Whether driven by corporate restructuring or not, human beings naturally lean into system worship when trapped in a rigid hierarchy.  He calls it the ‘Iron Cage Bureaucracy’, an inescapable phenomenon in modern society.  For now and in the foreseeable future, being protected behind bars is the most efficient, rational and predictable way to organise large human groups.  But that rationality comes at a massive human cost.  Weber argued that as a society becomes more modern and complex, scientific and bureaucratic systems take over every aspect of life.  Once these systems are prescribed within a rigid template, they become impossible to dismantle. They trap human beings in an ‘iron cage’ of rules, calculations and rigid control. He continues, bureaucracy strips away human emotion, tradition, and personal values.  It treats people as mere ‘cogs in a machine’.  It follows that whether a country was capitalist, socialist, or communist, all systems require mass organisation to run factories, armies, and states.  Therefore, all organising systems inevitably build massive, soul-crushing bureaucracies.

Western modern corporations and progressive public institutions, however, are finally recognising that rigid ‘cover your back’ culture kills innovation. Several decentralised strategies are being put in place, such as organising work into small, self-governing cross-functional teams and eliminating layers of middle management.  The teams have the authority to pivot immediately based on user feedback, rather than waiting for executive approval. The organisation can focus strictly on what delivers value to the end user, cutting out bureaucratic excesses. The danger, however, is that the ‘iron Cage’ shows up when the startup grows into a multi-billion-pound company; it naturally begins to implement compliance departments, legal teams and standardised protocols.

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The elephant in the room is that any effort to maximise efficiency, innovation and critical thinking takes a hit.  By implementing division of labour and standardisation, ideas originally designed by classical economists such as Adam Smith reach a tipping point. It can actually begin to destroy productivity and alienate the workforce, creating what sociologists call ‘functional silos’ or separate cells.  We have all been in positions where we had to repeat our enquiries several times to get a positive response, if we were lucky, finally.  We get trapped in a template. When work is divided too deeply, individual employees lose sight of the big picture. Their entire universe shrinks to a specific template, form, or checklist.  Seamless departments are rare, because compartmentalising can be more efficient, since any failure in the system can be traced to a single cell.  It also provides a shield, a cover-my-back culture within every cell.  Performing to a checklist may be useless to you and me, but on paper, to the employee, it means complete satisfaction. That checklist measures compliance rather than the final outcome and has nothing to do with productivity or keeping you happy.  

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A typical A&E department at hospitals.  In many instances, patient care is second best.  Bureaucracy in the form of paperwork reduces the time staff have for care and hinders staff and leaders from managing risk, being creative, innovating to fix problems, empowering others, and being flexible. This negatively impacts staff well-being, morale and retention while hindering the very outcomes the processes aim to support.  A similar situation exists in the police force, where, for example, an arrest of a teenager over a small amount of cannabis could take away a police man at least several hours of form-filling; instead, he could be doing frontline policing, a job he is expensively trained to do.

Bureaucracy also means standardisation. We live within standardised, predictable systems.  When you order a standard product online, the template ensures you are treated fairly, the price is predictable, and the process is uniform.  Bureaucracy can codify an operation into standard operating procedures.  A McDonald’s in London and a McDonald’s in Tokyo cook a burger the exact same way because the process has been bureaucratised into a rigid template.  This means the corporation can hire thousands of completely average, interchangeable workers and still achieve the same output. It can do all that with delicious fries, yet amazingly can’t fix a boiler.  

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When jobs are broken down into mindless, repetitive steps, critical thinking isn't needed because the system overrides it every time. Hence, deskilling occurs, which means low-paid, easily interchangeable workers (cogs). For workers, it becomes incredibly difficult to ask for better pay when they cannot point to an achievement or any tangible outcome they can show for their effort.  This is called value disconnection: there is no sense of ownership in a job, just a single-template satisfaction down the conveyor belt. We’ve all heard of ‘burnout ’; here it is ‘boreout’- trapped in a mindless loop.  Repetitive, mindless box-ticking all day long, a mind-numbing monotony, can ironically trigger mental exhaustion. Shamefully, the problem can often be associated with Capitalism.  It tends to treat labour as an input cost-a commodity to be bought, optimised and minimised, just like raw material. It also means breaking jobs down into predictable (template) and replaceable parts (separate cells).  

More seriously, this dysfunctional system can lead to alienation, a deep sense of isolation, powerlessness and separation which can corrupt both worker and consumer. Hence, cognitive dissonance builds, creating intense conflict when the worker knows the system is failing while the consumer is furious, and then has to offer a false “I understand your frustration, but it’s company policy…” The consumer doesn't realise the employee is judged solely on system compliance; the customer stops being a human being with a problem to solve. We are met with cold, robotic efficiency hidden behind a fake, corporate smile. (British Airways air hostesses come to mind?)  A bureaucratic personality takes over, and the worker becomes so alienated they start loving the rules more than they love being human.  

But hey, what about us? What do we get out of all this? We need to fix that boiler, I hear you say.   We all like to believe that bureaucracy is theoretically built to serve the citizen, consumer or end user.  On that assumption, can we be so bold as to believe that holding to a system expect it to deliver? Well, that all depends!. By and large, in principle, yes, the end user does gain when the task remains simple.  Opening a bank account, getting a driving licence, a bus pass or ordering online. In such cases, nobody needs to reinvent the wheel for you since you fit within the system.  The moment your enquiry steps ‘out of line’ and doesn't fit the template, the system breaks down.  You get bounced from one cell to another; at each cell the worker covers their back, while you repeat your story to every cell. Without realising it, you've entered a field where the focus is entirely on protecting the rules rather than resolving your problem.  You have to navigate a maze that has made your life harder, not easier.  By now, reaching your wits' end won't solve your boiler problems. From then on, the system commits to itself. When protocols need protecting, goals and customer satisfaction take a back seat, so a mere, cynical ‘I apologise’ becomes an easy ‘fix it’ ploy.

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Moreover, in this digital age, algorithms are increasingly taking over under the umbrella of AI and digital bureaucracy.  Traditional ‘paper pushing’ is out; digital exosystems run by Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are in. Algorithms replace manual templates, monitor inventory, track delivery drivers, and automatically organise and optimise workflow. AI can scan millions of financial transactions or legal documents in milliseconds, instantly flagging potential non-compliance or fraud.  It builds a digital audit more detailed than any human paper trail. The algorithm becomes the ultimate bureaucrat, solidifying the ‘iron cage’ into unyielding code, and alienating the end user entirely. We now end up with a new problem: the automated government system cuts off healthcare benefits or changes NHS appointment dates, but there's no human clerk to appeal to.  Those in the separate cells only resign themselves to the fact that ‘the system wouldn’t let me change it’—a tyranny without a tyrant.

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There is hope yet.  Progressive companies have finally realised that an antidote, an out-of-the-iron-cage card to such alienation, is empathy.  When they break the walls of these separate cells, the value of worker input returns.  Going further, they encourage those in the background, like engineers, designers, and middle managers, to listen to customer concerns.  Amazon has pioneered the ‘Two-Pizza Team’, where worker clusters are broken down into small groups small enough to be fed on two pizzas. They can evaluate, measure, and, when needed, put right, ensuring full customer satisfaction.  Prime examples of companies that have done away with traditional rules and broken the mould of bureaucratic norms in the digital age are Netflix and Spotify; both have encouraged worker independence, empowerment and promotion prospects.  When reconnection structures win, the system steps back. Employees are empowered to use their brains, and they are directly rewarded because their impact is clear.  

So, whether we look at AI, algorithms, or the traditional failures of past workplace bureaucracy, the lessons remain the same. When an organisation - be it HMRC, the Police or the NHS - prioritises internal systems, protocols and compliance engrossed in form-filling, a 'cover my back culture' is time-wasting.  All this lacks human empathy, leaving the end user to pay the ultimate price.  A profound, systemic blindness replaces efficiency. Max Weber feared a world where cold, static, rational rules would trap humanity. What we have arrived at in the digital age is far more psychological: a fluid iron cage policed by algorithmic guardrails. The bars are constantly moving, reshaped overnight by social media, shifting opinions, wokism, and changing cultural taboos. The system demands absolute uniformity, refusing to offer a fixed set of rules; we are left in a permanent state of anxiety.  Bureaucracy was invented to bring a sense of predictability to human life; ultimately, it delivers the exact opposite. A world where no one is free, no one is accountable, and everyone is pretending. What follows is social media conformity enforced by a faceless institutional apparatus: ‘the rule of nobody’.  

Bureaucracy conforms to the process of change as do compliance and checklists, and we change along with them.  There is no ‘exit’ from the iron cage.  The iron cage is not a prison; it is the skeleton that holds our civilisation upright; without it, the scale of modern life would utterly collapse.

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Iraq - The Apocalypse

 Iraq - The Apocalypse

Imagine that, as an Iraqi, through no fault of yours, you are suddenly labelled as a member of the “Axis of Evil”.  America, a superpower, had to find an outlet to shake off its frustration, an enemy to run down and what it cries out for retribution; the world becomes its echo chamber.

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Victims or Terrorists - Guilt by Association

September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of four coordinated suicide terrorist incursions carried out by al-Qaeda, a Muslim extremist network, against the United States. The attacks killed more than 3000 people and destroyed the famous Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. It was the most destructive terrorist act in human history and the biggest ever on US soil. The War on Terror had begun; the principal target was Iraq, despite the fact that 12 of the 15 militants were Saudi nationals. It was no good to blame Saudi Arabia; the US had a commitment to protecting the kingdom.  

Iraq, though weakened by years of wars and ravaged by severe sanctions, still represented a likely threat to America and the Middle East according to the Bush administration in the White House.  Hence, it was an ideal target; regardless of the possible human cost, it was to be a war of liberation, not one of aggression. carried out by ostensible ‘legal’ means. As it turned out, it caused a catastrophic refugee crisis, destroyed the fabric of Iraqi society, leading to segmentation, and displaced millions of people, as well as millions fleeing from the country.  

Little did America realise that terrorism on its own soil is partly of its own making. The enigmatic obligation to fund and help Israel has made it a target since the 1967 Middle East war.  America then and today may be rightly justified in thinking that terrorist groups originate in the Arab and Muslim world, and that ‘rogue states’ back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. But, by putting itself in this position, the US obliges itself to go after countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies have now become America’s enemies. In other words, America has created its own liability.

Be that as it may, the Media and the White House went into overdrive to justify a retaliatory attack on a worthwhile target that could fit the bill for easy justification, a preventative attack and invasion by employing highly racialised political rhetoric.  Scapegoating Iraq was therefore the eureka moment; ‘Reality’ was carefully choreographed, printed, and broadcast to the populace by television and newspapers, fantasising guilty Iraq as a perceived reality that the country and its citizens had to bear the consequences. Killing innocent civilians, or humans, was considered as never mind all that. The United States had to construct an ideological position, a window through which all can view reality by presenting a linguistic structure of socio-semantics that Iraq is perceived as harbouring terrorists. By now the word Islam was synonymous with terrorism, while the popularity of the Bush administration went into the stratosphere following the “Axis of Evil” speech.  

Coalition of the Willing

Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s authoritarian ruler, was seen as a loose cannon who had to be immobilised was the opening gambit. Unpredictable, a warmonger, a predator towards his neighbours, altogether a lawless president of a country that was suspected of harbouring WMD. An assumption and speculative illusion, as it turned out, but at the time was a good enough pretext to go to war. Iraq was ripe for regime change, so the US thought.  An invasion army was being assembled, and strategic weapons were being accessorised. Still, the United Nations (the UN) needed to come on board to turn hypothesis into enough justification for a pre-emptive strike.  In other words, monopolising the UN as a tool to validate what may be construed as an illegal war.  Effectively, in the face of hegemonic manipulation of international law and coercion, the UN was a lame duck. The US was free to monopolise and validate the definition of ‘legitimate violence’ and monopolise international law towards geopolitical reconfiguration under the facade of democratic transformation. The credibility of such a design, however, never held up, as the repercussions later proved, but that is another story that can adequately describe the profound miscalculation and ideological hubris.

Shock and Awe

Before turning to the question of displacement and the diaspora, it may be useful to briefly trace the successive stages that led to them.  The United States, together with its coalition partners, invaded Iraq on 20th of March 2003 under the euphemistic banner of Operation Freedom, better known as ‘shock and Awe’. The Awe here stands for an overwhelming feeling of fear, terror and dread.  The killing of innocent civilians was ‘legal’. Iraqi people were no longer innocent but guilty of 9/11 and classified as terrorists. The Western media saw to that.   The US unilaterally declared Iraq a future threat as justification for invasion and offensive violence, which juxtaposes the idea that all Iraqi citizens were collateral damage, a military necessity so a legal byproduct. For you and me, this is a shield that would otherwise be considered unlawful killing. Iraqi people were now categorised as Arab, as Muslim or Middle Eastern, having lost their individuality and political framing. They are now inherently violent, backward and dangerous.  Iraqi individuals walking down the street are stripped of the presumption of innocence. They are now a de facto Red Flag, giving prejudice free rein to work its discriminatory effect on who matters and who is disposable.

Such was the effect of 9/11.  The invasion is now ‘legal’, and its impact was catastrophic. It was to be an erasure of the Iraqi state and the destruction of all institutions. It became a type of warfare where the enemy does not wear a uniform, so every Iraqi citizen became a suspect, which led to mass arbitrary detention and torture.  The burden of proof shifted; Iraqi civilians had to prove they weren’t terrorists. It quickly became clear that the American military juggernaut arrived not as liberators but as oppressors.  

Dismantling a highly modern, institutionalised state became the catalyst for flight.  The US administration stripped 50,000 civil servants of their jobs, as well as rendering over 400,000 armed individuals unemployed.  Demolishing water and electricity utilities, as well as healthcare institutions, overnight. The De-Ba’athification meant stripping hundreds of thousands of civil servants, doctors, professors, and administrators of their livelihood. Even though, their employment was based solely on party membership, which was a prerequisite for professional advancement.  The dissolution of the Military, turning half a million armed men into unemployed civilians overnight, created a security vacuum that eventually sparked the sectarian civil war.  All this meant the very people, the very substance of the complex grids of a working society, were targeted, marginalised and completely unprotected.  It culminated in The Collapse of a complex Society

The Brain Drain and the destruction of human capital.

Iraq was proud of its leading institutions, with some of the most advanced healthcare and education systems in the Arab world before the invasion. Baghdad historically served as a capital of intellectual ferment and artistic expression, leading to the famous regional proverb: "Cairo writes, Beirut prints, and Baghdad reads".

The invading army created a security vacuum, having dissolved any state protection; lawyers, doctors, engineers, and academics became primary targets for kidnapping, extortion and assassination by sectarian militias. They were forced to flee in the hundreds of thousands to Amman, Damascus or Western capitals for survival, leaving the country stripped of its intellectual backbone or seek protection from sectarian or tribal factions. This marked the first phase of localised displacement after 2003.  An estimated 40% of Iraq’s professional class fled the country; by 2007, more than half of Iraq’s registered medical doctors had fled.  This systemic brain drain due to the safety vacuum engineered by the coalition crippled universities and hospitals altogether; this also meant that those who survived the bombings to live a dignified life had disappeared. Those who arrived in exile were economically hollowed out; they had to sell their homes and land, and many arrived in foreign countries with only a shirt on their backs, as well as losing their class and identity.

Displacement and dislocation were not an accidental byproduct of war.  The invasion was not just about regime change but, as we have seen, a deliberate destructive policy.  The Coalition Provisional Authority's policies engendered a weakened state shaped by sectarian rivalries.   As if that was not enough, before the invasion, despite living under a brutal dictatorship and despite the society's fracture, Iraqi identity was largely understood through a secular, nationalist framework.  The invasion shattered Iraq’s unified political capital and replaced it with a system designed to divide: the Muhasasa system. Empowering an entirely Shia majority, taking hardly any account of the Sunnis, who formed the largest minority, assured division and resentment.

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Sectarianism and remapping of Baghdad

True to form, ugly sectarianism followed. Among an already crippled society, peace was not to be.  One wave of displacement followed another.  The trigger this time was the bombing in 2006 of the Al-Askari Mosque, a Shia shrine in Samarra that unleashed intense sectarian violence and structurally altered Baghdad’s geography. Sunnis fled to Sunni-dominated western Baghdad (Al-Hurriya) while Shiites moved to eastern strongholds (Al-Dora). The US military accelerated this separation by constructing massive concrete blast walls to seal off violently contested areas-intercommunal unmixing. By then, the Tigris River had gained another chapter within its once-illustrious history.  It infamously became a separating border between the Al-adhamiya (Sunni) and Kadhimiya (Shia).  Two areas sat directly opposite each other, and the bridge that separated them was barricaded.  Sectarian violence became the primary driver of this displacement. The capital inverted its demographic makeup within months, from a highly homogeneous, integrated city to sectarian enclaves separated by military blast walls.

Estate agents enjoyed a booming business, pairing families and helping them trade legal deeds. It is estimated that 80% of all internally displaced people in Iraq originated from Baghdad.  

Lawlessness and systemic violence became Baghdad's new landscape.  Abduction became a highly organised "cottage industry" and a tool of terror. U.S. officials estimated that up to 40 people were kidnapped every day, ranging from ordinary Iraqi citizens and prominent academics to foreign journalists and aid workers targeted for massive ransoms. Among them were the leading cardiologists, neurologists, and Iraq’s leading academics and university professors.  It was suspected this was a deliberate campaign to destroy the best and brightest as part of the cultural cleansing taking place by religious extremists. Mass migration of this ‘Brain Drain’ naturally followed, hollowing out the country of its human capital.  Forced segregation was imposed by sectarian militias through their systemic campaigns, plastering notices of evictions on doors, giving people 24 to 48 hours to leave the area, and flipping areas completely.  As for the minority Christians in the area, they were forced to live under Sharia law and pay Jizya (tax) for protection.

Over 2 million people fled the country, and another 2.4 million, roughly 15% of the total population, were displaced within Iraq’s borders.  Despite allowances of around $1000 per family to encourage return as of 2008, few took up the offer.  Many families ended up with no fathers, only mothers with young children to look after, badly in need of human assistance.  In other areas, insecurity remained an issue, making it impossible to live in their previously mixed areas.  They would now rather integrate into their safe place. In certain areas, those displaced still felt vulnerable due to fear of inter-tribal conflict and eviction orders. They would return when things got settled.  It never did.

I have mainly concentrated on Baghdad, the capital, where most operations formed the nucleus and where it represents the prime example for the rest of the country, but displacement was happening throughout. Discussing regional societal collapse falls outside this narrative.  Suffice it to say, the history of Marshland tribes of the South as well as the Kurds of Iraq north of the country was nothing short of violence, political and moral misery. That is not to say the Kurds themselves were peaceful; instead, they engaged in inter tribal armed struggle due to two-pole power politics, which also led to segregation.

The Diaspora abroad: a dislocated identity and a Crisis of a Once Proud Nation.

Iraqi people historically held immense pride in their country's status as the ‘Cradle of Civilisation’ and the intellectual powerhouse of the Middle East.  Now see themselves stripped of what they had of class and identity as ‘displaced persons’.  Mainly in the USA as potential security threats, where ‘Mohamad’ and ‘Ali’ were a no no names.

In the decade following the invasion, Iraqi professionals and youth entered host societies where the public narrative cast them as "security risks"; they faced double victimisation. In many parts of the world, Iraqi refugees were classified as guests; they were largely barred from legal employment, forcing a highly educated population into deep urban poverty. When physicians, professors and engineers fled the country, their professional credentials were rarely recognised; they faced a sudden transition from high social status to the working poor.  Neurosurgeons found themselves driving taxis in Amman; university deans were forced to retail work in Detroit, USA.  This loss of class stripped away the dignity that had historically defined the Iraqi professional identity.

After being falsely associated with terrorism at home, Iraqi refugees faced intense suspicion; a hostile Western reception awaited them. Public opinion was already conditioned to view them with fear; they faced incredibly slow asylum processes.  A proud, highly educated population found themselves living in poverty, forbidden from working legally and facing Islamophobia and bureaucratic walls in the very nations that invaded them. A proud population that had nothing to do with 9/11 found themselves double-victimised by having their state destroyed by foreign intervention, and second, by being legally locked out of safety by the nations responsible for their displacement. The irony of exile couldn’t have been more morally cruel, living strained in their chosen sanctuaries.

Overcoming this required deliberate, strategic resilience; they had to constructively and individually re-mobilise their human capital to overcome prejudice in jobs, schools, and civic life.  Applicants with Middle Eastern, Muslim or Arab-sounding names faced widespread hiring prejudice, and reports show that they were under severe strain to overcome this ‘culture risk’ employer psyche in hiring them.    When hired, they were placed in low-paid jobs or paid well below the normal rate for a ‘native’ doing the same job. To overcome this discrimination, the Iraqi diaspora bypassed traditional corporate gatekeepers; many relied on their own merit and entrepreneurial spirit. Other highly skilled professionals underwent intense recertification processes, taking low-tier jobs to gain "local experience" before climbing back into their fields. Despite the challenges, however, they most coveted safety and freedom in their new surroundings to live a life free from fear.

Education was first and foremost for the first-generation Iraqi diaspora to overcome the 9/11 conditioning. The height of excellence was eventually achieved despite heightened bullying, structural marginalisation, and systemic low expectations from educators.  Iraqi students’ personal resilience utilised academic adjustment to dismantle discriminatory biases in universities. Unfortunately, names stood in the way of securing interviews in job applications.  It was easier for ‘John’ and ‘Emma’ to get an interview on an identical CV than for ‘Ali’ or ‘Mohamad’.  Snap judgments based on the CV header didn't go in their favour. Anglo-Saxonising names followed: ‘Zainab’ became ‘Zee’, ‘Tariq’ became ‘Tony’, and Mohamad became ‘Mo’. However, that was not enough to dampen their spirited enthusiasm and ambition.

The Triad of Deprivation (As conclusion)

The catastrophic effect of the invasion should stand as a warning against the manipulation of international law to validate pre-emptive warfare.   The inevitable result, as we have seen, is the sanitisation of human suffering leading to educational, economic and security deprivation.  The tragedy of modern Iraq shows that when a powerful state sets out to violently reengineer another nation under the guise of global security, the civilian population bears the structural burden of that arrogance.  The 9/11 rhetoric casting innocent civilians as terrorists, and as members of the Axis of Evil, permanently altered the lives of millions, transforming a complex modern society into one of the largest refugee crises of the twenty-first century. In conclusion, the plight of the Iraqi people reveals that the true cost of pre-emptive or preventive war needs not only to be measured in structural damage and political transitions but, above all, in the possible damage to a society.  In this case, a society weakened by decades of war and sanctions.  Against all the structural erasure of a nation’s institutions, the blaze of destruction to the framework holding its citizens together, the consequent displacement of its people, and all the suffering the superpower has caused, Iraq stood defenceless.

Iraq - The Collapse of a Complex Society

This comparative article analyses the collapse of societies in three empires: the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and modern Iraq, and where the collapse of modern Iraq fits in the story, taking centre stage. Iraq is the twentieth-century name for ancient Mesopotamia, more commonly known as the land between two rivers- the Tigris and the Euphrates. Or better known as the Cradle of Civilisation. This article seeks to answer the central comparative question: How and why do complex, bureaucratically advanced societies collapse, and what distinctive factors shaped the trajectory and aftermath of state collapse in Iraq compared to Rome and Byzantium? By setting these cases side by side, I aim to reveal both recurring structural patterns—such as the decay of central authority, fiscal crisis, and social fragmentation—and the particular dynamics that gave Iraq’s recent collapse its unique place in this broader narrative. After I set the stage, I go on to focus on the collapse of Iraqi society after the 2003 invasion by United States forces, and the reasons for non-resistance from any kind of Iraqi institutions. In consequence, a regressive transformation of Iraqi society crushed the middle class and created an artificial humanitarian disaster.

At its peak around AD 117, during the reign of Emperor Trajan, the Roman Empire covered about 5 million square kilometres across three continents and held a population of roughly 60 to 70 million people plus around 150 to 200 million slaves. It was the beating heart of Europe. Its Bureaucracy was a lean, adaptive administrative system that maintained order and collected taxes throughout vast Mediterranean territories, requiring 35,000 people to run and holding the empire together. In contrast, the EU Commission employs about 32,000 people today.

At its peak, the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire) was characterised by its massive territorial expansion, monumental architectural achievements, and economic hegemony over the Mediterranean world.  

In modern Iraq, history must be viewed through the lens of its most powerful native-centred power, the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258 CE), alongside its ancient predecessors: the Sumer Empire, which developed the world's first urban centres, writing system, and centralised government between the 5th and 3rd millennia BCE; the Akkadian Empire under Sargon around 2,334 BCE; the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BCE); the Babylonian Empire and its Hanging Garden. Not forgetting, of course, the laws of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar established the foundation for justice and equity, all originating in that land between the two rivers. Modern Iraq reached its socio-economic zenith during the "Golden Era" of 1973 to 1979. Driven by the nationalisation of oil and a massive influx of petroleum revenue, the country transformed into a complex society and one of the most advanced economies in the Arab world.

Mesopotamia, A Greek word meaning "land between two Rivers"

- The fountain of knowledge that shaped human thinking -

So what went wrong? When an economy breaks down, we call it an economic collapse. When a large number of people die, we call it a population collapse.   When power systems crumble together in a relatively rapid and enduring manner, we call it a societal collapse. Societal collapse defined the history of Rome and Byzantium, while 20 years after its collapse, the fray of Iraqi society is still ongoing; its society has yet to shape its future, and its collapse is still to be defined. Its present is an extension of the past half century.

If you ever visit Rome and wander through the Colosseum, you will be struck with a feeling that nothing lasts forever.  You will be surrounded by the marble skeletons of the Colosseum, a symbol of one of the most powerful and complex ancient European societies, when it had all of Europe under its grasp.  Now reduced to ruin and rubble, a haunting tribute to the people who lived there.  Visiting Istanbul tells the same story of Constantinople.  Following the Ottoman invasion in 1453 led by Sultan Mehmed II, the population fragmented. In central Iraq, about 55 miles south of Baghdad, near the modern city of Hillah, you can find the remains of the once-mighty city of Babylon.  How did these proud and powerful empires crumble? How did these honorific civilisations and complex societies collapse?  

In this essay, I will examine the sequence, causes, and after-effects of the collapse of these three civilisations, concentrating on Iraq, but first I define what is meant by the collapse of Complex societies. A society can be said to collapse when it goes through a rapid and considerable loss of an established level of socio-political complexity.  It stems from the destruction and decay of social organisations and institutions; often the reasons are a mixture of factors such as Climate change, drought and invasions.  A complex society, by contrast, has much more specialisation and centralised control.  All three societies I refer to here shared these qualities to some degree.  The loss of social complexity also comes in degrees.  I would also add that complex societies are often defined by profound inequality and hierarchy, and that certainly was the case in Iraq.

Disintegration and deliberate acts of State destruction led to the catastrophic Collapse of a complex, sophisticated, highly educated society.

My last paragraph captures many important details, which I try to unpack, quantify, and qualify in some order as I go.  Rome suffered from extensive tax evasion by the elite, shifting the entire fiscal burden onto the peasantry. Over time, its currency plummeted by 90%.  In Rome’s eastern empire, the financial exhaustion from the 26-year war with the Sasanian Empire left the treasury empty on the eve of the Arab conquests. Not helped, of course, by the 1204 sack of the city by the Crusaders. Constantinople’s revenue dropped by 90%, leaving the state unable to fund its standing army. Ba'athist Iraq suffered a similar fate.  UN sanctions froze imports, halted infrastructure repair, and forced reliance on the UN oil-for-food rationing system. Per capita GDP crashed from $10,300 in 1980 to under $1,000 by the late 1990’s.  The Iraqi Dinar devalued from $3.20 USD per 1 ID to 2,500 ID per $1 USD by 2002.  In all three cases, economic ruin left all three states physically incapable of maintaining basic civil functions.

Though separated by centuries, the Western Roman Empire of the fifth century, the Byzantine Empire before its final fall, and Ba’athist Iraq leading up to the 2003 Anglo-American invasion all offer stark illustrations of states thoroughly hollowed out internally long before their final external catalysts of collapse. Far from sudden, unpredictable military defeats, each of these civilisations suffered a prolonged, multi-decade unravelling characterised by fiscal ruin, the systematic degradation of central military authority, and deep socio-political fracturing and continuous regime change through repeated revolutions.  Having set the comparative stage, allow me now to zoom in on the gradual collapse and the final onslaught that led to the disintegration of Iraq’s society.  

The framework supporting Iraq's institutional infrastructure had been weakening since the 1958 anti-royalist revolution.  A bloody military coup led by Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew the Hashemite monarchy. The Outcome resulted in the killing of King Faisal II and Prime Minister Nuri al-Said. Iraq was declared a republic, ending British imperial influence. That was followed by the Ba'athist violent coup of 1963, only to see its demise in a power-sharing arrangement between a nationalist president and a Ba'athist prime minister.  

That arrangement was short-lived, followed by yet another coup that saw Saddam in jail for his political infighting.  In July 1968, another revolution followed, this time with the Ba'athists securing total control under Al-Bakr's leadership. Having escaped from prison in 1966, villainous, power-hungry Saddam played a critical operational role in the coup. He was appointed Vice President and head of the internal security apparatus.

The crescent paired with a star is the cultural symbol of Islam

Throughout the 1970s, Machiavellian and scheming Saddam Hussein built a powerful police state and effectively ruled from behind the throne as the ageing President al-Bakr's health declined. On July 16, 1979, the final transition came when Saddam forced al-Bakr to resign under the pretext of ill health and officially assumed the presidency.  Six days later came the infamous purge. On July 22, Saddam convened a Ba'ath Party assembly and falsely denounced dozens of senior party members as traitors. Sixty-eight people were arrested, and 22 were executed, cementing Saddam's absolute, unchallenged dictatorship over Iraq.  Hanging on to Power and control by violence was the default direction for the next 35 years.  He hollowed out the Regular Army of most of its generals to prevent military coups, starving them of funding while funnelling resources to the loyalist Republican Guard. As we shall see, even those deserted him, finding the cost of his defence too high, which also marked the final collapse of the hierarchical structure.

The chronological order of collapse is clear.  At every phase of this chronology, dislocation of Iraqi people continued unabated.  An estimated thousands of people emigrated to the regional centres of the Arab world, as well as further afield to Europe, the USA, and Australia.  The year 1958 is a major milestone in the collapse of Iraqi society and the ensuing diaspora.  Democracy at this time, tentative as it may have been, still offered exit options; many in the cultured middle class among royal sympathisers grew suspicious of the violent political direction of travel, became extremely vulnerable, and left.  That was the first wave of the breakdown. It remains debatable, however, whether the Jewish exodus of 120,000 people, made up of scholars, bankers, and other intellectuals in the early fifties, triggered the fragmentation.

Nevertheless, the blueprint of disintegration was continuously and effectively drawn amid mayhem and disorder.  Baghdad and major regional hubs experienced localised chaos, political purges, and flight during the rapid succession of coups, including the Kurdish war (1961), the Ramadan Revolution (1963), and the 17 July Revolution (1968). On top of this, ethnic conflict and political migrations in the rural and northern areas caused the displacement of around 600,000 individuals over the course of the 1960 to 1975 period.

The degrees of hollowness continue to instil fear, uncertainty, disillusionment, and loss of confidence in the government led by Saddam Hussein, who proved to be a highly predatory individual using military aggression, territorial acquisition and economic coercion to exploit weaker neighbours.  He squandered Iraq's riches in his deeply entrenched ideas of ‘War makes State and States make War’.  In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, leading to a brutal eight-year war of attrition.  He thought he could exploit the chaos of the 1979 Iranian Revolution to capture the oil-rich Khuzestan province.  It ended in a stalemate with massive casualties generally ranging between 100,000 and 500,000, with over 300,000 wounded and devastating economic costs for Iraq, $352 billion to $561 billion. Iraq entered the war with an estimated $35 billion in foreign exchange reserves, but finished it owing between $50 billion and $80 billion in external debt, largely to neighbouring Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.  

On the heels of the final stages of the Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqi regime launched a systematic, genocidal campaign against the Kurdish population in northern Iraq. In the period of 1987–1989, Saddam decided to attack the Kurds (Al-Anfal Campaign). The drive targeted rural Kurds because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate of Northern Iraq. The Ba'athist regime committed atrocities against the local Kurdish population, mostly civilians.  This included the infamous chemical weapons attack on the town of Halabja in March 1988. Both atrocities combined resulted in an estimated 50,000 to 182,000 Kurdish deaths. Between 2,000 and 4,500 Kurdish villages, along with dozens of towns, administrative centres, schools, and mosques, were completely razed. This clearly strained the cohesiveness of Iraq's ethnic and cultural diversity.

In 1990 came the Gulf War- Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990; many would argue for reasons due largely to carrying the burden following the crushing financial crisis and inability to repay Gulf lenders like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.  In addition, I would, however, ascribe to Hussein's Ba'athist ideology of Pan-Arabism.  See below for more on Ba'athist Socialist ideology.  The imposition of such entrenched ideology was centre stage, as was seen in his attempts to Arabise the ethnically distinct Kurds.  In response, a US-led international coalition launched Operation Desert Storm in January 1991, successfully expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait by February. The estimated cost to Iraq was $50 billion plus reparations, as well as the international damage resulting from the war.

Comprehensive economic sanctions between 1990–2003 took hold immediately after the invasion of Kuwait. The United Nations Security Council imposed near-total financial and trade sanctions on Iraq. These sanctions remained in place for over a decade, severely crippling the Iraqi economy and bringing about widespread humanitarian hardship. People were forced to sell their possessions to buy basic necessities. Modest relief came through the Oil-for-Food Programme in 1995, which ended with the US-led invasion in 2003. To alleviate the humanitarian suffering caused by the sanctions, the UN established this program in 1995 (becoming operational in 1996).   It allowed Iraq to sell a limited amount of oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian necessities.  A dark chapter of a dying nation with no country able or willing to offer a lifeline or impelled to take action against such cruelty.

What followed was a sad chapter: the sinking of a society within the web of the Dark Triad - Machiavellianism, money laundering, manipulation, self-interest, skullduggery, and fostering resilient domestic black markets for survival. We see a fluid society, with some branches transforming, no longer constrained by traditional morality and rigidity. 

Because Iraq is a Rentier state, relying on oil for 90% of its income, it was vulnerable to external shocks, which instantly squeezed the economy. Conduits of smuggling routes were put in place between Baghdad and to and fro Amman, Dubai, Turkey, Syria, Iran and the Kurdish territories (Erbil) in collaboration with foreign companies. The Jordan-by-truck pipeline was the main corridor for smuggling machinery spare parts, minimising the emerging local cannibalism of machinery.  A network of well-organised multi-layered supply chains supplied items from toothpaste to highly profitable electronics. Iraqi oil was trucked into Jordan, and goods of all description were shipped back, valued at around $300 million annually- all state-sponsored, placing surcharges and kickbacks to state gatekeepers, none other than the Goliath, Saddam Hussein and his two sons, Udai and Qusay, charging highly inflated prices to Iraqi people in need.  Across a range of competing people seeking status through market dominance, dark-triad corruption was widespread, with one group exploiting the rest. This was the collateral damage of state collapse.

See below for a brief look at the mechanism installed to show how this, and the highly profitable and highly specialised clandestine ‘Hawala’ operation, functioned. Privateers who worked this ingenious system, those hardwired to make money and get away with it, give the word ‘savvy’ a new dimension.

The US-led invasion of Iraq occurred immediately after these events, beginning on 20 March 2003. This military campaign resulted in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime and officially brought an end to both the comprehensive UN economic sanctions and the Oil-for-Food Programme that same year. By then, the law of diminishing returns applied to a society hollowed out by continuous state violations and offered no benefit to its citizens; the invisible social contract was at an end; hence, the institutions of all kinds offered no resistance to the invasion of coalition forces, ending in the total collapse of the framework holding the Iraqi society together.

The swift destruction of Iraq’s state apparatus unleashed suppressed sectarian rivalries and collapsed the centralised rationing network, sparking immediate internal and external refugee crises. The post-2003 chaos resulted in the displacement of over 4.7 million Iraqis—approximately 2 million fleeing to neighbouring countries (Syria, Jordan) and 2.7 million internally displaced, fundamentally uprooting nearly 15% to 20% of the total population.  The ultimate legacy of state collapse lies not in altered borders but in forced migration and the demographic shattering of the civilian populace. The United Nations sanctions regime against Ba'athist Iraq—established under UN Security Council Resolution 661 in August 1990—is widely documented as one of the most comprehensive and punitive economic blockades in modern history.  The specific legal mechanisms, bureaucratic terms, and catastrophic human impacts of this embargo methodically dismantled Iraqi civil society and engineered the structural collapse that preceded the 2003 invasion.

The 2003 final onslaught was labelled by the allied forces as shock and awe. Dismantling the Iraqi military and stripping down what remained of a highly centralised state that managed complex electrical grids, water treatment and public health systems meant they all suddenly ceased to function, leaving millions without basic services. Saddam Hussein's hollowing out of Civic institutions created a power vacuum. It precipitated an abrupt institutional collapse by removing centralised authority, instantly fracturing a fragile society and forcing it to look inward for resilience. Tribal and local governance became the alternative, taking over law enforcement and managing water and fuel distribution. As with the Byzantines, religious organisations also provided safety nets, medical care, and security.  

Beyond the risk of such romanticism, a human tragedy was unfolding: the destruction of Iraq’s social fabric, the rise of virulent sectarianism and a massive exodus of its people. Such dislocation was not only an exercise in adaptation, but an existential crisis defined by violence, fragmentation, and flight.

The Arabic writing 'Al-Ta'ifia' 

The Muhasasa system (Ta'ifia), the coalition forces put in place, moulded the landscape of sectarianism and internal segregation and the remapping of Baghdad.  This ethno-sectarian political system forced citizens to rely on sectarian political entrepreneurs and militias for basic physical and economic survival. This caused sectarian polarisation, which built into civil war from 2006 to 2008. Sunnis fled to Sunni-dominated western Baghdad (Al-Hurriya) while Shiites moved to eastern strongholds (Al-Dora). The US military accelerated this separation by constructing massive concrete blast walls to seal off violently contested areas-intercommunal unmixing. By then, the Tigris River had gained another chapter within its once-illustrious history.  It became a separating border between the Al-adhamiya (Sunni) and Kadhimiya (Shia). This resulted in millions of internal displacements, forcing Iraq’s important asset, its moneyed middle class, its human capital, into exile - The ‘Brain drain' and the collapse of the highly educated Middle Class.  Destruction of historical sites, ancient monuments, looting of museums and targeting of intellectuals by killing and kidnapping were part of cultural cleansing taking effect during this period. It is estimated that between 3,000 and 17,000 Iraqi doctors fled the country. The erasure of non-Muslim minorities, including Christians, lacking tribal militias for protection, suffered targeted campaigns of terror. These domestic impacts triggered a catastrophic chain reaction that changed the domestic landscape and cultural structure, and led to a steep decline in public health and literacy rates.

Comparing the collapse of post-2003 Iraq to the fall of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires reveals striking architectural similarities spanning two millennia. In all three cases, a rapid disintegration of a highly sophisticated, centralised state forced ordinary citizens to rely on immediate, localised survival networks. The main differences, as I have tried to analyse, lie in the speed and cause of the collapse.  All three resulted in a power vacuum. Central authority vanished.  Citizens in Rome eventually moved toward feudalism; in Byzantium, to the Millet system; and in Iraq, to Sectarian-Tribal Fragmentation and, of course, exile, while others who remained went through processes of resilience. This chapter proves that people will always sacrifice institutional liberty and national identity for the immediate reality of survival.  In exchange for physical safety, the diasporic Iraqi society faced and still faces painful friction: having lost their identity and class, they attempt to integrate into their chosen new host communities as marginalised foreigners.  Doctors and intellectuals faced with unrecognised degrees in their chosen host countries suffer mental pain and anguish, overcoming discrimination while reshaping their identities. Many in the diaspora faced barriers to survival as they tried to participate in their new society; for some, without economic help and a family to support, this meant losing dignity and self-worth. Against all odds, though, adapting to the new surroundings and shifting their mindset to the new culture became the final means of survival.

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Look out for my next essay: The hollowing out continues, so does the exodus. The internal dynamics of the trapped society left behind, the Tishreen movement and the fragmentation of diasporic transnationalism.

Sanction Busting- Its Mechanism

Institutionalised Bribery, backhanders and illicit smuggling

Sanction busting for some who lack empathy or feeling was an opportunity to get rich and for the rich to get super rich, on the back of people who were struggling to survive.  

Comprehensive trade Sanctions were a painful stranglehold on the Iraqi nation, sanctioned by the United Nations, imposed on it by the United States and regulated by the banking powerhouse of the US.

The measures taken were deeply cruel and inhumane to innocent civilians. It led to starvation, chronic child malnutrition, and other severe health conditions. It is estimated that at least two million people died as a result. It lasted from 1990 until the United States invasion in 2003. By then, the Iraqi economy lay in tatters, and its desperate citizens were completely demoralised. They struggled to survive under the strain of deteriorating living conditions, inflation, food shortages, and a lack of medicines.

Against such odds, life goes on for some.  An Iraqi trader might set up a front company in Amman or partner with a Jordanian merchant.  They would purchase parts, for example, European, American or Japanese electronics legally on the open market. After offloading in duty-free zones, smugglers would strip the manufacturing labels and serial numbers off the parts to conceal their origin.

There is also the ‘sandwiching’ method where prohibited spare parts were buried deep into the centre of large flatbed trucks, completely ‘sandwiched’ by layers of permitted humanitarian goods. The person buying the spare parts in Baghdad, such as mechanical and car components, or ‘dual-use products', never knows who drove the truck across the border. If authorities arrest the driver, they can compromise the rest of the supply chain. A similar setup is taking place in northern Iraq in the Kurdish areas of Kirkuk and Erbil, as well as the Southern Fou marshland area (the Meshouf) for smuggling operations to Dubai using dhows.

Physical goods cannot move without money moving in the opposite direction. Since Iraq is cut off from the global banking system, traders rely on informal money systems like Hawala. The buyer in Baghdad hands cash to a local Hawala broker who contacts an affiliated broker, say in Amman or Dubai; the Amman broker pays out the equivalent amount to the exporter. The system runs entirely on trust. The ledgers are balanced by trade, like oil for Amman or gold for Dubai, to settle the debt.

Those who went on to become billionaires from such a prolonged system, and many did, were often described as Psycopaths.  

The Ba'ath Party of Iraq

The Ba'ath Party under Saddam Hussein adhered to a highly specific, idiosyncratic ideology known as Arab Socialism (Al-Ishtirakiyah al-Arabiyah). While it shared structural traits with Marxist-Leninist regimes, its core philosophy was fundamentally distinct from—and explicitly opposed to—Soviet communism or Western democratic socialism.

At its heart, Ba'athist socialism was not a scientific economic theory designed to empower the global proletariat; instead, it was a nationalistic tool designed to achieve Arab unity, state-led modernisation, and absolute political control. Arab nationalism is an article of faith. It stood in opposition to orthodox Marxist socialism, which holds that the fundamental driving force of history is class struggle (the working class overthrowing the bourgeoisie). Ba'athism rejected this completely.

Time

 Time is of the essence, but what is the essence of Time?

Two nouveaux riches were boasting loudly to each other over dinner. One says, "I have two Patek Philippe and three Omegas in my collection.” The other replies, “I have three Rolex watches and one antique pocket watch with a gold chain encrusted with diamonds, worth a fortune.” Both championed their respective watches' timekeeping. A third, obviously not so parvenu, and clearly not so moneyed, and avoiding the ‘look at me stuff’, chipped in, "How do you define time?" The two looked at each other and thought, ‘What a stupid question.’  Ignoring the stares, he went on, “Because it is invisible, is time real, or is it just an illusion?” followed by “What do your watches tell you about time”? To all questions, there was deafening silence.  

Well, let’s find out…

The difference between ‘what is the time’ and ‘what is time’ is ‘THE’. One would hardly ever think that one of the most frequently used words in the English language could have such significance in Philosophy, science, and more. That is, even though we place it before the noun TIME, a prominence we take for granted, and to which many of us don’t give a second thought.  Yet that single word regulates our lives in three primary ways: it orchestrates our biological clocks, structures our societal schedules, and influences our psychological perception of reality throughout our working and leisurely hours. With so much going for it, giving Time such prominence, yet researching for this article, I find no single definition of Time.  The closest I have come to a rational explanation is that time is the measure we use to compare change against a regular physical process and call the result "time." A label.  In this narrative, I search for a definition of time, but even if I find one, it will, sure enough, prove controversial because, fundamentally, time is subjective for many, and for the majority, its relativity is a given. So, if time is partly in the eye of the beholder, how do we explain, in general, what time is?

Attempting to do that, this essay will have to come in two parts: ‘what is the time’ is clock time, the mechanistic time, the fundamental architecture, a human construct of unitary measure, attached to Newtonian theories that time is universal and absolute- it is the same for everyone everywhere, existing independently of us. The other part of ‘what is time?’ Is space-time, leading to a scientific and philosophical exploration that takes into account Einstein's theory of Relativity. His theories shattered the centuries-old idea that time is absolute; they show that time is interwoven with space and bends and dilates under the influence of speed and gravity. Adding more weight to this twentieth-century theory, time is defined by entropy (order) and its implications for biological ageing (disorder); within the arrow of time's flow, things become less tidy.  But more of that later.

My goodness, all that because of dropping the definite article ‘THE’? 

AI-generated image. Exploring time as illusion or reality through mechanistic and abstract forces,
the 'Elan Vital', an enduring life force.

When I was eight or nine years old, I loved collecting stamps.  I used to buy them in batches of hundreds, then separate them to navigate the chaotic bundle by country and date.  Beyond hoping to find the elusive Penny Black, I unconsciously built a timeline, separating the stamps into past and present and making space in my album in anticipation of the future. I was creating the flow of time, and didn’t know it.  

That sense of continuity, the human perception, dates back to the Macedonian general, Seleucid period after the death of Alexander the Great. Before then, people measured time by dry summers, cold winters, and echoing cycles of nature, wars, earthquakes, and so on.  Each event was geographically localised, making it easier to perceive one’s place in history.  Indeed, they are not really dates at all, but rather synchronisms between events.  The son of Seleucid did not restart the clock, and for the first time in history, historical time was marked by number by continuous flow.  It not only recalled the past but also, by correlating events, opened the way to a new kind of predictability. Almost every conceivable object- coins, documents, marriages, tombstones was marked by date. A period of history-making: from then on, every event had to be chained to its place and time. 

The Seleucid era inadvertently opened the gates of progress and proposed fundamentally new possibilities.  Fast forward, the tick-tock of time is no longer empty and irredeemable; it now has meaning. In fact, this arrow of time, formatted as a line, stretches its roots only to the eighteenth century.  It evolved from a grid-based display of history into a simpler timeline format.  At first, historians displayed time in a grid, but around 1765, the scientist-philosopher Joseph Priestley invented what was arguably the world’s first modern timeline, showing a flow of time from left to right. The idea is now so entrenched in Western thought that it is difficult to imagine another way of presenting time.   Charles Darwin took this up in The Origin of Species, conceiving of evolution in linear terms as an arrow of progress and deriving the term "ancestral lineage" from the Latin Linea.

Indeed, the line of progress was measured along the line of time; the notion of progress went along in parallel.  For Victorians, belief in progress was impelled by rapid scientific and technological achievements.  Darwinism holds that, as with time in evolution, human development is a transitory stage, not an end product.  

Time does not stop there, but in line with the progressive ideas within that -ism ideology, the evolution of time brings us to the discovery of space-time.  Priestley’s time is now being presented in graphic and mathematical forms. We are onto space-time as the fourth dimension.  Beyond what humans perceive in three-dimensional objects with length, width, and height, mathematicians have long considered a fourth dimension in their attempt to identify time. In other words, Time is a dimension of space; it is only a line on its own.  Yet we still fall short in our definition of Time.

Now time was of the essence, but what is the essence of time? It can be given or taken away, saved or spent, borrowed or beaten, kept or killed.  There are all kinds of timers: egg timers, old timers, time signals.  There are half-time and full-time, short-time and overtime, the best of times and the worst of times.  Time to be born as well as time to die. Time cures all things, yet corrodes all things. St. Augustine, Christian theologian and philosopher, is known to have said I know what time is, but if someone asks me, I cannot tell him. We do not know its nature, but we have an anxious sense of when it stands still or a wonderful sense when it passes.  Hey, we are running out of time; just look at the clock.

Along with the stirrup* (see below), gunpowder, and the printing press, mechanical clocks rank among the great inventions in human history, with momentous economic, social, political, and cultural consequences.  Humans like to measure things like time in hours, minutes, and seconds; distance in miles and kilometres; size and weight; and try to fit the entire universe into some measure. A tendency that probably originates from a combination of biology, psychology, and culture. Giving humans the ability to read patterns and predictability, perhaps read into the future.  

* How old?

* How fast?

* How heavy?

* How much money?

* How likely?

Meanwhile, the evolution progresses from medieval estimation to precision. The rise of railways and factories demanded more accurate timekeeping. Clocks speak of time as the universal language, the first step towards globalisation as we know it today. By agreeing on a mechanistic system of measurement, society, from far away, can coordinate when a train leaves or when a plane arrives.  Millions of people can coordinate their actions without knowing one another.  So the clock is not merely measuring time; it is synchronising human behaviour.  A clock takes this invisible, intangible thing and turns it into a sequence of numbers.

We take something that cannot be seen or held and turn it into:

  seconds → minutes → hours → days → years → centuries

As with other measurements, it gives us a sense of control and a comfortable, padded illusion.  We divide the cycles of nature into smaller increments —a macro of things—the metric of our existence.  I was, I am, and I will be.

* Farmers measured seasons to improve harvests.

* Sailors measured the stars to navigate oceans.

* Scientists measured electricity to harness it.

* Economists measure wealth to organise societies.

With the invention of increasingly precise clocks, time became something divisible, ownable, even tradable. We began speaking of:

* "saving time,"

* "wasting time,"

* "spending time,"

* "investing time."

 We treat time almost like money.  

The Sumerians of Mesopotamia, 5,000 years ago, invented a sexagesimal mathematical system for us, dividing the day into 24 hours, 60 minutes, and 60 seconds, applying it to the hitherto unmeasured universe.  They invented these units because continuous reality is easier to think about when broken into manageable chunks. It was not, as many assume, to harness nature but rather to understand it and organise their experiences.  They did not invent its sequence but invented a system to represent it and quantify the sequence of events.

Since then, we have built an entire civilisation around those divisions. We create working hours, school hours, and opening hours; we set deadlines, make appointments, mark birthdays and anniversaries, and create calendars and timetables.  

That is clock time, but the clock still ticks on LIVED time, where we become deluded by contradictions between the real and the not-so-real.  An hour waiting for bad news can feel like a day, while an hour of fun disappears almost instantly.  

There is measured time and experienced time. That's the time that exists in consciousness—the feeling of waiting, remembering, anticipating, ageing, regretting and hoping.  Sometimes, twenty minutes can feel like eternity, whereas other times, “where did those two hours go”? A remarkable feeling in understanding the concept of time, as lived experience and as to whether it is embedded in our consciousness.  So much so, one might suggest that, in a sense, time is merely an illusion.  

On the other hand, the time we forget and the time we remember give a sense of time's dimensions: past, present, and future.  In a sense, that defines the structure of our existence. A continuity of ordered change, parallel to the dynamics of the universe, riding the ever-moving arrow of time, with no option to exit. 

Our mental default?. Experience reality strictly in a sequential, forward flow. We see each present in isolation. Lived Time.

 Along that continuity sits one of the most fundamental concepts in physics and philosophy.  In physics, time is treated as a dimension. In Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, space and time are woven together into spacetime. In thermodynamics, the "arrow of time" comes from the tendency of entropy (a measure of disorder or change) to increase as time moves forward. It traces the universe from the highly organised order of the Big Bang to the disorder of today, unspooling along a cinematographic timeline.  This explains why we remember the past but not the future, and why many everyday processes seem irreversible: we remember only what has happened.  Moreover, our memories help define who we are; other thoughts reach toward what we might become.  

         

Interestingly, if we move backwards, we get younger but unlearn all that we know- the fiction of time travel. I am not going there, though; that is a whole subject all of its own.

The famous scientist Einstein profoundly changed man’s ideas of time, overturning Newton's notion that time is absolute and universal, which had stood for centuries, and replacing it with the idea that time is relative. But what does that mean? It can speed up or slow down depending on how fast you are travelling.

As I understand it, according to his theory, the faster you move relative to me, the slower time passes for you relative to my perception of time.  Time passes more slowly for a moving object than for a stationary observer. In its simplest form, a man standing on a train platform sees a person on a moving train appear to move faster than a person on the platform observing the train. This is, or its more complicated cousin, what science calls time dilation.

Before Einstein, people often thought of space and time as separate things.  Space is where something is, while time is when something happens. Einstein’s theories enabled scientists to picture the universe in a new way: as a static, four-dimensional block, with three spatial dimensions (height, width, and depth) and time as the fourth. This block contains all of space and time simultaneously – and time doesn’t flow. There is no before and after, no right and left.  There’s no special now in the block – what appears to be the present to one observer is simply the past to another (Presentism).  Moreover, Time is also interwoven with space into “spacetime”. The idea of spacetime is related to gravitational pull: the higher one is in space, the slower one ages.  So, Christine, living on the top floor of the Shard, will live longer than Margaret, living on the ground floor—one way of avoiding costly face-lifts.

Whereas in philosophy, the scholarly fraternity is still arguing over how to come up with a plausible definition, whether time exists or is merely an illusion, and whether time goes forward or backwards. They are still struggling to find a definition. 

Well, there you are; taking all that I have narrated into account, are we nearer to a definition?  To my reckoning, we got lost in translation, especially after the last bit, which, for many of us, would prove a very slippery slope. But, beautifying aside, what really defines time in this day and age is money, and the distinction between Time and hour is increasingly modelled on Economics.  Forget Science, philosophy, and their mysterious surroundings; more than ever,  today we live by the hour.  We cost and pay by the hour and measure speed by the hour.  More than anything, economics defines our Time. Economics so dominates our lives, almost like money.  "Come on, come on, time is money..." The language we use often exposes assumptions we're not consciously aware of: “I have no time to lose”, "She's investing her time wisely." as if Time is a finite commodity. Life became exchangeable for wages, hour by hour.  Symbolically, one hour of your finite existence has been assigned a market value.  Yet, sitting beside someone you love without saying much remains a time to treasure.

In conclusion, I leave you with this passage I copied verbatim.  "...we come to the conclusion that our senses can fool us, but it is through evidence from the senses that we have come to that conclusion.  The realisation lead to a sophisticated philosophical understanding of how we come to know things about the world: not by trusting our senses naively, but by testing our thoughts of how the world works empirically [...] our internal perception of the passage of time is an area owned by cognitive science and philosophy.  The exterior world is traditionally the playground of physics."- Gene Tracy, Chancellor Professor of Physics Emeritus at William & Mary in Virginia, USA

Time, gentlemen, please, drink up; it is closing time.

*= The stirrup is considered one of history's greatest inventions because it permanently merged rider and horse into a single combat and transport unit. Securing the feet gave riders total balance and stability. This simple device revolutionised warfare, created empires, and shaped medieval society (Wikipedia).