Week 3- Ideas and Interests- Role of Miscommunication

Professor Jackson’s lecture concerning whether or not an action on the world stage is driven by interests or ideas starts off by explaining key concepts and definitions for understanding those interactions. In his lecture he states that ideas are something that do not necessarily arise from a rational calculation, but are part of a broader cultural environment; whereas, interests arise from a rational calculation. During his lecture, I was thinking about how trying to understand an action as an idea or interest really highlights how easily there can be a miscommunication between states and/or actors.

Trying to understand whether an action was from an idea or interest by an actor is difficult to do, and I would agree with what Joy pointed out in her blog post from this week, that it is a convoluted idea. I would say that trying to understand an action as an idea or interest could lead a person to focus their attention to one or the other, perhaps misunderstanding the situation completely. That would lead to a large miscommunication, because they were trying to understand an action coming from an idea, versus an interest. This process may be easier to understand for states, but I think the idea of miscommunication is still very prevalent- if one is trying to understand an action as an idea, versus an interest, they may focus on the wrong detail which leads to a larger miscommunication.

I think that miscommunication can happen often and breaking down actions on the world stage that are driven by interests or ideas highlights this key problem. Continuing to break down the key components of ideas and interests helps to break through this miscommunication between actors and as we continue to study different actions made on the world stage, it is important to be aware of how easy it is to misinterpret those actions.