Lawrence had a deep understanding and sympathy for the people with whom he was fighting. He instinctively understood that the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the secred plan crafted by the British, French and Russians for the post-WWI partition of the Ottoman Empire, would serve neither the natives nor the West well. During the Paris Peace Conference after the war he submitted and strongly advocated for an alternative vision of the Middle East that would have changed the world forever.

On Thursday, NPR’s Talk of the Nation had a long interview with Micheal Korda, author of a new book on Lawrence, “Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia“. Korda says:

Lawrence’s intense state of masochism in later life, his decision to turn down all his decorations of whatever kind, his refusal to accept far greater decorations which were offered to him, his final decision to erase himself completely by joining the Royal Air Force as an aircraftsman under an assumed name, the equivalent of a private -all of this comes from Lawrence’s immense guilt at having driven and helped the Arabs to fight while knowing that the French and the British would not give the Arabs what they were fighting for.

And in a sense, the Sykes-Picot agreement, which split up the Ottoman Empire, originally between the French, the British and the Russians, who were to get Constantinople, the Sykes-Picot Agreement is the original sin. When you look at the Middle East today – and you have to look at it to some degree through Lawrence’s eyes, because Lawrence is one of the major creators of the modern Middle East – when you look at that today, you are seeing the consequences of not giving the Arabs what they wanted, of splitting the entire region up into relatively small and powerless states which were originally mandates or the equivalent of colonies of the British and of the French. Lawrence fought against that all during the war. He fought against it after the war, at the Paris Peace Conference. He fought against it after the Paris Peace Conference, both as a diplomatist and a peacemaker.

Listen to the Interview Here (about 20 min.)Talk of The Nation, 11.18.2010, Lawrence of Arabia

Lawrence’s alternative vision for the Middle East would have among, other things, included a Kurdish homeland and a multi-ethnic Jewish/Arab state in Palestine with a right of return for Jews. There is a copy of that map at the Imperial War Museum in London.

We can only wonder what the world would have been like had even a scintilla of Lawrence’s vision been made reality. But there can be little doubt that the life and work of this man, simultaneously very odd and incredibly charming; complex, intelligent and driven, has profoundly shaped the world we live in.

A couple of weeks ago, I made the argument — knowing perfectly well that it would never happen — that the best thing for the nation and for the US automotive industry would be to let GM and Chrysler fail and bailout their employees instead. Let creative destruction do its thing and allow a new automotive industry to rise from the ashes of the old.

For this morning’s reading, check out this piece by LA Times Auto Correspondent, Dan Niel, When Cars Were America’s Idols:

f you were to walk up to a typical New York executive in the 1960s — think Don Draper in AMC’s “Mad Men” — and tell him that General Motors Corp. would be in bankruptcy by 2009, he would have thought you were delusional, or perhaps a Communist. GM was more than just the world’s largest and most admired corporation; it was the final vindication of the American Way, the perfected and even divinely inspired example of democratic capitalism that stood opposed to the airless atheism and nullity of the Soviet system.

At the height of its power, GM represented 10% of the national economy. It controlled more than 50% of the light-vehicle market. Its products, research and management methodologies were the standard of the world.

The final chapter of that merger plays out this week as GM weathers a reorganization that will leave the federal government owning 70% of the company. In the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s, it’s hard not to see GM’s bankruptcy as a signal moment in a larger history. If mighty GM can fail, cannot also the United States? And the answer is, absolutely.

This is the lesson of GM’s bankruptcy, and it has little to do with market share and miles per gallon. It’s a rebuff of the notion of exceptionalism. Any organization that fails to sufficiently safeguard its means of self-correction and reform, that forsakes long-term investment for short-term gain, that piles up debt year after year, will eventually fail, no matter how grand its history or noble its purpose. If you don’t feel the tingle of national mortality in all this, you’re not paying attention.

Read the whole thing.

Be warned though, clicking on that last link will take you to a fascinating, time-sucking world of really cool information visualizations that will utterly challenge a many of your core assumptions about how the world works and is arranged.

In the video below, Rosling shows how the Gapminder software works and explains how the last 200 years have shaped global society.