Category Archives: A Little Wisdom

A Little Wisdom: On Evil, Memory, Time, and Goodness

17 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology

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Posted to YouTube April 9, 2013.

For how long should the sins of the fathers be visited on their sons?

It’s a timeless question.

To forestall the reemergence of similar evil, the answer is “forever”; to facilitate the doing of good, perhaps the answer should be “Not one more day.”

When I was a little boy recently moved into a new suburb, the still plain dirt yard of a neighbor’s new house and the clean siding of the same proved a too tempting target for the neighborhood’s eight-year-old mudslingers.

Kids.

It’s different with kids, of course.

How different adults are from children in their expanded powers, and yet how similar (in history and today) when it comes to a malicious thoughtlessness and “everyone else was doing it.”

Knowing how the Nazis worked as an infernal mafia, one may sympathize with the family business that intended to stay in business through the Nazi Era and now lives with the long hangover from a bad case of “civilizational narcissism” (reference Mobarak Haider’s work on the Taliban for more about that).

To the end of his life, my father who may have possessed a personality formed in the Depression Era and WWII, would not buy major manufactured German anything.

If today is different, it needs to be kept different and the past firmly consigned to the political period between The Great War and the end of the even greater insanity that came to its end for Germany 72 years ago.

Related Online

Accusation and guilt prove perennial if — or if not — haunting.

http://www.dw.com/en/bmw-dynasty-wants-to-uncover-nazi-ties/a-2814154 – 9/10/2007.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/breaking-the-silence-bmw-s-quandt-family-to-investigate-wealth-amassed-in-third-reich-a-511193-2.html – 10/12/2007.

http://www.dw.com/en/german-industrialist-family-breaks-silence-over-nazi-ties/a-3530701 – 1/8/2008.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2042405/Family-dynasty-BMW-admits-using-50-000-slave-labourers-Nazi-era.html – 9/28/2011.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2786189/Joseph-Goebbels-wife-s-descendants-Germany-s-richest-family-Relatives-Nazi-propagandist-s-stepson-worth-24-5-billion.html – 1/9/2014.

http://www.turtlegarage.com/the-dark-side-of-a-great-company-bmw-and-the-third-reich/ – 6/15/2017.

Moral Courage (web site)

Related in Literature

Golding, William.  Lord of the Flies.  UK: Faber and Faber, 1954.

Related on BackChannels

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/12/27/excerpt-1920s-the-spread-of-hate-russia-germany-laqueur/ – 12/27/2016.

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FTAC: A Little Wisdom: On Virtue

25 Tuesday Jul 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Religion

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Inspiration for the response:

Since there is good and evil in all of us, may God grant us the compassion and wisdom to see the good and not the evil.

Correction: 

“Since there is good and evil in all of us, may God grant us the compassion and wisdom to know the good and do it and not the evil.”

Language: such statements may be about our capacity for the doing of good and evil, and what may be most important, day by day, decision by decision, is that we do good and care to lean toward what is good.

The Persian Faravahar has come to my mind as symbolic of both the tension between good and evil and the taking of the direction of the good.

Faravahar-gold-trans-gif

Image File Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Faravahar-Gold.svg

The awesome conversation has been working around the issue of virtue in other threads.  BackChannels’ own political virtues have long been posted near the top of the left sidebar: Compassion, Empathy, Justice, Humility, Inclusion, Integrity.

In Wikipedia, one may find listed the “Cardinal Virtues“: “Prudence, Temperance, Courage, Justice”.

Of course, there are other characterizations of what is good, but all may be reduced to {normative values x context / intentions} and good intentions further reduce to loving consideration and thoughtfulness.  Hillel the Elder distilled all of that into one golden expression:

“That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another.”

Barbaric cultures of cruelty complicate our lives as do the insatiable needs of the malign narcissists who set their lowest standards and tones, but even within those one hopes the good will continue striving to be so.

On goodness, never give up.

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Also in MediaL: “Vienna: How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West” | The Economist | December 24, 2016

27 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Europe

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In 1933 Engelbert Dolfuss seized power in the name of Austrofascism, which gave way to Nazi fascism in 1938 with the Anschluss. Hitler, who moved to Vienna from Linz in upper Austria, had been transfixed by Schoenerer and, particularly, Lueger. He hungrily absorbed all his hero’s complaints about the Jews and the mixing of “races”; he called the Viennese a “repulsive bunch”. Thus liberal Vienna had produced its exact opposite: militant nationalism and anti-Semitism. During the interwar years these forces gradually took hold of the new Austria and from the 1920s onwards many began to flee abroad. One of the last out, in 1938, was Freud.

Source: Vienna: How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West | The Economist – 12/24/2016

Magnificent article on Vienna’s most glorious days and its lasting contributions to western art and culture.  As this is BackChannels, the note, however, picks up on the irony of developing a liberal state only to find it encouraging a transformation in the direction of fascist enterprise.

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FTAC – Briefly On American Secular Governance

11 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion

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The Constitution emphasizes equality for all beneath the law and forbids the establishment of a relationship between the state and any church, mosque, synagogue, or other symbol of faith. ALL are free here to practice their faith — in private and at private expense — in a civil and lawful manner.

The United States is a Christian-majority state, but it is not a Christian state by law or even exclusively so within the spirit of its laws. It’s true inheritance may be characterized as “Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian”. To the extent that Islam has borrowed from Judaism and recognized Christianity and in the better aspects of the Qur’an, say those emphasizing freedom of religion (“There is no compulsion”) and integrity (Muhammad’s emphasis speaking the truth), we’re good as a secular humanist society.

If one were to take the coldest view of the political science attending “Allahu Akbar Terrorism”, it would be to note that each attack has naturally promoted traditional patriotic nationalist and religious responses.  “Damned Arabs, damned Muzzies” shouts a part of the public and off it goes to Brexit in one state and resurgent white bread Christianity in another.

The truth about that comfortable extremism — often our own! — may be anchored elsewhere.

Last week, BackChannels noted the data-in-press for Bashar al-Assad’s incubation of ISIS in Syria.

In light of or coinciding with Moscow’s KGB resurrection, BackChannels has promoted note of Soviet Era Russia’s long dalliance with terrorism and the engagement of the same in the agitation and propaganda dimension known as “Active Measures”.

Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan told Al-Monitor, “The Meshaal-Lavrov meeting shows Russia’s interest in the Palestinian cause and comes as a continuation of the periodic meetings held by Hamas with regional and international parties. However, there were no discussions in the meeting regarding the possibility of Russia playing the role of a mediator to reactivate the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, although Lavrov and Meshaal have stressed its importance in general.”

Amer, Adnan Abu.  “Is Russia Hamas’ bridge to global diplomacy?”  Cynthia Milan, Translator.  Al-Monitor, August 24, 2015.

And from whence derived the “Middle East Conflict”?

Have a look at BackChannel’s October 2016 note on “Palestinian KGB”.

This blog also may be searched for “Russia, anti-Semitism” for further enrichment — but as much may return this note to the wisdom of secular governance and its producing for all of its constituents equality under the law and zero, zilch, nada, never ever compulsion to either choose an “official religion” nor feel intimidated in the classroom or anywhere else as regards having by way of choice or legacy a different minority path.

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FTAC – Ejection of the Archaic Past

22 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Epistemology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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The clip dates from 2013. I take note of the time because we’re in changing times where we may not be able to observe change — by what we’re able to see, we’re too limited — but if it’s taking place, there should be fewer of these clips available this year than there may have been in 2013.

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Archaic-Past | Restive Middle | Modern Muslim Reform Movements

That “archaic past” can no longer do any real thing for anyone except enrich its handful of malignant and piratical leaders. It’s going to go away, visible if by way of combat with the al-Qaeda Typicals, invisible if by way of unspoken individual and popular rejection. Out with the old. The new has many channels forward, including a conservative aspect, which I find convoluted but . . . what works might work.

Regarding Corbyn and the Far Out Left — http://www.the-american-interest.com/…/the-derangement…/

This is the 25th Anniversary Year of the Dissolving of the Soviet, and The Phantom of the Soviet wanders around in such persons as Corbyn, who should be also part of the “archaic past”.

Relevant on my blog: https://conflict-backchannels.com/syndicate-red-brown-green/

Those “al-Qaeda Typicals”, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the organizations and persons that support them are today readily visible to the public.  Perhaps still tender and less visible are organizations like the Muslim Reform Movement and publications like New Age Islam.

BackChannels’ question: has the modern world with its “match, science, and technology” mania passed the age of miracles?

The religion of the future will be cosmic religion. It will transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. - Albert Einstein

Is new scripture possible?

Are new exegeses based on old scripture possible and useful?

Over the years on this blog, and with such off-hand gems as “anthropolitical psychology”, one may look into the future with clinical observation and certainty, which may or may not be spiritually satisfying.

What does it mean to observe and say our global inventory of languages stands at fewer than 7,000 living languages, we are losing several every year, and each represents through sound and other signal a distinct way of living with others in proximity and with the land on which The People have been cultured?

Is that all there is?

Could be.

It could be magnificent as well if we continue to find God, Nature, and The Universe awesome beyond our comprehension.

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FTAC – On the Meaning of Al Aqsa

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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I can’t endorse the sentiment, ______, having taken a moderate course, but I hope that more and more Arabs will take note of the abuse of the refugees at the hands of their leaders and the medieval disinformation and manipulation campaigns that have led to The Preoccupation not only with the Jews but their own self-concept and status in the world. Too many fathers like al-Husseini have put them on the worst imaginable track, i.e., the emulation of Hitler and the Nazis. Some who have embraced that most may be due to wake up from the nightmare within them that has long masqueraded as their dream.

BackChannels now has plenty of information as to how the Israelis, the west, the refugees of 1948 and their generations, got to this unpretty pass.  The themes erupting in WWII — that Stalin-Hitler thing — have been sustained in the middle east conflict; the Soviet promotion of anti-Semitism in the middle east and the concomitant terrorism of the PLO and PFLP have been similarly and perhaps exhaustively covered; the formation and presence of what has been referred to here as “Syndicate Red Brown Green”; the self-dissolve of the Soviet on December 26, 1991 also has been remarked in these virtual pages, as have the feudal kleptocracies kept floating along in its place and around it; less has been remarked as regards the post-Cold War Era around the world, but BackChannels believes we’re in that realm as this is being posted.

All in all, and with Khamenei pressing for Israel’s destruction while a smattering of Sunni-majority states brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organization (that move took a while plus some “war by proxy” on Iran’s part), the world, even in one of its most medieval appearances, appears to want to move forward, not backward — and forward would seem toward the classical liberalism of the west.

The comment to which the excerpt responds called for the realization al-Husseini’s manipulative lie: the Jews haven’t any desire to “take over” Al Aqsa Mosque — never did and never will — because while being Jewish involves attending to self defense, it also involves being about and for others, and that includes the Arab brother and sister.

Two of Hillel the Elder’s most famous statements ring down through the ages: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.”  That is an idea predicated on the concept of human self-restraint.  Israel may produce harm when harmed itself, but it does not have to prove its power through making others suffer with impunity.  If met with the force that would do that to people, including its own people, then it may answer in kind.

The second of Hillel’s language-based corrals:  “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  If I am not for others, what am I?  If not now, when?”

Some Palestinians may be surprised to find Israelis for them in peace, but peace is needed as part of a sea change in the character of our humanity.

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