Category Archives: FTAC – From The Awesome Conversation

If — in my own head — I hit a universal note just about right in Facebook or other conversation, I may simply wrench it from context and publish it here in this category as a mix of observation and, I hope, a writer’s wisdom.

FTAC – A Note to Pakistan on First Principles

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

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Whether confined to ethics — the realm of interpersonal behavior or behavior involving others and other entities, including the living earth with all of its creatures and wonders — or expanded in the spirit and a part of religion, a rule is not a principle, and rules in customs and law are the ropes flowing down from either bad or good principles.

That thought may be abstract, but it is not complex.

The modern conscience worldwide – not west or east, kosher, not kosher, haram, halal, not confined to Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, or Muslim – wants for guidance in first principles, not rules, which come next.

The world has at hand — and it has had them at hand a while — its best first principles. http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml Are such principles inherently eastern, western, aligned with or against any of the great religions or myriad other pathways in the way of beliefs or ethics?

If so, how so, and why?

If not, good.

History begins with the principles embraced within each individual heart.

If the principles have been ensnared in out-of-bounds hubris, narcissism, and vanity, they will fail because such principles would adhere not only to the cult of the person but consign all others to misery. As I believe in God, I believe that God hears the cry of the abandoned, lost, and unhappy, and He — or nature, and our collective gregarious nature — trends against exclusion. However, if you live in South Sudan or Syria or have been the refugee of sectarian violence in Iraq or have been toughing it out in Evin Prison, Iran, in relation to any number of cooked up political accusations, God and nature may be taking more time than wanted as regards the embrace of really bad — anomic, criminal, inhuman, lunatic, sadistic (especially) — principles.

Pakistan has somehow encouraged within itself, or allowed within itself, the distinction of finding a bogey — e.g., The Great Satan — in the “west” — or the “Zionist Entity”, assorted kafir, and such — but always, this only in its conflict aspect, something outside of itself when, in fact, it is itself it’s greatest challenge in transferring power away from persons and perhaps away from bad principles — you decide — toward sustainable good principles.

The really cool thing in humans is 1) we have choices to make individually and communally about how we live, and 2) these choices may be argued and determined first and principally in language in the mind, or, abstractly, in the heart and in the spirit.

FTAC – A Note on Anti-Semitic Bigotry and Sophistry

06 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Psychology

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11/6/2012/1212H

J. — wade into academe and you wade into a flood tide of anti-Semitic ranting.

What do you want to do about it?

Report it to CAMERA, Honest Reporting?

Kick it around in the peace groups?

For any close reader, the sophistry shows up in the first paragraph: “Just recall the final TV debate as Barack Obama and Mitt Romney competed to prove who could pander more to the pro-Israel side while treating Palestinians as if they didn’t exist.”

This is well-recognized false witness and slander, but because it targets a people and a state — the Jewish People and Israel — there are no legal remedies. The cultural remedy is to make ourselves honestly known through ourselves around the world.

More we cannot do.

God, although I know you don’t believe, or Nature, and that should suffice, inspired in us a great mission in a world much larger than ourselves, and we have been on it for 5,000 years — perhaps I should say only 5,000 years — and we have eased, fully, close to 3 billion people to monotheism, not that 2.85 billion give a rip about thanking us for their better tracks.

That, of course, is their problem.

I may publish this on BackChannels, it makes me so angry and, as the Jew-baiting writer might calculate, a little bit helpless as to how to approach the repair of this form of bigotry and hate.  Such behavior in language stems from a deeply embedded social grammar — it is not a reasoning behavior but one rigidly set in attitudes and emotions — acquired by children in their earliest years, including probably some weeks in the womb with their ears turned on.

FTAC – In Brief Defense of Capitalism, American-Style

02 Friday Nov 2012

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On one of his forums, a Pakistani friend quoted a socialist screed as a strawman.  I took a whack at it.

* * *

American capitalism, at least, is a melange of public-private compacts and mixed individual incentive and social programs. Our military is a socialist program — if you’re in, you get medical and dental services, base exchange pricing, base housing, housing allowance, etc. for the term of service, butyou may be stuck where Uncle Sam’s machinery places you — defending massive public works, Federal campuses, bridges, roads, dams, forests, wilderness, parks, and so on, that provide employment in big numbers that then serve other development, business, and community (and human) needs. The American tax system supports Medicare and Social Security, services to military veterans in retirement; also public education, college and university research (not to mention student loans). The entire “Capitalist Evil” (!) is a complex of basic public services, public investment spread throughout the constituency, public infrastructure programs supporting private development, and then plenty — PLENTY — of “degrees of freedom” for people to enjoy their lives and — blessed, gifted, or lucky — do great things.

The system supports many ways of life, but it does not manage either the lives of all the humans within it, nor does it secure them.  For too many unemployed, under-employed, deeply exploited in their employment, or just marginal as persons, we have our human flood. Nonetheless, in light of public and private resources, between government departments and private charities, everyone gets some attention, and I think it actually takes effort to avoid “food banks”, “clothing banks”, “shelters”, “rehab” programs, “jobs programs”, and all the rest.

It’s true a few of our bankers and boardroom people could have been — and could be — better behaved (“The problem with capitalism is the capitalists”) but our capitalism is anything but pure capitalism, and, for the record, in response to the “socialist” critic,  the democracy IS 24/7/365 (not “once in four years”) and the public will toward both self-enrichment and altruistic community-wide improvement is constant.

Political dogma, especially in the U.S. this election season but in general  and worldwide too, may be more dangerous than nuts-and-bolts everyday politics because it is so easily, incautiously, and thoughtlessly, swallowed. Bottom line: by way of taxes, the American republic, overall, invests heavily in its human capital more than it does any other form of national resource, and out of that comes the greater freedom of the people to set their own courses and manage their own lives with a real minimum of “official guidance”.

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FTAC – Singing “Hatikva” On the Way to the “Showers”

29 Monday Oct 2012

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This started with a photograph of hundreds of women lined up at Birkenau, the Nazi death camp, and on their way to the gas chambers.  It has been reported that they sang “Hatikvah”, Israel’s national anthem, as they walked to their deaths.

The conversation online has covered many things, including the invitation to argue the existence of God, but as I wanted to wrap up the thread, I wrote this cap —

* * *

Let’s wrap this thread and move into the new week (in which I’m enjoying a so far mild hurricane).

Regarding choices having to do with divinity, there were no ends, and it seems Pharaoh himself believed himself a God. Man as god, plants as gods, rocks as spirits, gods in the skies (those of Greece and Rome were to come), there were many possibilities, including (film recommendation here: Agora), the possibility of reason and science.

The power to intimidate, rob, and murder others by way of political will includes the intent to humiliate, so to go down firm in spirit, to sing in the face of death, is another form of exodus — an act of defiance and liberation beneath the twinned shadows of madness and death. The Nazis lost a lot more than their country, their preferred identity (as Nazis born to rule the world), and their lives, and for them that’s something that might be said of the living as well as the dead: they lost their way when they jettisoned their humanity.

In consideration of the evolution of mind that may be associated with biological “brain power” (x size x abilities), our species would seem to be gregarious with great consciousness, self-consciousness, a highly developed language ability, and with it the advent of a complex of social norms, personal conscience, and values and sentiments of all kinds. Given that life of the mind, life alone is not the highest reward (even though we Jews toast with “La chaim” — “To life!” Dignity and freedom matter. We avoid and rightly fear humiliation and shame.

Survival may be the highest reward, but in human life, “survival” involves a great deal more than animal — copulate, eat, defecate — existence.

On one or two of my blogs, I’ve a quote by Simon Weisenthal, the Nazi hunter, made n the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: “The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing.”

That is living and a living testament to the discernment of right from wrong, which may be essential in both the evolution, including political and social evolution, and survival of our species.

Christopher Hitchens famously and repeatedly asked a simple question: “Do you need God to be good?”

I’ve never argued otherwise, and yet . . . from Moses to Maimonides to the Adlers (pioneers in contemporary psychology and humanism), this quest to learn from all or the Almighty or the universe seems to have been invested in those who thought enough of themselves to walk away from Pharaoh or who chose to end their lives — or begin new ones — singing “Hatikvah”.

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Referenced

Alfred Adler

Felix Adler

FTAC – Response To An Adverse Claim About Muslims in Burma

25 Thursday Oct 2012

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When a writer has “done the homework” but withheld information in order to throw mud on a human target for entertainment and manipulation of even less informed minds, that’s evil.  When a writer has not done the homework, has packed together the same mudball for the same audience, that’s not only evil, it’s cosmically pernicious.

At least that how I feel about propaganda and ignorance both.

* * *

Background on Burma: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20083287

The government’s awful; the monks have a dark side; this particular Muslim sect has been caught a long time between its inhospitable “landing zone” and the sea — and then comes to this, so it seems, the AQ complex of deeply fragile, equally narcissistic and sociopathic ideation. What seems like a very dark space in cultural psychology may be less so in anthropological views.

“The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority living in northern Rakhine state in Western Myanmar. They face religious and ethnic discrimination by Myanmar’s military regime, which refuses to recognize the Rohingya as Myanmar citizens. The Rohingya people are not considered one of 135 legally recognized ethnic minority groups in Myanmar. Myanmar considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, but they have lived in Myanmar for centuries, and Bangladesh will not accept them as its citizens.”

http://www.genocidewatch.org/myanmar.html

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FTAC – Having to Do with Responding to Disingenuous Recycled “Argument” – Combating Sophistry

25 Thursday Oct 2012

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Regarding responses to familiar anti-Semitic rants, I wouldn’t mind seeing a WordPress or other blog architected specifically to rebuff the favored mud of the day.

For those specifically interested in language behavior and attitudes, I’ve a blog I’d like to boost in that area — http://conflict-backchannels.com. In relation to that, I’ve been more active in the Pakistani community than Israel’s, but the work is the same: there are those who reason with integrity (and we find one another in this affinity-encouraging environment) and those who reason their wills or willpower and do so disingenuously.

I’m a strong free speech advocate and really don’t want to shut anyone up (or have anyone banned from the commons, online or in real space) but rather help produce the community, worldwide, in which bigoted and intemperate loons find themselves making themselves smaller and in their “actions” (as old communist’s might say) transforming themselves into common criminals.

I started out a romantic in many ways, but age plus a little education has taught me to look at the numbers when looking at the many characteristics — amplitude, frequency, distribution, intensity — of an adverse signal.

Also the Hebe’s GB’s (of the boat show persuasion  should any need the hint) provide for armoring and training. I got into this area with an Ozraeli just a few years ago and had never encountered The Bigot (or the bigots) so closely, if ever.

I’d no idea there were so many dozens influencing thousands to millions unable to contain or restrain either themselves or their hate.

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FTAC – A Comment on Religion and Language

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

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“For the record, Jewish thought, as little as I may know of it, may reject or overarch the Christian invention of “Original Sin”.

The emphasis I have found in cursory online reading more involves the human awakening to life and, indeed, its travail. While the story contains an admonition (“Don’t eat the apple”), a crime (the snake tempted Eve who eats the apple and has Adam share her fate — rather like marriage, that), and a punishment, the whole involving the “fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil” may signal the removal of the human from a less conscious natural order to one, as I’ve suggested, suddenly conscious, self-aware (self-conscious), and conscionable, i.e., aware of right and wrong.

“In the canon of modern American poetry, Robert Frost entertains the natural observation of something similar in “After Apple Picking”, a description of human work and cares quite different from the habits of other animal nature:

http://www.bartleby.com/118/10.html

“Speaking as a Jew: the traditions in English literature twine with the history of Christianity and the presence of the Enlightenment, and there has been in that a tension maintained between clerical and natural views of man’s existence and cultural and social ways. I think we are old enough — I hope I am — to understand even from a one-language perspective (my limitation, unfortunately) that other languages contain and sustain other histories, ideas, and potentials.

“We are all lucky chatyping here in English to have an extensive technology for common discourse, but even so, English language and culture would die if it had only itself for company. As nature and necessity inspire invention, languages, being cultural tools, may benefit, so I happen to think, from inventions and updates from within themselves.”

“The river between languages may be the one I will never cross (no luck, no discipline, insufficient focus, so far — I have only English), but most here cross back and forth all the time, a good thing with a powerful potential, not to turn the whole world into English gardens but growing and vibrant other gardens.”

It’s not courage and strength that lend themselves to fascism, any format, but fear and weakness that allows such juggernauts to overtake men and women unprepared for it or vulnerable to its pandering and its promises.  Time and again, as much happens — and it can happen anywhere — and to head it off, because the fascistic impulse is always unnatural, unsustainable, and tragic, one asks for a more informed and strengthened common humanity — that is work for language but not just one language.

FTAC – Admonition to “Reclaim the Heritage of the Land”

22 Monday Oct 2012

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The question posed by citizens of a developing state had to do with defending it from “Islamist” spoilers and their thoughts about ultimate cultural programming, a path abhorred by all but themselves.  My response:

” . . . a culture, any, I believe, IS its language, and its language contains ITS stories, ITS art, ITS theater, ITS dance, ITS customs, and most important and never to be displaced or replaced: ITS Literature. Books. Legends. Folk tales. Poems. Songs. IF the overlay of a colonizing or imperial or even religious culture — any — has dimmed the vibrancy of the expression of the earth through its evolving human complement, THEN one might consider taking a good, long, and shared elegiac journey through the past and reinstalling all that charms, delights, educates, informs, and refreshes the culture, rightly grounded, literally, to come in time and to become itself.

How is that for a different kind of “civilizational mission”?

My suggestion to you: reclaim in modern form the authentic heritage of the land.”

Also referenced in the conversation: American Transcendentalism and Vine Deloria, Jr.’s God is Red.

I’ve not wish to see English echoed in another language but, with peace, to enjoy the emergence of a reinvigorated foreign language, one more capable of serving the needs of cultural vibrancy born of the soil and coursing through the blood alive with it and in love with it too.

Let Colorado be Colorado, says I, and then may the people of every village and state revel in the mountains, plains, and rivers of their birth and ancestry.