Category Archives: Philology

Aside

07 Monday Jul 2014

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

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Hebrew culture has place x calendar and customs x language x religion and because of traditional tribal transmission, it’s generations may be schooled in “the old ways” with not much discomfort. However, large groups have converted, and in modern times the Abuydaya — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abayudaya — converted as a whole people and continue in the path.

Dispersion (into the “Diaspora”) alters land and language relationships, and, indeed, Jewish identity has suffered recession through intermarriage and national identification in other lands. Nonetheless, as may Shia, Jews worldwide have long taken measures to remain Jews, rejecting conversions en masse, maintaining language knowledge and customs, and sustaining identification with the Land of Israel.

As such affiliations go down to the bone, part of the genocidier’s motivation wants sheer sadistic control and humiliation, i.e., more than eliminating the presence of this “other”, the murderer has in mind the theft of the humanity and dignity of the same.

Some thoughts — probably most of mine — just get too long for Facebook.  A thread wants for a few words, not whole essays.  The above was on the way toward discussing the Islamic overlay over many distinctive cultures across feudal-to-modern history.

Fitra-65fitra-66

Source: Philips, Abu Ameenah Bilal.  The Fundamentals of Tawheed (Islamic Monotheism).  Pp. 65, 66. Second Edition. Riyadh: International Islamic Publishing House, 2005.

My parents did not make me a Jew.

God did.

Imagine, however, the insecure parent obsessed with power and control over progeny.  Trust is given, but dependence must be cultivated, and in the trust-me voice of the father, the child is told ” . . . the child is not strong enough in the early stages of its life to resist or oppose its parents”, which presumptuously impugns the authority of other parents, but the writer being a parent too, either in fact or in spirit, may not be immune from his own declaration.

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Aside

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Philology, Political Psychology, Religion

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I invest in the idea that contemporary Jewish ethics are reinforced by two fundamental statements by Hillel the Elder, the family man 🙂 who lived ten years into the Common Era: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another” (“That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study”). and “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, WHAT am I?” If not now, when?” Whether or not any Jewish action, conversation, or thought traces back to those statements directly, both would seem part of the Jewish spirit, and both would seem evidenced in the long, long history of Jewish social activism.

We do not know what we are dealing with?

Yes we do.

We’ve had a lot of experience since Pharaoh.

We’re getting better at comprehending the psychology involved with “monsters” who are, all said and done with every dictator ever vanquished and the worst among the same living, merely human after all. We may not be able to see what has set a “malignant narcissist” on his course, but we can label the type and take a hard look at how they work with language and how we (humans) are culturally programmed in relation to language behavior and content.

With the Haggadah with which I grew up, we cried, symbolically, for the Egyptian lives lost in the exodus and would go on to note that “with every generation, a little more freedom is won.” Lo these many years and laden with inexpressible costs and sorrows, we find those words still true.

From the sidebar of my blog:

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in 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.”

Indees, we are still “singing and dancing” and we will go on singing and dancing, but we are mindful of our neighbor’s suffering too, and however we might feel about it for a moment — say from Afghanistan to Gaza to Iraq — we’ll help them to greater freedom and greater lives too.

“If I am not for others, what am I?”

That’s what we’re about.

We can travel into the uptake of Jewish thought after Hillel into Christian and Muslim communities and related paths taken by Constantine and Muhammad, but “the base” — the authentic — has been and will be eternally Jewish. Perhaps the same in human thought needs to be dis-embedded from ethnic rivalry.

Aside

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, Philology, Philosophy, Politics, Regions

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Excerpted from a gem of an essay —

Said rolled American racism and European colonialism into one mélange of white oppression of darker-skinned peoples. He was not the only thinker to have forged this amalgam, but his unique further contribution was to represent “Orientals” as the epitome of the dark-skinned; Muslims as the modal Orientals; Arabs as the essential Muslims; and, finally, Palestinians as the ultimate Arabs. Abracadabra—Israel was transformed from a redemptive refuge from two thousand years of persecution to the very embodiment of white supremacy.

Muravchik, Joshua.  “Enough Said: The False Scholarship of Edward Said.”  World Affairs, March/April 2013.

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A Correspondent’s Observation Regarding the Difference Between “Real” and “Radical” Islam

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Politics, Religion

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I correspond off of Facebook as well (where do I find the time? It’s easy — I have no life), and this is what one from the anti-Jihad had to say about Islam in relation to the progress of the “Islamic State” (AKA “ISIS”, “ISIL”, “ISIS/L”) in Iraq and Syria:

I saw cars lined up. They were part of the death squads for Mosul. (Whilst perusing the jihad portal.) Now that we have rampant crucifixions and beheadings I await the public stoning of women. It is coming. M. allowed it. If it is good enough for him, it is good enough for them. I am determined to no longer reference these acts as “radical Islam”. They are the real Islam. This is real Islam, just as practised in the time of M. Radical Islam, would be an Islam that is moderate, philanthropic and kind. That is radical for Islam. What we are seeing, is the real Islam, based on texts, eyewitness accounts, primary source options from the era of the final Prophet.

With certainty, the entire Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda-type affiliates believe deeply that they are Muslims, never mind with what anomic and casual bents they kill others who believe they are Muslim too.  Of course, what my correspondent suggests with perhaps Christian insight is that those among the middle, mild, and moderate of Islam who stand up to terrorism and argue for a progressive modern society be considered the true radicals.

Why not?

What is it tumbling around in the Islamic Small Wars with a 1400 year old “road map” that tolerates no other instruction or thought but its own?

ISIS would call what it believes and pursues the true Islam, the only Islam, and bar the “radicals” from it.

So one may nod to the most radical of Muslims, “moderate, philanthropic, and kind”.

Related Reference

The Daily Star.  “Report: ISIS captures Syrian border town.”  July 1, 2014.

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FTAC – Conflict Axis Shift – x Affiliation x Personality

27 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Philosophy

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The difference in conflict axis discriminator may be found in the confusion between the worldview and intentions of personality (as with Ahmadinejad or Khamenei, also Assad, also Putin) and affinity or affiliation with nominal class (Shiite). While the American approach repeatedly tries to null discrimination by class (so our Protestants and Catholics now get along as regards the civil purpose that is governance), I don’t think that either the surface of the American leadership either pursues or promotes analysis in political psychology with an emphasis on our troubling “malignant narcissists” and, with ISIS, plain criminal sociopaths and psychopaths.

Whether Pope or Ayatollah, their respective adherents invest a great deal of faith in their perception and judgment, and sometimes to the extent of treating the same as infallible, at which point the same pick up the medieval chips, and unbridled, or nearly so, they can bring great damage to others.

To obtain freedom of worship within a secular system may mean addressing the despotic in persons — and specific organizational personalities — and channeling the same off to positions more safe for everyone else. In that regard, ISIS represents the criminal side of egotism unchecked and way beyond limits. That what they do works its way through an affiliate community, sufficient for the same to demur from battle with them, speaks to normative and social grammar. Barbarians and pirates may be criminals to all whose paths cross with theirs, but within their own enclaves, they are the normative reality. They think they’re just fine — and that God loves them most of all.

This is related to “civilizational narcissism”. Mobarak Haider has continued fighting the good fight against what I call the “God Mob” — the mafia that leverages religious faith into immense — and deadly and often soul deadening — power over others.

Mobarak Haider’s Diagnosis — Taliban: The Tip of a Holy Iceberg

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The chat had to do with Iraq, the Sunni-Shiite schism, and, loosely, the ISIS alignment with Sunni Islam.  Be that as it may, the response corresponds with the interests of this blog, its notes in the area of “conflict, culture, language, and psychology”, and its cycling to and around “malignant narcissism” and the psychology of dictatorship and fascism.

Rodney King’s question, “Can’t we all just get along?” has been long answered in the main: not only “Yes, we can” but “yes, we do!”

Most of the time in America, it’s true: we are not at one another’s throats except all across the board and through the complex labyrinth’s of open civil and criminal courts.

We Americans have all the problems of the rest of the world but in much, much smaller measure, and for those smaller measures — whether having to do with blowing up abortion clinics or blowing up marathons at the finish line — we have our Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The lethal mix of external influence and incursion has also, alas, led to our supporting a massive domestic and foreign intelligence apparatus.

Still, that’s not because of us — it’s because of the world Out There!

Why can’t all the rest of you just get along?

🙂

The truth is most do but not on the basis of religious or other common affinity but rather according to moderate-middle sensibilities and temperaments that may be then free and secure to distill issues and promote policies and law that work for most on the basis of their shared general humanity.

Those that cannot do that deform into other and malignant souls.

Environments that encourage and sustain the latter, however, distress and mire themselves in conflict defined by dismal rounds of rule and subjugation.

Indeed, they are “dumb wars”.

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FTAC – An Observation on the Sunni-Shiite Schism

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Political Psychology, Politics

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As a culture may be its language and the possession of its history in language, the argument over succession is unresolvable from the outset, but that the perception of the prize inspires so much animosity, contempt, and jealousy spells a dismal future for either hewing to such a legacy or, as discomforting but less absurd, retreating from the same.

While Hillel goes unremarked (“This which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another”), the greater world goes on around this schism that mires its humanity in its own sealed environment, which is more essentially an environment sustained in the poetry known to its own mind.

A book is a world, a movie a mirror of our own character in community.

The work of creative writers partially involves showing us to ourselves.  Some criticize their societies.  Some patronize them.  Of the two, I would prefer honest critics.

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Iraq – Imagining Time – As a River – As an Infinite Table

20 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Philology, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics

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As similes go, I think “time is a river” is done.

Iraq suggests to me that time, as here humans may conceive of it, may resemble something more like a table riven with canyons.

Some come to the edge of the end of something: if they turn back, they go backward while time continues advancing others around them; if they look toward the edge out ahead of themselves, they have to devise a crossing – and then take it.

Sometimes, I refer to Hillel the Elder (circa 35 BCE to 10 CE) who said in the course of arguing the meaning of Judaism with his rival Shammai, “whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

🙂

Hillel has been reputed to have said a few other good things as well (I believe three epigram have been listed to the left of this post), but that just quoted is the one that suggests a story about how we got to this edge.

If the Next Poetry looks difficult for writing (someone, please, channel Rumi), the separation of a kind of personality from the encouragement of a more human and natural ethics may want for sophistication greater than immediately available.

Simply pointing the finger at the despotic and spitting out the words “malignant narcissist!” might not do the trick.

Suggesting that the world is full of “bad daddies” might be more helpful: at least it would focus on the nature of some men and that of most men and women in light of the appearance of relationships between dictators, control of others (starting with what others hear and what they say), the exertion of power over others (whether they like it or not), and, always, the exploitation of the same for “narcissistic supply” accompanied by spectacles of murder and plunder undertaken with the greatest cruelty imaginable and achievable.

Now I / you / we can see them: The Despotic.

The Democratic stand opposed, but, alas, not quite put together themselves.  In Iraq, in fact, it appears they may be getting mauled, and the story in Syria tells exactly what happens to undefended good deed doers.

Time spreads out always to the end of things with a moment of division before the beginnings of new things.  That “now” may be short — somebody made a decision! — or it may be very long and tortuous as with forty years in a wilderness.

For some, perhaps myself included, time is also an island.

Every day is yesterday but a little different, but then — at my age — not too much so.

I have read that there are no longer “uncontacted people” — isolated tribes entirely untouched by the world beyond themselves — on our small planet, but some who may flee from further contact, probably with good practical reasons in mind, may live similarly.

The rest of us have to deal with one another in some way, and the “some way” we do that brings with it change — and better change we want than that assumed by a handful of tyrannical others.

Interesting Reference

Everett, Daniel.  Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle.  Vintage, 2009.

Golub, Alex.  “Are there ‘uncontacted tribes’?  The short answer: No.”  Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology, July 1, 2008.

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Aside

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Anti-Semitism, Philology, Philosophy, Religion

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We touched on this theme briefly at a synagogue planning meeting last night. In addition to reaching communities at the edges of our regional service area and bringing in also unaffiliated Jews, there was mention of the want of the passion to promote the distinctive wonderful qualities of the Jews as a community.

Not yet approached but on my mind very much as the very stamp of the “secularized” (in truth, I believe) American Jew: I want a Judaism and Jewish ethos more easily accessed and enjoyed on a more universalized basis. I’m not particularly Christian-friendly in this and also flatly reject Muhammad’s all-of-the-prophets-were-Muslim confusion, but as Judaism promotes a deep ethical and moral conversation between man and God and man and man, it may be a beacon beyond itself.

Generals Constantine and Muhammad built empires on the backbone of the Torah, but perhaps they did not build a better backbone in thought themselves.

With that said, “Jewish rejectionism” (of other faiths) also inspires anti-Semitic sentiment. A more welcoming religion might offset that.

A “beacon beyond itself’ — Judaism and the great conversation it invokes has been that, the basis for three great religions and inseparable from them.

No Moses?

No Muhammad.

It’s that simple.

Why not revisit the qualities of the base?

I’m a little more than half way through Fassihi’s book on Iraq — it seems I have mostly experienced the world through the technology of the the book, thousands of them — and when I’m done, I may well trim back to a second tour through the Torah.

In the process of this thinking out loud, I shared the draft with multifaith chaplain and writer Diane Weber Bederman,  who then responded in this way:

I don’t see Judaism as rejectionist. I see it as a religion that says, believe in your God. The Noachide laws. It is a trusting religion that trusts in your beliefs. Unlike others who demean other religions we accept them That is the revolutionary change that Jews brought out of the desert. Caring for the other. Not by changing the other but by accepting the other. Which must not be confused with moral and cultural relativism

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