I’ve maintained that Syria has been for decades in Russia’s sphere of influence — and across quite a few military, political, and trade issues — and rightly in the post-Soviet period should have been of concern to Russians. It may have been so but with the Assad regime and society overall still difficult and remote in its own right.
As an aside here, the spy games popping up through Manning, Assange, and Snowden (oh my!) have been a much obscured part of the Islamic Small Wars throughout the range. For Pakistanis, “ISI” is ever on the lips but equally off the radar and inscrutable; for Somalis, the Al Qaeda types come and go — I got my first online news glimpse in the Islamic Courts Union era and my last somewhere between Al Shabaab and a separate raid on kidnappers that raised a lot of unanswerable questions, starting with, “So how did you guys (SEALS) know who, where, and when?”
The world “behind the curtains”, from diplomatic missions to intelligence operations coursing through every sector of state-defined societies is immense, and it’s foolish to think that those hidden hands (plus eyes and ears and mouths) are not playing around in Syria.
Indeed, these are the best of times for the writers (and movie producers) of spy thrillers.
* * *
At stake in Syria, perhaps beautifully so, is a test of the definition of political and social obligation to others.
It’s much easier to express that when children, displaced persons, and refugees are the subject of whatever topic may be at hand: such are the victim of horrific circumstance and a portion of the soul of the world evident in the NGOs and the United Nations and all who support them comes out to do its thing, which is being helpful in the absolute worst conditions.
The spectacle of jets flown against neighborhoods, mass beheading, savage, if symbolic, cannibalism, and, finally, the taboo of chemical warfare brings something else into display, and it confronts these two incredibly unique men, President Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama with exactly what each might detest or fear most: differentially, a test of conscience on one hand, and a test of courage on the other: however, neither the former nor latter involve Syrians per se.
Instead, they involve the political grammars and structures on which the present has arrived, and in light of the savagery exhibited in Syria, as much seem to have grown old and to be moving out of favor.
I’ve been deliberately oblique in this last section, but fit to context, I think the poetry about right.
According to opposition figure Ayman Abdel-Nour, Al-Assad told the Syrian media recently that the regular army’s inability to take the city of Daria near Damascus after 120 days of non-stop shelling was because of the presence of foreign contingents fighting in the city, including Israelis and US commandos, for example.
However, the regime itself has been involved in forming the armed groups and of being a key mover in some of them. During the first year of the uprising, the regime released more than 60,000 prisoners by presidential decree, which facilitated the creation of the armed rebel groups and served its interests in painting them as criminals and former prisoners.
Nearly 47 amateur video clips reportedly filmed on the morning of the attack and showing the impact on civilians had been authenticated by French military doctors, according to the intelligence. French evidence gave details of other suspected chemical attacks, in the towns of Saraqib and Jobar in April, which now appeared to have killed about 280 people, the report said.
The lie always serves the liar in two ways: to conceal discomforting information or though — material that would be embarrassing, impolite, or shameful if expressed — or to manipulate the listener for gain, emotional or monetary, directly or indirectly.
Perhaps fiction serves for exception, but that entails literary invention in service to the emotional, political, social, and structural truth of a thing in aspects beyond the purview of journalism (for the journalist cannot record, for example, interior monologue).
* * *
A Jew may suggest, and possibly should, that each time the religion was hijacked, more or less, it may have been done with less concern for those inveigled in and by the New Power (two majors and lots of lesser camps in that category). One gets a lesson, say, about snakes and devils, a fall from grace, but go back and read Genesis 2 and 3 and “The Fall” is not there — and what is there is an awakening in awareness, self-awareness, and conscience, each an aspect of consciousness and knowledge.
And while our Original Couple may “cover” with the fig leaves, it’s God who sews them clothes of skin — and clothed and conscious of their lives as human beings, out into the world they go.
What happened to that telling?
* * *
From Adam and Eve and the charming story of their creation and birth as human beings to Bashar and Maher al-Assad would seem a stretch, but it’s not. The former emblematically tells a truth about the truth: indeed, humankind is conscious, self-conscious, and possessed of conscience; the latter symbolically tell a story about exceptional evil and how brazen, unconscious, uncaring, unconscionable, and sadistic a human or comparative handful of the same can be.
The initial mismatch involved in flying jets against neighborhoods in response to a guerrilla challenge at the low intensity level signals the delusion of grandeur in which the Assad brothers had been knocking about all of their lives. Theirs was a kingdom, never mind the exploitation, hunger, and suffering of some fair portion of their constituency.
Damascus, 30 October 2007 (IRIN) – Syria is struggling to reform unsustainable and inequitable subsidies, despite warnings from leading economists that delays increase the likelihood of drastic economic shocks and possible social unrest.
The question is how to do so without provoking sharp price increases in a country where the average state wage remains little over US$120 a month.
That is the way of kingdoms — and dictatorships — and they are all happy, are they not?
A more recent article in Al Monitor (“Failure of Economic Reform in Syria,” December 28, 2012) goes more deeply into the from-there-to-here aspect, but suffice it to say: all were not happy and however helped along or joined by fanatics or mercenaries, the seeds for insurrection would seem to have been homegrown.
As much, the Assad brothers would deny.
* * *
Remember: it’s never the narcissist.
* * *
Andrew Tabler: One of the ways the Syrian government defends itself is by obscuring everything that happens inside the country. Right now there’s a huge question about whether or not to intervene. The government can dispute whatever argument pro-interventionists have. This isn’t unusual for these kinds of regimes. Assad is a master at manipulating the press. Often times hardly anyone is even paying attention to Syria, though that’s changed now. At the time they could snow job us, but now it’s a lot harder, especially when so much violence is being captured on YouTube.
A false false-flag in which troops dress down to look like rebels and a disinformation industry gins it up to look like “the other guy” tells the character of the primary actor, and it never changes: bullies are cowards and cowards are liars always.
* * *
This may be the last I write about language, integrity, narcissism, and political psychology for a while. It may take funding or it may be for others to do, but with so much behavioral and cognitive machinery visible, one may pursue curiosity down into the nuts and bolts of child rearing, social grammar, the drama of, say, narcissistic mortification, and experiments with and development of criminal power as the basis for political and social power across large constituencies that will pay a high price for having allowed as much to happen to them.
The civil war in Syria provides the drama of the day; violence in Islam associated with mixed ambitions provides a convenient theme: however, observations proposed or stated here may have more universal qualities.
The absence of conscience on the part of the Assad regime in its military actions, an aspect that reaches its nadir with the use of chemical weapons, and the historically astigmatic vision of the Al Qaeda-types serve to keep “awareness, self-awareness, and conscience” — God’s gift to humanity in my interpretation of the Jewish ethos expressed in Genesis 2 and 3 — restricted to their own minds, concerned only with themselves, and consequently locked in true “mortal combat” on a small stage surrounded by mirrors of their own image.
I like Max Fisher’s term in the lead, ” . . . possibly imminent series of limited military strikes . . .” and the later too true observation, “The government responded, there is no getting around this, like monsters.”
However, over time the FSA became dominated by Islamist extremists (including some affiliated with Al Qaeda), bolstered by Sunni rulers in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The rebels, as the overarching group is now referred to, slowly split into fractured groups, with the more radical fighters taking over areas to the north and east of Damascus, and the more secular fighters holding court in the southern suburbs.
In Seija’s backgrounder, the Assad will-to-dynasty gets referenced but not its dependence on the politics of the Cold War and the prism provided by Putin’s now delicate diplomacy of the day, which has seen the retrieval of Russian civilian and military personnel and assets from Syria while fulfilling old military contracts at the Iran-Syria nexus.
Russia may be yet interested in defeating the “Yankee Imperialists” in the cause of the “New Russian Oligarchs” — just a thought — but it has to work at keeping itself apart from the European part of NATO identity as a Christian state fending off Islamist intentions in Chechnya and as a modern proto-democratic (all the parts are in place) still autocratic state enjoying a somewhat pagan muscularity.
* * *
* * *
* * *
Is that above an Ayatollah’s best buddy?
* * *
Back on center stage, Amos Harel writing for Haaretz asks, “In all the global talk over the last week about the chemical weapons attack in Syria and the expected U.S. response, one interesting question has been shunted aside: Why on earth did Syrian President Bashar Assad do it?”
Syria, specifically, and Putin in Syria, specifically, and a fair number of interlopers, not so specifically, would seem to be running around in there without much of a moral compass.
Again, “Syria Dark Star” consumes energy without transforming itself into a positive region although some of what has been taking place may be moving toward that, e.g., the Kurdish separation from Syria forced by the presence of Al Qaeda in the Kurdish sphere amid the absence of Syrian state forces; the fact that the seemingly moderate General Idris remains afield with a capable force fighting both Assad’s military and such as Al Nusra.
Still: where can the Syrian Civil War resolve?
The inability of Syrians and the world at large to address that question both ideally and politically serves to keep the conflict, in the way of fire, consuming and deadening.
* * *
An Aside on Generalized Syrian Anti-Semitism
The presence and effects of general Syrian anti-Semitic acculturation also spells a dismal future, for that facet also stands signal to a lost humanity.
The absence of conscience on the part of the Assad regime in its military actions, an aspect that reaches its nadir with the use of chemical weapons, and the historically astigmatic vision of the Al Qaeda-types serve to keep “awareness, self-awareness, and conscience” — God’s gift to humanity in my interpretation of the Jewish ethos expressed in Genesis 2 and 3 — restricted to their own minds, concerned only with themselves, and consequently locked in true “mortal combat” on a small stage surrounded by mirrors of their own image.
In a sense, these actors cannot see themselves.
Those not a part of it and out searching on the World Wide Web may nonetheless see the same as they are and caught in a predicament of their own making, starting with the “malignant narcissism” so well displayed by the Assad’s in their “Arab Spring” response to their constituents.
“The government responded, there is no getting around this, like monsters,” wrote Max Fisher a few hours ago, and that is the truth.
How is it that they could not see themselves when they needed to see themselves most accurately, most completely, and most of all?
The coin “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” may apply, but it serves as an aid to observation of leadership type and may not provide quite the key to insight and guidance needed in Syria.
Unfortunately, the conventions of diplomacy and war fighting won’t quell the dark energy in Syria either because in some the accumulated language-based “content of mind” has pushed them beyond the reach of their own and better humanity. In reach-out, one may point to those who have exceeded limits, but, here’s the problem, they are also those fulfilling their programming.
A segment in the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s new award-winning documentary “Jihad in America: The Grand Deception” focuses on Islamists and how they try to control public perception. Part of it is by manipulating a lazy and gullible media. But another part is to shut down any criticism of Islamist ideology – the notion that society is best governed by Islamic law.
Without narcissism and vanity, we would not have, say, Cadillacs and golf courses for starters; with too much, control issues — control of others, ambiguities involving locus of control in cultural, personal, and political dimensions — may become prominent, obsessive, and destructive.
The coin “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy” serves to define a trait in dictators who so often lead their states to ruin, but in and through it, one may also catch on to the rejection of criticism accompanied by grandiose delusions in the mirroring taking place within more average souls on similarly inspired missions.
Is it there by nature or has it been nurtured?
My briefest brush with someone else’s clinically diagnosed “bipolar disorder” makes a strong case for nature as regards that specific — distinctive, florid, and unmistakable — psychopathology. However, for the purposes of social and political psychology, I would make a case for language-informed “social grammar” constructing or programming a kind of person who would believe himself remiss if he demurred from enforcing what he believes to be divine favor and instruction already undergirded by congruent and unconsciously managed basic attitudes and beliefs.
If it can be seen or perceived, there may be a word for it; however, one might ask, if there isn’t a word for it, can it, will it, be perceived or seen?
This short and off-the-cuff note associates with the theme I had wanted for this blog, far more than secondary coverage of the war news: i.e., a fair look into conflict and political psychology.
” . . . how could a society allow the radical to run any sort of political business ?” There may be a form of moral and psychological weakness buttressed by stress plus challenges to personal and cultural self-esteem. Basically, The People Who Are Vulnerable may find themselves in want of a champion, a father, a demigod who can save them from their misery and restore them to (guess what) their former glory!
One does not have to relive the Battle of the Ditch to appreciate this.
The restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon might do.
“Malignant narcissists” possessed of charisma and grand enthusiasm (or grandiose delusions — see this blog’s note on Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy) are inherently manipulative and without internal brakes as regards others (who exist to serve them — and supply them with adoration and love in infinite “narcissistic supply”).
The dictator of the day, at least Egypt’s day, is Morsi, and the language technology in play, at least in part, serves a readily angered population, and they too lose their brakes and take license; however, any may be invited to overview the “career paths” of other autocrats, present and past, and note the dynamic similarities across ideologies and purposes. Not all are awful, but from the junta in Burma to Mugabe in Zimbabwe, they are all thugs and their power is the power of the mob boss or malignant feudal lord.
It’s possible that in a language culture or society infused with “black and white thinking” that observation of the character of the dictator may add only to prowess in back-and-forth mudslinging. Nonetheless, the possession of a concept universal in intent — i.e., the appearance of the autocrat in a social process, from board room to cabinet, from China to Cameroon, apart from legacy in culture, language, political system, and religion — may find a place in the political chemistry of constituencies engaged in conflict, in want of a way to the end of it and, through suffering perhaps, amenable to the adoption of an updating and progressive outlook.
It helps to know who really cares about you.
Not every leader with backbone or the inheritance, even, of a kingdom will prove a dictator in the depths of their psychology, but some, unfortunately, will, and they will always lead their people toward confusion and ruin, for what they most prize is their own aggrandized image and the comfort it brings them surrounded by sycophants and a visible sea of adoring loyal subjects.
I have altered the provocative voice to maintain only the line of thought pursued.
The answering voice, and more at length here, enough so to justify my noting that I have Martin Pembroke Harries’ permission to reprint his views here, takes an atheist’s stance in the formulation of ethics. We’ve had some back-and-forth about circumcision, Abraham, obedience, and conscience, but here the topic around which the notes weave is grrrrrl power, which he defends well.
Other editing: I’ve added line breaks for readability and italicized the “point” voice to Pembroke’s counterpoint.
* * *
Women are shy in the Koran and won’t perceive the crime the way a male would.
Is this a wind-up? I can’t decide whether you’re serious or a master of sarcasm.
If you are being serious, when you suggest to, say, Sheikh Hasina the prime Minister of Bangladesh, or Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the prime Minister of Argentina, or Hilary Clinton, the former US Secretary of State, that their testimony would be worth half that of yours simply because you are a man, you would be well to stand well beyond their swinging fist distance!
While the Koran authorizes beating a wife after other steps have been tried, it tells us not to maim them. In the west, it seems there are no rules.about how to beat one’s wife.
Again, is this for real?
If so, this is what religion can do to a nominally decent man, it forces him to justify the indefensible.
Do you think that because Sharia states that you can’t break her face when you beat your wife, that is some how a reflection of the nobility of Islam?
That is so sad first of all, but monstrously embarrassing soon afterward.
And let’s be honest, there is nothing in the Quran that states you can’t break your wife’s face when you’re beating her – If you actually read the Quran 4:34, you’ll find that there is no restriction at all.
Please don’t tell me I can find on the book shelves of my local mosque library “101 Halal ways to beat your wife!”, or “How to lovingly protect your wife from the shame of her disobedience through the use of a good timely thrashing” or “Sharia Wife-beating made simple and with a Smile – avoid the face, and Carry On!”
A woman in Islam may be a wife, mother, sister, or daughter. There is no disrespect in that.
I’ve read numerous Muslims state that there is this nominal respect for one’s OWN mother and one’s OWN sister, but once your average MENA Muslim male leaves the house, that’s where respect for women, in general, ends.
Women lead in the percentage of Muslim reverts in the United States. If the religion was so bad for them, why would they revert?
Yes, This is the case because non-Muslim females are marrying Muslim males – for love no less!
It’s probably to please the groom’s parents more than actually believing Mohamed’s story; whereas Muslim females are forbidden to marry non-Muslim men – often at the threat of her life. Again, this a shameful example of not giving equal rights to women. If Muslim men were forbidden to marry non-Muslim women the number of ‘converts’ would plummet.
Lastly, have you got the statistic of how many ‘converts’ have subsequently unconverted? Or how many have converted only nominally in order to facilitate the marriage? Those numbers would be far less flattering wouldn’t they?
Islam disallows Muslim daughters from marrying non-Muslims. If you have a problem with that, it’s your problem.
Well, first of all it’s the daughters’ problem.
I respect your atheism. I want you tor respect my belief in Allah.
No. I respect *your right to believe* what you want, but there is no way you should expect me to automatically respect *what you believe*. Nor should you expect me to automatically respect your right to practice your religion if the tenets of the religion are anathema to rational social harmony – and on those grounds masking the face would be contrary to those ideals. I’ll respect what you believe with respect to Mohamed’s story and social mores only if it reflects justice, morality and rationality – and there is your problem. But it shouldn’t be a big problem, it’s only unsubstantiated religion – folklore – after all.
There are probably a number of non-religious issues upon which we might agree. For instance, I reckon chicken biryani is a food of the gods!
* * *
Harries is entitled to his opinion, but I myself never regard folklore as trivial: language is always (always) a cultural tool and what is invented in it, whether out of necessity and the need for useful signals or out of desire or play or the want of excitement and greatness (even if only in our own heads), each language and its lore and literature becomes a suspension for cultural self-concept.
With that, I’ll take this post a little further.
* * *
Surat 4:34:
“Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah has guarded. As for those from whom you fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.” (Pickthall’s version of the Koran, Quran, 4:34)
Dr. Shafaat gets into the matter of entangled loyalty well with this statement on the violence involved:
“Beat them”. If even separation fails to work, then it is suggested that men use beating. To this suggestion of the Holy Qur’an there have been two extreme reactions on the part of some Muslims. The first reaction is being apologetic or ashamed of the suggestion. The second is to use it as a justification for indulging in habitual wife battering. Needless to say that both these reactions are wrong. The Quran as we believe is the word of God and is thus every word in it is full of wisdom and love. To be apologetic about any part of the Quran is to lack both knowledge and faith.
For every word to be “full of wisdom and love”, some additional exegesis seems necessary, for Dr. Shafaat continues:
In regard to the suggestion about beating, the following further points should also be noted:
a) According to some traditions the Prophet said in his famous and well-attended speech on the occasion of his farewell pilgrimage that the beating done according to the present verse should be ghayr mubarrih, i.e. in such a way that it should not cause injury, bruise or serious hurt. On this basis some scholars like Tabari and Razi say even that it should be largely symbolic and should be administered “with a folded scarf” or “with a miswak or some such thing”. However, to be effective in its purpose of shaking the wife out of her nasty mood it is important that it should provide an energetic demonstration of the anger, frustration and love of the husband. In other words, it should neither seriously hurt the wife nor reduce it to a set of meaningless motions devoid of emotions.
That power continues to reside in the man (this is a locus-of-control issue) and not in the woman (how should one of the fair sex respond to or treat a “rebellious man”?) seems less an issue than the management of the degree of violence expressed, either physically or symbolically.
* * *
In working with thought as language behavior subject to modification by context in time plus the relative insularity of minds and the language-inventing cultures that create content and self-concept as well as a righteous sense of both license and prohibition, there’s much conversation needed about what I’ve started calling the “humanity of humanity”, i.e., mankind’s better potential in character, and in relation to that, a reconciled psychological outlook.
It’s worth a look, especially to men who may have doubts about how tough may be the “rebellious” woman they have been otherwise so licensed to beat, they themselves having been so pandered to as to have been granted by power on high exclusive control over what many other humans might as fervently and justifiably believe ideal as an equally empowered and inclusive love and partnership.
* * *
One more note on the laying on of hands by either partner in a marriage: when it has come to that, somebody, one or the other, please, leave the home, call a lawyer, and arrange for a separation.
U.S. diplomats report that the Prime Minister gets almost all his information from Islamist-leaning newspapers, ignoring the input of his own ministers. The Turkish military and intelligence services no longer share with him some of their reports. He trusts no one completely, surrounding himself with “an iron ring of sycophantic (but contemptuous) advisors.” Despite Erdogan’s macho behavior, he is reportedly terrified of losing his grip on power.
Once armed with a widget like the term “malignant narcissist” to bundle all of the world’s dictators together, or, my favorite (because it’s mine) “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy (FBPS)”, we may reach a point where knowing how such personalities work and the harm they bring to themselves, their gulled peers and supporters, and the world beyond their glorious and tightly controlled bubble full of pleasing mirrors demands some response.
In Egypt, I doubt Morsi & The Brothers got the message, denial and resistance to criticism partially defining this syndrome in personality, but The People of Egypt finally got ahead of what was being done to them and that with a military perhaps equally prescient as regards both cultural and institutional “human factors” and corresponding administrative and management choices and wisdom as regards good leadership well anchored and strong.
Not all autocrats are alike — Putin’s my favorite; Mugabe’s the worst — nor or all military organizations alike in their affection, alignment, and integration with the greater spirit of the people they defend (to keep this parallel, Egypt’s infernal opposite might be Syria’s defense forces whipped on by Maher al-Assad — there hasn’t been much display of affection or regard for noncombatant Syrians on the part of that murderous outfit).
Where people come to know what they are seeing when confronted by a personality exhibiting a dangerous narcissism, then they become responsible for keeping themselves from too easily following the same.
In developing states afflicted with potential or already self-serving “presidents for life”, how to drive this perception of the peacock through the streets with either the language or technologies available becomes a challenge.
It’s not easily done or Zimbabweans would have it done it a long, long time ago.
Egypt’s Tahrir Square has seen nearly hundred women falling victim to “rampant” sexual attacks during the past four days of protests against President Mohamed Morsi, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
The global rights watchdog said on Wednesday that the mobs sexually assaulted “and in some cases raped at least 91 women” in Tahrir Square amid a climate of impunity.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is recommending against all but essential travel to Egypt following widespread protests.
At least 23 people have been killed and more than 200 injured following clashes between supporters of president Mohammed Morsi and those who want him removed.
Mr. Morsi insisted he was the legitimate leader of the country, hinted that any effort to remove him by force could plunge the nation into chaos, and seemed to disregard the record numbers of Egyptians who took to the streets demanding he resign.
Here comes our Egyptianity (a term I am coining); this is the aspect that many people won’t understand all over the world! It is a fact that I did not watch President Mubarak as an American might watch Obama. In my conscious, I was not taught to treat him in a firm rigid manner; judging each and every corrupt order issued by him! I watched him as if my father! Yes, call me naïve, but I remember he is an 82 year old man, regardless of the fact that this does not count for me. It counts for me; he is dying and I was taught to have merci on the old! I watched his features that are very Egyptian and that resembles many dads I have! I did not think of the corruption, I did not think of the regime. I just cried like my 58 year old mom for the poor leader who wants to die in his country! This is called political naïve minds, I know. But I can assure that millions of Egyptians have this same mentality.
As acquaintance — or let’s call it even “pre-acquaintance” — may learn, I’m wicked fast when it comes to learning by way of the web a little bit more about people whose writing I enjoy.
Journalist Imane Nofal’s reaction to the revolution deposing Hosni Mubarak speaks within all of us as regards the affections and comforts associated with “The Father”, and, of course, the same fits well with the psychology involved within current Egyptian President Muhamed Morsi: what father would wish to fail or be humiliated before his children by seeming to back off his most passionate area of conviction?
To get this down into something schematic, the father-become-“malignant narcissist” seeks control of his social surrounds to ensure himself a continuing and energizing “narcissistic supply”, i.e., adoration, affirmation, approval, and love without cause nor end apart from the continuing aggrandizement and glorification of his own existence.
With an old dictator who steps down, with a bear of a father who grows old and infirm, both freedom from the tyrant and affection for the “Old Man” mix in the heart, so even with the father-as-antagonist, adult children most often bring themselves to the displays and duties attending the care of old lions.
With more vigorous national leaders in their prime, conditions and cautions may attend the same relationship.
In families, depending on the mix in souls actually present, a healthy child may be expected to rebel against a too constraining and implacable “fatherly” (tyrannical) will — and such a father might well find himself abandoned (and questioning the cause of the animus).
In countries, contemporary leaders, generally narcissistic enough to believe in their own messianic sensibilities and put themselves “into the ring” bidding for leadership of a state, may enjoy the affections of their close backers and larger public who see in them the “good father”, but they face challenges and responsibilities larger and more profound than merely making their people feel good and parading themselves as the paragons of their respective civilizations.
In politics, the good father must leave the family and become the good man in the public sphere and among other equally beloved and fatherly adult men — and it should be not hard to add in here also the strong mother who may also engage in the public sphere as equally indispensable in the development of the life of the community.
* * *
The mouth is the medium through which we arrange or define our relationships with others, and our perception in self-concept may be part of each interior “back channel” conversational monologue about reality.
When I taught English many years ago, I referred to this as “The story we tell ourselves about ourselves when we wake up in the morning.”
In the middle east, the father’s tendency to allow his mouth to paint him into a corner may summon disaster.
Add a little black and white thinking for extra kick: either Allah is with Morsi or is not, and Morsi, by way of personality (build it up from the infant’s acquisition of a social grammar along with language uptake to the adult’s beliefs about himself and the world), sets out to test God believing himself an exemplary believer worthy of proven — i.e., tested — divine favor.
How does one call off that test?
I suppose one might consider leaving God’s work to God.
One might also choose to accept that a presidency really is just another and temporary executive position requiring great and rapid decision-making invested deeply in the practical interests of a whole constituency and its experience of “qualities of living” (another term on which I need to get to work).
In other words, becoming the president of a state is not as big a deal as one might think, and most certainly not an excuse to license putting into motion a grandiose messianic vision certain to lead constituents into violence among themselves or with others.
Along with the virtues of compassion and integrity in living and in speech, one might also work in humility and ever the possibility that no matter how strong one’s conviction, one might be wrong and better corrected by way of a conversation with the world than by setting out to test the will of the Almighty — or alternatively, the nature of nature.
* * *
Here a Beginner’s Note About Contemporary Judaism
I suspect — and welcome Yeshiva-type affirmation and criticism — that much that informs the contemporary Jewish ethos goes back to the decisions and methods developed and defended by Hillel the Elder in the First Century CE.
Credited to Hillel: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another”; “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, for those who may read Telushkin’s book about him, would hew to two paths in his living a Jewish life: tendency to include rather than reject others — for me, there has been a real life preparation for this notice by way of chatting with Mobarak Haider about Islam and “civilizational narcissism” (Haider’s term — see on these pages “Mobarak Haider’s Diagnosis — Taliban: Tip of a Holy Iceberg”); and then encouragement of challenge and criticism involving one’s ideas rather than rejecting either as hostile out of hand, the thought being that if an idea or rule is truly good, it will stand up to examination from many directions.
Whether at start or end, compassion, humility, integrity, and spirited inquiry may better serve the “humanity of humanity” — abundant with invention in myriad cultures and languages — and that in its totality than the grandiose and monolithic figure of the powerful father whose voice may be greeted with affection but an affection laced also with deep fear.
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