In my last note, I’ve mentioned one of the “hate-peace peace groups” that might serve as a gateway to so many others. If you want chit-chat with Greta Berlin, one of the organizers of the Gaza Flotilla, she’s around; if with my generally conservative buddies. they’re in the mix too; if a whole other set, we might get it. “Humanism” — shall I refer to Felix Adler and “Ethical Culture” — provides a common thread across religious and state boundaries; however, it would support, if we’re really going to be good about this, cultural polyphony. The Roma should not be so abused! Nor the Jews. Nor the Rohingya of Burma. Wahhabi imperialism, Islamic expansionism — especially as the “Islamists” would have it, resurgent nationalisms (which has Hungarian Jobbik relating to Iranian roots, for pete’s sake), ensure we’re going to be in trouble for a while. Even so, we may pay more attention to autonomy, degrees of freedom, human dignity, human rights, and qualities of living — physical, psychological, and spiritual, across our 6,900 or so language cultures and adjust for co-evolution.
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I’m not the only one who tires of addressing, confronting, and arguing the issues (and the facts) of the “middle east conflict” (i.e., that would be the one involving The Jews, as the others, I suppose, want for less attention).
Felix Adler (professor) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I caught my second wind 🙂 in the 1980s with my “discovery” of Abraham Maslow while working on a Masters in “Outdoor Recreation Resources Management”. Perhaps for this venue, Maslow’s suggestion that if one is to pursue greater health (with actualization), one ought to study healthy people as much as those beset by pathology.
The radical Jews — whoever gathered in the desert more than 5,000 years ago — produced a religion in which one God had dominion over all and no man — not even Moses, not even Abraham — was like Him.
God, from the Jewish beginning, was “Master of the Universe”.
Many, by comparison, could barely master his own emotions.
Anti-deification and conflation with God characterizes a Jewish approach to scripture, every passage of which enjoys close reading and vigorous ethical and moral argument. Even “The Akedah” splits between the (option one) promotion of obedience and (option two) the call to speak back to God, which we today we refer to as “speaking truth to power.”
Jewish, Christian, Islamic humanism, social humanism, atheist humanism, secular humanism, etc. all suggest that while God has plans, we are none of us God, and if we wish to live in peace, a common peace, a peace for the democratic (small “D”) man, a peace for the Pacific Islander as well as the Iraqi, we’re going to have to help one another and, perhaps, quiet some of the egotism and noise, most ambitious and inventive, coursing through our minds, the gift of languages invented to cope with survival in bounded systems.
I can never too highly recommend reading Daniel Everett’s Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes or this thoughts in Language: The Cultural Tool.
We’re a wild species, but our war technologies have exceeded many natural limitations, and they really can destroy humankind, while our advanced technologies have become comparatively fragile, “glass” plates beneath a blazing sun converting light to electricity.
We have a way to go, but, whatever we do, we’re going to go there together — and we’re not going to outwit God, nature, or the universe along the way.
Additional Reference
Linguistic Society of America | Advancing the Scientific Study of Language
World Council of Anthropological Associations – WCAA
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