{"id":66647,"date":"2015-11-23T12:00:28","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T12:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=66647"},"modified":"2015-11-22T20:18:14","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T20:18:14","slug":"contradictions-in-the-whirlwind-the-refugees-crisis-paris-attacks-wars-without-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/11\/contradictions-in-the-whirlwind-the-refugees-crisis-paris-attacks-wars-without-end\/","title":{"rendered":"Contradictions in the Whirlwind: The Refugees Crisis, Paris Attacks, Wars without End"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cHumankind cannot bear very much reality.\u201d<\/em> — T. S. Elliot<\/p>\n

Whitman wrote in \u201cLeaves of Grass:\u201d
\n“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself! <\/em>
\nI am large; I contain multitudes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Contradictions have, in fact, largely defined human life\u2014even human \u201ccivilization\u201d\u2014for millennia. Our contradictions are at least as immanent in the 21st<\/sup> Century as they were in the days of the pharaohs. They are interwoven in world myths: from the Trickster, who may deceive and enlighten at once, to the Garden of Eden\u2014Paradise lost when we have the effrontery to taste of the Tree of Knowledge! Freud and Jung treated our shadow selves; and our dual natures seem part of the double helix of our cells. The \u201cOld Testament\u201d often plays on the theme. My three favorite books from that very uneven anthology are \u201cProverbs\u201d (\u201cThere is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing\u2026\u201d) \u201cEcclesiastes\u201d (\u201cHe that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow\u201d) and \u201cThe Book of Job.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the first chapter of \u201cJob,\u201d the hero is described as \u201ca perfect and an upright man, one that fears God and eschews evil.\u201d What more could anyone ask\u2014even God could not ask for more! Except\u2026 Satan plants a seed of doubt in God\u2019s apparently too-pliable mind: \u201cDoes Job fear God for naught?\u201d the Serpent hisses. And God, whom we used to think all-knowing, must prove Himself (to Satan?) by torturing His faithful servant!<\/p>\n

Job\u2019s fidelity is tested and \u201crewarded\u201d with the deaths of his children, destruction of his livelihood, painful boils all over his body; and his garrulous \u201cfriends\u201d can offer nothing but cold comfort and specious logic. His wife advises him to \u201ccurse God, and die,\u201d but Job holds fast to his \u201cintegrity\u201d\u2014his belief in a just, omniscient, merciful God. Nevertheless, in spite of his mighty efforts, physical pain reduces him, ransacks his certainties, and he cries out: \u201cWherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea are mighty in power. \u2026They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave.\u201d Updated: the rich and powerful live to ripe old age and die quickly without pain. But, for the good, God-fearing man or woman: our blessings can destroy us, cause unwarranted suffering. (And God\u2019s voice at the end, speaking out of the Whirlwind, may enlighten or not, may soothe or not, depending on one\u2019s attitude!)<\/p>\n

But, all of that was long ago! Surely in our \u201cmodern\u201d world, our high-speed, high-tech world of NOW, we need not wait for voices out of whirlwinds to know where we are and where we\u2019re going! GPS and the amicable robot\u2019s voice will steer us home!<\/p>\n

And \u201chome\u201d is anywhere we hang our hat, as Streisand sang in the good old days. And home is where, as Frost said, \u201cwhen you go there, they have to take you in.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then Frost answered himself in \u201cThe Death of the Hired Man,\u201d perhaps his best poem, certainly his most dramatic: \u201cI should have called it something you somehow haven\u2019t to deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of which may have been good and true in the hard-working, rural \u201cwhite\u201d America Frost celebrated way back then.<\/p>\n

But where is \u201chome\u201d now, as we contemplate America\u2019s millions sleeping in old cars, or abandoned buildings, or warming their cold, sore bodies over sidewalk grates? Where is \u201chome\u201d as we look to rivers of refugees rushing across borders in the Middle East and Europe, escaping our endless wars\u2014wars invariably fought these days\u2014so our \u201cleaders\u201d declaim–to secure elusive \u201cpeace\u201d\u2026 and to keep the \u201chomeland\u201d safe? After the cataclysms of the 20th<\/sup> Century, hadn\u2019t we earned some respite in the 21st<\/sup>? Is displacement to be the eternal theme of humankind?<\/p>\n

A cursory review of history, and we wonder: Has the human species always been so massively contradictory, so divided against itself? Doesn\u2019t the Old Testament also tell us, and didn\u2019t Lincoln remind us, that \u201ca house divided against itself cannot stand\u201d?<\/p>\n

We come to a \u201cmomentary stay against confusion,\u201d and then lose that moment again! We achieve a Golden Age of Pericles or a long Augustan era of peace and prosperity; a Tang Dynasty; seven centuries of sunlight, scholarship and bliss in Andalusian Spain \u201cwhere Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in tolerance, and\u2026 literature, science, and the arts flourished\u201d; a Renaissance or Enlightenment\u2026 and then, the invaders come, or entropy overwhelms us, \u201cthe center cannot hold,\u201d and we blow up the sacred monuments in Palmyra or in the Black Hills of America–shattering the crystals in the Palace of Wisdom with covetousness, narrow-mindedness, xenophobia, schizophrenia, sadism and folly.<\/p>\n

Islam itself, the West\u2019s bugbear again, or \u201cradical Islam\u201d–as our \u201cradical Right\u201d would have it; as our self-appointed moral compasses declaim–arose as one of the consequences of the fall of the Roman Empire\u2013brutal and decadent in its closing fires-of Nero-\u201cminnows\u201d-of-Tiberius-chapters. The very name of the religion signifies \u201csubmission\u201d\u2014submission to Allah, to the will of God. It was Islam\u2019s acceptance of all ethnicities that transformed the hurt and anger of Malcom X, metamorphosing a peace-seeker, a reconciler.<\/p>\n

But, contradictions and conflicts within Islam\u2013as between Sunnis and Shiites\u2013soon led to internecine wars that have continued for over a millennium. In more recent centuries, Islam has faced onslaughts from crusaders and invaders\u2013from Christians, secularist Turks, capitalists\/imperialists from Europe and the US. (And yes, after the Prophet\u2019s death, as the religion spread rapidly across the Middle East, North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, the cry was often: \u201cConvert or die!\u201d Whether that was more sanguinary that the Crusaders\u2019 idea of massacring all who stood in their plundering way, \u201cletting God sort Christians from infidels\u201d\u2014only God, at last, can say!<\/p>\n

The Great Contradiction of the 21st<\/sup> Century is that humankind has never been more connected\u2014and our very connectedness renders us more vulnerable. We can communicate with friends in Mumbai and Singapore in an eye-blink, and we can lose all our vital information thanks to hackers in Shanghai or anywhere in the next eye-blink. And what is true for the individual goose is true for our collective ganders\u2014the whole shebang of modernity. Wasn\u2019t all this Age of Anxiety stuff supposed to surcease when the Cold War ended? Whatever happened to the \u201cPeace Dividend\u201d Ronald Reagan and Daddy Bush promised?<\/p>\n

Of course, if we were paying attention in the \u201890s, we heard murmurings; we saw the graffiti-handwriting on the wall. And the graffiti said, \u201cA clash of civilizations\u201d would be coming to a theater (of war) near you!<\/p>\n

And I wondered–Why? Why did Huntington write with surety about such a clash? Why did it have to be inevitable? Could we learn nothing to avert catastrophe? Surely, we are masters of our fate (in the West we especially like to think so! \u201cCaptain of my soul\u201d\u2014and all that!). Forewarned is forearmed. If we knew more about our potential enemies, were we all not mature enough, not seasoned enough, to sit down at the Table Round and talk things through?<\/p>\n

(I confess congenital naivety! \u201cThe poet,\u201d Goethe wrote, \u201cis essentially na\u00efve!\u201d)<\/p>\n

I soon realized: The best thing in Huntington was not news of an inexorable \u201cclash,\u201d but delving into the roots of it; i.e.:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion [\u2026,] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And,<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, our goose is cooked.<\/p>\n

Things will get worse\u2026 before\u2026 they\u2026 get\u2026 worse!<\/p>\n

Then\u2026 what hope? Can people live without that elusive, fluttering hawk on the wing? Is there \u201cinformed\u201d hope as opposed to the ignorant sputtering of our politicians and media hype-sters who tell us to just go about our usual business: i.e., watching millionaires play soccer in tax-financed mega-stadiums; Christmas shopping for the latest electronic baubles; Thanksgiving prayers over hormone-injected turkeys; caf\u00e9 au lait<\/em> and pinot noir<\/em>\u2014or else the \u201cterrorists\u201d will win! After 911, wasn\u2019t George Winsome Bush advising us, in the best Tammy Faye Baker tradition to \u201cshop till we drop,\u201d to resume our \u201cnormal\u201d lives? And, don\u2019t we hear the same chattering politico-media chorus now\u2014background Gregorian chanting from Sharm el Sheikh to Paris to Mali?<\/p>\n

News flash: the \u201cterrorists\u201d have already won! We have met the enemy and they are us! I do not mean that we are \u201cworse\u201d than they are, but I do not see that we are \u201cbetter\u201d! When our politicos and media mavens talk about \u201cgood guys vs bad guys\u201d or their \u201cpure evil\u201d vs our \u201cbasic decency,\u201d I wonder how dropping bombs on, and drone strikes against, civilians is less evil than cutting off heads?<\/p>\n

\u201cA little knowledge is a dangerous thing,\u201d mused Alexander Pope. \u201cDrink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years before Huntington was peddling his inevitability wares, Joseph Nye was advocating a \u201csoft power\u201d approach. His argument was simple (but not simplistic): we had won the Cold War by being \u201cfirm,\u201d \u201cresolute,\u201d \u201cproactive,\u201d etc., but how could we win the Peace? We needed a new set of adjectives (less Viagra-sounding, we might think now!).<\/p>\n

The best comment I have heard about the Paris tragedies, actually came a couple of hours before the attacks were \u201cbreaking news\u201d worldwide. Before the attacks, the \u201cExtra! Extra!\u201d news of the day was that the UK could confirm that \u201cJihadi John\u201d had been killed in an air-raid! \u201cJihadi-John\u201d was the infamous Brit-Arab, hooded and masked–sounding a bit like John Lennon!\u2014with the awful habit of cutting off men\u2019s heads on the \u201csocial media.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think it was on the BBC station that I caught a short interview with the mother of James Foley–a missionary who had been one of J-John\u2019s victims. Interviewer and James Foley\u2019s mother were seated in the studio, and he asked her the typical nonsense: if she were \u201crelieved\u201d now that her son\u2019s murderer had been \u201cbrought to justice.\u201d This sensible, sedate mom wondered how she could feel relief about the murder of a \u201cderanged\u201d man! What did it solve? Further, she was certain, her son would feel the same way; she was certain that her son would have forgiven that deranged man!<\/p>\n

Most of us are not designed that way, of course. When Dylann Roof went off his nut and massacred 9 members of an African-American church in Charleston, just five months ago this year, many of us \u201cnormal\u201d people wondered how the surviving parishioners could talk about \u201cforgiveness.\u201d (Wasn\u2019t Roof\u2019s an act of \u201cterrorism\u201d?) I suppose only the most exceptional among us can talk about \u201cforgiveness\u201d at such times, but many of us cannot help but wonder if we human microbes on this pretty speck of dust called Earth have the capacity to learn from our mistakes and misdeeds over the millennia?<\/p>\n

If we begin to understand our enemy and ourselves, we may begin to make some headway! (As Sun Tzu wrote in \u201cThe Art of War\u201d: Know your enemy, but not yourself, 100 battles, 50 victories; know yourself, but not your enemy, 100 battles, 50 victories; know yourself and your enemy, 100 battles, 100 victories.)<\/p>\n

In spite of all the tripe dripping from the lips of Trump or Carson, Hillary-Shrillary, Hannity-Vanity or O\u2019Reilly-O\u2019Really-?, 100-year-war-Cain-McCain and all the guff from our multi-starred consultant-generals\u2014all the tripe about \u201cevil,\u201d \u201cpure evil,\u201d \u201crabid dogs,\u201d etc.–those retaining an iota of sanity amidst the muck and clucking must wonder: Are babies born \u201cevil\u201d? How are values enculturated and ingrained? Does the \u201conly Super-power\u201d bear any responsibility for this world of blood, guts and explosive glory?<\/p>\n

We must begin to admit that America and its allies in Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Gulf States, etc., have fatefully (and myopically) fanned the flames of the Sunni-Shiite divide\u2013using either side to gain momentary advantage. Thus, we used the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein to wage war against the Shiites in Iran (and about 1 million dead in Iran!) But when it came time to pay the piper, we refused, betraying our former client state, leaving Saddam bankrupt and facing insurrection, leading to Saddam\u2019s invasion of our puppet state of Kuwait, leading to the first Gulf War, etc. And when Leslie Stahl asked saxophonist Bill Clinton\u2019s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright if the deaths of half a million Iraqi kids was \u201cworth it,\u201d\u2014deaths owing to our blockade, embargoes, sanctions, etc. against life-saving drugs and medical equipment, etc.\u2014steely eyed (but not \u201cevil\u201d?) Madeleine replied, emphatically and unapologetically, that it was!<\/p>\n

Half a million dead kids in Iraq. 129 dead in Paris. There\u2019s no equivalencies in war, of course. But, one wonders if Stalin\u2019s cynicism was right: one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.<\/p>\n

No equivalencies! Last year, three Jewish youths were kidnapped while hitchhiking outside of a Jewish settlement abutting Palestinian territory. Their bodies were found soon after. Hundreds of Palestinians were arrested as \u201csuspects,\u201d leading to widespread riots, leading to a Palestinian youth, possibly mentally impaired, being kidnapped, forced to drink gasoline, doused with gasoline and immolated. Leading to more riots and an invasion of Gaza that left over 2000 Palestinians dead\u2014mostly civilians, mostly women and children\u2014and many more wounded, displaced and traumatized. Some of the most advanced weapons systems in the world employed against some of the most primitive. A massacre! Was there an outcry in the \u201ccivilized\u201d West? No one even had to tell us to \u201cgo shopping\u201d!<\/p>\n

But, everything changes, \u201ccontains the seeds of its own destruction,\u201d as Marx justly noted about Capitalism (but failed to note about the system he devised in its stead. When has dictatorship\u2014of the \u201cproletariat\u201d or anything else–simply \u201cwithered away\u201d?)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u201d tell us to go shopping, live our \u201cnormal lives,\u201d because our \u201cleaders\u201d (what Aldous Huxley deemed our \u201cControllers\u201d) know well that terrorist attacks are a sick theater to match our own sick theaters of consumption, materialism, sports and celebrities, environmental destruction. Lao Tzu, Confucius and Joseph Nye would advise us to \u201ctone it down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Can we revise our moribund and defunct educational systems\u2014our high schools emphasizing football, cheerleading, socializing prurience; our colleges much the same, emphasizing student debts–leading to life-long wage-slavery? Can we de-emphasize filling in bubbles on standardized tests, re-emphasize time-tested subjects like \u201cRhetoric,\u201d \u201cWorld History,\u201d \u201cComparative Religion\u201d? Can we clip some of the feathering from our bloated 1000 worldwide military bases, reduce the half of our taxes and national budget that we direct towards the military-industrial-complex and provide, like many other \u201cadvanced\u201d societies, free or near free college education, vocational education (that also includes the Humanities), non-pharmaceuticalized healthcare and health guidance? Can we dismantle our grotesque prison-industrial system?<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the first death, there is no other,\u201d Dylan Thomas wrote in \u201cA Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London.\u201d What more can one say\u2014if one child\u2019s death is not more than sufficient an indictment, a plea, despair?<\/p>\n

We had better start to acknowledge the many crimes committed by the West\u2013against Africans, the Americas\u2019 indigenous people, and in the Middle East and Asia\u2013during the West\u2019s centuries of expansionism and conquest. Recognizing our own contradictions\u2013as Whitman suggested\u2013may be the first step towards reconciliation and resolution of these current world-devouring horrors.<\/p>\n

We are more \u201cconnected\u201d now, and more vulnerable! (Imagine a massive \u201ccyber attack\u201d taking down the grid on America\u2019s east coast!) The Western approach, probably since the scientific revolutions of the “Enlightenment,” followed by the Industrial Revolution (mass production, assembly lines, etc.); and, especially, since Einstein, has been what I’ll call “atomization,” or a reductionist approach: i.e., reducing compound and interwoven elements to their smallest particles (or ideas) in order to analyze and categorize. \u00a0This approach has caused explosive growth, exploitation of human and mineral resources, ecological despoilation. \u00a0If we are to survive this century as something other than algorithmic androids (!), we will need a more comprehensive, interactive approach–need to understand what Heisenberg was getting at when he observed how mere observation and measurement could change a particle’s velocity or position. \u00a0Einstein understood something of this, too, when he wrote about “spooky physics”–how widely separated particles could “correlate”–once \u201centangled,\u201d always \u201centangled\u201d! (Artists have understood these phenomena for millennia; just check out the plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides!)<\/p>\n

In one of my favorite Biblical stories, Jacob “wrestles” with an angel \u201cunto the breaking of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

I interpret that to mean that he is “wrestling” with his better self, his “higher” self. \u00a0Good ideas against less-good. \u00a0Truths vs falsehoods.<\/p>\n

We are all divided–hexed, vexed, and maybe blessed, with that helical symbol in our cells and souls. \u00a0And, one mutation in one gene, changes everything!<\/p>\n

We are in the Whirlwind now, and we must render our best answers!<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Gary Corseri <\/em>has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library, and his dramas have been produced on <\/em>PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere. He has published novels and collections of poetry, has taught in public schools, prisons and universities, and has published work at <\/em>TMS (Transcend Media Service)<\/a>,\u00a0The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine and other publications and websites worldwide. Contact: gary_corseri@comcast.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best thing in Samuel P. Huntington was not news of an inexorable \u201cclash,\u201d but delving into the roots of it: \u201cIn the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.\u201d Half a million dead kids in Iraq. 129 dead in Paris. There\u2019s no equivalencies in war, of course. But, one wonders if Stalin\u2019s cynicism was right: one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}