Poetic mythmaker, Clement C. Moore, borrowed a couple of ideas from Washington Irving and in 1822 he gave us a detailed picture of St. Nicholas— a picture complete with the red suit, the round belly, and the sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. In the 190 years since then, Madison Avenue mythmakers came to realize there was a big gap in the year starting with the day after Christmas and continuing until Thanksgiving when Santa Claus reappears, and over time they filled in the myth of Santa Claus with a home at the North Pole, a workshop manned by a toy-production labor force of elves, and a kindly wife named Mrs. Claus who looks remarkably like my own wife. The point is this— when you’re selling the idea of an iconic personality, you need to fill in all the details.
I offer the tale of Santa Claus to stand in contrast with the tale of Jesus Christ. If Advent and the time leading up to the nativity is meant to build anticipation for the coming of mankind’s Lord and Savior, then why is there this informational black hole starting the week after Christmas and continuing for three decades until Jesus shows up again as a full grown adult? By all accounts, the first Noel was witnessed by three wise men, as well as numerous shepherds and angels and heavenly hosts (whatever those are). And it’s obvious from the record that everybody at the nativity realized at the time that it was a big deal. So why didn’t anybody bother to track the growth of Jesus after His birth? Where are the hymns about the second Noel, or the third, or any others?
The Muslims in their Koran have a pretty detailed account of the life of Mohammed, and there aren’t the gaps in his story like there are with the life of Jesus. In Christianity, the four gospels do a fair job of doing the job they do, but they sure leave a lot unsaid. If the Son of God truly walked the earth in the midst of mankind two thousand years ago, then why was he so unremarkable for most of his life?
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
What Was So Different About the 1930s?
Throughout The Great Depression of the 1930s, the national unemployment rate never rose above 30%, and I wondered what was on the mind of the 70% who still had jobs. With very little research, it was easy to find the answer— optimism for the future. An unbounded and ubiquitous optimism pervaded America, and there was a kind of inner confidence that America would soon lead the world to prosperity. This world of tomorrow that everyone imagined even had a name— The March of Progress.
The March of Progress was a collection of anticipated marvels, prophesied in 1939, that were realistically expected to exist in the year 1964: buildings taller than the Empire State Building constructed with lavish use of aluminum and glass, a multi-lane highway system that would allow a driver to travel coast-to-coast without stopping for anything but food and gasoline, the cautious but feasible use of atomic energy for power production, ubiquitous plastics, television sets in every home supported by a broadcast infrastructure, nylon stockings for women, rockets capable of orbiting above earth's atmosphere, radio telephones for occasional use in automobiles, aircraft capable of carrying 200 passengers at 400 mph, antibiotics, warships an eighth of a mile long, prefabricated low-cost houses, and fresh fruits and vegetables available at any time of year. And when 1964 came to pass, every one of these wonders had become reality. Even in 1939, for those in the depths of poverty, technology and innovation promised a better future.
In 2011, there’s a new March of Progress that’s become reality: transcontinental bullet trains capable of speeds in excess of 250 mph, skyscrapers approaching heights of a quarter mile, and supercomputers capable of a trillion computations per second. The thing is, these technological wonders all exist in China and Japan. The U.S.A. is behind Asia in this new, modern-day March of Progress, and as if to put an exclamation point behind that reality, the United States just ended… ENDED its manned space launch capability. We do, however, still have the world’s biggest and best military, although we can no longer win a war.
So what’s on the mind of Americans today, the 90% who still have jobs, and who aren’t yet brain dead from incessant ideologically-biased political happy talk? What do we have to match the optimism of the 1930s? What future can we predict with confidence? Here’s a partial list: the emerging power of radical fundamentalism in both Islam and Christianity, diminishing effectiveness of antibiotics, identity theft, man-made climate changes and rising sea levels, extermination of the world’s supply of edible fish, a series of global economic meltdowns, depletion of natural resources (especially fresh water), escalating and unstoppable rates of Internet crime with pervasive hacking, and corruption in seats of power… all problems with their origins in the growth of population and the disparity of living conditions across the planet. And then there’s a secondary but related set of problems: most countries including the United States are now becoming ungovernable, and most large corporations are unmanageable, and most religions are unreasonable. The optimism of The Great Depression is something we’ll never see again.
The March of Progress was a collection of anticipated marvels, prophesied in 1939, that were realistically expected to exist in the year 1964: buildings taller than the Empire State Building constructed with lavish use of aluminum and glass, a multi-lane highway system that would allow a driver to travel coast-to-coast without stopping for anything but food and gasoline, the cautious but feasible use of atomic energy for power production, ubiquitous plastics, television sets in every home supported by a broadcast infrastructure, nylon stockings for women, rockets capable of orbiting above earth's atmosphere, radio telephones for occasional use in automobiles, aircraft capable of carrying 200 passengers at 400 mph, antibiotics, warships an eighth of a mile long, prefabricated low-cost houses, and fresh fruits and vegetables available at any time of year. And when 1964 came to pass, every one of these wonders had become reality. Even in 1939, for those in the depths of poverty, technology and innovation promised a better future.
In 2011, there’s a new March of Progress that’s become reality: transcontinental bullet trains capable of speeds in excess of 250 mph, skyscrapers approaching heights of a quarter mile, and supercomputers capable of a trillion computations per second. The thing is, these technological wonders all exist in China and Japan. The U.S.A. is behind Asia in this new, modern-day March of Progress, and as if to put an exclamation point behind that reality, the United States just ended… ENDED its manned space launch capability. We do, however, still have the world’s biggest and best military, although we can no longer win a war.
So what’s on the mind of Americans today, the 90% who still have jobs, and who aren’t yet brain dead from incessant ideologically-biased political happy talk? What do we have to match the optimism of the 1930s? What future can we predict with confidence? Here’s a partial list: the emerging power of radical fundamentalism in both Islam and Christianity, diminishing effectiveness of antibiotics, identity theft, man-made climate changes and rising sea levels, extermination of the world’s supply of edible fish, a series of global economic meltdowns, depletion of natural resources (especially fresh water), escalating and unstoppable rates of Internet crime with pervasive hacking, and corruption in seats of power… all problems with their origins in the growth of population and the disparity of living conditions across the planet. And then there’s a secondary but related set of problems: most countries including the United States are now becoming ungovernable, and most large corporations are unmanageable, and most religions are unreasonable. The optimism of The Great Depression is something we’ll never see again.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Will This Cut Into the Summer Baseball Schedule?
Harold Camping says he’s not making any long term plans. As the head of Family Radio Worldwide— an independent Christian ministry— he and his minions are spreading the word that the End Times (JesuSpeak for the end of the world) will start on May 21 of this year. Given the fact that old man Camping is 89 years old, he might be correct in his forecast, at least on a personal basis.
He and Christians just like him are looking forward to this final judgment day on the basis of predictions spelled out in the Book of Revelations that seem to match up with current events. In other words, a lousy global economy, an American ass kicking from the Muslims in the Middle East, and the fact that Jews still inhabit Israel— all of this means that the rest of us are toast come May 21st. You just gotta love the way that these mental-case Christians take a single incident or situation and extrapolate it into a hard and fast rule that governs the entire world and the future of mankind. “Ancient cultures always walked in single file. We know this because Biblical scholars have found an ancient illustration of the three wise men approaching the baby Jesus in the manger, each following one behind the other.”
These are the same brilliant intellectuals who think that the world is less than 6000 years old. Their god might be eternal, with the power to create heaven and earth, but his master work (the human race) — according to their belief system— is exceedingly temporary, lasting a mere nanosecond on the time scale of eternity. My question is this: will the end times cut into the summer baseball schedule?
He and Christians just like him are looking forward to this final judgment day on the basis of predictions spelled out in the Book of Revelations that seem to match up with current events. In other words, a lousy global economy, an American ass kicking from the Muslims in the Middle East, and the fact that Jews still inhabit Israel— all of this means that the rest of us are toast come May 21st. You just gotta love the way that these mental-case Christians take a single incident or situation and extrapolate it into a hard and fast rule that governs the entire world and the future of mankind. “Ancient cultures always walked in single file. We know this because Biblical scholars have found an ancient illustration of the three wise men approaching the baby Jesus in the manger, each following one behind the other.”
These are the same brilliant intellectuals who think that the world is less than 6000 years old. Their god might be eternal, with the power to create heaven and earth, but his master work (the human race) — according to their belief system— is exceedingly temporary, lasting a mere nanosecond on the time scale of eternity. My question is this: will the end times cut into the summer baseball schedule?
Sunday, September 12, 2010
It’s the Oil, Stupid
As a wave of anti-Islamic hysteria sweeps the U.S. on the 9th anniversary of 9/11, patriotic pundits tell us that this behavior runs counter to our basic notion of American pluralistic tolerance and inclusiveness. Oh, really? Tell that to the Indians (the kind on the buffalo nickel, not the citizens of India). In the last 150 years, in addition to the Indians, the following groups have been on the receiving end of intolerance, bigotry, xenophobia, prejudice, racial violence, and outright hatred from good upstanding patriotic Americans— Irish Catholics, non-Catholic Irish, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Mexicans, Italians, people with black-colored skin, people with brown skin who look like they might have a tinge of African ancestry, Jews, non-Jews who have Jewish sounding surnames, and most recently the Muslims. Add to this list, anyone who might have once entertained a private curiosity about Communism, or anyone who ever had sex with someone of their own gender. I apologize to anyone I might have overlooked who’s earned America’s contempt by being “different.”
This analysis would seem to suggest that Muslims are merely the latest group being picked on by a nation that has always picked on one sub group or another. Actually, the Muslim situation is far different. None of the other groups mentioned above owned any oil. The Indians, back in the early days, didn’t have any oil, but they controlled every other natural resource on the North American continent, and for this they were subjected to a century of genocidal extermination. Our government leaders constantly tell us that we, as a nation, are not at war with Islam. Yesterday, on 9/11, Obama expanded this to say, “We are not, and never will be at war with Islam.” The Bureau of Indian Affairs spouted pretty much the same message throughout the nineteenth century to a people who were being slaughtered or driven into refugee status. Watch and see what would happen if Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and the very center of Islam, ever cut off our supply of oil.
This analysis would seem to suggest that Muslims are merely the latest group being picked on by a nation that has always picked on one sub group or another. Actually, the Muslim situation is far different. None of the other groups mentioned above owned any oil. The Indians, back in the early days, didn’t have any oil, but they controlled every other natural resource on the North American continent, and for this they were subjected to a century of genocidal extermination. Our government leaders constantly tell us that we, as a nation, are not at war with Islam. Yesterday, on 9/11, Obama expanded this to say, “We are not, and never will be at war with Islam.” The Bureau of Indian Affairs spouted pretty much the same message throughout the nineteenth century to a people who were being slaughtered or driven into refugee status. Watch and see what would happen if Saudi Arabia, the home of Mecca and the very center of Islam, ever cut off our supply of oil.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
We All Get On Each Other’s Nerves
Shock and awe was NOT what took place over Baghdad in March of 2003. It’s hard to achieve any shock value from an event when you use the months preceding it to tell everyone that soon you will do something shocking. Because of all the hype leading up to that fiasco, the exercise itself was little more than an overblown 4th of July fireworks demonstration that surprised nobody and produced no lasting benefit. Shock and awe was what took place over lower Manhattan nine years ago this coming Saturday, and America was so shocked and awed by 9/11 that we, as a nation, will probably never get over it. It explains why, today, most of us view Muslims with at least a tinge of cautious suspicion (if we are completely honest about it). This isn’t racism or xenophobia, it’s enlightened self-interest.
The flip side of this, of course, is that ordinary citizens in Baghdad or Mosul or Kabul or Kandahar view all American soldiers with suspicion. Our troops will never be loved over there, and Muslims will never be loved in our country. For at least 60 years, the United States has subjected Muslims in the Middle East to political manipulation and lethal skullduggery just to get at their oil, so when one of them straps on a bomb vest and blows a few of our troops to smithereens, it should come as no surprise. Similarly, when some Christian pastor in Gainesville, Florida plans to burn a few Korans on 9/11, it should come as no surprise. Top U.S. military commander, Gen. David Petraeus warns us that burning Korans will inflame Muslims around the world and put our troops in harm’s way. My question is — how would we be able to tell, since Islam looks pretty inflamed already and our troops are already dying with extreme and violent regularity, so how would that be different? Maybe Muslims are inflamed by 60 years of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, going back to our installation of the Shah in Iran. I’d like to hear Petraeus give us his thoughts on that subject.
Basically, there are seven billion people in the world and we all get on each other’s nerves. It’s no more complicated than that. We in America think we’re exceptional, but every nation and culture on earth thinks the same thing, and here’s the deal — all of us are right about that.
The flip side of this, of course, is that ordinary citizens in Baghdad or Mosul or Kabul or Kandahar view all American soldiers with suspicion. Our troops will never be loved over there, and Muslims will never be loved in our country. For at least 60 years, the United States has subjected Muslims in the Middle East to political manipulation and lethal skullduggery just to get at their oil, so when one of them straps on a bomb vest and blows a few of our troops to smithereens, it should come as no surprise. Similarly, when some Christian pastor in Gainesville, Florida plans to burn a few Korans on 9/11, it should come as no surprise. Top U.S. military commander, Gen. David Petraeus warns us that burning Korans will inflame Muslims around the world and put our troops in harm’s way. My question is — how would we be able to tell, since Islam looks pretty inflamed already and our troops are already dying with extreme and violent regularity, so how would that be different? Maybe Muslims are inflamed by 60 years of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, going back to our installation of the Shah in Iran. I’d like to hear Petraeus give us his thoughts on that subject.
Basically, there are seven billion people in the world and we all get on each other’s nerves. It’s no more complicated than that. We in America think we’re exceptional, but every nation and culture on earth thinks the same thing, and here’s the deal — all of us are right about that.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
I Can Let You Look At It, But You Can’t Touch It
A group of radical, dark-skinned, fundamentalist Muslims plans to bomb an American law enforcement target, and they are labeled as “Islamic terrorists.” Nine whacked-out, white, fundamentalist Christians plan to bomb an American law enforcement target, and they are labeled as “Hutaree militia.”
Islamic madrassas whip dark-skinned Muslims into a frenzy of anger at the U.S. government, and they are creating “radicalized terrorists.” Tea Party assemblies whip white Christians into a frenzy of anger at the U.S. government, and they are creating “patriotic activists.” Frankly, other than calculated semantics, I don’t see any difference.
At last week’s Conference on World Affairs, one of the discussions dealt with “Modern Crusaders, religion in the military.” Ike Wilson, a professor of modern warfare tactics at West Point, expounded on the influence of fundamentalist Christianity in the conduct of our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The indoctrination starts early. Each Sunday morning, freshly enlisted Marine Corps trainees at boot camp are given the choice between cleaning latrines or attending a fundamentalist Christian worship service. And then, once they are deployed to a war zone, they shoot their bullets through gun barrels that are engraved with Old Testament bible verses right next to the weapon serial number. Troops are supplied with small Christian bibles that have been translated into the local Islamic, Middle-Eastern language, and they are expected to leave these bibles behind in houses where they conduct “searches,” although Pentagon rules prevent them from personally handing the bibles to local Muslim citizens. This nuanced religious conversion policy is typical of a pervasive Pentagon schizophrenia that reminds me of the high school girl who tells her boyfriend, “I can let you look at it, but you must promise not to touch it.”
If al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters find one of the small Christian bibles in a private home, they routinely murder all the residents of that house. One Pentagon estimate puts the number of these “religiously motivated” murders at a level equal to the number of civilians accidentally killed by misguided American bombs and gunfire. If these murders are reported at all, they’re typically dismissed as “sectarian conflict.” It’s easy to say that fundamentalist, radicalized Islam is insane, but then how can we not say the same for fundamentalist Christianity? We can’t condemn one and embrace the other without sacrificing our intellectual integrity. Personally, I don’t see how we can have it both ways.
Islamic madrassas whip dark-skinned Muslims into a frenzy of anger at the U.S. government, and they are creating “radicalized terrorists.” Tea Party assemblies whip white Christians into a frenzy of anger at the U.S. government, and they are creating “patriotic activists.” Frankly, other than calculated semantics, I don’t see any difference.
At last week’s Conference on World Affairs, one of the discussions dealt with “Modern Crusaders, religion in the military.” Ike Wilson, a professor of modern warfare tactics at West Point, expounded on the influence of fundamentalist Christianity in the conduct of our current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The indoctrination starts early. Each Sunday morning, freshly enlisted Marine Corps trainees at boot camp are given the choice between cleaning latrines or attending a fundamentalist Christian worship service. And then, once they are deployed to a war zone, they shoot their bullets through gun barrels that are engraved with Old Testament bible verses right next to the weapon serial number. Troops are supplied with small Christian bibles that have been translated into the local Islamic, Middle-Eastern language, and they are expected to leave these bibles behind in houses where they conduct “searches,” although Pentagon rules prevent them from personally handing the bibles to local Muslim citizens. This nuanced religious conversion policy is typical of a pervasive Pentagon schizophrenia that reminds me of the high school girl who tells her boyfriend, “I can let you look at it, but you must promise not to touch it.”
If al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters find one of the small Christian bibles in a private home, they routinely murder all the residents of that house. One Pentagon estimate puts the number of these “religiously motivated” murders at a level equal to the number of civilians accidentally killed by misguided American bombs and gunfire. If these murders are reported at all, they’re typically dismissed as “sectarian conflict.” It’s easy to say that fundamentalist, radicalized Islam is insane, but then how can we not say the same for fundamentalist Christianity? We can’t condemn one and embrace the other without sacrificing our intellectual integrity. Personally, I don’t see how we can have it both ways.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
News Flash to Rome. News Flash to Utah
Among all the world’s great religions, only Buddhism has demonstrated that its people and spiritual leaders understand the role of public relations in shaping media attention. The diplomatic travels of the Dali Lama, and the global media focus on the harsh Chinese treatment of Buddhist monks over the issue of Tibet— these and other PR initiatives demonstrate that, when it comes to the media, the Buddhists “get it.”
In stark contrast, the Abrahamic monotheisms don’t seem to have a clue. Three years ago, the Muslims went ballistic (actually, the proper phrase is to say they went Jihadist) because a Danish newspaper (the media) published cartoons of Mohammad. In the mayhem over that episode, several infidels were killed, which is always a real crowd pleaser for Islam, but it didn’t go very far to win over new coverts.
Catholicism fights this media battle constantly, and never seems to get it right. Most Vatican press releases are reactive to bad news, like when another Archdiocese goes bankrupt paying off past victims of priestly sex abuse, or when some rogue Bishop denies the Holocaust. Even when Vatican news is proactive and celebratory, it’s usually to announce something silly, like a human interest story about some South American peasant woman who cooks a baked potato only to find that the skin has crinkled into a likeness of the face of the Virgin Mary. We’ve all seen that sort of thing coming from the Vatican PR machine. The latest media war being waged by The Church involves the upcoming Ron Howard/Tom Hanks film, “Angels and Demons,” from the Dan Brown novel. The film doesn’t open until May, but already the Vatican is up in arms because they’re afraid that moviegoers will come away with the impression that The Church was anti-science during the Renaissance. News flash to Rome— that’s not any secret or misconception, and it hasn’t been for 400 years.
And now it’s the Mormon Church with its panties tied into knots over something involving the media. An upcoming episode of the HBO series, “Big Love,” will show a depiction of a secret ceremony (not fictitious) inside a Mormon temple. Only Mormons are supposed to know about this secret ceremony, but now HBO subscribers can see it too, and worst of all, they will learn about it for free, without paying that famous Mormon tithe. News flash to Utah—“Big Love” is only a sitcom. It’s not a documentary.
Long ago, business, educational, and political groups learned that trained PR people, with expertise in media relations, could go a long way toward making life easier for them in today’s media-drenched world. The Abrahamic monotheistic religions of the world need to embrace this tactic, and do it soon, because as long as these religions keep doing stupid things, the media will keep making them look stupid.
In stark contrast, the Abrahamic monotheisms don’t seem to have a clue. Three years ago, the Muslims went ballistic (actually, the proper phrase is to say they went Jihadist) because a Danish newspaper (the media) published cartoons of Mohammad. In the mayhem over that episode, several infidels were killed, which is always a real crowd pleaser for Islam, but it didn’t go very far to win over new coverts.
Catholicism fights this media battle constantly, and never seems to get it right. Most Vatican press releases are reactive to bad news, like when another Archdiocese goes bankrupt paying off past victims of priestly sex abuse, or when some rogue Bishop denies the Holocaust. Even when Vatican news is proactive and celebratory, it’s usually to announce something silly, like a human interest story about some South American peasant woman who cooks a baked potato only to find that the skin has crinkled into a likeness of the face of the Virgin Mary. We’ve all seen that sort of thing coming from the Vatican PR machine. The latest media war being waged by The Church involves the upcoming Ron Howard/Tom Hanks film, “Angels and Demons,” from the Dan Brown novel. The film doesn’t open until May, but already the Vatican is up in arms because they’re afraid that moviegoers will come away with the impression that The Church was anti-science during the Renaissance. News flash to Rome— that’s not any secret or misconception, and it hasn’t been for 400 years.
And now it’s the Mormon Church with its panties tied into knots over something involving the media. An upcoming episode of the HBO series, “Big Love,” will show a depiction of a secret ceremony (not fictitious) inside a Mormon temple. Only Mormons are supposed to know about this secret ceremony, but now HBO subscribers can see it too, and worst of all, they will learn about it for free, without paying that famous Mormon tithe. News flash to Utah—“Big Love” is only a sitcom. It’s not a documentary.
Long ago, business, educational, and political groups learned that trained PR people, with expertise in media relations, could go a long way toward making life easier for them in today’s media-drenched world. The Abrahamic monotheistic religions of the world need to embrace this tactic, and do it soon, because as long as these religions keep doing stupid things, the media will keep making them look stupid.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Don't Believe In God?
Don’t believe in God? You are not alone. This is the message splashed across ten billboards in metro Denver, Colorado, just in time for Christmas. The promoters of this message probably would say “the holidays” rather than “Christmas.” The billboards, we are told, are meant to comfort nonbelievers, and to give them a voice in a world besieged with religion. Here’s my beef with atheism. In my view, it’s just another religion. It tells us something about a subject that we can’t possibly know anything about, namely God. There are five religions in the tradition of Abrahamic monotheism— Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, and atheism, and the only area of agreement between these beliefs is that at sometime in the distant past there was a guy named Abraham who was willing to kill his own son because he heard a voice coming from someone he couldn’t see. Abraham was not unique. Before we closed down all the mental institutions, they were filled with modern day Abrahams, and you still find them occasionally popping up on the evening news. Sometimes the sons of these Abrahams survive, and sometimes they don’t.
The monotheistic religions believe that the first Abraham heard a real voice coming from a real but invisible entity called God. The atheists believe that Abraham was just hearing a voice. Who the hell knows? And for my part, who the hell cares? What I want to know is this— on this particular billboard which I photographed, what does the graffiti say? I have a friend who claims to be able to decipher such “hood hieroglyphics,” and he tells me that the message scrawled in black spray paint reads Focus On The Family. I have a hunch that my friend is just pulling my chain.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Fear and the Loss of Freedom
Freedom is a little bit like virginity. You don’t just helplessly lose it like some risky financial investment in a down market. Freedom is something that you willingly surrender to somebody who‘s out to screw you, and then sometime later, down the line, you wonder what it might be like to have it back.
The travesties of the Bush Administration will be recited and debated well into the next century, and only the hindsight of history will tell us how bad it really was. Even a short list will certainly include the following: Squandering a trillion dollars of our national wealth. Failing to address problems on our southern border. Initiating an unjust and needless war. Trampling on the United States Constitution by attempting to render the Congress irrelevant. And cynically exploiting the trust of Christians and conservatives. To me, however, the most lasting damage inflicted by Bush and Cheney was this: They made us change our understanding of the word, freedom.
Every dead Marine who comes home from Iraq is eulogized with the words, “He died for our freedom.” Nothing could be further from the truth, although I completely sympathize with the need for the dead man’s family to believe this. The fact is, our freedom was never threatened by Iraq. Our freedom has never been actually threatened in a military way by any outside power since 1945. We can’t ever lose our freedom to foreign enemies by force of arms because our military is too powerful. Instead, we give it away willingly to leaders who know how to manipulate us. And Bush and Cheney are the best that there has ever been at taking what we willingly gave them.
My perspective is that of a travel writer who has spent time in 110 foreign countries. Among these countries are India, Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, Indonesia, and several of the breakaway republics that were formally part of the Soviet Union. All of these nations have one thing in common: They have experienced repeated attacks of terrorism that were, collectively, far worse than 9/11. In the case of India and Indonesia, they have been fighting militant Islamic extremism for over half a century, with their loss of life counted in the tens of thousands. All of these terrorist-target countries have something else in common. None of their populations went insane with fear, surrendering much of their own freedom to their own governments. None of their governing bodies have initiated anything like our Patriot Act and our Homeland Security Department. The terrorists repeatedly inflicted death and destruction, but the people and the governments of these countries never “freaked out” like we did in the United States.
Why not? Are the foreign populations idiotic? Are their governments reckless and uncaring about the people’s safety? Are Americans cowards? The answer to all of these questions is, “No.” The difference is this. For one thing, their leaders didn’t use the opportunity to seize additional power in a time of peril. But the deeper reason is that these terrorist-target countries have a certain wisdom which is lacking in America. They understand that fundamental Islam seeks to use jihad to make target populations philosophically surrender intellectual freedom and embrace Islam, and you don’t counter that threat by simply surrendering your freedom to an alternate threat and embracing a different power that also seeks to dominate. It is useless for us to throw our Marines into battle against an Islamic jihad while, at the same time, we knuckle under to things like the Patriot Act without so much as a whimper. The Islamic terrorists know that the Bush Administration will be out of power in 2009, but now they also know that the American people will willingly give away personal freedom if sufficiently intimidated. And God knows, Americans are easily intimidated. George W. Bush gave them that example, and in doing so he altered our notion of what freedom really is. That’s his tragic legacy.
The travesties of the Bush Administration will be recited and debated well into the next century, and only the hindsight of history will tell us how bad it really was. Even a short list will certainly include the following: Squandering a trillion dollars of our national wealth. Failing to address problems on our southern border. Initiating an unjust and needless war. Trampling on the United States Constitution by attempting to render the Congress irrelevant. And cynically exploiting the trust of Christians and conservatives. To me, however, the most lasting damage inflicted by Bush and Cheney was this: They made us change our understanding of the word, freedom.
Every dead Marine who comes home from Iraq is eulogized with the words, “He died for our freedom.” Nothing could be further from the truth, although I completely sympathize with the need for the dead man’s family to believe this. The fact is, our freedom was never threatened by Iraq. Our freedom has never been actually threatened in a military way by any outside power since 1945. We can’t ever lose our freedom to foreign enemies by force of arms because our military is too powerful. Instead, we give it away willingly to leaders who know how to manipulate us. And Bush and Cheney are the best that there has ever been at taking what we willingly gave them.
My perspective is that of a travel writer who has spent time in 110 foreign countries. Among these countries are India, Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, Indonesia, and several of the breakaway republics that were formally part of the Soviet Union. All of these nations have one thing in common: They have experienced repeated attacks of terrorism that were, collectively, far worse than 9/11. In the case of India and Indonesia, they have been fighting militant Islamic extremism for over half a century, with their loss of life counted in the tens of thousands. All of these terrorist-target countries have something else in common. None of their populations went insane with fear, surrendering much of their own freedom to their own governments. None of their governing bodies have initiated anything like our Patriot Act and our Homeland Security Department. The terrorists repeatedly inflicted death and destruction, but the people and the governments of these countries never “freaked out” like we did in the United States.
Why not? Are the foreign populations idiotic? Are their governments reckless and uncaring about the people’s safety? Are Americans cowards? The answer to all of these questions is, “No.” The difference is this. For one thing, their leaders didn’t use the opportunity to seize additional power in a time of peril. But the deeper reason is that these terrorist-target countries have a certain wisdom which is lacking in America. They understand that fundamental Islam seeks to use jihad to make target populations philosophically surrender intellectual freedom and embrace Islam, and you don’t counter that threat by simply surrendering your freedom to an alternate threat and embracing a different power that also seeks to dominate. It is useless for us to throw our Marines into battle against an Islamic jihad while, at the same time, we knuckle under to things like the Patriot Act without so much as a whimper. The Islamic terrorists know that the Bush Administration will be out of power in 2009, but now they also know that the American people will willingly give away personal freedom if sufficiently intimidated. And God knows, Americans are easily intimidated. George W. Bush gave them that example, and in doing so he altered our notion of what freedom really is. That’s his tragic legacy.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Conference on World Affairs
I’ve just returned from my annual pilgrimage to the Conference on World Affairs, and- as I’ve been doing for the last 15 years- I will pass along my observations. Quite simply, this year’s conference seemed to be the best ever, with all of the panels and lectures rising to a level that exceeded anything in years past. Of course, all of the usual topics were presented, discussed, and debated: climate change, global petro-supply projections, geo-engineering solutions, 4th generation warfare tactics, looming global food shortages, U.S. foreign policy as a destabilizing element, exponential rise in population numbers within the Islamic world, and something new this year- a look at the neurobiology of the human belief process. It is this last topic on which I want to report, for it represents something that may possibly have a bearing on everything else.
On a panel titled, “Hardwired to Believe,” neurobiologists presented data on a study which looked at brain response differences in people who classified themselves as either a believer or a skeptic. Here’s how it worked. The person was put into an MRI machine which looked at blood flow in the brain when the person was presented with certain statements of belief. Such statements were “Patriotism is always a virtue,” or “Democracy is worth dying for,” or “Jesus is the Savior of mankind,” or “Evolution is a hoax.” Self-proclaimed believers responded to such statements with brain activity in the pleasure centers- brain activity similar to that which resulted from seeing the image of an attractive member of the opposite sex, or from hearing a favorite piece of music. Self-proclaimed skeptics had no such pleasure response to the belief statements.
The MRI tests were done in the United States with the belief statements reflecting the cultural and religious ideas that stir debate here in America. Presumably, the same results would be seen in a Muslim believer who was stimulated with statements like “The Koran is the source of all truth and wisdom,” or “Religious martyrs go to Heaven,” or “The U.S. invasion of Iraq is a modern crusade.” Assuming that the MRI tests show a real and valid neuro-response to the universal phenomenon of human belief, and assuming that the biological mechanism works the same way in the Islamic world, the implications are staggering. All the happy talk that “The U.S. Marines are winning hearts and minds in the Mideast,” is probably completely bogus. The science seems to show that people don’t change beliefs easily, not even at the point of a gun.
How, you might ask, does this science impact the other topics at this year’s conference? Wendy Chamberlin gave a sobering lecture about the rise of Islam. Chamberlin was the United States ambassador to Pakistan at the time of 9/11 and during the year leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Here are some of her statistics. In the Islamic world, half (50%) of the entire population is under the age of 25. If you increase the age to 30, then 70% of the entire population is under that age. And within that gigantic population of young Muslims, the unemployment rate is 40%. The replacement rate within Islam is 4. That means that for every Muslim who dies, 4 are born. In Japan, the rate is .8, so Japan is losing population. In the United States, the replacement rate is 1.2. By the end of the 21st century, Muslims will outnumber all the rest of the non-Islamic world combined.
Muslims have beliefs that are different from the beliefs of non-Muslims. And as the neurobiological research shows, beliefs within Islam won’t change just to suit the United States. Now, back to that reservoir of the 40% unemployed Muslims under the age of 30. These are the young people who are writing the book on something called 4th generation warfare, which means that there are ways of projecting cultural and religious influence without building aircraft carriers. If the wars of the future will be fought over ideas (which seems like a certainty), then maybe we should be training fewer Marines and more scholars.
On a panel titled, “Hardwired to Believe,” neurobiologists presented data on a study which looked at brain response differences in people who classified themselves as either a believer or a skeptic. Here’s how it worked. The person was put into an MRI machine which looked at blood flow in the brain when the person was presented with certain statements of belief. Such statements were “Patriotism is always a virtue,” or “Democracy is worth dying for,” or “Jesus is the Savior of mankind,” or “Evolution is a hoax.” Self-proclaimed believers responded to such statements with brain activity in the pleasure centers- brain activity similar to that which resulted from seeing the image of an attractive member of the opposite sex, or from hearing a favorite piece of music. Self-proclaimed skeptics had no such pleasure response to the belief statements.
The MRI tests were done in the United States with the belief statements reflecting the cultural and religious ideas that stir debate here in America. Presumably, the same results would be seen in a Muslim believer who was stimulated with statements like “The Koran is the source of all truth and wisdom,” or “Religious martyrs go to Heaven,” or “The U.S. invasion of Iraq is a modern crusade.” Assuming that the MRI tests show a real and valid neuro-response to the universal phenomenon of human belief, and assuming that the biological mechanism works the same way in the Islamic world, the implications are staggering. All the happy talk that “The U.S. Marines are winning hearts and minds in the Mideast,” is probably completely bogus. The science seems to show that people don’t change beliefs easily, not even at the point of a gun.
How, you might ask, does this science impact the other topics at this year’s conference? Wendy Chamberlin gave a sobering lecture about the rise of Islam. Chamberlin was the United States ambassador to Pakistan at the time of 9/11 and during the year leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Here are some of her statistics. In the Islamic world, half (50%) of the entire population is under the age of 25. If you increase the age to 30, then 70% of the entire population is under that age. And within that gigantic population of young Muslims, the unemployment rate is 40%. The replacement rate within Islam is 4. That means that for every Muslim who dies, 4 are born. In Japan, the rate is .8, so Japan is losing population. In the United States, the replacement rate is 1.2. By the end of the 21st century, Muslims will outnumber all the rest of the non-Islamic world combined.
Muslims have beliefs that are different from the beliefs of non-Muslims. And as the neurobiological research shows, beliefs within Islam won’t change just to suit the United States. Now, back to that reservoir of the 40% unemployed Muslims under the age of 30. These are the young people who are writing the book on something called 4th generation warfare, which means that there are ways of projecting cultural and religious influence without building aircraft carriers. If the wars of the future will be fought over ideas (which seems like a certainty), then maybe we should be training fewer Marines and more scholars.
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