tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post4958343919935861889..comments2024-01-02T02:18:30.960-08:00Comments on Israel Thrives: "Individuals don't concern me. Societies do."Mike L.http://www.blogger.com/profile/06450806807610560873noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-187310741476900262013-08-05T19:53:28.350-07:002013-08-05T19:53:28.350-07:00One still has to deal with them, however. But unde...One still has to deal with them, however. But understanding them is good and others need to discover the reality.<br /><br />They do know how to make a deal. There is the concept of hudna.<br /><br />http://www.meforum.org/1925/tactical-hudna-and-islamist-intolerance<br /><br />So long as one realizes their intent and relationship that can occur, and takes advantage, it should be possible to reach such a state.oldschooltwentysixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15672887176887940797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-2032334089356673422013-08-05T18:50:38.520-07:002013-08-05T18:50:38.520-07:00After reading this reflection from Mike L., the tr...After reading this reflection from Mike L., the truth is that my view comes closest to Jay because as someone coming from a Western society like Mike, I do and can believe individuals matter. Americans are decent people and criminals among them are the exception. And we don't have to be afraid for our lives or fear for our freedoms. There is much to commend our culture and we shouldn't apologize for it. Its the best thing human beings ever produced and I think every human being has dignity and rights equal to all the others. That's in keeping with the tolerant and humane spirit of our Western heritage.<br /><br />At the same, I agree with Mike that societies matter - at least in parts of the world that are NOT tolerant and humane. We witness it daily in Islamic supremacism, oppression and genocide. They are cultures in which individuals merely cogs in a huge, fanatical and inhumane machine. There are people on certain parts of the planet who want to see us all dead. The kind of progress it took us centuries to achieve in the West has no meaning for them. And as Mike points out there is an absolute and fanatical hatred of the Jews and Israel in the Middle East, ironically enough, in societies have been entirely Jew-free for a few generations now. <br /><br />Trudy's point is that at some point, the East turned its back on growth, progress and human betterment and has been intellectually and morally mired as a result in the Dark Ages. Its incapable of becoming like us because it rejects the assumptions and values that made the West the creative and commanding force on the planet. Arabs, Turks, Iranians and Pakistanis can adopt Western technology. They can't learn it for themselves because their unstable and violent cultures simply can't handle a lot more of it. As Trudy rightly wrote, to drag them into our world on our terms is doomed to failure. I wrote in my original piece, it will take a long time for the other side to become a productive and civilized people. The values in the Muslim World need to change to change for that to happen and good luck with it!<br /><br />When all is said and done, Islam may win with the sheer force of numbers. The quality of the individual matters more though than the mass of aggregate numbers of any society and in the end, we in the West ultimately hold the cards. We can never be defeated as long as we remain true to our tolerant and humane tradition. The barbarians conquered Rome but in the end Rome ultimately absorbed them. In my view, Islam cannot long survive in the free marketplace of ideas. In a word, the limits on its subsequent spread are there for all to see. We have changed and can change. Islam simply can't and that's why Muslim societies are where they are today and for the future as well.NormanFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03365459073293643108noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6579213173749170024.post-27357674732305528982013-08-05T17:18:13.256-07:002013-08-05T17:18:13.256-07:00The point I was trying to make is that you simply ...The point I was trying to make is that you simply can't get there from here. There's no line connecting point A and point B. If a civil modern nominally functional society modeled in part on the expectations and values that have formed or even just peppered western civilization replete with more or less many of the same values, where plurality and laws what we've come to call civic order, civic pride, respect for process however flawed, respect for governments that don't always go your way while the mechanism for transferring power doesn't require tanks and kangaroo courts then I'm afraid you're out of luck. <br /><br />We are what we are because of a long process called Western Civilization that began somewhere around the mid 14th century and continues to this day. When the west was recovering from the Black Death it was the same time that the Ottomans were in ascendency. At at that point the two cultures which were fairly similar in outlook, social order in economics and science began to diverge. The west chose the Renaissance and the east rejected it. The west moved to the Enlightenment and the east rejected that. The west progressed to the scientific and industrial revolutions and the east, with each decade falling further back, rejected all of that too. Less communication, less overt civil government, less science, less literacy, less philosophy, less diversity of thought. The east, the Arab-Muslim world or the Turkish world, is still almost without exception mired in feudalism. <br /><br />Importantly none of these revolts and sub-political wars are actually about politics. They're about which group of tyrants gets to steal and tax and oppress. The 'palestinians' are no different from the Saudis or Egyptians or Libyans or Yemenis or Lebanese Shiia on this score. It's not about the various revolutions, the green the orange the carnation and so forth. It's about who is going to steal enough and spread it around to ensure than the people who are potentially most dangerous to them have enough to eat and a modicum of material comfort. <br /><br />This is where our expectations should lie with the 'palestinians' - exactly where they are with all the others. The 'palestinians' should be no more expected to leap over the last 700 years of ignored western thought and suddenly land on 'modern secular tolerant pluralistic democracy' cost free than we should expect the French to abandon speaking French. They are what they are - good bad or in between. As any good lawyer will tell you, and I've lived with one for more than 3 decades - you have to take your clients as you find them not as you wish them to be fit your own plan for success. <br /><br />To me, this is not bigotry or racist. If the shoe were on the other foot and the Arabs were more politically, socially, economically, educationally advanced than we were and they started telling us that the path to success was Koran, Sharia, tribalism, revenge, blood feuds and a basic counter-rational approach, would we agree? Would we even be capable of making that leap? I don't think so and it would be a waste of time to try. In the early 3rd C. Christian Church a philosophy of extra Ecclesiam nulla salus developed, or 'outside the Church there is no salvation'. This can mean a great deal of things from supremacy of the Church to a universality of Church doctrine. But it can also imply a common unifying totality of all that is a culture; from its values and processes to its central themes and catechisms. <br /><br />My point was that these talks are of course doomed to failure because their notion of what a state even is is radically different from ours, their definition of success and progress are different from ours and their path to getting there is distinctly different. Any attempt at fooling ourselves that dragging them into our world is pointlessly doomed to failure. Empress Trudyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06073538968722986065noreply@blogger.com