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Everything's All Right In The Middle East


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#1 RobertLevin

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Posted 04 November 2002 - 04:26 PM


Can we, just for a minute, dispense with the hand-wringing and acknowledge that the problem Israel and the Palestinians are having with one another is actually their mutual solution to the problem of being mortal?

Of course, to understand what I'm talking about it is first necessary to recognize that it's not love or sex or money that makes the world go around but the fact of death; that what drives virtually everything we believe and do is the need to reduce, to at least a manageable degree of fear, the terror and panic the anticipation of extinction causes us. (If you can't quite grasp this notion, if you have to be reminded that terror and panic constitute the human default condition, then whatever you're believing and doing is working for you.)

Of the myriad subtle and blatant ways we've come up with to make living with an impossible given tolerable, one example would be the symbolic immortality we assure ourselves of by the making of a scientific discovery, or a work of art, that will continue to exercise an influence on the world after our departure. Another is the accumulation of inordinate wealth. The god-like trappings great sums of money buy enable us to feel not just superior to the common man, but less vulnerable to the common fate. Still another is getting "high," which is about getting ABOVE the body that we know will one day be our undoing.

And then there's our invention of an afterlife. Presenting us with a chance to survive death--if we honor the pronouncements and follow the dictates we've assigned to deities of our own fashioning--it's this immortality illusion that's at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Arabs are qualifying for eternity by doing what they've determined to be God's work, which is to make war on those who, ignoring or questioning His authority, are undermining His plan for the planet. And Israel, dropped in the Arab's midst, its diverse culture implicitly challenging the validity of Arab beliefs, provides the Arabs with the infidel they need to carry out their mission. For Arabs, it's not about killing Jews, per se. Jews are simply a fortuitously placed means to a purchase on heaven. (You could say that their culture being, by all appearances, limited in its repertoire of immortality illusions to the resources of Islam, suicide is the only instrument of self-perpetuation available to the Palestinian terrorists.)

On the other hand, the Arabs afford Israelis an opportunity to continually certify their biblically bestowed "chosen" status--AND TO ASSURE THEMSELVES OF THE POST-CORPOREAL REWARDS IMPLICIT IN THE ANOINTMENT--by constantly threatening, but never accomplishing, Israel's destruction. Persistently testing Israel's exalted designation but never disproving it, enabling Israel to be embattled AND remain intact, the Arabs are every bit the blessing to Israel that Israel is to the Arabs.

It follows that the violence each side visits on the other must be measured; balances and proportions need to be kept. For one side to win, after all, would be for both sides to lose; would, that is, return BOTH sides to a contemplation of the Void. We might call this aiding and abetting of one another's immortality illusions--the cooperation and the accommodations it requires--the deeper definition of the "social contract."

So we can engage ad infinitum in the most earnest discussions about anti-Semitism, about Arafat, about Sharon, about territory and occupation, and forever miss the real dynamic of the situation. The Arab-Israeli problem is, again, a solution to a more pressing problem, to what is, literally as well as figuratively, the mother of all problems. And what accounts for the tenaciousness of the conflict is the ongoing success it's enjoying in the service of its underlying agenda. As long as this holds true, Arabs and Israelis will, on one level or another, be enemies. Because for all of the horrors hostilities between them cause, they cause a more acceptable, a more BEARABLE species of horror than the fact of oblivion does.

The pain we are witnessing is a palliative. These are not the worst of times in the Middle East.

#2 Sophianic

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Posted 04 November 2002 - 08:23 PM

Can we, just for a minute, dispense with the hand-wringing and acknowledge that the problem Israel and the Palestinians are having with one another is actually their mutual solution to the problem of being mortal?


I can acknowledge that.

Welcome to the I I forums.

You present a compelling analysis of the situation in the Middle East. I follow the news religiously on a daily basis, and can see the seesaw dynamic of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Suicide bomber kills 8; Israel retaliates with force and kills 6; Palestinians sniper kills three; Israel attacks Arafat compound and kills four; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera ... The tie-in to the desperate clinging to the illusions of immortality is a very interesting idea, one that settles quite comfortably under the twin banners of faith and force. "All is well" in the Middle East, and yet ... witness the grief and the anguish and the rage; the afterlife is a fragile bubble and brings precious little comfort to the bereaved.

But don't tell that to the Israelis or the Palestinians.

#3 Limitless

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Posted 04 November 2002 - 11:59 PM

RobertLevin, you have some insights that the average person is clearly unable to decipher on their own. (Just watch any newscast) It's certainly true that the concept of faith, in an "Afterlife" (or not), through various religions, is the root of much, if not all of the violence throughout the world. Ultimately, as much as pointless deaths bother immortalists, it isn't very important exactly how many people die in primitive conflicts. Watching news stories about the conflicts in the Middle East....... is like going back in time. People just don't have the same concerns anymore in the developed world. I get the impression that you have a lot of great insights and look forward to hearing them-But don't let us be the only benefactors. Just a suggestion, maybe you could do something with the insights you shared in your first post. I always like to see people profit from their ideas, if possible. Many of the ideas on the "I I" are very, very strong, but there isn't much of a market yet for extreme healthism & life-extension talk. (We're getting there.) However, anything involving the conflict(s) in the Middle East is very marketable, and you could take advantage of this fact. Perhaps you could write an analysis in the form of an article, and submit it to a news agency (or whatever), or even write something longer. (If you felt like it-assuming you haven't already.) One shorter, and much easier thing you could do, is rework your 1st post a little bit, and submit it in the Writers Competition section of this site.

Keep up the great posts. ;)

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#4 Bruce Klein

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Posted 05 November 2002 - 05:08 AM

Welcome Robert,

I'll reiterate what Limitless suggested and encourage you to submit an article to the WC. Thanks.

BJK




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