Thank you for this bold, courageous and necessary essay, Jonathan. As we learn to hold the tension between either/or and both/and, we may be better able to discern what the moment is asking of us if we identify our hierarchy of values. To do this requires extensive inner work. Essays like this not only serve as inspiration but as direction finders as well.
Thank you, Jonathan, for your soul-searching effort. The paradox is: 'If you defend yourself, you will be attacked." It easily becomes a screw without an end!
In the six-day war in 1967, the Arab nations attacked Israel with around 435000 troops, 8000 tanks, and 2000 aircraft in order, as they had declared for some time, to destroy and annihilate the Jewish Nation. Miraculously something seemed to cause paralysis of the Arab military operation as witnessed by many Arab soldiers: "We just couldn't move." with the result of Israel gaining Jerusalem, not part of the Balfour declaration. No doubt causing tensions ever since and remaining during the event of the 7th of October. See, Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change. By John Hagee, 2013. Also, I can recommend a very moving book: "I SHALL NOT HATE: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity." 2011
Izzeldin Abuelaish. A book my daughter recommended, a book of hope for the future.
I'm afraid peace has no future so long as people are in charge who believe that they have a divine and/or natural right to order the world according to their desires and, most particularly, their profit. Whiteness and colonialism are their inventions. Denialism (lying) is one of their playbook standards. Concern for the well-being of people and the planet is never anything other than public relations to them.
Re 'either or', 'both and' and 'both either or and both and', do we get 'neither nor' in there as a consequence?
My feeling is that the metacrisis calls for a willingness to sacrifice, a willingness to confront the fear of losing what one has. Your post suggests this just scratches the surface. Your 'denial', and Bayo's 'reconciliation', and more, suggest the need for confrontation with the fear of losing who one is: we need to change at the level of how one self-identifies, and there is much paradoxical that bears here.
I've puzzled over how to think of 'the vertical dimension'. Progress is possible, and I think it can help with the paradoxical-seeming, and otherwise seductive difficulties, of this space. Again I think there are allusions in your piece to the need to go there.
Let us return to Galtungs 1990 paper, "Cultural Violence" and we can see how things were viewed in 1990 through his Peace Studies lens, and we can see what has changed. The State of Israel is now emboldened to move beyond Cultural Violence, to widespread, some say genocidal, Direct Violence. Of course, the trigger for this was the Hamas atrocities, but the violence was latent in the state of Israel all along.
"For a contemporary example [of Cultural Violence] consider the
policies of Israel with regard to the Palesti-
nians. The Chosen People even have a Pro-
mised Land, the Eretz Yisrael. They behave
as one would expect, translating chosenness,
a vicious type of cultural violence, into all
eight types of direct and structural violence:
There is.killing; maiming,
material deprivation by denying West Bank
inhabitants what is needed for livelihood;
there is desocialization within the theocratic
state of Israel with second class citizenship to
non-Jews; there is detention, individual
expulsion and perennial threat of massive
expulsion. There is exploitation, at least as
exploitation B [ against self determination needs].
The four structural concomitants of
exploitation are all well developed: efforts to
make the Palestinians see themselves as born
underdogs, at most heading for second class
citizenship by 'getting used to it'; giving them
small segments of economic activity; keeping
them outside Jewish society both within and
outside the Green Line, and dealing with
Palestinians in a divide et impera mode (as in
the Camp David process), never as one peo-
ple. There is neither massive extermination
nor massive exploitation A of the sort found
in many Third World countries under the
debt burden, which above all hits children.
The violence is more evenly distributed over
the whole repertory of eight types. To some,
who set their sights low, defined by Hitlerite
or Stalinist extermination and Reaganite
exploitation A [against survival needs], this means that no mass
Dude you express an eloquent point of view but I don't see reasons. Jonathan expresses a point of view but he seems to say 'I might be wrong' (1.) and (2.) 'this is WHY I think we need to think x'. I don't see you doing either. Of course the future will answer today's questions about what it will bring in ways that will overturn today's answers! But you seem to think you know today and I can't discern why I should believe a word of it?
Self-ignorance AND other-ignorance, and any other kinds of ignorance you care to mention.
Whatever one is, and whatever is, there is work to be done. To volunteer to do it, whatever the extension of these words, is a thing. And this is the beginning.
Thank you for this bold, courageous and necessary essay, Jonathan. As we learn to hold the tension between either/or and both/and, we may be better able to discern what the moment is asking of us if we identify our hierarchy of values. To do this requires extensive inner work. Essays like this not only serve as inspiration but as direction finders as well.
Thank you, Jonathan, for your soul-searching effort. The paradox is: 'If you defend yourself, you will be attacked." It easily becomes a screw without an end!
In the six-day war in 1967, the Arab nations attacked Israel with around 435000 troops, 8000 tanks, and 2000 aircraft in order, as they had declared for some time, to destroy and annihilate the Jewish Nation. Miraculously something seemed to cause paralysis of the Arab military operation as witnessed by many Arab soldiers: "We just couldn't move." with the result of Israel gaining Jerusalem, not part of the Balfour declaration. No doubt causing tensions ever since and remaining during the event of the 7th of October. See, Four Blood Moons: Something is About to Change. By John Hagee, 2013. Also, I can recommend a very moving book: "I SHALL NOT HATE: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity." 2011
Izzeldin Abuelaish. A book my daughter recommended, a book of hope for the future.
Brother Niels
I'm afraid peace has no future so long as people are in charge who believe that they have a divine and/or natural right to order the world according to their desires and, most particularly, their profit. Whiteness and colonialism are their inventions. Denialism (lying) is one of their playbook standards. Concern for the well-being of people and the planet is never anything other than public relations to them.
Thank you.
Re 'either or', 'both and' and 'both either or and both and', do we get 'neither nor' in there as a consequence?
My feeling is that the metacrisis calls for a willingness to sacrifice, a willingness to confront the fear of losing what one has. Your post suggests this just scratches the surface. Your 'denial', and Bayo's 'reconciliation', and more, suggest the need for confrontation with the fear of losing who one is: we need to change at the level of how one self-identifies, and there is much paradoxical that bears here.
I've puzzled over how to think of 'the vertical dimension'. Progress is possible, and I think it can help with the paradoxical-seeming, and otherwise seductive difficulties, of this space. Again I think there are allusions in your piece to the need to go there.
Let us return to Galtungs 1990 paper, "Cultural Violence" and we can see how things were viewed in 1990 through his Peace Studies lens, and we can see what has changed. The State of Israel is now emboldened to move beyond Cultural Violence, to widespread, some say genocidal, Direct Violence. Of course, the trigger for this was the Hamas atrocities, but the violence was latent in the state of Israel all along.
"For a contemporary example [of Cultural Violence] consider the
policies of Israel with regard to the Palesti-
nians. The Chosen People even have a Pro-
mised Land, the Eretz Yisrael. They behave
as one would expect, translating chosenness,
a vicious type of cultural violence, into all
eight types of direct and structural violence:
There is.killing; maiming,
material deprivation by denying West Bank
inhabitants what is needed for livelihood;
there is desocialization within the theocratic
state of Israel with second class citizenship to
non-Jews; there is detention, individual
expulsion and perennial threat of massive
expulsion. There is exploitation, at least as
exploitation B [ against self determination needs].
The four structural concomitants of
exploitation are all well developed: efforts to
make the Palestinians see themselves as born
underdogs, at most heading for second class
citizenship by 'getting used to it'; giving them
small segments of economic activity; keeping
them outside Jewish society both within and
outside the Green Line, and dealing with
Palestinians in a divide et impera mode (as in
the Camp David process), never as one peo-
ple. There is neither massive extermination
nor massive exploitation A of the sort found
in many Third World countries under the
debt burden, which above all hits children.
The violence is more evenly distributed over
the whole repertory of eight types. To some,
who set their sights low, defined by Hitlerite
or Stalinist extermination and Reaganite
exploitation A [against survival needs], this means that no mass
violence is going on, thus proving how
humane the Israelis are. Such perspectives
are also examples of cultural violence, indi-
cative of how moral standards have become
in this century." _Galtung 1990
👍🏻
Dude you express an eloquent point of view but I don't see reasons. Jonathan expresses a point of view but he seems to say 'I might be wrong' (1.) and (2.) 'this is WHY I think we need to think x'. I don't see you doing either. Of course the future will answer today's questions about what it will bring in ways that will overturn today's answers! But you seem to think you know today and I can't discern why I should believe a word of it?
I discovered my existence as deeply as I ever will (I suspect) about 30 years ago now. So one is in the depths. How to swim, then.
Self-ignorance AND other-ignorance, and any other kinds of ignorance you care to mention.
Whatever one is, and whatever is, there is work to be done. To volunteer to do it, whatever the extension of these words, is a thing. And this is the beginning.