Merneptah and Spinoza
A reader from Istanbul wrote in, asking me to comment on the war in Israel and Lebanon. In other words, he wants me to make this blog the scene of yet another intellectual bloodbath, with insult-laden rockets launched from untraceable IP addresses and complexity-theoretic civilians trapped in the crossfire. What a neat idea! Why didn’t I think of it before?
Alright, let me start with some context. No, I’m not talking about the Gaza pullout, or Camp David, or the last Lebanon invasion, or the Yom Kippur War, or the Six-Day War, or the War of Independence, or the UN partition plan, or the 1939 White Paper. I’m talking about the first appearance of Israel in the extrabiblical historical record, which seems to have been around 1200 BC. Boasting in a victory stele about his recent military conquests in Canaan, the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah included a single sentence about Israel:
Israel is laid waste; his seed is destroyed.
Sure, the pharoah was a bit premature. But give him credit for prescience if not for accuracy. Unlike (say) pyramid-building or Ra-worship, Merneptah’s Jew-killing idea has remained consistently popular for 3.2 millennia.
Today, in the year 2006, as the LHC prepares to find the Higgs boson and the New Horizons probe heads to Pluto, Am Yisra’el (literally, “the people that argues with God”) is once again surrounded by enemies whose stated goal is to wipe it off the face of the Earth. And, in the familiar process of fighting for its existence, that people is grievously, inexplicably, incompetently, blowing up six-year-olds and farmers while failing to make any visible progress on its military objectives.
So what is there to say about this that hasn’t already been said Ackermann(50) times? Instead of cluttering the blogosphere any further, I’ll simply point you to a beautiful New York Times op-ed by Rebecca Goldstein, commemorating the 350th anniversary of Spinoza’s excommunication from the Jewish community of Amsterdam. Actually, I’ll quote a few passages:
Spinoza’s reaction to the religious intolerance he saw around him was to try to think his way out of all sectarian thinking. He understood the powerful tendency in each of us toward developing a view of the truth that favors the circumstances into which we happened to have been born. Self-aggrandizement can be the invisible scaffolding of religion, politics or ideology.
Against this tendency we have no defense but the relentless application of reason.
Spinoza’s system is a long deductive argument for a conclusion as radical in our day as it was in his, namely that to the extent that we are rational, we each partake in exactly the same identity.
Spinoza’s dream of making us susceptible to the voice of reason might seem hopelessly quixotic at this moment, with religion-infested politics on the march. But imagine how much more impossible a dream it would have seemed on that day 350 years ago.
Follow
Comment #1 August 1st, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Einstein’s Poem on Spinoza
Comment #2 August 1st, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Thanks for the link! Is there an English translation of that poem on the web? I could only find the following excerpt:
How much do I love that noble man
More than I could tell with words
I fear though he’ll remain alone
With a holy halo of his own
Comment #3 August 1st, 2006 at 11:35 pm
“try to think his way out of all sectarian thinking”
You endorse that? I would have thought your identity as a Jew was important to you. Considering the title of this blog, for instance…
Comment #4 August 2nd, 2006 at 3:31 am
cheshire cat:
You endorse that? I would have thought your identity as a Jew was important to you. Considering the title of this blog, for instance…
Hmmmm. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmmm. As Stephen Colbert once said on the Daily Show (while slowly and repeatedly stroking his chin): “Jon, that’s a five-stroker.”
I think we should strive for a world where everyone sees themselves as just human beings, just as we should strive for a world without war, tyranny, or mandatory Phys Ed classes. I think these are fundamental moral obligations. But the past century made it clear (if it wasn’t before) that we don’t live in anything like such a world.
Given everything that’s happened since, it’s easy to forget that before the 1930’s, Zionism was basically a fringe movement within Judaism. The observant Jews condemned it as heresy, while the non-observant ones preferred to see themselves as socialists, or secular humanists, or French or German nationalists, etc. A few observant Jews (and non-observant ones like Chomsky) still feel exactly the same way today.
For the rest — well, look. You don’t probably don’t base much of your own identity on the town you grew up in. But what if your hometown was singled out for two millennia as the embodiment of evil, as a cancerous sore on the human race? What if, within living memory, an entire continent diverted much of its industry away from fighting a war, and toward the enormous, logistically-grueling task of rounding up, deporting, and exterminating every resident of your town it could possibly find? What if it did the job so well that you were one of only a handful of survivors? What if even now, a significant fraction of the world’s governments ranked killing you as an extremely high priority, much higher than raising their own GDP? And all because of the town you grew up in? Would the role your hometown played in your identity be determined (as it were) entirely a priori, or would these empirical considerations also enter into your analysis?
(Incidentally, here’s another anthropicism: why are the Jews so paranoid about being annihilated? Because the calm ones aren’t around anymore.)
So then — more chin strokes — how does one reconcile Spinoza with Merneptah, humanism with the Holocaust, universal ideals with a particular legacy of suffering? Insofar as it relates to Israel, I think there’s a reasonably clear answer: support the Jewish state, and also support working for a world in which such a state would be superfluous. As long as Israel remains a secular democracy, these ideals remain consistent.
Of course I’m not saying anything particularly clever or original. It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure this out, though it suffices.
Comment #5 August 2nd, 2006 at 6:45 am
“I think we should strive for a world where everyone sees themselves as just human beings….”
Succinctly: Everybody’s just people.
Comment #6 August 2nd, 2006 at 9:22 am
I don’t know if opposing anti-Semitism implies supporting Israel’s actions. I think that most anti-Semitism in the world today is caused by Israel.
From the start, the Zionist cause was supported by British anti-Semites (who either wanted to encourage Jewish emigration, or, bizarrely, thought that appeasing the international Jewish conspiracy on this issue would mean getting its support in WWI), and opposed by well-off British Jews, who feared accusations of double loyalty.
It’s a reasonable idea that after the Nazis, we can’t trust any national government any more. But I think this (ghetto-optimized?) idea is outdated, and that living in the U.S. or even Europe will be safer than Israel for the foreseeable future.
Comment #7 August 2nd, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Scott Said:
For the rest — well, look. You don’t probably don’t base much of your own identity on the town you grew up in. But what if your hometown was singled out for two millennia as the embodiment of evil, as a cancerous sore on the human race? What if, within living memory, an entire continent diverted much of its industry away from fighting a war, and toward the enormous, logistically-grueling task of rounding up, deporting, and exterminating every resident of your town it could possibly find? What if it did the job so well that you were one of only a handful of survivors? What if even now, a significant fraction of the world’s governments ranked killing you as an extremely high priority, much higher than raising their own GDP? And all because of the town you grew up in? Would the role your hometown played in your identity be determined (as it were) entirely a priori, or would these empirical considerations also enter into your analysis?
I say: Scott, I know exactly what you’re talking about… I am from such a town… your people (the jews) and my people (the gays) should be able to understand one another.
Comment #8 August 2nd, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Should left-handed people also have tried to get a land of their own?
The reason why left-handed people aren’t persecuted any more — aside from the fact that we no longer live in the dark ages — is that they aren’t conspicuous. It is telling that the most consistent traits which form the basis of discrimination are the most recognisable ones: age, skin colour, and gender, followed by conspicuous religious observation.
Now, conspicuousness is the prerogative of the individual: everyone should be free to stick out like a sore thumb. In reality, however, people who stick out are going to get more hassle, especially if they are part of a group which (for probably irrational reasons) are traditionally not well-accepted.
I would claim that Jews are accepted in society to the extent that they are for two reasons: one, again that we are living in times which are somewhat more enlightened that previously (otherwise, there wouldn’t be any shame even over something like the holocaust), and because there are people who are Jewish, but don’t make a big deal out of it, which helps other people accept Jewish people.
Being Jewish just because of an acute consciousness of the history of persecution of Jews is your prerogative, and in an ideal world it should not cause you grief. But it’s like picking at a scab: although you may want to do it, it doesn’t help it to heal. Similarly, having an entire country which exists solely for the purpose of being a state “of the Jews, by the Jews, for the Jews, because by god we don’t trust anyone else anymore” doesn’t help matters much either, even ignoring any historical context after WWII.
Comment #9 August 2nd, 2006 at 1:42 pm
for some reason I cannot find an online German text of Einstein’s poem Zu Spinozas Ethik
http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/history/Einsteins_poem/Spinozas_Ethik.jpg
there is this scan of handwritten MS
but I have trouble reading it
can anyone provide a link to ordinary typeset copy?
I also have seen this link but havent tried it
http://www.alberteinstein.info/db/ViewImage.do?DocumentID=17814&Page=1
this link may have errors or may be pay-per-view
Hardcopy of the German original of Einstein’s poem is said to be in the appendix of a box by Jammer (Einstein and Religion).
Comment #10 August 2nd, 2006 at 2:23 pm
Aram: I think that most anti-Semitism in the world today is caused by Israel.
I will grant you that much of it is motivated by the existence of Israel.
I think this idea is outdated, and that living in the U.S. or even Europe will be safer than Israel for the foreseeable future.
That may be true, but full national evacuation would also be difficult.
Comment #11 August 2nd, 2006 at 3:06 pm
cheshire cat:
“try to think his way out of all sectarian thinking”
You endorse that? I would have thought your identity as a Jew was important to you. Considering the title of this blog, for instance…
It’s possible to be Jewish without being sectarian, just as it’s possible to be a Republican and still date Democrats.
-Gus
Comment #12 August 2nd, 2006 at 3:21 pm
The scott’s anthropisism reminded me a joke – it is dark and not very funny so I hope you can forgive me.
Kohn and Roubiczek are getting of the train, and they are taking them straight to the camp. In front of the gate Roubiczek stops and points out to the gas chamber building: “I really don’t like the look of the thing. I am not gonna go there. No way!”.
And Kohn says: “Shh. Roubiczek – are starting again? Do you always have to make trouble for everyone -even in this situation we are in?”
Comment #13 August 2nd, 2006 at 3:25 pm
What a beautiful post, Scott. To reprise for a wider audience what you and I discussed at lunch a month ago, the surge of modern interest in Spinoza’s political philosophy is largely driven by IAS scholar Jonathan Israel’s renaissance history Radical Enlightenment
Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750.
This book holds a proud place in our Quantum System Engineer Goup’s Library of Subversive Literature (every research group should have such a library).
To quote from Spinoza’s Theological and Political Discourses:
Preface: The Translator to the Reader
Religion and Government being the Subject Matter of the Book, ’tis easy to guess what Sort of Men are like to decry it; but let those who are angry with it and find fault with it answer it; in the mean time the Crape Gown and the Long Robe are both defied to prove that there are any Tenets in the Whole Treatise, half so dangerous or destructive to the Peace and Welfare of human Society, as those Doctrines and Maxims are, which have of late years been broached by time-serving Churchmen and Mercenary Lawyers; for which they justly deserve the hatred and contempt of all mankind.
Nothing more needs be said to any Reader, than to desire he will deliberately read the Book twice over, before he condemn or commend it.
Byu the way, don’t look for the above quotation in any of the standard Spinoza references; I transcribed it myself from Thomas Jefferson’s personal copy (a 300-year-old book), which is held at the US Library of Congress.
Greatest … library … card … ever!
And by the way, what was for Spinoza the most important human virtue? Cheerfulness!
Comment #14 August 2nd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Greg, I meant to Israel’s actions and not its existence.
Comment #15 August 2nd, 2006 at 4:53 pm
And by the way, what was for Spinoza the most important human virtue? Cheerfulness!
He also, apparently, valued brevity.
Comment #16 August 2nd, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Greg, I meant to Israel’s actions and not its existence.
Yes, I know what you meant. But, first, you can’t separate actions from existence. There is no moment in Israel’s history in which Arabs and Muslims did not condemn its actions. Second, people will interpret the actions of an entity differently if they question the legitimacy of its existence.
I agree with you that there is a broad middle ground of people who honestly criticize only one side of Israel and don’t mind its existence as a Jewish state. Sometimes I’m one of them. But I would not say that Israel drives these people to anti-Semitism.
When people get to the point of denying the Holocaust, or blame the Jews for 9/11, then they question the legitimacy of Jewish rule in general, or even Jewish existence, not just specific decisions.
Comment #17 August 2nd, 2006 at 8:58 pm
I think we should strive for a world where everyone sees themselves as just human beings
I disagree with this sentiment. I look forward to a world where everyone sees others as just human beings, without letting prejudice color such views.
But I think it’s great that people identify as Jewish, French, Yankee fans, string theorists, trekkie, and so on, and it would be a loss if such indentities (and the sense of community and belonging they create, along with the cultures they give rise to) were to dissolve. I very happy to live in a city where different neighborhoods have very strong identities.
It’s ok to be sectarian; it’s hating the other sects that is a problem.
Comment #18 August 2nd, 2006 at 10:57 pm
There’s a good poem about Spinoza by Jorge Luis Borges. It’s called “Baruch Spinoza”. In english it goes like this:
A haze of gold, the Occident lights up
The window. Now, the assiduous manuscript
Is waiting, weighed down with the infinite.
Someone is building God in a dark cup.
A man engenders God. He is a Jew
With saddened eyes and lemon-colored skin;
Time carries him the way a leaf, dropped in
A river, is borne off by the waters to
Its end. No matter. The magician is moved
Carves out his God with fine geometry;
From his disease, from nothing, he’s begun
To construct God, using the word. No one
Is granted such prodigious love as he:
The love that has no hope of being loved.
Borges also wrote very good short stories, similar to Kafka’s in some ways, only much better. “The Library of Babel” is one for you if you’re interested in information. Found out about him from my copy of Kittel and Kroemer’s “Thermal Physics”, where the sentence “Could all the monkeys in the world have typed out a single specified book in the age of the universe?” has a footnote that reads: “For a related mathematico-literary study, see “The Library of Babel,” by the fascinating Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, in Ficciones, Grove Press, Evergreen paperback, 1962, pp. 79-88″.
Comment #19 August 2nd, 2006 at 11:07 pm
Another Borges poem about Spinoza. This one is called “Spinoza”. Here it is in english:
Here in the twilight the translucent hands
Of the Jew polishing the crystal glass.
The dying afternoon is cold with bands
Of fear. Each day the afternoons all pass
The same. The hands and space of hyacinth
Paling in the confines of the ghetto walls
Barely exists for the quiet man who stalls
There, dreaming up a brilliant labyrinth.
Fame doesn’t trouble him (that reflection of
Dreams in the dream of another mirror), nor love,
The timid love of women. Gone the bars,
He’s free, fom metaphor and myth, to sit
Polishing a stubborn lens: the infinite
Map of the One who now is all His stars.
Comment #20 August 2nd, 2006 at 11:51 pm
What a thing you’ve done, Scott. A post about the “situation” which mentions the Higgs boson and the Ackermann function. And, moreover, a post which is true. I mean, which is beautiful. I mean, . . .
I am. . . oh my. . . wow.
Comment #21 August 3rd, 2006 at 12:46 am
Thanks, ano! Those poems reminded me why, even in translation (I alas don’t read Spanish), Borges was so clearly a giant — those Nobel dudes who passed him over should be doing hard time. (And that’s not my gut feeling; it’s a verifiable fact. 😉 ) Of course I know the “Library of Babel”; three of his other masterpieces are “The Circular Ruins,” “The Garden of Forking Paths,” and “Borges and I.”
Did I forget to put him on my moved-me list? Inexcusable.
Comment #22 August 3rd, 2006 at 12:56 am
Oh, and thanks, everyone — I’m so proud of you! I blog about one of the most radioactive topics on the Internet (second only to C++ vs. Perl), spend a day flying to the States, come back to a computer, and all I can find is thoughtful, intelligent disagreement…
Comment #23 August 3rd, 2006 at 1:17 am
Luca:
I think it’s great that people identify as Jewish, French, Yankee fans, string theorists, trekkie, and so on, and it would be a loss if such indentities (and the sense of community and belonging they create, along with the cultures they give rise to) were to dissolve … It’s ok to be sectarian; it’s hating the other sects that is a problem.
Hmmm … your view has considerable appeal to me, despite being exactly the sort of thing an Italian would say.
Anyway, it turns out Goldstein has written a whole book about the tension between Spinozist universalism and one’s particular identity. I just started it; maybe I’ll know where I come down by the end.
PS: It occurred to me that Aumann’s Theorem, which says that two Bayesians with common priors can never “agree to disagree”, and which I talked about in theory lunch a few years ago, is just the mathematical analogue of Spinoza’s philosophy as expounded by Goldstein.
PPS. Aw, man. I miss theory lunch.
Comment #24 August 3rd, 2006 at 1:39 am
anonymous:
Being Jewish just because of an acute consciousness of the history of persecution of Jews is your prerogative, and in an ideal world it should not cause you grief. But it’s like picking at a scab: although you may want to do it, it doesn’t help it to heal.
Unfortunately, I do tend to pick at actual scabs…
But I completely agree with you that there are more fulfilling things in life than picking at the scab of the Holocaust. Like sex, for example. Or proving complexity theorems.
Tell you what: if you want me to pick at this particular scab less often, just tell my friend Mahmoud to stop lancing it, rubbing salt into it, and trying to make new scabs.
Comment #25 August 3rd, 2006 at 1:51 am
Scott, I know exactly what you’re talking about… I am from such a town… your people (the jews) and my people (the gays) should be able to understand one another.
A toast to that! And may peace reign between us in New York, San Francisco, and all the large coastal cities of the land.
Comment #26 August 3rd, 2006 at 5:33 am
Religion is the disease and reason is the cure. In Israel, aren’t they just making God really really mad? I guess, with all the explosions, it’s hard to think. If God hasn’t hurricaned their ass yet, then either He doesn’t care or He likes a good fight. Either way, He’s as corrupt as the suffering he permits.
Pretty soon, they’ll all kill each other, and then everything will be fine. I think that’s a reasonable conclusion.
Comment #27 August 3rd, 2006 at 5:58 am
Epilogue
A blogger on a previous post writes:
Where do so many people get the cockamamie idea that there’s such a thing as a “scientific method” — that science is not just really, really, really careful thinking? (I blame the school system.)
To which I respond with this link:
http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/4/cole.asp
Basically, is says confusion is essential to brilliance. The universe was once a big steaming pile of goo.
To make another point, giving reason to the blogger’s contempt for The Academy, I offer this link:
http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19460829-12332,00.html
The cited evidence is poor, but it suggests a common knowledge truth, that through relaxation, one may attain mental prowess, and while school forces us to learn new and unrelated tricks and jump through hoops to negotiate the standardized obstacle course, it suffocates the determined writer or the talented mathematician. The article also offers an explanation for why Einstein rarely changed his clothes.
Comment #28 August 3rd, 2006 at 6:08 am
Final Epilogue
It should have been E=M(CC).
Comment #29 August 3rd, 2006 at 11:29 am
Pretty soon, they’ll all kill each other, and then everything will be fine.
Again, paraphrene, I don’t understand your logic. If “everything would be fine” if all the men, women, and children in Israel and the surrounding countries were dead, then why isn’t everything fine right now?
Comment #30 August 4th, 2006 at 1:31 am
They’re not dead yet, or nobody has intervened. All we can do is watch.
I’ve been in a hole, studying classical literature, and I watch almost no television. This is the first I’ve heard about it.
I feel like I dozed off for an era and woke up in the wrong century. In my stupor, I saw what appeared to be a model for world peace, a united global nation. Every country joins, they’re all protected, a few battles at first, crime, but afterwards, relative peace: Every person unified under a single banner.
I seem to have awoken prematurely.
This Israel thing. Is it the most important thing in the world?
Comment #31 August 4th, 2006 at 2:50 am
aram harrow said…
I don’t know if opposing anti-Semitism implies supporting Israel’s actions. I think that most anti-Semitism in the world today is caused by Israel.
This is like husbands killing their wives is caused by the feminist movement, or gay-bashings are caused by the ACLU. And the use of the word “caused” in the quoted comment is particularly outrageous. I do agree that “opposing anti-Semitism does not imply supporting Israel’s actions”. The rest of the Aram’s paragraph, on which I’ve already commented, seems not very well thought-out.
(by the way, I would not compare the state of Israel to the ACLU in general, but in this context I think the claim that Israel causes anti-Semitism is as justified as the ACLU causes gay-bashings. That is, it is true to some extent, but without the ACLU gays would be screwed, just like without Israel, Jews would/might have been screwed).
When the burning of synagogues permanently stops, and when Arab leaders no longer proclaim that Israel (and the US, mind you) should be burnt into ashes, then I will feel that the state of Israel can be dismantled (although then it would be a state like any other). I would like to present an hypothesis: It says that if Israel’s neighbors wouldn’t have wanted it destroyed, Israel would not have taken part in a single war to this day. I’m not 100% sure of this, but I am reasonably sure of it.
I find these claims that Israel’s actions (being justified or unjustified — I won’t argue on that issue) give rise to antisemitism are in extremely bad taste. If some people are blaming jews worldwide for the actions of the state of Israel, then obviously jews aren’t safe, and should indeed have a state of their own. I find Aram comment somewhat disturbing.
Comment #32 August 4th, 2006 at 2:52 am
Scott wrote: Am Yisra’el (literally, “the people that argues with God”)
I don’t know this one. I speak Hebrew, and I see no resemblence between “Am Yisra’el” and “the people that argues with God”. Are you sure about that?
Comment #33 August 4th, 2006 at 4:54 am
As always, I think Scott’s post was very good. A single sentence deserves comment when you look at it from this part of the Middle East, though:
“And, in the familiar process of fighting for its existence, that people is grievously, inexplicably, incompetently, blowing up six-year-olds and farmers while failing to make any visible progress on its military objectives.”
This looks inexplicable if one assumes that Israel’s military objectives are based on fighting for its existence. I think that Israel is the last country in the Middle East which should worry about its existence. (All right, I know about Scott’s friend Mahmoud, and millions like him, but, just as in the case of the USA, the bare fact that countless millions all over the world wish a country to just go away does not in itself pose a credible threat to that country’s existence.) Through the USA, Israel has veto power in the UN, which means it can (and does) get away with murder. Israel is the only country in the region with nuclear weapons, a fact that people who worry about other countries’ WMD programs mysteriously ignore. My thesis is that Israel is, basically, *not* fighting for its existence.
So let us try to find out what real military objectives Israel could have to make the (very competent) killing of six-year olds explicable. Conspiracy theories abound, but here is my favorite explanation: Too many innocent Israelis have been (deplorably) killed by Arabs during the colonial war that has been going on since Israel’s overnight appearance on the map in the 20th century. So many that most Israelis just do not want to think about the bigger picture, about the Arab children that *they* have massacred during that war, about any rational way to end the bloodshed. They are full of hate, and just want the Arabs to go away. And this is their motivation in this war. They want to kill as many Arabs (women, children, whatever) as possible, because they see today’s Arab children as tomorrow’s terrorists.
Of course, this is crazy, it cannot work, never has in history. It is just investment for more centuries of hatred and bloodshed. But these people have lost their minds, and will not listen to reason.
So what Scott says about reason is exactly relevant here, but will the parties listen to it? Don’t think so.
Comment #34 August 4th, 2006 at 10:21 am
Reader from Istanbul –
ISTM that each “side” (perhaps more accurately, each of these two portions of humanity that thinks of itself as being opposed to the other, and acts accordingly) creates what it fears: Hezbollah rockets -> Israeli support for bombing -> Israeli bombs -> Lebanese support for Hezbollah -> Hezbollah rockets…
I do not intend by formulating this as a classic feedback loop, in which each step tends to encourage the next, to draw any conclusions about moral equivalency (or absence thereof) that would bother anyone sympathetic to one “side” or the other. I find the “side” to which I personally am more and more drawn is the side of life; I am tired of so much death.
Comment #35 August 4th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
the reader from Istanbul said…
I think that Israel is the last country in the Middle East which should worry about its existence. (All right, I know about Scott’s friend Mahmoud, and millions like him, but, just as in the case of the USA, the bare fact that countless millions all over the world wish a country to just go away does not in itself pose a credible threat to that country’s existence.)
As you seem to be denying the only sort of evidence the world could get before the fact, it seems that the only way you could get convinced of the potential for Israel’s destruction is after the fact. You’d say “opps, I guess the arab leaders did mean it and act on it. Sorry.”. The only reason that the US isn’t at a potential of being destroyed by the Arab world is that it is too big and too strong. Even a couple of neclear terrorist bombs wouldn’t wipe it out. As opposed to Israel, a country of 6 million people with a very small amount of land.
And if you don’t believe that the Arab countried surrounding Israel have already tried to conquer it a few times, there’s no way I could convince you. I could point you to wikipedia, say to here , but too many people are denying that the Arab world does in fact wish to destroy Israel, so history has not “settled down” yet.
And, just to remind you, the Lebanese civilian death toll currently stands at something around 300 for the whole 3 weeks of fighting. If Israel wishes to rid itself from its regional problems by killing all arabs, it is going at it at pathetic rate. However, if Israel wishes to destroy Hizbollah military installations which lie in densely-populated areas, and not making 100% sure it doesn’t hit civilians, then I guess 300 might be the number you’re gonna get. (I’m not justifying this, I’m just saying this is the case).
And, by the way, don’t believe everything you see in the media. TV reporters, especially british but also others, are given information censored by Hizbollah when they report from Lebanon. Read more here:
report
Comment #36 August 4th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I accepted without question what my philosophy professors taught me: that Spinoza was a philosopher, and that philosophy is a search for truth that sometimes succeeds.
Although these axioms are appealingly simple, and are a good starting point for students, they did not equip me to read and understand Spinoza.
Jonathan Israel’s book did equip me to read Spinoza, for reasons that are summarized in an excellent review by Brandon Look:
“As someone trained in a philosophy department to work on the history of philosophy, I felt uneasy in one respect with this book. While Israel emphasizes the battles between philosophies and ideas, he does not concern himself so much with the process of doing philosophy. …
Philosophical views, one used to believe at least, were held for reasons and because of the results of arguments, but these arguments and reasons do not play a central role in the historical narrative.
… it remains perhaps ironic that, in leaving open the possibility that Enlightenment views were advanced for self-interested motives, for the acquisition of political power, and not out of a commitment to “Truth,” a historian who seems so sympathetic to the ideals of the Enlightenment has produced a work that, at first glance, could be used by the new opponents of the Enlightenment and its legacy: post-modernists.
Be that as it may, there is no denying that this book is a very important addition to the field and will doubtless alter the way we view the intellectual history of Europe.”
IMHO, anyone who familiarizes themselves with Prof. Israel’s historical context, and then rereads the original Spinoza, will find the effort to be extraordinarily rewarding. Consider them to be the Talmud and the Torah, respectively: each being incomplete without the other, and the whole being greater than the parts.
Comment #37 August 5th, 2006 at 3:00 am
Reader from Istanbul: Thanks for the comment! A quick response about Israel’s nukes. If Israel wanted to threaten its neighbors with a first strike, then it could have done so at any point in the last four decades. But when my buddy Mahmoud gets into one of his eschatological moods, I can’t predict who he’ll launch a first strike against (Israel’s a good bet though). In other words, a nuclear standoff between Israel and Iran would not resemble the standoff between the US and USSR, because of what one might refer to, in technical game-theory terminology, as the “72 virgin asymmetry.”
Comment #38 August 5th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
“so what might save us, me and you, is if the arabs love their children too”
Comment #39 August 5th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
(sting, russians )
Comment #40 August 5th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
I don’t know this one. I speak Hebrew, and I see no resemblence between “Am Yisra’el” and “the people that argues with God”. Are you sure about that?
This is not even close to how one would say “the people that argues with God” in Hebrew (either modern or biblical). Poetically, however, it could be loosely translated that way. I think Scott was alluding to Genesis 32:29.
Comment #41 August 5th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Right — apparently the etymology of “Yisra’el” is “he who struggles {fights, argues} with God”; it comes from the Genesis story where Jacob wrestles the angel.
Comment #42 August 5th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Anonymous:
Should left-handed people also have tried to get a land of their own?
Yes! As an “extreme” lefty, I strongly support that proposal, and would consider buying a home in Leftistan.
Note, however, that Israel is also an excellent country for lefties. Why? Because Hebrew is one of the only languages we can write in without smearing ink on our hands.
Comment #43 August 6th, 2006 at 12:01 am
Note, however, that Israel is also an excellent country for lefties. Why? Because Hebrew is one of the only languages we can write in without smearing ink on our hands.
There’s also Arabic, and Persian.
Comment #44 August 6th, 2006 at 12:15 am
Yeah, I thought of Arabic right after I posted that. Persian I didn’t know.
Comment #45 August 6th, 2006 at 4:07 am
As to lefties rights we should avoid going too far to favor such sinister people but we can do this simply.
One word: Boustephedron
It’s equal-opportunity writing.
Comment #46 August 6th, 2006 at 5:57 am
What is unfortunate about scientists talking about politics and wars is that with their creativity, and tendency for abstraction and generalization, the discussion of a small-scale war between Israel and Lebanon (or more precisely the Shiite-Lebanese quasi-army) immediately moves on to nuclear deterrence, anti- Semitism, full national evacuation, and dubious thought-experiments like a country for lefties.
The most important thing about wars and military threats is to confine them and to restraint them and then perhaps stop them and prevent them. Scientists with their abstract and formal thinking, generalizations, thought-experiments, game theory and tasteless jokes are better kept out of it. Politicians are much better.
Comment #47 August 6th, 2006 at 8:42 am
Anonymous said: Scientists … are better kept out of [complex decision-making]. Politicians are much better.
Although mutual ignorance is a very convenient strategy for both scientists and politicians, it is a disaster for the human race and the planet.
Here’s a sobering 1955 essay by John von Neumann (written in the last two years of his life, when he had begun turning his attention away from thermonuclear weapons). Keep it in mind the next time you hear someone assert that scientists can’t predict the future and shouldn’t meddle in politics.
All major weather phenomena … are ultimately controlled by the solar energy that falls on the earth. … The carbon dioxide released into the atomosphere by industry’s burning of coal and oil—more than half of it during the last generation—may have changed the atomosphere’s composition sufficiently to account for a general warming of the world by about degree Fahrenheit. … Intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters will come in a few decades, and will unfold on a scale difficult to imagine at present. …
Such actions would be more directly and truly worldwide than recent, or presumably, future wars, or the economy at any time. … All this will merge each nation’s affairs with those of every other, more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war would have done. …
What safeguard remains? Apparently only day-to-day—or perhaps year-to-year—opportunistic measures, a long sequence of small, correct decisions. And this is not surprising. After all, the crisis is due to the rapidity of progress, to the probable further acceleration thereof, and to the reaching of certain critical relationships.
Specifically, the effects that we are now beginning to produce are of the same order of magnitude as `the great globe itself.” Indeed, they affect the earth as an entity. Hence further acceleration can no longer be absorbed as in the past by an extension of the area of operations. …
The most hopeful answer is that the human species has been subjected to similar tests before, and seems to have a congenital ability to come through, after varying amounts of trouble.
Comment #48 August 6th, 2006 at 9:05 am
The most important thing about wars and military threats is to confine them and to restraint them and then perhaps stop them and prevent them. Scientists with their abstract and formal thinking, generalizations, thought-experiments, game theory and tasteless jokes are better kept out of it. Politicians are much better.
Yes — if history has shown us anything, it’s the skill of politicians at preventing wars.
Comment #49 August 6th, 2006 at 10:08 am
“Yes — if history has shown us anything, it’s the skill of politicians at preventing wars.”
yea, politicians are not that great. Maybe, maybe things can be really better with women politician.
Comment #50 August 6th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
“Although mutual ignorance is a very convenient strategy for both scientists and politicians, it is a disaster for the human race and the planet.
Here’s a sobering 1955 essay by John von Neumann (written in the last two years of his life, when he had begun turning his attention away from thermonuclear weapons). Keep it in mind the next time you hear someone assert that scientists can’t predict the future and shouldn’t meddle in politics.”
hmm I think I understand what you mean. John von Neumann was interested in thermonuclear weapons as a way to destroy the human race and by this to save the planet from global warming that he predicted well before everybody else. Great mind he was!
Comment #51 August 6th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
I wouldn’t have thought I would ever delurk, but since you’re talking about my country…
Listen, Scott, maybe you’re an outstanding complexity theorist, but I don’t believe that either you or any of the other bloggers here can explain what’s going on exactly: I have been living in Lebanon since I was born. I have been following local politics since age 10 – 12, and I don’t have the slightest clue about the cause of what is happening. I don’t know why Hezbollah decided to abduct the 2 soldiers and kill 8 others on July 12, I don’t know why Israel responded with such a large scale operation and I still don’t know what the Israelis hope to achieve.
I know that I might get a chorus of replies with more or less “obvious” answers like : The Hezb wants to kill all Israelis, or: Israel wants to deter the Hezb, but these don’t hold water. The Hezb is pretty far from being able to kill all Israelis, and it knows it. Israel knows that demolishing Lebanon won’t deter the Hezb. So I don’t get it, nor could any of my friends/neighbors
All I know is that we have about 1,000,000 refugees, and about 900 dead civilians, a large number of them children. And yes, I know that there are civilian victims on the Israeli side and I know there are Arabs among them and I don’t support Hezbollah. But there is no simple explanation to the situation, I think that personal ambitions of the leaders play an important role, and not only great pinciples or ideas or religions like Zionism vs Islam, or the New Near East vs The Umma etc …
Comment #52 August 6th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Hi Lebenese guy,
I’m a shia of Iraqi origin. Let me first say that even though my own country is suffering terribly (100 people killed per day on average), we cry for you and stand with you 100%. Your suffering is our suffering,your deaths are our deaths, and your children are our children.
I wasn’t going to post anything on this forum because there is too much nonsense in the above posts to warrant the effort, but since you posted questions, I’d like to offer my thoughts.
As to why Hizballah kidnapped the soldiers, this was done for a prisoner exchange. There are almost 10,000 palestinian and lebenese (taken during the occupation) in israeli jails at the moment (including children) and many of them are held indefinately without trial. I don’t think Nasrallah did anything for personal ambition. He and his family will spend the rest of their lives under threat of assassination, and he has already lost a son to the IDF.
Why the huge response from israel? I guess it’s a punishment to the lebenese for allowing hizballah to remain in the south, and to hurt hizballah indirectly. This is the same strategy they have been using with the palestinians.
But yes, it was disproportionate, as the Isreali UN ambassador himself said – see this:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51326
There is a hillarious interview I saw today that may answer some questions. The man is George Galloway, a British member of parliament being interviewed by Sky News.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-galloway_060806,00.html
(if the link doesn’t work, go to the Sky news website, then the “video” link on the left, then George Galloway)
Peace to you and all of Lebanon.
Comment #53 August 6th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Lebanese guy, please let me say, I respect and honor your post. For us both, the war is an inescapable reality.
Two of my nephews in Tel Aviv have been called to active duty in the IDF. And I have a son in the USMC, who lost his foot to an IED in Fallujah … he is one of very few amputee Marines to stay on active duty.
Because I am a professor of orthopaedics, it was possible for my wife and me to do Alex’s wound care at home. This experience, which no young person and their family should have to bear, has become all-too-familiar to hundreds of thousands of families around the world. And tragically, there is no end in sight.
Is there any path, Lebanese Guy, such that by the end of the 21st Century, there will be no such posts as yours and mine?
I have no global answer, but for my wife and me personally, the main path forward is to accept that there will be no end to GWOT until such time as a good, family-supporting job exists for every young person who wants one.
Sadly, every nation involved in this conflict finds it easier to create bombs and armies, than jobs and nations.
My personal interest in complexity theory arises because, in the hopeful future that we can all foresee, and hope to help create, complexity theory is central to the creation of resources and jobs.
That is what quantum system engineering and its synoptic biomedical applications are all about—complexity theory in service of an urgent global need for new resources and job creation.
Comment #54 August 6th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
I have to say that I feel a real sense of shame about what Israel is doing in Lebanon.
I agree with almost all of Scott’s comments here and elsewhere about threats to Israel. I think that there are always a lot of wild exaggerations about Israel, extreme double standards, and a lot of fundamental hatred of Jews. I think that there is a real risk in the background that some suicide bomber will some day detonate a nuclear device inside of Israel. I think that comments that Israel doesn’t have to worry about its existence, or that it has created most of the world’s anti-Semitism, are off the mark.
But I can set all of that aside and be ashamed. I don’t think that Scott goes far enough in his comment that it’s “incompetent” and “inexplicable”. Among other objectives, the war in Lebanon is a reprisal attack meant to deter the Lebanese from harboring Hezbollah. It’s immoral and it won’t work. It will deepen hatred of Israel; it will slightly magnify the small but tangible risk that Israel will one day be destroyed.
I am not ashamed because I feel any sense of Israeli identity. I don’t particularly, even though I am part Jewish. I am pro-Israel in the same sense that I’m pro-Canada or pro-Japan. I would be equally depressed if Canada were doing this. Maybe I would be less upset if the United States were more against it.
Comment #55 August 7th, 2006 at 1:56 am
Thanks for delurking, Lebanese guy! It’s almost certainly true that Nasrallah’s ambitions within the Arab world played a large role in creating this situation. I also wonder whether Olmert felt he needed to prove his non-wussiness, and therefore disregarded the best military advice available to him. How could the IDF not have realized that aerial strikes wouldn’t deter Hezbollah, and that not all civilians would be able to evacuate at the drop of a flyer?! Well, I guess many people are asking those questions now.
In any case, the mere fact that you’re willing to engage in dialogue here puts an upper bound on the magnitude of our disagreement. Best wishes to you in what must be a difficult time.
Comment #56 August 7th, 2006 at 2:13 am
The rationale for the Israeli actions triggered by the recent attacks on Israel, is to dismantle or reduce the threat from Hizballah to the northern part of Israel. The “high way” for achieving such a goal would be to capture all of south Lebanon all the way to Beirut like
in 1982. This will probably lead to an order of magnitude more casualties and destruction as in 1982. (But greatly reduce the attacks on Israeli cities.) Of course, not taking any action, or a small-scale operation was also an option. It is not clear to me if the Israeli actions will be effective and certainly not what will be the implications for the future. The sight of death and suffering on both sides is terrible.
Comment #57 August 7th, 2006 at 3:04 am
I also wonder whether Olmert felt he needed to prove his non-wussiness
Absolutely, since his real goal is to withdraw from much of the West Bank.
How could the IDF not have realized that aerial strikes wouldn’t deter Hezbollah,
Attack in haste, repent at leisure.
and that not all civilians would be able to evacuate at the drop of a flyer?!
They must have known full well, Scott. The flyers are moral fig leaves.
Comment #58 August 7th, 2006 at 3:37 am
Unfortunately, positive developments in that region appear to happen only at the intersection of three low probability events: when there are wise and courageous leaders in Israel, its neighbors, and the united states.
Comment #59 August 7th, 2006 at 4:03 am
” positive developments in that region appear to happen only at the intersection of three low probability events: when there are wise and courageous leaders..”
Are you sure that courage is part of the solution and not part of the problem?
(The same question goes for wisdom).
Comment #60 August 7th, 2006 at 5:27 am
A very interesting paper by two US professors on the USA’s support for Israel:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/print/mear01_.html
Analysis of that paper and the responses to it:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19062
Comment #61 August 7th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
If you’re going to read that “paper” by Mearsheimer and Walt — I use quotes since to me the word “paper” (even in the social sciences!) has some connotation of new ideas or research — it’s worth reading Dershowitz’s response in addition to that New York Review of Books metaresponse.
Comment #62 August 7th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
Remember what Einstein said about Princeton: pygmy demigods on stilts. I think that that describes Walt, Mearsheimer, and Dershowitz. When pygmy demigods stand on stilts, they also shove each other.
Comment #63 August 7th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
They must have known full well, Scott. The flyers are moral fig leaves.
Well, maybe a moral tank top and underwear. If not for the warnings, civilian casualties would be much higher. (The standard joke is that Hezbollah sends warning flyers too — on the missiles.)
Comment #64 August 7th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Cheshire Cat and Scott raise the delicate and important topic of loyalty to and identification with one’s religion, town, nation, or ethnic group versus loyalty to one’s species. This is the subject of some excellent books and articles by the Anglo-Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. See for example
NY Times piece.
Appiah’s cosmopolitan position builds on the ideas of Spinoza, John Stuart Mill, and the Carthaginian-Roman writer Terence.
Comment #65 August 7th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Lebanese guy said…
have been following local politics since age 10 – 12, and I don’t have the slightest clue about the cause of what is happening.
I think that it is very important, at least for me, that this discussion is taking place. We are all fed by local, partisan, news reporting, and thus cannot possibly understand the full picture — I certainly know I can’t. For example, I am still very much wondering about the real extent of the damage to Beirut. I have not found any reliable source to estimate it. I am also wondering about teh extent of the support Hizbollah is getting from the Lebanese population, and about whether the fact that the Lebanese goverment didn’t take power awayt from Hizbollah is because of inherent weakness, apathy, or implicit cooperation.
I think that it would be extremely important to continue this discussion. I, for one, would really like to know the truth about what is happening, about the sides’ motivations, etc. and I think that gluing together the pieces of information of all sides might get us closer to this target.
I will try to answer some of the questions you pose, as best as I can see the situation from my perspective:
I don’t know why Hezbollah decided to abduct the 2 soldiers and kill 8 others on July 12
The common claim, which I tend to believe, is that the order came from Iran, and the goal is to take the UN’s and Europe’s attention away from the Iran nuclear bomb — they want to stall international action, as they supposedly are very near conclusion of their nuclear project. The claim about the abducted soldiers seems to me like a complete excuse. For once, Hizbollah’s timing seems awfully suspecious. And more on that later…
I don’t know why Israel responded with such a large scale operation and I still don’t know what the Israelis hope to achieve.
Israel, as far as I can see, is operation with a mix of strategic bombardment and outright terrorism. I believe they are trying not to hurt civilians which don’t have anything to do with Hizbollah. But the extent of this “trying” is unclear. The Israeli army is hitting whatever looks to them as it will hurt Hizbollah’s effort, including airports, roads, neighbourhoods harbouring Hizbollah bunkers, and whatnot. Additionally, they are hoping that the additional effect of demolishing parts of Beirut will have a detterant effect. I am personally disgusted by this, but the situation is problematic: I do believe that Hizbollah is “hiding behind civillians”, including children, and so some harm to civillians is to be expected if the IDF wants to harm Hizbollah. On one hand, hiding behind civillians is the best tactic available to Hizbollah. This means that the Israelis aren’t completely to fault about hurting civillians. On the other hand, this would just lead to more hate and bloodshead. Big ethical problem there.
Also, I want to respond to soemthing that the iraqi guy said:
As to why Hizballah kidnapped the soldiers, this was done for a prisoner exchange. There are almost 10,000 palestinian and lebenese (taken during the occupation) in israeli jails at the moment (including children) and many of them are held indefinately without trial. I don’t think Nasrallah did anything for personal ambition. He and his family will spend the rest of their lives under threat of assassination, and he has already lost a son to the IDF.
I think that this is a very partisan view. Firstly, I do not believe that Israel is holding children as prisoners. They are holding children if you define any person under 18 to be a child. I do believe that all of these “children” that Israel is holding were involved in hostile action against Israeli soldiers. It may have been rightful hostile action, depending on your point of view, but I would not call them “children”. Secondly, the number you give, 10,000, seems to be made up. But it is certainly more than 1,000, as far as I know. Finally, I don’t believe that Hizbollah did all of this for prisoner exchange. But it’s a reasonably-sounding excuse, so that’s the excuse they use. Iran knows that the best way to piss Israel off is to kidnap soldiers, and that’s why Hammas and Hizbollah kidnapped soldiers at about the same time — I firmly believe this was an Iranian-orchestrated action, designed to draw Israel into battles both at Gaza and at Lebanon, and to divert the world’s attention from the Iranian nukes.
Comment #66 August 7th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
On the topic of divided loyalties:
I hereby declare that I have no loyalty to anyone else. That way, no one can accuse me of partisanship.
Comment #67 August 7th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Israeli Guy: They are holding children if you define any person under 18 to be a child.
I actually agree with a lot of what you say, but I can’t agree with this. It’s an issue that arises in the American criminal justice system. It is certainly true that there exist 17-year-olds who are functionally more like adults, either because they are more mature or more dangerous, than some 30-year-olds. Even so, the recurrent practice of trying minors “as adults” here is a crock. It is a blatant slippery slope, as well as disreputable from the beginning. The only ethical path is to draw a consistent age line.
I agree that it is frustrating rhetoric when the same word, “child”, could mean a capable 17-year-old or a 6-year-old. The American English word for anyone from 13 to 19 is “teenager”, or from 13 to 17 if it is meant as distinct from an adult. In my view, that is the fairest term in this context.
Also, the legal term “minor” specifically means “under 18”. It sometimes connotes an older teenager in cases when “child” could have been used, but wasn’t.
Regrettably, there have been some teenage minors at Guantanamo Bay as well.
Another question is whether there are minors treated as adults in domestic prisons in any of afore-mentioned countries. In Israel? In Lebanon? In Turkey? As I said, it happens in the United States and I think that it’s bad.
Comment #68 August 7th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Question possibly answered: Lebanese prisons are overcrowded with minors mixed indiscriminately into the adult population.
I don’t mean to place either the United States or Israel above Lebanon with this quote. Certainly the United States does it too. I think that it’s deplorable wherever it occurs.
Comment #69 August 7th, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Greg, I think you’re missing the point. The Iraqi guy’s claim was that the purpose of Hizbollah’s abductions was a prisoner-swap. And he said that Israel is holding “10,000 Palestinians and Lebanese (including children)”. By stating that, he wanted us to imagine poor Palestinian children, been held in horrible Israeli prisons, away from their mothers. He wanted us to imagine a “Midnight Express”-like picture, with little kids being brutalized by horrible Israeli guards. Well, I just wanted to point out that when he’s talking about “children”, he is referring to teenagers who were involved in hostile acts against the Israeli army.
Not that I think that’s a good thing. I think the occupation must stop (indeed, it should have been stopped 20 years ago), and so we wouldn’t have to deal with governing occupied territories, with all the mess and anguish that surrounds that. But it is cheap manipulation to talk about “palestinian children” being held in Israeli prisons.
Comment #70 August 7th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
he said that Israel is holding “10,000 Palestinians and Lebanese (including children)”. By stating that, he wanted us to imagine poor Palestinian children, been held in horrible Israeli prisons, away from their mothers.
No, I understand. I did acknowledge your point about this, if only briefly.
Comment #71 August 7th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Israeli Guy,
Yes, I define a child as under 18.
Regarding the numbers, “almost 10,000” is the figure I have heard from multiple sources of at least some degree of respectability.
For example, this is a link to a very poignant letter by, among others, Noam Chomsky and Harold Pinter. It also highlights the discrepency in attitudes toward Arab and Jewish kidnappings.
http://comment.independent.co.uk/letters/article1188853.ece
This BBC link gives a more conservative 8,000 (though this is just Palestinians, and therefore doesn’t include Lebenese), and it gives some figures about the number held without trail:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5122056.stm
Regarding Nasrallah and Iran, I believe Iran’s role in this is exagerated. Remember, that while you claim Iran would have an interest in this conflict to divert attention away from it’s nuclear ambitions, I could claim, conversely, that Israel/US would have an interest in blaming the conflict on Iran in order to lend support to the argument that Iran is a “state sponsorer of terrorism” and thus should be cracked down upon in respect of it’s nuclear activities.
Ahmadinejad shouts alot but it’s little more than hot air. In my judgement, very few of his population would want war with Israel for the sake of the Lebenese or any Islamic cause and he knows it.
Also, you may be privy to Nasrallah’s private communication, I certainly am not, but given that prisoner exchanges have been done between Hizballah and Israel several times in the past, why should I believe that this time is any different? I know the cloth from which Nasrallah is cut, and when he says something, he usually means it – there’s no bullshit. It seems more plausable than the theory that Iran ordered him to do it, especially given how it has clearly put Iran in a bad (worse?) light.
Iraqi guy
Comment #72 August 7th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Thanks for the link, Charlie! (And thanks for delurking!) One positive aspect of my “Spinozistic identity crisis” is that it’s helped me understand similar crises faced (for example) by my Chinese and Indian friends.
Comment #73 August 7th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others … as we all sadly know.
Which is why—almost without exception—each poster has taken care to arm themselves with righteousness, and thereby, relieve themselves of empathy.
The rare people with the strength to refuse this cognitive path are called “saints” in all religions.
Comment #74 August 7th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Israeli guy,
As I said in my second post, I *do* mean under 18s when I say “children”. I wasn’t trying to “make us all imagine poor Palestinians” or anything else. My posts have been a mixture of quoted sources and my own personal opinions and judgements, which is what I thought was the point of this forum.
Furthermore, you may or may not know that much of the terrorism in Iraq has been from Palestinians coming to wage war on us – Zarqawi was Palestinian in origin, and many hundreds have been killed by his hand. Palestinians also aided Saddam in his brutal put-down of the Shia uprising against him – 60,000 were massacred in the space of two weeks, yes, including children, and till the fall of Saddam, they were happy to take suitcases of money from Iraqi pockets.
Trust me when I say I have no special love for Palestinians (though I don’t hold them collectively responsible either).
The point is, your obvious allusions to some kind of pro-palestinian agenda are without foundation.
I’m finished here, goodbye.
Comment #75 August 7th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Iraqi Guy,
You say that “Ahmadinejad shouts alot but it’s little more than hot air. In my judgement, very few of his population would want war with Israel for the sake of the Lebenese or any Islamic cause and he knows it.”.
Well, in my judgement, not many of his population want the country to be ruled the way it is. Particularly the intellectual elite, which is (thankfully) quite vast. War tends to justify itself, so there’s no need to build public support in advance.
Not to mention that exploding a nuclear bomb in Tel Aviv would not necessarly be the effect of a war. All Ahmadinejad needs to do is give a nuclear device to Hammas, and watch Israel blow up.
Not that this will necessarily happen, but one Iran has the bomb, it can get away with a lot more: Massacre of Israelis with Chemical or Biological weapons, for instance. Who will dare retaliate, knowing that this nutcase has nukes?
Comment #76 August 7th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
John: One always expects people to arm “themselves with righteousness.” What’s more interesting to me about this thread is the number of comments that actually try to engage both sides.
Comment #77 August 7th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
I’m finished here, goodbye.
Is that supposed to make me seem or feel like a bad guy? I think there was a completely non-heated intellectual discussion going on… But I guess that some of my words might have come off too harsh for an Iraqi person at these hard times…
Anyway, no personal resentment, I do believe that the use of the world “children” here is meant to be misleading. Not that I’m terribly on the side of one of the parties. I regard both sides as guilty. As one Israeli film-maker said in an interview this week, regarding the Israeli and the Lebanese: “I hurt terribly for all of them. They’re all guilty and they’re all victims”.
Comment #78 August 7th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
“Is that supposed to make me seem or feel like a bad guy?”
Neither. It’s just that I’ve put in my 2 dinars worth and will not be posting anymore on this thread.
Iraqi guy
Comment #79 August 7th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
You are right, Scott … it’s pretty darn heartening that there is any dialog at all.
Especially because, upon reflection, I was incorrect in saying “The rare people with the strength to refuse this cognitive path are called ‘saints’ in all religions.”
More commonly, freethinkers and peacemakers like Spinoza are called “wicked”, “evil”, or “monstrous”; these being some of the terms of opprobrium that appear in Spinoza’s excommunication:
“Cursed be [Spinoza] by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.”
Let the above serve as a serious warning, that even today, Spinoza’s message is unwelcome in many quarters (as, e.g., the Quakers know).
Comment #80 August 8th, 2006 at 1:08 am
Even though I am disgusted by Israel’s tactics in Lebanon, I am also persuaded by Nicholas Kristof’s column in tomorrow’s New York Times:
Three weeks ago, with President Bush supplying the weaponry and moral support, Israel began bombarding Lebanon. The war has killed hundreds of people, galvanized international attention and may lead to an international force of perhaps 20,000 peacekeepers.
Three years ago, Sudan began a genocide against African tribes in its Darfur region. That war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and it is now spreading. There is talk of U.N. peacekeepers someday, but none are anywhere in sight.
The moral of the story? Never, ever be born to a tribe that is victim to genocide in Africa.
The rest of the column is powerful too, but I don’t want to overstep fair use.
Comment #81 August 8th, 2006 at 2:46 am
I’m confused. I just started reading this blog. Why are they mad at each other?
Comment #82 August 8th, 2006 at 11:31 am
It is a sad human trait to get competitive about victimhood– “My victimhood is bigger than your victimhood.” And for some reason people tend to get more emotional about their forebears’ victimhood than their own. I know Serbs who are enraged at today’s Muslim Kosovars for having taken “their” Kosovo away many centuries ago. Some docents at Old Deerfield, MA still can’t forgive the Native Americans and French for the Deerfield Massacre of 1704. I have heard blacks and Jews argue about whether slavery was worse than the Holocaust, or vice versa. Victimization of one’s forbears ought to increase one’s empathy for someone else’s current victimization, as Kristoff tells us, but more often it has the opposite effect, desensitizing people to anyone’s suffering but “their” own.
Comment #83 August 8th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Anonymous said… I’m confused. I just started reading this blog. Why are they mad at each other?
This being a Spinoza thread, I will now essay a “deutero-Spinozist” answer, assuming as background the Spinoza article in the Jewish Encyclopedia.
We take as our modern text Frans de Waal’s The Brutal Elimination of a Rival Among Captive Male Chimpanzees.
There are two reasons for studying de Waal’s article in the light of Spinoza’s thinking. The first is that Spinoza’s close friend and patron John de Witt was killed in a eerily similar manner to de Waal’s chimpanzee “Luit”.
Although the Jewish Encyclopedia delicately refrains from giving the brutal details, de Witt and his brother were literally torn to pieces by a Calvinist Dutch mob, and some sources say, cannibalized. “The generally quiet and retiring Spinoza wanted to respond to the mob killing of the De Witt brothers by going out to meet the mob with a sign he had made that said “Ultimi barbarorum,” but was locked in by his landlord.”
The second reason for studying de Waal in the light of Spinoza is that in refraining from relative moral judgments as to “who is right”, we recover both our human empathic ability and our intellectual freedom. This is the same freedom that Spinoza achieved by his embrace (in fact, his invention!) of biblical textual analysis.
The remaining deutero-Spinozist analysis is swift and simple.
Whenever primates are crowded and resources are short, murderous behavior comes naturally. Homo sapiens differs from other primates in the ability to conceive and articulate logical and moral justifications for murderous behavior, and in the ability to fabricate rockets, machine guns, and nuclear weapons to accomplish killing efficiently.
Homo sapiens differs also from other primates in the ability to recognize that (as Katherine Hepburn says to Humphrey Boart in African Queen) “Human nature, Mr. Olnutt, is what we are put on earth to rise above.”
So what’s the action item? IMHO, a planet inhabited by six billion recently evolved primates, who are armed with nuclear and biological weapons, and whose ecosystem is degrading, is in pretty serious trouble.
The most urgent need is new resources and jobs, as soon as possible, and on a planetary scale, because
“more bananas” -> “less fighting”.
Moral clarity can come later.
Comment #84 August 8th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
“Are you sure that courage is part of the solution and not part of the problem? (The same question goes for wisdom).”
I’d describe Nassrallah as ruthless and clever rather than courageous and wise. (As an Israeli, I wish I could say that Olmert was at least clever). But, for a leader in this region, it often takes more courage to make peace than make war. (At least in Israel, the only PM shot was because of peace and not war.)
Comment #85 August 8th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
It should be noted that double-standard as it comes to Israel is both good and bad. It is judged more harshly by Europeans than other countries but on the other hand no other country has comparable support from the U.S., this is probably due to a number of reasons, but yes, its also due to the Jewish lobby. (Same as U.S.’s idiotic Cuban policy is due to the cuban exile lobby.)
The fliers are barely a fig leaf. Also the Hizbollah keeps bombing the same places, so you can say that everybody should have evacuated by now (but getting to compare Israel to HA already says how bad Israel is doing). Also the means to escape in lebanon are limited: today Israel announced that nobody should drive in south lebanon, and even before that many cars were hit.
Comment #86 August 8th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
The Real Border
“I see holocaust in the street” says Steve
I try to reason with him. “Not, here in Cleveland” I say,
and “but Steve, our own relatives immigrated well before”
and I even ask “what precisely is it that to you see?”
But Steve only says: ” I see holocaust in the street and also in my cup of coffee”
As you could have guessed, my brother is schizophrenic.
His illness makes him suffer. A kind of intolerable suffering which
shattered and corrupted his identity and personality for forty years now.
On the other side of the real border there are those whose suffering is unbearable and inexplicable. There is Steve and the Lebanese girls and boys who lost all in one Israeli bombing attack and the Israeli girl who died with her grandma by Hizballah rocket.
The wisdom, the knowledge the understanding, the justice, all this stuff is in on our side of the border.
The more I understand the more I succeed the happier I am, the deeper the border between me and my brother.
Comment #87 August 8th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
I’m an Israeli reader, and had something like 10 comments and rants I considered adding here, but decided not to bore you with the lot of them. One point is very interesting, and while my comment is also regarding the current conflict, it’s mostly about good PR.
It was stated here that “There are almost 10,000 palestinian and lebenese (taken during the occupation) in israeli jails at the moment (including children) and many of them are held indefinately without trial.”
The conversation went naturally to the number of prisoners, and to what children (or minors) being imprisoned means. This is amazing Hizballah PR, because there are about a dozen (certainly far less than a hundred) Lebanese prisoners in Israel, and yet we’re debating whether there are 1000, 8000, or 12000.
These people held in Israel aren’t people who threw rocks at soldiers. The most famous one murdered a policeman and then a whole familiy after infiltrating into Israel.
As for the Palastinian prisoners, anyone’s welcome to believe they are wrongly imprisoned, but Hizballah capturing Israeli sodiers to try and force their release makes as much sense as Israel capturing Egyptian soldiers to release people from prison there, who according to our system have done nothing wrong (there are people in jail there for attending gay parties).
Asking the questions gets you the answers you want.
Comment #88 August 9th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
How do we solve this problem?
Comment #89 August 9th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Anonymous asked: How do we solve this problem?.
Without asserting that a Spinozist solution is feasible in practice, my understanding is that a Spinozist solution is at least well-defined:
Spinozist Step I: refrain from relative moral judgments, replacing them instead with absolute moral judgements. As the conclusion to that most Spinozist of novels, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped states: Whatever befell them, it was not dishonour, and whatever failed them, they were not found wanting to themselves.. This defines a Spinozist state of grace which all participants in the Middle East conflicts can hope to share.
Spinozist Step II: Ensure that adequate resources and a good family-supporting job are available to every young person. The alternative being, the global dominance of “hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos” that Nobelist George Marshall identified as the great enemy of humanity.
It goes without saying, that the above Spinozist objectives are considerably more difficult and costly to achieve, than supplying young people with arms and motivating them to kill one another.
Comment #90 August 9th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
“It goes without saying, that the above Spinozist objectives are considerably more difficult and costly to achieve,”
and induce much less excitement
and (yes, let’s face it) fun
“than supplying young people with arms and motivating them to kill one another.”
Comment #91 August 10th, 2006 at 3:24 am
The following story can perhaps shed some light on the situation:
In Israel the tax for importing goods to the country is very high. A person wanted to bring to Israel an extremely expansive white elephant that he bought (in London of all places). To save money on taxes he painted the elephant grey. (Grey elephant are considerably cheaper than white elephants. Their price is only 15%-20% of that of white elephants.)
At his home in Israel this person started to scrape away the grey color from the elephant but then he scrapped also the white color.
Comment #92 August 10th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
It seems like maybe America should have gone to Israel instead of Iraq. Do you agree or disagree, and why?
Comment #93 August 10th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Anthropic Spinozist-Haiku #3
“You are more evil than me,
and so I will kill you …”
The ancient pond
Reassembled the apes
Comment #94 August 10th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
It seems like maybe America should have gone to Israel instead of Iraq. Do you agree or disagree, and why?
I completely agree – the US soldiers could have come to Israel, hang out a bit in Tel-Aviv’s bars, spend some time on the beach in Eilat, and go back, completely unharmed. Much better than what happens to them in Iraq.
Comment #95 August 11th, 2006 at 6:35 am
Scott said:
“The standard joke is that Hezbollah sends warning flyers too — on the missiles.”
Whereas the Israeli missiles carry an altogether different sort of message, it seems; check this link:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1153291980307
Comment #96 August 11th, 2006 at 7:23 am
Cute girls. . . .
No, but, you’re all talking like somebody should put a stop to this madness.
Comment #97 August 11th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
anonymous sez:
somebody should put a stop to this madness
“In dreams begins responsibility”
(Yeats, Schwartz, Creeley)