To burn with desire and keep quiet
about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.
(Federico Garcia Lorca)
Syria is not for the Syrians and
Iraq is not for the Iraquis. The Earth is Allah's.
(Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of
IS, the Islamic State )
We like our history as is
Here in the United States another
battle is taking place in the ever hardening cultural divide. This
time it's over the College Board's revised “curriculum framework”
for the Advanced Placement test in U.S. History. The New HistoryWars.
Most of us over a certain age
remember high school history courses as little more than memorizing
names, dates and facts, all in all pretty boring. In reality, we
American know virtually nothing about our own history let alone the
history of the world.
Now, it's not that the U.S. is unique
in creating historical fairy tales or slanting the truth. We are
pretty much amateurs compared with the dismal police states and
theocracies dotting the planet. What is different is that our
American “exceptionalism”has never been really challenged or
forced to confront the reality, and ignorance is most certainly
harmful to our health and well being
Afraid and fearful and so fearfully
afraid.
Observing humankind across the planet
at the present brings to mind the lines from Yeats' The Second
Coming: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of
passionate intensity.” Human evolution lurches and weaves along in
some indeterminate direction, while our technological prowess
disappears over some unknown horizon.
Meanwhile, the small collection of
monsters that make up IS may be the latest example of human
malevolence but it will likely not be the last. Monsters have
certainly crossed the land called Iraq and Syria in the past.
The Mongol invasions from Central and
North Asia in the 12th and 13th century may
have been one of the most destructive in human history, and terror
was certainly used as an effective weapon. The Mongol armies
conquered China, the Turkic tribes and attacked Russia and Eastern
Europe. In the mid-13th century they destroyed Baghdad,
which in the 9th century was the greatest center of
learning in the world. The monsters have always been with us; the
goal is to keep them in the caves as long as possible.
Sand beneath our shifting feet
Why should we be so surprised today
that cave dwellers like the Islamic State have suddenly appeared in
the light of day? Again from William Butler Yeats: Things fall apart,
the centre cannot hold, Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. Yes,
things do fall apart. Excluding for the time being such issues as a
global population of more than 7 billion people, climate change that
can be denied only by the delusional and a global economic system
dressed in a top hat and tails, we simply have to look around us,
especially at some of the major nation-states:
For example, China, a police state
fearful of its own people, seems to have as a guiding star a
determination to turn the planet into its own plantation, regardless
of the destruction it will likely cause along the way; Russia, an
environmental disaster in the making, with President Putin apparently
imagining himself a 21st century czar; America, an
increasingly dysfunctional society with a decaying 18th
century Constitution, and who single-handedly destabilized a
significant part of the Middle East. And the rest? Pick a continent.
For an interesting article on ad hoc violence at the local level read
In times of regional violence, local rules apply. (See below.)
It doesn't seemed far fetched to
envision more regional and local conflicts with nation-states
exerting increasing repression against its own citizens as well as nearby smaller states, until the more powerful state itself begins to implode.
Loyalty to what and to whom may become the overarching question. No,
the Earth doesn't belong to Allah but to all the visible—and not so
visible—life inhabiting the planet--equally. Will the “best”
regain conviction?
Additional Reading
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