PSA

[sabotabby]

If you believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and sundry conflicts throughout the Middle East, will never be solved while current political and economic structures are intact, then I think you're likely right.

If you believe that said conflicts will not be resolved because you are the sort of curmudgeon who believes that people will always be fighting for some reason in one part of the world or another, then I disagree with you, but I'll shrug it off and not think any less of you for being cynical. I like cynics—I am one, at times—but if I didn't think a better world was possible, I'd have to pretty much give up, y'know?

If, however, you believe any of the following:

• there is something different about people in the Middle East that makes them fight more than people elsewhere, either because of a genetic factor or because of deeply rooted cultural values;

• Jews and Arabs have never gotten along and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on since the beginning of time and they never will get along because of something moronic written in some book somewhere;

• the ones who want to fight should be put on an island somewhere where they can duke it out and everyone else will shrug their shoulders and go on with their lives, and furthermore you are very clever for coming up with this solution all by yourself;

• "they" don't want peace;

• a resolution will only be reached once one population is deported or slaughtered; or

• the only way there will ever be peace in the Middle East is if a) the desert is turned to glass, b) the desert is turned into a parking lot, or c) someone drops a giant fifth-dimensional alien squid on a heavily populated area;

then really, you are an idiot, you lack historical perspective, and you are a racist schmuck. I got over that "turn the desert to glass" bullshit in high school at around the same time I got over Ayn Rand. It's basically the fascist end of the liberal "a plague on both their houses/cycle of violence" mentality and is just as absurd. The only reasons to think that you're living at the end of history are because you have an ego problem or are heavily invested in your own apathy, or both.

Yeah, just braid my hair and call me Pollyanna, motherfuckers. This too shall pass.

Comments

[sabotabby]

I think that's different. When each side has the capacity to not only obliterate each other, but obliterate the entire world several times over, it's logical to assume that the conflict can lead to the end of the human race, and therefore history. But the "end of history" meme wasn't common until after the Cold War. And while the Israelis have nukes, I don't think they brought enough for the whole class, fortunately.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

True, and the US and Russia are not at the hair-trigger level they were during the cold war such that if Israel set off their small set of nukes that it would trigger the big bang. And, hopefully, we'll never get back to that place.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

Actually, in the 1973 war if it came down to that the Israelis had a plan to do just that do just that if it looked like they were going to be overrun.

More underestimation of the power of moronic things written in some book somewhere.

[fr-defenestrato.livejournal.com]

I think you're mistaken. Plenty of people believe(d) before, during, and since the so-called 'Cold War' that we are living in the 'end times'. See Hal Lindsey, The Late, Great Planet Earth, a bestseller in the 1970s, and the Left Behind series of the last decade or so. This is just one brand of eschatology based on moronic things written in some books somewhere. Against that backdrop, even secular fears of world destruction were exacerbated throughout the 20th century as humans became absolutely capable of destroying, if not all life on earth, at least all the megafauna. Bunches of people with weak or questioning faith in the dominant religious belief systems started saying to theyselves, Selves, lookie-look at thumthar gubmints trying to git us all blowed up; ain't that look like what that John guy said in his Rebelatiums? I better git me to church!

And, to be precise about your original grousing, you didn't ask your hypothetical reader whether she believed she was 'living at the end of history'; rather, you made all your bullet points and THEN said You're a big dummyhead: 'The only reasons to think that you're living at the end of history are because you have an ego problem or are heavily invested in your own apathy, or both.' Well, no. You've left out the major reason people believe in the end of days, viz.: God done tol' me so. Plus, the beliefs expressed in your bullet points, I would submit, are not even remotely predicated on eschatological beliefs.

Now, by and large I agree that the viewpoints you protest in those bullet points are reprehensible (with the one minor quibble I've already made in comment to the original post). But, frankly, I've not seen anything in popular writing that supports the existence of a post-Cold War 'end of history meme' apart from the aforementioned eschatologies, which clearly predate the Cold War. I'm interested to know where/how you've formed your take on the folk derivation of 'glass the desert' attitudes.

Religion is an ego problem

[flintultrasparc.livejournal.com]

However, at the center of "God done tol' me so" and many religious beliefs is a very strong egoism that believes in the immortality of the human soul. It's horribly narcissistic. Religion, by and large, is an ego problem. The id has better things to do.

The "end of history" meme post cold war, I think is usally a reference to Fukuyama; and really doesn't have much to do with the apocalypse; so much as regarding the struggle between capitalism and socialism is over--and now all remaining conflicts will be ethnic and religious. Fukuyama went from declaring victory of Western Liberal Democracy (Israel fits in there somewhere) to being a neo-conservative supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, to then breaking with the neocons and voting Obama. He now believes: "War is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world." Frankly, I don't know why anyone listens to him, but his rhetoric seems to resonate with whoever is currently ruling (or going to rule) the U.S.

Anyway, Fukuyama's an opponent of posthumanity/transhumanity; but I'm sure he'll be enough of a hypocrite to embrace life longevity technology so I'll probably be hating on him for centuries to come. To bring this back to the topic, given advances in longevity medicine--I plan on living a very long time. If that's the case, I'm planning on seeing peace in the middle east--atleast for awhile.

Re: Religion is an ego problem

[fr-defenestrato.livejournal.com]

Wow: by virtue of having been living in a cave at the bottom of the ocean—or so it would seem—I was unaware of Mr. Fukuyama and his claim to the phrase 'end of history'.

As you point out, however, history's obsolescence in the Fukuyaman sense has nothing to do with eschatology. As I understand it, Mr. Fukuyama has cried 'We have a winner!' in the global ideological tournée, a sort of Political Ideology to End All Political Ideologies: liberal democracy at the top of the food chain. Which, setting aside all assumed niceties about his theories, about which I know nothing, sounds like utter kindergarten bullshit to me. Even humans and lions and sharks get viri and bacterial infections, and 'In [Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution], he qualified [ed: hedges? you did say hedges, right?] his original 'end of history' thesis, arguing that since biotechnology increasingly allows humans to control their own evolution, it may allow humans to alter human nature, thereby putting liberal democracy at risk.' Uh-huh. Sounds like a virus in the ointment to me. Oops, I meant to say history is ALL BUT at an end.

So. Even given (hypothetically, temporarily, and solely for the sake of argument) the radical assertion 'Religion, by and large, is an ego problem,'—how could it fail to be a superego problem, if we're relying on crude formulations of mind?—I do not see how the same ego problem could be said to explain anyone's belief in the 'end of history' in the Fukuyaman sense (though cerebral trauma due to repeated head-dropping might.) Frankly, I don't see any logical application of this so-called 'post-Cold War meme' to the issues and conflicts that have beleaguered the Middle East; in fact, those issues and conflicts would seem to argue against any such stance—though Mr. Fukuyama would doubtless explain them away with all the grace of a startled gazelle escaping a peritonitic lion.

At bottom, however, while I revile religious belief of all flavors and care not to form any defense thereof, I just can't get behind your claim that 'belief in the immortality of the human soul' derives from or is attributable to an inflated ego, at least in any Freudian or street sense of 'ego'. I genuinely believe the human ego can be more correctly said to justify each and every 'Here is my truth' statement in this thread (mine, yours, others') than to justify a primeval, seemingly hardwired notion like 'I am and therefore cannot not be.'

In general, and in an attempt to justify my petulance and fractiousness with a glance, at least, at the original topic, I frankly get put out when people seek to proscribe avenues of discourse because they disagree with them or are tired of hearing them. It basically says, with the certitude (if not the amplitude) of conviction of an Arab killing Jews for Allah, 'I have weighed all the possible issues and opinions, and this one, this one, and this one are utterly wrong. And the people that think that, suck.' Sigh. I know I am hypocritical, because I think the people who think Jesus wants me dead for being a faggot, suck. Oh well.

Fukuyama has a super ego!

[flintultrasparc.livejournal.com]

I agree. it's a Super-Ego problem. I was being funny. I still don't think a desire for immortality is inherent to the Id. The Id doesn't think about stuff like that. If anything, the id wants to enjoy life the most, or escape it's problems. All this angst over potential non-existence definitely seems to be working on a much higher level in the consciousness.

I, apparently controversially, don't think religion is at the heart of this conflict. Many folks in the U.S. (and Canada) seem to wish to interpret the conflict through a religious viewpoint--which I suppose is only to be expected among societies more religious than Israel.

I think we are just semantically stretching sabotabby's rant against some very stupid arguments that start with a position that mass murder is a solution to conflict that has directly killed less than 15,000 people since 1936. Not that the discussion and it's tangents aren't fascinating.

I'm glad I could tell you about Fukuyama. I've been annoyed with him since 1992.

Can the posthumans count on your support against the fans of Jesus the homophobe? I mean, if they hate you for wanting to do what you are capable of with just your god-given biology, wait till they find out about the people who want to splice chlorophyll production into their DNA.

Re: Religion is an ego problem

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

I think is usally a reference to Fukuyama; and really doesn't have much to do with the apocalypse; so much as regarding the struggle between capitalism and socialism is over--and now all remaining conflicts will be ethnic and religious.

That idea has been around for a long time before Fukuyama, since it's pretty part and parcel of millennialist religions (in the chirstian second coming, jesus comes to fight evil, wins, everyone lives in utopian happyland for a thousand years and then all the good guys go to heaven) for thousands of years.

In the modern sense, Fukuyama ripped that idea off from Marx, which is pretty damn ironic in itself, but not surprising since most capitalists are just as mistakenly materialist as Marxists are, though they like to claim that they are some kind of different breed.

Re: More underestimation of the power of moronic things written in some book somewhere.

[sabotabby]

What flintultrasparc said—it was a reference to Fukuyama, not premillenial dispensationalism. Arguably, though, both Fukuyama and the fundies suffer from a similar flaw in their thinking, which is that they live at the most significant point in human history.

And this is the point—"glass the desert" presumes that the current situation, which while having deep historical roots only goes back to 1948, is a permanent state of affairs. This permanence would make it unique amongst all conflicts throughout history, as the One That Is Permanently Unsolvable. By coincidence, it is also the one that is particularly prominent right now, while we (the special people living in the most special time) happen to be alive.

Make sense (I was rather angry when I wrote this)?

Re: More underestimation of the power of moronic things written in some book somewhere.

[fr-defenestrato.livejournal.com]

Yes. I am perhaps impoverished of historical education, but I can't quite accept that 'the current troubles' are 60 years old and no older. If you insist on shackling a political struggle with the accoutrements of current political structures, sure, you've got your 'current situation'. But how fair is that configuration, exactly, given millennia of animosity and violence?

Anyway, I've responded above re Fukuyama and his 'end of history'. Pooh-pooh, said I. I guess for all the minutiae in which we differ, we can both go Pooh-pooh under the same standard. Yay!

Re: More underestimation of the power of moronic things written in some book somewhere.

[flintultrasparc.livejournal.com]

given millennia of animosity and violence?You're talking about between Jews and Christians, right?