Lloyd wrote in response to my note earlier tonight. I copy part of his note here, and respond more fully below:
Lloyd wrote:
...snip...
However small, the Muslim secularists currently control key Arab states. Money is certainly at work now, and is especially frustrating since we supply the capital from our purchase of oil and drugs. The secular Arab states caused us little or no trouble when they were broke.
But now what should we do, or not do?"
...snip...
Terrorism" is just as big a problem for those governments as for us.
They want stability.
We must support their POLICE, and JUDICIARY.
THE WINNING STRATEGY IS NOT DEMOCRACY PER SE, IT IS establishing the RULE OF LAW.
(The real winning strategy is getting off oil, but that's another discussion)
Terrorism - old definition, Pre-BUSHCO:
"Criminal Acts Performed In Pursuit of Political Goals"
We need to respond to the criminal aspects...with legal and police methods (infiltration, neutralization, arrest, open trials, and sentences...with rather more than usual cooperation between supposed national enemies (Pakistan and India for example) it would be EASY to erase all the terrorists.
That was not and is not the point of BUSHCO.
They wanted, and obtained, perpetual war, so they can perpetually suck at the teat of taxpayer largess...while clanging a pro-christian cultural crusades cymbol.
BUSHCO AND THE SAUDI EXTREMISTS WHO FINANCE OBAMA ARE ON THE SAME PAGE AND SERVING EACH OTHER, NOT NECESSARILY explicitly, SIMPLY BY THEIR ACTIONS...more terrorists now than in 2001, BUSHCO was best recruiting tool the extremists could wish for, and all we have to show for it is thousands of US dead, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani dead, and millions upon millions of displaced people, and 50% of the world's population has been born, watching us do it!!!
Not too good for public relations, or being a moral example.
Culturally: One cannot export, demand, instill, or otherwise "spread" democracy (except by being a better example than we have been lately). SPREADING DEMOCRACY is oxymoronic on its face. Democracy must be home grown, to be meaningful, and, it requires a population that can READ and understand what their civic duties are...Afghans aren't quite there yet, probably neither is Qatar, who knows?!?
However, a sense of JUSTICE is GENETICALLY EMBEDDED IN US. (loads of research from monkeys to college students, we've got a moral compass that's built in (3 month old infants show it...) and that includes a sense of what is just and what is not just.
Establishing the RULE OF LAW is what wins.
1. The natives appreciate that they can rely on the government and the laws.
PAKISTAN is the current poster child for renewal of their entire court system, since it was dismantled a couple of years ago...the people aren't pleased!
2. Countries that establish the rule of law will much more easily attract CAPITAL, which is the only religion worth pursuing amongst those with it!
3. With rule of law, things can progress, women can be liberated to have educations and control of their own bodies, democracy can bloom...if that's what the natives want...
I am afraid the Neo-Con's kool-aid has you swimming Lloyd.
There are reasons for war, and there are reasons for war.
Religion is used as a justification for actions, on both sides.
However, the Iraqi war is ONLY about OIL and obtaining the military investment necessary to defend our use of OIL, for ever (or 100 years, whatever comes first).
FOLLOW THE MONEY: HALIBURTON, LOCKHEED, EXXON, ETC.
Have you heard that "We are fighting them there, so we won't have to fight them here?"
Are we really defending our incredible acts in Iraq by that claim?
Could there be a more heinously IMMORAL act, fighting a war on a proxy state's ground?
FORGET ABOUT THE MERITS OF OUR INVASION AND OCCUPATION OF A NATION THAT WAS ABSOLUTELY NO THREAT TO THE U.S., SUCH AS IRAQ...
IN THIS DEMOCRACY, CAN YOU VOTE FOR FIGHTING A WAR ON FOREIGN GROUND EXPLICITLY TO PROTECT THE US?
THAT'S HOW OUR CULTURE WILL END THE WAR IN IRAQ...IF PEOPLE TRULY THOUGHT ABOUT JUST THAT IDEA, HOW MORAL IS IT TO FORCE A WAR UPON SOMEWHERE ELSE, TO DEFEND OUR LAND HERE...why don't they phrase it that way?
because obama and hillary are supporters of the corporate interests too, otherwise they couldn't get elected, that's the corporate capital nature of our democracy!
(P.S. LLOYD: ON 9/11, I watched the second tower get hit live on Television, I thought it was a movie trailer....
I decided, immediately, the correct response to this act was Surrender.
Anyone crazy enough, desperate enough to do this, would do it again.
The only way to prevent that is to surrender, so they won't have reason to do it again.
Of course, I presented my viewpoint to many in the ensuing days, they were aghast, or worse, but...when they asked me to expound, I simply asked, "To whom ought we surrender?" and of course, no one knew who had sent the planes that day at the time...and so, since they couldn't tell me to whom we ought to surrender, I asked them how could we go to war...
If you are at WAR, you MUST know to WHOM MIGHT YOU SURRENDER.
To whom ought we surrender since we're in a "War on Terror"?
If you don't know, then we aren't at war at all...one cannot proclaim war on a tactic, there are RULES and LAWS of war, and BUSHCO BROKE ALL OF THEM!
Justice grinds slowly, but there will be justice in due time...)
PPS ( and a few more comments below):
DON'T DISCOUNT THE ARMEGEDDON CROWD WHO ARE BECOMING QUICKLY ISOLATED AS MCCAIN SHEDS PREACHERS...IRAQ ISN'T ABOUT OIL, IT IS ABOUT FULFILLMENT OF GOD'S PROPHESY DON'T YOU KNOW.
END TIMES, TITANTIC BATTLES, WEST VERSUS EAST, CRUSADES, GOTTA LOVE IT!
On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 7:54 PM, Lloyd wrote:
Michael.
My reference to "primitive" societies was intended to mean those that began to form as early man came down out of the trees.
(((
I WOULD REFER TO THEM AS EARLY SOCIETIES BUT SURE!
You really are asking, what is the nature of human nature? !!!
What made "proto-humans" different? What was our competitive advantage?
(FIRE? LANGUAGE? SOCIAL RULES THAT ENGENDERED BETTER RETENTION OF KNOWLEDGE OVER GENERATIONS???)
BUILT IN RULES of right and wrong are a huge part of it!
(These are required to have humans be social creatures to begin with!)
However, as I've discussed at length elsewhere, It's not nice to (try to) fool mother nature...our "success" as a species may be quite shortlived...
)))
However small, the Muslim secularists currently control key Arab states. Money is certainly at work now, and is especially frustrating since we supply the capital from our purchase of oil and drugs. The secular Arab states caused us little or no trouble when they were broke.
But now what should we do, or not do?
Lloyd
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael
To: Lloyd
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 9:01 PM
Subject: Re: Culture
Hi all, back again, just returned and let me add some quick comments "inline" below for your fascination..
This is cursory, and I'm exhausted from my vacation (how does that work?) so here's something...
On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 12:01 PM, Lloyd > wrote:
Sue, Nancy & Michael,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
you are welcome.
This all started with Sue's and my email exchanges regarding religion and culture. It is my hottest topic because of the Mideast situation, the Arab theocracies and the growth of militant Muslimism.
Okay, wondered where it came from.
Sue and I agreed that we were both non-secular members of different cultures, both cultures having similar religious traditions. My first argument was that cultures had to grow from religion, but from your emails, I see that there is much more to the subject. I enjoyed Michael's comment that the God of the Old Testament is a "farmer's god".
You make the point that cultures "grow up" in a society, and it makes sense that this is so, but is not some form of isolation required for a people to form and maintain a culture? Examples are geography, e.g. oceans, deserts or mountains; prejudice, e.g. Jews, Mormons; language, e.g. the Amish. Cultures can be maintained by the same forces that supported their beginnings, by indoctrination of the young, as well as forces from government or a priesthood.
Yes exactly. What you see today (cultures clashing! it is called "globalization"!) is because there are no longer natural barriers for ideas to be exchanged. THINGS ARE GETTING OUT OF "CONTROL" AND SOME DON'T LIKE THAT (Chinese Gov't over the past 60 years, Myanmar's dictators, North Korean, Albania, Cuba, etc. are the extreme examples...)
The learning of Language (and therefore the basic passing of CULTURE) is done in family groups. It is hard to sway family tradition in a generation or two...generally, we do things like our parents...cooking, working, voting, etc.
(Sorry, I understand the term "primitive society" in a much different way...all cultures and societies, are "equal" from a sophistication point of view, (all societies have to solve the same problems, in order to continue their cultural socialization as you said above...therefore there are no such things as "primitive" societies!!!) I'll assume that you mean cultures without the technological (so called) advantages we enjoy)
whatever their culture's beginnings, natural disasters like fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, drought, earthquake, disease, death, eclipses, and so on, were frightening phenomena. These mysterious happenings provided fertile ground for the empowerment of individuals promising to identify the supernatural powers behind the mischief and prescribe (religious) behaviors to placate them.
How "god" or "spirit" or "supernatural" get's into the picture is as you say.
Think about what else is "promised" by our western religious tradition:
We have souls (whatever you think that is, about as easy to define as god(s))
We will live forever through our souls. THAT SEEMS to be of interest to people...
When you dream of dead grandma, that's evidence of souls.
When you have or hear of, a near death experience, and white light is radient down the tunnel of love...that's evidence of everlasting life.
Any unexplained phenomena:
Why did the fire burn my third child but not my second? God Knows!
et. etc. etc. you can see how all of this can be institutionalized in many incarnations, so as to attract those who are currently looking for explanations...
Motivation to seek power seems so basic to human nature that I don't see how any culture, whatever its beginnings, could avoid coming under religious dominance at some point in their history.
Dominance? Not really. FOLLOW THE MONEY. IT IS ALL ABOUT THE ECONOMY, WHATEVER ELSE IS GOING ON...THE RELIGIOUS AND THOSE WHO MAINTAIN THEIR KEEP THROUGH DONATIONS OF THE SHEEP, ARE ONLY AT THE BECK AND CALL OF THOSE WHO OWN THE CAPITAL AND MEANS. They are the great benefactors afterall, Medici for example, merchants who donate huge sums to the church, for their own purposes...
We know how desperately those in power will take measures to cling to their power. How did the Western democracies ever implement the separation of church and state?
REVOLUTION - FIRST THE RELATIVELY MINOR US OVERTHROW OF THE BRITISH, FOLLWED BY THE TRULY MAGNIFICENT FRENCH REVOLUTION...THE LAST TIME PEOPLE HAD THE SAME MILITARY MEANS AS THE GOVERNMENT, but that's another story...the despotic and inbred royals and religious could not control the will of the people, as long as the people were as well armed as their own troops...
Although not a guarantee, are not non-secular Arab governments pre-requisite to a peaceful middle east? How will it come about? Does it matter?
It matters plenty. MOST MUSLIMS JUST WANT TO HAVE A PEACEFUL PLACE TO RAISE THEIR KIDS, HOW SURPRISING, YES, THEY ARE HUMAN.
Don't be taken in by the koolaid of neocons.
Extreme Muslim Radicalism is a very small number of humans...
sURE.
1. TERRORISM CANNOT BE FOUGHT WITH MILITARY MEANS. TERRORISM IS A TACTIC, IT ISN'T DETERED BY WAR.
2. THE NEOCONS REDEFINED WHAT THEY CONSIDERED TERRORISM, IN ORDER TO HAVE A MILITARY RESPONSE.
3. fOLLOW THE MONEY. OIL IS UP, DEFENSE IS UP...HELLO~
Yet, after a trillion dollars of Iraq/Afghan expenditure we are less safe.
How very interesting. They have used a few deranged survivors of the Crusades - Osama Bin Laden and his Saudi funders who also support the Madrassas...to terrify the American people to unending war.
Welcome John McCain, his lobbyists and the entire Military Industrial Complex...
Don't you think, if we spent 1,000,000,000,000 on software and hardware and satellites we could have information in a palatable form delivered world wide for everyone (10 times over).
(there are 6.8 billion people, we'd spend $130 per person (not everyone needs hardware) and it would be enough....)
How about, along the way, we spent part for Potable water for the millions who have none, and condoms for the women to control their fertility, and then, maybe, we'll be able to introduce the concepts necessary for continued human occupation of the planet.
-
Cheers,
Frish
