DON’T SWITCH OFF THE LOUDSPEAKER IN YOUR HOTEL ROOM!

A tourist in Myanmar has been sentenced to three months hard labor because he had switched off the loudspeaker in his room which prevented him from sleeping. It was a Buddhist prayer and he was sentenced because he had offended the Buddhist religion. How stupid and how outrageous can institutions be? Avoid Myanmar.

Fanaticism to the point of idiocy seems to be on the rise everywhere in the world, including religions that seemed broad-minded before, like Hinduism and Buddhism.
A few years ago, in India a very scholarly book on Hinduism has been taken out of the bookshops because it offended Hinduism. The writer, by he way, was more critical of other scholars than of Hinduism. My guess is that she didn’t take some Hindu scholars too seriously.

About Islamic sensitivities nobody needs to be reminded. Remember the cartoon where freshly-dead jihadists ate informed that heaven has run out of virgins. Till a few years ago the going rate was 40 virgins, meanwhile it has gone up till 72 virgins. What is the rate for girls who blew themselves up?
Scholars have argued that the original text most probably read: ‘plenty of green grapes.’ A transcription error of just one dot the wrong place, intentionally or not, could have shifted the meaning. The text about grapes would also fit, because grapes are mentioned just before too, while the virgins (‘green’ girls) fall out of the blue. Sorry for mixing up my color metaphors.

David Greer, writing about the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution once called fanatics the disease germs in the body politic. Religious fanatics are often worse than political fanatics, because common sense is even more repugnant to them.

What could explain this rising fanaticism?

Increasing exposure everywhere to an international world of finance, economics and technology diminishes local identities and local culture and that international world is clearly “Western”. Television does that, the internet and social media even more. If that is true, we are witnessing a backlash of threatened local cultures that cling to religion as an antidote to what might be an inferiority complex.

At the same time there is a backlash against liberalism, democracy, rationality and the acceptance of pluralism, even in Western countries. Part of  this may be due to a cycle of about 55 years in which progressivism and conservatism, right-wing and left-wing ideas change places. But only a part, I guess.

Unbridled capitalism bred socialism in its different forms. Narrow-minded socialism bred a return to neoliberalism and neoconservatism that spawned a world-wide financial system that is leaving behind so many disaffected that we get Occupy movements and worldwide blackening of multinationals.

The heydays of neoliberalists (read: neocapitalists) are over, though they still may assume they have the run of things.

Alternating waves are healthy - if they grow less and less extreme. But they also may grow more and more extreme.

Meanwhile, be careful in you holiday planning. Especially if you look like a Westerner.

ATROCITIES

(This is a selction from a text I wrote more than thirty years ago. Still relevant and today once more actual.)

Atrocities are what people are doing to people. Atrocities mean violence - unimaginable, unpredictable, unstoppable violence. Terror means wanton manipulation and assault, chase, rape, torture, inquisition, execution. It means being shot, slain, burned, slaughtered, drowned, or starved to death. It means horror, loneliness, impotence, madness, grief, guilt, shame, disgust, repugnance, rage, malice, rancor, hate, thirst, hunger, filth, cold. Above all, it means intense pain, fear and despair, until mind and body become unhinged. Terror is the breaking of body and spirit. Fear for our own life and limbs is often not the worst fear. Even more terrifying is fear of what may be done to our children, our parents, our family and our friends. Often, mental torture is added to physical torture. Where brutality reins freely, brutes grow smart and mean.

Terror occurs in mob violence and in lynch parties, in revenge, capture and abduction, in arrest, interrogation and internment, and in slavery. And in genocide, At large, terror occurs in repressive tyrannies and dictatorships and in occupied countries, especially when occupation forces encounter armed resistance. It occurs in revolutions, counterrevolutions, civil wars, especially religious and ideological wars.
Whatever the danger of ‘terrorists’, bands of political extremists using wanton violence to gain political attention and reach political ends, the larger challenge are terrorist regimes.
    Revolutions and civil wars, where the enemies are fellow citizens, usually breed more terror than do wars between countries. They destroy our feeling of a safe home-base among people to whom we belong. Religious and ideological wars are even more cruel and dangerous because they tend to destroy any remaining pragmatism and business sense.
   
Why are people cruel? Why do they torture? Why do they rape and kill and maim others, apart from just fighting? Many people like to watch violence and cruelty, blood and gore. Horror movies are entertainment. Victim behavior may trigger brutality in others. Masochism may trigger sadism, and sadism may trigger masochism. To explain violence we have to understand the tyrants, the butchers, the executioners, the brutes and the bullies. We also have to understand the perpetrators farther away: the pay masters, the bosses, the organizers, the people who rule or benefit.
    Perpetrators of cruelty and torture come in many types. Whatever the type of perpetrator, engaging in cruelty, torture and terror overcompensates for deep feelings of inferiority and worthlessness.
Cruelty, torture and terror constitute the ultimate lustful assertion, being unrestrained and all-present in the fear and horror and powerlessness of others. It transforms impotence in omnipotence, playing God or the Devil.  Just as an actor or musician basks in the attention and admiration of his audience, so a terrorist basks in the pain of his victims and the fear in spectators.
    Brutes see their descent into barbarism and sadism as courageous, hard, only for the strong. Brutes view others as sleepers, dreamers, sentimental squeakers, timid, afraid, soft and vulnerable. They view common folks as children of a lesser God.
   
What conditions turn people into brutes? The main breeding ground for brutes is intimidation and humiliation from an early age. Any continuous inhuman treatment of people sows the seeds of an inhuman response. Whenever people in authority treat others as small, insignificant or despicable, they create losers. In such losers, envy and hate may fester, and one day this hate may erupt. Brutality breeds brutes.
    The first brutes are born, not bred. ‘Psychopaths’ simply appear to lack conscience - or rather empathy. Their inhumanity is not an emotional reaction to being belittled, ignored, intimidated or rejected, but is rather a fact of life. Biological factors may play a role. As we analyze political terror here, physical factors are less important. But they do help to explain the beginnings.
       
We have to stop cruelty and terror, and we must do so without doubt, without hesitation, without undue consideration, and without becoming infected with what we try to eradicate. There are great differences between the surgeon who wields his knife, the butcher who wields his knife, and the sadist who wields his knife. Violence is usually is a butcher’s job. This job may become sadistic, but it must become surgical. A good cause does not need hate; it needs resolve. Surgeons don’t attack a cancer furiously with a kitchen knife. They concentrate on the job of cutting it out, calmly but definitely.
    Any timorous response to actual terrorism only strengthens it. Terrorism needs to be confronted squarely and strongly - without the responder becoming infected with the unholy triad of fear, hate and disgust. Even without indifference.
    Against fear, hate and disgust, we must mobilize wrath. Wrath is the kind of rage that is eye-opening instead of blinding. Wrath is adamant anger that makes us grow, not shrink. It makes us more human, not less human. Wrath is the unyielding strength of ‘Enough!’
    Sometimes terror for political reasons dies out gradually, just as some cancers spontaneously disappear. But no one in his right mind will count on this. Machiavelli already warned: malevolence is not vanquished by time, nor placated by gifts.
Tolerating terror is the penultimate political malpractice. The ultimate is to commit terror.    
If we want to fight terror, we need wrath and more: courage, common sense, and good organization. And preferably, those who fight terror are bachelors. If we speak or write about terror, we must spoil the sense of sport of the perpetrators. Contempt is good, if it is subdued and cool, and expressed without moral indignation. Indignation only entangles us in the mind web of the perpetrators, and when that happens their nostrils widen.
    The first root of political terror is extremism, the idea that the end justifies the means, that superhuman ends justify inhuman means. Extremism is the politics of fanaticism, while fanaticism is the psychology of extremism. The willingness to use extreme means for noble ends leads as surely to terror as indifferent or lecherous brutality does. Many fanatics at first abhor violence, but they start to accept its iron ‘necessity’. After all, all other methods have failed to convert the stubborn heathens and their chiefs and priests. The fanatics make themselves hard, unyielding servants of their higher purpose. Preaching fanatics are hot and acting fanatics are cold, but their henchmen are hot again.
    We have to see extremism for what it is: a sign of bigotry - and of incompetence. Competent people do not need either corruption or extremism. Ambition with incompetence breeds immorality. Hardness and extreme measures are indications of incompetence, just as a stainless steel condom would be a sign of impotence. If we really stand for something, we do not need to arm ourselves with extremist outcry.
    Other breeding grounds are poor areas filled with desperate people. Kids take to streets. Gangs offer compensation for inferiority feelings that lurk during adolescence, especially in boys. When we want to be somebody, but we are still nobody, our self-esteem is most easily corroded. Gangs offer protection, belonging, identity and self-worth.
    What else can we do? We should give more respect to feminine ideals in our society, ideals such as tenderness, intimacy, warmth. We can trade in our notions of macho for truer models of masculinity. (A real man fights other men and sleeps with women, a macho beats women and doesn’t dare to sleep with men.) Masculinity stands for courage, perseverance, honor, reliability - virtues that may be tempered and improved by feminine values. The ‘gentle man’ is one of the greatest inventions of civilization, in spite of the affectation, weakness and hypocrisy that may accompany it. By being gentlemen, men can have self-respect without being macho. Of course, we should know when to stop being gentle - and when to stop being violent.
   
Terror is the loss of reason, the loss of innocence, the loss of protection, the loss of hope, the loss of civilization. Cruelty, torture and terror constitute the ultimate pornography, the ultimate inhumanity. Large-scale atrocities are the deepest challenge, a black hole opening in society. No one wrote better about the opening of this black hole than Yeats in The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer
Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned
The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity

The ‘blood-dimmed tide’ is being loosed again.

(From Chapter 3 in my book The Ten Global Challenges: How People Make the World, An essay on politics, civilization and humanity. At www.lulu.com. Also as e-book at www.onlineorginals.com.)

Ideology? Personal choice! We are the people.

The essence of the Atlas syndrome is that we feel more responsibility than we can bear. So we have to balance our burden and our carrying power at the highest level of both impact and satisfaction. We should bite off as much as we can chew, while staying healthy. We should not stretch our load to the limits of our carrying capacity, or we would grow too tired, and deteriorate our future carrying capacity.

Our challenges should be really challenging, making us want to confront them, to exert ourselves, not to waste ourselves. We should not become frustrated and unhappy in carrying out our responsibilities. Stimulation and happiness are great sources of energy. Solving problems, meeting challenges, offering successful responses, provide at least as much energy as they take. And that is what we need - plenty of energy. We should carry our burden ‘with a light step, as gentlemen go’.

We can try to increase our understanding of the problems we face, our sense of discrimination to sift the important from the less important, the essential from the accidental, and to distinguish causes from effects and identify the loops by which effects become causes and vice versa. We need to gain a helicopter view, a global view, without losing sight of the particulars. There is no sense in becoming aware of more problems if we cannot map them, both practically and meaningfully. This approach takes both intelligence and guts.

If we lack one of those qualities, we may end up with merely an ideology, the poor man’s substitute for a vision. An ideology makes us aware of the problems of the world in terms of simple causes and effects, good people and bad people, clear-cut do’s and don’ts. But instead of becoming aware of the facts and problems first, we get a package deal, becoming aware of problems and their solutions simultaneously. Then we may feel that unless we buy this package deal, we will be doomed to ambivalence and impotence and therefore irrelevance.

So ideology appears to be an attractive offer if we are willing to pay the price of exchanging an independent mind for a program. Such an exchange is akin to selling our birthright for a pottage of lentils, something civilized people don’t do (nor have done to them).

In looking at the world, we cannot escape personal viewpoints and therefore subjective choices. But we can put these personal views to empirical test and critical review and still be strong and effective in our action. We can, that is, if we have guts. In this case, that means guts of mind.

A personal and flexible viewpoint differs from an ideology, like a personal dress differs from a uniform.

Now if you need a uniform, or if you think that uniforms are needed, or if you simply like a uniform, choose one that fits you and make sure it is of good quality. I will make some suggestions to help you choose. Think of these suggestions as a consumer guide to picking social or political ideologies. I recommend judging such ideologies by five criteria.

The first criterion is the extent to which social and political appeals are based on negative emotions, on fear, anger, hate, envy, contempt or despair. The more that such emotions are present, the more we should avoid these appeals. Such suspect appeals may take many forms: from contempt for opponents, to establishing order by inspiring terror in opponents; from envy and anger toward those who are better off, to fear for foreigners (xenophobia); from prophesying doom unless the prescribed solution is taken, to ascribing vile and base motives to those who refuse the solution.

The second, related criterion is how much understanding and empathy are extended to those who do not adhere to the ideology or oppose it. Be suspicious of scapegoating. Such an attitude is the main indicator for lack of empathy. Of course we may oppose outrageous and barbaric behavior, as long as we do not see such behavior as coming from inherently wicked people.

The ultimate in this lack of empathy occurs when those in power exterminate people instead of certain types of behavior. Throughout history, entire peoples have been decimated or exterminated for their alleged behavior or alleged characteristics. Beware when leaders portray other people as inhuman barbarians, and their own followers as a noble herd, full of goodwill. Carl Gustav Jung and Erich Neumann have explored the destructive psychology of scapegoating. Politics is full of scapegoating, but it is not a political disease. It is rather a social and individual disease, and a malignant one at that. Scapegoating has to be overcome, and every sign of overcoming it is welcome.

Joe Camplisson, a community development man who was in the thick of ugly sectarian heat and human misery in Belfast, wrote in 1974:

It is not these people

Way out there

We are the people

Here and now

And we are the people

That have the finger on the trigger.

The third criterion for judging ideologies is their appeal to positive emotions such as hope and joy, as long as these ideologies do not need to direct negative emotions toward scapegoats. An ideology better promises pie in the sky than the destruction of enemies. Still, the use of hope is dangerous. What will happen when hope is not fulfilled? Hope is especially dangerous with a collectivist approach.

The fourth criterion is the presence or absence of great collectives, staging great events, be they marches, rallies, or even mass prayer meetings or mass peace demonstrations. Mobs are dangerous political foundations, even when they are full of goodwill. The distance between ‘Hosanna!’ and ‘Crucify him!’ is disturbingly small.

The fifth criterion is the extent to which an ideology appeals to personal freedom and responsibility.

These five criteria suggest the presence or absence of incumbent destructive and fanatical elements. The twin criteria of appealing to negative emotions, and scapegoating, I find most helpful in analyzing political statements. These criteria offer a simple and powerful tool to weed out useless and even dangerous ideas, proposals, politicians and sometimes even parties.

Limitation of one’s own response seems an easy way out, but it usually is not for sensitive people. The world with its problems is each day encroaching into our lives through television, internet, radio, and newspapers. You may find it difficult to concentrate on your immediate surroundings instead of diluting yourself on the world. If you find that the world is still weighing on you, but you do not have the energy and talent to improve it, there are still ways to contribute. I will return to those ways in the last chapter.

If you have attention to spare, or cannot ignore the problems that you see, don’t bog yourself down with problems that keep staring you in the face, or you will only feed negative emotions. Think rather about the people who try to fight or to solve those problems. If the fact that people are still being tortured is nagging at you, become informed about the people who are fighting such torture. Think of them and support them. You can more easily walk about with feelings of sympathy for those who fight atrocities, than with feelings of hate for those who commit atrocities, or with feelings of hopelessness when thinking of those that suffer atrocities. If you cannot beat the problem, you can at least mentally join those who try to beat it. Such a choice will boost your energy rather than drain it.

A simple gift of money to a worthwhile cause is better than endless pondering about the ugliness of the world. Such pondering just makes us misers, adding to the ugliness. We should direct, not fragment or dilute our energy. It is better to give small sums repeatedly to the same personally and consciously chosen cause, about which we stay informed, than to contribute to many things that we can hardly can tell from one another. We will still be aware of a world full of problems, but perhaps then we can stand it, because the small things we do may grant us some satisfaction.

The difference between people with small talents who really use them, and people with great talents who use them, is small. The real difference is between people who care and those who do not. Some people do not care because they cannot, others because they will not. That difference is also great, but difficult to perceive.

Satisfaction brings the energy to do some more small things. It works more effectively than does overshooting yourself, as people with inflated egos are apt to do. They set goals for themselves that they can never reach, and by that habit they screen themselves from failure because they can always blame the circumstances, if not the world. So their superiority feelings are protected and they live on, barren, with elevated, but vulnerable self-regard. Ostentatiously trying to make deals that overrun his credit is the way a showman buries his talent. Let us trade with what we have, whatever the amount. ‘The rest is prayer, observance and discipline’.

What then - apart from writing or reading books like this one - is the profile of a civilized, humane, rational, effective citizen who feels responsible for the world, makes a contribution and does not turn away or suffer from being Atlas? It is someone who has found the golden mean:

1.     between optimism and pessimism;

2.     between passivity and frenzy;

3.     between meaningless and powerless political engagement.

It also means submitting private interests to the public interest without abandoning private interests or private judgment. Socially, it means common sense and responsibility; politically, it means statesmanship.

No matter how crushing the circumstances, if we find the role that really suits us, we will have, in several respects, the best of both worlds. We will find the peace of mind of contemplation in the midst of action. We will enjoy ourselves while exerting ourselves. We will be tremendously conscious of ourselves while forgetting ourselves. We will carry the world, with a light step.

These are diary notes of Winston Churchill. The date is May 10. The year is 1940:

‘As I went to bed at about 3 A.M., I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.’

Relief. The opposite of an Atlas syndrome. We may not have Churchill’s stature, nor will we be ever in his position, but every man or woman can reach such a point in a task that fits like a glove. First we must discover our destiny, which means we have to know both the world and ourselves. This may not be easy.

Around 1936 the political role of Churchill seemed to have finished. Most saw him as an opinionated and cantankerous old man who drank too much. If acute, professional political commentators were so mistaken about a man who had already been so long in the public eye, how can we be sure that we know our own destiny?

So let us find our destiny and be resilient and resourceful.

We are the people

Here and now

And we are the people

That have the finger on the trigger!

From: The Ten Global Challenges: How People Make the World. An Essay on Politics, Civilization and Humanity. Ordering the book