Good points, Mike. I see aggressive authoritarianism as a
developmental stage. This behaviour did not start in the 20th century,
it starts as humans develop a sense of individual self.
Not just societies ( or "religions" ) but all human effort - from an
infant growing to adulthood to our shared global culture - have to
wrestle with growth through shifting value systems.
Our desires are influenced by what we see outside- our ability to
responsibly handle those desires has to develop inside us. The two are
often in conflict. It's human nature.
( A glitch in the programming, eh, a broken link somewhere. Who
designed these brains, anyway?)
The same goes for societies. The 8-year old wanting the keys to the
Camaro, the 15-year old wanting access to billions of dollars, or to
heroin, the 19-year old wanting to be king, or pope, or the
Unibomber....
The immediacy of communication and access to technologies means that
across the globe we are at different stages, but we are confronted by
all the differences. We see them, they impact our perception, and we
have to find our cultural solutions in the face of all this knowledge.
Earlier in human history, we didn't know about them, and our growth
was more self-referential. Not less violent, but usually smaller scale
in its effects. Again, you'll see this progression in kids as well as
organizations and societies. Now we see everything, immediately, and
people at any developmental level can access information and
technologies that were developed in another developmental level.
It reinforces that we are in this together. No matter how divided we
feel from each other as a species, we have one planet, one set of
resources, and one shared meta-meme-field we create and inhabit. To
survive we will have to figure out how to work with each other,
whatever our developmental level. Rapid growth and a wider sense of
responsibility for our actions - small and large- is demanded of all
of us.
Exceptions do not exist. Earth is a closed system.
Tory
On Sep 16, 2012, at 3:59 AM, Mike Oliker wrote:
Is the problem blowing up in the Middle East Islam or something
else? On
the one hand it is fully dressed up as Islam. It wears turbans,
speaks
Arabic quotes the Koran and the Hadith, issues Fatwas. Is seems fully
Islamic and sounds like religious fanaticism. But, oddly, if you
strip away
the religious trappings, it looks a lot like Nazism and Communism, the
obscene 20th Century Totalitarian movements we fought for a century.
There is the desire for a single omnipotent leader, for everyone to be
forced to believe the same things as everyone else. The belief that
glorious ends justify any conceivable means. The blood lust and
focus on
terror and random violence. Hatred and scapegoats and the language of
genocide and class warfare and now sectarian warfare. Maybe this
isn't an
excess of religious passion, but a rather more base desire in a new
hat.
Is this just a phase very traditional societies, with rigid
hierarchies and
sharp sex role divisions, go through as they modernize? As they
modernize,
they look at the West and see decadence and weakness and calculate
that,
instead of modernizing, they can just conquer the West and
subordinate it.
Instead of relaxing their hierarchies, they can make the more
extreme and
rigid on their way to world domination. The goal seems more and more
unworkable, but the process seems to be playing out yet again.
-Mike Oliker
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
