Thanks Lawry,
I guess my interpretation of what John Gray said was a little too simple. I
have a problem with books. I tend to read them too quickly and too long ago and
never read the last few chapters.
Be that as it may, in addition to those you've made, I'd make a few more points
on the creation of Der Judenstaat -- the Jewish state in the Middle East. What
I say below is based on some research I did on the Arab/Israeli question a few
years ago.
One thing we mustn't forget is that the Jews were never popular in Europe.
Throughout European history, Jews were demons and victims. The Holocaust was
not the first mass killing of Jews, even if it was by far the largest and most
efficiently organized. There had been others based on little more than the need
for an ultimate victim - one that was anti-social, anti-Christian, or even
anti-human, and who was both despised and dreaded. The Jews of Europe, seen as
insular, secretive, and at times sinisterly wealthy, filled this role
admirably. There were pogroms and persecutions. And there were the expulsions:
England expelled them in 1290. France in 1306, Lithuania in 1395, Spain in
1492, Portugal in 1497. Even though there were some re-admissions (England in
1655) Many of the expelled Jews wound up in places not especially good for them
later - the various principalities that later became Germany and in eastern
Europe.
Fast forward to the early part of the 20th Century: The Ottoman Empire had
collapsed, and the British having been given a rather difficult chunk of that
empire decided that it would be a good place to send the Jews of Europe and be
rid of them for good. It was their ancient homeland, after all. The Balfour
Declaration of 1917, named after the British Foreign Secretary of the time,
favored the creation of a Jewish state, and was a primary instrument in making
the Jewish ancient homeland into a modern one. However, the Declaration simply
recognized something that was happening anyhow. Beginning in the latter part of
the 19th Century, Jews had bought a considerable amount of land from
Palestinian Arabs. The rise of Nazism spurred the migration so that by 1940,
some 30% of the land of the Palestine Mandate was owned by Jews, who comprised
about as high a proportion of the region's people.
Fast forward to the post-WWII period: While many minor conflicts occurred
between the Jewish landowners and their Arab neighbors, it wasn't until after
WWII that problems escalated to their present dimensions. In 1947, the British
withdrew from the Palestine Mandate and a United Nations Partition Plan divided
the territory into two states. Jews got some 55% of the land and the Arabs
about 45%. The Arab parts included the Westbank and the Gaza strip, areas to
which most were forced to move. Israel officially became a state on May 14,
1948. Jerusalem, sacred to Islam, Judaism and Christianity, was supposed to be
an international site but it was taken over by Israel and soon displaced Tel
Aviv as the Israeli capital.
Large numbers of Arabs fled or were driven out of the newly-created Jewish
State. The continuing conflict between Israel and the Arab world resulted in
the lasting displacement that persists today. Immigration of Holocaust
survivors and Jewish refugees from Arab lands doubled Israel's population
within a year of independence. Over the following decade approximately 600,000
Mizrahi Jews, who fled or were expelled from surrounding Arab countries and
Iran, migrated to Israel.
To end this, two points are worth making. One is that many of the Jews who went
to Israel probably didn't want to go there. Essentially, their civilization was
that of Europe. They spoke European languages and had their own variants of
those languages, Yiddish for example. The other point is that the creation of
the Middle Eastern Judenstaat had no idealism about it. The migration to Israel
was the result of conflict after conflict that stemmed as far back as the
diaspora itself. However, one thing that can be said of the Judenstaat is that
the Jews have been able to maintain it and make it thrive, though at the cost
of other people who also live there or are its neighbors.
That is about all I have to say for the moment, Lawry. Now I have to get back
to a book that the writer himself may not have understood: "Living in the End
Times" by Slavoj Zizek.
My but it's great to be retired. You can do absolutely dumb things without
anyone tapping you on the shoulder!
Regard, Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence de Bivort
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 11:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] In the name of charity
Hi, Ed. Interesting post. Thanks.
I think the message as you have summed it up is deeply misleading, though.
Let me try to explain.
The model he uses sequences the utopian dream first, and them its
'consequences'. That seems logical enough, but it reflects the common mistake
of not seeing the formulation of a dream as simply a part of the evolving
condition of humankind. Gray accepts that an idea is the foundation point of a
sequence of following events. I will suggest that the formulation is itself
simply a part of that very sequence, and not intrinsically the 'starting point.'
I'll offer an example of a sequence that I know well: that which led to the
creation of Israel and what has happened since.
Gray would, I think, see Theodor Herzl's publication of Der Judenstaat (The
Jewish State) in the last decade of the 19th century as the utopian plan that
launched political Zionism. Motivated by this vision, Jews around Europe began
the search for a place to create such a state. So far so good: a utopian vision
appropriately gives rise to a movement to implement the vision. But then things
started to go sour. A faction of the Zionist Organization decided that the
place had to be Palestine, despite the fact that Palestine already was
inhabited by a full population. Then things got worse: That faction took over
the Zionist movement and decided that the Palestinians could be dismissed: they
were bedouin, they were few, they were farmers, they didn't have a government,
they were really Arabs who could resettle elsewhere, they were poor and
uneducated and would welcome Jewish expertise and benevolence, etc. etc. The
process of Zionist demonization of the Palestinians and whoever they are
associated with -- Arabs, Muslims, Arabists, etc. was launched. And that led to
Palestinian resistance, escalation, wars (of which Afghanistan and Iraq are
only the two most recent phenomena), and now a growing anti-Semitism.
OK, you may be thinking, doesn't this narrative simply bolster Gray's theory
that utopian visions end in disasters and horror? I say that that would be a
tempting but incorrect interpretation.
Because Der Judenstat didn't come out of nowhere. Itself, it was a response
to...horror and disaster. The anti-Semitic pogroms of Russia and Eastern
Europe, The Dreyfus case (though popular history has exaggerated its impact on
Herzl himself). So, from a simple logical point of view, one could as easily
argue that real horrors produce a utopian vision, which then may or may not go
on to trigger an effort to implement it.
Here is a mind experiment: identify some political accomplishment that you
admire and feel has been essentially beneficial. Now ask yourself: Was this
created from a utopian vision? And then...ask yoursself what led to the
creation of that utopian dream. Is it not some horror, some disaster?
Mine safety regulations have saved hundreds of thousands of miners death,
wounding, and ill-health (though we hear more about the times the regulations
have been flaunted and men have died). Airbags save tens of thousands of
people each year int he US alone. The United Nations provides peace keeping
services in dozens of countries each year. The Red Cross and Red Crescent
assist hundreds of thousands of people each year. The ACLU provides vital legal
services to upholding individual rights in the face of government efforts to
reduce them. Amnesty International protects people around the world who are
oppressed by their governments. Medecins sans frontieres. Yes, all of these
were launched on utopian visions -- but each of these visions were created out
of the witnessing of horror and disaster.
So blaming the vision for the eventual disappointments and faults and
disasters that follow makes little sense. Let us recognize that the human
condition allows for such disasters and horrors -- and why this is would make
for a fascinating and enlightening discussion -- and that perhaps, as I see it
-- the utopian vision like the yeast in bread provides a leavening to that
condition. It provides a catalyst for change and improvement. Without the
utopian vision mankind would have little chance of improvement and no chance at
all of changing that basic programming or whatever it is that keeps generating
horrors and disasters, even by, it sadly seems, people who we view as
upstanding, as were some of the early Zionists utopians.
I'm very interested in your thoughts on this....
Cheers,
Lawry
On Aug 4, 2010, at 8:11 AM, Ed Weick wrote:
One of the best books I've read on the theme of grand social dreams and
what happens because of them is John Gray's Black Mass. The simple words of
Christ led to huge persecutions; The Enlightenment led to chaos and the
choppings of many heads; the perceptions of Adam Smith justified the creation
of vast city slums; Marx's idea that workers should own the means of production
led to Stalinism; and the American dream of freedom and democracy has thus far
led to Iraq and Afghanistan. How we dream and how we behave because of those
dreams are two very different things.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandwichman" <[email protected]>
To: "Keith Hudson" <[email protected]>; "RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME
DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 11:46 PM
Subject: [Futurework] In the name of charity
> Keith wrote: "Every conceivable type of government cares about
> unemployment, and has done so throughout history if it wants to
> maintain power and sleep easy."
>
> The semi-official conventional wisdom on unemployment is that it
> doesn't exist. If it does exist, it is voluntary. If it is
> involuntary, it reflects moral defects of the unemployed themselves.
> If it exists, is involuntary and not the fault of the unemployed it
> will soon be eliminated through the equilibrium of the market.
> Therefore it doesn't REALLY exist.
>
> So why should every conceivable type of government "care" about
> unemployment? There are, of course, plenty of lucrative swindles that
> can be engineered in the name of charity. Ray Harrell and I met up
> yesterday afternoon and during our conversation Ray brought up Herman
> Melville's "The Confidence Man." Government's care about unemployment
> the way the confidence man cares about... well, *confidence*!
>
> As for the efficacy of gold as a "real" monetary standard, it reminds
> me of Schumacher's quote from Gandhi about "dreaming of systems so
> perfect that no one will need to be good." Schumacher cited those
> words in the context of a discussion of the ethical flaw in Keynes'
> ironical argument that the "economic possibilities for our
> grandchildren" somehow depended on us continuing, for a few decades
> more, to "pretend to ourselves... that fair is foul and foul is fair;
> for foul is useful and far is not."
>
> --
> Sandwichman
> _______________________________________________
> Futurework mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
>
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