[humanmarkup-comment] Sneak Preview-an article in the works

The following is but part one. Part two is envisioned as a more specific examination of how the Palestinians and Israelis carefully attempt to mold public perception of each other and the situation by never talking about their own activities at all, but only about how they have been unfairly attacked by those terrorists opposing them. That will lead to a further examination of that process of attempting to mold public perception without thought to how such single-sided presentations always distort public perception such that it eventually becomes impossible to ever determine truth. So we become our own victims because we deprive ourselves of accurate information.

Perception and Peace 2002
by Rex Brooks, Vice Chair, OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Commitee

While this article concerns how the XML vocabulary that will be known as the Human Markup Language can contribute to better understanding which in turn may help the cause of Conflict Resolution in our Modern Digital Society, we must start with the facts that make the effort to create this vocabulary, this computer language imperative.

The American War on Terrorism and the latest crisis in the Middle East are putting the issue of Peace and War at the forefront of Public Perception here in the midst of spring 2002.

While the current manifestations of these on-going human conflicts dominate the headlines, it is all too easy to forget that the underlying conflicts are as old as human civilization. Specifically, the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Middle-Eastern-led, Al-Quaeda/Islamic-Jihad Fundamentalist, Anti-Western terrorist war have their roots in the civlizations that grew out of the Tigris-Euphrates watershed as it affected the mediterranean basin on the west to a great extent and the Indus watershed from the central Asian steppes to the Gulf of India on the east to a somewhat lesser extent.

That this set of conflicts also now engages the equally historically entwined cultures of the Ganges watershed where its headwaters share the central Asian massif with the Himalayas and the headwaters of the Indus in the region of Pakistan and Afghanistan seems inevitable. That these conflicts involve the highly irrational motivations aroused by religions underscores the volatility of the combined situations.

The conflicts of the Far East are not entirely separate, but are, fortunately, not as intimately involved with religious feelings, unless you consider Chinese Communism a religion. However, this region is very involved due to the economic complication of petroleum supply chains upon which China, Japan and southeast Asia depend. The point is that these conflicts are coming to a nexus of historical, cultural and technological developments.

While this sounds rather academic, it is important to note because it sets the stage for getting to the depth of these conflicts and the reasons why so much misunderstanding or lack of understanding is involved without being acknowledged.

Most of the misunderstanding is cultural although this is disguised in public perceptions on all sides of the conflicts by the simple fact that the technology of public media provides the illusion of communication. In fact, while almost no parties would admit it, or even recognize it, there is almost no communication outside the communication of one body understanding the effect of another body committing violence upon it, usually just as the body so affected expires, after which little use is possible from that understanding. It should be noted that body is used here in the abstract sense extending from a single human individual to a family to a neighborhood, a clan, a city, up to a nation or a people that define themselves in ways transcending political boundaries.

That may sound glib, oversimplified and useless, which it is, but it is also nonetheless true to an absolutely appalling extent.

We ought to know better. We claim that we do know better. There is no shortage of highly educated geopolitical analysis of these situations, yet blood flows on the streets of New York and Jerusalem and in remote mountain valleys of Afghanistan, as it flowed in the Arabian deserts of Iraq and Kuwait a scant decade ago, and in Egypt and Syria and Jordan in the 1960s and 70s and 80s. The Cold War is over, but the internecine clan blood-feuds of the semites goes on, pulling in their arab and persian neighbors as always, and now the entire world.

Or so some Al Quaeda leaders claim and so it seems. When some call it a Jihad, as they have been calling it for decades now, the entire world needs to pay attention because Holy War excludes no one, and recognizes no non-combatants as they have also obligingly informed us. We should listen, and that will be the first piece of information which we will tell you is the basis for the Human Markup Language--We should listen. We MUST listen.

The last thing we should do is oversimplfy, but we should also be warned against overcomplicating our analysis of this situation as well.

This particular series of articles is going to to focus on the current crises, but we must remember that violence and bloodletting is endemic and always has been. Warfare is the single most defining aspect of human civilization and blood continues to flow. As it flowed in Chile. As it flowed in Argentina. As it flowed in Cuba. As it flows in Mexico and Columbia. As it flows in India and Pakistan. As it has flowed everywhere throughout human history.

We would like to point out a few things by making a Human Markup Language. We are attempting to create an unbiased vocabulary, even while recognizing that this is impossible in practical terms, since our very languages carry biases. However, we will attempt to accommodate that by providing for writers, speakers and thinkers of those languages and cultures to create the very cultural modules, Human Markup Cultural Schemata, or vocabularies, which describe their cultures, and which can be used collectively to produce better translations and understandings than currently possible while people think and perceive only in their own native languages and only through their own cultural veils so to speak.

This is what we mean when we say that we MUST listen; not to ourselves explaining to ourselves what those people over there meant when they said or did this or that; but to THEM. And to do that we have to let them translate their language into ours as we translate ours into theirs. It can work no other way. Look around you. This is the result of not doing this job properly. The only thing we currently understand is each others' bullets, knives, bombs.

However, this article is not directed at how we can do that but at why we must. Simply saying so and pointing at the results of not doing this will not convince anyone. Nor will grandiose descriptions of our plans to do the job. The fact is we must first enlist real support and the only way we can do that is to keep pointing at the ugly facts on the ground.

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