RE: [humanmarkup-comment] Thoughts on Cultural Blinders and 9/11

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

The first show you mentioned took up two themes of 
relevance.

1.  The dark side of religion that emerges when
love of God becomes willingness to do anything 
if it can be construed as God's will.  The speakers 
made it plain that until Islam can face the fact 
that fault for the 911 does rest with Islam, that 
claiming it to be merely an aberration is to duck 
the issue, the causes will not change and the 
incidents will continue.  They also noted that 
this is not a unique property of the Islamic 
religion, but of religious zealotry and that 
human history is litered with such (consider 
the Children's Crusade of the late Middle 
Ages).

2.  The incident where two people who were about 
to be consumed by the flames of the towers held 
hands and jumped together.  Although their deaths 
were certain, why did they do that?

Consider what different views of human love this 
suggests.  Love is the most powerful force in 
the universe but it too can be as good or bad 
as the expression it takes.  Our questions here 
are, what are the signs, what are their 
signifiers and signifieds, and what interpretations 
are most likely significant of the intent.

The source of these is in religion and 
until we comprehend the human need and desire 
for the absolute, we won't understand the first events. 
Yet is that the cause of the second incident?  Or 
is this something even more fundamental, that one 
desires above all things not to be alone, so the 
gesture however fruitless to touch and be with 
another when facing the ultimate, is the source 
of the means by which we may pass through this 
dark time?

If for no other reason, this exploration of 
what it means to a human to be human, to find 
values that are human, not supernatural, not 
imposed by absolutism, but by relationships 
to those around us, is the hope.  What was 
seen on the precipice of a living hell was 
that the need to not be alone is the more 
powerful force.  If we choose community, 
we do not choose death.  If death comes 
in the context of preserving community, 
we choose life.   It we take life for the 
cause of the absolute, we are dammed.

Damnation is eternal loneliness.  Perhaps 
those who are choosing terror as the sign 
of their community must come to understand 
that.  We must find the sign that informs 
them that this expression will make them ever 
more lonely, and that another sign enables 
them to escape that fate.  By what sign can 
we invite them to be here with us not on 
the precipice to hell, but to life?

Last weekend, I produced a free concert of 
music that brought out people of all ages.
When singing, they are not afraid, and when 
not afraid, there is no terror.  I am a 
musician and that is a sign system over 
which I have competence.  What are your 
signs and to whom are they shown?  I do 
not ask anyone to confront the terrorists, 
but each other, and thereby, to reduce 
the loneliness.  As T. Sturgeon wrote, 

"In all of immensity, there is one lonelier than you."

len


From: Rex Brooks [mailto:rexb@starbourne.com]

Hi Everyone,

As I have been coaxing myself out of the realm of aesthetics and back 
to the world internet standards and HumanML, I have been stuck in the 
process of fighting myself. The truth is I would rather be painting 
or sculpting or writing fiction, or doing any number of things other 
than diving back into this work and the collateral work of learning 
more computer languages to create websites with or studying the 
latest developments in the languages I know and work with. I haven't 
gotten to the point where my normal love of learning new stuff for 
its own sake has kicked in, and I have to admit to quite a bit of 
woolgathering in the last few hours as I struggle to get down to 
work. Okay, so much for the blathering introduction.

I responded to Len's next to last post in reply to my previous 
wimpering request for help by noting just how important what we are 
doing really IS...if, and I say again, IF we are to produce a 
standard of anything other than marginal significance. THAT means 
connecting up to the mechanics of web, the way it is actually 
working, not in the way we might prefer. And THIS is what I mean by 
getting down into the trenches, for those who attended our last 
telecon meeting.

And I will, but first I want to get a few thoughts off my chest with 
regard to what is important about this work and especially timely as 
the anniversary of the World Trade Center attack approaches. There 
was a show on Frontline on PBS this week that purported to examine 
the crisis of faith following those attacks, and I watched it for as 
long as I could stomach it before changing channels in deep disgust. 
That should tell you that I am about to relieve myself of some 
troubling feelings and thoughts and that what I am about to say is 
very personal. The fact that I had to turn away from a PBS 
presentation really worries me.

As we have already tackled the element culture, I won't revisit that 
discussion except to remind us all that one of our most important 
goals is to reduce misunderstanding in communications with special 
attention to the cultural misunderstandings that contribute to such 
calamities. That said, let me explain why I was troubled by this 
Frontline episode.

First, it was an examination of the crisis in faith resulting from 
the devastation following those events last September 11. However, 
before I had to turn away, I saw that the only faith being examined 
was ours--the victims. So there may have been other portions of the 
show which I failed to see which examined other viewpoints. However, 
I was too appalled to continue watching.

The question, or I should say, the ultimate question, of why God 
could allow such a thing to happen to innocent people was the central 
theme. I was immediately staggered by two observations: Bhopal killed 
more innocent people in a single event and led to immensely greater 
long term suffering; and, the fact is that the perpetrators of this 
shattering event apparently believed that THEY WERE DOING God's will.

I won't even touch the notion of God because that is personal as far 
as I am concerned, although that very attitude leaves people like 
myself very vulnerable to those fundamentalists of all religions who 
believe they have a mandate to act however they choose because of 
those personal beliefs. However the point is that the entire issue 
was not what in our clash of cultures allowed this situation to 
develop, but rather, how our faith in our beliefs was shaken by this 
event.

I hope I am not the only person who wonders at how utterly condemned 
we will be to creating more generations who see us as the Great Satan 
if we continue to fail to even attempt to understand how they see us. 
We have mobilized great resources to attempt, through positive public 
relations, to change how we are seen, yet we have no idea how we are 
seen, except that it looks like we are seen as devils. There was yet 
another PBS show on last night, that examined how our embassies and 
ambassadors are seen and treated, and it documented the progression 
of attacks on our embassies over the last 30 years, and still there 
was not a single question about how this seemingly insumrountable 
misunderstanding came into being. The only facts analyzed were that 
the media of communication have increased the speed with which these 
misunderstandings are spread. That segment was called, the Big Lie, 
harkening back to Nazi propaganda that culminated in the Holocaust. 
Aside from the specific problems of Israel and Palestine as it is 
reported in culturally biased media of all persuasions, there are 
Lies aplenty. How they came about and grew worse?

I wish I had answers. All I have is a work in progress that may give 
us a way to frame the questions and a structural way, a method, to 
encourage listening for what other cultures actually have to say.

Showers are not only good for singing, they are also pretty good 
places to shout without alarming the neighbors, at least not too much.