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

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

I am glad you were able to endure long enough to see these larger 
issues. They didn't get there quickly enough for my own personal 
human limits. I appreciate you taking the time to respond this 
thoroughly. My own sense of despair and anger in the face of seeing 
faith portrayed even briefly (and through my own lack of patience) as 
one-dimensional is lessened. I'm less concerned with the terrorists 
as much as I am with our own ability to understand their expressions, 
their signs, and respond to them appropriately. I don't have much 
clue what that response ought to be to successfully reach into their 
cultural context and persuade them to a different course.

Thanks,
Rex

At 12:33 PM -0500 9/5/02, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>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.


-- 
Rex Brooks
Starbourne Communications Design
1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA 94702 *510-849-2309
http://www.starbourne.com * rexb@starbourne.com