Pandymonia
  • about
  • art
  • fashion
  • design
  • feminism
  • poetry
  • politics
  • vintage
  • other stuff

politics and all that jazz



Dogmas and Scapegoats - blame and blameability

17/1/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
I have a lot of atheist friends who enjoy tossing around opinions about how religion is to blame for much of the warfare, terrorism and violence in the world.

(“They’ve all got imaginary deities and kill for their beliefs”… said one friend recently in her hasty critique of Buddhism, citing the Burmese oppression of the Rohingya people, as an example of the “long and bloody” history of Buddhists. “Buddhism is not a religion of peace” she protested.)

However, I beg to differ. Frankly, the notion that religious indoctrination is responsible for most of the heinous acts of political repression and violence in history, is short-sighted and misguided.


Picture

For one, it ignores the obvious truth that there have been many more wars and acts of genocide perpetuated due to territory disputes and economic and political power struggles, than due to religion.

And secondly, it ignores the fact that the genuine, original teachings by the founders of the major religions are usually completely distinguishable from the manifestation of the institutionalization of that religion. Why is this? This is because human beings appropriate ideologies and manipulate the tenants of religion to suit their very secular, political and economic interests. There is a very big difference between a religion authentically practiced by a devoted individual, and a religion usurped by political or military leaders, or terrorists, who simply bend the religion to whatever suits their agenda. The difference between the "religious" practice St Francis of Assisi and the Borgia Pope Alexander VI is gargantuan and one should not be judged by the other.  Yes – religion has been used as an excuse to commit atrocities the world over. There is no denying that. But whether the religion in question actually advocates harm done to others in its name, is a totally separate question and should be treated as such, if we wish to avoid being bigoted and uninformed.

Thirdly, it ignores the greater political, socio-economic and historical factors that play a huge role in driving any kind of “religious” warfare. For instance, it would be careless not to consider the greater context influencing the Algerian gunmen brothers at Charlie Hebdo, such as the atrocious history of France’s oppressive relations with Algeria. It would be sloppy, not to take a moment to understand the greater context influencing many of the terrorist acts committed in the name of Islam – such as the deplorable treatment of Palestinians by Israel and the fact that the western world does nothing about innocent Muslim children being killed in their beds, yet with barefaced hypocrisy doesn’t hesitate to go to war in Iraq, when its oil interests are being threatened. Or the incredible disparity of wealth and power in the process of globalisation that leaves developing countries exploited and ravaged by poverty and famine, while the west squanders away the world’s resources and lives blithely at a level of luxury that is simply unsustainable and completely unsharable.


These factors (and many more) are key to understanding the brewing discontent and escalating violence that we are seeing from the Muslim world. The religious factor in this discontent provides a unifying force and a sense of identity and some sort of external justification, but is religion the real issue? Are the underlying historical (and secular), political and economic factors a more prominent cause? These are questions that we should be asking to understand the historical complexity of global cause and effect and to appreciate our role in the bigger picture. With this kind of perspective you might well ask yourself, the next time you go and buy a second laptop or another new car, could capitalism and global inequality be as much to blame for war and terrorism as religion?


Picture
The fact that human beings are very good at distorting philosophies (whether religious, political or sociological) to fit into secular, disturbing, and sometimes diabolical, political schemas is nothing new. It is accepted that Trotsky’s socialism has very little in common with its manifestation as the fanatical brutality of Stalin, Pol pot or Mao. These three atheist despots between them, were responsible for the massacre of over 100 million people, as well as the decimation of three exceedingly rich cultures. In all three cases, religion played no part as an inspiration to the horrors these men wrought; political theory did. A political theory that specifically rejected religion. A political theory that started out as an antidote to injustice and inequality.  Wouldn't it be narrow-minded to blame Lenin or Marx for the actions of these totalitarian tyrants and the particular way they distorted communist discourse to suit their ends?

The point is that any charismatic madman can take a perfectly good ideology, manipulate it until it is a mere shell (or even travesty) of itself, and use it to justify horrific violence in the process of achieving ultimate power, economic wealth, or the unchecked rampage of racial vendetta. Hitler did this. Jean Kambanda did this. Idi Amin did this. A number of catholic Popes did this. ISIS does this. George Bush did this. These are all men driven by greed, or megalomania, or unfettered sadism who would bend whatever ideology happened to be available to them, to manipulate the masses and carry out their own despicable agendas. These are not men acting from religious inspiration. These are men driven by very worldly, very human, and very secular motivations.
And an important thing to keep in mind is that the seed of those motivations is in all of us – religious folk or atheists alike. The capacity to be selfish, greedy, to enjoy power and wealth, to indulge an “us and them” kind of attitude, are all infinitely human characteristics. When these traits are left to grow unchecked and given an opportunity to express themselves in someone with a position of power, they can become tyrannical, cruel and bloodthirsty. That is what enables people to hate and harm and slaughter others who view the world differently from them; these same tendencies that we all have, but in an unrestrained context. The irony is that all of the major religions in the world were actually instigated by extraordinary pacifists who were trying specifically to address these tendencies in human beings and transform them.

Picture
Of course some religions lend themselves to variants of interpretation more than others. There is no denying that Islam with its notion of jihad is not the most peaceful of religions. The Quran has some very inflammatory verses that can easily be interpreted by fundamentalists to condone the random killing of infidels. However, many Muslims (such as the Ahmadiyya and Sufi sects) only interpret the Quran as being a book of love and peace, and claim those verses have esoteric meanings and not a literal one. They say the real Jihad is fought inside one's soul to control negative instincts. They say Muhammad only considered taking up arms as an absolute last resort if it was necessary to defend religious freedom. Interpretation is the deciding factor, and that changes over time.

 Religions have their core values, their non-negotiable truths, but they also surround themselves with many stories not essential to the message. Any religion that exists over long eras absorbs many of the ideas and beliefs of the community in which it finds itself, and reflects those in its writings. Over time, thinkers and theologians reject or underplay those doctrines and texts that contradict the underlying principles of the faith as it develops.

Yes, Sharia law is sexist and violent compared with the European rule of law, yet sharia law has changed over time and has been largely shaped by changes in Islamic society. A patriarchal society with a history of bloody territorial conflicts. Is it any wonder that the interpretation of their religion is shaped by and reflects these (secular) factors?

The Bible also has some pretty violent sentiments in it, especially in the old testament. Yet the gist of Jesus’ teachings is uncontroversial -  do good, love thy neighbor as thyself and to turn the other cheek. His creed was all about overcoming hatred and greed with love and charity and forgiveness. The fact that his words and actions have been institutionalized as various churches and at times used as an excuse to do the exact opposite of what he preached, is not Jesus’ fault. It is not the fault of Christianity per se, that Catholic priests enjoy sexually exploiting young boys. It is the fault of peoples’ tendency throughout history to turn everything into a grab for power, wealth and gratification at the cost of others, under the guise of religion or ideology or ethnic identity, or whatever it happens to be.

Picture
Picture
In fact, is quite astounding  - our capacity to turn even the antidote into the problem. It is the one constant throughout history – in pre-Christian Roman times (see the Gracchi brothers for example), in post-Christian times, in the crusades (which were actually a political grab for trading routes and land and wealth and had very little to do with religion), during the reformation, and especially over the last 200 years. As the bard said long ago – “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Human beings have been violent, factional and blood thirsty since beginningless time, whether or not they believed in a god, or many gods, or no gods at all.

To blame religion for the existence of this tendency is, frankly, utterly absurd. The seeds for our repeated history, like I said, lie within each of us, no matter what we believe. And no amount of scientific rationalism will provide humankind with the antidote to this. In fact, a Darwinian view can be seen to advocate for the natural prevalence of such characteristics even more, with its survival of the fittest law. Nature is violent and cruel and the survival of the fittest instinct ensures there will always be an “us and them” attitude inherent in us, which ensures we place ourselves and our kin’s wellbeing and survival ahead of any “others”.

Religion is not responsible for this instinct, (although it may reflect this instinct in the way it gets institutionalised). In fact, religions, such as Christianity and Buddhism, have attempted (and largely been completely unsuccessful, I might add) to interrupt this natural order and to inject a completely un-natural, and some would say more evolved, consciousness into human society. They have introduced the extraordinary notion of caring for others, no matter what colour or creed, more than for yourself.
Picture
  The Buddha, in particular, taught that no human being is worth more than any other. That we all have the potential to break free from our habitual tendencies and that we are not necessarily bound by our dog-eat-dog experience of the world. He taught that we are all responsible for our own perceptions and that they can be changed through examining and deconstructing how we have been indoctrinated to relate to phenomena. He taught that through cultivating love and altruism to the point that our love for all beings is unlimited and our notion of self is no longer something we have to protect, we become completely harmless. The Buddha taught the Buddhist path as a complete antidote to violence, greed, hate and aggression. There is absolutely nothing in the teachings of the Buddha which could possibly be used to advocate harming others. His entire doctrine revolves around not harming others and discovering how to benefit all sentient beings instead.  Since the whole thrust of the Buddhist teachings is to eliminate the notion of “us and them” completely, in a deep experiential way, and to cultivate empathy and compassion to the point of becoming nothing but love and awareness (which is essentially what enlightenment is), how could Buddhism justify killing or harming or oppressing others?

Picture
The fact that some so-called Theravadin Buddhist countries have been subjected to political regimes which have slaughtered non-buddhist people, or the fact that there exist plenty of corruption and power struggles in many “Buddhist” monasteries, is yet again an example of the secular play of power and politics under the guise of religion. Such historical episodes have nothing to do with the authentic teachings of the Buddha. Buddhism is nothing other than a religion of peace. The societies in which Buddhism has flourished and been shaped, however, are full of instances of so-called "buddhists"  committing acts of violence and aggression for socio-economical and political reasons. To judge all Buddhists by the behaviour of some people (who may wear the robes and shave their head, yet who couldn’t be further away from embodying or practicing the actual teachings of the Buddha), is illogical and myopic. It would be ridiculous to blame all atheists and say their belief in scientific rationalism is inherently flawed and harmful, simply because people like Nazi war criminals, or Ted Bundy, or Mussolini, or Kim-Jong II, who happen to be atheists, also happen to be sadistic sociopaths.

The Buddha taught different levels of teaching in accordance with the differing capacity of beings. This, and the differing cultural milieu of the time and place in which it flourished, has meant the kinds of Buddhism that exist in the world have different flavours and emphasies. In the Theravadin tradition the emphasis is on discipline, morality and meditation. In Mahayana Buddhism the emphasis is on Bodhicitta (compassion and selfless altruism) and recognizing the compounded nature of phenomena. In Vajrayana Buddhism, the emphasis is on an all-embracive approach to transform all of phenomena into a means for developing insight and loving kindness. Theravadin Buddhism has historically been quite sexist and strict and women are considered inferior to men. In Vajrayana Buddhism, by contrast, it is said that the women are superior to men in their capacity for enlightenment and there are numerous female Buddhas as inspiring examples. However these different kinds of “buddhism” manifest is entirely dependent on the nature of the culture it flourished in, and the time in history.

Picture
Religions and ideologies are shaped and influenced by the characteristics of the society they develop in.  Sometimes the so-called tenants of the religion have more to do with the social mores of the time, than with the genuine words and teachings of the religion’s founder. Both the Koran and the Bible were written after their instigators passed away. It takes dedication and study and the right motivation to separate the pith of the religion from the cultural artifacts. The key to this is education and authenticity of the teaching lineage. When these are missing, a religion can become a hodgepodge of contradictory elements. The trick is to go back to the original purpose of the teachings and have enough discrimination to recognize the essence from the chaff. And the original purpose of most religions is to provide a transformative antidote to the troubles and torment of the world and to bring about peace and ultimate happiness.

I know many atheists who are wonderful, loving, kind, compassionate human beings and who have identical goals to the religious people I know. They derive for themselves some meaning from their atheism or rational scientific creed that enables them to seek to improve themselves, to engender empathy and care for others, in furtherance of a more peaceful world. Whatever ideological means they use to do this, is commendable. In the same way, the essential teachings of the major religions are just as commendable, for attempting to achieve this and go against the tide of human folly. The only difference in the two is that the major religions have been institutionalized over history into becoming forces that achieve the opposite of their intention – due to the secular appropriation of the ideology and its distortion through the machinations of the pursuit of political and economic power.

Picture
So to all you atheists who blame religion for the corruption, war and terror around you, I say, look inside yourselves. For you have the causes for both altruism and selfishness within you. The battle between these two is played out whether you are “religious” or an “atheist.” The outer ideological garb or cultural association is irrelevant. You are either an unwitting pawn in the endless repetitive history of bloodshed and prejudice, or you can decide to take responsibility to do something completely different and cultivate the antidote to the mess, deep within yourself. This is all the Buddha was trying to get us to do. Whether you call yourself a Buddhist or an atheist, the Buddha couldn’t care less about such labels! If you are trying to cultivate the antidote to hate and ignorance inside yourself in a genuine and daring way, then you are actually more of a genuine Buddhist than anyone who wears robes and thinks it’s okay to kill, torture or harm others.

What we need to do is prioritize the quest for self-knowledge recognize the labyrinth of preconceptions and prejudices within us – that feeling that we are right and everyone else is wrong. For it is only in understanding the root cause of human aggression and stupidity, and taking responsibility for that seed within ourselves, that we can develop the humility, empathy and perspective necessary to effectively apply an antidote and protect it from the dangers of appropriation and distortion.

Picture
1 Comment

hebdo and media hypocracy

12/1/2015

0 Comments

 
Great article by Rabbi Michael Lerner which reminds us of an important perspective on this brutal tragedy.


Picture

Mourning the Parisian Journalists Yet Noticing the Hypocrisy
As the editor of a progressive Jewish and interfaith magazine that has often articulated views that have prompted condemnation from both Right and Left, I had good reason to be scared by the murders of fellow journalists in Paris. Having won the 2014 "Magazine of the Year" Award from the Religion Newswriters Association, and having been critical of Hamas' attempts to bomb Israeli cities this past summer (even while being equally critical of Israel's rampage against civilians in Gaza), I have good reason to worry if this prominence raises the chances of being a target for Islamic extremists.

But then again, I had to wonder about the way the massacre in Paris is being depicted and framed by the Western media as a horrendous threat to Western civilization, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, I wondered about the over-heated nature of this description. It didn't take me long to understand how problematic that framing really is.

When right-wing "pro-Israel" fanatics frequently sent me death threats, physically attacked my house and painted on the gates statements about me being "a Nazi" or "a self-hating Jew," and called in bomb threats to Tikkun, the magazine I edit, there was no attention given to this by the media, no cries of "our civilization depends on freedom of the press" or demands to hunt down those involved (the FBI and police received our complaints, but never reported back to us about what they were doing to protect us or find the assailants).

Nor was the mainstream or Jewish media particularly concerned about Western civilization being destroyed or freedom of thought and association undermined when various universities denied tenure to professors who had made statements critical of Israel, or when the Hillel association, which operates a chain of student-oriented "Hillel Houses" on college campuses, decided to ban from their premises any Jews who were part of Jewish Voices for Peace. Nor was the media much interested in a bomb that went off outside the NAACP's Colorado Springs headquarters the same day as they were highlighting the attack in Paris. Colorado Springs is home to some of the most extreme right-wing activists. It was a balding white man who was seen setting the bomb, some reports claim, and so the media described it as an act of a troubled "lone individual," rather than as a white right wing Christian fundamentalist terrorist. Few Americans have even heard of this incident.

And when the horrific assassinations of 12 media people and the wounding of another 12 media workers resulted in justifiable outrage around the world, did you ever wonder why there wasn't an equal outrage at the tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed by the American intervention in Iraq or the over a million civilians killed by the U.S. in Vietnam, or why President Obama refused to bring to justice the CIA torturers of mostly Muslim prisoners, thereby de facto giving future torturers the message that they need not even be sorry for their deeds (indeed, former Vice President Cheney boldly asserted he would order that kind of torture again without thinking twice)?

So don't be surprised if people around the world, while condemning the despicable acts of the murderers in Paris and grieving for their families and friends, remain a bit cynical about the media-circus surrounding this particular outrage while the Western media quickly forgets the equally despicable acts of systematic murder and torture that Western countries have been involved in. Or perhaps a bit less convinced that Western societies are really the best hope for civilization when they condone this kind of hypocrisy, rather than responding equally forcefully to all such actions repressing free speech or freedom of assembly. I could easily imagine (and regret) how some Islamist fundamentalists will already be making these points about the ethical inconsistencies of Western societies with their pomposity about human rights that never seem to constrain the self-described "enlightened democracies" from violating those rights when it is they who perceive themselves as under attack.

Yet there is a deeper level in which the discourse seems so misguided. As Tikkun editor-at-large Peter Gabel has pointed out, there is no recognition in the media of the dehumanizing way that so much of the media deals with whoever is the perceived threatening "other" of the day. That media was outraged at the attempt by some North Korean allied group to scare people away from watching a movie ridiculing and then planning to assassinate the current (immoral) ruler of Korea, never wondering how we'd respond if a similar movie had been made ridiculing and planning the assassination of an American president. Similarly, the media has refused to even consider what it would mean to a French Muslim, living among Muslims who are economically marginalized and portrayed as nothing but terrorists, their religious garb banned in public, their religion demeaned, to encounter a humor magazine that ridiculed the one thing that gives them some sense of community and higher purpose, namely Mohammed and the religion he founded.

To even raise this kind of question is to open oneself up to charges of not caring about the murdered or making excuses for the murderers. But neither charge is accurate. I fear those fundamentalist extremists just as much as I fear the Jewish extremists who have threatened my life and the Christian extremists who are now exercising power over the U.S. Congress. Every form of violence outrages and sickens me.

Yet the violence is an inevitable consequence of a world which systematically dehumanizes so many people who are made to feel powerless and despairing and deeply depressed about the possibility of finding the milk of human kindness anywhere. The representation of evil dominates the media, and becomes the justification for our own evil acts. And that evil is made possible because so many among us avert our eyes and shut our ears to the cries of the oppressed.

The U.N. estimates that some 10,000 children will die of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition today and every other day in 2015. 2.5 million live on less than $2 a day, 1.5 million on less that $1 a day. Every day thousands of young women are sold into prostitution or "voluntarily" join it in order to raise enough money to help feed their families. Tens of millions of others work in horrendous "sweat shop" conditions. When some of them and some who know about them and feel outraged turn to various forms of nationalist or religious fundamentalist extremism, their violent actions rightfully get condemned. But the silence at the violence that is structural and a pervasive consequence of the globalization of capital is rarely brought to anyone's attention.

All of us absorb this global reality into our unconscious, just as we absorb the violence, hatred, and demeaning of others. We tolerate the kind of endless put-downs that the "humor" magazines and even supposedly liberal comedians like Bill Maher perpetrate, not realizing how much damage all of this does to our souls. The spiritual consequences are all around us: people despairing of ever being understood by others, growing distrustful of others, and feeling that no one really can be trusted. A collective and global emotional depression makes so many people withdraw into themselves, sometimes in relatively harmless ways, but often in ways that undermine the possibility of any human community emerging that would be capable of dealing with the social and environmental problems that face the human race, thereby giving freedom for the global corporations and their hired guns in the media and politics to continue to run the world for their own narrow interests and without regard to the wellbeing of other people or the environment.

"But they ridicule everyone's religion, not just the Muslim's, so isn't that fair?​" we are reassured. But the reassurance isn't reassuring. That they ridicule everyone is exactly the problem -- the general cheapening and demeaning of others is destructive to everyone. But of course not equally destructive, because people who are already economically and socially marginalized are in far greater danger of having this demeaning sting rather than feel funny.

"And shouldn't free speech and individual human liberties be our highest value? This value that is put into danger if you ask for some kind of responsibility from comedians." Two responses: 1. No, individaul human liberties is not our highest value. Our highest value is treating human beings with love, kindness, generosity, respect and see them as embodiments of the holy, and treating the earth as sacred. Individual liberty is a strategy to promote this highest value, but when that liberty gets abused (as for example in demeaning women, African Americans, gays in public discourse) we often insist that the articulators of racism, sexism and homophobia be publicly humiliated (not shut down, but using our free speech to vigorously challenge theirs). 2. Free speech is not defeated when we use it to try to marginalize hateful or demeaning speech. So lets call demeaning speech, including demeaning humor, what it really is -- an assault on the dignity of human beings.

None of this is reason to stop mourning the horrific murders in Paris or to excuse it in any way. But it is reason to wonder why the media can never tell a more nuanced story of what is happening our world.


0 Comments

    Archives

    July 2020
    January 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All
    Australia
    Carbon Tax
    Climate Change
    Climate Change Skeptics
    Gaza
    Genocide
    Global Warming
    Human Rights
    Jose Mujica
    Manus Island
    Noam Chomsky
    Palestine
    Political Solutions
    Refugees
    Renewable Energy
    Socialism
    Tony Abbott
    Uruguay
    War
    Zionism

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly