A couple of words of explanation:
This was written about six months ago, and has come up again in another context. I thought to post it here in the hope that someone would wish to share their thoughts on it.
Secondly, "The Uniter - Parts 1 & 2" were modified from an earlier series entitled "Gitmo", in response to the questions raised by the terrorist prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. I depersonalized it and made it into more of a report for general consumption.
Both "The Uniter - Parts 1 & 2" and another one mentioned below ("Declaring War") are already posted here on the board, should anyone wish to review them.
I started writing something that morning but quit because I had too many things to do and it just didn’t seem important enough. However, after receiving an email asking about those reports as well as some cogitating on my part, I decided that perhaps I should continue. Maybe it’s just a bit more germane to the situation than I thought. Here is what I ended up with.
Shifting Realities
I’m feeling introspective this morning, I suppose. After I finished up my report (Declaring War) (I sent it to others too) last night, I hit the sack and slept like a rock for 8 hours. Then I staggered into the living room where my desk was to see if there had been any sales on my eBay account.
There were 9, all paid for. None of them were big enough to jump up and down and flap my ears about, but they were appreciated anyway. One of them, though, got me to thinking, if that’s what you want to call it.
It was just a little thing, a Game Boy cartridge for the old original Game Boy, about 25 years old, and hardly worth anything. I had it for sale at $1.95. Most people would call it junk and throw it out, but I figured “whot ‘t heck” and listed it anyway.
The guy who bought it is named Jaroslav Zemnyuhov, and he lives in Magnitogorsk, Chelabinskaya oblast, Russia. As I recollect, that was one of the cities the communists built as scientific research centers back during the Cold War. It’s located towards the southern end of the Ural Mountain range and not far from the border with Kazakhstan. He paid me $3.00 for the shipping, making it a total of $4.95. I will still make a couple of bucks off of it. It was done just as easily and casually as if I was trading something with my neighbor over the back fence, instead of an unknown stranger clear on the other side of the world, who speaks a different language, uses different money, and whose realities are vastly different than mine.
I don’t know how to describe the feeling it leaves one. That it’s ridiculous is certainly the truth, but at the same time it’s real. I can go down and pull that money out of an ATM right now and buy a hamburger with it if I so wish. How can it be real and ridiculous at the same time? Think of the logistics of this transaction. First is the communication. He has to locate my sales, then arrange to buy one. Then the money needs to be transferred between our two countries, automatically converted between currencies, and finally made available to me. These things are not only done, but done in split seconds and with almost no effort on our part. Finally, I will be mailing a package most of the way around the world for less than $3.00. All of this, and I’ll still make a couple of bucks? This is beyond ridiculous. It’s absurd if not insane.
I remember as a kid that simply receiving a long distance telephone call was a big deal. Usually it didn’t happen unless somebody died or some other important thing happened. But this??? It’s mind-boggling and leaves one with a sort of disorientation that I don’t know how to describe. I have, though, felt it before.
I first noticed it when I was on the truck. (I have a million miles of long-haul experience.) More often than not, I’d be in a different time zone every night, night and day would become blurred with time itself becoming irrelevant and meaningless. I would eat when I was hungry and sleep when I was tired, and the only reality would be long periods of awareness interspersed with brief periods of oblivion. Time and space become warped and the normal ways of handling them no longer work. One had to form new perceptions of reality and let the old ones go.
This is about as far as I got, but a few more things occurred to me that made me feel that I should continue this exploration. First was the thought that these forms of disorientation are similar to the sea sickness experienced by those who first venture on the sea. The ground and floors are supposed to stand still, not move up and down and back and forth. The walls are supposed to remain perpendicular, not wave back and forth as though they were in the wind. These are the things that we have oriented ourselves to ever since birth and it takes time to change our reality and get our “sea legs”.
Yes, we can “adjust”, whatever that is. What is it that adjusts? Is it part of our brain? Heart? Semi-circular canals? What? Whatever, this is a disorientation that interferes with our activities. Sea sickness has been known for thousands of years. But these others are new, and they seem to be coming faster and faster, stronger and stronger. What used to be fantasy is now our common everyday reality. For thousands of years, our ancestors would orient themselves with the realities around them, and they did not change. But now even reality is moving.
I’d like to just kick back with you folks after an evening meal, sip a glass of wine or whatever and compare our experiences with this, especially concerning how we as individuals handle it. I have felt something in my gut that seems like a letting go, I know not what, and just relaxing into the flow. DTRT, with you jumping all over the globe like some glorified flea, playing chess by satellite telescope, and quite literally going where no man has gone before in science and other ways, you must have experienced this more than we have. How do you handle it without everything becoming fantasy and thereby losing any grip on sanity?
Sometimes it seems similar to how a high climber handles things by shutting out much of the outside world and focusing solely on the things that matter, such as his handholds and safety gear.
There appears to be only a few things left that’s unchanged and that we can orient to, and those are moral standards and the principles of human nature. Honesty, fair play, consideration for one another, etc., are the same whether we are Russian, American, or any other nationality, race, or creed. We could be on the moon or Mars, or on the bottom of the sea, they are still the same. Nor do they change due to the era in which we live.
I suppose what triggered this line of thought was the report Declaring War. Even a few short years ago that would have been the equivalent of committing suicide. But now we have Wikileaks releasing the secrets of the most powerful nations in the history of the world, and those nations can’t do anything about it. We have Face Book and Twitter, two entities that hardly existed even 5 years ago, cracking perhaps the hardest nut in the world: The political and religious stranglehold on the Arab world. Talk about coming out of left field! It caught them completely by surprise and with their pants down. What defense do they have?
And that brings up a huge question. What do we do with this new reality?
I remember back in the late 50’s and early 60’s that there was a series of “who dun it” “bang, bang, shoot ‘em up” books by Richard S. Praither (actually, his 36 novels were published between 1950 and 1987), and his hero, Shell Scott was a forerunner of such larger-than-life heroes as James Bond, etc., only without the gadgets. He was, as I recollect, “six feet, three inches, about 220 lbs. of muscle, was a towhead with a butch haircut, had a broken nose, and he had been relieved of the tip of one ear by a passing bullet.” Naturally, being such a dashing character, all the women would fall in love with him. The books were considered too mature for my young years due to the romantic scenes, which meant of course, that I loved them.
These books were meant to entertain and little more, but there was one book that does have bearing on the situation today. It was, as I recollect, “Dance With The Dead” and the plot involved a religious cult with a leader comparable to James Jones or David Koresh. His followers were rabid, trained not to think for themselves, but only to do what they were told – instantly. In short, they were religious fundamentalists of the type that all of us are so familiar with, and almost exactly like the Muslims, with the only differences being the doctrines that they are force-fed. I am intimately familiar with that type of personality.
In the book, the cult’s leader told his followers that Shell was of the Devil and that anyone who killed him was serving God, etc. They reacted like a mindless hoard of rabid dogs and it was all Shell could do to stay out of their clutches. Shell’s solution to the problem was an extremely dramatic act that exposed the leader for the fraud that he was. The result was startling and horrifying.
There was a few moments of stunned silence while the parishioners absorbed the proof of how they had been duped, then with a low roar of rage, they all headed as one man for that evangelist and literally tore him to pieces with their bare hands.
This has the ring of truth to me, especially when it comes to the fundamentalist mindset and how they react in unusual circumstances. Their entire existence revolves around fear of God, fear of their religious leaders; just an all pervasive fear that colors their entire existence. They have been carefully taught that life itself is unimportant and that “serving God” (doing whatever the leader tells them to do) is of paramount importance. Should these followers suddenly come upon absolute proof of the lies they’ve been subjected to and realize that they had been hoodwinked into doing things that are against God’s will, the lack of respect for human life will remain, and they will come to the point where killing those who mislead them is a sacred duty.
Sure, for one or two to realize this wouldn’t do much good, for this would be successful only when 1,000’s realize it at the same time. Then you have a powder keg that is practically unrivaled in explosive potential, as is being demonstrated in the Mid-East right now.
Now, let's tie these things together.
The prime force or glue that has held the Muslim world together for many centuries is Muslim fundamentalism. Even secular and moderate Muslims stay within its confines for fear of being put to death.
There is now a wave of rebellion washing across the Muslim world based almost entirely on the revulsion the common man has towards the hideous things to which they have been subjected. True, the rebels are claiming their rebellion is against the secular rulers, but inasmuch as the religious rulers have been and are backing (and sometimes are) the secular rulers, it would take very little for this rebellion to spread to the religious leaders too.
I would suggest that the sole reason this hasn’t spread to the Muslim clergy is that the common people have yet to differentiate between their Creator and the men who claim to speak for Him. There are still laboring under the delusion that these men are serving God instead of themselves. Therefore, they are caught in the same dilemma that Peter expressed in John 6: 67, 68: “So Jesus said to the twelve, “You don’t want to go away too, do you?” 114 Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life”.”
There was a steady theme throughout the Gitmo series that the “court” to which we should appeal is one that is superior to the secular and religious leaders. I was speaking of the court of public opinion – worldwide. The wave of turmoil rolling across the Muslim world right now is a small indication of just how powerful that is. It has a weakness though. They don’t know “to whom they would go”, just as Peter expressed it, after they abandon the old. They find that frightening, and it will probably guarantee that they will fall back into something just as bad as that which they have abandoned.
Now, what do you suppose would happen if the common man came to the realization that there was a whole bunch of information that their religious leaders were NOT telling them?
In turn, what better tools could be used for that purpose than Face Book and Twitter?
There would be, of course, certain principles we would have to observe to have any hope of success. This could not be accomplished by someone assuming the authority to speak for God and instructing them in “proper” knowledge. These people have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the hatred of other faiths of any kind, and their level of suspicion and distrust for authority of any kind is monumental. This means that the way things are presented is every bit as important as what is presented. I would suggest this:
Because they too are experiencing the phenomena of “shifting realities” as described above, they don’t like the old ways of doing things and are looking for new ways. Therefore such things should be presented as new, unusual, fascinating, and disturbing.
It would need to include their own history and traditions, instead of trying to replace them. It needs to build on their beliefs with a view towards explaining why things have been as they were and include some ideas on “where we go from here”.
Those doing the presenting would have to de-emphasize themselves. Picture a man going on a camping trip with some friends and, before settling himself down for the night, he takes a stroll to the top of a rise to see what’s on the other side. He sees something that shakes him to the core and returns to camp, white faced and agitated. His friends notice and ask him what’s wrong. His answer: “Walk up to the top of that rise and look over the other side. Tell me if you see what I think I see.” This way there are no “leaders”, only companions and brothers, and they will be far more likely to listen and examine the things presented.
These people are fighting for the right to think and speak for themselves. Let’s give them something to think and speak about, and do it without restricted them in any way so that each individual feels free to use his or her own mind and heart to evaluate the evidence without any outside pressure.
To be most effective, the information would need to be presented to them en masse.
The good thing about the thoughts behind The Uniter is that they should be equally effective with all three of the faiths involved. Note, for instance this point:
If the God of Abraham’s choosing of the Sons of Isaac over the Sons of Ishmael to make a covenant with, is indeed as much of a sore point with them as was suggested in The Uniter, then these words towards the end should have a special impact with them:
“It appears that it is now at this critical point in history, that the God of Abraham wants us all to join hands in giving that answer that will “make my heart rejoice, that I may make a reply to him that is taunting me.”
“It also appears that this time He wants all of his children to have a part in it, and that the Sons of Ishmael should have one of the leading roles in giving that answer.”
This then, appears to be a way forward. For everyone’s sakes, I think we should try.
What are your thoughts?
Tom