Nature vs. Nurture, the genetics of submission and the Will to Power

11:16 pm, homework’s done.  Time for a good old fashioned throwdown covering everybody’s favorite topic, what happened on 9/11 and what we should do about it.  This is bound to be a long one, but that’s alright.  I have a fresh cup of coffee, I’ve done my pilates and my yoga.  I’m loose, and I’m ready to pound at the keyboard mercilessly for a good long while.  Don’t expect this to be a pleasant ride, because it won’t be.  I expect I’ll piss some people off, and that’s certainly intentional.  As Maya Angelou put it, “Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”  Consider this post a cure for bitterness and a call to anger.

But first, a little light entertainment.  It’s only 11 minutes long, and it’s not safe for work.  It’s not actually safe for family, either.  Watch this without the kiddies in the room, please, and prepare to be very, very angry.  Don’t worry, the voiceover is in English after the original prayer is done, and the prayer is mostly translated later on.

Submission

So, now that I’ve got your attention, it’s time to talk a little bit about Islam, Christianity, and the dangers of mixing these two cultures that are hell-bent on submission to an utterly ineffable “higher power”, and willing to sacrifice their deepest inner needs in order to express their devotion.  Their servitude.  Their “calling”.  My calling, for a brief and ever-so-slightly insane period in my life. Ya-Baha’ul-Abha!, I managed to break free!

Our goal of establishing freedom in the Middle East presumes that the freedom we establish will be one which allows for tolerance and social justice.  It presumes that Christians, Jews, Hindus, atheists, and every other brand of heathen out there will be allowed to live, work, and express their beliefs side by side with Muslims.  It presumes both equal respect and equal rights.   It presumes that the warring factions within the Ummah will be able to establish peace and agree to disagree, women will be educated, and society will enter a brighter day.

Very presumptious, really.  It’s like assuming that Republicans and Democrats can agree to non-partisan solutions, only exponentailly worse in a way that people who aren’t really familiar with Islam can’t even begin to imagine.  There is no such thing as separation of Church and State in the Islamic faith.  It’s all one.  

Factions are far more attractive to the humble masses than heretical leaders who challenge people to think new thoughts about very old and sacred ideas.   Humble obedience to God’s Word is not necessarily compatible with a spirit of inquiry and a willingness to accept that the other party may be right.  People, by and large, simply do not want to be troubled with thoughts that disturb their view of right and wrong, good and evil.   They are trained from birth to not ask questions, and such has been the way of life for the followers of the Prophet, Peace Be Unto Him, for roughly 1400 years.  Are we going to undo that all in a single generation?  Bloody unlikely.  The ailment is common enough in our own culture, despite centuries of vigorous innoculations by the likes of Voltaire, Twain, Vonnegut, and many, many others

The idea of “Judeo-Christian” respect took several hundred years to develop in this nation, and only happened grudgingly in response to the horrors of the Holocaust, with the help of some very liberal Protestant theologians.  The religious freedom that let those liberal Protestant theologians thrive in this country, founded by zealots in an attempt to create a City upon a Hill, and still overflowing in the twentieth century with puritanical Acres of Diamonds, is predicated upon the heretical impulse expressed by seventeenth century theists like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, and continued by the likes of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.  The concept of Ummah, or the entire Muslim community of believers, contains the foundation for this sort of pluralism between Sunni Muslims and Shi’a Muslims in theory, but practice in the streets is quite a different thing from the lofty ideals that look good on paper.  Put mildly, the same heretical impulse that allowed us to develop a society that is at the very least nominally tolerant of diverse religious views is simply not sanctioned in the Qu’ran.  Quite the opposite!

One of my favorite quotes from a religious leader comes from Gandhi, in his essay Experiments with Truth, “those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”  Pair that with one of my favorite quotes from Thus Spake Zarathustra:

“I know these Godlike people all too well: they want to be believed in, and doubt to be a sin.  I also know all too well what it is they themselves most firmly believe in.  Truly not in afterworlds and redeeming drops of blood:  they believe most firmly in the body, and their own body is for them their thing-in-itself.  But it is a sickly thing to them:  and they would dearly like to get out of their skins.  That is why they hearken to preachers of death and themselves preach afterworlds.”

I trust, dear reader, that you now have some idea where I’m going with all of this.  It’s not a happy little place with flowers on the nightstand and a cool breeze coming in off the ocean.  It’s the nuclear wasteland of our future if these lunatics are allowed to continue this pissing contest of whose Sky-Daddy is the most powerful and most merciful Sky-Daddy.

So let’s return to that video for a moment, and the very important messages contained in it.  How many women and men have the courage (or the cause!) to do as this brave woman did?  Or, for that matter, what the brave man who created this masterpiece did.  It was certainly a risky topic to film, as evidenced by the fact that the director and co-author Theo van Gogh was stabbed to death a few short months after its release. 

I chuckled at a cartoon that proposed a memorial to 9/11 in the form of a gravestone with Osama bin Laden’s name on it, standing on a lonely hillside with a baren tree, presumedly with its occupant sleeping The Long Sleep from which we do not Wake below.  But I think the gravestones of Salmon Rushdie and Theo van Gogh are more significant symbols in this war.  The lesson they bring to us is profound, shocking, and highly relevant; any man (or woman) sufficiently skilled in the art of rhetoric can exploit a people who are yearning to submit.  Kill Osama, and another glorious leader will rise up to lead the fearful and the devout, crying for the blood of the infidels and praising the holy martyr who has ascended to Paradise.  Indeed, these sheep are programmed by centuries of selective breeding and environmental conditioning.  All you need to do is convince them that God is on your side, and you have a following.

So what do we do?

We dismantle submission by holding a mirror up to the sheep and forcing them to see what they are.  Pure and simple.  We expose the impulse to “patiently endure hardship” for the toxic behavior that it is and demand that the global community stands up and thinks on its own two feet.  Nothing else can save us from the impulse to fall to our knees and wait silently for the axe to fall, trusting in God to make sure that it is ”one of our guys” who holds the handle in his hand.  1/3 of the world are Christians, 1/3 of the world are Muslims.  Guess which 1/3 is more likely to pray devoutly five times a day?  Guess which  1/3 is more likely to be in the majority fifty years from now.  A hundred years?  Both sides are on a mission to convert the other side, and this is something that those of us who consider ourselves “moderates” cannot afford to ignore.  Those with heretical impulses are just as likely to be subjected to the witch hunts of the next century as every other brand of non-believer. 

You cannot tame one brand of submission with another brand.  There is no such thing as the “Judeo-Christo-Islamic” faith in the mind of the Muslim (or the Christian who believes in Christ and understands the Qu’ran, for that matter).  One all-merciful and all-encompassing ocean of faith mixed with another all-merciful and all-encompassing ocean of a different brand of faith simply means that the tsunami that results when the next fascist preachers (or secular leaders) come around to exploit them will simply be more destructive.  Civil War, religious tension, and economic instability are exactly the sorts of conditions that give rise to those sorts of leaders.  

We need to dry this impulse up.  We need to replace it with good solid stone that allows us to build a foundation for peace, resting not upon some notion of a “higher power” that demands us to turn to Him for guidance, but based instead upon the certain knowledge that human beings are fragile and error prone animals who will often resort to mean behavior and horde mentality.  The Sky Daddy is not going to save us from ourselves, nor is he going to clean up after our collective messes left over by a few millenia of sloppy logic.

A couple of articles for quiet contemplation while that flood of rage washes away the bitterness, and I promise to quit overextending the metaphor now:

Feds Train Clergy To “Quell Dissent” During Martial Law

<snip>It was stressed that the Pastors needed to preach subservience to the authorities ahead of time in preparation for the round-ups and to make it clear to the congregation that “this is for their own good.”</snip>

And, on a somewhat more encouraging note, a German campaign to put the focus where it needs to be:

Ex-Muslims Demand Right to Renounce Islamic Faith

<snip>Controversially, 9/11 was chosen as the date to sign the “European Declaration for Tolerance.” It aims to draw attention to what the former Muslims see as the lack of freedom of religion within Islam.”</snip>