Wisdom in a time of crisis.

When some leaders start to display dictatorial tendencies, human nature being what it is, it is worthwhile looking at what history has to say. Always it is best to take the long view – a timely distance allows one to make sense of what happened and why. 

Even so, relating to current world leadership, inferences may be drawn from the sayings of some historical figures:-

“Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”

No one is quite sure who originated this saying - attributed, possibly to Euripides, but it doesn’t really matter. It is the intent. I believe is quite appropriate today.  By “mad” I don’t think that insanity is implied, rather I believe that what is alluded to is a loss of  “measure” – a term that is no longer fashionable - meaning a loss of proportion; giving to much emphasis on personal gain and aggrandizement and thus ignoring the plight of others.     

Then there is this famous injunction leveled at the English “Rump Parliament” on 20^th April 1653, when Oliver Cromwell harangued the members of that parliament:-

“You have sat here too long for any good that you have been doing lately. Depart I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” 

Also quite apposite today I believe is this saying, attributed to Edmund Burke, the Eighteenth Century Irish author and Statesman:-

 “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.”

It saddens me to think that some of todays world leaders have so lost their moral and ethical compasses that they think only of themselves.

Then many people have idols; things they value above all others, even, unfortunately more than they value themselves – their self-worth, their honour or their reputation. As has been said before, poets have the ability to say in a few words what it takes others many words to express. 

There is a very appropriate verse in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Omar was an 11^th Century Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet) - which goes as follows (verse 69): 

                                           Indeed the Idols I have loved so long

                                           Have done my Credit in Men’s Eyes much wrong:

                                              Have drown’d my Honour in a shallow cup,

                                          And sold my Reputation for a Song 

In this context it may also be useful to recall the words of an old nursery rhyme – a cautionary tale stressing the importance of doing things properly. By doing things properly, doing them well, unintended consequences are minimised. This is a tale of the “Horse-shoe Nail”:-

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the Kingdom was lost,

And all for the want of a horse-shoe nail!

The nail represents the “glue” that binds us together as humans. The main component of this “glue” is trust. This is what holds us together as a society – trust. Trust that those we deal with believe in ethics, morality, virtues and hold to their values and will do what they promise; trust that people are honest and will treat others in the way they would like to be treated. When it comes to organisations – be they Governments, financial organisation, multinational news conglomerates, political parties, police departments or families there is a need to understand, today as never before, what it means to provide a duty of care and its corollary – a fiduciary duty. Anything else will lead to chaos, as has been displayed for all to see over the last few years.

This leads back to the title of this post – wisdom in a time of crisis. When good men do nothing; when leaders love their idols more than their fellow beings; when leaders love their idols (whatever they are) more than they respect the need for honesty and morality, we are in real trouble. The horseshoe was lost years ago and we have already lost the horse; if we now lose the battle as well, the kingdom and all of us will be in grave danger. 

And it’s leaders will have drowned their honour in a shallow cup and sold their reputations for a song.

Why do we hate and destroy?

It is a human defence mechanism to hide from or avoid certain things and events. All of us use diversionary tactics that we have developed to distract us from emotional pain and anguish.

All of us human beings have the capacity to hate - it is part of the human condition and is a function of pride. We can hold ourselves together when we feel completely powerless and helpless, only by hating the people we believe to be responsible for our desperate state. In this way many of those people, dispossessed and powerless, for instance, in major cities, come to hate the police or those living in parts of the Middle East have come to hate the USA and Israel. Similarly some children have come to hate their parents. The first kind of hatred, (by the dispossessed in cities and those in the Middle East) however, may be expressed by forming gangs or groups, attacking those they hate, and feeling virtuous for so doing.

An immediate way of solving this problem, not by mastering internally, but by running away from it, is to flee into activities outside ourselves in the external world. However when we do this we prevent ourselves from developing the safeguards human being have acquired as a guard against their own destructiveness, a knowledge and acceptance of ourselves and the impetus to develop effective methods of managing our hate and destructiveness.

Without these safeguards we destroy those things which we perceive as unconnected with us and as not being human like ourselves. Thus we chop down trees, blow up mountains, pollute the seas and the atmosphere, eradicate whole species of animals, birds, fish because we do not understand that we are connected to everything on our planet, and therefore need to be careful about what and how much we destroy. They may walk and talk and live just like us, but if we do not perceive them as human like us we can bomb and maim them, exploit them, starve them and inflict hurt upon them without feeling shame or guilt. We can perceive other people as being human like us only when we can make that special leap of imagination which takes us from our own internal world into theirs.

We are all born with a capacity to hate and to destroy. We are also born with the capacity to know our internal world and to empathize with others. A child brought up to live and let live and to accept, develops all these capacities and can balance one against the other. Empathy balances the hate and keeps the destructiveness in check. We can feel immense hatred for another person and we can desire to harm him, but at the same time, instinctively, we know how it would feel to be the victim of that hatred and harm.

However the less we value and accept ourselves, the more powerless and helpless we feel, and the less we value and accept ourselves, the more likely we are to use hatred as a defence. If we do not understand that we are using hatred as a defence, and if we see such hatred as justified and virtuous, our hatred becomes boundless and such a part of us that we cannot relinquish it, no matter what peaceful compromises our enemies may offer us. Hence the continuing hatred between some Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, between some Israelis and Palestinians and between some Muslims (Shia vs Sunni) and recently between some Christians and some Muslims – it becomes a matter of them and us; always with us being better and superior in every way. (From “Beyond Fear” by Dorothy Rowe)

Never forget that poverty and riches – however these are defined - are products of our thoughts.

We have to rise above our baser feelings, avoid our fear of change and avoid using diversionary tactics to escape our internal turmoil.

I will end this post with a quote from a speech by Frederick Douglass (an African American former slave, social reformer, orator and statesman) on the 24^th anniversary of emancipation, Washington, DC, 1886, which has great relevance today:- “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is in an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” (From “Spirit Level” by Wilkinson and Pickett).

Israel's staggering presumption

So now Israel has agreed to a cease fire, of sorts and we are told that it has ‘exceeded its objectives’ in Gaza. Big deal. Over 1200 dead and many thousands injured. What for? If the Israelis think that bombs, rockets and assassinations will destroy a dream, will destroy the emotional fervour of the Palestinians (however disunited their various factions are) then they have learned nothing from their own history. Have the many and various anti-Jewish activities that have happened over the centuries ever sapped the Jewish dreams; ever broken their morale? Of course not! So what makes them think that doing what they have done, during the last 22 days of their offensive will bring ‘peace’ any closer.

The Israeli have destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza (for sure they will not pay for the repairs!); they killed, injured and maimed thousands of people after 22 days of brutal activity to arrive back at the point they started from! As I say what was all the death and destruction for?

They may kill thousands and destroy houses and buildings but they will never kill the Human Spirit. They should know that. So what makes them think that they are so special that what never had any affect on them will affect Palestinians any differently? We are all human beings on this world together. For whatever reason we are all here, now, with our differences in skin colour, beliefs and creeds, daily practises of living, our loves, our dreams, our hopes and aspirations – we are all in this together. So for one group of people (the Israelis) to try to subjugate another group (the Palestinians); to attempt to control how they should think and act towards the first (dominant? group) shows breathtaking arrogance, unbelievable hubris and staggering presumption.

The presumption is that Israel knows best. Do they? Have they addressed the root of the problem – a landless, disenfranchised population? That they are an occupying nation that was ‘given’ Palestine in 1946 because the world wanted to give the traumatised survivors of the Nazi death camps some place for them to recover and call home? What about the Palestinians? Without so much as a by your leave they were made landless and moved.

As the English poet and sermonist John Dunne wrote in the 1600s, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

The Israelis have been diminished by their actions – therefore they have lost. They may have ‘exceeded their objectives’ in Gaza but as I said, in the long run they have lost.

This is a defining moment in Israel’s short history. As a people the Jews in Israel are morally bankrupt. Their only recourse is to arms, to fight. That is not the way civilised people act. Whatever the shortcomings of Hamas and other hard line Palestinians, and there are many, by lowering themselves to ‘Hamas levels’ of activity the Israeli have diminished themselves – and they know it.

Why can’t the Israelis show moral leadership and lift the whole region to a new level of consciousness? Isn’t this what Jewishness; the Kabbalah and their spiritual practices are supposed to bring about? They should not just talk about it. They should walk the walk, not just talk the talk!!