Hashmat Moslih - AlJazeeraTalk
11th of September is a gruesome celebration of a gruesome act, committed by the leaders of the western civilization; it is the celebration of the death of logic. Logic died when the western leaders demanded that the occupied must provide security for the occupier. In such an environment of world order, attacks like that of 11th of September are inevitable and nothing is going to prevent it. Humanity has reached a deadlock; war is the only path in resuscitating “reason” and “logic’. What happened to “reason” and “logic” and where enlightenment is, are questions which can only be answered by analysing the roots of the political psychology of our era. An honest analysis of the guiding political psychology of our times will lead us to the answer of the most heart aching question amongst the western population in general and USA in particular, “why do they hate us”?
Those who carried out the 11th of September attacks were not born terrorist or barbarians, they were simply the products of modernity, they did not suffer from lack of modernity, on the contrary, they are the victims of hypermodernity. It all begun when we accepted the notion of “scientific objective truth” as the torch of guidance towards prosperity. Subjective man tricked his fellow subjective man to believe in him as “objective”. Moral certainty had to make way for scientific relativity and Truth was proclaimed dead and truths were celebrated and embraced. The result was obvious, man became the god of man. The previous relationship of man being the slave of God alone was shattered. The age of new “prophets” was born, now they spoke not in the name of God but rather in the name of Science and spoke of “objective truth”. A new set of social control came into effect “scientific objective truth” became the standard of right and wrong and whoever disagreed and challenged it, was pointed out as nothing more than a regressive dogmatic religious fool who lives in the “dark ages” away from reality, and certainly not “enlightened’.
“Enlightenment” was supposed to have been the age where “reason” and “logic” are celebrated and embraced, however, today what we have is not the ‘enlightenment” of “Dark Ages” but rather the “Dark Ages” of “Enlightenment”. The new “prophets” of humanity now called “Scientists” begun to shed ‘light” on the most fundamental questions that had shaped society. The origin of life was redefined and the theory of social Darwinism embraced. Together with Social Darwinism came the theory of survival of the fittest, all this led to the theory of natural selection, a modern statement that might is right became the motto of nations set on the path of material development. And it just happened to be that might was also white. An old human trait of subjugation and domination of others was now given a moral footing and an “objective” psychology and was embraced as the inevitability of natural order. The European imperialists discharged many ‘white gods’ through out the world, and an old age human injustice, ‘slavery’, took a modern shape, an era of institutional colonialism begun, however, this time it felt no guilt or remorse, the age of self righteous colonialism and subjugation had begun. The new colonialism spoke of “human rights”, “freedom” in a “modern” way, based on the laws of nature and natural selection. Millions of free men became slaves to other men, “modernity” was embraced and the race was on. The world became a place not for the faint hearted. “Modernity” had set the benchmark; nature has no time for the weak. So if one could enslave a man, purely on the account that he fell victim was justified, because it was nature at work. The “modernists” argued, there is no God or divine morality beyond man, sovereignty belongs to the people, and people’s representatives can define what is moral or immoral through laws. On the other hand, they taught the individuals that Truth is only that which is real and reality is that, which is tangible by our five senses and anything outside that, is nothing more than a fiction. Our five senses are our only measure of the world “outside” us. To determine the good and bad of things we look at its utility and utility is measured by pleasure, in other words, that which gives pleasure is good and of use. Such theories led to the emergence of yet another modern psychology of “national interest”. The best way to preserve the individual’s interest is through collective means and any collative entity must have leadership and a body to administer its affairs, in other words, a government and governments must be supported by all. The job of government is to ensure prosperity for the individual and guarantee a long term pleasure. So ensuring the interest of the nation is modernity’s role for the government. All rules, regulations and conventions must be set to serve the interest of the nation. Today, this is exactly the underlying moral principle of any foreign policy. Whenever rules or conventions collide with the continuously changing interest of the nations, interest must come first. The best way to serve ones interest would be to stay dominant over others at all cost, and when you cannot, manipulate others, make your own laws, conventions and morality to stay on top. Demand that the occupied, the prisoner, is responsible to provide security for the occupier, the jailor. Demand that the burden of proof is on the accused. Demand that torture is okay, and call your professional killing machines ‘service men’ and others militia. Your civil fighters, patriots and others warlords, your atrocities isolated cases, others organized war crimes. Call your cause a struggle for freedom and others barbaric terrorism. Make the rules as you go, and when you fear you are loosing, shift the goal posts. Demand that Palestinians must have elections and embrace democracy, when they do so and the result is not to your liking, place sanctions on them. Ferment insecurity amongst them and accuse them of being incapable of establishing law and order, when they root out the elements of insecurity, cry out that they are violent. The applied logic is that of Road Runner cartoon, which the western world raises their children by. Today, the criteria of being superb and super is the size of ones gun and whether you have nuclear weapons or not, and whether you defend your wrongs or not. Such has become the world where nations are competing to acquire weapons of mass destruction to defend their wrongs, to become modern, to experiment in the theatre of war and prove scientifically that the mightier your guns the greater your chances of being naturally selected to survive and hence naturally proven to be right.
That is why the western governments are desperately trying to stop others from acquiring weapons of mass destruction; in reality we are already in the Modern theatre of war. “Modernity” dictates that it is okay to take the land of Palestinians and give it to the Jews and revive the kingdom of Jerusalem after thousands of years, because it gives us a foothold on the shores of others, it can serve as a base to wage war against others but reject and fight off the reunification of Kuwait with Iraq, which was only separated early last century because it serves our interests. “Modernity” dictates that killing one and a half million people in Iraq with sanctions “a price worth paying” as said by Madeline Albright, the former US foreign secretary of Jewish background. While modernity has grown deep roots in the western civilization, old habits die-hard. The western modern psychology is still clouded by its Christian past. The notion of original sin is applied in a secular way to daily issues. We are told that Jesus died for our sins, the original sin of Adam (who was the product of God) a sin that we never committed. The only way we can be saved and redeemed is to confess to a crime that we did not commit and accept Jesus as our saviour. Likewise, the western leaders held the people of Iraq responsible for the crime of their undemocratically elected government and placed the entire country under a regime of sanctions, which killed 1.5 million Iraqis. They were told to confess to their crime and rebel against their sin, ‘Saddam’ (who was the product of the Western governments) and accept the west as their saviour in order to be redeemed. And when they could not understand this logic of “modernity” a Modern crusade has been waged against them. So the terrorists argue if the people of Iraq can be held responsible for the crimes of their undemocratically elected government, surely we can hold the people of the west responsible for the crimes of their democratically elected governments. The terrorists further argue based on the rules of “modernity” if it is okay for you to have more than a million innocent Iraqis killed in order to change a government and serve your interest and protect your way of life, then it should be insignificant if we killed a 1000 innocent Spanish to serve our interests, protect our way of life and cause a government change, after all, nature allows the weak to struggle to survive and only time will show if the weak is really weak. So we all have to brace ourselves for a long, bloody torturous celebration of the death of logic as the Guantanamo has become the prison of the “terrorists” the “terrorists” are poised to make the world the Guantanamo of their enemies. There are those of us who are desperately trying to find out why human beings are prepared to become suicide bombers and kill their own fellow man. But subjective man disguised as objective try to tell us that those who commit suicide bombings are evil. The masked man tries to convince us that they are terrorists that they train in distant strange lands, live in the shadows and sleep in dark caves. From time to time they tell us not to venture out of our homes, they put out warnings saying do not travel to Indonesia or Middle East or here or there because the boogieman is there, they realize not that the real boogieman is our state of mind. No security measure can keep the “Terrorists” out because there is no out. We are all in it, we have all fallen victim to “modernity”, we have reached hypermodernity. We breathe terrorists; our homes, schools, sidewalks, books, workplace and televisions have all become the training ground for terrorism. London bombings are a testimony to this fact. The British police tell us that three of the bombers were born in England and had gone through English secular teachings. How come the logic of secular teachings could not prevail over a few months of religious teachings in the mind of the four western Moslems? What is fundamentally wrong with the secular teachings of the west that has not been able to win over many Moslems? An interesting fact refutes the subtle pointing of the media to the Pakistani origin of the bombers and that fact is that the fourth Bomber was a Jamaican convert, so it could not have been an ethnic factor. The answer is obvious; the political psychology of our era is flawed. The secular world has embraced the law of the jungle and this is as good as it gets. In fact we have gone back to the time of first man but this time trees have given way to concrete structures. We have no choice but to leave the jungle and take refuge in caves and high mountains. Unfortunately, all “democratic” experiences and experiments in the Muslim world have proven that war is the only path. The story of Hamas is the latest example of why war is inevitable. And as for the question “why do the hate us?” the answer is –you do not care.
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- 2ND Tendancy : struggle against any supremacy, would it be justified by science and history , and stick to our social and religious values;
This huge gap gave birth to big events.A century later, our devided world bacame a new modern one with new independant states, and newly identifiable communities;The interaction of differences have certainly lead to some good results. But could we acheive any independance or freedom without fighting? Only the cases of India and South Africa illustrate the importance of peaceful resistance; While the cases of so many coutries illustrate the need to armed struggle, to achieve independance and restore peace.Besides, no development in any country, for the benefit of any free people , is possible, unless they recover their ressources and wealth . Only then , they can be free to choose their partners and share work as they will