maybe all bin Laden really wants is control of Saudi Arabia
I was amazed to read this from Steve as it was the same
thought I had regarding the dynamics- a question which
again could be related to place and states of mind, too.
In previous, years earlier news it was said the goal of
bin Laden may be an attempt to overtake Saudi oilfields.
Though, at the same time, it would seem that that may be
a common international issue about places so identified
with this fossilized prehistoric resource which enables all
of technological developments today, perfume to airflight,
internet to paved roads, plastic containers to heating fuel.
one related question may be, is such a takeover limited to
Saudi Arabia or is it to occupy the Muslim/Arabic world?
the geographical space that may be occupied by 'minds'
in such a shared place, of a religious belief system or of
a system of faith, would itself provide a conquering force,
should these be at the service of a centralized authority,
such as a lineage of prophets who call repeatedly upon
God's willingness in all decisions, who can only provide
a critique of the goodness of a warrior mentality, which
would need to be supernatural, in effect, to refute what is
said to be in 'God's' name, that is, death, murder, mayhem.
Only something like lightning splitting open the casks of
untruth, earthquakes shattering the sanctity of falsehoods
of mystic truths, symbols falling from the sky of damnation,
epic earth-events and paranormal hijackings of a natural
order by an-other force altogether may be all that could
communicate beyond this invocation of 'godness' as a
justification for a private war of beliefs. That, fortunately,
is a wrath destined only those who invoke a false-power,
using the name of one thing for the purposes of another.
It seems that this is where, minus the current .US admin,
'the west' was better than average in addressing failings
of equating political truth with moral truth, in some way.
As when the two are identical, you end up with a literal
repeat, oddly enough, of the Iran-Contra figures from the
1980s running the government again, and again, in Iraq.
Hard to fathom what this means, it is all on autopilot and
nothing is said about these aspects, nor that such ways
are deep-rooted in the politics and policies of the regions,
both afar and nearby. Who can trust a public servant who
lies to congress and does no time because of immunity,
and is in Iraq to help 'build democracy' with Halliburton?
Forget which of the cast of characters is in this scenario,
there are too many to count, basically an administration.
Just like the coup-de-grace of a recent .US endorsement
of one-side of the .IL settlement planning, the opportune
time to make the grandslam is when the puppetmaster is
out of town. Place and mind, no congress, it is a divine
cause, divine purpose, divine calling of one individual
in a system of catastrophic structural collapse, which is
to determine one extreme based on a belief system, in
a sense bypassing the entirety of .US national security
and public interests and historical precedent to make
an unrepresented, purely ideological position which is
beyond comprehension how to stop this deterioration...
in fact, can it be stopped? Today, .US policy is Israel's,
and that is not good for the .US, .IL, .PL, or the world...
True believers do not think, or, better to say, _believe
that. Thinking only gets in the way of the direct-connect
to the divine truth, as handed down from a source of
divine intel: that being, Ariel Sharon apparently, as he
recently stated of some settlement that, for all eternity
the land will be under his domain. Now, I am not sure
if there is any precedent for such thinking, beyond a
level of true-belief in omnipotence and power that is,
simply, superhuman in its beliefs and, occupations.
Pre-occupation, that an idea may pre-occupy a place,
makes it curious how land can be owned for eternity,
if owned at all, in any religious sense whatsoever. It
is among the most profane things I have ever heard.
And like the curse of the gods throughout centuries a
proclamation indeed may come true, but in opposite
form-- and what this may be may someday not be so
simple a grand conceit but a tragic, inhumane place
owned by settlers upon something less than divine.
Place, mind, space, time. There is a story in the .US
of two families that feud, it may be true yet also is a
folklore, that they keep fighting through generations
of families, seeking revenges. And it never stops. It
seems to be an approximate example of the binary
thinking and either-or logic as an approach to some
resolution of 'difference', whether cultural or structural
or psychological. The analogy that comes to mind is
of Gary Kasparov chess match against IBM's Big Blue
computer, in a sense a battle of ideas vs. ideologies,
imagination vs. computation or limited consideration.
And, humans challenging decision-making machines.
It has a bit of the context of the present day, what it is
like to exist in a realm of statistics, databases, realms
of low-resolution decisions and profiling, and the will
to retain what is unique, independent, collaborative,
beyond the limitations of some predestined encoding.
Existence changes, disrupts, and disturbs the past, it
may even churn away at it, unless it is harnessed for
better purposes, beyond just resisting, but changing
the course of events so that 'the public' retains place,
'the private' retains place, that these are not made to
disappear from the mind in some Brave New World
soma pill-popping to erase the real for the surreality,
dictation machines, pre-recorded, playing on and on.
If thinking, in global machinery of bureaucracies or
even revolutionary efforts based on attempts at the
transformation of these yet only to replace them with
a new occupation of limitations, with new a rulership,
would seem to be similar to binary thinking yet with
a missing middle or undecided, thought is decided.
And, interactions such as those between ideologues
may be similar to computations of the chess computer
whereby seemingly opposite sides are complements,
adding the missing parts of the other, to complete a
worldview that, taken together may be partly accurate,
partly fuzzy, and partly inaccurate. And, on the other
side of the table, the human beings who interact in a
state which thinks both are wrong, both have some
truth, and both are missing a realistic middle-ground
to ever allow or enable a fairness to accounting of a
situation instead turns it into a system of automated
computation, this chess computer churning through
time, slicing reality into discrete bits and the outputs
match the inputs, God1 in, God2 in, God1 or God2
or NoGod12 output. How to make a simple diagram?
It is similar to charges, if there are two persons and
two ideologies and a similar partly shared situation,
and then an either-or decision has to be made, and
on the terms in which it is made there is an inherent
bias, in this case using the idea of +,neutral, - charge.
+ | - -|+
| |
if two ideas are meeting on shared (negative) ground
and denying the other aspects of 'the other' person, it
would seem that any ambiguity would be impossible
unless a middle-ground (in this case, the symbol 'I' ) is
available to transcend the inability to choose. Any truth
of the other person/vantage is negated in a state of bias.
And, an approximation of 'the truth' of any situation, even
if it is a negative (say, 'war' is equated with '-') then, with
each person having three values, +|-, would be one third
of possibility by making a choice, and having two persons
or ideologies involved, who share but differ on positions,
would seem to be dealing with 1/3rd of 1/3rd or any truth,
negative or positive, or it would seem about 9% of some
truth or falsity, which could further be split in thirds in the
disagreement over truth and falsity and middle-ground
in such a statement of war. Even if such a basic, likely
inaccurate as numbers, estimate of the truth-value of a
rhetoric of place and mind in, say, Iraq or with Terrorism
were to exist, it would seem reason has long been left
behind for the more encompassing universalism of the
religious belief systems, which allow belief to equal truth.
Or, in this same context as above, each side can say with
absolute certainty they are 'right', there is no ambiguity,
another is wrong or lesser, and thus one side of a deeply
pre- and post-occupation of considerations of the divine
would lead one to, falsely, equate power as being truth,
that is, or something like 1/37th accuracy equal 1, truth.
Some actual mathematician would be able to give more
accurate numbers and these may be somewhat off yet
I do not think they are that far off if considering 3 values.
maybe (fill in the blanks)
Maybe it is like the tarpits which captured the dinosaurs,
trapping the oilmen and oilstates in a situation less that
of a quagmire as that is escapable it would seem, and
more like quicksand where once in, you cannot get out
without additional help, and you just keep sinking down.
About the movies, there is something very interesting in
reading a recent Zarqawi message and now bin Laden
communicating about a peace ("sulh")... what is unique
is that the differences in realities seem to be coming into
some perspective-- and to try to keep within a reasoning,
the observations which never really sunk in before were,
one, while news accounts have said that one of these
texts was about 'civilizations against civilizations' it does
seem a bit too simplistic for that. And, instead of asking
for the blessing of a prophet, it is more like--
And may this happen for our people, Media Willing...
This is not meant to be derogatory but to provide a media
context for what is like a re-release of a media album or
some press-statement, like there is a press agent for the
fighters of infidels and corruption of the world. What is of
deep concern is what types of 'place' and types of 'mind'
are these al Qaeda types are fighting for? This is missing
from all rhetoric, as it focuses on the others being evil and
misled (some truth, and likewise). Yet, what about women
in Muslim/Arab worlds? What is bin Laden's vision for the
billion or so women if the Taliban culture was a utopia?
What about poverty and education and skills that are now
being used for media production? What about literacy, of
building economies for people to work? Here it is often
said-- do not complain unless you have a better plan--
so, it is wondered, what exactly is the plan of bin Laden?
Not that one discounts the horrors that have proceeded,
but imagine if somehow a truce, through a shared reason,
was found, and that things to this date may still play out
to balance the scales, and yet a new foundation would
be possible to open up ideas beyond bureaucracies to
ask such questions and have 'the public' of the Islamic/
Arab worlds say, beyond one individual (bin Laden) to
plan out the destiny and changes on a basis other than
war, and, in a sense, with a middle-ground of realism--
that myths may have a function, yet to save oneself the
horror of infamy may require resolution towards a goal
first stated: change. What change, how, who? Citizens?
It would seem that bin Laden is not against democracy,
per se, nor as a business person probably against any
kind of trade with regard to certain cultural exchanges.
It is not known, yet in terms of place, mind, psychology,
all that is received is _against_ everything, absolutely.
An annihilation of existence which simply doesn't work.
Nihilistic viewpoints are a luxury only few can afford at
the price of everyone else, as there is little else to live for.
What if, through the horrors that have preceded present
conditions (decades worth) and also, ongoing warfare
and great human strife, could be placed into a context
of reasoning in which one-side does not hold another
onto its terms alone, but in some way begins to reason
through this to a shared place, it seems entirely possible
if the goals of shared human striving can defeat those of
suffering so great and a disenfranchisement so difficult
that to fight it is to fight the world. What if bin Laden can
direct his forces towards a middle-region of peace, not
just on his terms, and likely many peoples fates will be
unchanged, though the direction could break-open the
freedoms of people's potentials, not with violence yet
through the power of human voice, everyone's voices,
a public voice, of reason, uniquely of a place and mind
and a balancing and in that, a definition that goes well
beyond the simplistic ideologies and war-mongering,
ceasing the tragic and moving towards a transition?
Off-the-table for diplomats, and the language used by
recent releases indicate the bias similarly shared by
the .US in its worldviews, yet it is an effort that should
not be ignored in terms of hope, place, mind, it is some
kind of beginning-- imagine if truth and thought and
even goodwill entered into local, global interactions,
what may be possible if the forces which have been
against instead becomes forces _for a general type of
empowerment, releasing the ideological shackles and
to start to hear voices of the moderates who, in times
of extremism, are most radical in consideration of the
multi-faceted aspects, seeking balance, continuity,
fairness. There used to be a Mad magazine cartoon
called Spy Vs. Spy, and today it is like God Vs. God.
And what if, through reason, culture, thinking, ideas,
arts, that place may be connected beyond one view,
yet, if there is something obviously lacking in some
exchange, that it may need to be addressed to go
beyond, change the context, moving throughout it
and into a better place, and states of mind, reason.
Instead, there is a type of Unabomber-paradox in
which there was a person in the .US who used the
explosion to make their point in a targeted attack,
finally getting their ideas into the NYT newspaper
to air their thesis on the condition very similar to
what is happening today in terms of bureaucracies
and the stakes. Yet, there were flaws in the critical
thinking, small ones that grow into bigger ones, in
which the necessity of 'peer-review' and lack of it
could be seen in its tragic consequence. As, the
situation went beyond reason, and violence was
the way to continuing writing the story. A story in
a way related to the holy warriors, who need be
said, have an impressive skill for story telling, or
of handing down a narrative of actions, even if it
is not accurate (nor is the .US', either, as it was
attempted to exampled above in the diagram). It
gives a sense of very different realities yet also,
of what is valued, this long history, the long view.
Yet, if one is mistaken in an assumption early on,
and continues the stories, they may become, in
essence, inaccurate at their core, misrepresenting
or even distorting the truth, and thus actions which
are based on them may lead one to a series of
wrong conclusions, such as: 'x' is the cause of 'y'.
It may not even be inaccurate, it may have some
truth at some time, it may be a myth, it also may
be largely untrue, except for its propaganda. It
is here that if the warriors were to proclaim their
academics and thinkers and poets to explain the
middle-positions, to open dialogues of reasoning,
that the negative forces could be turned into a
force for a more positive transformation based on
the wealth of knowledge, of culture, civilizations,
which is still largely a mystery and very missed in
its critical role in defining a place beyond wars,
in terms of people, shared goals, even the world,
a path which takes into account the undecided.
In the .US, even though ideologically now negated,
it was thought (or so it seems) that separation of a
church and the state was not a negative in that it
was a type of censoring, rather that it kept a type of
sanctity to ideas, public representation, yet also of
faith and belief, that although one may not be able
to voice what they believe, they can believe it none-
the-less and, in a sense, it may be more accurate to
'not know' yet 'know' something beyond words than
to constantly have to use religious language as a
way of defining and describing and engaging local
and world events, because of limits but also, it may
not be the function of a contingent belief-system to
make it the rule or law if it is metaphysical, that is to
make it also arbitrary depending on the interpreters,
and if one gets very slanted or ideological views, it
can lead to letting young women burn in schools,
as they are not wearing the right clothes, in itself a
question of the purpose of belief in the life of mind,
if it is not to aid the human condition, may it oppress
if taken to an extreme, and becoming itself inhuman?
Pre-occupation, it is hard to let go of this word as it
seems thought out far-in-advance, the corruptions
now underway and which most, still, here, view as
a bad-week-of-television, a jump in gas prices, an
increase in milk (mad cow), government reviews,
9/11, 9/11, 9/11, and TERROR. The American Mind
detached from a composite, the flip-side and middle-
ground also missing. It is like a crypt of sorts in that
there is a sealed off area that only the crooks now
in charge manipulate, further and further, to rob and
despoil the last of the last, in some vacuous attempt
to reclaim their divine right to absolute truth, power.
The conceit of the son-king, though what is different
in the plans or designs for a place by bin Laden? It
is this, if there is reason to belief in a purpose which
is greater than bin Laden himself, and war itself, that
some freedom from current limitations which are a
cause for events, some of which has very little to do
with the .US or 'the West' but is a home-grown issue,
and may include representative government of some
form -- what is the stance if not for greater potentials
and futures and freedoms (with respect, balances),
for people now in a state of question, Praise Media,
Media Willing, what will bin Laden do?
Place, peace. Time, peace. Mind, peace. Space, peace.
Imagination. Strategy, how to go from yesterday toward
a tomorrow where there is balance-- what is necessary,
what are the questions, conditions, how can we relate
as a world, and with respect for differences yet also to
acknowledge the reality of the world beyond the self--
that other points of view are required to co-exist and at
some point, it may be necessary and desired because,
that is largely part of living, learning, changing, loving.
Not one who has ever identified in one way or another
with the simple notion of peace, as complexity does not
seem to allow for it, the chaos of mind, of events, of the
relations between people would seem to indicate that
this millennium is not off to a great start, and if it is to
continue in this way, it is likely unsustainable in every
way imaginable. And, that is not a choice. The option
seems to be reason, attempting understanding and to
bridge realities in some way to enable new things to
be possible. It does not seem likely given who is in
power in the .US, the way things have been and are
continuing to go, and yet there are definitely changes
that are happening and that can happen that will alter
the context of events, new and old. It is just that time
is on the side of machines, bureaucracies, they can
stop it or speed it up, they can compute or crash any
decision, in a sense, the forces of war complement
eachother while at the same time annihilating 'the
other', which ends up with nothingness, if it is not a
war that can be won, unless all win through reason,
through a new peace, a new context, a new relation.
There is little more that can be done, it seems, to
move towards resolution or some change in events
as the rhetoric is limited, biased in an insufficient
dialogue or dogma, and thus imperils possibilities
to transcend language, to reach an understanding
that, with intense cultural dialogue of empowered
thinkers, artists, imaginations, both intercivilization
and internally, could rearrange the situations now
existing in the conceptual models being used to
define and describe and compute the outcomes.
A plea for reason beyond holy war, here or abroad,
it is critical to take seriously any attempt at a sharing
of space, time, place, minds. Even if in opposition.
The world exists with limitations, perfection is rare,
and to judge based on any moral purity is delusional,
as a rule for pragmatic, realistic action within hellfire.
What are the ideas, options, goals, dreams, wishes?
What do various 'publics' of the Arab/Islamic world
think and need to change the circumstances, to get
at the 'root causes' for the inequities which arrive in
the form of terrorism, elsewhere, -- how can the ideas
move beyond 'holy war' and into a 'peace of cultures'?
It is necessary to hear from more than 'power' but also
of large realms of truth, that which is also absent here
for a type of mystic action which is, basically, unhinged
from the consequences of such an ideological stance.
The bodies are not symbols, they are lives vanquished.
For all the dead, what is gained? More war, or options
and a future that, before now impossible, may bring a
future and a stability and a focus and respect and also
any help to make amends in the cause of a peaceful
middle-east, an Iraq governed by Iraqis, and changes
which address the causes of terrorism through actual
structural changes, including the .US' foreign policy,
with which all on-going equations could be changed.
Yet, more terrorism only strengthens what is going on,
it is the reason for the reactionaries to retain their hold
on power, and what cause does it serve besides itself?
A lot could change with reason, within a middle-ground.
... 'peace of mind' may also require the 'peace of place'.
brian
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