Acknowledgment And Encouragement
As many theorists have argued both before and since 9/11, political violence is unarguably a form of sociopathology. On some level, as anything political, it is a quest for attention. Notwithstanding attention, the requisite recognition of what an issue, a dilemma, entails, cannot attain the transparency necessary to its resolution. Moreover, barring objectivity, resolution is probably also all but improbable.
Objectivity is complex. It usually manifests itself as a function of a political process. One would not generally consider political violence to be part of such a process. In fact, it would render itself as utterly antithetical to it. On some level, such is probably what we're currently witnessing in Iraq where the reconstruction has been forced to compete with a perhaps unexpecetedly potent insurgency.
Generally speaking, objectivity normally arises as a function of a democratic process. What democracy assumes is that any issue is bistable, that it must be comprised of two sides presumed to be antithetical, but not absolutely. Democracy is a form of the scientific method in which a hypothesis, a kind of opinion based on some form of what one might refer to as " associative observation " is forced to compete with an experiment that will either confirm or deny its veritability, at which time a compromise might be necessitated where the hypothesis must be either revised, or confirmed and more universally applied.
Resolution under such conditions may result from compromise or it might result from a realization of a residual, underlying commonality which will serve to compete with those diametric opposites. In other words, because an issue is comprised of a diverse set of characteristics, the realization of what is common on both sides is fundamental to resolution and must outweigh what differences exist.
So obejectivity is, unto itself, a process. Democracy, any notion of democracy, does not necessarily presume it to exist. That idea is where opponents of democracy are usually the subjects of misinterpretation. It is also where Christianity enters the picture. The most fundamental tenet of Christianity is not a characteristic shared by every religion. That tenet is the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule is neither simple nor straightforward. Nor does it consider the impulse toward retaliation that has long permeated the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Is that impulse even escapable ? Is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost deterministic to the point of engendering an element of predictability ? To what extent is such a crisis a function of the human mind, of human nature, of imagery, of self-perception in the form of what psychologists refer to as " identification." To what extent is identity a function of society, of culture ? And what about right and wrong ? Can a culture become so pathologically distorted that even such things as suicide bombing can be conceived as necessary and therefore not necessarily wrong ? If such were to be the case, the phenomenon would be a kind of rationalization reflective of nurture - the manner in which nurture might appeal to certain aspects of human nature.
Objectivity is complex. It usually manifests itself as a function of a political process. One would not generally consider political violence to be part of such a process. In fact, it would render itself as utterly antithetical to it. On some level, such is probably what we're currently witnessing in Iraq where the reconstruction has been forced to compete with a perhaps unexpecetedly potent insurgency.
Generally speaking, objectivity normally arises as a function of a democratic process. What democracy assumes is that any issue is bistable, that it must be comprised of two sides presumed to be antithetical, but not absolutely. Democracy is a form of the scientific method in which a hypothesis, a kind of opinion based on some form of what one might refer to as " associative observation " is forced to compete with an experiment that will either confirm or deny its veritability, at which time a compromise might be necessitated where the hypothesis must be either revised, or confirmed and more universally applied.
Resolution under such conditions may result from compromise or it might result from a realization of a residual, underlying commonality which will serve to compete with those diametric opposites. In other words, because an issue is comprised of a diverse set of characteristics, the realization of what is common on both sides is fundamental to resolution and must outweigh what differences exist.
So obejectivity is, unto itself, a process. Democracy, any notion of democracy, does not necessarily presume it to exist. That idea is where opponents of democracy are usually the subjects of misinterpretation. It is also where Christianity enters the picture. The most fundamental tenet of Christianity is not a characteristic shared by every religion. That tenet is the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule is neither simple nor straightforward. Nor does it consider the impulse toward retaliation that has long permeated the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Is that impulse even escapable ? Is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost deterministic to the point of engendering an element of predictability ? To what extent is such a crisis a function of the human mind, of human nature, of imagery, of self-perception in the form of what psychologists refer to as " identification." To what extent is identity a function of society, of culture ? And what about right and wrong ? Can a culture become so pathologically distorted that even such things as suicide bombing can be conceived as necessary and therefore not necessarily wrong ? If such were to be the case, the phenomenon would be a kind of rationalization reflective of nurture - the manner in which nurture might appeal to certain aspects of human nature.
posted by nld_coder at 8:55 AM
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