<The maddening thing is that to report on the Israeli/Pal conflict as just a conflict between tribes, one no different than the other, as Reuters does, is to ignore the civilized self-restraint (and make no mistake, it is chiefly self-restraint) that prevents the Israelis doing to the Palestinians what the Palestinians would do to the Israelis in a New York minute if the power positions were reversed. >
I know it's racist, but higher order species are held to higher expectations. We don't get all wound up and angry because a crocodile eats a person. That's just what they do. That's their job. The same with sharks. I'd kill them if I could, but not from any sense of revenge but merely to stop them doing it again.
It's weird these days [to me] that people are so enamoured of animals that they think of killer whales as cute orca dolphins. A pod of killer whales cruised around Auckland's harbour recently then wandered off back out to sea. A day or so later, a whale was found chewed up and dead, having been attacked by the killer whales. They forced its mouth open and ate its tongue, a delicacy and being a baleen whale, a very large delicacy. The rest of the whale was more or less left.
People wonder why whales beach themselves fairly frequently. My theory is that they hear the killer whales coming and in terror, hope to escape by heading into the shallows. I wouldn't want to be out in the ocean with killer whales coming for my tongue. I'd take my chances on dry land.
People were beaching themselves out of the top floors of the Twin Towers too, but they weren't confused in their navigation systems. They just had no way out and took their chances with a hard impact, knowing it would be fatal.
True, the Jews show more self-restraint than the Palestinians. Jews have seen genocide up close and personal in living memory, so they don't wish to inflict such horrors on other people. They know that Palestinian children aren't responsible for what a wicked Hamas alpha male murderer decides to do, and that killing a lot of Palestinian children and other non-belligerent people won't help their cause. It wouldn't even make them feel better. The suicide bomber is dead and that's the primary guilty party. There's no revenge to be had.
Not all people are created equal, although it's fashionable these days to pretend so. Humans range from chimp-like to high order primate with a full quota of ethics, intelligence, emotional stability and long range concepts.
Look at Prime Minister Sharon; obviously a higher order primate. Okay, I'm kidding there.
Anyway, I expect higher standards from my family and friends and certain countries than I do from places like Rwanda, Syria, Indonesia and Palestinians where I racistly think "Well, what can you expect from a shark? They kill people".
It's true that humans can be civilized, but some human groups are a lot easier than others to civilize. Some just don't have the ability to organize complex civilized societies. See "Smart Fraction Theory" lagriffedulion.f2s.com Even those that do have the ability get overtaken with MADness from time to time. Germany and Japan were perfectly capable of civilization, but look at the direction they chose before WWII.
Such violent outlooks derive from a concept of the world as a zero-sum game based on the eons-old tribal alpha male dominance hierarchy kleptocratic way of life where wealth is found and taken by force. Which was true for a billion years in the biosphere, so it's not surprising that with a genome full of such DNA, the atavistic old ways rear their ugly head from time to time. Some societies have never left the way of life of living by the sword. Magna Carta and habeas corpus are still only a few centuries old. Women only got a vote last century in most countries [and still don't in many].
Trading and voluntary association on a global non-tribal basis is a very modern and unusual idea, which hasn't even got a very robust foothold in the USA, let alone in more backward places. Bringing those places into the civilized world is the trick.
Mqurice |
