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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (32879)	6/22/2002 5:42:21 AM
From: SirRealist	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>Tom Friedman replied, "Culture matters. It matters what you teach your kids." He also noted that there is more democracy going on any given day on a street corner in Tehran than in all of Saudi Arabia the whole year long. He said that Iran, which like the Arab world is growing younger and poorer, is in better shape to democratize because the people are more educated and 60% of university students are women. In Saudi Arabia the first elections would likely return some bin Laden wannabe. In short, he painted the picture of an Arab world that has dug a very deep hole for itself. << Yes indeedy. The Muslim religion is hardly the first to be found complicit in cultural perfidy. I've seen Christian education primers from the early part of last century that advised girls being raped that it was not a sin to kill themselves to avoid being soiled. In any social structure where strict taboos are placed based on gender- which, by the way, has a repressive impact on both genders - societal advancement is delayed in many ways, including economic. One predictable result is a higher birth rate, which exacerbates the economic woes and causes a devaluation in the worth of the lives of children. After all, children are easily replaceable. It becomes a vicious cycle, as a larger population with a self-limiting economy generally has less resources to spend on education. Often, such societies find the knowledge void filled by religious leaders. Certain intellectual disconnects can arise. For instance, setting aside the current crisis in the Catholic church, one would or should question why a collective of celibate men and women should be viewed as experts on sexual matters. Yet for centuries, they called the shots and still try to, with restrictions on contraceptives. Humans are sexual critters and church-imposed sanctions that ignore our basic biology inevitably breed dysfunction. In the past year, from different societies we've been spotlighting here, we can see a number of such dysfunctions. In Afghanistan, children are taught to compete with each other ruthlessly and betrayal is encouraged. More advanced societies urge competition but they also stress the values of teamwork. Switching sides in the midst of battles (when your side is being beaten) is another oddity there. How can either side fully trust their fellow soldiers when they were shooting at ya a day or an hour ago? I'm a bit loathe to dis the entire Arab world, however. Not just in Iran, but in Jordan and the UAE and elsewhere, more functional societies are developing. But in those with the highest birth rates, there appears certain tendencies. Such as the macho belief that negotiations and concessions are a sign of weakness and surrender. Or that if you resist the group in power, you are a collaborator with the opposition and are therefore subject to torture and murder. The two institutions with the greatest power to correct these flaws are political parties and religions, even in the most tribal of societies. However, since both can lose power, prestige and influence when sound education and civil liberties are introduced, they typically provide the opposite. It generally takes the emergence of truly enlightened thinkers for change to occur. Or a long history of defeat that causes the masses to reject those who lead them to repeated defeats. And I feel, to some degree, this is where the more advanced societies are guilty of some neglect. Incentives that encourage intellectual freedoms could provide carrots to go with the stick that often gets used alone. But indeed, in societies where the average person in the thick of things is an under 25 uneducated male whose role is upheld by petty religious tyrants who dangle the jewels of the afterlife for adherence to policies that have failed throughout history, there is a deep hole dug. And it's ultimately a hole whose inhabitants must decide for themselves to climb out of. Outsiders can't do it. The best they can do is spread the word about the advantages one gains living outsde such holes. That's where I think Israel and the western democracies could do a better job, by providing more educational opportunities. That's hard to do when the folks you're trying to help are strapping bombs to themselves or crashing jetbombs into your buildings. And education alone is insufficient. Just consider the accomplishments of two well-educated men: Gandhi and Bin Laden. That's a cultural difference. And the only way, in my opinion, that the deficiency of Bin Laden's methods can be highlighted is to defeat him soundly, again and again, till his weakness becomes a taunting joke. Whatever his capacity to inflict damage on others must be met with a ferociousness that ensures a greater cost on him and his ilk. Even then, we must wait for more enlightened voices to arise from within such backward cultures, as an alternative. Till then, it merely becomes a different hole.