A forking of history----Part II
Recently, the witty American Jewish anti-Zionist Lenni Brenner commented on Chaim Weizmann’s letter of 1914. Weizmann, the leading Zionist and first president of Israel, had an important talk with Lord Balfour (of the Balfour declaration) and Balfour confided that ‘he shared many anti-Semitic ideas. <Weizmann> pointed out to him that Zionists too are in agreement with the cultural anti-Semites’. Brenner triumphally concluded, ‘translated into blunt English, Balfour thanked Weizmann for confirming his anti-Semitism’.
It could sound odd for young readers used to sycophantic Jewish writing, but the first Zionists were very strict with the Jews they knew. For them, a plethora of Jewish lawyers, porn dealers, currency traders, lobby activists, bankers, media lords, real estate moguls, liberal journalists were ‘an undesirable, demoralizing phenomenon’, in the words of Weizmann, or ‘scum of the earth’, in harsh words of David Ben Gurion. Zionism accepted the main premise of anti-Semitism, and offered a remedy, Mao-style ‘re-education’ in an isolated remote countryside.
However, History decided otherwise. Galutiyut, the (Diaspora) Jewishness turned out to be a winning strategy in the Mammon-worshipping West. The named lawyers and media lords captivated America’s mind and became the model for many Americans, Jewish and Gentile. Israeli Zionism lost its spirit, degraded into military dictatorship and survives only thanks to subsidies of the captivated America. Still, it does not mean that ‘anti-Semitic’ diatribes of the early Zionists were all wrong, as worldly success is not the only measure of things.
There was one feature of (Diaspora) Jewish mindset that was particularly strange and unique. When good Russian Jewish kids of fin-de-siècle left the sheltered life of Jewish townships and entered the Gentile world, they became aware of a tragic element of Jewish existence, its almost total divorce with Nature. Jews were not interested in Nature at all, they did not describe in verse or prose, they did not paint it, they did not connect to it; they did not care for landscape outside their schtetl. Young men and women felt it has to be changed. Some of them moved to Argentina, where Baron Hirsch tried to attach Jews to land. Others established colonies in Crimea, or in Palestine.
They planned to get rid of their Jewishness. They did not mind the name (well, some did, and demanded to be called Israelis or Hebrews, or Canaanites), they minded the qualities of ‘the Jew’ and wanted to get rid of them, and reunite with Nature. Not being strict Zionists, we would say that some people of Jewish origin succeeded to get rid of this feature without going to Palestine (probably they could be described as ‘descendents of Jews’ rather than as ‘Jews’). Majority of Israeli Jews failed to attach themselves to the land in Palestine, as well, as it hardly could be done without fusion with the local inhabitants.
The reason of Jewish divorce with Nature was explained in different terms, but to the same effect by an important Russian historiographer, ‘Russian Toynbee’ Lev Gumilev. He considered an ethnos as a group connected to its landscape. Ethnos can’t exist outside of its ecological niche. Gumilev defined Jews (or unreconstructed Diaspora Jews, a Zionist would say), as people of anthropogenic (man-made) landscape. That is why it is so easy for a Jew to change his place of living: he disregards the Nature, while modern cities are basically all the same. That is why a Jew has an advantage in competition: while a part of, say, English mind refers to skills needed in the natural environment of the British Isles, a Jewish mind is wonderfully concentrated on advance in man-made environment.
Gumilev replaces the traditional dichotomy of Jews vs. Gentiles by another one, people of man-made landscape vs. people of Natural landscapes. It does not coincide with a city/village division, as a city dweller can be integral part of its landscape. Such men live in the old beautiful cities, Florence and Oxford, Jerusalem and Mecca, Suzdal and Leon. These cities grew like flowers in their setting, they created art, built cathedrals and mosques; they were unique, and local, and universal in the same time. There is also a place for great cities of the world, Paris, London, New York, Bombay, Shanghai – they are meeting places for civilisations. However, modern man-made cities, Milton Keynes, Luton, St Denis, the suburban spread of New Jersey, our Holon and Afula are faceless, similar to each other and devoid of culture.
An ethnos is successful in its own ecological niche, and unsuccessful in a foreign one. In order to win in the competition with other ethnic groups, an ethnos tries to adapt oneself to environment or to adapt environment to its needs. We observe a similar process while fishing a big fish: a fish tries to pull the fisherman into its own environment, water, as it rightly presumes it can win there. A fisherman tries to pull a fish into his own environment, dry land, as he is certain he can win there.
That is why (Diaspora) Jews are wont to exclude foreign (for them) natural landscape and supplant it by a man-made one, where they know how to apply their strategy. It is as instinctive a move as the attempt of a fish to pull the fisherman into the sea. An example of such strategy is provided by the Canadian Jewish dynasty of Reichmann.
This pious Orthodox Jewish family was active in real estate in Canada, England and elsewhere. They immigrated into Canada from Austria in Hitler’s days, and in 1980s their assets were assessed at $40 billion. Reichmanns invented a shopping mall, the urban design that changed lives of people all over the globe. Malls undermined socially integrated inner cities, killed small traditional shops, devastated artisans and supported brand names, big companies, car ownership, suburban living and social disintegration. Malls eliminated the advantage of a local product or producer over an imported or centrally produced one, as in the mall there is no traditional shop or traditional shopper, no loyalty or age-old craftsmanship.
Malls made Reichmanns fabulously rich, and Canadians used to say, there are rich, super-rich and Reichmanns. They supported various Jewish charities and Israeli projects, spent much money on Russian (‘Russian Jews’) immigration to Israel. But they caused more harm than good to the nascent Israeli society. Their malls devastated Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem, as relatively affluent shoppers switched to malls, while local shops, and after them local cafes, local social meeting points lost their clients. Israeli society, once rather cohesive, disintegrated into an amalgam of various groups. Children of immigrants, with their tentative and dubious connection with local landscape, stopped playing on the slopes of Judean Hills, and spent their free time wandering the malls, getting used to man-made environment and to shopping as entertainment. Mall kids can easily move from a mall in Jerusalem to a mall in Toronto, with the same brand names, built by the same Reichmanns. Thus (Diaspora) Jewish trend succeeded to undermine the Zionist utopia, as well as social life and traditions in many countries around the globe.
VI
The Mall did not appear on the empty space. Shoppers for the future malls grew in mass-produced rectangular standard housing blocks, built after the WWI. Inspired by Gropius, Le Corbusier, Niemeyer, they are basically the same all over the world, including my native Novosibirsk. These housing blocks brought us into man-made environment, divorced from local content, national traditions and natural surroundings. Faceless cities rebuilt after great destruction of the World Wars are particularly depressing, but even cities untouched by war madness were often ruined by the modernist trend.
The Swedes invited Oscar Niemeyer, a Brazilian-born son of immigrants, a disciple of Lucio Costa and Gregory Warszawchik, to contribute to the beauty of Stockholm. He proposed to demolish the medieval core of Gamla Stan, the Old City, and replace it by an accurate row of rectangular blocks. This project was scraped, but as a compromise, nice 19th century central area of Hotorget was erased and transformed into identical blocks. The same blocks were erected on the site of beautiful 18th century Arbat area of Moscow. A friend of the Soviet Union, Niemeyer influenced big scale housing building programme in post-Stalin Russia that turned many Russians into man-made landscape men.
Once I took a Russian TV director, a pretty Russian girl from Moscow, for a walk in En Jedi canyon, one of the most charming and delightful spots in Palestine with its springs and wild goats, lush greenery and small pools. ‘Couldn’t you make a replica of this canyon in an Eilat hotel spa’, she complained after the walk. She was serious: this city dweller had no need of nature with its beauty. She was not alone. While showing to the Russian tourists gorgeous Arab mansions of Jerusalem, I heard sceptical remark, ‘well, probably one can live there, if there is no choice’. But standard housing blocks on the outskirts of Jerusalem brought out their enthusiastic acclaim.
Rural Russia was transformed as well by introduction of standard housing, by collectivisation and mass shift of population to cities. Eventually, Russia became a land of two paradigms, of man-made and of natural landscapes. The division was felt in arts, literature, politics, preferred economics and social structure. Dominance of man-made was almost total, as the post-Stalin Communist leaders were increasingly Western in their desires. The dissident opposition supported even more thorough man-made policies. Natural landscape writers and artists were marginalized.
The consequences of this advent of man-made paradigm were grievous for Russia. Its nature was destroyed; rivers were poisoned by industrial waste, villages erased as economically unviable. 1991 completed the transfer of power and influence into man-made hands, as it was signalled by meteoric rise of Jewish oligarchs, few super-rich bankers and industry moguls.
Similar process took place elsewhere as well, and the man-made paradigm became the dominant of the world. Now, I do not think that Niemeyer, Reichmanns and other creators of man-made environment were consciously labouring for the sake of the (Diaspora) Jewish world domination, as conspiracy fans would have. Some of them acted subconsciously by creating an environment they would be able to prosper in, i.e. man-made environment. Others could not even understand that man-made environment is deadly for the Natural Man and explained the resistance by people’s prejudice. Strong-willed and stubborn, they thought they know better what is good for the people. Probably they did not even understand that it was good just for them.
Instinctively, as fish pulls the fisherman into the deep, the Jewish media owners formed public opinion for the man-made; Jewish financiers provided funds for man-made projects; Jewish real-estate developers built and promoted housing estates, as they sympathised with the man-made world, and felt that they will prosper in this new world. I think these actions were instinctive rather than conscious as they took place in the Jewish colony in Palestine as well. There is no doubt these people had deep sympathy for Israel, and Niemeyer lived for a while in our country, but their activities in Israel were as destructive as anywhere else.
One can compare this process with a similar development that took place earlier, when the British immigrants colonised North America. They had to compete with local inhabitants, the Native Americans, who lived in perfect symbiosis with the nature. In order to survive, the colonists had a choice: to change themselves or to transform environment. The Pathfinder of Fennimore Cooper was a man who adapted to nature and to the ways of Native Americans. If Native Americans would be strong enough to block or limit immigration from Europe, if the English colonists would share the French excitement with the Savage, there would be a possibility of adjustment.
However, the English settlers, fervent Protestants, devotees of the Old Testament, were inspired by the idea of their Chosenness, of being a New Israel repeating the conquest of Joshua. Local people were, correspondingly, ‘Canaanites’, who should be ‘dispossessed’ (Ch. 33:53 and «utterly destroyed” (Ch 21:3). The paradigm of the Old Testament (overturned by the New Testament and Koran) is the paradigm of total war, annihilation, dispossession and domination. By reverting to the Old Testament, the colonists declared war on less chosen ones. That is why they killed and dispossessed the Native Americans whenever they had a chance, but they also destroyed the environment: killed bison, poisoned wells, ruined the prairie. Destruction of environment is a natural mode of takeover by a foreign group.
VII
The reasons for landscape destruction are frequently presented as purely financial. Whenever a beautiful spring dries up, a river swells with industrial waste, a forest is cut off and a hill has been desiccated, we are supposed to blame human greed. However, one witnesses this process in the absence of profit motif, as well. In my native Siberia, many villages were destroyed and whole landscapes ruined by creating man-made lakes and hydraulic power systems. In Soviet Siberia, there was no profit motif, and vast supplies of electric power were not needed [xvii].
One can offer thousands of examples, as nature destruction goes on without real profit being sought or taken. One of the most inspired writers of the Web, Diane Harvey, asked in despair: ‘The purposeful relationship between the ruling minds of Earth and the agonizing death of the natural world is mystifying. What could motivate the present owner-operators of this globe to allow planetary life-support systems to degrade into a state of toxic shock? The death-throes of nature intensify, yet the fatally destructive human operations continue unabated, as if this state of affairs had nothing to do with human life. We must ask ourselves if those powerful men at the helm of this sinking ship, responsible for the poisoning of an entire planet, have genuinely lost their minds. We wonder if such ardent devotees of greed have finally been overwhelmed and driven mad altogether by this master-vice. Are we being carried along in a slipstream of reasonless chaos, toward the abyss? [xviii]’ ’
Diane Harvey, as Immanuel Wallerstein, makes a heroic effort to see reason in the apparently unreasonable behaviour and she almost succeeds by stretching the concept of greed. She concludes, ‘the global corporate power structures… have engineered the destruction of nature as the greatest business opportunity of all times. They have in mind to force mankind into total dependency on their replacements, and to control us absolutely through these very substitutes for natural existence they plan to sell us. I propose that the forces of corporate totalitarianism are deliberately destroying this entire world in order to sell their simulated version of it back to us at a profit’.
Her diagnosis is bleak, but it is not bleak enough. Who promised Ms Harvey she will be sold the replacements, air and water, in the dark tomorrow of our nightmares? After all, greed and profit, even capitalized, presuppose a lasting mode of operation. It calls for an effort to recognize that greed is not an elementary particle, neither a simple force. Beyond it, there is an older and darker figure, the domination drive. For domination, greed is just means to the purpose. Yes, it is nice to sell air to Miss Harvey and to make a handsome profit. But maybe it is even nicer to refuse to sell her air and watch her dying throes? After all, my ancestors, obsessed with domination drive, paid good money for the Christian captives after the Persian sack of Jerusalem, and slaughtered the prisoners, refusing the profit-taking [xix] . Profit is not the last word; greed is not the ultimate sin. No greed can explain a drive of billionaire to make more billions. He is after different game, domination.
As we said, domination calls for slaves, and no man can be enslaved while he is connected to nature. That is the reason of nature destruction; it has to be done to enslave a man. But beyond domination drive, beyond destruction of nature, we observe something else. As a Columbus’ sailor at landfall, we rub our eyes in disbelief: it just can not be so!
For two hundred years, or more, Christendom tried to live without God. Some denied His existence, some didn’t, but believers and unbelievers explained our existential problems without appealing to God’s presence in Universe. Our good and bad drives and desires would suffice, normally. There is an adage ascribed to various scientists, from Newton to Einstein, saying, ‘I had no need to introduce God into my formulas’. A medieval English scholar from Surrey, William Ockham (he served as a prototype for the principal character of Umberto Eco’s thriller, Name of the Rose), stated a principle called Ockham’s Razor, ‘Do not multiply entries beyond necessity’. He meant that of two competing theories, the simplest explanation is to be preferred. That is why we do not usually appeal to the spiritual categories while explaining mundane events.
While we relaxed in our totally material world, another principle of medieval logic, Law of Manifestation, prepared us an ambush. This law states, ‘An existing entity will eventually manifest itself’. A non-manifesting entity could be called non-existent as well, without loss. Theoretically we knew that at certain speeds, the space won’t conform to age-old Euclid’s rules. Instead, a new geometry established in 19th century by a brilliant son of Hanover priest, Bernhard Riemann, will became operative. Practically, our mind refused to accept it – until it became a reality.
Theoretically, a believing man should be prepared to observe a manifestation of spiritual world, of God and lower Forces. Practically, we refused to believe in such a possibility. A Swedish lady pastor was asked, what she would do if she would be granted the vision of St Birgitta. ‘I’ll have two beers, a big steak, and if it will not help, I’ll take myself to a psychiatric clinic’, she replied. If that is an approach of a priest, what can one expect from laity?
While we turned away from God’s presence, and screened Him off our life, we helped His adversary at checkerboard. Now, his influence and plans became palpable, and no amount of steaks and beer would change this fact. The latest developments in human history, gratuitous destruction of nature, and war against spirit can not be plausibly explained by rational material causes. Beyond all-too-human figures of big corporations, beyond capitalised Greed, beyond the paradigm of Domination, the faceless Destroyer made his appearance, as Lord Darth Vader on the captive planet.
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http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/bizarre/bizarre.cfm?instanceid=10
[ii] 1999, University of Minnesota Press
[iii] On the Move
[iv] Ephesians 6:12
[v] Ex 29:45
[vi] Jn 1:14
[vii] Jn 12:31, 14:30, 16:11
[viii] Serge Averintsev, Sophia-Logos, Kiev 2001
[ix] The Archaeology of New Testament, Princeton University Press, 1992
[x] I Samuel, 21:14. reference in Biblical Archaeology Review 1980
[xi] 9, 4:6
[xii] Finnegan p 334
[xiii] Talmud, Horayot 12a
[xiv] see an amusing if indecent poem of the Afghan poet Rumi, Gourd Crafting, on failure of a copy-cat to observe the details of the action, and of its sad consequences.
[xv] Kevin McDonald, the Culture of Critique, Praeger, 1998, page 330
[xvi] This idea was promoted by Bakunin, an arch-enemy of bureaucracy, and beautifully expressed in the best Lenin’s book, the State and Revolution (1916).
[xvii] Eventually it was utilized for aluminium production, and after 1991, it was privatised and now belongs to a citizen of Israel.
[xviii] Global Totalitarianism And The Death Of Nature, Diane Harvey, rense.com
[xix] see my article Mamilla Pool |
