Re: tribal violence (was: RE: would you vote for this man?)

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Sep 03 2003 - 09:05:01 MDT

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    On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Amara Graps wrote:

    > >A Reformation is the last thing Islam needs right now -
    > >fundamentalists are very similar in their rhetoric and analysis to
    > >people such as Luther and Calvin. [snip]
    >
    > Thank you for pointing out my mistake, Steve. I had thought that
    > the Christian Reformation did the opposite of this, that is, cause
    > a reanalysis and subsequent mellowing of the more extreme elements
    > of the religion. I have to study a little more religious history,
    > obviously !

    Amara, I would *not* be so fast to back off on this. There has
    been a recent PBS special in the U.S. running on Luther I think.
    It points out how dogmatic the Catholic church had become (IMO
    it still is). At least one analysis I've seen regarding the
    issue of priests and marriage suggests the restriction that priests
    must be celibate had nothing to do with anything in the Bible but
    had primarily to do with having priests leave their wealth to the
    church rather than their heirs. Pure self-interest at work.
    The consequence, in part, being the current molestation scandals.

    Now, why the reformation may have promoted individual self-interpretation
    of the text of the Bible -- it seems to have given way to "fundamentalism".
    I am not sure when and why this took place. I suspect it has something
    to do with the power of leaders to convince people to interpret things
    in a specific way. Spike has pointed out to me several times that
    the Bible can probably be used to justify almost anything. I suspect
    that the same is true of the Koran.

    So the problem is *not* a 'reformation' per se but the fact that some
    people abuse the 'reformation' process to convince people to interpret
    the text in a certain specific way -- rather than allow people to
    interpret it in their own way. Such behavior is a power grab and
    is rooted in basic survival instincts. One can see this between
    both the people who have religious power in Iran and the young
    college students there as well as the old and young shiites in Iraq.

    Friedman has an interesting observation with respect to "tribes"
    in the NY Times today [1]...

    { Technology, though, still can't trump two huge impedients to Arab
    democracy. One is the lack of institutions to ensure a peaceful rotation
    of power. "In too many countries there is still a tradition of rule or die
    - either my group or tribe is in power or it's exposed to great danger, so
    you must never give up power," noted Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The
    Ideas That Conquered the World."

    The other is that so many Arab economies are dominated by state oil
    revenues and state companies, with private enterprise very weak.
    Therefore, holding onto or being close to power are the only pathways to
    wealth. Control power, control wealth. "It will be very hard to install
    lasting democracy in this region," Mr. Mandelbaum added, "without
    institutions and economic reforms that guarantee that there is life after
    power and wealth without power." }

    It would be interesting to bring either the "nanotech" or "AI" discussions
    to the table in Arabic countries since both would seem to trump concerns
    about "tribal power" and "survival instincts" in various ways.

    Robert

    1. Friedman, T. L., "52 to 48", NY Times (3 September 2003).
       http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/03/opinion/03FRIE.html?pagewanted=print



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