Charlie:
I want to congratulate you on a truly excellent piece of work, produced in
such a short period of time. Since it was posted to a public list, I hope
you won't mind if I share it with friends elsewhere.
The long view you've taken is quite good and deeply correct, IMO, as far as
it goes. With regard to the historical context, though, you pick the story
up at the point of the Crusades, which I think misses some important
foundational material. I know I've been beating this drum fairly regularly
since I began my program of delving into Islamic culture this week, but I
honestly think we can't ignore the deeply bloody-minded nature of the Koran
and the violent beginnings of Islam. While there's certainly more to the
story, I don't think you can deny that Mohammed was a fairly ignorant
merchant-pirate, and that a whole lot of the Koran and the Hadith are
basically the sayings and life-story of a man who developed a religion to
motivate and govern an army of conquest. On the other hand, Jesus was
basically a pacifist (I know you can find a few exceptions in his sayings,
but they are the exceptions). The distinction is important. "Christendom"
has had to engage in a kind of ideological schizophrenia in order to wage
religious warfare (although, until relatively recently, it was remarkably
successful in doing so). Islam, on the other hand, has to ignore
significant chunks of its own sacred texts to rationalize peace.
This makes the program of "cultural sculpting" you prescribe very difficult.
You've basically said what I've been ruminating on for the last few days:
For the military action about to commence to be truly useful, it needs to
have clear, long-term goals of making fundamental changes in the structure
of society in the middle east. As you say, we need to explicitly cultivate
Enlightenment values in the process, as we did in Japan. You're right that
Japan and Germany are shining examples of how to do things RIGHT.
A LOT of thought needs to be given to how the basic formula applied to the
vanquished Axis powers can be modified to work in the middle east. So I
sincerely welcome your fine essay.
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
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