Understanding Fear in the Arab world

We can gain insights by looking at the revolution sweeping through Northern Africa and the Gulf from the perspective of evaluating the fear felt by the different parties. Remember that fear makes people aggressive - so the most aggressive parties are the most frightened.

In Egypt there was a refreshing management of fear - although it was present it was controlled, by both sides. In Libya, on the other hand fear is in control and extreme measures are being used. This is the type of environment that encourages the formation of radical groups, that then use fear to propagate their influence.

Hopefully Egypt can convert their gains to create an open democracy. Libya does not seem to have this opportunity yet.

American Politics
Dick Stoute
Sept 2008

It is a classic battle, hot emotion versus cool reason, fight versus consensus building. The Republicans are better at the war. Driven by the belief that politics is a war, they are in their element when conflict arises and have no difficulty in upping the anti, getting more aggressive, dirtier. It suits their thinking and draws in the media and the crowds. When you are getting ready for a fight you need a “Regan” to galvanize the instinct to fight, but when you are getting ready for world leadership you need someone who can make friends, as you cannot force the rest of the world to submit.

This is a different process, one where people are brought on board, not because they hate the enemy, but because they want to be a part of a negotiated solution. They appreciate that everyone has a different view and the process of aligning all of these into a strategy and an action plan is extremely difficult. This is not an approach that a Regan or a Bush can be successful at; all they can do is declare war. That splits the world into two factions, those for you and those against you. But it also triggers hostilities at many different levels around the world and generates many repercussions.

This clash between a consensus building approach and its nemesis, the angry aggressive drive for dominance is an old conflict. History reveals many of them. In recent times we have seen the angry, fear driven, response of Middle Eastern people to the almost subconscious Western strategy of, “you are stupid and we are smart so you have to do things our way.” This very primitive approach has lead to alienation and guerilla warfare on a world scale. The 9/11 tragedies produced the largest number of casualties so far, but this is only one of many life-consuming conflicts in this continuing war.

Over the ages there have been attempts to get beyond this conflict, to get “Beyond Good and Evil.” Perhaps the best know is Jesus’s “ turn the other cheek.” This approach is directed at getting the angry aggressor calm enough to be able to move out of the war paradigm into the other, where they can appreciate that aggression is not going to produce solutions. If this is achieved then consensus building has a chance. But Jesus’s attempt was not the first. The book of Genesis talks about a Garden of Eden that exists when no one eats from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” It also warns of the conflict that erupts if you feast from such a tree.

We have ignored this warning and built systems that exploit the simplicity of judging good and evil. Our law courts do this daily, and crime continues unabated. Our churches, especially the evangelical ones, revel in good and evil and provide fighters with the burning zeal they need to fight. Our businesses and sports also use this source of energy to drive their conflicts and sadly our politics also gets dragged into this mode of thinking. It is an easy trap, as it seems to make things simple. What could be simpler than I am good and you are bad, and therefore I have the moral high ground and everything I do is good and everything you do is bad?

Although many people have tried to move on, to understand that “judging good and evil” causes the conflict it is designed to eliminate, gains are short lived and we repeatedly get drawn back into the war paradigm. This is because all of us have an automatic self-preservation “fight” system that is triggered when we feel threatened. Our natural fear-response makes us aggressive. The conflict that results increases the level of fear. It is a positive feedback system that can easily escalate into outright warfare.

So as the Republicans bring on the aggression they increase the level of fear. The voters respond by choosing a leader that is good at war and the Republicans win the election. How can the Democrats respond to this strategy? How can you try to build consensus when there is a war being fought? The Jesus strategy of turning the other cheek does not seem feasible in this environment, so what can you do?

A bold strategy would be to set your own agenda and deal with the issues you think are important and not respond to the warlike challenges coming from the Republicans. The election is not about fighting the other party; it is about selecting someone to lead the world for the next four years. Obama seems to have the talent to do this. He is hopeless at the type of direct confrontation that the Republicans keep throwing at him, but he is great at building a consensus among those who are willing to listen.

My advice to Obama would be to expose the Republican strategy for what it is and then ignore its attempts to draw him into direct confrontation. Instead he should focus on the issues that are important for the USA and the World. The USA is at a cross roads, if it refuses to lead the world will simply find another leader, one who is capable of building a consensus about what should be done, rather than putting more troops into battle.

I think that Obama has the talent to do this, but he has to get past this election test by adopting his own strategy. If he wins by responding aggressively to the Republican challenge he will tend to respond aggressively to the other, larger challenges he will face as a president. This will be a failure. To win for America and the world he has to convince the American people that their best strategy is to forget about dominating the world and try to lead it by building consensus.

Into The Light - Via The Transparency Loop

“Hesius woke up in the dark. He could hear people moving around, but he remembered stories about looters being aggressive, so he kept quiet and did not turn on his light. The rescuers never found him.”

If it had been daylight, Hesius would have been able to see who was moving around and call out, or the rescuers might have been able to find him, even if he did not make a sound. It is unlikely that the looters would be out in daylight and, because they could see what was happening, everyone would have been much more confident and able to make well-informed decisions.

This is obvious when we are dealing with a situation like the one described above, but less obvious when dealing with the type of information that we can keep hidden. Take salaries for instance. What you look like and what you say is much more revealing than the salary you work for, but while we are not concerned about appearing and speaking in public we are concerned about other people knowing our salary.

Just like Hesius we prefer to hide this bit of information and forgo any opportunities that might arise from revealing it. If things were different and this information was available about everyone and to everyone it would be no big deal. We would know more about each other and this additional information would contribute to the “light” in the community.

This is because transparency (when information is freely available) is similar to light. It is easy to see the similarity. In the daylight, Hesius can see (gather information about) what is around him. Similarly, transparency in information allows us to gather information about what is happening around us.

If, when you read the Bible, you substitute the word “information” for “light” you get an interesting perspective. God is associated with light, or information while the Devil is associated with darkness, the absence of information. This suggests that we should seek to make more information available rather than try to hide it.

Education helps the process of spreading light in the community as it drives out ignorance and brings our people closer to “God,” or “knowledge,” the light of our lives. Perhaps what the prophets are saying is that “God” is “understanding” and the better informed you are the closer you get to God. This is possibly why lights (fire and candles) are used to honor God.

An epiphany (a realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something or someone) is sometimes described as a flash of light, a light bulb being turned on in our head. Here again we see the association between understanding and light. It has a specific meaning for Christians. All of this suggests that knowledge, derived from information is very closely associated with the symbol of good in the community.

Since this is the case, why then do we do our best to hide certain information? We know that suppressing information about who is HIV positive helps to spread the disease. Yet we continue to do this, arguing that we have to do this to protect those affected from the prejudices of the rest of the community. This seems to be an obvious step, but it needs to be questioned as it takes the community in the wrong direction. Instead of suppressing information we should suppress prejudice.

Here is one of those famous closed loops that we have to constantly keep our eye on. Prejudice is created when information is suppressed and it then leads to the further suppression of information. This process takes us into darkness and we have to resist this temptation and make every effort to move in the opposite direction.

Suppose HIV status, like director’s remuneration, was one of the items that we decide to make public, would we all be better off? Would it help us to begin the process of getting rid of our prejudices? I don’t think there is any doubt that it would.

Perhaps the “resurrection” that is predicted in the Bible is the arrival of the “information age,” where “God” or “the light” of information and knowledge shines into the darkness of ignorance and eliminates it.

Clearly we are on a path that takes us out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of knowledge. We all need to buy into this idea. Each of us needs to participate in the process of emerging from the darkness into the light.

We need to work at becoming more transparent, and allow more information to circulate. This will help to reduce the prejudices and make it easier to release information. This transparency loop will take us into the light.

A Conversation with a Spiritual Being

I just don’t know what to do with my life. Time to try something, anything, meditation? Why not? Nothing to lose.

Get comfortable, turn off interruptions, take a deep breath and exhale while making a low rumbling sound, focus on your breath.

“Ommmmmm……Ommmmm…...Ommmmm…”

“Hello?”

“Can we talk?”

“Any time. That is what I am here for.”

“I am confused, tell me what to do.”

“Hey, I just can’t do that. The deal is, you come up with the ideas and then we discuss them.”

“So you are leaving all the creative work to me?”

“I am not here to tell you what to do. If I did that you would, very quickly, feel oppressed. You have to do the work, use your initiative.”

“The problem is I do feel oppressed.”

“The old down in the dumps, everyone against you, no viable options?”

“Yes, you’ve got it.”

“That tells me you must have lost your initiative, because that’s what happens when you lose that thing.”

“ I just don’t know what to do. By the way, what should I call you?”

“Well, just give me a name, if you think I need one.”

“I can’t give you a name, you have to tell me what your name is.”

“Hey, you remember what I said about using your initiative?”

“Are you trying to confuse me, Devil?”

“You want me to be your Devil?”

“No, I really don’t want to go there, I just need some advice, and you don’t seem willing to give it.”

“Sounds like you are frustrated as well as oppressed. So let me make it quite clear. You come up with the ideas and then we discuss them. That is the only way it is going to work. If you don’t come up with the ideas: no discussion. No matter how hard you try, you cannot change that. The oppression you feel is a direct result of not coming up with ideas.”

“But other people seem to get along find doing what they are told. They say they are doing what you told them and seem quite happy taking your instructions.”

“Good for them, they are happy to be oppressed. They feel comfortable knowing that they are following a leader. But it won’t work for you. You are beyond that stage. You have learnt to question things and that puts you in a different ballpark ”

“Suppose I called you God?”

“If you are happy with that, it is cool with me.”

“Do you talk to them?”

“Sure.”

“What do you tell them?”

“I tell them exactly what they want to hear.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say they can’t deal with anything else.”

“So why do you tell them lies?”

“I don’t, I simply enter their reality and live it with them. In that reality I am what they make me.”

“Are you doing the same thing with me?”

“Yes.”

“Why.”

“Same reason. I have to be whatever you make me.”

“So I can make you an all powerful God, or a Devil, or my conscience, or my rational thought process. I just “make it so,” and it happens?”

“I think you have finally got the message.”

“But I don’t like it like that.”

“Then change it.”

“But I don’t know what to change it to.”

“Welcome to leadership.”

“Let me think about this. Are you are telling me that I can choose to follow someone else’s ideas, and accept the oppression that comes with that, or I can choose my own path?”

“That’s about right.”

“What about the people who follow someone else’s path, but do not feel oppressed?”

“If they do not feel oppressed they have taken their right path. Many people never consciously make the choice, it simply never occurs to them to question what they are doing.”

“And I do not fall into that category?”

“You have eaten from the tree of knowledge and evicted yourself from the garden of blissful existence.”

“So I have to choose a path, not knowing what that choice will bring?”

“You got it.”

“That makes me feel oppressed. I can’t make a good decision without knowing the consequences.”

“I thought you would be elated. This is “freedom” man. You can do whatever you want. And by the way, you can make “best guess” decisions and then change them as you go along.”

“So I have to choose a path and take it and you will come with me like a parrot on my shoulder.”

“An intelligent parrot.”

“So what is the meaning of life?”

“Toss me some ideas and we can work on them.”

“Piss off parrot, you’re no use to me.”

Looking Back to Look Forward

We are celebrating the 200^th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade and looking back we can easily see many things that were wrong with that shameful period. This makes us want to fix those old problems, but we can’t as they have already happened and there is nothing we can do to reverse what has already happened.

We can however influence what happens in the future and the challenge is to learn from the mistakes of the past so that we can fix the future before it happens.

This raises the question, what mistakes are we making today? For what will our future historians blame us? Slavery existed for a long time before the community accepted it was wrong. Similarly, there are probably several things that we are doing today that we think are OK, but which will be judged as wrong by future generations.

Perspectives change and we can expect that in, say one hundred years time, Barbadians will have a different outlook on life. When they look back they may recoil in horror at some of the things we are currently doing. Meanwhile, from today’s perspective we have difficulty identifying what those things are, because we are doing the things that we are “accustomed” to doing. We should challenge ourselves to figure out what those things are and start the correction process.

Several possibilities come immediately to mind; capital punishment, punishment in general, not doing enough against AIDS, creating too large a public debt, not preparing for high energy costs, not responding fast enough to global warming. All of these are possibilities, but I want to stick with the issue of slavery and its aftereffects.

We do not like to talk about the wrong things we do. That takes a great effort and it is much easier to keep quiet. Self-examination is very difficult for us, perhaps because we expect to find a “sinner” when we look at ourselves and so refuse to take the exam. We can feel the fear tugging at us, turning us away from this self-examination and we very easily find ways to avoid doing it.

This could be why we are so secretive and value “privacy” so highly. The report on our self-examination on a national scale has not been published. Something is restraining this. Could it be that one of Bob Marley’s “mental chains” is wrapped around this report?

This secrecy is a social characteristic and could be one of the legacies of slavery. It has many side effects. One of these is a lack of trust. When you know very little about the people around you the tendency is to be suspicious. In this atmosphere of suspicion the only stories that are accepted as true are those that depict people as thieves or criminals. This has the effect of perpetuating a negative self-image that reinforces the distrust.

Another legacy of oppression could be our predisposition to avoid responsibility. Our tendency to blame others for our problems is complimented by a great skill at avoiding any responsibility ourselves and so avoiding blame. We tend to see the world as a place where “others” call the shots and so “others” must be blamed for whatever happens. Our secrecy, complimented by this avoidance of responsibility, severely restrains progress.

There are echoes here of the scene in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree. This suggests that we have to take a more fundamental step and work on our predisposition to hide and judge and blame.

Transparency is one way out of this trap, but if the public attacks whoever releases information, we cannot expect many people to volunteer to do this. Instead of living in the light of information we seem to end up living in the dark where we can more easily avoid responsibilities.

The Churches should be able to lead an initiative to take us into the light of transparency. It is an opportunity for them to re-establishing their leadership in spiritual matters. The upcoming election will be an opportunity for them to show leadership, but will they take it? Avoidance of leadership is another characteristic that seems to have its roots in oppression.

If we are going to propel Barbados into developed nation status, we need to get everyone working on this project. The Churches need to make a significant contribution. Perhaps they should also look back to see what they have done wrong and then move forward on a principled basis.

Failure in this mission is a serious contender for criticism from our future historians.

The Good and Evil Meme

The old religious myths that have guided us are being destroyed by education. They just can’t stand up to the scrutiny of an enquiring mind. Do we need to replace them?

We arguably need some form of faith and something to guide our faith. Religion does this so it is likely that we will continue to modify our religious beliefs rather than dump the whole package.

Religions are built to provide for our needs. We should therefore look insider ourselves and examine the way we think to determine how to modify our current religious beliefs so that they can continue to help us evolve our beliefs.

Richard Dawkins talks about memes (Google it), ideas that invade our psyche and influence what we do. One very destructive meme is the concept of “good and evil.” Genesis warns us of the consequences of, “eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” but we continue to do so unmindful of the consequences.

This good/evil “meal” is the basis for our courts where judges hand out punishments. It is also the underlying force behind color and race prejudices and it encourages parents to judge and punish their children.

Evangelical Christians propagate the same good/evil theme, projecting an image of good fighting evil, seemingly ignoring the message in the Bible’s most ancient of texts. To “fight” they must of necessity also ignore the basic theme of Christ’s teachings. These are about “love and forgiveness,” but his ideas seem to get lost in the evangelical good/evil fight. Mohamed, Gandhi, King, and Mandela all tried to get their followers to avoid this meme all made some progress, but the meme lives on.

No one who stops to think can accept that, “fighting for peace,” makes the world a better place, yet we continue to do this, not realizing that we are following a socially destructive meme. A new approach is needed; we must avoid rather than follow this meme.

What new weapons can we bring to this task? What new strategies can we deploy? How can we destroy this meme? Now stop and think. By framing the questions in this way have I not (almost) unconsciously followed the meme?

To avoid this “war paradigm,” we have to move to a new paradigm so that we can study and understand the one we are trying to leave. One possibility is to create a “learning paradigm” where you think of yourself as a student, observing and learning about your society and yourself. To make it appear real we can think of human society as if it were a body, similar to a human body, composed of many cells. Each person is a cell in the body that forms the community.

Think of yourself as a learner in a learning paradigm. You have to ensure your own survival, but this is best done by building a co-operative network of friends and associates, rather than trying to destroy enemies. In fact, having rejected the “good/evil” meme you don’t have any enemies simply because you have refused to make anyone your enemy.

Your new religion does not have a name yet, but it involves understanding yourself as a human being. It also requires that you study many texts (including the Bible) and meditating on the ideas they generate. Your main subject is yourself and you try to understand why you do the things you do, why you have the memes you do have. You then use the knowledge to plan your course through your life. It is an adventure.

Your hymns are the songs you hear every day on the radio, your Church is the World Wide Web, your priests are those who impart wisdom to you. You are living at a time of great transformation, a time of spiritual death and rebirth, when many new ideas and new memes are vying for attention. It is very exciting, too exciting sometimes and you may long for the peace of death. That will come, but while still alive you must continue your quest.

Your god is reason (embrace it), your devil is fear (manage it), and your path is the same one that humanity has been on since it became conscious of itself. You must discover. Your community must continue to learn and you must find a way to contribute to this learning process.

The only way to displace an old meme is to find a new one to adopt. Try something new today.

Why Socialism/Communism Fails

There is no doubt it fails, there is a long list of examples. The most recent attempt to make it work seems to be happening now in Venezuela where Chavez is planning to nationalize everything. It is doomed to failure.

This happens despite the good intentions of its proponents. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt, for the time being, and assume that they really wanted to help their community solve its problems. The obvious way to do this is to take control of all the assets of the community and make all the important decisions about who gets what.

Unfortunately this destroys the wealth in the community. This automatically happens when all the assets are nationalised. With government owning everything and no possibility of any other owner, nothing has value. None of the government assets can be sold, none bought. This destroys the private sector and government has to provide all the ideas and energy needed to drive the economy along. But they do not know how to do this.

Reward cannot be used to encourage people to work hard as this is contrary to the socialist ideals. Those who are inclined to innovate can only do this in the underground economy. The majority of people prefer not to get involved with illegal activity and simply do what they must to survive. Oppression reigns.

The central decision making structure of socialist/communist regimes simply cannot make the right decisions quickly enough to make the economy work. The big advantage that capitalism has is that it distributes responsibility and decision making away from a central authority and allows people to get on with adding value to their lives in whatever way they can.

Capitalism's big disadvantage is that not everyone is capable of being successful at doing this. Many people seem to need to be told what to do as they are either unable or unwilling to make good decisions themselves.

In many cases it is fear that blocks their ability to make good decisions. Fear holds them back.

Socialism/communism fails because of its inability to make decisions. Capitalism is partially successful because it gets past this problem, but it is held back because many people are unable to make good decisions in its relatively high stress environment.

The next innovation in social/political structures must get beyond this restraint.