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Human Rights, Extremists and Rudyard Kipling – Can the ‘Twain’ Ever Meet?

Rudyard Kipling in his poem ‘The Ballad of East and West’ put it in his famous phrase: ‘East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.’
His idea was that the differences were too great to ever be fully reconcilable. The term reconcilable in turn stems from ‘reconciliation’, something two or more parties at war would do…

These modern times see the discussion going on just as forcefully, opinionated and to some extent just as wrongly prejudiced as Kipling was. He also was the poet laureate who coined the phrase of the ‘white man’s burden’. It’s another way of saying that ‘the West’ actually has an obligation and a duty to go elsewhere into the world and teach ‘them’ there what life should be like and how to think and feel.

The prejudice this idea is based on of course means: here (in Europe, the West, US) ‘we’ know all about it, are always right and could not accept another point of view because the truth is to be found here.

The ‘devil’ in such ideas lies in two things:

  • That there exists one real truth only.
  • That there are whole countries or regions filled with tribes or people who have to be taught what is right. In former times: to be religiously converted in a ‘mission’.

This is actually the same principle ‘the other side’ employs when influencing simpler minds into attacking and killing people, or go to war.
The propaganda for centuries has been the same:
Find an image in the ‘other’ that is harmful, problematic or even dangerous, paste it up, make it look shiny and ‘red’, present ‘the enemy’ in the most gruesome colours and then take up the weapons and march.

A very simple and core argument today is in judging Islamic terrorists by the fact that allegedly ‘they’ have the fierceness written into their religion, namely the Koran contains suras that explicitly ask its followers to go to war or kill. Although this is true – here comes the interesting and even more simple fact:
Terrorism sanctioned by the government is called just – war.

More importantly, if we take the human rights act and lay it beside the allegedly worthy, because peaceful bible, that is taken as proof that the West is worthier still, we may be astonished: the bible has many parts in it that are just as fierce, ‘bloody’ and dangerous to simple minds than any possible counterpart in the Koran. I just like to bring up the ‘eye for an eye’ phrase as an example.

If you want to understand and truthfully judge, how people think and live in a majority of a culture, you do not just take up their religious book and make an equation.

You start to understand this:

  • Living, breathing and caring people are all around the world. They very often have very similar dreams about a peaceful life that contain love and reasonable wealth.
  • The propaganda is the same – in basic fact – around the world, in words as well as in deeds. Using simple concepts and even simpler wording to ‘drive people crazy’ – and into torture or killing.
  • Putting your own view of the world ‘up there’ as the only truth that has value and should be adhered to, namely be self-righteous, is the starting point of any narrow-mindedness and ultimately may lead to war just as easily.

If we want to really change the world, let’s start at our own door: open it to let different point-of-views in and thus different kinds of people from around the globe and try and understand, that many things can be differentiated and sometimes difficult – but they are certain to be exciting and fruitful, not to say beneficial too. Because variety is what makes life colourful!

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Sun, Rain, Weather, Water – and a Little Lightness of Being

In many European countries for some time now sun is being considered to be a feature, even rather special or valuable. Sunny days are called ‘good weather’, rainy or cloudy days are ‘bad weather’. And some people think it necessary to even brag about the fact that they have the means and opportunity to travel into (more) sunny regions than the ones they live in.

In other parts of the world, the sun is a very dubious luxury. You need so much water or liquids to drink in order to stay healthy. Not even the recommended 1,5 l per day are available there. People would perhaps like to make themselves a tea or coffee. Or have a nice soup for a cold. Apart from cooking other kinds of food! Or keeping clean – clothes, the house – themselves!

The sun in those parts can be damnable or at least unwelcome.

The movie ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ has a number of very graphic scenes shot in the desert, with appropriate soundtrack, that make abundantly clear, what it can mean to be victim to a grim climate involving a lot of sun.

Although the desert has always had a fascination for many Europeans, partly because it is so different, next time the weather turns bad over here, think again, perhaps. I remember a visitor of ours, who came from the Near East ‘only’, with enough water for everyday use, vividly, to this day, over 25 years ago, when she visited Germany for the first time. Driving with us through half of it, you might say, from Frankfurt/Main to the South of Germany, she was amazed at how green everything was! Over and over she repeated, ‘look at this countryside, so much green, so many trees, so many pastures – incredible!’

So, next time in these parts, before you complain about the weather turning ‘bad’ – perhaps you could instead think of what it would be like if you came from some part in the world where water is scarce, like the big deserts in Africa (I yet have to see personally). Where you often have not enough water even to wash yourself, much less, to cook – or just drink whatever you like, as much as you like, anytime. And you may come to appreciate tap water again: it’s the best controlled water in the middle of Europe and can be drunk from the tap without any further ado…

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Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn Revisited – The Modern Craze for Calm Kids

children playing

In the times I grew up in (I was a kid in the seventies in Europe) there was a distinct trend for raising children differently: the recently weathered storm of Nazism and fundamentalism together with the most atrocious crimes against mankind called forth a very determined frame of mind to never let it happen again. The root causes were being analysed in earnest shortly after WW II across the globe and especially in Germany starting with the late fifties, when a new generation claimed the silence of their parents to be broken.

The reasons for such atrociousness as the Third-Reich of the Nazis and their followers caused have been defined since then: the servant’s, even devotee’s frame of mind people had been raised in in many parts of Europe that basically stated authority should be listened to and followed at all times at all costs, together with a long history of Anti-Semitism.

The new young generation in the sixties and seventies, among others picking up Alexander S. Neill’s ideas set forth in his school in England, Summerhill, in turn created the idea of a children’s education which is free of adult authority.
His ideas since have found a world-wide reception and response. Many sources cite him as the most influential educationalist of the 20th century.

I won’t recite or summarize his work, but I am worried and even feel repulsed by a (not-so)-new counter tendency that can be found throughout recent movies, documentaries and articles: to basically diagnose every second or third child with the so-called ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and then – recommend or even prescribe medication to quieten them!
A recent review of a not very important little comedy movie featuring primary-school children in prominent roles even went so far as to recommend such treatment for one of the main characters – an about seven year-old boy who obviously was a little too young to not play around an office!

The reasons for this tendency seem clear to me and are really frightening to me, as they seem to point into the same direction as the ideas that had been prevailing at least since the nineteenth century: let children be quiet and calm at all times so parents are not disturbed too much and also would not have to attend to them too much…

In other cultures than the Western children and their special needs and care for them are viewed differently. One would not easily find a parent in the Middle East asking a small child to always be quiet – or even medicate them.

There are certainly cases of children who need more than the average attention, but why? Because someone (the parents or family or teachers) didn’t do their ‘job’ properly!

Children and adults alike need attention, in the case of grown-ups it’s called appreciation and ‘suddenly’ is a good thing. So, parents that are unable for reasons most likely based in their own childhood to pay attention to their own children, will probably raise children suffering from that kind of attention deficit, where the term actually says it (almost) all!

Apart from a proper loving attention and care that includes drawing the line now and again, children should be able to draw attention to themselves and they also should be allowed to play and develop slowly into grown-ups, as nature intended.
No adult can always stay calm without medication, not to say drugs. A child that is ‘drugged’ into calmness at an early age will most likely become a drug-abusing adult instead of a healthy and occasionally loud human being!

So, parents, theorists and teachers, think again: would you want to have Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn around today – and what medication would they have to take….?

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The Darker Side of Love – Men, Women, Appreciation and Violence

Sex can be life-affirming I posted recently, and I still think it’s true. Yet, there’s a darker side to sex, the bodily love, that has been gauged in recent months, especially in the US. Although a lot needs to be said about those that manipulate and are out for money from celebrities, yet the fact remains that violence, especially sexual violence in patriarchal societies, has been too often and too long trivialised. In some ways we are lucky in this day and age that because of the feminist movement especially in the course of the past two centuries a new awareness and a better realization of the problem has been created.
Judges and juries these days are less likely to play down the grave actions of abuse or even rape that have and are being committed every day.

Mentally Sick

The most common reasons in many cases also have been determined. In cases of downright mentally sick or disturbed offenders they have been shut away and some effort is made to cure them.
But there’s the grey area of those that seem neither sick nor disturbed nor raised in the wrong surroundings or state of mind.
Still, the more prominent as well as ‘lesser cases’ – as regards media attention – are known to exist: respectable men, professional, successful, family all complete, are being found out after years to have been involved in numerous cases of shady or downright criminal offenses against women.

Why, one wonders over and over again, why does this happen?

The Sane Male and Root Causes

To my mind several reasons are at the root of this phenomenon and this is even not the first time they are being identified:

  • In patriarchal society the man is supposed to take the ‘reigning position’. Always alert, always superior, always there to safe the weaker members of society, women, children and the elderly, as it were.
  • Additionally, more commonly realized and also more often publicly stated from inside the feminist movement, the sexual role a man has to play in theory in patriarchal societies is that of the conqueror: representing the strong and almost animal-like quality of round-the-clock seducer image.
  • A very basic principle of human needs is that of appreciation: at the root of many of man’s initiatives, actions, drive or motivations is the need to be appreciated, or noticed. Work as well as private life are determined to a great extent by this need. With it comes the feeling of being strong, sufficient and in the right place among one’s fellow beings.

Appreciation – The Basic Human Need

To me this need for appreciation, which has more often gone too unnoticed, is the root to more problems than just the subject of this post. But appreciation as a man, to repeat,  in patriarchal societies most often, depends on the image being fulfilled: the seducer and superior being, the reigning head of the herd, the lion.
After the principle of the successful and rich existence has been realized, there remains the seducer: ‘women swoon’ nicely describes the expectation connected with this image.
And not only does the respective ‘male’ feel strong and confident because he ‘did his duty’, as it were. In addition a great number of surrounding fellows or pals will admire him for it, even if envious at the same time. Because he ‘got it’, rather ‘them’. Them, meaning women.

What often goes unnoticed also, are two other basic human phenomena, which make understanding part of these occurrences easier: men as well as women after reaching adulthood will never feel the same as in childhood again. The constant feeling of being perhaps not ‘up to par’ as regards expectations of the society around one’s self is ever present.
What fewer humans realize though, yet would be so important for more of them to lead more productive and satisfying lives:
It is human to feel like that. And to try and use different ways and means to overcome this by quenching the emotion is common – but not helpful.

The Seducing Game

One of the methods very commonly used by men to feel ‘right’, secure, ‘up to par’ is fulfilling this role of seducer, the veritable Casanova: it seems the more insecure someone feels, the higher the rate of women he needs to fill the basic void.

Inexperienced, frightened or just ambitious women especially at a younger age can easily fall victim to this kind of often schematised seducing game.
Because, the modern Casanova so often isn’t a bad guy on the surface, or even at lots of his heart. He’s got charming manners, especially towards women. He’s the perfect pal for all around. He can create the atmosphere and impression that he appreciates each woman in her own and very special right, even treats her as if she was the revelation of his life and the one goal he had been aiming at. He’s not even ruthless or inconsiderate in everyday life. That makes him so difficult to spot, especially with less experience in these matters or people in general.

Go Public

A very important point to be made in this context: making things public can be crucial. Too often women are even blamed for ‘falling for the guy’. And too often they blame themselves, which is the worst side to all of this. The ideas range over ‘they should have known better, be more prudent, be more aware’, and so on. That is the ‘devil’ of it, of the game and the underlying human condition: the need for feeling close, the need for passion – and appreciation. So men and women alike should stop blaming the victims, in whatever shape or form the deed is done.

But to stop the game and its tools it doesn’t suffice just to recognize and avoid the wielders. An effective way to prevent the worst things in life, such as other kinds of crime, is to educate, to make aware and – raise our children differently. Which means that women as well as men learn to understand, what life is really all about. How passion can be integrated into a loving and caring relationship on an equal footing, where no man and no woman is to be expected to be ‘super’ in any way – especially seducing.

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Trump: Lies, Hate – Atomic War? – Remember Gandhi…!

Donald Trump has been a phenomenon from the first times he entered public record and awareness. He’s the worst version of a depraved and downright hateful human being you can probably imagine. I myself read about these types only in books – and in newspapers of course.

He’s perhaps not one of those you would outright suspect of murder – but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was secretly involved in such schemes.
What is public and confirmed knowledge though is this: he’s been involved in lies, shady business schemes and fraud to the ‘hilt’. He is so obviously lying almost any time he opens his mouth that it’s difficult to take him seriously.
The fact that he’s come all this way in terms of wealth is proof of an also comparatively commonly known concept: there always were and always will be a certain percentage of human beings on this earth who believe that money is a form of distinction in a man (or woman) to have acquired – the more the better.
If Trump wasn’t president of the USA, one could easily just have a good laugh at him – or two – and then dismiss him for the basically ridiculous person he is.
Unfortunately he is president of the US at the moment. My only hope is that an impeachment process will  be started against him after all. That there will be enough people around who still have some kind of reason at their hearts – and also realize that the respect for the USA outside of it is at a historic low – and no new war even be started by them – yet…
Well, in view of such trials we have to face in this life, the only comfort left to me are two things:

  • As a peaceful person at heart and of conviction you can always resort to Gandhi’s way of civil disobedience, if all else should fail.
  • Take comfort in the fact, that depravity always has been part of humanity – but that there are at least as many kind, smart and knowledgeable people around!
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zereshk’s blog

Welcome to my blog!
I originally named it after the ‘zereshk’ berry, the Persian name for barberries, because I like them very much. I hope my blog will turn out to be just like barberries in a Persian dish:
sweet-sour, shiny red and an addition without which the dish is just half as good.
I like politics, but will deal with all other subjects that I come across, whatever they may be. Basically I love to talk or think about pretty much anything, be it philosophy – or the proper working of drains.

If you like it, let me know! If you don’t, your constructive criticism is also welcome!

This redesigned website contains a few German posts too, please select the language above or to the right. English posts are in focus these days.

Barberry fruit along river road
Barberry fruit along river road (Famartin, via Wikimedia Commons)
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