This made me think of a poem I wrote at the beginning of the year - it struck me then, it's just a postcode lottery, where we are born. We in the Safe West have no more right to life than any other human bring, we just got born in a ' better neighbourhood. '
Because the psychopaths created money which created poverty and a means of control. We used to banish them to die in the wilderness. Now they get "elected" to rule over us.
Thank you Jasmin. My feeling is that they were always in power, because early humans preferred them, seeing them as better protectors. Imagine having a person in charge who has empathy and instead of trying to kill a dangerous animal, he or she felt empathy for it. We are what we are because of those who came before us. Our strong survivalist imperative instructs us, or conditions us to put our comforts, rights, freedoms aside, when we perceive an existential threat. This means that human tribes might have felt uncomfortable under the rule of psychopaths, but it did work better to keep us alive, which is why there are 8 billion of us and growing. Cooperation, kindness, empathy have also played a big part in our evolution and development, but the fact that they are not in charge, speaks volumes. This is why I always talk about how we need to ditch our surrealist focus and start focusing on growth and development for everyone. Once we do, we will stop selecting psychopaths and their influence will gradually diminish. We are nowhere near this, but I hope we will start moving in that direction. Things often have to get extremely bad, before there is a willingness to take a different path. I see it in my work all the time. People rarely present in therapy when they think they can 'cope' and manage. They often come when things are at a crisis point and they know that something has to change. We do the same as groups, I believe.
Thanks you so much once again for reading and for commenting. I do not take it for granted. 🙏🏼
"Like all perpetrator societies, built on the devastation they have wreaked on others, Israeli society cannot be happy, peaceful, or content. It is permanently stressed, chronically anxious, jumpy, exhausted. Life there is a constant emotional roller-coaster. People are on tenterhooks, always waiting for the next drama or disaster, which their media promise them is always around the corner. As a result, the general atmosphere is impatient, harsh and intolerant. It is not psychologically healthy for anyone."
You described America. It is tragic how as American and Zionist leadership have melded, their two nations have become terribly similar.
Would you believe that I was well aware of it while I was writing it? I was hoping someone from the US, would see it and say something. I think they did not ‘become’ similar, they always were. All settler-colonial societies have the same mindset. You have to have a particular kind of psychology to commit the crime settler-colonialism in the first place, and then you have to create mechanisms that enable you to cope with this kind of psychology. I think both societies are very similar indeed. Thank you!!
Come to think about it, you're right! We've always been that way. It just seems so much more extreme now since we are committing another genocide. We already killed 5 million native Americans in our first genocide. Thanks for the reminder!
Another excellent deconstruction of the settler colonialist mind-set and the deceit, fear and related greed underpinning such criminal enterprises. We all know and recognise the sociopaths and narcissists who are the face of these 'movements'. The problem is that for such butchery to persist, it requires the passive or proactive 'permission' of far too many of our 'fellow citizens'. The same people who delivered the mail to Belsen or drove the trains to Auschwitz.
'...it is chance that determines whether we survive, and have an opportunity to fulfil our human potential.'
Yeah, I share the same view, Avigail. Our system really is unfair and unkind, especially towards those who aren't looked upon favourably. It's all up to chance, and it needs to change!
Thank you Raveen. Glad that you see what I see. If we are such a genius species, surely we would be able to come up with a way of life that enables everyone, rather than replicate random chance in a completely unnecessary way. Thank you for reading, commenting and subscribing.
Thank you, Avigail. The article is full of great insights. The (in)famous Zionist idea of the "Clash of Civilizations" can indeed be applied to our times (since neocon arrival) - only not as a clash between East and West, but as a clash between hordes who believe in human hierarchy, Uber- and Untermenschen and selective human value - and those who believe in human equality and political cooperation.
Those who believe in human hierarchy - the "Jewish fingernail", "Judeo-Christian values", chosenness of one tribe over another - also believe that freedom of one tribe is only possible INSTEAD of freedom of another. That existence of one group is only possible INSTEAD of existence of its neighbor.
America INSTEAD of Russia. Israel INSTEAD of Palestine. Either you kill THEM or they kill YOU. Such is their madness.
We have come to the point where to kill "them" means killing the whole humanity. So the tribalist believers in hierarchy of human worth and happiness instead of and at the cost of someone else are now willing to destroy the whole planet just to prevail.
This unstoppable desire to prevail over the neighbor, subjugation as a means of survival, "dominate or be dominated" mentality is an enemy of humanity number one.
And these people hate anybody who believes in human equality and cooperation.
Zionists invent myths that Palestinians want to annihilate them. Zionists say that Palestinians are waging genocide on Jews. The idea of Israel was The Jewish State completely INSTEAD of Palestine because Zionists can only imagine Jewish existence INSTEAD of all others, otherwise they are under an "existential threat." And they have succeeded in propagandizing the whole West into the Iron Age of conquest and domination.
Humanity today is divided by those who believe in hierarchy and those who believe in equality.
A question about Israel’s harsh, hypervigilant, and militaristic society which also appears to be increasingly racist. The parallels with a person who has suffered chronic childhood trauma are there in spades.
Do you have a view on the perspective that Israel is a traumatized society kept deeply entangled in its trauma by its institutions and leaders? It seems to me israeli leaders have weaponized the trauma of the Holocaust both externally and internally. Internally this has served to keep the society stuck feeling continual existential threat since the founding of the state. This has benefited the military, the country’s foremost institution, and the military weapons complex from which the top generals and officers go on to benefit economically.
I often wonder what Israel would have looked like if it had invested some of its military budget in mass mental health services to address the trauma legacy of the Holocaust. A “genius” thought: work on healing fear and trauma rather than perpetuating and manipulating it. Any good books written on this? Or would you consider writing an article? Many thanks.
You are absolutely right and I have written about this in some of my essays in the past. Israel deliberately keeps trauma alive and uses its formal and informal mechanisms to make sure no one is ever not traumatised. If Israel invested in recovery from trauma, it would cease to exist as an exclusively Jewish state, and this is diametrically opposed to Israel’s purpose. There is no interest in this in Israel because they do not think there is anything wrong with being the way they are.
Trauma is at the core of Jewish-identity. When people (or societies) have trauma, their identity is organised around the trauma. To recover means to allow our identity to transform. I am a recoverer from severe childhood trauma, and also from Jewish-Israeli collective trauma. I know what it feels like to lose who you think you were, no matter how crappy, and walking into the unknown. I write about trauma in a short book, which is not about Israel but applies to trauma in general. I think I have written about this before but cannot think right now about a particular paper or article. You can look me up on the Electronic Intifada, and on Mondoweiss. Some of the articles I published there over the years are also on my Academia.edu page. I do not know any particular book or writer that covers this topic, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t any. There is social psychology research on this in Israel esp by the famous Dr Daniel BarTal. But the problem with his work is that while he describes Israeli society really well, he is also an apologist for it and for its settler-colonialism. Another problem with the trauma narrative is that despite our known science, there is still a false belief that it is not possible to recover from trauma. This is in relation to individuals. I suspect we are not even close to talking about whole societies. But as I said, I don’t know enough and it doesn’t mean the material isn’t there. If you find anything, please send some references my way. My chapter in my edited book, Beyond Tribal Loyalties, and my introduction might be useful to you as well.
I gave a series of talks in Germany back in 2013 that I called 'The Psychology of Israeli Settler-colonialism’, where I talked about Israeli trauma psychology. I am happy to give you access to the slides if you send me an email to avigail at fullyhuman dot co dot uk It is too big to send by email but if I have your email I can give you access via Dropbox. There aer two points relevant to this topic: 1) an explanation is not an excuse, and 2) we don’t have time to wait until Israel ‘gets a clue’. The Palestinians are being exterminated right now and Israel is determined to finish the job. I said this even 11 years ago when I gave those talks. I do not believe Israel will change from within. The reason it is important to understand Israel’s psychology is to accept that we have no one to reason with there, and that Israel must be stopped by the outside world, or it never will.
Thank you, Avigail. I will look into your writing and look for other sources, which I will share if I am able to identify some good ones.
Separately, I agree and am under no illusion Israel will change from within. The change will have to be imposed as a result of pressure from the world community and especially the US and W Europe. The grassroots trends are encouraging but the iron grip of the Israel lobby is a huge force. As of now, politicians value funding over dollars. Once this can be demonstrated to be a faulty calculation, things can start to change. Politicians need to start losing elections because they disregard the peoples’ wishes.
For now it is all about activism and educating the public. I believe we all fear that there will be nothing left of Palestine and Palestinians by the time change happens, but we must not be discouraged. Thank you for all you do to help tilt the balance towards justice.
The 'sabre tooth tiger' is nothing else but the zionist narrative of 'outside awaits the danger'. Imagine there is no dangerous outside and be bold enough to try it. You did that already. And it obviously worked.
Now imagine one step further: there never was a sabre tooth tiger. [They existed, of course, as does malaria, but they never killed as they were 'told to kill' ...]
Go on on that journey. Not all societies made cities. Most indeed did not. And the few that fortified their cities did it not because of blood thirsty hyaenas.
I am not generalising about all of humanity. I am looking at the forces that are dominant now in the world, or in other words, what or who has the power. Clearly, those in power are not the cooperative, peaceful ones who desire for everyone to grow to their potential and for war to be banished… I do say that there were many influences and experiences in humanity, but we ended up with one way that dominates our societies and world politics. The psychology that dominates is the traumatised, fearful, and competitive variety, and there is no doubt this came from suffering and trauma that some groups have experienced.
Sabre tooth tigers, giant hyenas and other scary beasts did eat our ancestors as late as 13,000 years ago. One study that looked at the DNA of a great beast found that we were a major source of food. We killed many of them, and many died because humans changed their environment too much. If they did not eat us, we competed with them on the same food.
Everywhere humans moved into, about 50% of the wildlife disappeared within a relatively small amount of time. But the point is to look at what is dominant in us now, and it is not the benevolent variety of humans. We are a right mess…
I like your inspiring point of view though I disagree in parts, but my english is not good enough to explain. I’ll try, anyway!. Many different psychologies can coexist. Take the Palestinians, take the Levant, the whole Maghreb - I live side by side to Morrocco - ; one common trait is hospitality. It's proverbial! Even the poorest, those who are suffering 'sabre tooth tigers' now, will uphold hospitality. It is sacred. The guest is taboo. The guest is safe. [US-american evangelicals will never understand this.]
Central and east european societies don't have that. Politeness, yes. Give and take, yes. But no this deeply engrained habit (?) of hospitality. Warm and welcoming.
I have found that hospitality in other places, too. Northeast Brazil. ♥️🇧🇷
It is not mankind as such that kills nature. When a certain type of human 'discovered' the world (and began destruction) there were already humans living there for millenia. And most of them managed a coexistence between their tribes and not-humans. (Some did not.)
But these ‘discoverers' had - and have! - a different mindset. I feel we should direct our focus (attention, energy) towards the better part of human kind and learn from them. It is 'our own better part'.
Thoughtful piece. I'd have rephrased the title to "Kismet or Karma" - the quintessential head-scratcher of our times.
The empathy towards the hapless residents of Gaza with which you begin the piece is relatable. For 420 days now, I have scanned the faces of pictures of dead children often laid in rows, covered in burial shrouds in my SM feed, one feels a vague survivors' remorse?
A slightly critical if pedantic feedback when you write: "I have always felt deep empathy towards asylum-seekers who are treated like criminals in the West. Apparently it is a crime to want a better life if your skin colour is the wrong one, or if the immigration policies in Western countries exclude you. People do not become asylum-seekers because of who they are. I am in no way a better, or more deserving person than anyone whose unlucky circumstances placed them in a harmful country, and who does not fit within the immigration policies of the country they hope to escape to."
-- Right. That said, people do become asylum seekers from countries such as Venezuela, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan not because unlucky circumstances placed them in a harmful country, but precisely because harmful countries such as the USA (and UK) are making their countries unliveable. The irony of course is that most people flee those countries aspiring / targeting the US, the only country the US is not sanctioning/bombing yet.
Thank you for reading and for your thoughtful comment. What I meant by unlucky is that from the POV of the people themselves, it is only luck or lack thereof that determines how things would go for them. When countries like the US and UK make their countries inaccessible to asylum seekers, they are creating those random circumstances for other people. As I said in the article, my good luck was that Australia's immigration policy in 1991 happened to fit my circumstances, and spec, or rather the latter fitted with the immigration policy. There was no guarantee that I could move there because I am a 'nice' person, or I 'really really wanted to', or I desperately needed to. It was pure luck.
A beautiful personal and deeply human piece. “There but for the grace of god go I” is a thought I have when encountering a homeless person, reading about people suffering from poverty and, excruciatingly now, the Palestinian people being erased by Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Sadly, many of us who have achieved a modicum of security and privilege feel that we deserve it, because of our virtue and specialness. If we all, and the Israelis especially, could empathize rather than dehumanize the other, this would go a long way towards a better and more peaceful world.
Thank you for feeling deeply, writing thoughtfully and beautifully, and sharing your personal experience.
This made me think of a poem I wrote at the beginning of the year - it struck me then, it's just a postcode lottery, where we are born. We in the Safe West have no more right to life than any other human bring, we just got born in a ' better neighbourhood. '
The Promised Land (c) deborahjones 2024
We are all nomads,
made of stardust,
seeking a home.
Wanton creepers in
nameless forests,
settlers in an
unknown future.
Scattered seeds
among the ruins
of yesterday
and the hope
of tomorrow.
Owning nothing.
Our birthright
the postcode
where our seedpod
cracked.
Travellers in time
and fortune,
Bound together
by the same cosmic laws
Separate
Alone
Apart
Colour coded,
for fast track
or failure
We are all nomads.
Beautiful and painful. I hope you post or publish it somewhere. Reminds me of the French song by Julien Clerc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7292k1CMf0)
Réfugié, tu as tous les droits
Marcher à quatre pattes
Ou au pas de l'oie
Réfugié tu n'as plus de loi
Plus de terre ou de combat
Avoir des droits avoir un toit
Essayons un jour l'amour
Le jour où chez nous tu seras chez toi
Réfugié réfugié
Nous sommes tous tous tous
Des réfugiés
Bien sûr on peut oublier
Renoncer même au passé
Et abolir la mémoire
Comme on ferme un livre d'histoire
Avoir des droits avoir un toit
Essayons un jour l'amour
Le jour où chez nous tu seras chez toi
Réfugié réfugié
Nous sommes tous tous tous
Des réfugiés
Hiver printemps automne été
Nous sommes tous des réfugiés
Sur cette terre qui est notre terre
Qu'il faudra bien un jour partager
Avigail, I couldn't agree more with your thoughtful post.
It's making so many of us crazy that the genocide in Gaza continues no matter what we do, it seems.
Humanity has so much potential, and it's so hard to understand why it's being squandered the way it is in ways that are preventable and cruel.
Because the psychopaths created money which created poverty and a means of control. We used to banish them to die in the wilderness. Now they get "elected" to rule over us.
Thank you Jasmin. My feeling is that they were always in power, because early humans preferred them, seeing them as better protectors. Imagine having a person in charge who has empathy and instead of trying to kill a dangerous animal, he or she felt empathy for it. We are what we are because of those who came before us. Our strong survivalist imperative instructs us, or conditions us to put our comforts, rights, freedoms aside, when we perceive an existential threat. This means that human tribes might have felt uncomfortable under the rule of psychopaths, but it did work better to keep us alive, which is why there are 8 billion of us and growing. Cooperation, kindness, empathy have also played a big part in our evolution and development, but the fact that they are not in charge, speaks volumes. This is why I always talk about how we need to ditch our surrealist focus and start focusing on growth and development for everyone. Once we do, we will stop selecting psychopaths and their influence will gradually diminish. We are nowhere near this, but I hope we will start moving in that direction. Things often have to get extremely bad, before there is a willingness to take a different path. I see it in my work all the time. People rarely present in therapy when they think they can 'cope' and manage. They often come when things are at a crisis point and they know that something has to change. We do the same as groups, I believe.
Thanks you so much once again for reading and for commenting. I do not take it for granted. 🙏🏼
"Like all perpetrator societies, built on the devastation they have wreaked on others, Israeli society cannot be happy, peaceful, or content. It is permanently stressed, chronically anxious, jumpy, exhausted. Life there is a constant emotional roller-coaster. People are on tenterhooks, always waiting for the next drama or disaster, which their media promise them is always around the corner. As a result, the general atmosphere is impatient, harsh and intolerant. It is not psychologically healthy for anyone."
You described America. It is tragic how as American and Zionist leadership have melded, their two nations have become terribly similar.
Would you believe that I was well aware of it while I was writing it? I was hoping someone from the US, would see it and say something. I think they did not ‘become’ similar, they always were. All settler-colonial societies have the same mindset. You have to have a particular kind of psychology to commit the crime settler-colonialism in the first place, and then you have to create mechanisms that enable you to cope with this kind of psychology. I think both societies are very similar indeed. Thank you!!
Come to think about it, you're right! We've always been that way. It just seems so much more extreme now since we are committing another genocide. We already killed 5 million native Americans in our first genocide. Thanks for the reminder!
Another excellent deconstruction of the settler colonialist mind-set and the deceit, fear and related greed underpinning such criminal enterprises. We all know and recognise the sociopaths and narcissists who are the face of these 'movements'. The problem is that for such butchery to persist, it requires the passive or proactive 'permission' of far too many of our 'fellow citizens'. The same people who delivered the mail to Belsen or drove the trains to Auschwitz.
Indeed. And the very clever poem Regugees by Brian Bliston.
Many of my Gaza Poems are published in Wayward Words, Pesky Publishing, with all proceeds to Gaza Aid projects
Wonderful! Thank you. 🙏🏼
'...it is chance that determines whether we survive, and have an opportunity to fulfil our human potential.'
Yeah, I share the same view, Avigail. Our system really is unfair and unkind, especially towards those who aren't looked upon favourably. It's all up to chance, and it needs to change!
Thank you Raveen. Glad that you see what I see. If we are such a genius species, surely we would be able to come up with a way of life that enables everyone, rather than replicate random chance in a completely unnecessary way. Thank you for reading, commenting and subscribing.
Thank you, Avigail. The article is full of great insights. The (in)famous Zionist idea of the "Clash of Civilizations" can indeed be applied to our times (since neocon arrival) - only not as a clash between East and West, but as a clash between hordes who believe in human hierarchy, Uber- and Untermenschen and selective human value - and those who believe in human equality and political cooperation.
Those who believe in human hierarchy - the "Jewish fingernail", "Judeo-Christian values", chosenness of one tribe over another - also believe that freedom of one tribe is only possible INSTEAD of freedom of another. That existence of one group is only possible INSTEAD of existence of its neighbor.
America INSTEAD of Russia. Israel INSTEAD of Palestine. Either you kill THEM or they kill YOU. Such is their madness.
We have come to the point where to kill "them" means killing the whole humanity. So the tribalist believers in hierarchy of human worth and happiness instead of and at the cost of someone else are now willing to destroy the whole planet just to prevail.
This unstoppable desire to prevail over the neighbor, subjugation as a means of survival, "dominate or be dominated" mentality is an enemy of humanity number one.
And these people hate anybody who believes in human equality and cooperation.
Zionists invent myths that Palestinians want to annihilate them. Zionists say that Palestinians are waging genocide on Jews. The idea of Israel was The Jewish State completely INSTEAD of Palestine because Zionists can only imagine Jewish existence INSTEAD of all others, otherwise they are under an "existential threat." And they have succeeded in propagandizing the whole West into the Iron Age of conquest and domination.
Humanity today is divided by those who believe in hierarchy and those who believe in equality.
Absolutely!! And thank you, Lena. Your feedback means a lot to me.
A question about Israel’s harsh, hypervigilant, and militaristic society which also appears to be increasingly racist. The parallels with a person who has suffered chronic childhood trauma are there in spades.
Do you have a view on the perspective that Israel is a traumatized society kept deeply entangled in its trauma by its institutions and leaders? It seems to me israeli leaders have weaponized the trauma of the Holocaust both externally and internally. Internally this has served to keep the society stuck feeling continual existential threat since the founding of the state. This has benefited the military, the country’s foremost institution, and the military weapons complex from which the top generals and officers go on to benefit economically.
I often wonder what Israel would have looked like if it had invested some of its military budget in mass mental health services to address the trauma legacy of the Holocaust. A “genius” thought: work on healing fear and trauma rather than perpetuating and manipulating it. Any good books written on this? Or would you consider writing an article? Many thanks.
You are absolutely right and I have written about this in some of my essays in the past. Israel deliberately keeps trauma alive and uses its formal and informal mechanisms to make sure no one is ever not traumatised. If Israel invested in recovery from trauma, it would cease to exist as an exclusively Jewish state, and this is diametrically opposed to Israel’s purpose. There is no interest in this in Israel because they do not think there is anything wrong with being the way they are.
Trauma is at the core of Jewish-identity. When people (or societies) have trauma, their identity is organised around the trauma. To recover means to allow our identity to transform. I am a recoverer from severe childhood trauma, and also from Jewish-Israeli collective trauma. I know what it feels like to lose who you think you were, no matter how crappy, and walking into the unknown. I write about trauma in a short book, which is not about Israel but applies to trauma in general. I think I have written about this before but cannot think right now about a particular paper or article. You can look me up on the Electronic Intifada, and on Mondoweiss. Some of the articles I published there over the years are also on my Academia.edu page. I do not know any particular book or writer that covers this topic, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t any. There is social psychology research on this in Israel esp by the famous Dr Daniel BarTal. But the problem with his work is that while he describes Israeli society really well, he is also an apologist for it and for its settler-colonialism. Another problem with the trauma narrative is that despite our known science, there is still a false belief that it is not possible to recover from trauma. This is in relation to individuals. I suspect we are not even close to talking about whole societies. But as I said, I don’t know enough and it doesn’t mean the material isn’t there. If you find anything, please send some references my way. My chapter in my edited book, Beyond Tribal Loyalties, and my introduction might be useful to you as well.
I gave a series of talks in Germany back in 2013 that I called 'The Psychology of Israeli Settler-colonialism’, where I talked about Israeli trauma psychology. I am happy to give you access to the slides if you send me an email to avigail at fullyhuman dot co dot uk It is too big to send by email but if I have your email I can give you access via Dropbox. There aer two points relevant to this topic: 1) an explanation is not an excuse, and 2) we don’t have time to wait until Israel ‘gets a clue’. The Palestinians are being exterminated right now and Israel is determined to finish the job. I said this even 11 years ago when I gave those talks. I do not believe Israel will change from within. The reason it is important to understand Israel’s psychology is to accept that we have no one to reason with there, and that Israel must be stopped by the outside world, or it never will.
Thank you, Avigail. I will look into your writing and look for other sources, which I will share if I am able to identify some good ones.
Separately, I agree and am under no illusion Israel will change from within. The change will have to be imposed as a result of pressure from the world community and especially the US and W Europe. The grassroots trends are encouraging but the iron grip of the Israel lobby is a huge force. As of now, politicians value funding over dollars. Once this can be demonstrated to be a faulty calculation, things can start to change. Politicians need to start losing elections because they disregard the peoples’ wishes.
For now it is all about activism and educating the public. I believe we all fear that there will be nothing left of Palestine and Palestinians by the time change happens, but we must not be discouraged. Thank you for all you do to help tilt the balance towards justice.
Meant to say funding over votes.
Yes ♥️ and no.
The 'sabre tooth tiger' is nothing else but the zionist narrative of 'outside awaits the danger'. Imagine there is no dangerous outside and be bold enough to try it. You did that already. And it obviously worked.
Now imagine one step further: there never was a sabre tooth tiger. [They existed, of course, as does malaria, but they never killed as they were 'told to kill' ...]
Go on on that journey. Not all societies made cities. Most indeed did not. And the few that fortified their cities did it not because of blood thirsty hyaenas.
Homo homini lupus est.
Thanks for reading and commenting Arturo.
I am not generalising about all of humanity. I am looking at the forces that are dominant now in the world, or in other words, what or who has the power. Clearly, those in power are not the cooperative, peaceful ones who desire for everyone to grow to their potential and for war to be banished… I do say that there were many influences and experiences in humanity, but we ended up with one way that dominates our societies and world politics. The psychology that dominates is the traumatised, fearful, and competitive variety, and there is no doubt this came from suffering and trauma that some groups have experienced.
Sabre tooth tigers, giant hyenas and other scary beasts did eat our ancestors as late as 13,000 years ago. One study that looked at the DNA of a great beast found that we were a major source of food. We killed many of them, and many died because humans changed their environment too much. If they did not eat us, we competed with them on the same food.
Everywhere humans moved into, about 50% of the wildlife disappeared within a relatively small amount of time. But the point is to look at what is dominant in us now, and it is not the benevolent variety of humans. We are a right mess…
I like your inspiring point of view though I disagree in parts, but my english is not good enough to explain. I’ll try, anyway!. Many different psychologies can coexist. Take the Palestinians, take the Levant, the whole Maghreb - I live side by side to Morrocco - ; one common trait is hospitality. It's proverbial! Even the poorest, those who are suffering 'sabre tooth tigers' now, will uphold hospitality. It is sacred. The guest is taboo. The guest is safe. [US-american evangelicals will never understand this.]
Central and east european societies don't have that. Politeness, yes. Give and take, yes. But no this deeply engrained habit (?) of hospitality. Warm and welcoming.
I have found that hospitality in other places, too. Northeast Brazil. ♥️🇧🇷
It is not mankind as such that kills nature. When a certain type of human 'discovered' the world (and began destruction) there were already humans living there for millenia. And most of them managed a coexistence between their tribes and not-humans. (Some did not.)
But these ‘discoverers' had - and have! - a different mindset. I feel we should direct our focus (attention, energy) towards the better part of human kind and learn from them. It is 'our own better part'.
Thoughtful piece. I'd have rephrased the title to "Kismet or Karma" - the quintessential head-scratcher of our times.
The empathy towards the hapless residents of Gaza with which you begin the piece is relatable. For 420 days now, I have scanned the faces of pictures of dead children often laid in rows, covered in burial shrouds in my SM feed, one feels a vague survivors' remorse?
A slightly critical if pedantic feedback when you write: "I have always felt deep empathy towards asylum-seekers who are treated like criminals in the West. Apparently it is a crime to want a better life if your skin colour is the wrong one, or if the immigration policies in Western countries exclude you. People do not become asylum-seekers because of who they are. I am in no way a better, or more deserving person than anyone whose unlucky circumstances placed them in a harmful country, and who does not fit within the immigration policies of the country they hope to escape to."
-- Right. That said, people do become asylum seekers from countries such as Venezuela, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan not because unlucky circumstances placed them in a harmful country, but precisely because harmful countries such as the USA (and UK) are making their countries unliveable. The irony of course is that most people flee those countries aspiring / targeting the US, the only country the US is not sanctioning/bombing yet.
Again, well written - one from the heart.
Thank you for reading and for your thoughtful comment. What I meant by unlucky is that from the POV of the people themselves, it is only luck or lack thereof that determines how things would go for them. When countries like the US and UK make their countries inaccessible to asylum seekers, they are creating those random circumstances for other people. As I said in the article, my good luck was that Australia's immigration policy in 1991 happened to fit my circumstances, and spec, or rather the latter fitted with the immigration policy. There was no guarantee that I could move there because I am a 'nice' person, or I 'really really wanted to', or I desperately needed to. It was pure luck.
A beautiful personal and deeply human piece. “There but for the grace of god go I” is a thought I have when encountering a homeless person, reading about people suffering from poverty and, excruciatingly now, the Palestinian people being erased by Israel’s Genocide in Gaza. Sadly, many of us who have achieved a modicum of security and privilege feel that we deserve it, because of our virtue and specialness. If we all, and the Israelis especially, could empathize rather than dehumanize the other, this would go a long way towards a better and more peaceful world.
Thank you for feeling deeply, writing thoughtfully and beautifully, and sharing your personal experience.
Thank you! It is so kind of you to say.