Why so many people don’t take it seriously when Israel warns us – and
they’ve been warning and showing a lot of stuff – about the oppressive regimes,
the authoritarian theocracies, the bloody dictatorships that threaten entire
regions and the World?
I think a lot of us are afraid to call these things “evil”. Some people
think this would be too “judgmental”.
But we know that the consequences of a small group of people having
absolute arbitrary power over a country are bad for the people there. So how do
people deal with this contradiction, knowing that certain forms of power cause
pain and at same time not wanting to “judge too much”?
Some people prefer to think that these undesirable forms of power are simply
result of “inequality”. Like, life conditions are worst there, so we have no
right to say that people’s attitudes are right or wrong.
But “life conditions” is not only a matter of how much money a country
has compared to the United States of America, it is also – and I believe it is more
– about how the leadership of a country does their job.
Doesn’t it make a real difference? Are people treated with dignity, are
they respected in their rights? Do they have freedom and opportunity to try to
make the things that can improve their lives and bring them happiness?
Iran’s economy is strongly controlled by the government. Just like
everything else. Should we really go on believing that the lack of freedom of
people is all caused by the fact that someone else has more money, even if
Iran, in general terms, is very far from being a miserable country when it
comes to summed resources?
Are we really forbidden to use our discernment, use the accumulated
experience of humankind through history, to notice that some patterns –
arbitrary power, violence, blaming everything on an external enemy, preaching
to “take back” something that was “lost” in the past by “any means” – all
necessarily lead to darkness, suffering.
Iran has not only their own violent army, they have proxy groups acting
against whoever they don’t like. Terror groups, groups formed by masked man who
long gave up wanting anything for their lives excepts the prizes for violence.
Making attacks that it would be insane for the attacked not to respond to.
But still, many people feel that standing in the side of the one who
“have more money”, no matter the specific conditions that led to conflict, no
matter the insanity that is going on, or how dangerous some agent has become
for the region and the world, will always be “kind of wrong”, simply because of
the different economic conditions.
In this case we are – a lot of us without knowing - echoing a
materialist point of view. A point of view largely shared by Marx himself.
Because he was the guy that proposed that everything should be seen through the
lens of who has the “capital”.
Classical Marxism believed the economic differences between groups of people
– namely who owned and who didn’t own the means of production, the factories
and other things that can turn money into more money – these difference would lead
to social contradictions, social struggles, that would have consequences in the
economy and so on.
Those movements of forces, disputes between “classes of people” would change
the landscape, and while there is still imbalance, new contradictions would always
appear, and the conflicts and struggles would lead to new contradictions that
would lead to new struggles and so on, until the only end possible: an equilibrium
being reached, means of production belonging to everybody and nobody at the
same time.
They believe this economic struggle was the real truth behind all the Historical
processes. To put it very simply: one dimension was really relevant, the
Economic Dimension. All problems are generated by economic imbalance, and what
diminishes imbalances is always good in the long term, because will lead to the
good equilibrium.
Therefore, it would make no sense to judge individual actions that
people take in their struggles, if it leads to more balance. A substitution of
very old human notions of what is ethical or not to do towards the other, for an
abstract vision that looks a lot like a simple mathematical graph.
Nowadays of course, their language changed, got more sophisticated. A
lot of things evolved in the world of science and knowledge, the jobs of people
changed, and they don’t want to look like old school bearded factory picketers,
they want to look modern.
So now they give importance “not just to money simply”, they speak of
the existence of “complex systems of culture” – ideologies, intellectual life,
religion – all these producing different types of “hegemony”, but of course,
they always end up pointing to their old enemy: the “capitalist Western World”,
mainly the United States, and, disproportionally and obsessively, Israel.
How can it, in the end, look so much like their old talk of
materialistic imbalance? The Capital now is different, companies act and have
money in different countries – and the biggest companies don’t seem to be loyal
to nobody.
And although the United States still have the bigger Economy, China is coming
fast, they openly aim for Global Leadership, and their vision of government is
not democratic, they don’t believe in individual freedom as much as us. The
number of people they have under their authoritarian power is immense. Human
lives, as I said before, is something even more real than economy numbers.
Also, how many people live under absolutist theocracies, or in countries
more and more infested by extremist religious groups, how many people are
getting more and more radicalized?
What happens in these situations is much more than “hegemony”. It’s one
thought. One direction. Everything else is smashed.
So what the Anti-Western people are saying is that absolutist powers
over a huge number of people is not that bad, when it stands against the
supposed “hegemony” of the West. But in the West at least there is more than
one thought allowed, more than one direction to be tried.
There is freedom of Religion is the Western World, the press is much
more free than in other places. And the Academic World, although not free from
its own hegemonic thought, which is bad, is not obliged to be aligned with the
government, which is good.
And let’s not forget that the money in democratic countries is not so
obliged to the political leaders as the money is state-controlled economies.
That makes a difference. So why treat the West as a “big hegemony”, and the
others as “complex”?
Of course nobody in his sane mind desires a Global War – God forbid –
but there should be a clear message that certain things are not acceptable.
Endorsing and supporting a regime like Iran’s, siding with extremists when they
say Israel should be wiped out – we must be clear that we don’t accept these
positions.
Terrorism has caused so much pain, saying that a country should not
exist can’t lead to a good end. Iran needs to be clearly considered a big enemy
of peace. Yes, Terrorism is urgent, it must be dealt with right now.
It is clear that the Marxist’s problem is not really with “Hegemony”, or
“the power of people over people”, is precisely with the West. They are still
seeing the old Economic Scale more than anything, and refusing to really see
what is not shown by the gpd numbers, that is, powerful dictatorships, and a
World where the United States don’t give all the cards. Not by far.
Yes, in the History of mankind there is the horrible slavery of black
African people in the hands of some Europeans or descendants of Europeans, but
there is also oppression everywhere, in all old Kingdoms and Empires, not only
in the West.
See how the academic people use their concept of “complexity”, of “many
things to consider”. When anything bad happens in a country that they consider
“oppressor”, they will say that this bad fact that happened is a perfect
reflection of “many things”, and it proves that virtually everything in this
country is wrong.
But when we see bad things, massacres out of nowhere, terror groups
oppressing their own people, women subjugated, homosexuals condemned to
non-existence, when this things happen in a country they don’t “want to judge”,
then they say there are “many things” that we are not taking in consideration if
we “judge”.
Two very different uses of the expression “many things”.
That is, in their “sophistication”, they use their concept of
“complexity” to relativize everything that they don’t want us to apply our
discernment to, and then it all falls happily back to that old mathematical
graph.
And I think this unidimensional line of thought doesn’t affect only the
Marxists. Think: how many people who are not interested in communism – or
religious extremism, for that matter – look at the news, see a bunch of economy
numbers on one side, and a lot of reports of conflicts, and numbers about
conflict, and they think that it is all a matter of richness and poverty.
How many of us – I, for sure, in a certain time of my life – have the
feeling that it all somehow boils down to economy? Like, poverty, lack of jobs,
shortage of investment, it all causes bad economic situations and these lead to
those “strange aggressive behaviors”.
How many people seem to believe that a Global Development, a rise of the
“good indices”, is the solution for everything? More commerce, better
investments, people will get out of misery and “naturally” start looking for
the real good things for their lives…
In my opinion, people who think like this, are being just as
materialistic as the Marxists. Of course, they don’t believe that the only
solution is struggle, clash between classes, that will lead to equilibrium.
They don’t believe the flat world of communism, that everybody needs to have
the same, they believe a collective growth, that’s all.
But think. If someone believes that the economic dimension is so much
more important than everything else, to the point that a normal person doesn’t
even need to think about the rest, just keep going and letting an abstract idea
of developments do its “magic”, and believing that every possible confrontation
is “unnecessary” because soon the “indices” will fix everything – then this
person is being just as unidimensional as the Marxist.
Because a solution has to have to do with the cause, and if money is
solution for everything, then the cause of every awful violent deed is lack of
money. We are falling in the same relativism of the communist, that don’t
believe anything must be “judged”.
The difference being that we believe that everybody can “grow together”,
and the Marxist believe that the faster way – or the only way – to bring
“development” to the poor is to take down the things that keep some people
“having more than others”.
In this case, the difference between us and a radical Marxist is just
the result of a calculation. We would be forever arguing about the same weird
mathematics, that just sees one variable as really relevant. We can’t prove they
are justifying Evil if they just “solved and equation differently”.
The difference should be more than that. It should be a qualitative
difference. Different parameters, different language, different things brought
into the reasoning. Not just see “money” and “development” as a magic answer that
makes everything else irrelevant.
We should consider the consequences of the choices that people make as
much more diverse than just “going up” or “going down” as if there was one, and
only one, Universal Ladder that everybody is climbing.
Imagine simply sending more money
to regions where there is an insane leadership. It will not magically make
people’s lives better.
There are so many other factors we should consider when we think about
the World. The extremist propaganda, so strong in so many places, children
being educated for hatred, arbitrary power of leaders, people having the right
to kill others.
“Oh, the indices account for that”. Maybe, but the “indices” also give
an illusion that we just need to make one variable, “development”, grow. In
most people’s mind, it’s about money. But there is not one Universal ladder
that everybody is climbing. Reality has many more dimensions that that.
Some people watch the news and, for some reason, they seem to have come
to believe that “real adults” care mostly about Economy.
Then they tend to doubt that aggressive leaders would really go very far
in their stated violent goals. As if they think that “everybody will someday be
satisfied with some money”.
Well, I don’t know if those leaders have well finished plans for, say,
the next one hundred years. But not having a perfect plan doesn’t mean someone is
playing.
Think. If in a “kingdom”, there is one thought, that is, “we do all to
fight our enemies”, then what is expected of the leadership? What everybody in
the system expects of the person immediately above? That they work for it, and
work well. Where can this end? We don’t know.
We have to deal with things like violence, terror, hatred, propaganda,
miseducation, misleading for what they are in themselves, not as “delays in
development”.
If we say we care for life, we
must acknowledge that there exist, in this World, whole different realities
where life doesn’t matter. How can we expect a country like Israel to defend
itself from Iran – who sworn to destroy Israel – and their terrorist subgroups,
and blame Israel for all the tragedy of this war, if we know Iran has created a
reality where life has no value?
We heard those leaders say, “we are proud when our people die”, “we are
a people of martyrs”. Israel is not the one in charge of these regions where
life has lost its value, became disposable, and are we going to expect them to
give up their defense when brutally attacked? How are we going to change these
realities, these dark realities? It’s horribly sad, but where were the leaders
of the World while this death-loving kingdom was being created?
We have, with all ethics and with all care possible, to protect the ground
where life is valued. It’s the only hope for the World.
So yes, we should consider “many factors”, but not say “oh, there are
many factors” just to prevent people from discerning right and wrong in
specific human actions, and then throw it all back to the same mathematical
graph that does not contain any guarantee of life improvement for nobody.
We should indeed see right and wrong in the each of the many factors,
because that is what changes things, and that is what valuing human life in all
its richness is.
