The Corridor: Never ending fights in Palestine, Israel, Lebanon and Syria

Did you know that east of the Mediterranean Sea there’s only a narrow strip of fertile land before the mountains rise up? No?

Well, quite likely you have heard a lot about this area in the media, without realizing it is just a narrow strip of land with lots of people living there.

Here are the present-day names: Palestine, Israel, Lebanon and Syria. And you may say: ‘Hey, it’s that area where rage and suffering never ends. The people have fought one another since biblical times and it still goes on.’

That's right. The violence is structural and age-old.

See, the fertile strip of land was part of the Fertile Crescent, where humans took to the cultivation of food grains 12,000 years ago and populations grew rapidly.

But in the narrow corridor they had much less space for expansion than in other parts of the Crescent, such as in Egypt or Iraq. So, in the Corridor the population grew beyond what the fertile land could provide for. People resorted to life in the mountains which brings small communities existing fairly isolated from each other or fighting each other.

Second, while communities in and near the Corridor remained weak by their small size and mutual fights, other societies in the Crescent expanded and built large armies. They moved over long distances and often came through the Corridor.

Next to scarcity and mutual fighting, the Corridor communities faced a long series of terrorizing occupations, oppressions, exploitations and deportations by the empires of Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and, in the end, also West Europeans.

So it came that the formation of stable political structures in and around the Corridor remained disrupted. Fragmentation reigned and mutual fighting between small communities went on.

This became so deeply ingrained in the unconscious of people that we still see the pattern continued.

https://www.google.co.th/search?q=fertile+lebanon+landscape+photo&tbm=isch&imgil=re-8UmeEJzxQBM%253A%253BC95RwhvOxtyGDM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.alamy.com%25252Fstock-photo-grapevines-growing-in-the-fertile-bekaa-beqaa-valley-of-lebanon-67085020.html&source=iu&pf=m&fir=re-8UmeEJzxQBM%253A%252CC95RwhvOxtyGDM%252C_&usg=__tN300UOR1ywCndXZpIgawcGbKNw%3D&biw=853&bih=393&ved=0ahUKEwjhtPHxm8zWAhUIo48KHfw5A9EQyjcIPg&ei=DTHPWaH6HojGvgT884yIDQ#imgdii=Yv1TD7R-1zNTvM:&imgrc=re-8UmeEJzxQBM:

The distinction between content and social dynamic of culture

CONTENT AND DYNAMIC OF CULTURE

How can I so coldly deny that religion and spirituality influence culture, although I have spiritual orientations myself?

That is because, as both a social scientist and a policy advisor, I give priority to looking at generally occurring dynamics or mechanisms in how humans interact, irrespective of the content they produce.

One such general dynamic creates what many call culture. But often we only look at the content of a specific culture or compare the content of different cultures. We then either ignore the dynamic that produces such cultures or mix content and social dynamic.

As a policy advisor, I acknowledge the attention that we pay to culture can be generated by our concern about a specific culture or a need we feel to change that culture.

Now, in order to achieve anything here, it is important to clearly understand the working of the social dynamic in itself, irrespective cultural content.

This cultural dynamic, as I have come to see it, consists of learning, internalizing, expressing and transferring commonalities in behaviors, that is, in feeling, thinking and acting, in a social entity such as a society or organization.

Like it is important to understand how the dynamic of the internal combustion engine makes cars run, for policy reasons it is helpful to clearly see the social dynamic that creates culture.

If we would want to change, say, certain behaviors, we will hopelessly fail if we focus on the surface and only see cultural content. We will be fight symptoms. We need to study how the learning, internalizing, expressing and transferring takes place and find ways to modify those processes.

This underlying social dynamic itself is distinct from religious, spiritual, rationalist, artistic, medical or any orientation that can fill the content of a culture. Of course, it is possible that I see or experience the underlying dynamic in a religious, spiritual, rationalist, artistic, medical or any other way, but then we are back at content again.

In other words, religion cannot exist without the social dynamic of learning, internalizing, expressing and transferring of common behaviors. But this social dynamic can very well exist without religion.  

Even if God creates culture, culture shapes religious behaviors

If I experience an external entity named, for instance, God, the Universe or the Spirit, I can experience that entity as creating everything. This ‘everything’ includes, among many other things, the continued shaping of common feelings, thoughts and visible behaviors in a particular society throughout time. Such a society may have developed some common feelings, thoughts and visible behaviors that are called ‘religious,’ because they regard the professing of a religion. More widely, such commonalities can regard moral codes and rules of conduct in other fields than only the professing of a religion.

Now, suppose I do not experience an external entity such as God, the Universe or the Spirit and do not find that entity as creating everything. Then I just see, among many other things, the continued shaping of common feelings, thoughts and visible behaviors in a particular society throughout time. I can also see that this society may have developed some common feelings, thoughts and visible behaviors that are called ‘religious,’ because they regard the professing of a religion. More widely, such commonalities can regard moral codes and rules of conduct in other fields than only the professing of a religion.

But there’s also another consideration that some use to explain why religion would dominates culture.

They point at feelings of sacredness, holiness or divinity, to one extent of the other, in actions and objects. Now, if I have that experience, it applies not only to the inspiring beauty of music or nature, but also to cobble stones and industrial sites. Likewise, sacredness can be felt when I look at the continued shaping of common feelings, thoughts and visible behaviors in a particular society throughout time.

Even if God creates the scoring of a goal by football player, that player still scores a goal.

Religion does not shape common behaviors, Culture does

Many people see religion and culture as having similar positions if it comes to influencing our behaviors. But I suppose they disregard what culture really does, at least in the way as I see culture.

There are many other definitions but I am among the ones who find those less helpful.

In my view culture contains three core elements. The first element has the commonalities in thinking, feeling and acting that we learn in a society or community, to start with childhood. The second element has the unconscious brain of the members that learn, store and contribute to commonalities in thinking, feeling and acting. The third core element is the continuation over long periods of time and is difficult to deliberately modify because of the unconscious is hard to reach.

These three elements together constitute the dynamic of culture.

The usual caveat is to keep in mind that commonalities do not exclude at all individual variations in how members think, feel and act.

A second caveat is not to see societies or communities as entirely closed off entities: they’re not billiard balls. They have overlaps and interactions with neighboring societies or communities.

Yet another usual caveat is to avoid concluding that all behavioral commonalities come from culture. Forces such as the genetic makeup and the physical environment are also active.

Finally, do not forget complexity. Have an open eye for things such as causal loops and minor or major changes at work.

Yet, the three core elements of the cultural dynamic go on shaping our behaviors as well. They influence our behaviors in each part of society: economics, family life, traditional religion, new spirituality, politics, the judiciary, school education, healthcare, sports, arts, engineering, architecture, sciences and any other field.

Now, some say, but religions have specific rules or moral codes and the organizational apparatus to enforce those rules or codes. Well, that also goes for politics, healthcare or sports, to name some other fields in society. Also here - just as in religion – the commonalities in our learning, unconscious storing and expressing it in visible behaviors operate as the core elements of the culture dynamic.

Others claim that culture and religion influence one another. First, if that were true it would also happens in economics, politics, sports and all the other fields. But to represent social dynamics in this way ignores what the cultural dynamic really is: our commonalities in learning, storing and expressing. Or course, in the field of religion some of those commonalities can change, as they change in other.

But to allocate equal positions to culture and religion, culture and economics or culture and healthcare, is to equalize apples and oranges or, if you want, car and petrol. The car does not make petrol run. Petrol makes the car run.

Natural disasters: From centrism to realism

While the death toll of Hurricane Harvey is around 70, in Africa intense rains killed at least 1,240 people in August and more than 1,200 in Asia already.

But is then a number of, say, 3,000 casualties dramatically worse than over the last twenty years. My, no!

Come for a shift of focus from sensational media to realistic figures and from centric thinking to looking at other places and times as well.

Natural disasters have taken 30,000 lives each year over the last two decades. That is ten times 30 more than the 3,000 in 2017 sofar.

Or have a look at the period of 1920-1939 when natural disasters killed half a million people yearly.

http://time.com/4124755/natural-disasters-death-united-nations/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/floods-south-asia-india-bangladesh-nepal-houston.html?mcubz=0

https://qz.com/1068790/floods-in-africa-in-august-killed-25-times-more-people-than-hurricane-harvey-did/

http://time.com/4930098/texas-hurricane-harvey-death-toll-70/

https://ourworldindata.org/natural-catastrophes/

Green policies affect status quo

Environmental policies relate to much more than the presently discussed climate change problematic. They aim at reducing the alarming depletion of forests, ocean fish, ground water and farm land, next to natural disasters, industrial disasters, factory farming, ocean pollution, the poisoning of local air, soil, surface water and ground water, and noise pollution.

While consumers have a certain influence, major green policies depend on financing by state governments. These governments, however, are either ruled by ignorance or inertia, or hesitate to substantially engage in green policies because elections are earlier lost than won with costly green agendas.

But, state governments are also prisoners of financial markets. These governments borrow money in order to finance their national deficits that arise from overspending on industries, including oil and the military, and on education, health care and social welfare. These overspendings would be jeopardized by more spending on the environment and meet with resistance from the industrial and leftist lobbyists.

On the other hand, if national governments start spending more on the environment, along with a continued financing of industries and social sectors, they need to borrow more money than they do now already at financial markets.

Money at these markets is provided by private banks, central government banks, international banks, insurance companies, retirement funds and other national and lower level governments. But these investors are not interested in saving the planet. Their role is to earn money with money. Therefore, some say these investors operate as the main obstacle for greener policies.

But the interplay of borrowing governments and providing investors happens at international financial markets with fluctuating opportunities and risks. These parties are bound to participate in these markets. So, next to identifiable actors, there are the impersonal, elusive financial markets that functions as a limitation of green investments. As fundamental changes of the present financial market system are unlikely, alternative financial systems and private green investments may be facilitated.

Meanwhile, as said, also identifiable actors such as consumers, voters, governments and industrial and social lobbyists also contribute to the weakness of green public policies. As shifts in their present power balances between these actors seem equally unlikely, the rise of other powerful green actors than governments may be facilitated.

Among such green actors are 'impact' investors and entrepreneurs, with the word 'impact' referring here to impacts on the physical environment.

Courtesy: Razmig Keucheyan