Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Penn Jillette's Take on Atheism, Libertarianism, Terrorism
I was getting ready to write something like this for my next essay on terrorism. Like Jillette, I too believe that I do not know what is best for other people, and that it is categorically wrong for me to dictate to them (unless I am telling them to please avoid blowing my head off, vel sim). I also really like what he said about reserving the right to change his mind about something as his experience with it evolves. For me, that is what good faith is (and always has been)--not accepting a single answer as true no matter what, but remaining open to new truth (even when it destroys the old).
Secret Combinations
If even a little of this is true, my distrust of government, corporations (including churches), and the media is not misplaced. The worst enemy is always the one who makes you entirely dependent on him.
Monday, October 10, 2011
Atheist Agnostic Believer
Chuck Borough has produced a great podcast over at Mormon Expression. I agree with just about everything the man said, and have repeatedly reflected that my own status as a Mormon is best described with the adjectives atheist (since I doubt the existence of a personal deity), agnostic (since I don't know for a fact), and believer (since I believe in community, including family and friends and the values that sustain these relationships).
Contrary to what someone prominent implied recently in a large gathering of LDS, I am not some kind of fascist who wants to force others to deny God so that we can all go on a wild crime spree together. Borough's Santa Claus analogy is perfect. When I realized that the jolly old gent was not a real person residing on the North Pole, I did not suddenly lose all respect for Christmas: I still like gathering with family and friends, singing, sharing food, and even exchanging gifts (though I am sometimes embarrassed that my offerings are a little meager). Christmas is still Christmas for me, even if I don't anticipate flying reindeer on my roof come Christmas Eve. Just so, Mormonism did not lose all its meaning for me when I realized that I have serious doubts about the existence of a personal God and the moral authority of those who represent him (whether gods incarnate like Christ or inspired prophets like Joseph Smith). I still believe in the importance of being a moral person. I believe in community, including the community of believers. Unfortunately, they seem not to believe in me. Judging from Elder Christofferson's recent talk, LDS church leaders think I am a fascist, a nihilist, and (to sum it up) a pretty rotten excuse for a human being. While I can sort of understand where they are coming from, having spent a little time in that place myself, I cannot accept their caricature of me. It is wrong, and I resent it. If anybody asks, then yes, it offends me. But I can be offended safely: I am not going to drop my morals and lash out at them violently (as Nehor did to Gideon). Instead I am going to reach out and ask them to realize that many of us "atheists" are people too, that we love our families, that we read scripture, that we believe in and desire many of the same good things that they do.
Sometimes I probably speak too harshly against religion. That is just the pain of my subjective personal betrayal speaking. It is not objective reality. Many religious people are absolutely fine. Their faith nourishes them in what I would call (in my saner moments) a perfectly fulfilled human life. But the same is also true of many "secular" people, i.e. people whose religion certain sects (not just the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) fear and seek to denigrate. Why deny this? Why pretend that happy and fulfilled atheists don't exist? Why make us all out to be Satan? Why drive a wedge between us and our believing friends and family? Are you really willing to make a man an offender for a word? Do you think the fate of the universe really hangs on accepting a certain narrow construction of reality, a construction that has no room for doubts about things which are (to be frank) easy to doubt? Why would a loving God do that? I wouldn't do it. I refuse to write all believers off as fanatic members of the Inquisition: I know too many who aren't that way at all, and I am not committed to a worldview that makes it necessary for me to deny their reality to have mine.
Anyway, back to work I go. Thanks for listening to the rant, Internet world.
Contrary to what someone prominent implied recently in a large gathering of LDS, I am not some kind of fascist who wants to force others to deny God so that we can all go on a wild crime spree together. Borough's Santa Claus analogy is perfect. When I realized that the jolly old gent was not a real person residing on the North Pole, I did not suddenly lose all respect for Christmas: I still like gathering with family and friends, singing, sharing food, and even exchanging gifts (though I am sometimes embarrassed that my offerings are a little meager). Christmas is still Christmas for me, even if I don't anticipate flying reindeer on my roof come Christmas Eve. Just so, Mormonism did not lose all its meaning for me when I realized that I have serious doubts about the existence of a personal God and the moral authority of those who represent him (whether gods incarnate like Christ or inspired prophets like Joseph Smith). I still believe in the importance of being a moral person. I believe in community, including the community of believers. Unfortunately, they seem not to believe in me. Judging from Elder Christofferson's recent talk, LDS church leaders think I am a fascist, a nihilist, and (to sum it up) a pretty rotten excuse for a human being. While I can sort of understand where they are coming from, having spent a little time in that place myself, I cannot accept their caricature of me. It is wrong, and I resent it. If anybody asks, then yes, it offends me. But I can be offended safely: I am not going to drop my morals and lash out at them violently (as Nehor did to Gideon). Instead I am going to reach out and ask them to realize that many of us "atheists" are people too, that we love our families, that we read scripture, that we believe in and desire many of the same good things that they do.
Sometimes I probably speak too harshly against religion. That is just the pain of my subjective personal betrayal speaking. It is not objective reality. Many religious people are absolutely fine. Their faith nourishes them in what I would call (in my saner moments) a perfectly fulfilled human life. But the same is also true of many "secular" people, i.e. people whose religion certain sects (not just the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) fear and seek to denigrate. Why deny this? Why pretend that happy and fulfilled atheists don't exist? Why make us all out to be Satan? Why drive a wedge between us and our believing friends and family? Are you really willing to make a man an offender for a word? Do you think the fate of the universe really hangs on accepting a certain narrow construction of reality, a construction that has no room for doubts about things which are (to be frank) easy to doubt? Why would a loving God do that? I wouldn't do it. I refuse to write all believers off as fanatic members of the Inquisition: I know too many who aren't that way at all, and I am not committed to a worldview that makes it necessary for me to deny their reality to have mine.
Anyway, back to work I go. Thanks for listening to the rant, Internet world.
Friday, September 30, 2011
What is Pornography?
In honor of the upcoming General Conference, I offer my own talk on pornography, created from a very rambling essay I posted a while back on a message-board for Mormons.
What is pornography? This question is actually really hard to answer. (I could bring up the Supreme Court justice who summed it up with an aphorism to the effect of, "I cannot define it, but I know it when I see it.") The way we use the word in the LDS church, it often seems to refer to images of people that cause sexual arousal. This causes a lot of confusion, since what causes arousal for one person does not always do much (or anything at all) for another. Some people are excited by the sight of a foot; others are impervious to full nudity. Some Mormons are "offended" by the J. C. Penney catalogue. Others can "endure" (and even be inspired by) much "wilder" stuff. (Here I remember a course in Western Civilization that I had at BYU: the teacher, a woman, announced at the beginning that students would be required to study in detail works of great art, including nude paintings and statues, and that anyone who objected to that should drop out before the semester got underway.) Generally speaking, official church pronouncements ignore these niceties and refer to pornography as some kind of monolithic thing, with universal (and universally evil) effects. In other words, we objectify art along with everything else!
In the real world, outside of our religious fantasies, people are sexually stimulated by a variety of mundane and unavoidable things. Sex is woven deep into our being. Like every human practice, it sometimes comes out "evil" -- not because there is anything inherently wrong with it in the abstract, but because there are things wrong with particular individuals, things which sometimes find expression in the sexual habits of said individuals. While it makes no sense to censor the world to fit some imaginary Platonic standard of what constitutes "beauty" and what constitutes "smut" (since the standard is inevitably arbitrary and incoherent), it makes a whole lot of sense for the individual to avoid images that make his life worse (and do whatever he pleases with images that do not). No one can write the book telling us what images are universally safe to look at, because the same image speaks to each one of us in a different way. We have to be our own censors. Some people have no problem with the Venus de Milo. Other people find her the bane of their existence. That is OK. Let the hedonists enjoy and the ascetics abstain without mutual recrimination. As long as no one is being tortured to make the art (as sometimes happens in some of the seedier parts of the sex industry), it is all good.
My line of thinking is perhaps best illustrated with an analogy from physical culture. Years ago, there was widespread fear of working out with (heavy) weights. People who thought nothing of a day's work on the farm somehow got it into their heads that picking up moulded pieces of iron with no practical aim beyond increasing strength would render them unsupple, impotent, and just generally physically degenerate. Since then, we have learned that this is not the case. That does not mean, however, that every person in the world should immediately drop whatever he is doing, run to the nearest gym, load an Olympic bar with all the plates on the rack, and throw out his back. To get the benefits of strength training (which, like sex, is neither good nor bad in itself), you have to ease into it, listening to your body and responding with more or less load as you feel pleasure or pain in the aftermath of your last workout. There is no one program that will work for all trainees (elite athletes in a variety of sports, hardcore gym rats, and the rest of us at all stages of physical development and degeneration). It is not that really heavy squats or deadlifts are evil, by any means, only that you should not decide to start your training career tomorrow with the poundage that (say) Konstantin Konstantinovs uses (unless you happen to be a reincarnation of the Hulk).
Sex is not evil. It is not even that dangerous, provided you come at it with a modicum of preparation and good sense (i.e., it is no more dangerous than a heavy deadlift). The church's mistake here is to rush into generalities without realizing that the nature of the problem is inherently specific. (Masturbation is not a problem. Porn, with the exception of anything produced under duress, is not a problem. Strength training is not a problem. The problems are human beings, who respond differently to all of the above in unique situations, often unmappable without recourse to intensive individual scrutiny.) Instead of recognizing that exercise must be tailored to the individual, the church qua personal trainer gives us "the one true workout" complete with "true" exercises and "true" poundages that every trainee (beginner to advanced) must put up for the required, "true" number of repetitions. Anything less is sin; more usually earns commendation for going above and beyond the call of duty (even when the trainee all but kills himself). This is ridiculous, and harmful if you happen to be one of the people for whom the one true size is a particularly bad fit.
One more word for those who think I am not being hard enough on evil porn (which I see as existing only for the individual). Let's take another analogy, this one dietary. I am reasonably certain that every murderer has drunk water regularly. But wait, all of us do too! Are we all running a terrible risk of becoming murderers every time we sip that deceptively refreshing beverage? Are we slowly changing inside, gradually morphing into the next Jeffrey Dahmer? Fortunately, the answer is no. Water is one variable of many that go into the making of a serial killer, but correlation is not causation. Sex, like thirst, is a pervasive human need. Some people think about it, make pictures of it, have it, and then use it to commit terrible crimes (or at least make themselves and others miserable), but that is not the fault of images (which may or may not match someone's definition of pornography), or the romantic partners of the criminals, or their victims. It is the fault of the criminals. Until we approach the person, we cannot address the problem.
One more personal story, and then I will shut up. 10 years ago, I was young, extremely scared of my sexuality (which I wanted to tear out by the roots: I used to fantasize about cutting off my genitalia or killing myself), and very, very devout (the reason I hated sex so much was because persistent erections made me feel "unworthy," requiring endless rounds of confessing my sin to the bishop, being chastised, and feeling like crap). I was also extremely sensitive in a sexual way: anything could set me off, even things that have nothing to do with sex (like pull-ups). I could barely talk to girls my age and avoided activities where young women participated. I attended a stake dance one time (only one time) and did not have the nerve to go inside. I never dated. Then, I went on a mission. The women of Spain did not care that I could not bear the sight of nubile females, and they were not going to cater to my weak eyes by going about in burkhas. They let it all hang out, and (what amazed me at the time) I was perfectly fine. My fear receded as I realized that seeing nearly naked women did not automatically turn me into some kind of lustful monster (think of the Hulk again). Gradually, I learned that acceptance was a much better strategy for healthy sexuality than avoidance. Getting married was a huge leap forward for me (and required some deprogramming which I won't bore or titillate you with). Today I accept my sexuality, and that of everyone else, and I make a point of never imposing myself (and my images of beauty, truth, etc.) on another person. Nakedness is no excuse for lack of manners. Intimacy is no excuse. Pretty pictures are no excuse. Ugly pictures are no excuse. There is no excuse.
Pornography is just pictures (or stories, i.e. verbal pictures), some good, some not so good, and some frankly awful, but most of it is nothing to be deathly afraid of (unless you are trapped in a ridiculous worldview that makes objectification, abstractions, and stereotypes the most important things in the universe, idol gods that all mere mortals must worship). If it bothers you, there are many other things to hold your mind and take your time. The less you care about it, the less power it will have over you.
What is pornography? This question is actually really hard to answer. (I could bring up the Supreme Court justice who summed it up with an aphorism to the effect of, "I cannot define it, but I know it when I see it.") The way we use the word in the LDS church, it often seems to refer to images of people that cause sexual arousal. This causes a lot of confusion, since what causes arousal for one person does not always do much (or anything at all) for another. Some people are excited by the sight of a foot; others are impervious to full nudity. Some Mormons are "offended" by the J. C. Penney catalogue. Others can "endure" (and even be inspired by) much "wilder" stuff. (Here I remember a course in Western Civilization that I had at BYU: the teacher, a woman, announced at the beginning that students would be required to study in detail works of great art, including nude paintings and statues, and that anyone who objected to that should drop out before the semester got underway.) Generally speaking, official church pronouncements ignore these niceties and refer to pornography as some kind of monolithic thing, with universal (and universally evil) effects. In other words, we objectify art along with everything else!
In the real world, outside of our religious fantasies, people are sexually stimulated by a variety of mundane and unavoidable things. Sex is woven deep into our being. Like every human practice, it sometimes comes out "evil" -- not because there is anything inherently wrong with it in the abstract, but because there are things wrong with particular individuals, things which sometimes find expression in the sexual habits of said individuals. While it makes no sense to censor the world to fit some imaginary Platonic standard of what constitutes "beauty" and what constitutes "smut" (since the standard is inevitably arbitrary and incoherent), it makes a whole lot of sense for the individual to avoid images that make his life worse (and do whatever he pleases with images that do not). No one can write the book telling us what images are universally safe to look at, because the same image speaks to each one of us in a different way. We have to be our own censors. Some people have no problem with the Venus de Milo. Other people find her the bane of their existence. That is OK. Let the hedonists enjoy and the ascetics abstain without mutual recrimination. As long as no one is being tortured to make the art (as sometimes happens in some of the seedier parts of the sex industry), it is all good.
My line of thinking is perhaps best illustrated with an analogy from physical culture. Years ago, there was widespread fear of working out with (heavy) weights. People who thought nothing of a day's work on the farm somehow got it into their heads that picking up moulded pieces of iron with no practical aim beyond increasing strength would render them unsupple, impotent, and just generally physically degenerate. Since then, we have learned that this is not the case. That does not mean, however, that every person in the world should immediately drop whatever he is doing, run to the nearest gym, load an Olympic bar with all the plates on the rack, and throw out his back. To get the benefits of strength training (which, like sex, is neither good nor bad in itself), you have to ease into it, listening to your body and responding with more or less load as you feel pleasure or pain in the aftermath of your last workout. There is no one program that will work for all trainees (elite athletes in a variety of sports, hardcore gym rats, and the rest of us at all stages of physical development and degeneration). It is not that really heavy squats or deadlifts are evil, by any means, only that you should not decide to start your training career tomorrow with the poundage that (say) Konstantin Konstantinovs uses (unless you happen to be a reincarnation of the Hulk).
Sex is not evil. It is not even that dangerous, provided you come at it with a modicum of preparation and good sense (i.e., it is no more dangerous than a heavy deadlift). The church's mistake here is to rush into generalities without realizing that the nature of the problem is inherently specific. (Masturbation is not a problem. Porn, with the exception of anything produced under duress, is not a problem. Strength training is not a problem. The problems are human beings, who respond differently to all of the above in unique situations, often unmappable without recourse to intensive individual scrutiny.) Instead of recognizing that exercise must be tailored to the individual, the church qua personal trainer gives us "the one true workout" complete with "true" exercises and "true" poundages that every trainee (beginner to advanced) must put up for the required, "true" number of repetitions. Anything less is sin; more usually earns commendation for going above and beyond the call of duty (even when the trainee all but kills himself). This is ridiculous, and harmful if you happen to be one of the people for whom the one true size is a particularly bad fit.
One more word for those who think I am not being hard enough on evil porn (which I see as existing only for the individual). Let's take another analogy, this one dietary. I am reasonably certain that every murderer has drunk water regularly. But wait, all of us do too! Are we all running a terrible risk of becoming murderers every time we sip that deceptively refreshing beverage? Are we slowly changing inside, gradually morphing into the next Jeffrey Dahmer? Fortunately, the answer is no. Water is one variable of many that go into the making of a serial killer, but correlation is not causation. Sex, like thirst, is a pervasive human need. Some people think about it, make pictures of it, have it, and then use it to commit terrible crimes (or at least make themselves and others miserable), but that is not the fault of images (which may or may not match someone's definition of pornography), or the romantic partners of the criminals, or their victims. It is the fault of the criminals. Until we approach the person, we cannot address the problem.
One more personal story, and then I will shut up. 10 years ago, I was young, extremely scared of my sexuality (which I wanted to tear out by the roots: I used to fantasize about cutting off my genitalia or killing myself), and very, very devout (the reason I hated sex so much was because persistent erections made me feel "unworthy," requiring endless rounds of confessing my sin to the bishop, being chastised, and feeling like crap). I was also extremely sensitive in a sexual way: anything could set me off, even things that have nothing to do with sex (like pull-ups). I could barely talk to girls my age and avoided activities where young women participated. I attended a stake dance one time (only one time) and did not have the nerve to go inside. I never dated. Then, I went on a mission. The women of Spain did not care that I could not bear the sight of nubile females, and they were not going to cater to my weak eyes by going about in burkhas. They let it all hang out, and (what amazed me at the time) I was perfectly fine. My fear receded as I realized that seeing nearly naked women did not automatically turn me into some kind of lustful monster (think of the Hulk again). Gradually, I learned that acceptance was a much better strategy for healthy sexuality than avoidance. Getting married was a huge leap forward for me (and required some deprogramming which I won't bore or titillate you with). Today I accept my sexuality, and that of everyone else, and I make a point of never imposing myself (and my images of beauty, truth, etc.) on another person. Nakedness is no excuse for lack of manners. Intimacy is no excuse. Pretty pictures are no excuse. Ugly pictures are no excuse. There is no excuse.
Pornography is just pictures (or stories, i.e. verbal pictures), some good, some not so good, and some frankly awful, but most of it is nothing to be deathly afraid of (unless you are trapped in a ridiculous worldview that makes objectification, abstractions, and stereotypes the most important things in the universe, idol gods that all mere mortals must worship). If it bothers you, there are many other things to hold your mind and take your time. The less you care about it, the less power it will have over you.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
House of Submission, House of War
Bernard Lewis. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror. New York: Modern Library, 2003. ISBN: 0679642811.
A second essay on terror and holy war.
This book provides a detailed discussion of the historical background from which modern Muslim fundamentalism arose (e.g. organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the religious government of the Ayatollah Khomeini). It contains many insights, offers many different perspectives, and presents overall a complex, realistic picture of the worldwide phenomenon that is (and has been) Islam. Lewis is not anti-Muslim at all, but (like most Muslims) he cannot condone the modern guerrilla war on civilians that we in the West have lately dubbed terrorism. The Islamic thread holding the book together is jihad, the Muslim crusade, which began as actual, literal war with geographical and political conquests (undertaken during the life of Muhammad) and became a metaphor for the believer's struggle to offer his best service to God. (Remember that Islam means submission to Allah.)
Lewis emphasizes that the Muslim jihad has resisted criticism (as a historical movement) and secularization (no modern Muslim uses jihad the offhanded way we Westerners often use crusade, e.g. as a synonym for cause). Whereas Christians took up the original crusade relatively late (after suffering as a persecuted minority for centuries) and dropped it relatively early (after several military disasters), the jihad started with Muhammad and was never dropped (in part because it was met, at least initially, with unbroken success). Today, many Christians are embarrassed by the idea of holy war (which they see as barbaric and somewhat foolish); fewer Muslims are so embarrassed. Many Christians are concerned with avoiding the unnecessary imposition of their values on other people: they create walls between church and state (which some of them then doubt and want to pull down). In Muslim culture, there is (ideally) no wall between church and state. There is no church, really, only the faithful believers, who are united in obedience to God. In a good Muslim state, the law of Allah is the law of the state, and vice versa.
The Muslim world is conceptually simple. All people live in one of two "houses" -- the house of Submission (i.e. the house of Islam) or the house of War. Historically, Islam reaches out to the house of War with violence, with conquest, and with the revelation of a better way to live (which the more enlightened inhabitants of the house of War embrace willingly). This violence comes with strict rules, however, rules which Lewis (and others, including many Muslim authorities) interpret to forbid the kind of tactics (e.g. suicide missions against civilians) employed by groups like al-Quaeda. Even with this caveat, I am still not entirely comfortable with it. But I am not a Muslim, so my opinion matters little, especially to those Muslims who have already decided that I am a servant of the Great Satan (owing to the accident that I was born in the United States and raised as a Christian). This brings me to an interesting problem.
I have known or at least interacted with various Muslims personally over the years. Most of them have been really good people (moral, upstanding, respectful, helpful). I even have several American friends who have converted to Islam (including some who are at least as doubtful about the literal truth of ancient mythology as I am). What am I to make of these people? Are they secretly plotting the violent overthrow of my life? Do they only pretend to value other people, other cultures, other ways of being that do not come to us from the only God and his last Prophet? As a result of long-standing personal interactions with them, I really, really don't think so. And yet they react with pain and aversion when the state of Israel comes up in conversation, or when a discussion of the United States' historic involvement in the Middle East gets serious. What causes my good friends to flinch? Could it be the same thing that drives many of their co-religionists homicidally crazy? Lewis answered this question in the affirmative, and it was painful for me.
You see, the track record of our government in the Middle East is not that great. Terrified by every shadow of a threat against our power in a region we don't control, we supported anyone carrying gun against our perceived enemies (e.g. Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom we attempted to play against one another; and Osama bin Laden, whom we supported against the Soviets). We didn't really care if these people were nice to the rest of the neighborhood or not: it turns out, they weren't. Not only that, we didn't even support our allies reliably: when the last Shah of Iran agreed to be our puppet (as the locals saw it), we repaid his loyalty by refusing to offer any kind of aid whatsoever; when his government collapsed, we were so eager to pander to his successors that we let him go into exile outside our borders. By associating with thugs (Hussein, bin Laden, etc.) and then treating our allies like dirt (even the relatively harmless ones, like the Shah), we pretty much killed our reputation with a sizable population of foreign Muslims. These people fail to understand how it is acceptable for the United States to blow them up (or send some local thugs to blow them up), but not for them to retaliate (in some way: not all of them fly planes into buildings full of innocents). They don't see how it isn't hypocritical of us to claim the moral high ground as agents of freedom and justice and then throw our support to the likes of Saddam (whom we don't even support reliably). This does not mean that jihad is not a problematic concept, or that al-Qaeda was justified in attacking the Towers. Far from it. But it does reveal that calling such attacks unprovoked is a little naive. We knew there were religious people in the Middle East. We knew their sacred texts preached holy war. We knew they had a history of fighting for honor and religion. We knew they were outfitted with weapons and training (a lot of it from us). We knew that, and we went and kicked the beehive anyway. Is the honey really worth it?
For me, the most shocking and scary thing about Islam (including the "malfunctioning" Islam branded as terrorism in the West) is how normal it is. I grew up in a conservative Christian environment: though many Christians would deny me fellowship as a Mormon, I spent a good portion of my life living in their company, learning from their textbooks (including the King James Bible), and aspiring to be like them. I wanted to break down the wall between church and state, putting prayer in the schools and the government in the marriage bed. I thought the United States of America was a nation that depended on God the way the idealized house of Islam depends on Allah. I thought life would be better worldwide if all people converted to Christianity (and ultimately to Mormonism, the truest form of Christianity). I was not overtly violent in my enthusiasm to convert the world, but how much of that was historical accident? Many Mormons of the nineteenth century were violent (as some Christians have always been), and I personally was never provoked. What if someone had treated my leaders (religious or political) with blatant disrespect and bombed my house? Who knows how I might have reacted, especially if someone whose authority I respected had responded with a pious American, Christian, or Mormon version of the original 1996 ultimatum published to the West by al-Qaeda? The more I think about the 9/11 attacks, the more it seemed to me that I am in no way categorically different from the Muslim terrorists whose violence I naturally abhor. If the shoe were on the other foot, who knows what awful crimes I might have laid on the altar for the United States of America, for Christendom, for my God?
The attacks of 9/11 were one of many factors that ultimately forced me to re-examine my loyalty to all human institutions (and my relationship to God). As a result, I have become simultaneously less violent and less trusting. The good guys look a lot like the bad guys to me. We are all simply human, doing what we think the situation demands (in the Middle East this means blowing stuff up) and spinning stories to justify it.
A second essay on terror and holy war.
This book provides a detailed discussion of the historical background from which modern Muslim fundamentalism arose (e.g. organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the religious government of the Ayatollah Khomeini). It contains many insights, offers many different perspectives, and presents overall a complex, realistic picture of the worldwide phenomenon that is (and has been) Islam. Lewis is not anti-Muslim at all, but (like most Muslims) he cannot condone the modern guerrilla war on civilians that we in the West have lately dubbed terrorism. The Islamic thread holding the book together is jihad, the Muslim crusade, which began as actual, literal war with geographical and political conquests (undertaken during the life of Muhammad) and became a metaphor for the believer's struggle to offer his best service to God. (Remember that Islam means submission to Allah.)
Lewis emphasizes that the Muslim jihad has resisted criticism (as a historical movement) and secularization (no modern Muslim uses jihad the offhanded way we Westerners often use crusade, e.g. as a synonym for cause). Whereas Christians took up the original crusade relatively late (after suffering as a persecuted minority for centuries) and dropped it relatively early (after several military disasters), the jihad started with Muhammad and was never dropped (in part because it was met, at least initially, with unbroken success). Today, many Christians are embarrassed by the idea of holy war (which they see as barbaric and somewhat foolish); fewer Muslims are so embarrassed. Many Christians are concerned with avoiding the unnecessary imposition of their values on other people: they create walls between church and state (which some of them then doubt and want to pull down). In Muslim culture, there is (ideally) no wall between church and state. There is no church, really, only the faithful believers, who are united in obedience to God. In a good Muslim state, the law of Allah is the law of the state, and vice versa.
The Muslim world is conceptually simple. All people live in one of two "houses" -- the house of Submission (i.e. the house of Islam) or the house of War. Historically, Islam reaches out to the house of War with violence, with conquest, and with the revelation of a better way to live (which the more enlightened inhabitants of the house of War embrace willingly). This violence comes with strict rules, however, rules which Lewis (and others, including many Muslim authorities) interpret to forbid the kind of tactics (e.g. suicide missions against civilians) employed by groups like al-Quaeda. Even with this caveat, I am still not entirely comfortable with it. But I am not a Muslim, so my opinion matters little, especially to those Muslims who have already decided that I am a servant of the Great Satan (owing to the accident that I was born in the United States and raised as a Christian). This brings me to an interesting problem.
I have known or at least interacted with various Muslims personally over the years. Most of them have been really good people (moral, upstanding, respectful, helpful). I even have several American friends who have converted to Islam (including some who are at least as doubtful about the literal truth of ancient mythology as I am). What am I to make of these people? Are they secretly plotting the violent overthrow of my life? Do they only pretend to value other people, other cultures, other ways of being that do not come to us from the only God and his last Prophet? As a result of long-standing personal interactions with them, I really, really don't think so. And yet they react with pain and aversion when the state of Israel comes up in conversation, or when a discussion of the United States' historic involvement in the Middle East gets serious. What causes my good friends to flinch? Could it be the same thing that drives many of their co-religionists homicidally crazy? Lewis answered this question in the affirmative, and it was painful for me.
You see, the track record of our government in the Middle East is not that great. Terrified by every shadow of a threat against our power in a region we don't control, we supported anyone carrying gun against our perceived enemies (e.g. Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom we attempted to play against one another; and Osama bin Laden, whom we supported against the Soviets). We didn't really care if these people were nice to the rest of the neighborhood or not: it turns out, they weren't. Not only that, we didn't even support our allies reliably: when the last Shah of Iran agreed to be our puppet (as the locals saw it), we repaid his loyalty by refusing to offer any kind of aid whatsoever; when his government collapsed, we were so eager to pander to his successors that we let him go into exile outside our borders. By associating with thugs (Hussein, bin Laden, etc.) and then treating our allies like dirt (even the relatively harmless ones, like the Shah), we pretty much killed our reputation with a sizable population of foreign Muslims. These people fail to understand how it is acceptable for the United States to blow them up (or send some local thugs to blow them up), but not for them to retaliate (in some way: not all of them fly planes into buildings full of innocents). They don't see how it isn't hypocritical of us to claim the moral high ground as agents of freedom and justice and then throw our support to the likes of Saddam (whom we don't even support reliably). This does not mean that jihad is not a problematic concept, or that al-Qaeda was justified in attacking the Towers. Far from it. But it does reveal that calling such attacks unprovoked is a little naive. We knew there were religious people in the Middle East. We knew their sacred texts preached holy war. We knew they had a history of fighting for honor and religion. We knew they were outfitted with weapons and training (a lot of it from us). We knew that, and we went and kicked the beehive anyway. Is the honey really worth it?
For me, the most shocking and scary thing about Islam (including the "malfunctioning" Islam branded as terrorism in the West) is how normal it is. I grew up in a conservative Christian environment: though many Christians would deny me fellowship as a Mormon, I spent a good portion of my life living in their company, learning from their textbooks (including the King James Bible), and aspiring to be like them. I wanted to break down the wall between church and state, putting prayer in the schools and the government in the marriage bed. I thought the United States of America was a nation that depended on God the way the idealized house of Islam depends on Allah. I thought life would be better worldwide if all people converted to Christianity (and ultimately to Mormonism, the truest form of Christianity). I was not overtly violent in my enthusiasm to convert the world, but how much of that was historical accident? Many Mormons of the nineteenth century were violent (as some Christians have always been), and I personally was never provoked. What if someone had treated my leaders (religious or political) with blatant disrespect and bombed my house? Who knows how I might have reacted, especially if someone whose authority I respected had responded with a pious American, Christian, or Mormon version of the original 1996 ultimatum published to the West by al-Qaeda? The more I think about the 9/11 attacks, the more it seemed to me that I am in no way categorically different from the Muslim terrorists whose violence I naturally abhor. If the shoe were on the other foot, who knows what awful crimes I might have laid on the altar for the United States of America, for Christendom, for my God?
The attacks of 9/11 were one of many factors that ultimately forced me to re-examine my loyalty to all human institutions (and my relationship to God). As a result, I have become simultaneously less violent and less trusting. The good guys look a lot like the bad guys to me. We are all simply human, doing what we think the situation demands (in the Middle East this means blowing stuff up) and spinning stories to justify it.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Myth as Language
Someone recently wrote to me about my discussion of C. S. Lewis. In responding to this person's insights, I came up with something I would like to share more generally.
Does that make my position a little clearer? I don't think I am calling Lewis (or any Christian) stupid. I think Christians are by and large good people, with good stories in a good language. But I see in us (and other human beings of all faiths) tendencies towards a kind of cultural absolutism which others use and prey upon to bad effect (in the history of the world, which it has become my job to read). For what it is worth, I have the same tendencies. So if we are fools, then we are all fools together. I have not become someone who sees other cultures as magically superior to his own: we all have human flaws that can be dangerous. But I do think that acknowledging the flaws in ourselves (as we cannot help seeing them in others) is an important first step towards getting along better with everyone (including our very selves). Moral improvement cannot really begin until we are entirely honest (at least with ourselves). For me, that means admitting that Christians (and English-speakers) are neither better nor worse than other human beings. Our story is one of many. It is not the only story in any way. It can be special because we love it, and that is enough. It does not have to be true history, or the source of imaginary superiority that we enjoy over those who have different stories. As I read Jesus (including some of the words attributed to him outside the New Testament, e.g. in the Gospel of Thomas), he was not necessarily interested in declaring himself the one true God (though some disciples were eager to claim him as such) or in founding a missionary church (though some disciples were eager for that as well). The core of Christianity, as I understand it, is cultivating love for the world (God and one's fellow human beings, which are not artificially restricted to those who speak the same language or tell the same stories). To me, this message is more important than the messenger (who may or may not have been a god on earth: why does this matter? is his message somehow false if he didn't rise from the dead or turn water into wine, etc.? I don't think so. If Lewis does, then we disagree there.)
The problem with the claim for Christ (as the one and only way to God, or the Good) is that it is not really stronger than a claim for Balder (or Osiris, or any other dying and rising god). Today we know a bit more about the gospels than we did in Lewis' day, and they are very clearly myth (just like Egyptian myth or Norse myth or any other myth). They aren't history (any more than the changing story of Joseph Smith's First Vision is). This does not mean that they do not express important human truths, but those truths are not historical (i.e. accounts of what really happened at some moment in the past) or particular (i.e. stories of a particular person doing particular things). Myths are about universal truths like love, loss, and moving on into the great unknown. They are about what happens all of the time to all of us (and each one of us).
Just like you can speak of these universal things in any language without losing important meaning (since Spanish is no truer than English or Russian or Chinese as an expression of human reality), so you can put them in any myth: they are the timeless truth; the myth is just an accidental vessel that holds them. Lewis' mistake was presuming that Christianity was somehow categorically different from other religions. It isn't. This doesn't diminish its importance: English is still important, even if it is not categorically superior to (say) Spanish (which is also important, right? why should we pretend that Spanish is inferior to English? why pretend that Christianity is categorically superior to Buddhism, Judaism, or Islam?). This doesn't mean that the real truths it teaches are not important or universal. But it does allow us to check them against other versions of themselves (as it were), and to compare our myth-makers with other storytellers out there (who may pick up on some important things that we leave out of our stories, for one reason or another).
From my perspective, Lewis just made the choice at some point to speak English (Christian), i.e. to make English (Christianity) the language through which he expressed himself. That is perfectly fine, and English (Christianity) happens to be my native language as well. But I like other languages. I don't see them as categorically inferior to mine (though there are speakers of each who claim it as the one and only true language, and treat those ignorant of it as babbling idiots, no matter how well they speak their own language; I think this is wrong).
I can make an emotionally charged argument that anyone who chooses to dismiss the Buddha or Muhammad (or Osiris or Balder) is willfully rejecting the one true prophet or the one true God. I can make an emotionally charged argument that English is the one true language, that there is no such thing as a cultured human being who has never read Shakespeare in the original. Both arguments have a gigantic flaw. They ignore the humanity of other people, a humanity evident in the facts (1) that there are many prophets and many gods (including many as good as ours), and (2) that there are many great human cultures entirely ignorant of Shakespeare (who did not live early enough to bestow his genius on the Upanishads, the writer of Ecclesiastes, the Homeric poets, or countless others widely and rightly acknowledged as having achieved high levels of culture).
What is good in my culture (English, Christianity) does not have to be qualitatively superior to what is good in other cultures. People do not have to speak my language (English, Christianity) to me before I acknowledge them as true human beings. I think even C. S. Lewis is willing to concede this on some level (with the story of the saved Calormene in the Last Battle). The only difference between us is that I see the saved Christian as being more like that Calormene: God is a mystery that all human cultures (including every form of Christianity) seek in vain to capture and own for themselves (and their little languages), but he is not ours. We can be his, but he cannot be ours. He can speak for us, but we do not speak for him. When we try to do this (speak for him), what we say has a disturbing tendency to become fascist nonsense.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Kale Borroka
Mario Onaindia. Guia para Orientarse en el Laberinto Vasco. Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2000. ISBN: 8478808396.
This essay starts a series of reflections on terrorism and the concept of holy war.
Ten years ago, I was preparing to serve as an LDS missionary in northern Spain. Right before I left for Utah en route to the LDS Missionary Training Center in Provo, the Twin Towers were attacked. Living at home away from the television, it was some time before I learned of the attack, and my first reaction was not very emotional. I remember a vague fear that the attack would impede my upcoming international adventure, but when it did not I promptly ceased to care too much about the political kerfuffle that followed (as the United States declared her War on Terror): the issues of right and wrong, forgiveness and retribution, fear and loathing that the attacks raised were relegated to stew somewhere unnoticed in the back of my mind.
Less than a month later, I found myself living with three other LDS missionaries in Bilbao on the northern Spanish coast. I had not been there more than a few weeks or so when another terrorist attack disrupted my life. This time, I could not just brush it off. It had been a long day, but I was feeling happy. We had already returned to our comfortable little apartment in the Begona district, and I was standing alone in the main room, looking out at the city, which was lit up for the night. Everything was quiet and still: our window was open, I think, and the air was crisp and clear. Then, suddenly, there was a massive sonic boom, and the floor underneath me shook. I thought someone was dynamiting our building! Fortunately, I was mistaken. The next day, there was a blast crater in the park (Etxebarria Parkea) across the street (including a few shredded trees), and people were talking about how the target had been some local police (the Ertzaintza). Another attack took place several months later. A fellow missionary and I were visiting one of our local LDS sisters (with her family), and she happened to have the television on. No sooner did we reassure her that it would not destroy our ability to focus than the scene cut suddenly to downtown Bilbao, and we were upstaged: La Gran Via Don Diego Lopez de Haro was practically empty (unheard of for the hour), and all windows near the train station (and the nearby post of the Guardia Civil) were smashed. Throughout my stay in Bilbao (about six months), these events never left me: when I went to the municipal police station to hand in paperwork for my empadronamiento, the wall held a giant plaque commemorating officers killed in combat, and one of our regular walking routes took us right past an official station downtown (either police or Guardia Civil) where men with machine guns guarded the roof as well as every entrance. It was strange to see them standing there, watchful and alert, scanning the crowds of shoppers, business travelers, and schoolchildren, who parted naturally to step around their large guns, but never interrupted the flow of countless conversations. It was like they were not there. Until the terrorists blew them up, again.
Who were these terrorists? I learned quickly that they were Basque nationalists, members of a group known commonly as ETA, an acronym for Euskadi ta Askatasuna ("Basque Homeland and Freedom"). I knew they fought for freedom from Spanish and French rule (this much the graffiti told), that they targeted military and police preferentially (this much the gossip told), and that their role in Basque society was hotly contested (this much the continual demonstrations in the street told: some hotly demanded the release of political prisoners; others decried the use of violence by Basques). That was all I got. As a young foreigner still very adolescent and very much involved in my own mission (which had everything to do with sharing Mormonism and as little as possible to do with Basque terrorism), I was not exceptionally receptive to the deeper currents moving the masses of people then around me. I thought that Basque people were quirky (with traditional language, dress, and other forms of culture that came out especially on holidays), stubborn (because few of them wanted to talk religion with an American teenager determined to convert them), and good (since they seemed to value things like family, integrity, and honor). I did not really see where terrorism fit in this collage. But, years later, Mario Onaindia showed me.
Onaindia's book is a fascinating history of the nationalist movement(s) in Euskadi (Basque Country). It starts with two seminal events: (1) the abolition of the fueros vascos (roughly the Basque equivalent of the English Magna Carta) by the democratic reforms of Antonio Canovas del Castillo (1876); and (2) the creation of the Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea (i.e. "Basque Party of the Supporters of God and Old Laws," or, more prosaically, the Partido Nacionalista Vasco) by Sabino Arana (1894). The aftermath of these events occupies an entertaining cast of historical characters all the way through the twentieth century (right up to the day I felt the floor shake under my feet!). The story is long and very dense, and I am still struggling to understand it all, but I have enough to notice some interesting things. Basically, canceling the fueros created a more or less permanent fracture in Basque society. Some Basques gave the old laws up for lost and started working to secure their place in society by other means. These people accepted more or less peaceful interaction with successive Spanish governments that came and went over the last century, using legal means to establish boundaries between Basque society and the larger Spanish commonwealth. Nationalists in this category include the current Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), which operates today like any other political party in a modern representative democracy, attracting voters who elect officers who enact policies (which might include measures designed to secure greater autonomia for Basques in Euskadi). However, a significant minority of Basques felt that no government (neither the Spanish republic, nor Franco's dictatorship, nor the restoration government that followed under Juan Carlos I) had any right to treat with them at all without the fueros. The intransigence of these hardliners was radicalized early on as a result of the brutal industrialization of Vizcaya (starting in the nineteenth century under the republic), which destroyed not only the local landscape, but also much of the peasant culture so dear to some Basques. As a result of this action (and others like it), the tough minority lost all respect for any government, which they saw as intractably foreign and oppressive (Onaindia nicknames this caricature of the Spanish government Neguri, after the wealthy neighborhood in Bilbao where the original industrialists who destroyed the old Vizcaya built mansions with their ill-gotten gain). Thoroughly disillusioned with Spain, the radicals became warriors, kidnapping and killing targeted enemies (government officials, police, Basques who were too cooperative with the Spanish government, and even wholly innocent and helpless bystanders like Miguel Angel Blanco) and engaging in regular bouts of public mayhem (the kale borroka). ETA is the most active, high-profile group formed in modern times by these insurgents.
The result is a bizarre situation, in which passionate Basques on both sides say words that sound the same (at least to outsiders like me) even as their actions are noticeably different. One man is proud of his Basque heritage and declares that pride by voting for a local politician. Another is similarly proud and declares it by blowing up a car near the police station. Each thinks the other is nuts. Each thinks his expression of cultural pride is the only "true" one (the only one worthy of a real Basque). At certain moments in historical time, each has declared the other to be a traitor. And yet they say they want the same thing: freedom, dignity, and self-determination for Basque people. One seeks that prize through negotiation, admitting the fact that different Basque people want different things (i.e. that there is no single definition for "freedom, dignity, and self-determination" that all Basques would recognize: some of them want Euskadi to maintain affiliation with the Spanish government, and see that government as standing for something more than ruthless exploitation). The other opts for violence, even violence directed at his own people, because he thinks that his vision of "freedom, dignity, and self-determination" must prevail at all costs. (He does not see any good in the government, which is forever tainted by certain moments of its past.) If other Basques cannot see it, he must show them. If they cannot accept it, he must punish them (just as he punishes the servants of the Spanish government, e.g. politicians, policemen, and officers of the Guardia Civil). Neguri must not win: if she is brutal (killing and enslaving innocents), then he must oppose her with the same brutality. War hurts everyone, but you cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?
The warrior sees the negotiator as a compromised coward, a weakling who abandons real freedom for a specious pretense (the diluted autonomia within the larger commonwealth that the Spanish government allows). The negotiator sees the warrior as an uncompromising fool, a danger to himself and to everyone else who comes near him (like Blanco, mentioned above, whose "crime" was being in the wrong place at the wrong time: he did nothing to oppress Basques, and his death brought no obvious victory for the separatist movement). But when Onaindia stripped off the warrior's mask and showed him to me in his native habitat, with the ghosts of Neguri looming down over him, threatening his traditional way of life with a faceless and horrible modernity (the end of Spanish hegemony abroad, industrialization of the Basque countryside, and the post-modern desert of globalization in which the wealthy take all and the poor turn to bankrupt governments for economic help rather than retaining the means and skills to serve themselves), I saw that he is not necessarily an inhuman monster. Instead, he looked a lot more like a rather ordinary human being responding to a not entirely irrational fear that his whole way of life is disappearing. When democrats offer him a seat at the common table of the new Spanish order, he fears a trap (a repeat of the rape of Vizcaya). He does not want to move forward to a new society. He wants to go back to the good old days (which have only gotten better since we left them). He does not see where the emerging order created by the Spanish government and the negotiators has any room for him, really. They speak to his head (arguing that the Basque people have freedom, dignity, and self-determination now), but they have not managed to persuade his heart (which cannot help feeling that today's freedom is not what the old freedom was, before the abolition of the fueros and the coming of Neguri).
And so Euskadi remains riven, people go on dying, and visitors like me have to tread carefully.
This essay starts a series of reflections on terrorism and the concept of holy war.
Ten years ago, I was preparing to serve as an LDS missionary in northern Spain. Right before I left for Utah en route to the LDS Missionary Training Center in Provo, the Twin Towers were attacked. Living at home away from the television, it was some time before I learned of the attack, and my first reaction was not very emotional. I remember a vague fear that the attack would impede my upcoming international adventure, but when it did not I promptly ceased to care too much about the political kerfuffle that followed (as the United States declared her War on Terror): the issues of right and wrong, forgiveness and retribution, fear and loathing that the attacks raised were relegated to stew somewhere unnoticed in the back of my mind.
Less than a month later, I found myself living with three other LDS missionaries in Bilbao on the northern Spanish coast. I had not been there more than a few weeks or so when another terrorist attack disrupted my life. This time, I could not just brush it off. It had been a long day, but I was feeling happy. We had already returned to our comfortable little apartment in the Begona district, and I was standing alone in the main room, looking out at the city, which was lit up for the night. Everything was quiet and still: our window was open, I think, and the air was crisp and clear. Then, suddenly, there was a massive sonic boom, and the floor underneath me shook. I thought someone was dynamiting our building! Fortunately, I was mistaken. The next day, there was a blast crater in the park (Etxebarria Parkea) across the street (including a few shredded trees), and people were talking about how the target had been some local police (the Ertzaintza). Another attack took place several months later. A fellow missionary and I were visiting one of our local LDS sisters (with her family), and she happened to have the television on. No sooner did we reassure her that it would not destroy our ability to focus than the scene cut suddenly to downtown Bilbao, and we were upstaged: La Gran Via Don Diego Lopez de Haro was practically empty (unheard of for the hour), and all windows near the train station (and the nearby post of the Guardia Civil) were smashed. Throughout my stay in Bilbao (about six months), these events never left me: when I went to the municipal police station to hand in paperwork for my empadronamiento, the wall held a giant plaque commemorating officers killed in combat, and one of our regular walking routes took us right past an official station downtown (either police or Guardia Civil) where men with machine guns guarded the roof as well as every entrance. It was strange to see them standing there, watchful and alert, scanning the crowds of shoppers, business travelers, and schoolchildren, who parted naturally to step around their large guns, but never interrupted the flow of countless conversations. It was like they were not there. Until the terrorists blew them up, again.
Who were these terrorists? I learned quickly that they were Basque nationalists, members of a group known commonly as ETA, an acronym for Euskadi ta Askatasuna ("Basque Homeland and Freedom"). I knew they fought for freedom from Spanish and French rule (this much the graffiti told), that they targeted military and police preferentially (this much the gossip told), and that their role in Basque society was hotly contested (this much the continual demonstrations in the street told: some hotly demanded the release of political prisoners; others decried the use of violence by Basques). That was all I got. As a young foreigner still very adolescent and very much involved in my own mission (which had everything to do with sharing Mormonism and as little as possible to do with Basque terrorism), I was not exceptionally receptive to the deeper currents moving the masses of people then around me. I thought that Basque people were quirky (with traditional language, dress, and other forms of culture that came out especially on holidays), stubborn (because few of them wanted to talk religion with an American teenager determined to convert them), and good (since they seemed to value things like family, integrity, and honor). I did not really see where terrorism fit in this collage. But, years later, Mario Onaindia showed me.
Onaindia's book is a fascinating history of the nationalist movement(s) in Euskadi (Basque Country). It starts with two seminal events: (1) the abolition of the fueros vascos (roughly the Basque equivalent of the English Magna Carta) by the democratic reforms of Antonio Canovas del Castillo (1876); and (2) the creation of the Euzko Alderdi Jeltzalea (i.e. "Basque Party of the Supporters of God and Old Laws," or, more prosaically, the Partido Nacionalista Vasco) by Sabino Arana (1894). The aftermath of these events occupies an entertaining cast of historical characters all the way through the twentieth century (right up to the day I felt the floor shake under my feet!). The story is long and very dense, and I am still struggling to understand it all, but I have enough to notice some interesting things. Basically, canceling the fueros created a more or less permanent fracture in Basque society. Some Basques gave the old laws up for lost and started working to secure their place in society by other means. These people accepted more or less peaceful interaction with successive Spanish governments that came and went over the last century, using legal means to establish boundaries between Basque society and the larger Spanish commonwealth. Nationalists in this category include the current Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV), which operates today like any other political party in a modern representative democracy, attracting voters who elect officers who enact policies (which might include measures designed to secure greater autonomia for Basques in Euskadi). However, a significant minority of Basques felt that no government (neither the Spanish republic, nor Franco's dictatorship, nor the restoration government that followed under Juan Carlos I) had any right to treat with them at all without the fueros. The intransigence of these hardliners was radicalized early on as a result of the brutal industrialization of Vizcaya (starting in the nineteenth century under the republic), which destroyed not only the local landscape, but also much of the peasant culture so dear to some Basques. As a result of this action (and others like it), the tough minority lost all respect for any government, which they saw as intractably foreign and oppressive (Onaindia nicknames this caricature of the Spanish government Neguri, after the wealthy neighborhood in Bilbao where the original industrialists who destroyed the old Vizcaya built mansions with their ill-gotten gain). Thoroughly disillusioned with Spain, the radicals became warriors, kidnapping and killing targeted enemies (government officials, police, Basques who were too cooperative with the Spanish government, and even wholly innocent and helpless bystanders like Miguel Angel Blanco) and engaging in regular bouts of public mayhem (the kale borroka). ETA is the most active, high-profile group formed in modern times by these insurgents.
The result is a bizarre situation, in which passionate Basques on both sides say words that sound the same (at least to outsiders like me) even as their actions are noticeably different. One man is proud of his Basque heritage and declares that pride by voting for a local politician. Another is similarly proud and declares it by blowing up a car near the police station. Each thinks the other is nuts. Each thinks his expression of cultural pride is the only "true" one (the only one worthy of a real Basque). At certain moments in historical time, each has declared the other to be a traitor. And yet they say they want the same thing: freedom, dignity, and self-determination for Basque people. One seeks that prize through negotiation, admitting the fact that different Basque people want different things (i.e. that there is no single definition for "freedom, dignity, and self-determination" that all Basques would recognize: some of them want Euskadi to maintain affiliation with the Spanish government, and see that government as standing for something more than ruthless exploitation). The other opts for violence, even violence directed at his own people, because he thinks that his vision of "freedom, dignity, and self-determination" must prevail at all costs. (He does not see any good in the government, which is forever tainted by certain moments of its past.) If other Basques cannot see it, he must show them. If they cannot accept it, he must punish them (just as he punishes the servants of the Spanish government, e.g. politicians, policemen, and officers of the Guardia Civil). Neguri must not win: if she is brutal (killing and enslaving innocents), then he must oppose her with the same brutality. War hurts everyone, but you cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?
The warrior sees the negotiator as a compromised coward, a weakling who abandons real freedom for a specious pretense (the diluted autonomia within the larger commonwealth that the Spanish government allows). The negotiator sees the warrior as an uncompromising fool, a danger to himself and to everyone else who comes near him (like Blanco, mentioned above, whose "crime" was being in the wrong place at the wrong time: he did nothing to oppress Basques, and his death brought no obvious victory for the separatist movement). But when Onaindia stripped off the warrior's mask and showed him to me in his native habitat, with the ghosts of Neguri looming down over him, threatening his traditional way of life with a faceless and horrible modernity (the end of Spanish hegemony abroad, industrialization of the Basque countryside, and the post-modern desert of globalization in which the wealthy take all and the poor turn to bankrupt governments for economic help rather than retaining the means and skills to serve themselves), I saw that he is not necessarily an inhuman monster. Instead, he looked a lot more like a rather ordinary human being responding to a not entirely irrational fear that his whole way of life is disappearing. When democrats offer him a seat at the common table of the new Spanish order, he fears a trap (a repeat of the rape of Vizcaya). He does not want to move forward to a new society. He wants to go back to the good old days (which have only gotten better since we left them). He does not see where the emerging order created by the Spanish government and the negotiators has any room for him, really. They speak to his head (arguing that the Basque people have freedom, dignity, and self-determination now), but they have not managed to persuade his heart (which cannot help feeling that today's freedom is not what the old freedom was, before the abolition of the fueros and the coming of Neguri).
And so Euskadi remains riven, people go on dying, and visitors like me have to tread carefully.
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