"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?"
Remember that Robert De Nero film when he said those words? I think it was Taxi Driver, and believe me; you wouldn’t want to be the one talking to him. You probably have enough troubles without getting a crazed animal on your ass.
Is it just my imagination, or do people in the Middle East get pissed off easily? Do you think that some of them, at least, get up in the morning wondering where the next insult will come from? And once they lose their cool, they don’t easily forget so easily, do they? And it’s not a religious thing, either. Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle East all seem to be afflicted with the same malady. Maybe it’s a tribal thing? Who knows?
I remember getting married some thirty-three years ago. We were married on the Champs Elysees in Paris, my wife having grown up there. We invited family from all over the world, and a lot of them actually showed up. But of special concern to us were my two uncles, on my father’s side, who hadn’t spoken to one another for some twenty-five years. How would they get along at the wedding, we wondered. Would they even come?
Well, both ended up coming, and we assigned them to be the two witnesses to sign the Ketubbah, which is the marriage contract in the Jewish tradition. God forbid you give one an honor, and not the other. But would they speak to one another after all those years of silence?
My fiancé and I came up with a strategy. We would spend a day with each one separately, showing each some of the sights of gay Paris. We asked one, “Tell me uncle, what was the fight with your brother all about?” He didn’t seem to remember. We asked the other. Same response. Hmm. Twenty-five years of not talking to one another, and no one remembers why? Interesting.
The day of the wedding, believe it or not, everything went well. The two brothers signed the Ketubba, and that seemed to break the ice. They chatted away, and stayed close ever since, until they passed on.
I’ve often wondered about the psyche of the Middle East. Could it be that people there are particularly sensitive, and prone to bear a grudge? And what are the implications for peace if this is so?
If I had to guess, I would say that there is a strain of ultra-sensitivity in the Middle East. Obviously, not in everyone, but the tendency is still there as part of the regional culture. Many Middle Easterners are very proud of their cultural and religious heritage. But the flip side of pride is extreme sensitivity, and a tendency to hold a grudge.
Do you have a father, or a family member, that has to be spoken to in just the right way? And if you miscalculate your wording, do you begin to feel the heat just as the words slip off you tongue? And do you sense that your faux pas will not soon be forgotten?
Why is any of this important? A sense of honor is important, but a craving for honor could easily bring dishonor. Honor killing is an extreme example. Honor killing brings dishonor to the family, even as the family strives to protect its honor. A sense of pride is important, but too much pride can shut one off from criticism, and can induce long term hatreds due to perceived insults. And like an elephant, one never seems to be able to forget, or to move on.
The business of peace in the Middle East will not be clean or comfortable. People abused by the scars of history will hurl insults at one another, to give expression to their collective sense of grief and injustice. How we react in light of those emotions will make all the difference in the world as to our success in brokering a peace.
It is natural for people to be emotional. And emotions run particularly high in the Middle East, and for good reason. But it may be time to cool the emotions, even if only a tad. It may be time to go about the business of peace with a cool, calculating, collected mind, one bent on strength of purpose, instead of emotional relief.
We may well have to swallow our pride, to create a reality that we can really be proud of. If that means shelving our emotions for a while, so be it. If that means bringing some flexibility to our sense of honor, well that’s how it goes. If that means giving up a piece of ourselves in the process, c’est la vie. We will have to be big enough and wise enough to admit that it’s not just about us, but about those who will come after us. We will have to step out of who we are, to become something more than we ever were, or could ever imagine.
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Hi Nissim
A good friend of mind in the conceptual world thought the problems in Middle East are because of the secrection of too much testorterone. She thought if the leaders were women, not just few women, many many women among the leaders, among the ones who can effectively change the direction of the forunes, then emontions might well cool down and thingsw go back to normal.:)
Hi Elinor, You may be on to something here.
I don’t know that much about testosterone, but I think that putting women down, which often happens in the Middle East, is not good on many levels: it hurts the economy when you lose half the work force, it creates low self-image for women, it probably puts additional pressures on marriages, and it allows men to go loony with their ideological nonsense.
If women were to become empowered politically and economically then this would act to balance a lot of the ideological extremism in the region. Women, for the most part, are more pragmatic in their approach, having the responsibility to bring life and to care for life. This pragmatism could go a long way to neutralize some of the hate, and to move the region in the direction of economic productivity, and eventually peace.
Hi Nissim,
It is always to hear what you write Nissim. To add to what you said, I want to say that women already know how to manage a family. They do that, they have different tones and stratgegies talking to their kids, each of them in a different tone, talking to neighbors, to husband, they don’t need to looks so threatening and feel so powerful to get what they want. Negotiations some times work better and much more in favor of good deals, than the showing off power. Hopefully we can see more of women little by little around the Middle East, and around the world, in Middle East, maybe the rate of change is not that much senses, but it is already there and time will only pass to make it better
It is always a pleasure to speak with you as well Elinor.
I agree with what you say about women. You know that I believe in common sense. As far as I’m concerned, common sense, the collective wisdom born or shared experience, kept us going as a species for some two million years.
Put yourself in the head of a caveman. You wake up in the morning, and your single greatest concern is, “How am I going to survive yet another day.”
Well, we’ve come a long way from that, but in a way, survival is still our greatest challenge. We shouldn’t be fooled by progress. Our survival may be threatened more now, than ever before.
We have no choice but to start believing in what makes sense. If running our economies on fossil fuels makes no sense, than out it goes. If ideological extremism makes no sense, than out it goes. If extreme economic disparaties make no sense, then out they go.
As you suggest, women, and mothers in particular, have a natural sense of what it takes to survive. They have little patience for ideological nonsense. If their kids goes mouthing off, they straigten them out in short order. They know about caring for the environment, because they know what it takes to create a clean and loving home. They know about economic justice, because everyone in the family gets a place at the table, and an equal piece of the pie.
Issues of Extremism, the Environment, and the Economy, seem to come naturally to women. And therefore, if more political and economic power were to be placed in their hands, my guess would be that a greater sense of order will result. You will see a movement toward reform with regard to our greatest challenges. You will see more justice and fair play.
Women are often the victims of men’s ideological nonsense, and sense of superiority. I don’t see that men have brought us to such a great place. Something has to give, and fast. Empowering women is a way of bringing change in the most efficient way possible. They already know what they have to do. They just have to be given the chance to do it.