[thechat] READ AT YOUR OWN RISK: Open Letter to America from a Canadian

[Martin Burns]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2002, Lachlan Cannon wrote:

>   Paul Cowan wrote:
>
> >Now I'm no PhD in middle-eastern politics, but you know what it seems to
> >me the fundamental problem is? *Both sides are right*. This is a fact
> >that seems beyond comprehension to everyone involved in the debate. No,
> >the fact that the land was 'Jewish' land long before Christ was a twinkle
> >in his father's eye does NOT mean that the Palestinians have no claim to
> >it. Correspondingly, no, the fact that it has been 'Arab' land for the
> >last thousand years after the Jews moved out doesn't mean that the Jews
> >have no claim to it. Modern political thought does not seem to allow
> >for both sides being right... it's some sort of error condition which
> >people just can't cope with.
> >
> >How do you solve this dilemma? I don't know. But I DO know that when your
> >argument consists of "you're wrong, because..." repeated over and over
> >again,
>
> Merge the two states into one?

Well that *was* the original idea, but it didn't work. Why? At its heart
because people just want to live mostly with people like themselves. It's
comforting to humans.

>The idea of a state just for Jews, or a
> state just for
> Arabs is so badly wrong, anyway, IMO. Anything where you start to
> seperate people out
> based on qualities like that, you'll see sides where really they don't
> exist.

True, but it doesn't take much. I saw some modelling to see how
self-imposed segregation works. It was a bit like a Game of Life
simulation. Two groups - say red and yellow - were spread randomly across
a matrix. The rules were set up such that each cell would rather have at
least 2 (I think) out of 4 direct neighbours the same colour. If that
condition failed for a cell, it would change places with a similarly
failed condition cell of the opposite colour.

Now note that *none* of the cells had a directive to be entirely within a
mono-culture, yet within a remarkably short number of iterations, that's
what you had - two entirely separate, segregated communities.

Within real  human societies, there are many factors which you could use
to gauge whether your neighbour is "like me" - income, colour, religion,
education, sexuality, musical preference, employer's industry  and so on.
But in the most obvious cases of segregation, the overlying culture of the
groups encompasses a number of these factors. And the more factors
involved, the stronger the effect.

Of course, on an intellectual level, it's plain mad. But it's how humanity
behaves.

> The Jews will
> get attacked by the Arabs, they'll go and attack other Arabs, because
> they're from the
> 'other side'. Vice-versa. Imagine if you could get rid of all the
> prejudiced parents that
> existed there right now, and grow all the children up in a combined
> state together. I'd
> be willing to bet that you wouldn't get the same stuff happening all
> over again.

In theory, sure. But in practise, it would start up pretty quickly.
*Especially* where everyone's poor and can start to fear that the other
group is preventing them from escaping that poverty. Take Northern
Ireland - you don't get much overt sectarian acts from the Middle Classes
(even if they have sectarian feelings). The bombers come from the poor of
both sides who've little else to hold on to - little hope except in
'winning the war.'

Cheers
Martin

---------------------------
"Names, once they are in common use, quickly
 become mere sounds, their etymology being
 buried, like so many of the earth's marvels,
 beneath the dust of habit." - Salman Rushdie