IMO the real evil in the Middle East is Tribalism Run Amuck

[Armstead]

We bicker about whether the real culprit in the latest Middle East conflict is Israel or Hezbollah...In other circumstances it's Israel or the Palestinians...Or Iran....Or Syria....Or,Or,Or..

The real culprit, IMO, is the refusal of all sides to let go of tribalism. The real enemy is the notion that you do not deserve to live -- or you do not deserve to participate in a common society or share in a common good -- because you come from a different tribe.

Personally, right now I'm royally pissed off at Israel, and at the US for being such boneheads in supporting their extreme actions and not intervening to stop this carnage against the people of Lebanon...In a larger sense, I'm pissed at the hawks of Israel who continue to do everything possible to provoke their neighbors, and demand everything on their terms.

But I'm also pissed at Hezbollah, both for provoking this, and for their cumulative crimes....I'm pissed at the Palestinians who believe that blowing up a bunch of ordinary people in a restaurant or bus stop is some kind of justified and holy act.....And I'm pissed at the thugs in Iraq who insist on blowing up other Muslims who come from some different branch of their faith...And all of the other sects and factions who use violence to further their goals or to settle scores from several thousand years ago.

In short, I'm totally fed up with every damn person over there who rabidly clings to some barbaric form of Tribalism over co-existance, co-operation and common decency.

THAT IMO is the real culprit behind all of it. Stupid Tribalism. Jew vs. Arab. Sunni vs. Shiite. Moderate vs. Fundamentalist....This tribe vs. that tribe.

All who have let that tribal instinct override everything else -- including their own damn self interest -- are guilty IMO. All those who waste their lives devising new and creative ways to blow up their perceived tribal opponents are guilty.

It's stupid. It's evil and it is impractical.

For all of the faults of American society, we at least have partially learned one crucial lesson in life. We have to co-exist with each other. We might argue and we might harbor prejudices and we might attempt to stifle or exploit those who are different than us...But for the most part, we do it within a framework of civilized behavior. We don't waste out time and our lives blowing each other up. We generally accept the fact that if someone has the money to buy a house next door, they are entitled to be our neighbors.

Again, I emphasize that I am not being a Pollyanna. Sure our own history is rife with tribal conflicts. There are exceptions to the basic rule of co-existence today. People are still sometimes held back by their ethnicity or religion.

But overall, we have learned and moved beyond the form of overt and relentless and violent tribalism that continues to be the norm in the Middle East.

I'm just ranting, I realize. But this pattern of tribal violence and retaliation over there makes me sick.

As for the role of the US, we may not be able to stop them from this insane desire to kill each other. But we should not stand by and condone it -- or encourage it. That's what is currently making me sick about our own role in it all.

[Ian David]

1. I agree with you 110%! n/t

[Turbineguy]

2. Tribalism is why Europe

is made up of so many small countries (and there used to be more!). But they do seem to be trying to find common ground.

A few years ago somebody estimated that Iraq was of a political age of Southern Europe in 1850. And as we know, pre-invasion Iraq was a very progressive country (Saddam Hussein not withstanding).

[Armstead]

3. It's a lesson all regions have to learn

It's the dark side of human nature.

But we at least ought to be able to see beyond it, and recognie that ultimately we're all in this together.

[eridani]

22. It took WW II to drive that lesson home to Europe

What will it take in the ME? One complicating factor is that Europe is not very resource rich, and so never had the fights over water and oil that we are seeing in the ME.

[Cleita]

4. It's pretty well said in the movie "Lawrence of Arabia"

when Omar Shariff, as a bedouin sheik, kills Peter O'Toole's (Lawrence) guide at a well they were drinking out of because the well belonged to his tribe and the Arab who drank out of it was of a different tribe that had no right to drink from it. Of course that was before they discovered they had oodles of oil and water as a precious commodity became so yesterday and passe.

However, I think the real problem is too much interference over the centuries from outside invaders and conquerors. First it was Alexander the Great, then the Romans. When the Romans no were no longer powerful, there were the crusaders and up to the time of the Ottoman turks who held most of the Middle East in their grip up until WWI.

Maybe if all us European and Asian powers just left them alone to sort the mess out, they might divide the region up more to their liking and along ethnic lines. I suppose we would still have to protect Israel but other than that..........

[Armstead]

6. You make a good point -- I should have mentioned that

It occurred to me after posting and too late to change the original post that the outside powers have also had a hand in creating this mess, with our takeovers and arbitrary territorial divisions and other interference over the years.

However, even with that in mind, I still believe that tribalism is still a core of the problem. Other regions and nations have gone through similar disruptions from outside forces in various guises throughout history....Northern Irteland being a case in point in recent history.

And here in the US we've had similar periods in which tribal differences have led to ongoing violence. (The segregtion of the south or the warfare in the movie Gangs of New York, for example.)

But still at some point, people who live in the same general area have to get beyond their history, and take an evolutionary step forward. The problem in the Middle East, it seems to me, is that they insist on clinging to it rather than looking forward.

[smirkymonkey]

29. I wonder what would happen if every other nation withdrew to let

them sort it out for themselves? I think we are definitely fanning the flames. I know it's unrealistic to expect meddling from outside states to go away, but I wonder if they will ever lay aside their age old hatreds to try to build something new.

[genie_weenie]

14. I think one point you miss

is that the tribes that live in the Middle East now have not been isolated only to be picked upon by Asian or European bullies. The Arabs streamed out of the Saudi Pennisula in the 600s to conquer the lands as well. And the Turks are of pseudo-Mongolian stock and actually migrated towards the ME around the time of the Huns, it wasn't until Alp Arslan in the 1000s that the Turks exerted their control over Asia Minor and then over the Muslim world.

And this short reply doesn't even touch on the Chaldeans, or Medes or Elamites or Persians or White Huns or Mongols or Dravidians or any of the other different "tribes" which conquered areas of the ME for extended periods of time.

To be clear the same can be said of many lands. Polish people today have a mix of many different tribes which have crisscrossed their lands and interbred, The UK is awash with many different conquerors blood.

[Cleita]

19. Yes, and the Poles were being invaded over and over

until after WWII when the Soviets annexed them. But yet they seem to have hung on to their identity as most of the ME tribes have over the millenia as well. I understand what you are trying to fill in. I know that history but I was trying to make a point as briefly as possible. I started with Alexander because he was a pivotal point in history that led us up to the Roman era. Before that the Persians were the conquering empire and so on back further and further. Egyptians had a hand in the ME as well as the proto-greek sea peoples way back then too but it's way too much history for one little post.

[genie_weenie]

20. Cool. No worries.

It was a good post! :hi:

[H2O Man]

21. There is a book

by Kenneth Pollack ("The Persian Puzzle") that offers a wonderful history of the Persian tribes, and who invaded their territory, and what territory they invaded. I'm not a fan of the conclusions he reaches per say, but I think that it is important to be familiar with the history of the various peoples that are involved in the growing conflicts.

[Igel]

5. Yes.

With the caveat that different tribes have different claims, assumptions about what's proper, and different modes of behavior.

But tribalism, yes. And you're right to make religious differences as tribal faultlines. It explains why Christian churches in Iraq can be bombed to punish the Americans, or why Hezbollah feels it's necessary to act to defend Hamas' interests.

Or even why Indonesians, Syrians, Turks, Lebanese, Sa'udis, and British Muslims all decided it was necessary to preserve their tribal honor and protest the Danish Muhammed cartoons.

[mmonk]

7. Not just tribalism

but those (such as the US and UK) that exploit it for their own gain instead of seeking solutions for the region.

[Armstead]

9. Yes, I noted that above later

History has always been largely the result of outsiders interfering and exploiting such differences.

However, the more positive aspects are also the evolutionary process of moving beyiond that, to resolve things in ways otehr than blowing each otehr up.

Not a straight line, but it's frustrating to have to watch the Middle East stay mired in self-created stalemates and devolve backward into self-inflicted nmeedless violence as a way of life.

[treestar]

8. Great post. IA, and it leads to that collective punishment, or

punishing different members of the other tribe for the actions of others of their tribe, that is so infuriating.

Then they pass it down to their children. So that justifies killing the other tribe's children. Damn stuipid, and we should be over it by the 21st century.

[TahitiNut]

10. What I just don't get ...

... is why I should feel somehow more aggrieved that someone with my hair color was killed and that all people without my hair color are somehow my enemies. Just because there are people who most of us know are fucking batshit crazy have gotten together and hunted down people with my hair color, does that mean I have to think that my hair color somehow makes me a separate kind of human being?? I mean - if it's insane for those psychopaths to think that, why wouldn't it be insane for me to think that? Why should I proclaim myself entitled to live where people with my hair color lived 2,000 years ago? Why am I supposed to think that the only way me and others with my hair color can live is if we have our own country and keep others without my hair color out.

[Armstead]

11. Blonde Liberation Front vs. Brunette Army

[Selatius]

12. I dunno, but I see it in practice with White people vs. Black people

If a Black woman from the poorer part of Birmingham, AL, was abducted in Aruba, would we hear so much about her than if she were a White woman from a wealthy family?

It's not even just Blacks. Substitute Black with Asian American or Hispanic American or Arab American.

[Armstead]

34. The key diference is how racism is handled

You are correct that racism exists in the US. And in tne past it has taken violent turns, and still does on occasion.

However, tne question is what individuals do with their racism, and what society's norms are for it.

We do not have violent and ongoing warfare between different ethnic groups. And society here goes after those who would perpetuate it.

[kineneb]

13. thinking with Lizard Brain is the problem

that ancient part of the brain that still thinks that we are velociraptors (or other nasty big lizard). "Big Lizard A" growls at "Big Lizard B" and they then get into a fight, for no apparent reason, with no thought as to the result.


We must overcome the Lizard Brain to live with each other in peace.

[HardRocker05]

15. You're catching on; it's "us vs. them" gone wild. It's also an extremely

unhealthy focus on the "enemy" at all times. People over there (on all sides) will never, ever, ever look in the mirror and say "What are *we* doing wrong, and how should we correct it?" The culture over there is built on the eternal struggle against the evil enemy; they can't see anything else.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

16. That this thread has only 2 recommendations so far is an abomination. -nt

:thumbsup:

Armstead -- are you an alternate-reality version of me who jumped dimensions?

[H2O Man]

17. Yes, of course.

People familiar with Erich Fromm's 1955 classic "The Sane Society" recognize the tribalism involved in the tensions and violence in the Middle East. In particular, I would recommend Chapter 3, specifically section C (rootedness vs. incest), which examines a tribe's relationship with the land it considers "home." The chapter includes, not coincidentally, fascinating information about the Jewish tribal history in the Palestine.

[H2O Man]

18. A good OP/thread .....

... that deserves more attention.

[Ron Green]

23. Tribalism = fear = easy. Tolerance = love = hard.

[H2O Man]

24. Tribalism

has as much potential for good as for bad.

[Ron Green]

25. Perhaps in the past, but I believe in the "global village" it can only

harm our necessary efforts toward peace and sustainability.

[H2O Man]

27. "Tribalism" is

in essence matriarchal society. Fromm, in his classic "The Sane Society," points out the positives as "a sense of affirmation of life, freedom, and equality which pervades the matriarchal structure. Inasmuch as men are the children of nature, and children of mothers, they are all equal, have the same rights and claims, and the only value that counts is that of life." He paraphrases Bachofen's identification of the negative aspects: "being bound by nature, to blood and to soil, man is blocked from developing his individuality and his reason." (page 48)

Two other books that are of interest in explaining the benefits of tribal society are Vine Deloria Jr's "We Talk, You Listen (New Tribes, New Turf)", and "A Basic Call to Consciousness," the Haudenosaunee presentation to the Non-Governmental Organizations of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. I suspect that a large portion of humanity would find the tribal wisdom of the Haudenosaunee far less threatening than the Bush administration's policies. But you could be right: it may be that it "can only harm our necessary efforts toward peace and sustainability."

[Armstead]

31. The difference between Tribalism and "Tribalism Run Amuck"

Tibalism in itself is not a bad thing. In fct it ius good, as a social community and support system. Plus there is something mystical about being connected to something larger than our individual selves.

However, like anything else, it can become bad when taken to far. The tribalism I'm referring to is the "us against them" aspect. It becomes dangerous whan that overrides the larger recignition that everyone on earth is actually one large tribe.

[McCamy Taylor]

26. Consider Tribalism is a straw dog, real conflict is Class warfare.

Saudi Royals trying to prevent a French Revolution by setting various factions in the Middle East off against each other. For a long time it was the Palestinians who REAL BEEF was income disparity--being poor in one of the most affluent countries in the region. Now, Israel via the US is working for Saudi Arabia to kill off the Shia enemies of the Saudi Royals, since the Shias do not hold the Wahabhi dogma that a monarch is necessary to rule a muslim state.

The Bush Family works for the Carlyle Group, which is the Saudi Royal family.

In the modern world, almost everything boils down to money and power.

For a study in how ordinary people can be manipulated in a massive scale to go against their own best interest read CJ Cash's "The Mind of the South" about how generations of southern working class whites were kept poor by their rich white bosses in the name of racial solidarity.

[smirkymonkey]

28. Hear, hear....

Kicked and recommended.

I feel exactly as you do. Black and white, good guy vs. bad guy thinking doesn't work here at all. They all share some of the blame, as well as the responsibility for fixing it. As long as these mind sets persist in that part of the world, there will never be peace. Never.

[wtmusic]

30. Tribalism is alive and well in the US

what makes you think we've come anywhere near overcoming tribalism? We've learned to co-exist...with ourselves?

Just because our neighbors are latino or black doesn't give us any idea of what it's like to live in the ME. At this moment, we're busy decimating the population of another tribe--in Iraq.

[Armstead]

32. We have tribalism here, but we don;t take it toi these extremes

You can dislike someone without killing them. That's the difference.

[wtmusic]

33. ?

Exactly the same there. EXACTLY.

The problem is not culture-driven but issue- and proximity-driven. Take 100 Americans with a similar beef; drop them in Lebanon and they'd be bombing each other in no time.

As Americans, in general, we have not a clue as to how to relate to their circumstances. As people they are no different than us.