Surviving 9-11 — Again!

September 11, 2010 has come and gone and – surprisingly — no new war started nor has the planet been annihilated.  It really looked touch-and-go there for the previous week.

We have probably already forgotten about the events of this day, nine years after the most cataclysmic terrorist attack in US history.  We are mainly thankful that nothing like it has happened since.

By now, I suppose those of us who still believe in print media are using the September 11^th, 2010 edition of our favorite newspaper to line the bottoms of bird cages or litter boxes or whatever. It seemed that this year, we were very, very close to something very, very bad happening.  We were literally on the brink of internecine warfare that could easily have destroyed the earth.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” said George Santayana.

Since nobody studies history in a meaningful way for a variety of reasons, I am slowly becoming more of a critic, more pessimistic for the human race than ever. Let’s look at what happened this current September 11th.

International media paid a rather amazing amount of attention to a small town Florida “Pastor” with a miniscule congregation.  Depending on whom you believe, his congregation had somewhere between thirty and fifty people.  His idea of burning copies of the Koran nearly caused an international incident – Iran threatened a Holy War against the US if this desecration of their holy book proceeded.

I do not think anybody, except one media group, even asked who this man was, and on what authority was he bringing down doom and destruction on our nation. Points to ABC news on this one.  “Pastor” Jones represented no religious nor political entity except a church he had created himself, as he was — as far as I can figure – never ordained by any recognized religion nor even educated man.  He seems to have stumbled on a way to get his classical Andy Warhol type 15 minutes of fame.

But he seems, by this story, to be someone who wanted personal money and fame and whatever perks go with all of that, and had no great attachment to lofty  — or even holy — precepts. What he did, either accidentally or on purpose, was find a way to push deep emotional buttons in a lot of people. I do not know which of the powerful and influential – or threatening — people who spoke with him publicly and/or privately made him change his mind about book-burning. But such people are to be praised and valued, at least in this instance, for preventing what could have been the final holocaust for the human race.

Jones and this entire situation reminded me of some things about human beings I would rather not think about.

Religion is generally a knee-jerk either-or issue.  This has not changed in a few hundred years.  Apparently Darwinian evolution does NOT apply to human intelligence, or else somebody would have noticed this.  Anybody ever heard of the Crusades?

As long as a war is political, for oil or money or whatever, it is easy to come up with an opponent – an enemy — whether by solid or faulty logic. But once somebody is talking about the stuff people have been imprinted with, every Saturday or Sunday since birth and potentially opposing it, the response is primitive and simple, either or, right or left, us or them.  Just get them.

We citizens of the USA have set ourselves up as defenders of Christianity – although we are not a Christian theocracy – and we really should not blame those citizens of various Muslim theocracies for the actions of the most radical proponents of their faith/politics.

After all, American Christians have their own violent, radical proponents.  Some of them assassinate abortion doctors.  Some of them set off bombs during the Olympics.  Some plan to assassinate a random police officer and then set improvised explosive devices off at his funeral to kill many more. And some actually blow up a federal courthouse/office building that houses a daycare center in a major city at the time of peak activity.

All in the name of Christian fundamentalism.

Radicals – extremists – not representative of mainstream Christians.

Just like the Islamic terrorists are not representative of mainstream Muslims.

Emotional overreaction is not reserved for any one particular sect.  Muslims take drastic action when they are victims, and Christians react the same way. I had thought we got past this one long, long ago.  Our Founding Fathers (and mothers) specifically demanded the separation of Church and State by writing it into the Constitution.

In fact, the Constitution only mentions religion twice – and both times in exclusionary statements.

The colorful characters I feel as if I know best through their writings, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, seemed to think that we would be over the belief of the truth of religion by now.  I am not saying that religion is totally without use or function.  We need myths; check out Joseph Campbell but we do not need internecine messes. We are just too blamed stupid.

Most people are confused about public religion, private religion and their intersection in today’s society.  Since ancient times, religion has been a public activity.  In the beginnings of human civilization tribes of people organized their hierarchy of authority and searched for meaning in the natural world – the sun, moon and stars; the weather; the seasons and crops; fertility, birth and death.

These things all intertwined and the tribal leaders were often granted divine status, or at least venerated as the Earthly link to the divine.

As society evolved, secular societies appeared.  They are newer and they have usually been weaker (maybe because the weren’t around as long).  Religion never died out, no matter how often it was predicted to be on its last legs.

We in the USA flatter ourselves into believing that we developed a new kind of society, a humane and benevolent society.

Yet those who actually study (and remember) history know that our Founding Fathers gladly filched the best parts of ancient Greek and Roman government principals, as well as (to them) more modern European ideals from British, French, German and other contemporary societies.

Religion played a part in all of these models – but was not always a formal constituent.

All of the religions of the world are welcome in the USA. Nobody is forced to convert to Christianity when they immigrate.  No citizen CAN be forced to prove what their religious beliefs are when they show up to vote.

I’m much to young to tell you personal stories about Jewish persecution in other countries, but many among are still living with the memories of purges in Russia, and of “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkan states, and of the Nazi Holocaust.

America was a refuge.  Such religious persecution couldn’t happen here.  Grandparents – all four of them – were Jewish exiles from Russia, and they told me first-hand tales of what life was like in that type of system.

Contrary to what you might think these experiences do to shape a young person – as I was once – I do not value the Jewish religion above any other religion.

People who consider their own religion the “One True Religion” decry what they call “Secular Humanists.” These are Godless people, in their definition, people who not only have no religion, but are anti-religion.

I don’t believe they are right.

I am not a Secular Humanist and I’m not a Jewish Humanist.  But I want people to venerate each other for being human – so I guess I am just a plain humanist.  Whether I recognize a god or worship a god or have a Capital-Letter God in my life is simply nobody’s business  but my own.

That is Private Religion.

There don’t know anybody else who is like this, although I’m sure there are many. But through our mass media, I’m exposed to those who are not only practicing Public Religion, but trying to force it into modern American life.  Not only do these people not celebrate diversity, they attack it.

Check the term “Multiculturalism” on your favorite search engine.

To a certain segment of our society, this is an epithet – spit from their lips instead of pronounced, as if it defiles them to even say it.

Even if they don’t say it, the opponents of multiculturalism are supremacists.

Given the power, they would do the things that – well, that we wouldn’t want to contemplate, because we’ve experienced these horrors before. It’s human nature.  We often — if not always — choose who we trust and celebrate because they are as much like us as possible, in their beliefs, even in their appearance.  As I meet more people in this nation (and even the allegedly evolved state of California) I learn that people are primitive in these thoughts, and I am outraged. Once we invent “religious” institutions, we are inventing institutions that are, by definition, run by human beings. Institutions protect wayward individuals, devoting an inordinate amount of time and energy to protecting their own.  I am old enough now that I have seen a lot.

Police departments that cover up brutality and “bad” shootings.

Corporations that cover up pollution, human rights violations and other crimes with the help of governments whom they financially support.

Medical societies that protect incompetent doctors.

Drug companies that bury data that could save lives.

Churches protecting clergy who have misused their status to abuse the very people that turn to them for help and comfort.

I have nothing against “private” religions and personal beliefs.  I do not care if my friends and patients believe in Calvin the tree God, Jesus Christ, the transmigration of souls, or nothing at all.  I do think there is some kind of human need for “spirituality” and I will give my patients whatever they need that I can figure out a way to dish out. Period and end.

Two days ago I gave a patient (who asked me for it) a traditional Jewish eastern European type blessing in a waiting room. It was what she needed and so I gave it to her.  She felt calm and well.  I will give anyone whatever I have that will help. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, we need to depend on the wisdom of a knowledgeable public to keep us on the path, to steer us to the truth. Well, the people aren’t knowledgeable. Literacy is a problem, but even more of a problem is a lack of interest.  I cannot get patients (who know how to read) to read any material about their own condition. One of the big problems here is how we perceive authority, and how we prostate ourselves before said authority.  Do you really think that our political “leaders” have more IQ than us?  Believe me, there is absolutely not enough IQ variability in the population to account for success or achievement of any sort, and certainly not this. What they do have is a skill set that helps them manipulate us.  With unprecedented access to information, we generally ignore it, and let other people do our thinking for us.  Some people, like Rush Limbaugh, have actually told us they would think for us and then we let them do it.

I have thought recently of the Stanley Milgram experiments.  Basically, what happened about 40 years ago when he did this, a university researcher recruited subjects to press a button administering electric shocks to a subject that he could see through a window in the next room.  The subject was strapped into a chair and electrodes hooked to him.

Each time the volunteer pressed the button, the subject would scream and writhe in pain.  The research director would have the volunteer increase the shock by turning up a dial before pressing the button.  At some point the volunteer would complain that he could not subject another human being to any more torture, but the researcher would tell him to proceed, that the experiment was vital and depended on administering more powerful shocks.  In most cases, the volunteer would continue as the subject’s screams became more intense and the contortions were more violent.  Each time the volunteer wants to stop, the research convinces him that the experiment is really important.

The volunteer doesn’t realize that the shocks are fake and the subject is only acting like the shocks are real.  The experiment was actually designed to see how far the volunteer would proceed because of his obedience to authority.

Shamefully – every volunteer kept going long after the indications were showing how painful the shocks were.

Proof by the scientific method that people suspend any kind of human empathy or morality or whatever in the face of real or imagined authority.

It is just so easy.  “I was only following orders” can ease a troubled conscience if one is forced to participate in a war of prejudice, ethnic cleansing, you name it.

It doesn’t matter what you believe.  I am ethnically a Jew.  My people have had their troubles.  I don’t blindly hate the Germans.  I am grateful to them for their law that the Holocaust must be taught in schools. They are trying, really trying. If anybody ever asks can it happen again, they might say “no” out of hubris.

But after the events of September 11, 2010, the answer must be “yes.”
Americans are not trying.  They are — and continue to be — lazy in their spirits and intellects, wanting spoon-fed easy yes or no answers, thus leaving themselves open prey to rabble-rousers. We just don’t learn, even though we think we do.