Logic and Rationality
Are of No Avail in Disseminating Information
There are many people on the internet, and I respect them, who
have, and are, working tirelessly employing logic and rationality to help
people understand both sides of the conflict in the
I, for one, have long ago stopped trying to do this and I will
explain why I consider the attempt futile.
I've been on the internet for some four years. During that time
I've been observing how people behave, interact, group and what political
positions they take on a good number of fora. I have noted the correlations
between social behavior and political positions taken.
I have come to the following conclusion: The vast majority of
people do not assume a given political position after having considered a
number of alternative positions and a large body of data.
They form political opinions on the very same basis that they
form friendships: they side with those with whom they identify. Like seeks out
like. Proverbial water seeks its proverbial level.
Those who see themselves as deserving of special privilege tend
to identify with some type of elite. These are few in number and I shall
explain why presently.
Both those who are bullies as well as those who feel the need
for strong backing identify with political power structures and tend to accept
the positions of those power structures as unquestioningly correct and
inviolable. They defend the power structures tooth and nail.
The vast majority of people may be grouped under those to whom
I do not find people whose brotherly feelings are grounded in
the common baseness they find in one another repugnant. I see them, rather, as
victims of Capitalist indoctrination which inculcates the profoundest feelings
of wounded pride and violation of one's person. They are, however, truly base
and understanding the provenance of their baseness in no wise negates their
being so. They are many. They are the vast majority.
They tend to huddle together for mutual protection and defense in
their social groups. Their relationships are based on an agreement of everyone
ignoring the others' real and imagined defects. It is also agreed that each
will come to the others' defense if an "intruder", someone either up
or down in some way enters their territory.
When the most wounded among them assume a political position
they invariably resonate with those they consider the underdog. Wracked as they
are with feelings of victimization, frustration and helplessness to find a way
out of their lives of what Henry David Thoreau called "quiet
desperation", they take up the cause of those who do not make them feel
inferior. Feeling degraded as they do; they feel comfortable taking up the
cause of those they see as still more degraded than themselves.
It is not surprising, then, that the vast majority of Europeans
and many Americans identify with and support the Arabs in the ME conflict. The
Arabs do not make them acutely aware of their feelings of inferiority. They can
take a superior, paternalistic stance vis-à-vis the Arabs. Of course,
they put on a front of being concerned with the victim, but in reality they
identify with the victim because they feel victimized beneath their
protestations of good will and bravado.
The political stances that the vast majority of people assume,
then, are neither logical nor rational. They are based on identification that
comes from the gut.
There is no countering that with logic and reason.
The Jews and the Israelis make them feel their defects most
acutely. They simply cannot relate to the People who hold the highest per
capita number of Nobel Prizes in the world. They do not feel comfortable in the
presence of the People who count Einstein as but one of their sons. They cannot
relate to the People who transformed a miserable tract of desert and swamp into
not only a desert, but departments of bioinformatics and other cutting-edge
technologies.
Israelis are, for the most part, a rare breed. Those who
emigrated here from developed countries as well as native Israelis who have
skills and education that would allow them to be professionals elsewhere, yet
choose to stay, are that very rare and miniscule sector of Humanity that do not
assume a political stance based merely on personal feelings of weakness.
Rather, they are those who have chosen to devote their lives to something
bigger than themselves. They are proactive, not simply reactive. They do not
huddle together with others for protection. They cooperate with others for the
sake of realizing a vision and actualizing a plan for Humanity.
Few are those who are content, confident and comfortable enough
with themselves to be able to praise and encourage us
in this. Few are those who with outstretched hand offer to take part in this
magnificent and noble enterprise.
But they do exist. And they are wonderful. They are those who
elevate Humanity from the degraded social level of chimpanzees to fully Human.
People such as these are not in need of our reason and our
logic. We do not have to teach them. They need only our encouragement and they
deserve our thanks.
You know who you are.
Thank you.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan,