Designing a Country ...

Hello again ... from deepest, darkest Princeton (it’s not really true, the sun is shinning and it’s a beautiful day ... but it is deep and dark in other ways),

I was reading an article about King Mswati III of Swaziland getting ready to take a new wife (Number 13) from among 50,000 dancing virgins clad only in short skirts and doing their best to attract his attention ... G-d only knows how that will turn out! But, it got me to thinking about different strokes for different folks as the basis for the societies we live in. Someone from the “Democratic West” might think that this is a primitive affair, the last absolute monarch of Africa setting up an audition to select his newest virgin bride in a land where abject poverty is the norm and the HIV epidemic in the country is among the world’s very worst. It could be perceived as an example of the inability of this country and it’s ruler to move into “modern times” and adjust to the “modern world.” This would not necessarily be an incorrect assessment, except that it’s probably far more about the ability to remain out of the “modern world” and to keep things “traditional” in terms of how this serves the monarch, than any inability to make the changes that would bring Swaziland into parallel with a more modern Western style democracy.

Yet the people of Swaziland think this is a good thing to a large extent. They back the king and his rule. One women is quoted as saying, “The King takes a wife whenever he wants and that’s the way it is. This is our culture and we will never change.” The king just also lifted a ban on having sex with virgins, an attempt to curb the high rate of HIV, that he himself put in place five years before. This of course occurs on his whim, without any oversight or concurrence of a congress, or parliament, or legislative body of any kind having any kind of a say. Yet 50,000 young girls, most probably between fifteen and twenty years of age, will be dancing hoping to be selected by the King to be another of his wives. Today (Monday 29August2005) will be the day the King selects, probably by the time you’re reading this it’s over, yet the ramifications of this act will ripple for decades through that society. This is the act of social construction.

What’s interesting to me is the part of the quote that goes, “... and that’s the way it is.” As though it’s “True” ... i.e.: that’s the way it is. Yet it only is and can be that way when people agree with it being that way. It may be amazing to think that someone living today in Swaziland - in abject poverty while the King lives a lavish, opulent and conspicuous lifestyle as he does, largely at the expense of his people - is in agreement with things being this way ... it’s the only way they can be so. Not that there would be no consequences, but rather that they’ve agreed to the consequences they currently face. This is an implicit agreement between all rulers and their subjects – even when the rulers are elected. The “trick” as I’ve pointed out before is that clever rulers make enough people comfortable enough NOT TO WANT TO ROCK THE BOAT. They rather think they’re safe and secure in a leaky boat than risk swimming.

Yet what’s even more fascinating is what’s happening in Iraq at the same time. This is a country attempting to re-design itself after years of oppression, abuse and tyranny, but all they can think about are their individual fractionated desires. Every fraction in Iraq has it’s own desires and intentions, without much regard for anything or anyone else. Ultimately, the Sunnis (the minority from which the Baath party emerged and ruled under Saddam Hussein) want things to be pretty much as they were, with themselves in control but without having to answer to Saddam. The Shias who are the majority faction who suffered with little opportunity to address the imbalance in power under Saddam want to divide the country and make a “Federal” state with regions having autonomous control – with themselves of course holding the richest oil fields in the country for themselves. The Kurds in the north also want to have a “Federal” state and on this point are in agreement with the Shias, however where they’d disagree is with the seeming Shia desire to have Iraq become an “Islamic” state as well.

So there you go, people thinking there “different” when it’s just a function of what they call themselves ... and the ability of their leaders to convince them that they are in fact “different” ... “unique” ... which gives them a people they can rule.

I don’t see much of a “difference” here from Swaziland from the rulers point of view.

It’s astounding to me that we “think” we’re advanced “modern” people when what we continuously display is our willing tendency to stand on nationalistic positions about “who we are” - as though this is really an ontological position, a position of deep, fundamental identity and existence. Ultimately the inability to think of the world as a whole is demanding that we continue to keep it fragmented. A great American leader once said, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” Well it seems to me we’re well into freefall. And we’ve created it ... our own “freefall” to destruction!

How? By agreement of course. We agree to continue to keep separate from one another based upon ... race, religion, creed, nationality ... however, we have no idea how to proceed along these lines and keep ourselves alive ... or for that matter the world we live on. We do this as we agree to “diversity.”

The tolerance of “others” in the name of “diversity” is the most damning thing that modern thinkers have done to the human race, and very probably the planet.

By virtue of “accepting’ others and being “tolerant” of others in the name of “diversity” we keep them ... the “others” separate. They are NOT us, we are NOT them ... we are NOT THE SAME! If we were why would we need to be accepting, tolerant or have a willingness to support diversity. No one in the same biological family has such concerns or considerations. They may or may not like one another, but they don’t have a false construct like diversity to consider – in most ways they recognize they are the same – and what makes them different is personal ... what they individually think, do and profess. This does require diversity, although it may require acceptance and tolerance, it’s just not based in them being fundamentally different other than as they “choose” to be.

However “diversity” teaches another game ... people are “different” beyond their choice, they can’t “help but to be different.” SO therefore we have to accept and tolerate their differences because it’s somehow become the “right” thing to do  (used to be the left only, but that has changed as the political winds shifted). Instead what about we become diversity blind, we just assume people are just like us, except they have unique individual behaviors and thoughts. Then of course we have to give up being “special’ ... but I think that’s for another posting some time.

I’d like to remind those in Iraq and around the world watching this ratification process in Iraq of the impassioned pleas of both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin at the ratification of the U.S. Constitution that although in ways they vehemently disagreed with one another and thought the document was imperfect they could only pray that their colleagues and peers would nonetheless get on with ratifying it ... as it may have been the most perfect document they could have come up with at the time despite their differences ... and that a document deemed perfect by one would most surely be deemed imperfect by the other. I especially liked Ben Franklin’s approach, to ask the members of the ratification committee to consider their own infallibility a little less perfect then they might have otherwise thought it was.

The world we know and live in is made up of imperfect agreements pointing towards an unrealizable ideal. It is only when we lose sight of the agreement and presume it’s absolute “Reality” that the world itself can become less than the perfect and join us in our manufactured imperfections.

Best regards,

Joseph