Who are we?

Peoples and nations are attempting the most basic question humans can face: Who are we? And they are answering that question in the traditional way human beings have answered it, by reference to the things that mean most to them. People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural ethnic groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.
Samuel P. Huntington: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

Skis in the desert

This is how the British army was sent to war in Iraq while Tony Blair and friends stayed in England:

Operations were so under-resourced that some troops went into action with only five bullets each. Others had to deploy to war on civilian airlines, taking their equipment as hand luggage. Some troops had weapons confiscated by airport security.

Commanders reported that the Army’s main radio system “tended to drop out at around noon each day because of the heat”. One described the supply chain as “absolutely appalling”, saying: “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.”

From: 'Iraq report: Secret papers reveal blunders and concealment', The Daily Telegraph, 21 November 2009.

Brazil in the media

"On October 22nd Geyse Arruda was escorted from the campus of Bandeirante University, a private college in a São Paulo suburb, her thighs shrouded by a lab coat, watched by several hundred jeering fellow students. Her offence? Wearing a dress so short as to constitute 'a flagrant lack of respect for ethical principles, academic dignity and morality'. How could this happen in the land of topless carnival dancers and buttocks swaying on the beach?" asked The Economist on 12 November 2009 and explained: "Tolerance coexists uneasily with prudishness. Brazilians are a religious people. Many of the churches frown on carnival as a time of loose behaviour and marriage-breaking, a fight that the Catholic church has waged for centuries."

Are Brazilians really a religious people? Well, how would one measure that? And, what about the claim that tolerance coexists uneasily with prudishness? That actually sounds more like The Economist were describing the people of its homebase, the English ...

The problem with this article however is another one. The reporter, like most reporters, has very probably not been present when the incident he or she wrote about occurred. In other words, what we got to read about this case was based on hearsay and what we got to see was based on video-images - and these are often even less reliable than hearsay for pictures, contrary to popular belief, do not provide evidence.

But hey, were there really several hundred fellow students jeering? And if so, why? And how come that a camera recorded it? Could this have been an orchestrated event by, for example, a small group of conservative zealots to get media attention?

It is simply absurd to use this totally insignificant incidence - everybody who has ever set foot on Brazilian soil knows that this is totally atypical for this country - as a pretext for arguing that in Brazil "tolerance exists uneasily with prudishness". There is zero basis for such a claim. And this means that one really shouldn't read The Economist when trying to understand Brazil.

Hans Albrecht Moser

Es liegt schon einige Zeit zurück, dass ich "Vineta" von Hans Albrecht Moser gelesen habe. Vor vier Jahren war das, in Istanbul. Letzthin habe ich einige der Stellen wieder gelesen, die ich mir damals angestrichen hatte. Hier sind einige von ihnen:

Die Welt ist ein Betätigungsfeld und weiter nichts.

... den guten Geschmack: ich lernte ihn als selbständigen, vom Moralischen unabhängigen Wert erkennen.

Es liegt in der Natur des Glaubens, die Tatsachen in seinen Sinn umzufälschen, und der Glaube, richtig zu erkennen, geht schliesslich jeder Erkenntnis voraus.

Mit unseren Welterklärungen wird uns mehr genommen als gegeben. Sie erklären nichts, setzen nur an die Stelle des Geheimnisses eine Gewohnheit zu denken.

Der Bildungsstoff, der uns angeboten wird, wird immer grösser, um so strenger müssen wir also auswählen, was davon für uns wirklich bestimmt ist.

Ist es nicht ein verhängnisvoller Irrtum zu glauben, wir könnten unser Ziel erreichen und damit unsern Sinn erfüllen, indem wir wissentlich leben, wie wir nicht leben sollten?

Freeing oneself up

Years ago, in Bangkok, Thailand, I used to spend the first Sunday afternoon of the month at the nearby headquarters of the World Fellowship of Buddhists where meditation practice was taught in English by monks from Wat Pah Nanachat, the International Forest Monastery in Northeast Thailand. I particularly remember a speech by Ajahn Sumedho, an American monk, who ended it by saying: Should you have come to the conclusion that what I have been telling you sounds interesting to you then you most probably have got me completely wrong. Because a lot of things are interesting. But that is not the point. 

What you need to ask yourself is whether what I have been telling you is helpful for you. To look for what is helpful is indeed good advice. Helpful for me is for example this insight by Richard Rorty (in Cultural Otherness): "… the emphasis falls less on knowing than on imagining, more on freeing oneself up than on getting something right."

A cultural faux pas

During a trip to Senegal, Maya Angelou called Samia, a friend she had made in Paris several years before, and was invited over for dinner. Passing a room where people apparently clung to the wall to avoid standing on the rug, Angelou became incensed. "I had known a woman in Egypt who would not allow her servants to walk on her rugs, saying that only she, her family and friends were going to wear out her expensive carpets. Samia plummeted in my estimation."

Keen to challenge her host's hauteur, she walked back and forth across the carpet. "The guests who were bunched up on the sidelines smiled at me weakly." Soon afterwards, servants came, rolled up the rug, took it away and brought in a fresh one. Samia then came in and announced that they would be serving one of Senegal's most popular dishes in honour of Angelou: "Yassah, for our sister from America… Shall we sit?" And as the guests went to the floor where glasses, plates, cutlery and napkins were laid out on the carpet, Angelou realised the full extent of her faux pas and was "on fire with shame".

"Clever and so proper Maya Angelou, I had walked up and down over the tablecloth… In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons. The epitome of sophistication is utter simplicity."
From The Guardian, 14 November 2009

A white lie

A white lie is not a lie at all. It is where you tell the truth but you do not tell all of the truth. This means that everything you say is a white lie because when someone says, for example, "What do you want to do today?" you say, "I want to do painting with Mrs. Peters," but you don't say, "I want to have my lunch and I want to go to the toilet and I want to go home after school and I want to play with Toby and I want to have my supper and I want to play on my computer and I want to go to bed."
Mark Haddon: The curious incident of the dog in the night-time