Tower of Babel in the Holy Land
Searching for Reality
Gestalt psychologist Fritz Perls stated: "Nothing changes until it becomes what it truly is."
In a recent substack post, Robert Reich took a survey of opinion on achieving peace in the Middle East. What shocked me was the disconnect of the people commenting on his post. I didn't have any confidence about peace in the Middle East before all of this and after reading the comments here I have even less.
Joseph Campbell wrote about the power of myth and how we concoct stories to give our lives meaning and some sort of logical narrative. The real danger is when we supercharge these stories and make them "holy" or sacred. Jerusalem is now considered the "Holy Land" sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians.
Sacred means it takes on meanings beyond the secular or natural aspects. A Holy Land leaves behind the mundane laws of secular reasoning and flies untethered into pure mythology. How can the Holy Land "become what it truly is" when the myth is far more powerful than the reality? Any discussion dissolves into a Tower of Babel because each of us speaks our own mythological language. Because we refuse to agree on a common language any discussion becomes angry gibberish with compassion and understanding lost in translation.
Philosopher Ernest Becker believed we split off into an imaginary world of symbols in order to escape our subconscious fear of death. We attempt to achieve immortality by creating world views or sacred stories of how the world operates "logically" and within our powers of understanding and control. These worldviews take on existential importance and any conflict escalates into a symbolic holy war.
Voltaire wryly noted: "God created humankind in his image and we returned the favor." The Holy Land is the mythical foundation of many religious mythologies all of which claim the title of knowledge of the "True God." The first casualty of religious wars is humanism and acceptance of humble mortality. Human existence can only be justified by sacrificing it for a supernatural sacred cause. Mixing religion and nationalism makes it all the more toxic and deadly.
This mythological battle has raged for eons in this region and the archetypes are deeply ingrained in our collective subconscious. All Abrahamic religions are based on a duality of "good" vs. "evil" and "sacred" vs. "secular." Reading the confusion communicated in those comments, I hold little hope we will miraculously return to our mortal senses and compassionate humanity. It seems we would rather die as gods than to simply live as humans.
Boys and their very destructive toys all claiming to be holier than each other. Tragic.
The kids were over for dinner the day after the horrific attacks in Israel. My son's education as to the eons long wars was lacking so I popped in the movie Kingdom of Heaven. Now I realize that it is a Hollywood version and heavily fictionalized, but I thought it would help him understand the complexities and limited possibility that a solution could be found. The end of the movie the English King on his way to the Holy Lands tries to find Balian, the famed defender of Jerusalem, to start it all over again ... and again ... how many times has it changed hands? At least 20 times, conquered, destroyed, rebuilt, and conquered again. That was the salient point of the movie, the futility of the forever war. I am not an expert, but I wouldn't be surprised that Hamas did what it did to start another Holy War .. what an oxymoron. to kick start what they hope leads to the return of their heroes. It doesn't look good. As you said, little hope.