There's this "European Heaven/European Hell" joke. There are many variations on it. This is a simple one:
European Heaven Is Where
-The French are the cooks.
-The English are the police.
-The Germans are the mechanics.
-The Italians are the lovers, and
-The Swiss organize everything.
European Hell Is Where
-The English are the cooks.
-The Germans are the police.
-The French are the mechanics.
-The Swiss are the lovers, and
-The Italians organize everything.
These are all stereotypes. Stereotypes have a bad image.We're not supposed to stereotype (in America, anyway).Yes, really it's okay.Stereotypes are helpful mental shortcuts that come naturally to the homo sapiens brain.In fact stereotypes are an indispensable tool that our brains must use if we are to function in the world.Our brains are not computers, they cannot take every single one of the four billion of us as blank slates.Our brains need to take the shortcut of "this looks like." This looks like: mommy, a cat, a car--our car--macaroni and cheese, etc.
As we get older and our brains develop and we get more experience we are able to distinguish, among the class "mommies," our mommy from a MILF, a cat from a tiger, our car from the neighbor's Lexus, and macaroni and cheese from food.
When we get really clever we can distinguish a Frenchman from an Italian from an Englishman and that is where the European Heaven/European Hell joke comes in. The reason the joke "works" is because there are national and ethnic identities, we all recognize them, and the joke captures them. Forget the opposites, if we randomly put the English in European Heaven as the organizers and the Germans as the lovers, the joke wouldn't work. A stereotype is only as good as its commensurability.
Discriminating among things is what we must do if we are to survive as individual members of our species. Stereotyping helps us do that. The problem with stereotyping is when we stop the discriminating at the class level. When we meet an individual member of a class, say Englishmen, we must not say "Don't go near the kitchen!" And we don't do that, for goddsake. Nobody tells an individual Englishman don't go near the kitchen (unless he's cooked for us before). That is, we can enjoy the European Heaven/European Hell joke and still treat individual homo sapiens on their individual merits and demerits. We know that at base we are all homos with nearly identical DNA. We may not know this but it is true: our DNA is more similar to that of a chimpanzee than is chimpanzee DNA to orangutan DNA (we certainly do not like that (but it is true)).
And so in this post we have come from Englishmen to orangutans and somewhere in that range are Americans, Arab Muslims, Chinese, me, and you. Americans have a "democratic" political system; Arab Muslims and Chinese do not. The question becomes why?
I do not believe that Arab Muslims and Chinese lack the democracy gene; there is no democracy gene. I believe that Arab Muslims lack the democracy will (I can't deal with Chinese further here). I believe that because I know that Americans invented modern democracy and we are a nation of mutts of average intelligence and so if we can do it anyone can. I believe that Arab Muslims can do democracy because they are at least the equivalent of us American mutts and because some few non-Arab Muslims (Turkey, Indonesia) do it.
I do not believe that democracy is a difficult thing to "organize," as Tunisia's Yadh Ben Achour said in explaining why the March 15 election there was called off. The demonstrations in Tunis, in Cairo, in whatever the hell the capital of Bahrain is, those, Mr. Ben Achour, are democracy-like acts, and they were done in the name of democracy.You put a bunch of ballot boxes in Tahrir Square, form a line, dip your finger in purple ink after you're done voting like they do in Haiti (avoid the butterfly ballot like we did in America), and voila as the French say.
The Tunisian elections were called off because Tunisians (we're talking class) had not the will to organize them. They valued "order" more. Order is a good thing, I like order...Actually order is not a good thing and I don't like order. Too much order and you'll end up German. Rather the will to democracy is the will to listen, and to compromise. People who order don't listen and don't compromise.
I don't find the will to democracy among Arab Muslims because of Islam. Islam has too many orders. When the organizing doctrine of life requires the toilets to face all toward (or away from, I forget which) Mecca, there is too orderly an organizing of life for the listening and compromising that is required of democracy.
Religion is not destiny (despite what all religions say) any more than biology or history or melanin is. Even DNA changes. Democratic change will not come, it says here, until the Arab Muslim people change Islam as it is practiced and preached today--just a little. Really not much. Or if they just change Islam's role over their lives that same little bit. But until "Islam Is The Answer" is truly believed by Arab Muslims to be NOT the answer, the toilets will all face one way, democracy will have a hard time, and the Arab Muslims will all be like Germans.
European Heaven Is Where
-The French are the cooks.
-The English are the police.
-The Germans are the mechanics.
-The Italians are the lovers, and
-The Swiss organize everything.
European Hell Is Where
-The English are the cooks.
-The Germans are the police.
-The French are the mechanics.
-The Swiss are the lovers, and
-The Italians organize everything.
These are all stereotypes. Stereotypes have a bad image.We're not supposed to stereotype (in America, anyway).Yes, really it's okay.Stereotypes are helpful mental shortcuts that come naturally to the homo sapiens brain.In fact stereotypes are an indispensable tool that our brains must use if we are to function in the world.Our brains are not computers, they cannot take every single one of the four billion of us as blank slates.Our brains need to take the shortcut of "this looks like." This looks like: mommy, a cat, a car--our car--macaroni and cheese, etc.
As we get older and our brains develop and we get more experience we are able to distinguish, among the class "mommies," our mommy from a MILF, a cat from a tiger, our car from the neighbor's Lexus, and macaroni and cheese from food.
When we get really clever we can distinguish a Frenchman from an Italian from an Englishman and that is where the European Heaven/European Hell joke comes in. The reason the joke "works" is because there are national and ethnic identities, we all recognize them, and the joke captures them. Forget the opposites, if we randomly put the English in European Heaven as the organizers and the Germans as the lovers, the joke wouldn't work. A stereotype is only as good as its commensurability.
Discriminating among things is what we must do if we are to survive as individual members of our species. Stereotyping helps us do that. The problem with stereotyping is when we stop the discriminating at the class level. When we meet an individual member of a class, say Englishmen, we must not say "Don't go near the kitchen!" And we don't do that, for goddsake. Nobody tells an individual Englishman don't go near the kitchen (unless he's cooked for us before). That is, we can enjoy the European Heaven/European Hell joke and still treat individual homo sapiens on their individual merits and demerits. We know that at base we are all homos with nearly identical DNA. We may not know this but it is true: our DNA is more similar to that of a chimpanzee than is chimpanzee DNA to orangutan DNA (we certainly do not like that (but it is true)).
And so in this post we have come from Englishmen to orangutans and somewhere in that range are Americans, Arab Muslims, Chinese, me, and you. Americans have a "democratic" political system; Arab Muslims and Chinese do not. The question becomes why?
I do not believe that Arab Muslims and Chinese lack the democracy gene; there is no democracy gene. I believe that Arab Muslims lack the democracy will (I can't deal with Chinese further here). I believe that because I know that Americans invented modern democracy and we are a nation of mutts of average intelligence and so if we can do it anyone can. I believe that Arab Muslims can do democracy because they are at least the equivalent of us American mutts and because some few non-Arab Muslims (Turkey, Indonesia) do it.
I do not believe that democracy is a difficult thing to "organize," as Tunisia's Yadh Ben Achour said in explaining why the March 15 election there was called off. The demonstrations in Tunis, in Cairo, in whatever the hell the capital of Bahrain is, those, Mr. Ben Achour, are democracy-like acts, and they were done in the name of democracy.You put a bunch of ballot boxes in Tahrir Square, form a line, dip your finger in purple ink after you're done voting like they do in Haiti (avoid the butterfly ballot like we did in America), and voila as the French say.
The Tunisian elections were called off because Tunisians (we're talking class) had not the will to organize them. They valued "order" more. Order is a good thing, I like order...Actually order is not a good thing and I don't like order. Too much order and you'll end up German. Rather the will to democracy is the will to listen, and to compromise. People who order don't listen and don't compromise.
I don't find the will to democracy among Arab Muslims because of Islam. Islam has too many orders. When the organizing doctrine of life requires the toilets to face all toward (or away from, I forget which) Mecca, there is too orderly an organizing of life for the listening and compromising that is required of democracy.
Religion is not destiny (despite what all religions say) any more than biology or history or melanin is. Even DNA changes. Democratic change will not come, it says here, until the Arab Muslim people change Islam as it is practiced and preached today--just a little. Really not much. Or if they just change Islam's role over their lives that same little bit. But until "Islam Is The Answer" is truly believed by Arab Muslims to be NOT the answer, the toilets will all face one way, democracy will have a hard time, and the Arab Muslims will all be like Germans.
