Peace & Wisdom

In this article I explain why those that really want to help the Palestinians should become Zionists and those that really want to help Israel should support Barack Obama’s policy of engaging Iran.

1. Zionism: The Great Divide
2. How I Became a Zionist
3. The Great Hypocrisy
4. Barack Obama, Israel, Iran and Hamas

(This is the fourth and final article of the On Zionism series.)

In a recent article, Obama. What’s Complicated Here?, Gershom Gorenberg at South Jerusalem explains why he thinks Barack Obama should get the support of all right-thinking Israelis (left-thinking Israelis in Gorenberg’s case):

The one candidate who speaks in clear terms of taking a new approach to the Mideast is Obama. This is what scares the small coterie of American Jewish rightists who would eagerly fight to the last Israeli. If you care about Israel, you should hit “delete” when you get their emails.

Obama is the one candidate who had the sense to oppose the war in Iraq. He’s the one candidate whose statement on Israel expresses support for a two-state solution, which is the country’s path to peaceful future and is today the consensus position in Israel. He’s the one proposing a clear break from the disastrous Bush policies, and a turn to trying diplomacy.

Matt Yglesias at The Atlantic does find a complication though.

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(This is the third article of the On Zionism series.)

It seems to me that there is a great partisan divide, and those perpetuating it on both sides are using Israelis and Palestinians as surrogates for their own political agendas (see Stop the Demonising and Idiot Compassion). A standard line to pursue at this point (the lefty narrative) would be to take up Jimmy Carter’s point about the brutal treatment of the Gazans, but, if the reader has been following me, that is an argument best left for the likes of Jimmy Carter: much better for me to expose the great Euro-leftie hypocrisy, the great abuse of the Palestinian cause for quite unrelated agendas.

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(This is the second article of the On Zionism series.)

True to my Euro-leftie roots, especially someone whose political consciousness was formed after the Camp David Accords (i.e., after all serious existential threats to Israel had been extinguished), watching the 1982 Lebanon war and the Sabra and Chatilla massacres I grew up with no empathy or real understanding of the Israeli perspective, an attitude that was cemented by a hapless visiting Israeli’s attempt justify to our sixth form the 1982 invasion of Lebanon immediately after the camp massacres.

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(This is the first article of the On Zionism series.)

It is interesting listening to Jeffery Goldberg being interviewed by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz at the Atlantic. (Some speech I find quite mesmerising, including Rothenberg Gritz’s; always a bit of an Americanophile it seems to be coming to the fore with the election season.) Here Jeffery Goldberg is in fine, thoughtful form, reflecting on the various currents of the often highly contradictory ideals that flowed into the formation of Israel. And what a contrast they make to his reactionary screeds against Jimmy Carter.

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It is interesting how some writers can say things that others would be utterly unqualified to say, even if they used the same words. Desmond Tutu has just written a Cif article explaining why Sri Lanka should be excluded from the Human Rights council–its record of kidnap and torture of its own citizens, a trend that is worsening.

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Topics:

1. The Joy of Aggregation
2. New Review Page
3. Mansfield Park Blog
4. What You Are Reading
5. Connecting up
6. Phew!
7. Feedback Welcome

The Joy of Aggregation

Switching to RSS aggregators revolutionised my blog reading in ways that surprised me. I see form my blog statistics that few of you are reading the blog through RSS so I will explain how it helped me in case it can help you too. Here are the advantages I noticed.

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Nesrine Malik has written a well argued piece on Comment is free about the excessive attention that is paid to certain ex-Muslim reactionaries in the West, and why it so counterproductive for the liberal Muslim cause (though she has failed to do her own copy-editing).  It has provoked the usual attack of the trolls, and my own robust defence.

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Over at Comment is free Inayat has another potboiler at the top of the leader-board (heading for 300 comments at the time of writing).

In my late teens I read a book by the Pakistani Islamic scholar and exegete of the Qur’an, Amin Ahsan Islahi. Islahi urged young Muslims to beware of wasting their time with frivolous activities and called on them to adopt a serious reading programme. Naturally, reading and trying to understand the message of the Qur’an was No 1 on his list, but he also recommended searching out books that he said would encourage greater contemplation and self-assessment and pointed us towards the Bible, books on philosophy and the biographies of influential figures in history.

Keen to make the most of my time, I generally avoided fictional literature, though I had immensely enjoyed reading Catch-22 and Animal Farm (oh, and two of the early Adrian Mole books) etc when I was younger.

Inayat’s problem is that he has rather neglected fiction and now feels he has some catching up to do, tried Lucky Jim, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Portnoy’s Complaint from Time’s recent top 100 since its first issue in 1923, only to be somewhat disappointed, and is looking for recommendations. I suggested he might like to consider going back to the source, that he might have a particularly good reason for looking at Jane Austen:

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In this series of articles I link the Jane Austen and political threads on the blog, discussing the similarities between our modern response to Jane Bennett and Barack Obama’s New Politics.

1. Jane Bennet and Barack Obama
2. The Candour of Jane Bennet
3. Jane Bennet and Barack Obama
4. Original Sin (postscript)

While writing this series of articles on candour, our potential for realising our better, divine selves, it occurred to me how equally poorly understood is the Christian doctrine of original sin. (I have no wish to get tangled in theological debate here so I would like to confine myself to some general remarks, speaking as a non-Christian.)

Nothing is more common than to hear non-Christians pointing to the doctrine of original sin as proof of how pessimistic and depressing Christianity is. Even, I am sorry to say, some Buddhists who should really know better. In doing so they will point to the Buddhist doctrine of Buddha Nature, that we all have the potential to attain enlightenment and become Buddhas.

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He’s never come up with an explanation about how he would actually transform politics, and his conventional substance is beginning to overshadow his unconventional style.

— David Brooks, Combat and Composure, New York Times, 6^th May

I’m on record as saying that Hillary Clinton’s advocacy of a gas-tax holiday, while it wasn’t good policy, didn’t rise to the level of a crime.

Judging from last night’s results, however, it was worse than a crime: it was a mistake.

— Paul Krugman, Talleyrand and the gas tax holiday, New York Times, 7^th May

I could have picked dozens of quotes insisting that Obama hasn’t explained how his New Politics works, yet from nowhere he has turned the political scene upside down, eschewed PAC funding, signed up 1.5 million donors, crushed one the most formidable (if incompetent) political machines of recent times and quite conceivably will thrash the Republicans in a landslide in the autumn (it is of course impossible to predict, but as far as any of these things are predictable, this looks on the cards). The junior senator from Illinois, not even on the national political scene when the Iraq war was launched, has got himself into a position where Washington could soon be his feet. Could some people be failing to see the wood for the trees? I think it is interesting that the old media, with some honourable exceptions, is having such difficulty understanding Obama’s core message.

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A recent posting to the Austen-L mailing list, titled the ‘desperation of candour’, illustrates the thoroughly bad press that old-style candour generally receives. In it we were told that Austen began as a satirist, and retained her critical stance throughout (I couldn’t agree more—it is difficult to disagree with this), that while endeavouring to read and understand the novel with the candour of Jane Bennet would do justice to one’s heart, Jane Bennet sees the world the way she does because it would be too painful to see it as Elizabeth sees it, and Jane finally agrees to Elizabeth’s observations of the hypocrisy and duplicity of the Bingley sisters. Jane’s candour comes out of desperation, desiring peace, not through any conviction about the truth but driven by a psychological vulnerability. Austen was too much of a realist we are told: Jane Bennet was only one voice, and certainly not the definitive perspective from which to make sense of Pride and Prejudice.

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(or The New Politics)

After apologising for combining Jane Austen with more contemporary, worldly topics in the blog, it would be as well to make an explicit connection. This I will try to do with Barack Obama and his New Politics.

As with practically every philosophical article on this blog it is about how we are losing our minds because we are losing sight of our minds—the modern tendency to fixate on and overemphasise the external play of phenomenon, to the extent that we lose sight of inner, psychological factors, in this case, losing site of the distinction between cynicism and candour.

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(or The Very Strange Tale of Two Jacqui Smiths)

Andrew Sullivan and Daniel Finklestein wonder whether the YouGov poll published in today’s Sun is real, putting as it does Labour on 23% and the Tories with a 26% lead over Labour? I very much think so. Andrew Rawnsley–probably the most authoritative New Labour pundit has analysed a much bigger survey in today’s Observer, and come to the same conclusion. The bottom has fallen out of Labour. What a bittersweet moment. And what a strange tale. Let me explain.

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In the Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Group last night we were talking about how meditation on Precious Human Rebirth and Death and Impermanence can help us live a meaningful life and not allow our lives to become entirely engrossed by trivia. Let me explain–this is a line of thought that is Buddhist in the specifics, but actually quite common to all religions.  It also has an intriguing connection with Chris Hedges’ Book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.

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[I for some reason that can't fathom (age!--its happening) wrote AustenBlog when I meant Jane Austen's World in an earlier version of this article. Corrected. Sorry for the confusion.]

Over at Jane Austen’s World Ms Place very kindly point out the Mansfield Park commentary blog that I am wait for readers to notice before I progress beyond the initial articles. And in response to Ms Places post I have seen the up-tick in interest I have been waiting for so I will shortly resume with the commentary on the Mansfield Park blog.

I must confess to feeling a little guilty at combining contemporary political issues, including some issues that are raw and surrounded with controversy in high contrast with the elegant and soothing Jane Austen’s World, echoing well the sense of A. C. Bradeley’s assessment that “her novels make exceptionally peaceful reading”. And Ms Place gently scolds me in saying I write ‘about Jane’s novels, politics, and Buddhism. Recently his thoughts have turned mostly to Jane.’

Of course Ms Place does nothing of the kind (scolding me I mean)–it is just my tortured conscience imagining such a scolding for my tasteless mixing up of Austen’s perfect novels and our messy contemporary world.

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A recent discussion on the Austen-L mailing list is considering the extent to which Austen’s philosophy is compatible with Hobbes’s ‘moral pesimism’ with Brad Walton suggesting a strong compatibility between the two:

Hobbes’s moral pessimism seems to bear some similarities to Austen’s somewhat dim view of humans as moral agents (for instance, I strongly suspect that Elizabeth Bennet’s remarks to Jane in _PP_, Chapter 24, regarding her evaluation of human beings in general, reflects Austen’s own views). However, I do think that Austen’s take on human nature is somewhat more complex than Hobbes’s.

I would say that not only is her understanding of psychology more acute but so is her ethics. For sure she adhered to the view that we must take a skeptical view of motives, certainly not to take professed motivations at face value, but that doesn’t mean that she was a cynic, and we should be careful about assuming that Elizabeth Bennet’s (and her father’s) cynical wit represent the view of the author with Mrs Gardiner’s warning in Chapter 27, “Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of disappointment” (27.20) is surely aimed at the reader too. I would argue that Austen is drawing us into Elizabeth’s accretion of the worst aspects of her mother and father that we easily condemn confronted with in the early chapters, viz. her mother’s tendency to hasty judgement and her father’s cynical detachment. While it is easy to condemn it in others it is not so easy to spot in ourselves but by getting us to condemn it elsewhere before joining Elizabeth in indulging these tendencies we too can partake in the eclaircissement in Chapter 36.

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“… You have all so much more heart among you than one finds in the world at large. …”

— Mary Crawford, Mansfield Park

On first encountering the Austen blogs (see my Literature Blogroll) I was surprised at the overwhelming space given over to discussion of film adaptations, but then I realised that PBS were just completing a season on Jane Austen. I have enjoyed adaptations of the novels and had a particularly indulgent phase on the ‘95 Davies-Ehle-Firth adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I started exercising restraint when i noticed that I was starting to blur this adaptation and the novel itself–it was becoming the novel, I still think it biases my impression of the novel. I wonder if anyone else has had this problem.

Appearances can be deceptive.

Via the BrontëBlog I came across this notice:

Jane Austen and the Brontes: ‘Sense’ versus ‘Sensibility’

[...] with Angela Day

[...] Austen’s approach is through a rejection of excess of sentimentality – sense. The Bronte novels emphasise the power of the imagination – sensibility.

And in an exchange of comments Christina said:

What I’ve always concluded from S&S, too, is that by the end of the novel both sisters have learned that extremes are no good and to take a leaf of each other’s book.

Now I would argue against both of these interpretations, what I would call the standard interpretations, and do so at length in the early draft of In Search of Sense and Sensibility (and I anticipate making the same argument in all subsequent drafts unless you persuade me otherwise).

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Will folks will never learn. The AustenBloggers have poking fun at this piece, that begins rather unpromisingly:

The Jane Austen industry continues to move on as television adaptations, movie treatments, biographical fiction and modern spin offs fill our wide and small screens.

Why this interest in an early 19th century writer of virtue and sensibility? Is it because we lack in our age any such thing since liberalism has taught us that anything goes as long as no one gets hurt? Is it because of the romance and the happy endings that have the heroine finally marrying the man of fine sensibility, every woman’s dream, a retreating one in the face of the personality of the modern male? Or is it that all of this happens without resort to the messy and by now unintelligible involvement of God?

It is safe to say that God does not appear as a character in the novels of Jane Austen. The church is certainly present as a respectable profession for second sons, but such sons are not moved by any religious sensibility but by the necessity of obtaining a place in society.

Clergy may be enthralled to worldly prestige and goods like Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice or simply solid and noble like Edmund in Persuasion [sic] but they do not appear to be moved by the Spirit of God. Indeed they show little difference in character to any other character in the novels.

It is difficult to do justice to the shallowness of this critique. That Austen was intensely preoccupied by the competing demands of society and the individual (Malcolm Bradley’s ‘62 essay is good on this) and on the need to combat selfishness (almost any decent Austen criticism). One might think that life is too short to spend too much time on those that won’t do even the most basic reading before assaulting the public with their bar-room literary criticism, but serious authors have made some similar claims:

I say that Jane Austen the novelist did not believe in God because God is totally absent from her work. A person may remain silent about a deeply held and genuine belief, but not a writer: all that exists in a writer’s work is what he creates.

Laurence Lerner, The Truthtellers: Jane Austen, George Eliot & D. H. Lawrence, pp. 23-4

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