Friday, November 03, 2023

Gaza, Haiti, Jean-Paul Sartre & me: Resuscitating morality in an immoral world

 

Gaza, Haiti, Jean-Paul Sartre & me: Resuscitating morality in an immoral world

     Suddenly there it was -- just sitting there in a Little Free Library on Stuart Street in Berkeley.  A very used copy of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Age of Reason.  I'll give it a try.  Lots of big words.  I'm an adult.  I can do this.

     Sartre wrote about his struggle to remain moral in an absurd world where immorality ran wild everywhere.  Government.  Main Street.  Wherever.  But Sartre only had World War II to deal with.  You and me?  We gotta deal with Evil Globalist Bastards, butchery on a grand scale, institutionalized theft and World War 3. 

     The Federal Re$erve robs us blind.  The UN utterly fails to prevent genocide (doesn't even try) and even we house-proud Americans are homeless, jobless and dying on the streets.  Boy Howdy!  These days, we gots both absurdity and immorality covered on a scale never even previously imagined before.  Eat your heart out Jean-Paul!

       And I also went to hear three actual live-action non-Zoom lectures on the subject of "Morality in an Immoral World."  First Ilan Pappé spoke to us at the University of California's Berkeley law school.  Pappé is an Israeli historian, reminding us that you can't just judge stuff by watching the evening news.  "You have to look at events from a historical context as well."  I can do that.  My undergraduate major was in history too.

     "In Israel, the story starts with a history of racism," said Pappé. "That is the nature of the Zionist movement.  Their eliminary policy from the start was to get rid of the natives.  Ethnic cleansing has become the new form of nationalism, the DNA of Zionist policy."  Not a religious policy.  A racist one.

     "Before 1948, the society in Palestine reflected a 'live and let live' approach among Christians, Muslims and Jews....  And in the future, we cannot calculate a solid moral ground either unless it is based on that approach also."

     Next I went to hear Mildred Aristide speak about the extreme importance of education in Haiti.  "Military action is not the answer.  Education is."  And so she and her husband started a university in Port au Prince, drawing on the best and brightest students from the poorest parts of Haiti's many slums.  "We need doctors and engineers.  We need to tap the intellectual capacities of impoverished people."  Not just shoot them.

     "When this horror of the UN and American invasions, paramilitary troops disguised as gangs and foreign theft of Haiti's many resources is finally over, there will be a great need for educated people who can put the pieces back together."  

     I agree -- and Jean-Paul Sartre probably would too.  Sending billions of dollars worth of weapons of mass destruction to Zionists in Israel and to neo-Nazis in Ukra$ne is definitely not the answer to creating a future morality in our world.  Education (and safety and security) is.

      Next lecture?  Angela Davis, speaking at an old-fashioned teach-in at U.C. Berkeley's student union auditorium.  She is now more professorial in tone than the firebrand she used to be -- but I'm still a firebrand!  "We should be in a deep state of mourning for people killed, wounded and terrorized," she said, "and come up with strategies to stop the juggernaut.  We cannot pretend that this [butchery] is business as usual.  As June Jordan once said, 'Palestine is not just a cause but is a moral litmus test'.  We need a habitable future for all -- not just a hierarchy."

PS:  Before attending the Pappé and Davis lectures, I'd pretty much given up on Gen Z as being narcissistic, self-absorbed, lost in tech gadgets and addicted to the totally depressing lyrics of Billie Eilish.  However, now I gotta re-assess my opinion of Gen Z completely.  Berkeley Law's auditorium holds 360 people.  Pauley Ballroom holds 900 people.  Gen Z filled them both.  Gen Z showed up!
 
PPS:  So.  What is the solution to the Israel-Palestine problem?  One friend suggested that everyone who arrived in Palestine after 1945 just be sent home back to wherever they came from.  
 
     Someone else suggested that Ancestry.Com give everyone in Israel-Palestine a DNA test -- and if their ancestors haven't actually been born in West Asia, then send them back to Europe or America or wherever their ancestral point of origin actually was.

     Another solution is to take back all of the F-16s, JDAMs, F-35s, CH-53 heavy-lift helicopters, 155 mm artillery shells, Boeing smart bombs, white phosphorus incendiary munitions and carrier task forces supplied to the Zionists by America for use on Gaza -- and then just give every adult in the Israel-Palestine region a cardboard box containing one AK-47, 15 bullets and one leather-bound copy of the Golden Rule.  "How's that for equity."  Let them all just work it out the civilized way.

Resources:

Sue the freak out of our local politicians for covertly encouraging genocide:  The CrowHouse




And the slaughter in Ukra$ne also rolls on, making weapons manufactures very happy:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZnxSvnOZ8g

"War" is causing an explosion of global debt.  How can that even be considered moral?  It can't be:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_PHmxmE0NE and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKOuZkbN554

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