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    • Feb

    2

    Promises, Promises

    Filed Under college studies, history, lil things, questions | Leave a Comment

    I’m a bit loose with my “promises” I think. And believe me, I’m painfully aware of it.  It’s so easy to say, “I’ll do that,” or “I’ll be there,” and worse, “I’ll call you later,” and then just … not.  Here’s a quote from A Concise History of the Middle East:

    Pre-Islamic poetry embodied the Arab code of virtue, the muruwwah: bravery in battle, patience in misfortune, persistence in revenge (the only justice possible at a time when no governments existed), protection of the weak, defiance toward the strong, hospitality to the visitor (even a total stranger), generosity to the poor, loyalty to the tribe, and fidelity in keeping promises. These were the moral principles that people needed in order to survive in the desert, and the verses helped to fix the muruwwah in their minds.”

    I imagine that back when bartering was more common than currency, keeping one’s promise was crucial. If your neighbor promised you dates or lambs or milk for next month, and didn’t give them to you, you could starve!  If your brother in law promised to journey with you several villages over, and flaked out, you could be susceptible to raiders. Today, the millions of casual broken promises we’re all used to are annoying and can screw us up a bit, but they won’t likely cause death from starvation or lack of protection.

    To give another one’s word - and to keep it, always: has it gone the way of chivalry? To be replaced with what: the art of making excuses?

    Popularity: 15% [?]

    Feb

    1

    Death in a Classroom

    Filed Under college studies, history, rants | 4 Comments

    I had no idea that the history of the Middle East could be so dull. I say this as we enter the final two hours of today’s class - (it’s 24 hours of lecture over three days). The professor is exceedingly nice, but his style of teaching is not engaging, the syllabus was unclear (and inaccurate), what he’s telling us is all written (better) in the book he assigned (Goldschmidt and Davidson’s A Concise History of the Middle East), and he does not invite any kind of critical thinking about the subject.

    Right now I have a powerful need to graduate, and get my frickin degree, so that I can teach Islamic history!

    Maybe it’s just the hormones talking. I do seem prone to feelings of rage and impatience recently. But in all seriousness, this classroom feels like the Nazgûl passed through here. Jeezus.

    *****

    Side note: there is a classmate here who looks almost exactly like Chalice Chick. They even have the same voice. This is the most interesting thing about my class.

    Popularity: 15% [?]

    Jan

    11

    More on Money as Debt (from the 18th C.)

    Filed Under books, capitalism, class, college studies, happiness, history, questions, quotes | 3 Comments

    Never say never, indeed. It’s nearly 4 in the morning, and I’m delighting over pamphlets from 1720 about an ill-managed public land bank experiment in Massachusetts. Having just watched Money as Debt sheds some light on the subject, as did the 1953 article The Land-Bank System in the American Colonies (courtesy of JSTOR).

    The best thing is that my professor (the class is Muckraking: Activists’ Role in History) provided us with a format that links passages from the Colman pamphlet to another that refutes it (by a fellow named Wigglesworth).

    Colman is in despair about the middle class landowners who have taken out paper currency loans against their estates through the public land banks; they are now in dire straits because there isn’t enough paper money in circulation to pay off the debts with interest. While I sympathize with Colman (but disagree with his faith in the private bank), one of Wigglesworth’s responses is what I want to note here (emphasis is mine):

    For it is easie to see, that if we had never trusted one another, the worst Husbands of us all could not have spent more than we earnt ; for when we must pay ready Mony for every thing we buy, we can’t buy more than we earn Mony to pay for; unless we borrow Mony at Interest to support our Extravagance; a thing which but few would have been so foolish as to have done. Indeed when Debts are already contracted, Do but set up a Bank to borrow of, and we have found from sad experience already, that men will be ready enough to mortgage their Estates for mony to pay their Debts. But (I say again) where Debts were not before contracted, few men would have been so foolish, as to borrow Mony at Interest to provide needless Fineries and Gew-Gaws for their Families. The Folly of so few could not have affected the Country.

    Oh wow; does any of this sound familiar?

    I am fascinated by these papers, and also by the fact that in our society today - 290 years later - we are encouraged as a people to buy more in order to spur the economy, to take out more loans, to spend, and spend, and spend. That is our “role” as consumer-citizens.  And yet, as individuals, we are shamed and chastised if unable to pay on our debts; then we are irresponsible, foolish, and greedy.

    And while that may be the case (though, not necessarily), what then, is the vice? Is the vice to borrow money (at interest) in the first place, for things we can get by without? Or is the vice to fall into a situation where one cannot pay on the money borrowed?

    Popularity: 35% [?]

    Dec

    27

    Unburying My Head

    Filed Under current affairs, history, islam, politics, sadness | Leave a Comment

    Not being much of a news watcher, I learned about Benazir Bhutto’s assassination from a casual blogger in Brooklyn. For the first few minutes, I ran searches in Google, trying to confirm that it was just a prank or rumor, but it seems to be real.

    For a while now I’ve been feeling a growing bemusement about what so-called Muslims are doing to each other. Earlier this year, I stopped listening to reports about bombings across the African and Asian continents - and slaughters in Iraq. As a former Muslim I am dismayed - and wondering what conversations Muslims are having about these atrocities - in this post 9/11, post-Taliban, post-Saddam, post-Arafat “Muslim world.”

    I’ve had the displeasure of interacting with a few very frightening “Muslims” who expressed support for suicide bombings and such things - and this was pre-9/11. But even then they seemed peripheral. Surely, as a typical Muslim in the US, such people are anomalies and weirdos - they were as central to my life as neo-Nazi clans are to the average American. But gradually these people have become less peripheral; they are changing the agenda. Hell, they are the agenda.

    For a long time I just wanted to take a break from all things politically Muslim. But now it’s definitely time to get my head out of the sand. I decided last week, while registering for my Winter classes, to take History of the Middle East (in Spring there is History of US-Middle East relations). There is a lot I don’t understand and don’t know.; lots of blanks to fill in. I’m sure a few courses won’t teach me all there is, but it feels more and more necessary to have some grasp of what’s going on. I may not be able to do anything more than have an informed opinion, but that’s got to feel better than just being at a complete loss.

    Popularity: 20% [?]

    Jul

    7

    The Last Best Hope on Earth?

    Filed Under ao resources, books, current affairs, history, questions, quotes, race | 2 Comments

    From State of Emergency:

    … if racism means a belief in the superiority of the white race and its inherent right to rule other peoples, American history is full of such men. Indeed, few great men could be found in America or Europe before World War II who did not accept white supremacy as natural.

    In Pat Buchanan’s book, State of Emergency: the Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, he writes that what ‘paralyzes’ Bush and other Americans from repulsing the waves of illegal immigrants (or undocumented workers, as some prefer) is white guilt.

    He reminds us that Eisenhower engaged in Operation Wetback without any trouble to his conscience. Nobody called him a racist (or perhaps I say, no one white called him a racist). Buchanan goes on to add:

    Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, we did not feel any need to apologize for America’s past, but took pride in all she had accomplished. African-Americans shared that pride. That there were sins in our past, no one denied. But Americans did not obsess over wrongs done by previous generations, for, compared with other nations, America merited the gratitude of mankind.

    He then describes a “disease” that took root in the 1960s, beginning in Europe, in which left-wing intellectuals began to loathe all things European, seeing their ancestors as “irredeemably racist, imperialist, and genocidal.” By the end of the 60s, Buchanan says, this illness had spread to the US, with the result that baby boomers grew up mired in guilt, “indoctrinated to believe America is fatally flawed - racist, sexist, nativist, homophobic … many baby boomers bought into its core doctrine: America must confess her sins, seek absolution, do penance, and make eternal restitution.”

    I found this really interesting, given recent discussions here and in other UU blogs on race and the founding fathers. The lightbulb over my head is brightening a little.

    It was also interesting to contrast Buchanan’s take on ‘not obsessing’ over the past with James Loewen’s recounting of the Reconstruction, and the period of 1890-1940 - the time he refers to as “the nadir of US race relations.” This was when the anti-racist efforts of white and black folks in the generation following the Civil War were essentially rolled back.

    Earlier today, I was telling Michael (the DH) about this nadir of US race relations; and then about the expulsions of the Chinese from small towns all across the northwest and west (at one point in the late 1800s, 1/3 of Idahoans were of Chinese descent); and then the rising up again of the KKK; and the changing of the story of why the Civil War was fought (it really was about slavery, not states’ rights); and the terrorizing and destruction of scores of black towns by angry white folks; and the creation of hundreds of anti-black laws - in places like New York, where at one point 1/3 of all merchant marines were black until limitations were placed on the percentage of black sailors allowed on ships; all the way until today where communities of people of color are targeted for “revitalization” (I just came from New Orleans where I saw this first hand).

    I told all of these things to Michael, and his response - especially to the murders and driving out of Chinese in Rock Springs, Wyoming - was, “Whoa! No wonder Pat Buchanan and the other ultra-conservatives are so afraid! They don’t want this to happen to them!”

    Is that really what this is about … fear of being destroyed? Buchanan’s main points so far are that:

    He writes, “We may call our ancestors racists, as we trumpet our moral superiority. But history may yet mark ours as the generation of fools that threw away the last best hope on earth.”

    This reminds me of a question Ms. Kitty recently asked. I think there is a lot at stake in the answer(s) - for all Americans. It leads me to wonder, “if the answer to Ms Kitty’s question were yes, would we (americans) change?”

    Popularity: 17% [?]

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