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02695: Re: [WDDM] Chocolate minarets and Multikulti (for Joe)

From: Joseph Hammer <parrhesiajoe(at)gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 13:44:10 -0700
Subject: Re: [WDDM] Chocolate minarets and Multikulti (for Joe)

Perhaps it is more true to apply the principle that you take as common understanding what you hear from the most vocal members of a group. I have met fundamentalists of all flavors. When they exist in a compulsively oriented hierarchical structure, their opinions are the only ones that are heard. They are parrotted relentlessly by the vocal and weak minded...

In an American mosque, when you interact with them in a free forum... when you talk to them outside the confines of the dome of dogmas that surrounds every church, you find something quite enlightening.

In church as a youngster, there was one way you spoke inside church on Sunday... and there was another set of beliefs you actually held dear, internal values. Those are what you uncover from friends or close aquaintances. They preached hellfire and brimstone for homosexuals at my church, but outside the Sunday walls, people just weren't that interested in the hatred. They "played along", because that is what the social morays told them to do.

The examples of this are endless. You could find them at a communist rally in 1900s russia, 1930s germany, 1600s rome... in fact, everywhere where belief in a social doctrine grants safety, communion or material advantage. This is group think and mob mentality, and it has less to do with any particular religion or dogma than it has to do with the structure of power and the effective conveyance of influence.

It is the social hierarchy that prepetuates this nonsense, and it is the acceptance of majoritarianism that grants it destructive power.

Personal experience is a good guage, but it must be one component in our understanding. When we experience people acting in a certain way, we must dig down and figure out why. We are all built of the same stuff. Even if 90% of the people in a room want peace, we will not announce that desire if it puts us or our families at risk. The task is to remove that risk, to grant anonymity of opinion, so that opinion can confer no advantage or disadvantage on the answerer.

We rarely achieve this state, so we rarely get true opinions. We get rhetoric and dogma.

Go to a mosque in Canada, the Western US or Australia... make some friends, and ask them about their friends "Back Home" and their opinions. You do NOT find a bunch of fanatics chanting for Sharia law. You find humans, mostly seeking their faith for community, peace with mortality, and answers to unanswerable questions.

It is RARE to find someone who wants to shout "down with infidels"... but you can be sure, they are the first ones to stand up and shout. These conditions can make us fool ourselves about the world around us, unless we are VERY careful about the environments and conditions of our survey of popular sentiment.

Most people in the south US in 1776 were against slavery, according to surveys at the time.
Germany was one of the most active places for anti-defamation leagues right before hitler came to power.
So many things that a casual study of the surroundings would tell us to be true are fallacies.

Chief among these are... A majority of muslims do not want to kill you or subjugate you or convert you... AND Open, secure, anonymous, direct democracy is the only way that this majority of muslims will be able to state their opinion without fear of retribution from the WACK JOB FUNDAMENTALISTS that we are all afraid of. If you ask muslims to elect someone, they may very well elect a NUT JOB. If you give them the power to vote without funnelling their opinions through the LOUDEST PERSON in their group, then we can live in harmony.

Never elect someone who seeks power... perhaps that means, never elect anyone.

"Perhaps, Harry, the only ones fit to wield power are those who have never sought it" - Albus Dumbledore

Peace,
Joe



On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 1:05 PM, <Georges Metanomski> wrote:
wddm@world-wide-democracy.net

--- On Thu, 10/21/10, <Joseph Hammer> wrote:

There is something relevant in all this, Lata. I like to read posts like this, to understand Georges, and in so doing, to understand myself. He believes what he reads and sees on tv.
============
G:
To keep the record straight:
I don't have TV. I mainly write and don't read, except Internet news.
I published lately the book

SECOND ENLIGHTENMENT
TOME I
Einstein's Physical Reality
and Relativistic Dialectic

which stems from my 4 years research in Einstein's team, took about
40 years to write, leaving little time for reading.

My social and literary writings stem from direct experience:
I participated in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I was Israeli commandos, in
which quality I was court martialed for knocking out a superior
officer in defense of a Palestinian, whom he abused. At Haifa Uni
I had hundreds of Arab students and colleague, with whom I
contributed to creation of the peace movement. I also had horrible
experiences with Muslim fundamentalists and their Sharia, in Israel,
in Germany, France and the UK.

Just to keep the record straight.

Georges.


.





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