Thank you Jamie, this is an intriguing and helpful way to look at this current crisis. Your essay made me think about my own current situation. I’m just your average middle aged American male of Italian descent, trying to tactfully navigate this intellectually volatile landscape. I’m currently in a relationship with a converted Jewish woman who is fairly serious about her beliefs. I’ve been to Shabbat dinners, Temple for Passover and even to an AIPAC fund raiser. I’ve been introduced to dozens of her friends and a few Rabbis. Interestingly, my partner was raised in a Muslim home. Her parents and siblings are Muslim and they all live here in the States. Her aged parents live in Houston and she travels there often to take care of them, she loves them. The Jewish people I’ve been associating with are kind, generous and loving people who want to make this world, this life a better place. Also, I’ve meant members of her Muslim family who also showed me kindness. I was raised a fundamental Christian. My parents belonged to the Jehovah’s Witness cult. I left over 20 years ago, but it gave me a good, working knowledge of the Scriptures. My understanding is that Jews and Arabs are the same people, coming from Abraham. The Hagar/Ishmael story, when God cursed that side of the family, allegedly. Bibles words, not mine. I wish there was more discussion about the fantastical origins of this current rift, maybe there would be less knee jerk reactions. Anyway, I could ramble on and on. My point is in my observation most religious people, if they don’t take their ancient writings literally, are quite reasonable.
Oh boy this is good - and I'm glad I saved it for a quiet moment when I had time and space to think it through. I really love the analysis of how different ways of perceiving time create different understandings of a situation. This could be applied usefully in so many conflicts. It's also really interesting to think about how conflicts arise based on how one tends to think about time. (I'm thinking about a conflict in my family earlier this year that had a similar flavor - each of us looking through our preferred time lens and talking past each other while causing each other pain.)
This is helpful, thanks. I personally think we’re witnessing a genocide in Gaza, in both a legal and moral sense, and set against that viewpoint it feels uncomfortable to intellectualise the divergences of view. However, your Temporics analysis is a powerful way to explain why others might view the situation differently from me. The closest parallel explanatory framework that comes to mind is Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind, where he gets into underlying values of moral intuitions and helps to show why people disagree. I notice I orient to the issue diachronically mostly, with the other two co-arising but somehow less salient. I’m less sure about the ease with which they can all be seen to be relevant; it’s clear that they all matter, but I’m not sure how you develop this analysis from the contextual to the jurisprudential, or what kind of meta ethics you’d need to arbitrate among these temporal heuristics. However, I do think this simple set of distinctions helps to explain divergence in moral intuitions and that’s a valuable contribution. 🙏
Of course, "his story" is always fun to tinker with. All things chronological are titillating. Absolutely surreal melting clocks. Still, for an even broader context, we interrogate the social system and global culture we have now and examine the preconditions and inherent human characteristics that led to civilization eight thousand years ago. Yes, that book. We are well-trained consumers and fit right into our current Fossil Capital way of life. Soon, we will have forgotten about this episode of Middle East wars, and circumstances will dictate that the people of the Levant be climate refugees. We are all banal Accelerationists and don't even know it. I'll see you at the Super Bowl or on the dance floor.
I agree in principle and cautiously with your assertion about humanity. But your quasi-sophisticated analysis unfortunately adds to the confusion, hence contributes to Israel’s narrative that things are ‘complicated’.
Settler colonialism is no more complicated than a home invasion. Israel has only one aim, to remove every last Palestinian from all of historic Palestine, and replace them with Jews. I’m from Israel, born and raised there. I’m fluent in Hebrew. Jewish-Israeli psychology is cult-like. It is based on the premise that Jews are not safe except with their own ‘kind’, that another holocaust, or something very much like it, is imminent, and that only an exclusively Jewish state can protect Jews from annihilation. There are times, especially where there is abuse in the context of a gross imbalance of power when we need to take sides. We have to dismantle the power structure, and protect victims from the perpetrators. We can psychoanalyse and philosophise later. I don’t think you know Israel or its history very well. There are Zionist settler-colonial Jews in this story. But Arabs/Palestinians are only in it because they happened to be living on the land the Zionists coveted for their exclusively Jewish state. It could have been Martians there, the Zionists would have done the same as they have been doing over the past seventy-five years. There was never a problem between Jews and Arabs. There was only settler-colonialism. I recommend Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappé, before you write anything else on this topic.
One of your best! Love the multi dimensional view. Truly one of the world’s Wicked problems.
Thank you Jamie, this is an intriguing and helpful way to look at this current crisis. Your essay made me think about my own current situation. I’m just your average middle aged American male of Italian descent, trying to tactfully navigate this intellectually volatile landscape. I’m currently in a relationship with a converted Jewish woman who is fairly serious about her beliefs. I’ve been to Shabbat dinners, Temple for Passover and even to an AIPAC fund raiser. I’ve been introduced to dozens of her friends and a few Rabbis. Interestingly, my partner was raised in a Muslim home. Her parents and siblings are Muslim and they all live here in the States. Her aged parents live in Houston and she travels there often to take care of them, she loves them. The Jewish people I’ve been associating with are kind, generous and loving people who want to make this world, this life a better place. Also, I’ve meant members of her Muslim family who also showed me kindness. I was raised a fundamental Christian. My parents belonged to the Jehovah’s Witness cult. I left over 20 years ago, but it gave me a good, working knowledge of the Scriptures. My understanding is that Jews and Arabs are the same people, coming from Abraham. The Hagar/Ishmael story, when God cursed that side of the family, allegedly. Bibles words, not mine. I wish there was more discussion about the fantastical origins of this current rift, maybe there would be less knee jerk reactions. Anyway, I could ramble on and on. My point is in my observation most religious people, if they don’t take their ancient writings literally, are quite reasonable.
Damn Jamie. Thank you. Really insightful - and helpful. Glad you landed on the Friedman piece. He speaks for me.
Oh boy this is good - and I'm glad I saved it for a quiet moment when I had time and space to think it through. I really love the analysis of how different ways of perceiving time create different understandings of a situation. This could be applied usefully in so many conflicts. It's also really interesting to think about how conflicts arise based on how one tends to think about time. (I'm thinking about a conflict in my family earlier this year that had a similar flavor - each of us looking through our preferred time lens and talking past each other while causing each other pain.)
This is helpful, thanks. I personally think we’re witnessing a genocide in Gaza, in both a legal and moral sense, and set against that viewpoint it feels uncomfortable to intellectualise the divergences of view. However, your Temporics analysis is a powerful way to explain why others might view the situation differently from me. The closest parallel explanatory framework that comes to mind is Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind, where he gets into underlying values of moral intuitions and helps to show why people disagree. I notice I orient to the issue diachronically mostly, with the other two co-arising but somehow less salient. I’m less sure about the ease with which they can all be seen to be relevant; it’s clear that they all matter, but I’m not sure how you develop this analysis from the contextual to the jurisprudential, or what kind of meta ethics you’d need to arbitrate among these temporal heuristics. However, I do think this simple set of distinctions helps to explain divergence in moral intuitions and that’s a valuable contribution. 🙏
Exceptional. A balm for the chaos.
Of course, "his story" is always fun to tinker with. All things chronological are titillating. Absolutely surreal melting clocks. Still, for an even broader context, we interrogate the social system and global culture we have now and examine the preconditions and inherent human characteristics that led to civilization eight thousand years ago. Yes, that book. We are well-trained consumers and fit right into our current Fossil Capital way of life. Soon, we will have forgotten about this episode of Middle East wars, and circumstances will dictate that the people of the Levant be climate refugees. We are all banal Accelerationists and don't even know it. I'll see you at the Super Bowl or on the dance floor.
Big Gratitude for this one Jamie! Considering all perspectives/approaches and yet not bypassing a damn thing, oof! Thank. You!
Very thought-provoking piece. Thanks.
Such a useful analysis, and a helpful lens to use in all complex scenarios.
Thanks for taking the time to untangle the situation. It’s helpful while grappling with all the points of view. Great article!
I agree in principle and cautiously with your assertion about humanity. But your quasi-sophisticated analysis unfortunately adds to the confusion, hence contributes to Israel’s narrative that things are ‘complicated’.
Settler colonialism is no more complicated than a home invasion. Israel has only one aim, to remove every last Palestinian from all of historic Palestine, and replace them with Jews. I’m from Israel, born and raised there. I’m fluent in Hebrew. Jewish-Israeli psychology is cult-like. It is based on the premise that Jews are not safe except with their own ‘kind’, that another holocaust, or something very much like it, is imminent, and that only an exclusively Jewish state can protect Jews from annihilation. There are times, especially where there is abuse in the context of a gross imbalance of power when we need to take sides. We have to dismantle the power structure, and protect victims from the perpetrators. We can psychoanalyse and philosophise later. I don’t think you know Israel or its history very well. There are Zionist settler-colonial Jews in this story. But Arabs/Palestinians are only in it because they happened to be living on the land the Zionists coveted for their exclusively Jewish state. It could have been Martians there, the Zionists would have done the same as they have been doing over the past seventy-five years. There was never a problem between Jews and Arabs. There was only settler-colonialism. I recommend Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappé, before you write anything else on this topic.