Sunday, September 12, 2004

The Gordian Knot on the Mobius Strip.

The Mobius Strip does sound like a land area in Israel, or somewhere north of the Red Sea or maybe a little southeast of the Valley of Kings. Then again, it also sounds like one of those places you can find the naughty girls in a large city; a place named after some location they emigrated from.

Sometimes I think of the Mobius Strip as being America itself as it moves in and out of the unseen and always reappearing slightly, though imperceptibally different. Since time warps and as the speed increases, the warp ribbons in a sort of accordion fashion things do appear, at this juncture, to be getting bent out of shape. This assumes there's some template to begin with.

Perhaps the Mobius Strip is more like a Zeitgeist that moves according to some unknown formula through the West Bank in Gaza. It's here, there, everywhere that the eye moves until the eye lands upon it and it is then somewhere else. It is only stationary as the eye moves toward it and it is gone when the eye focuses.

We could surely call the Arab/Israeli situation a Gordion Knot. Since I was a child, this tale of Alexander the Great has remained with me as an indelible lesson. Alexander apparently had that David Bowie thing with two different eyes so maybe he could see the whole of the Mobius Strip as well.

At this location HERE you can see a map of contested areas in the Arab/Israeli dispute. There's something I don't get here. It appears to me that the Israeli's, or a portion of the Israeli government, are working to dismantle 4 settlements- so noted on the map. What I don't get is that there appears to be around one hundred settlements there. The settlements to be withdrawn 'appear' to be a truly ludicrous amount in the face of what remains. What possible gain can be achieved by this? Why bother? Why would something as meager as this 'seems' to be even be under discussion? It changes nothing. Double, triple the amount and it changes nothing.

It is as if someone objected to my walking around naked and so I compromised by putting a hat on; so it does 'seem' in any case. On the face of it I do believe we would be better to rename the location the Mobius Strip.

I believe the reason that the tale of The Gordion Knot moved me so is because it is a method that I usually bring to dealing with problems. I'm not the sort who likes to become involved in the intricate untangling of inextricably wound threads. I don't fancy combing out dreadlocks, nor am I at all certain of the result. My reaction would be the shave the head, cut to the chase, cut the knot.

I've heard it said that Israel has the 4th most powerful military in the world. This is saying something when you consider the world's other major players. The idea that even the collective and focused efforts of all of the Arab armies could defeat it is wooly thinking.

If Israel returned all of the territories today and declared a Palestinian State they would be in no greater danger than now. The only weapon possessed by the Arabs is that of the suicide bombers and it is effective in its limited fashion simply because of the difficulty of defensing against it. Nothing will ever change this according to present circumstance.

Some might argue that it is just tactically easier to defend Israel with the present setup. However, the present setup is the source of the attacks. I know that the Palestinians would be so immediately caught up in celebration of statehood that all thought of violence against Israel would diminish to nothing.

Nearly all of the violence worldwide, being waged by Islamic fighters and Mossad units would lose motivation in the light of a return of territories. The pressure gauge would fall to near zero. The air would go out of the balloon and the swell of hope and release all across the globe would send angels with trumpets before the Sun.

I recognize that a faction within Israel has no intention of returning this land. They want more actually. Let's face it, even seen from a design standpoint, that 'bite' in the Eastern border doesn't look good. They'd much rather have a symmetrical map balance. I realize that all appearances of negotiation, promises and the like are fatuous. This is a game with no possibility of resolution. It's just a game with no end. It's a Mobius Strip and it's a Gordion Knot. And it would take an Alexander to resolve it.

Let us assume that all of the men and women in all of the countries interested in and affected by this festering circumstance are intelligent. Let's assume intelligence is a pre-requisite for the minutiae of international diplomacy and jurisprudence. Let's assume that all of the peoples represented by these peoples would all sleep safer at night if this situation were resolved. Yet the situation is not resolved. As with any problem that has features below those features that can be perceived on the surface we need to dig deeper.

It seems that the ongoing strife and it's effect globally must serve some purpose. The obvious people are making money from it but is that all? Maybe this war in Iraq and the situation in Israel, the attempted pacification of Afghanistan and the sure to follow problems with Iran and Syria, maybe there is a schematic at work that intends a result we can't really see unless we really look.

Maybe this whole thing is just an industry. Maybe war itself is an industry. Maybe conflict and struggle are critical to powerful economies. Maybe we can't do without them. Maybe you make more money from illegal drugs than you will ever make from legal drugs. Maybe the lack of health care is more economically productive than total health coverage. Maybe the pressure of life and the ubiquity of bad food and liquor and cigarettes and all of the health concerns raised are an important feature of the economy. Maybe everything is the way it is because of the profits that are to be had.

It's possible there isn't a sincere thing in this world that isn't somehow absorbed into the money machine. Varying quality of product certainly exists but that may be all.
So then it may be possible that the world was set up to be destroyed to begin with. For all of our altruism and hope of a better world, it may be that this is the only world we will ever have in this location. We will have this world always and we will have our hope always and it will look better and it will look worse but the more it changes the more it will remain the same.

Maybe the whole thing is just about what you live and fight and die for. Maybe results don't count at all. Maybe all that counts is what happens to you inside and all of that is determined by what you hold dear. "There where your treasures are..."

Maybe we shouldn't worry about results, maybe we shouldn't worry at all. Maybe the whole thing is fixed and you are just here to decide what you want from it. Maybe all of your tears, your struggles and your dangling, reaching hopes are just to convince you that there is nothing worth having that you don't already possess. Maybe...

I suppose you can wander this Mobius Strip forever, after all, that's what the design suggests. And you'll never unravel the Gordion Knot. The whole point was always that it had to be cut. Implicit in this is the idea that you will never have it until you cut it assunder and that it will then cease to be whatever it was you were reaching for. I can't go past this and continue to use this medium. I hope you will travel with me now though, into that realm where further exchange is still possible.

"Compassion is a weapon from the sky against being dead" Lao Tzu

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

good one-keep going-and?
the haven





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