Folk who know me know that I'm feelin' the Bern. I've had some good conversations with friends who definitely don't feel the same and some have raised interesting critiques of Bernie Sanders. One friend said that Bernie should not be president because he simply doesn't understand how the world works. I disagreed and responded that perhaps it is not that he doesn't understand how the world works but instead he is offering a different paradigm as to how it should or could work.
Recently I read a really fascinating book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Of all of the ideas in the book, the one that really caught my imagination is that everything works because of our unique ability to imagine a paradigm and then agree upon it. Those imagined realities enable large groups of humans to work together, to trade with one another, to form societies. Basically the author, says that there is nothing in human society that does not depend upon those imagined realities upon which we have agreed to agree. And those imagined realities can be changed.I was thinking about one of those imagined realities the other day when an editorial in our local paper complained that the problems with the dollar began when its value was cut off from anything real - i.e. gold. But, the value of gold is also tied to nothing "real." The book uses gold as an illustration of imagined realities. While the metal does have some iteresting properties, there is no reason beyond a cultural agreement that it should hold any more value than some other metal, many of which are significantly more useful. Ineed, when the Spaniards arrived in the new world, searching for gold, the native people were confused. Gold is pretty, they thought, but too soft for any important uses. They imagined much lower value for that soft yellow metal.
Back to Bernie... there is no reason beyond the fact that we have all imagined the world as it is that it should remain that way. We have decided that some people should be incredibly wealthy while others struggle and even die from want. We have decided that a freakishly tall, athletic man should make tons of money for entertaining us with incredible feats that we cannot accomplish while the one who picks our food, bent over in the hot sun in a field day after day, struggles. Why? The list could go on.
Now Bernie is not calling for crazy changes. Indeed, many of the changes he envisioned are already part of the imagined reality in much of the world but it is a different reality than the one we've adopted together in the US at this point. That is why he is revolutionary. That is why he challenges the powers that be. That is why I'm feelin' the Bern. I want to see a new paradigm and the one he is offering is a lot more like the one I believe that God imagines for us than the one we currently have.
1 comment:
The international phase of the first Arab-Israeli war took place after a UN General Assembly resolution recommending the partition of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states and Israel’s subsequent declaration of its status as an independent state on May 14, 1948. Cheap Jordan Shoes,Transjordanian forces were small but well-trained and professional. Abdullah initially assigned them the mission of taking control of all territory that had been allocated lor the Arab state in the partition of Palestine. The British were informed of this plan by General Glubb with British foreign Secretary Bevin responding, “It seems the obvious thing to do ... but do not go and invade the area allocated to the Jews.”, Later, the Jordanians departed from this plan and became involved in heavy fighting in Jerusalem, Air Jordan Shoes, which was projected to have been an international city under the UN resolution. This change in plan led to an increased use of the Arab Legion in exactly the sort of fighting that Glubb had hoped to avoid.
The Arab Legion commander considered the Jewish militia (Hagana) and strike force (Palmach) to be adept at urban combat in ways that his Bedouin troops were not. Unsurprisingly, both Israeli and Transjordanian casualties were heavy in the subsequent fighting within the city. King Abdullah claims to have refocused his efforts on Jerusalem in response to urgent appeals for rescue from Arabs living there, and thus directed his military away from a variety of more feasible missions. These statements probably do not reflect the full story. Abdullah is also known to have felt a special emotional tie to Jerusalem and may have believed he had a family responsibility to defend the Muslim holy sites from Israeli capture. As the fighting went forward, Retro Jordans, it quickly became apparent that Jerusalem would not be internationalized at the end of the war, and one side or the other would establish control over the area through military action.
Post a Comment