I got into a very interesting on-line conversation about ISIS today that ended up in a quite illuminating place. It started from an article about how the Archbishop of Canterbury has joined with Jewish and Muslim leaders to declare #WeAreAllHuman, and express religiously-based opposition to ISIS. The convo went like this: ********************************* Me: When your only tool is a hammer, you see every problem as a nail. When your only tool is religion, you see all problems as sectarian. ISIS is about raw, naked, political power, backed up by irresistible force and a complete lack of empathy. This is not a religious problem, any more than the Israel/Gaza conflict is religious. Its all about power. Religion is just a convenient rallying-point for the supporters of both sides. As it has always been. Other Person: ISIS is not about religion? ISIS is about creating an Islamic theocracy. A theocracy is not just raw, naked political power. It is a religious dictatorship. In an ISIS style Islamic caliphate, idolators will be killed, and people of the book (Jews and Christians) will have to pay a special tax, leave their gates open in case Muslim travelers need a place to stay, send their kids to Islamic schools, refrain from repairing their churches and temples, and, if struck by a Muslim, refrain from striking back. Thats not about religion? Me: Thats my take on it, yes. The envelope is addressed in religious language, but the message inside is one of pure power. Now, the majority of ISIS followers may think its about religion, but thats not my view. IMO the real point is the effective and irresistible exercise of power. In the USA its exercised by corporations, in the ME its religions. Peel back the surface and you find the same power principles at work. Other Person: Not clear why you hold this view. Corporations in the US do not seek political power for its own sake. They do it to make money. Similarly, ISIS and other religious crazies do not seek political power for its own sake. They do it to establish their religion. All the evidence points at this. What is your evidence to the contrary? Me: Systems seek power in order to prevail over competitors. The principle is closely related to natural selection, and is one of the foundations of life. The rest of it is just the stories we tell ourselves about the reasons for the behaviour. I view human organizations of all kinds as ecosystem components, where the ecosystem is the broader society or civilization within which they operate. The use of religion by ISIS simply maximizes their ability to acquire and project power. I see this in exactly the same terms as an American corporation using the quasi-religious justification of free enterprise as their cover for buying politicians to craft favourable laws that increase their own economic power. Politics is a story, religion is a story, economics is a story. The underlying motivation is the same - to prevail over competitors. ISIS is just a little more brazen and open about it. Other Person: Ah! You have a monistic Theory of Everything. Thats a kind of philosophical illness. Im not here to do philosophical therapy. See ya! ********************************* I suddenly realized that they had hit on something very important with that diagnosis. Not that either monism or TOEs are necessarily philosophical illnesses. But I had to admit that the thrust of my exploration for the last year and a half - looking for the deep root cause of human collective behavior in a single physical principle of the universe - has been shaped at every step by my personal monism. All of which causes me to ask what is important to me about this search. Is it really about explaining human behavior? Or is it more about finding ways to express my monism in the relational, dualistic world of forms and appearances - while still retaining a thin veneer of intellectual respectability?
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 18:35:20 +0000
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