Of cells, people, tribes, nations and tumors

 * Healthy animal cells submit to signals bridling their acquisitive and reproductive drives, so as not to become tumors.  A society is analogous to an animal most of whose cells resist bridling and create tumors in every organ.  That is, most individuals of a society seek wealth, power and offspring.  Eventually, every normal family or clan is a tumor to the society.  A corporation is a super tumor, required by law to acquire and expand, and this is often augmented by political corruption.  Likewise every tribe, religion and nation is a tumor to the neighboring tribes, religions and nations, especially where resources limit prosperity.  These tumor-like behaviors are directed by primitive drives in the brains of all animals.  Perhaps it should be said that a society is analogous to the collection of microbes in every ounce of fertile soil, all producing antibiotics to kill unrelated microbes.  All of the above is in service of respective DNAs.
 * European tribes exploited, displaced and/or dominated their neighbors for centuries.  They colonized distant lands cancer-like.  Now, non-European tribes formerly colonized by European tribes are metastasizing throughout Europe.  Russia is pushing into Georgia and Ukraine and is eyeing Baltic states.  Israel is a permanent tumor to Palestinians and various middle-east peoples.  Anglo-America expanded tumor like throughout today’s US, first stealing from and eradicating natives, then stealing from Mexicans, much of this fortified by slavery.  Now Latin-Americans are metastasizing back.  Whites and blacks are still unreconciled.  ISIS is dominating and displacing inhabitants of Syria and Iraq and parts of Africa.  Longstanding borders suddenly seem arbitrary as incompatible tribes find themselves bound in sovereign/subject relations.
 * Observers of the above dynamics typically cheer for or justify whichever side of a conflict resembles them most, not necessarily the side that is more ethical or deserving.  There is much to regret about the competitive gerbil wheel that humanity is on.  It is associated with gratuitous pain, harm, fear and waste of resources that should be kept for future generations.
 * Civilization attempts to bridle those primitive drives that perpetuate conflicts between individuals, between tribes and between nations.  Some of us contemplate a more satisfactory civilization, one based on evidence, reason and noble aspirations.  It should be fun to discuss that civilization’s specifications and the path to it from that which we have.  What about agreement among leaders of all kinds and everywhere on the need for self-restraint of acquisitive and reproductive drives?

Appeal of Jihad to Western Muslims

* In his Mar-1 Letter to the Tennessean Editor, Mark Goldstein  rants against a Jan-24 Saritha Prabhu Tennessean column that discussed factors enhancing the appeal of Jihad to Muslim youth.  He begins with a dismissive caricature of her column.  The rest of his letter is a series of rhetorical questions the expected answers to which associate Islam with violence.
* It is indeed shocking to find that some young people in the 21st century would be attracted to a group that beheaded and burned alive its helpless prisoners most of whom were never its enemies.  It is discouraging that young people in our midst would join in ethnic cleansing aimed eventually at us.  Such disrespect for and intolerance of those judged as infidels is incompatible with a civilization worthy of the name.
* Goldstein seems too opinionated for an objective or curious reading of Prabhu’s column.  Perhaps he has forgotten the turmoil of the adolescent mind, the antisocial fantasies that bubble up, the pleasure of mischievous company, the remoteness of eventual life satisfactions, the pain of indolence, the minefield of temptations–and, for a Muslim kid, the addition of special restrictions and humiliations.  These conditions with the provocations listed by Prabhu can account for numerous Jihadist choices.
* We could all use some modesty, considering that adherents to every monotheistic religion have engaged in religiously justified atrocities.

   *   *   Addendum:
* Prabhu listed the following provocations:  1) Iraq invasion, 2) Abu Ghraib, 3) Gitmo, 4) Drone strikes in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan seen as indiscriminate (and cowardly), 5) Palestinian suffering (and hopelessness), 6) Specific disrespect of Islam.
* To that one could add:  7) The Crusades,  8) 1953 CIA overthrow of duly elected government in Iran, 9) Our national pride in "Shock and Awe", 10) Guarantees by our government to protect autocratic regimes in the middle east and elsewhere, 11) Hateful treatment of Arabs/Muslims in our popular culture (films, TV), 12) Unemployment in Muslim enclaves in western countries.