Thanksgiving Ceasefire

Haven't checked whether ceasefire between Israel and Gaza has held. Afraid.

 I suspect, like many others, I find my sympathies split between innocents on both sides of wars ... for,
indeed, most participants in the product of war (its death and devastation) are innocents ... At least innocent of the propensity to turn hurt to anger to hate to rational decision to exhaust that hate on all others who are 'like' the persons who induced the hurt.

I often in my mind go back to what some feminist thinkers think of as Freud's negative comments about women's uber-Ich (conscience), about women's inability, according to Freud, to make a purely rational decision to offer up hot and cold retribution without being effected by feelings. Wouldn't it be nice if our generals had just a bit of that womanly conscience?

Over the years, I've spoken a number of times about Jonah's lesson on the need to feel at the hands of his God. The teaching moment doesn't come till the end of the story. I suspect this audience knows it but I like telling it ....

God wants Jonah to warn the non-Jewish dwellers of Nineveh (Mosul) to repent or get the shit kicked out of them ... Divine wrath. Jonah the Son of Amitai (maybe best translated as Jonah who came out of Truthtelling) takes the morning boat to Tarshish for fear that if the Ninevites repent, it won't look good for HIS non repented brothers and sisters. The whole thing with the big fish and the big storm happens and the big fish spits him back up on the road to Nineveh. Vocatur atque non vocatur, Deis aderit ... Beckoned or not beckoned, alas, God and all your dilemmas are still present.

Any case Jonah gets to the outside of the Gates of Nineveh, mouths some words, and sits down in his pity pot. It gets hot and hotter. He bemoans his plight ... God grows him a shading gourd ... A kikayon ... and Jonah feels cool. That night, his God brings him an East wind and with the next day's sun and a nasty little worm, the Gourd and it's shade disappear. God asks him ... So, are y'sufficiently pissed-off-depressed, now. Jonah responds ... Damn straight! Then, his God hits him with his teaching moment and metaphor .... You're angrily depressed for the gourd for which you never toiled and I shouldn't cry for the 125,000 of my children and their many cattle that may die of their own corruption.

I don't know how to deal with my need to feel for the needs of the dwellers of all Ninevehs ... All the suffering Others .... And the fact that someday I may have to make the decision to go to war with them. Awareness sucks and Instincts rule. Awareness sucks because, in its healthy form, it brings doubt and the skeptic's paradigm .... Instincts are binary. The still fly is not food to the frog. The moving fly is nothing but food to the frog.
When I was young, mon grandpere would swing a sacrificial chicken over my head ... Take this chicken, God, and not my grandson. Today, many Americans offer up their 'Big Chickens' .... Even if the grandson-now-grandfather doesn't swing a bird over his grandkids.

Wishing for the hegemony of the Female uber-Ich, I remain with warm regard .... Au nom du grandpere