You're just like I was...

[imomus]

There's a scene in Happy Days. Richie Cunningham has to take a test, but someone has given him the answers in advance. He decides to come clean to his father. "Dad, I have something to tell you. I have all the answers." Howard, his father, isn't too concerned. "That's okay, son, at your age I thought I had all the answers too."

Howard, here, is failing to take on board the new information his son is trying to give him because he's too busy projecting himself -- affectionately enough, but also patronizingly and narcissistically -- into the situation. He's insisting on mapping his own experiences, his own former delusions, onto his son. He wants to help Richie overcome old mistakes that Howard made thirty years before. It's classic parent stuff. They never understand.

Tellingly enough, the Howard-mistake Howard mistakenly projects onto Richie is the delusion of omniscience: having all the answers. And although his answer seems to suggest he's over it, Howard still clearly thinks he has all the answers. About his son and what he's going through, anyway. Howard is still talking as if he's up on the high hill, that spot from which other people's errors can be seen, if only because they're your own. Sitting up on that high hill, Howard sees Richie as a little carbon copy of himself, thirty years down the line. "Oh look, here he comes, struggling up the same hillside path I came up, dealing with the same delusions and pitfalls. Thinking he's already sitting at the top, when in fact it's only me who's sitting at the top. He'll find out soon enough, I guess. And then wish he'd listened to his father."

Anyone with parents knows how infuriating this kind of assumption is. It's all the more infuriating when we look in the mirror and see fresher-faced versions of our parents looking back. In other words, when we suspect that there might be some truth in it. But the main thing that makes it wrong is context. In the twenty or thirty years that separate two generations, a lot has changed. Lessons learned in Howard's slumped 1930s are probably not particularly applicable to life in Richie's affluent 1950s. Imagine the Waltons trying to tell the Jetsons how to live.



Projecting yourself too much onto something inherently different from you -- even if it's only different because the context has changed -- is a bit like anthropomorphism; projecting human attributes onto animals. Contemporary Western culture is incredibly anthropomorphic. I was in the Post Office queue yesterday, examining Easter cards featuring rabbits. While all the cards based on photographs were forced to show the rabbit's eyes on either side of its head, looking out sideways, ever-vigilant for predators, the cards which used drawings of rabbits "corrected" this, putting the eyes on the front of the face, as they would be if rabbits were a predator species like humans, not a prey species. As a result, the rabbits looked like long-eared bears. Presumably this alteration was to make rabbits more like us, and therefore more loveable. But why must we only love things on the condition that we can project our own features onto them? The "modern Stone Age family" in The Flintstones is funny because of all the anachronism, all the projection of ourselves onto a different time. But would you want an Anthropology Museum, or a foreign policy, based on the idea that Stone Age people are just like us?

The problem is, that's exactly what we have. Every day we read the opinion that radical Islam is reproducing Medieval Europe, or that Japanese women are just about to go through a stage Western women went through in the 1960s. We invade Iraq thinking that they'll thank us for giving them the political apparatus we already have. Thinking that if it works for us, it'll work for them. We are perhaps the most narcissistic culture that has ever existed. We really think we're sitting on top of the hill, the pinnacle and culimation of all history and all progress. The fact that we have to kill so many people to help them see how they're just like us, really, doesn't seem to convince us that this view might be mistaken.

To say that an animal is like a human, or one culture is like another culture at a different phase in its history, is a metaphor, nothing more. It cannot be the case, non-metaphorically. Even when different calendars co-exist -- and they do; for the West this is 2007 years after the birth of Jesus Christ, for the Japanese it's Heisei 19, for Muslims it's Hijrah year 1428 -- we're all living in the same moment. And we're all living with each other, changing each other's context, redefining each other. Today's postmodernism has been influenced by Islamism, as Islamism has been influenced by postmodernism. Even if the Islamic 1428 resembled the Christian 1428 in every way, the fact that we were around would change the situation utterly. Context changes everything. Imagine a 1428 in which Christendom lived alongside a postmodern culture with TV stations, pop stars and the internet. It would be an utterly different 1428, one which defined itself (probably negatively) against the postmodern culture next door.

Think, too, of how insulting it is to say "They're living our 1428. They're just like we were." What would we think of a Japanese writer who said the West had just about reached Japan's Meiji 18? He'd be dismissed as an incredibly arrogant nationalist.

Borges has two short stories which have a lot to tell us here. One is about a poet who's writing an epic poem describing everything in the world using an Aleph in his basement -- a wondrous little model which makes the whole universe simultaneously visible in a space just a few centimeters across. The West really seems to think it's the Aleph, the model, the place from which everything can be seen, and in which everything is contained. We really act as if we're up on the hilltop, and have the answers. The trouble is that in our Aleph, everything looks suspiciously like us. The rabbits in there all have eyes on the front of their heads. Maybe we haven't kept it clean. Maybe it's a mirror.

The other story is Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote, in which a 20th century man attempts to rewrite Cervantes' 16th century novel from memory. Borges makes clear that even if Menard had succeeded (and of course he can't, just like the famous monkeys with their typewriters and their infinite bits of paper containing close-but-no-cigar versions of "Hamlet"), he would still have been an utterly original writer, doing something Cervantes wouldn't have dreamed of: reproducing Cervantes word-for-word.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm influenced in this by Akbar S. Ahmed's book Postmodernism and Islam (http://www.amazon.com/Postmodernism-Islam-Predicament-Akbar-Ahmed/dp/0415062934).

Basically, the current version of Islam in the world did not just appear out of nothing. It's significantly different from versions of Islam that preceded it. That difference may well strike us as being fundamentalism, militantism, hard line-ism. But in fact it's a direct reaction to the West. Even if it's a negative reaction to the West, it's the reaction of a religion which has become oppositional. And -- this is something I'm totally aware of as a satirist -- oppostion is a kind of fascination, a kind of obsession. Contemporary Islam is obsessed with the postmodern West, negatively defined by it. This was not the case before. It's possible to say, for instance, that contemporary Islam "knows" about Madonna, even if it's horrified by that image of what a woman is. Every time you see a woman in a veil, see that as an image of postmodernism. Madonna is, in a sense, inscribed in that veil-wearing act just as much as Islamic tradition is.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

I suspect most of the circa 1.3 billion Muslims in the world would be surprised to be told they are obsessed with the postmodern West, and defined by it to boot. Perhaps they would protest that they are more preoccupied with being good Muslims; for their souls, their families, their communities, and Allah's sake.

Western media and academia might well define Islam by it's own measure and contrast: it is condescending and insulting to suggest that Muslims do too.

Or perhaps you are positing a sort of Platonic form of Islam that transcends individual Muslims, communities and denominations?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single muslim who didn't know there was something newly radicalised in their religion, and that it had something to do with opposition to America and Israel, and something to do with the situation in Palestine, and an ongoing battle over modernity, Westernization and imperialism. I don't say that the West creates Islam, but it certainly has had a huge hand in creating what we now call Islamism, which is a postmodern and literally reactionary form of Islam.

Take the Deobandi movement, which influenced the Taliban (postmodern as they come, despite/because of the ancient affectations, just as Whimsy is postmodern despite the 19th century garb). "Developed as a reaction to the British colonialism in India," says Wikipedia, "whom they believed to be assimilating the Islamic religion. Fearing this, a group of Indian ˤUlāmā led by Maulana Qasim Nanautavi founded an Islamic seminary known as Darul Uloom Deoband. It is here that the Islamic revivalist and anti-imperialist ideology of the Deobandis began to develop."

I don't even need to go near the conspiracy theories which say that the Taliban and Bin Laden were directly created by US and Pakistani intelligence services. All I need to say is that these movements, whatever costumes their participants wear, exist in the context of global geo-politics (and cultural politics) right now. They are not beamed in from the Middle Ages, or "timeless", or "going about their lives exactly as they have for millenia".

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

They might read about the radicalised and reactionary in the news, granted, but most of those 1.3 billion are neither.

To say Islamism is postmodern is a definition by your lights - as an afficionado of fashionable Western theory - but it's an invalid one. If postmodernism is, shall we say, the lack of a common denominator - truth, God, progress, whatever - leading to self-reflexive finite systems, constructing and refining their own meaning and value, then it's clear that a Muslim is not 'postmodern'. You might be, but you just cannot say he is.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Unless you enjoy epistemological superiority of course, which you do not.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

If postmodernism is, shall we say, the lack of a common denominator - truth, God, progress, whatever - leading to self-reflexive finite systems, constructing and refining their own meaning and value, then it's clear that a Muslim is not 'postmodern'.

9/11 is perhaps the defining event of the "spectacular" period. Mohammed Atta studied architecture and town planning at a German university, for Allah's sake! And you say that postmodernism and Islam are pristine and don't infiltrate each other?

Islam is postmodern to the extent that it has ever, in any way, been in the slightest bit aware of the postmodern West, defined itself in relation to it, or impacted the postmodern West, becoming a spectacular event and part of this West's self-image. And right now Islam is "the designated other" -- what could be more central to the West's self-image?

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Islam is postmodern to the extent that it has ever, in any way, been in the slightest bit aware of the postmodern West, defined itself in relation to it...

OK. I'm a Nazi then.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

You see my point sir?

And another thing:

And right now Islam is "the designated other" -- what could be more central to the West's self-image?

Again, does the 'West' transcend its individuals and communities? If not, did Westerners' self-understanding change with the switch from Ruskies to Ay-rabs?

Freud's not completely full of Shit

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

Well, since you've made the statement one can assume you've made an identification with Nazis. To say you identify with Nazis is not to say you are one, but rather that you define yourself in terms related to them (e.g. that you are not one). To be not-Nazi is part of who you are, without Nazis existing that part of you would not exist since it cannot be defined as the absence of something which does not exist.

So too, modern Islam identifies with the contemporary West. Certainly it's not the case that Islam is the West, but without the West Islam could not exist as it does; they cannot set themselves up to be different from the West if there is no West or if it is not just as the West is. Therefore, since there was no "the West" when we were in the 15th century, the analogy of Islam to our 15th cen breaks down.

One can say "oh but they're just reverting to older ways" but that begs the question. Why are they returning to older ways? Why did they progress beyond them and then only now decide to undo that? These things don't just happen, there are reasons for them. One such reason may very well be that doing so is a way of their disavowing their identification with the West.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

I think the point that Eustace Plimsoll makes is that the majority of Muslims aren't extreme radicals in any sense. The militant practitioners of Islam are a small minority - just as the radical fundamentalist Christians in the West are a very small minority, compared to rest of Christianity.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Quite so, Sir Robert.

As I walk down Bethnal Green Road (a Muslim area in East London), I see decent, friendly people: not the rabid psychos the Sun (the UK's most popular newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch) daily portrays Muslims to be.

[butterflyrobert.livejournal.com]

Whimsy is postmodern despite the 19th century garb

As Whimsy would no doubt point out, his mode of dress is largely 2oth century.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You're quite right, he has made the transition (rather dashingly) from 19th to 20th centuries. When I first became aware of him he rode a penny farthing and looked like this:

[bricology.livejournal.com]

I think that what you see as oppositionalism vis-a-vis the West and Islam is really just our observation of their return to basics. Every aspect of Islam that the West finds negative and retrograde is really nothing more than them going back to the roots of their faith. The subjugation of women, the oppression of adult homosexuals (not boys, of course), intolerance of other religions or atheism, the elevation of theology over notions of human rights, over science and reason -- all of these are roots-Islam, as written by Muhammad in the Qur'an and codified by his immediate followers in the Hadiths.

I'd suggest that there is nothing more accurately Islamic than to be "medieval" (if you like). I realize that it's a very PC sentiment in the West to claim that "Islam is a religion of peace", but it just ain't so. I'd be happy to quote any number of Islamic scriptures that amply demonstrate how oppressively parochial and violent "roots Islam" is. Is, was, and always will be. Peaceful Muslims are, in a way, betraying their religion, as it explicitly calls for them to wage war on nonbelievers, especially in Suras 2, 4 and 9.

More to the point: the West was once in that same mode. We were once pre-feminist, pre-freethought, pre-reasoning, pre-accepting of other sexuality, and so on. Was our evolution really just corruption? If so, then your assertion is correct. But history sure doesn't look that way to me.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

My argument is that even if contemporary Islam were 100% the same as Islam 500 years ago, the current context would change its meaning and bring it into juxtaposition with the postmodern West which would change its meaning.

And even if we in the West had gone through a period which resembled contemporary Islam in every single detail, it wouldn't be the same situation contemporary Islam is in, because contemporary Islam's meaning is changed by its juxtaposition with the West as it is now.

Unless... we imagine a world in which the West had gone through a period in which it was a theocratic society radicalised by a contemporaneous postmodern society, and that the tables had turned and now the Islamic world was in that same situation... but that quickly becomes an infinitely recursive situation, like a series of glass balls each containing a tiny image of a scene including themselves...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

A shorter and perhaps clearer way to say that is that the simile "they are just like we were" forgets that we are.

[(Anonymous)]

Unfortunately you are absolutely correct Bricology, whilst recognition, tolerance and respect of other cultures should be intrinsic to one's value system, organised religion as I have remarked before- by very dint of it's inate refusal to embrace these values- places itself beyond the pale of 'culture' and needs to be recognised for what it is anti-humanist, anti-ideas, anti-progress, anti-otherness.
I still find it remarkable that the illiberal, former left (still so subject to the antiquated, notional left/right dichotomy that they fail to recognise just how 'right wing' they themselves have become) can engage in the hypocrisy of recognising the evils within the Christian faith whilst turning a blind eye to those within Islam, the greatest irony being that in a fundamentalist Islamic state they would be amongst the first against the wall.
Thomas Scott

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately you are absolutely correct Thomas Scott, whilst recognition, tolerance and respect of other cultures should be intrinsic to one's value system, the West as I have remarked before- by very dint of it's inate refusal to embrace these values- places itself beyond the pale of 'culture' and needs to be recognised for what it is anti-humanist, anti-ideas, anti-progress, anti-otherness.
I still find it remarkable that the neocons can engage in the hypocrisy of recognising the evils within the Islamic faith whilst turning a blind eye to those within Christianity, the greatest irony being that in a fundamentalist Christian state they would be amongst the first against the wall.
Thomas Scott

[(Anonymous)]

That's the thing about neo-con boilerplate - it's so easy to expose the bull by just switching a few words around.
Not Thomas Scott

[(Anonymous)]

This is the second point in this comment thread where I have been accused of being a neo conservative, oddly that label is probably about as much the antithesis of what I am as you could pull from the hat.
Perhaps this is the sort of debate people really wish for a polarised left/right dichotomy where all is plain and simple, no ambiguities, no internal debate, no shades of grey...
Thomas

[(Anonymous)]

An eschewed rhetorical coin flip! Your stamping machine may need some calibration though, the West can hardly be compared with organised religion and I think the neo cons would find their spiritual home in a fundamentalist Christian state.
Perhaps you are getting closer to the pith of the matter however, namely the symbiotic rise of 'right wing' expansionist, fundamentalist Christianity neo-crusaders in certain 'Western' powers and the parallelled rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East.
Thomas Scott.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think the neo cons would find their spiritual home in a fundamentalist Christian state.

Check this (http://www.spittleandink.com/isis/?p=557) out.

[(Anonymous)]

My, the writer could write Oliver Stone's next script.... oh actually he couldn't Ollie's flown across the fence and sits on the neo-cons perch now.
Thomas

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

Jesus famously said, "render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's". This permits the separation of church and state - something Muhammad repudiated.

[winterkoninkje.livejournal.com]

Quoted from another comment because it's apropos:

One can say "oh but they're just reverting to older ways" but that begs the question. Why are they returning to older ways? Why did they progress beyond them and then only now decide to undo that? These things don't just happen, there are reasons for them. One such reason may very well be that doing so is a way of their disavowing their identification with the West.