My schooling did a pretty good job of conditioning me to the power of both the Jewish and Arab cultures as well as the animosity that has plagued their relations since forever. I was short on specifics, but I definitely understood the depth of their dislike of one another. My teachers did not do as good a job in educating me about the power of Hinduism and the depth of hard feelings between Hindu and Muslim. I did not see them as a bunch of rag heads, but neither did I have a clue as to what motivated them to war with one another. My exploration of foreign cultures started in the Philippines and was energized in East Asia, during the Korean War. I became fascinated by China and spent a huge amount of my working life trying to figure out what made Chinese people and their cultural offspring tick.
While assigned to Thailand, I studied the language with a group of Buddhist priests and learned a little bit about Buddhism. During my assignment to Thailand, I also collected replica samples of traditional Buddhist art and considered myself to be knowledgable about the important role of Buddhism in the world. I went out of my way to avoid acquiring genuine antiques for several reasons the noblest of which was that I thought them the property of the Thai people. The crassest of which was that they were very expensive. I developed a strategy that worked exceptionally well. I would go into an antique shop that I knew to be loaded with replicas being sold as genuine pieces, identify the piece that I wanted, and then ask the price of another similar piece on the other side of the room. When told the price, I would adopt a suitably shocked countenance and exclaim that I had no idea that the piece was a genuine antique. I would then ask the dealer if he, by chance, had a similar piece that was a replica. Some times it worked and sometimes not, but over a decade of trying, I managed to fill out my collection satisfactorily. In the process, I also convinced myself that I knew a lot about Asia.
Then I took a trip to Calcutta. One of the objectives of my visit was to collect a representative piece of Hindu art. I found a suitable antique shop and applied my tried-and-true bargaining strategy. In order to impress the elderly gentleman that ran the shop, I waxed eloquently about Asia, drawing on my “vast” knowledge of Buddhism. After listening to me for a polite period of time, he replied by saying, very self-assuredly, that Buddhism was merely “a failed religion” and totally irrelevant to anything of historic significance. The casual, total confidence of the man got my full attention and began my belated thinking about what is today the largest assemblage of people in the entire world: India with 1.48 billion people. (China “only“ has 1.41 billion people.)
India and China are currently engaged in difficult border disputes that occasionally deteriorate into low level conflict. India is allied with Russia as it looks nervously at Afghanistan, which it fears could be a problem, should a troublesome relationship with Pakistan morph into all out war. Given that both Pakistan and India are nuclear powers, such a conflict would, of course, have repercussions far beyond their borders. The fascinating imbroglio is further complicated by India being the I in BRICKS, while Pakistan is a key part of China’s new Silk Road that aims at tying China to Western Asia, the Middle East and eventually Europe. I contend that, in a democracy, the voters need to have some minimal understanding of what is happening in the world so that they can choose their leadership intelligently. I suggest that we not only do not have that understanding, we don’t even aspire to having it. We can not stretch our minds to deal with that level of complexity and turn all of our attention instead to the age of the fetus, the number of chips in the bag, the price of gasoline, the proper usage of pronouns, and our precious feelings. Because all of our antagonists are led by one form or another of authoritarian governments, your and my ignorance places us at a significant disadvantage.
There is no question in my mind but that democracy is a superior form of governance as compared with authoritarianism, but it requires, repeat requires, an intelligent electorate. Proclaiming yourself to be democratic is the least important part of being a successful democracy. We are today, destroying our society and we actually know that we are doing it, and yet we continue to do it. I ask myself why and continue to believe it is because we have been protected from reality for too long. We are not yet frightened enough to do the necessary - which is to think. I worry that the event that wakes us up might well be our death knell. For that reason, I continue to advocate that we wake up now - before it is literally too late. Russia, China and North Korea have nuclear weapons sitting on top of satellite guided ballistic missiles. Iran is about to have them too. All four of them are actively engaged in trying to destroy you and me. Why help them?
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