From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Tue Nov 23 2004 - 07:30:46 GMT
Dear Sam and Platt,
You asked me to comment (20 Nov 2004 15:56:32 -0000 and 21 Nov 2004
09:10:19 -0500) on the Dutch experience with tolerance and the need for
intolerance of intolerance, i.e. a need for intolerance of those who would
destroy a generally tolerant system.
I guess you refer to the recent murder on Theo van Gogh, a filmmaker who
made it his identity to overstep in his public expressions every limit of
tolerance by others he could imagine. He expressed for instance intolerance
of Muslims and their 'backward' habits (but only in words and film) and
hardly any public figure in the Netherlands had not had (verbal) fights with
him. Nevertheless he had some popularity among those with a general
antipathy against Muslims and government. In short: a very controversial
figure, like (populist, right-wing politician) Pim Fortuyn, who appealed to
the same knid of sentiments among the Dutch, and who was murdered 2,5 years
earlier.
Their murderers were very similar too in a sense. Grown up in the
Netherlands, where people are left free to develop their individual ideas,
they felt more than averagely frustrated by developments in the public
sphere (the political success of an anti-environmentalist, the public
acclaim for a film by Theo van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali -right-wing
politician, born in Somalia, campaigner for Muslim women's rights-). They
acted as individuals even though their radical ideas (animal liberationism,
islamism) where shared with others, of course. One could say that Mohammed
B. (the murdere of Theo van Gogh) was 'used' to some extent by an
international terrorist movement (he did have the contacts), which cannot be
said of Volkert van der G. (the murderer of Pim Fortuyn). But they didn't
'use' him to lay a bomb in a busy spot and kill indiscriminately, the
pattern of international terrorism. No, to me the murder on Theo van Gogh
seems a fairly purely Dutch phenomenon, only marginaly related to
international islamist terrorism.
The fact that the frustrated sentiments against Muslims in general (who were
formerly voiced 'for' a large group of people by Theo van Gogh and Pim
Fortuyn) now express themselves in violence against Muslim property
(mosques, schools), with some retaliatory violence against Christian
property (churches) by Muslim youths IS related of course with general
uncertainty (fed by the media) about international terrorism and the role of
Muslims in it. The form it takes seems a fairly Dutch phenomenon to me,
however, as long as the violence is directed against property and doesn't
harm people. It is comparable to bored youths of all backgrounds damaging
public property like bus stops.
The main difference between Mohammed B. and Volkert van der G. seems to me
the speed with which Mohammed B. radicalized and lost contact with moderate
Muslims and society in general. It was very enlightening for me to read in
Saturday's newspaper an article describing this process. Only 2 years ago
Mohammed B. -having had a more than average education- was very active in
his local community centre and making plans to keep a group of less well-off
Moroccan youths off the street. If he had been employed by that community
centre then or had not failed in his attempts to get government subsidy for
his plans then... The cause of this murder may have been the failure of the
Dutch welfare state (because of cutbacks in expenditure in the last 10 - 15
years or so), which used to pamper marginal people out of revolutionary
ideas, rather than international islamist terrorism.
I don't really know what 'intolerance of intolerance' (or even 'not
tolerating those who destroy tolerance') means. It is a meaningless and
useless paradox for me. Just a contradiction in terms.
The question should be what can be done and by whom/what against those who
would destroy society. The question is difficult to answer because we are
talking about societies that have (at least in the Dutch case) made themself
relatively defenseless against those who are dissatisfied with it. They did
so because they didn't need those defenses any more and because the defenses
(a repressive state and social control) had proved to be contra-productive:
they decreased satisfaction of people with society. Should we return to a
more repressive state and more rigid social patterns of value in general (if
we can) and decrease the general well-being of people in doing so? That
would seem a backward, degenerate move to me in an evolutionary (MoQish)
sense.
I tend to stick to the solution that Dutch society found for dissatisfaction
that threatened society: buying it off, compromising. That's what social
security systems and a welfare state mean from a 3rd level point of view
(ignoring 4th level motivations for it in terms of equality, justice etc.)
This solution seems to be breaking down because of (4th level)
identification (by -in global perspective- relatively well-off members
of -even Dutch- society) with dissatisfaction with society by non-members
(animals, muslims in Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya etc.). Volkert van der G. and
Mohammed B. didn't have reason to be dissatisfied with Dutch society
personally. They are dissatisfied with Dutch society because they identify
with non-members of society who are adversely affected by it. To me the way
forward seems a widening (globalization) of the social solution: buying off
dissatisfaction, again compromising. Giving animals a few more rights,
taking into account Muslim interests a bit more in foreign politics, maybe
moving towards a kind of global welfare and constitutional state in which
development aid through UN agencies develops into a kind of global social
security system and humanitarian intervention backed by the UN Security
Council and/or Global Court of Justice into a kind of global (instead of
national) security system.
How does this relate to the idea that started this thread (in Platt's 19 Nov
2004 17:57:19 -0500 paraphrase of Sam's words): 'the idea that we can rely
on "individuals making quality decisions" to maintain social cohesion'?
Social cohesion is maintained to the extent that individuals behave
according to 3rd level patterns of value, i.e. guided by 3rd level static
quality. Once they start behaving contrary to the 3rd level patterns of
value that constitute (maintain) the societies they are a member of, thereby
decreasing social cohesion of those societies, they rationalize their
contrarian behaviour as decisions guided by 4th level patterns of value,
i.e. islamism (or socialism or ...). From a 3rd level point of view such
'quality decesions' are either DQ-guided (when resulting in new social
cohesion) or degenerate (when only destroying social cohesion at a certain
level, necessitating falling back to a lower level kind of social cohesion).
So: we cannot rely on individuals making quality decisions to maintain a
specific kind of social cohesion, but we can rely on the combination of
static patterns of value and Dynamic Quality to always restore some kind of
social cohesion, the evolutionary trend being: social cohesion on an
increasingly larger scale and ever more inclusive.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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