Sympathetic Mirrors - مقال كلاود
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Sympathetic Mirrors

  نشر في 03 فبراير 2019 .

                The mechanism of sympathy of human conscious works like a mirror. That is why when we indicate to other species as animals in talking about wealth or resources serving our economical system, we often exclude most of other species from the circle of our sympathy, because they have another structure of conscious and a different external shape. The mechanism of sympathetic mirrors works when human conscious catches mutual aspects with others. There are two kinds of aspects which are vertical aspects which penetrate the ethnical and ideological links or correlations like gender and the economical classifications for social classes like ( middle class, poor class, the proletariat and bourgeoisie etc..),and horizontal aspects like ethnic, race, religion, sect, doctrine and language.

This mechanism of sympathy explains many of allies and conflicts within the human society, besides, the objective factors of wars and conflicts like struggling for vital environment and energy sources which come from human basic needs. Moreover, there are tangential conflicts among other individuals who are not directly involved in war, but they cling ethnically or ideologically to other groups who do. Therefore they exclude each other from the circle of sympathy because they belong to a different ideological structure or a different ethnic form.

Human mechanism of sympathy has international attendance by the so called " clash of civilizations " the thought which turned into theory in the famous work of Samuel Huntington . Although this is still an argumentative point because the concepts of democracy, citizenship, free press and human rights represent the ultimate evolution form of human history according to some researchers as in the thesis of Francis Fukuyama of (( the End of History and the Last Man)). This completely contradicts with the previous concept of clash of civilizations , because for many researchers and even mere viewers these concepts are basic features of the western civilization which keeps this concept and the mechanism of sympathy of human conscious working.

One of the most prominent criteria about the concept of civilization is getting liberate from primitive arbitrary relations of nature and acting away from the initial instincts by human conscience and awareness, and that in some levels contradicts with the term of sympathetic mirrors in case we want to recognize and define the role of effective countries and nations on the international arena. This is mainly because it is noticeable that the massive attendance of economic and military readiness play definitive role to point out the most controlling countries. The stability of allies and unions which are not based on ethical or ideological correlations or do not follow the same structure of political regime (democratic constitutional regime or military dictatorship etc..) is so fragile and it is always on the edge of collapse specially when it faces extreme crisis for example ( the crisis of Ukrainian Peninsula , announcing the Southern Sudan as independent republic, withdrawing of United Kingdom from the European Union and the tension between the Saudi Arabia and United States of America on 2016 ).

Therefore, it is easy to conclude that the primitive relations of nature still take place in the recent system of the global relations among countries, and that is definitely will arise many questions and problematic points about the possibility and the ability of producing conformable relations with the moral, ethical and contemporary facts that we are able to recognize. For example Michel Foucault in his famous debate with Noam Chomsky referred to that the political authority is practiced through other foundations or institutions which pretend to have nothing to share with it, and they have their own independency away from the state the thing which is implicitly not true. He also mentioned that any one knows that the universities and generally all the educational systems which seem simply spreading knowledge only were also constituted to maintain a specific social class in powerful position and for limiting the using of power tools only for it without including the other social classes. Moreover, instruction and knowledge foundations and care institutions like medical organizations also help in supporting the political power and this is very obvious too. The question here should ask to what extent it is applicable to fill the moral gaps of the educational system and other foundations about their relations with political authority and social different classes according to Foucault`s approach, with taking into consideration that the factors as competitive sense and choosing the qualified individuals play significant role in improving the efficiency of these institutions?. However, these factors come under title of the oldest primitive aspects of relations which were produced by human communities. Another questions , to what extent taking into consideration the immoral and unjust damages will slow the efficiency of the educational system progressing?, and in what ways will it affect the developing of the economic, technological and military fields of any country?.

On the other hand, democracy is considered as a huge and significant breakthrough to the regular correlations and dominance distribution among social classes and political authority. The most aspects of the democratic system were mentioned in the famous democratic reference ( the social contract ) which was written by the French philosopher Jean Jack Rousseau. According to this work, the essence of the democratic system is the separation among executive, juridical and statutory authorities. The most important thing about the mechanism of democracy is depriving the most powerful and the most dominant class from permanent authority and controlling people and the state. Moreover, it forms the first effective movement of human society against the primitive mechanism of natural relations. It was a new phenomena and a very successful example about how moral theory can be applicable efficiently in real situation specially in very complex and critical cases like the political governing. But what was the secret of this success? what were the conditions which paved the way in front of it to grow, thrive and be applicable ?.In France and in some parts of Europe specially which were following the catholic church, there were two kinds of rule which contributed in creating some kind of an early or primitive separation of powers or authorities which were the theocratic authority ( Pope rule ) and political authority ( king rule). This simple unintentional separation in the structure of the system rule helped this organized intentional separation of power or the so called ( Trias Politica) to evolve and occur. These historical conditions illustrate the intersection between the reality of the situation and thinkers approaches about the political system which is able to fill moral gaps and has the ability to reproduce itself (The constitution of the United States of America, adopted in 1788, provides the world's first formal blueprint for a modern democracy, and it has reproduced itself with many modifications till now).

After the mid of the nineteenth century theoretical methods would suffer from a tragic setback after a lot of inspiration which came from the scientific background was prevalent in that period, and it can be summarized like the following: everything on the universe works according to natural laws; the laws which were indicated by the so called classic physics that Isaac Newton put its corner stone. As a consequence, the idea of putting human hand upon nature would be applicable as soon as its laws are revealed. This phase in the history of science come under title of scientific determinism which attracted attention of many thinkers and philosophers to the possibility of applying these scientific methods in studying the human societies and the historical movements for inducing ultimate laws to control and predicate their relations and directions which means more flexibility in adopting the recent ethical theories and facts which human conscious can be aware of in building political and social systems.

As a result of all the mentioned factors and as a response to Hegelian dialectics Karl Marx in his book (The Historical Materialism ) and in many others tried to seek new approach about a communistic system and at the essence of it is the public ownership of the means of production, after analyzing the historical conflict among social classes and considering this conflict as a natural consequence to the so called historical determinism. Karl Marx referred to new circles of sympathy among the category of human relations. He wanted to adjust the mirrors of sympathy only to be reflected among the laboring classes and the proletariat and disbar the bourgeois ones who have the big hand over the turnover. He tried to create views to very precise mechanism of work to the social and political systems to reach a state of social justice which is able to renew itself because it is submitted to the laws of the historical movement. In other words, he tried theoretically to fill moral gaps as much as he could by defining the prerequisites of mechanism of sympathy by limiting the ability of capitalism forces from controlling the range of moral values, all of these big titles were explained on ( Manifesto of Communist party ) which was written by Marx and Engels in 1848. On the contrary of democracy theorizing success, Marxism suffered from tragic flaw in many contexts which leaded to military dictatorship, oppressing free press and public liberties , crimes against humanity and enclosing the common wealth among oligarchic military elites. What really deepened the Marxism theoretical crisis that most of its theoreticians specially on the third world after collapsing of the Soviet Union converted to liberalism or they receded to their local identity or beliefs without questioning or criticizing the old cognitive structures of Marxism because they got involved in new theoretical conflicts and new circles of allies.

Darwin`s Theory about natural selection which was explained in his book ( The Origins of Species ) and his indicating to the idea that human being and other primates descend from the same ancestor implicitly destroyed any special or subjective meaning about human existence. Sigmund Freud indicating to the Libido energies and many other oppressed unconscious emotions and feelings in interpreting human behavior firmly shacked the concept of ( human will ). Albert Einstein in his theory the general relativity in physics gave new concepts about the mechanism of the universe which made the position of mankind pointless and meaningless according to the universe which led to reconsider the concept of scientific determinism and the idea of putting man hand upon nature. Therefore all the classical ideas about human nature and its relation with the existence were perishing, Michel Foucault expressed this stance through an interview with him in 1969 by saying that ( Humanism is the heaviest heritage which descended from nineteenth century to us, it is the time to get rid of it, our basic mission is getting totally liberated from this trend). This heritage consisting of many approaches trying to make an ultimate liberation from the ancient and classical systems of relation and allies, was translated to a tragic disappointment on world war one and world war two and all the aspiration which came with theoretical methods of nineteenth century collapsed and new methods would come instead under the titles of modernism post-modernism ( structuralism, post structuralism, anthropology, epistemology and deconstructionism etc..).

Feminism is another contemporary movement which tries to establish vertical sympathetic circles, and their corner stone is gender which means their mechanism of sympathy penetrating the ideological and ethnic criteria and depending on the category of sex. Feminism wants to modify the sympathetic mirrors among women around the world to be reflected among them to be more aware of their rights and achieving equality with men. feminist movements succeeded in organizing their effort through women federations which are supported by the governments around the world. Feminist movements did not get involved in complex theoretical or political conflicts; rather their circle of interests were generally about social activities and their political activities confine to demand guarantees for women to get the whole rights in education, getting job, health and social insurance. Although many women have many objections to the concept of feminism because it implicitly indicates to the inferiority of women and they prefer more modern concept which is more common and more advanced like the concept of citizenship.

We cannot talk about sympathetic mirrors and circles without indicating to anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss who is considered as the most important theoretician of anthropology. In the second chapter ( Social Organizing) of his book ( Structuralism Anthropology ), he reversed a comment about calling ancient communities and tribes as primitive according to ethnographic and sociological dictionary, because it indicates to that communities and groups like they had no history, contradictions, economical or social system. He also referred that they were creative in many fields more than the so called civilized world like the family system of ancient Australian communities and the perfect balance of the emotional life through complex system of duties and rights in Melanesia. As consequence it is logical to induce that ancient tribes, groups and communities had built efficient social and economical systems away from the competitive sense and communicating through circles of relation which do not work according to regular power classifications which domain the basic context of the recent civilization. He was very skeptical about the criteria of the recent civilization and how it is defacing in superiority the diversity of methods and contexts of the ancient societies and communities, besides, he criticized the contemporary assessing of the aspects of recent civilization as ultimate gains, and how the western world defines itself according these aspects and encloses this definition, because it is still under the pressure of the concept of identity. He also criticized the eastern civilization specifically Islamic civilization, because Islam religion also activates and increases the pressure of the identity concept, and that is why he described Islam )as the west of the east ). He had many objections to the role of that mankind attributed to himself, so, he commented on that by saying that man should occupy an efficient role among living species and not consider himself as the master of creatures. As it was mentioned on the introduction to stop looking to the other species as vital sources to serve our economic system and the necessity of rebuild and redefine the mechanism of the global civilization.

Horizontal aspects and specifically language are the key in forming the so called parallel communities. The immigration crisis that Europe has been exposed to since Iraq war in 2003 then the civil war on Syria in 2011 and from other illegal immigrations which are coming through north Africa and from other Asian countries . All of these immigrants do not share horizontal aspects of sympathy with European communities. Therefore it is natural to constitute parallel communities next to the European societies. Adjusting the these aspects is very important to assimilate these parallel communities and dissolve them through immigrants acquisition to the native languages of the country that they have immigrated to, because language is the key to recognize the new culture and being able to deal with the concept of the citizenship and belonging to the law which helps them to liberate from ethnical or ideological links. For instance, Germany has received on the first six months of 2015 about (160000) refugees ( 20.3% Syrian refugees, 17.9% refugees from Kosovo and 13,6% Albanians refugees), besides, it already has 2.5 millions Turkish immigrants. The German state plays the role of intercessor among all these immigrants communities and local society on the organizing level, while on the social level the flexibility of immigrant individuals in modifying their concepts and customs to fit the new cultural environment, and the readiness of locals to accept these new cultural factors as part of their society play significant role on increasing or decreasing the obstacles and the efficiency of the merging social process. It is incomplete to mention the immigration issue, and the prior images of locals about these new inhabitants specially who have immigrated because of the crises on the Middle East without referring to the back warded impact of Orientalism. The beginning of the appearance of Orientalism as a movement of reintroducing the cultures of the middle eastern societies to the West in particular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries influenced inversely in activating the political and social problematic issues in the region. Most of those who wrote and drew about the region and its communities among the orientalists like Louis Massignon and Jean-Baptiste Prosper Jollois, tackled only the folkloric sides and conveyed what the local communities of the region like to convey about themselves without deconstructing their culture according the criteria of social science which was on the rise in that era; the thing which led to creating a typical concept about the Middle East, and this also led to creating a problematic issues like cultural pluralism in the West, increasing the interval between the two sides of the Mediterranean and helping in the appearance of contemporary disturbances in the western societies like Islam phobia , Parallel communities and cultural infrastructure.

I want to use the mechanism of the sympathetic mirrors for surveying and deconstructing the Syrian identity before and during the civil war . The Syrian community consists of two prominent ethnic group (Arab and Kurds) and two prominent religion (Islam and Christianity). Most of the Syrian Christians are Arab and most of Kurds are Muslims which helped horizontally to produce powerful circles of sympathy, because Christians belong to the ethnic majority and Kurds belong to the religion of the majority. These circles of sympathy would break into pieces through the Syrian Civil war for many reasons. Al-Baath Party which has ruled Syria since 1963 dominated by military elites who have the upper hand above military, security and intelligence apparatuses and headquarters most of which belong to Alawites while the majority of the Syrian people are Sunni , but both of them are Arab and Muslim but they do not belong to the same Islamic doctrine. Therefore after the breaking of the Syrian civil war, we started to notice two circles of sympathy being deactivated (Arabic and Muslim ), so they exclude each other from circles of sympathy according to the doctrine and lately other Islamic minorities according to the doctrine also deactivated the circles making them belong to the majority (Muslims and Arabs). The Islamic Sunni Circle which correlates Arabs and the Kurds has been deactivated and the ethic circle has been activated. On the contrary, the ethnic circle of sympathy which makes Arab Christians follow the majority has been deactivated and the religion circle which categories them as minority has been activated. As a result, The Syrian collective identity has decayed and perished and entered into deep crisis. The absence of the democracy process on the Syrian regime and the stance of citizenship, besides , the real absence of a state who has an independence from the civil society and its conflicts and trends play a definitive role in increasing the collapse of the Syrian Identity. Of course, these factors only explore a simple level of the Syrian crisis, due to the fact that Syrian crisis has today territorial and international dimensions and complexities.

I want to analyze the international background which surrounds the Syrian crisis. After the collapsing of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, many political thinkers indicated that the reason of the collapsing of the Soviet union was that it depended only on the military readiness on its competitiveness with the capitalist pole which was leaded by the United States of America. Recently Russia has occupied Ukrainian peninsula ( Crimean ), and Russia justified their movement by declaring that there is agreement allowing Russia to keep 25000 Russian soldiers on the ( Crimean ), while the new government in Kiev reckoned that there are no such an agreement. Many analysts mentioned that Russia considers itself with Ukraine as an empire and without it as just a nation, because (Crimean ) is the only path which connects Russia with the Black Sea. It is Also noticeable that Russian massive interference on the Syrian crisis has appeared as a result of its lost of two basic allies in the Middle East( Iraqi and Libyan regimes ). In addition, Syria is so strategic site of domination because it is the only path for Russia to reach the warm water ( Mediterranean Sea ). We can deduce from all the previous factors that Russia is working so hard to recreate the cold war conditions according to the same old criterion ( The military Readiness ) which is classified under the title of primitive arbitrary of relations. To what extent is the ability of Russia to revive the cold war conditions taking into consideration the possibility of huge diplomatic and economic damages that it will suffer from? Another point of view refers to the point that Russia only exploits the vacuum which resulted from USA withdrawing from Middle East specifically from Iraq, because USA tends more to expand its interests in the Middle and East of Asia. In addition, behind Russia foreign policies there lie a massive economic power which is China, and in many international files and cases China foreign policies are compatible with Russia specially in the Syrian case because these circles of allies of the military leftist dictatorships (China, Russia and North Korea ) want to keep its last footstep on the middle East which is the Syrian regime. On the other hand, the Islamic Republic in Iran is more clear example of exploiting the circle of sympathy in foreign policies. Iran has worked so hard to deactivate the ethnic sense among a wide range of Arabs especially those who follow the same Islamic group of Iran (the Arab Shia), and at the same time it activated to a large scale the religious sense of identity among those; clear examples can be noticed in the case of Hizbullah in Lebanon and the militia of AlHashd in Iraq and of course the Houthis in Yemen. All of the mentioned militias adopt on their political speech the same threads of the Iran foreign policy.

Last thing that I want to discuss is the practical results of the last ethical and intellectual theories and their effects on the political and social phenomena , because it is obvious how the crises around the globe reproduce their selves and create a lot of complexity and ambiguity about these results. So it is reasonable to infer that the recent ethical and moral approaches have no prominent attendance on the international collective level. The question here should ask what is point of all this intellectual effort?. All of these moral and ethical theories are more efficient on solo contexts ,policies and behaviors. Vegetarians are clear example for these solo behaviors because they enter animals on their sympathy circles, but at the same time their behavior does not prevent investing them as vital sources to serve the international economical system as in animal industries or selling animal products on the international markets. Finland educational system which has come at the top among other educational systems around the world is suitable example of the solo polices, because it has succeeded in filling the gaps of skills among all students with less depending on the competitive sense. Although Finland educational policies do not represent the general trends of the international educational methods or scholarships system which mainly depends through its mechanism on choosing the most qualified individuals, because it is inapplicable to fund the massive number of students who willing to obtain scholarship. I think the accuracy of assessing the results of the intellectual effort become more clear by deconstructing the policies of governments and social movements and attitudes into solo threads and levels. In addition the diversity of the moral and ethical threads creates difficulties in forming circle of sympathy among who follow these behaviors. It is so important to refer that it is more applicable for governments to adopt policies which lead to fill moral gaps in the internal affairs than the foreign affairs, because foreign affairs require dealing with complex files and cases which correlate with very sensitive issues like national security, military balance and commercial relations with other countries . As a consequence these complex files and issues require plenty of calculations on many levels which do not leave space for global governments to consider ethical or moral level. Moreover, they push them to keep going with unethical activities like developing military industries to achieve balance of power or the so called ( balance of terror ). The Universal Declaration of human rights (UDHR) which was adopted by the by the United Nation General Assemble on 10 December 1948 at the Palaise de Chaillot and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Right (1966 ) besides the International Covenant on Economic, Social and cultural Rights (1966) represent the ethical and moral standards of the collective conscious of the human societies on the twentieth century. These standard are commonly not depended on the foreign affairs by the most of the governments because of the contradictions of their policies and the conflicts of interests, while they are generally depended on the internal affairs by countries who follow constitutional democratic regime. The role of the human rights organizations and most of their activists around the world confine to document crimes against humanity and most of the human rights violations almost from the second half of the twentieth century till now. Finally, the standards of the human rights are not part of the structure of the recent circles of sympathy among global communities specially the horizontal ones, because if they become a part of the them, they will make a massive shake to the traditional infrastructure of the allies and conflicts among countries and inside the structure world communities. The real challenge for applying these standards is the recent concept of identity.


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  • Odai Wardeh
    كاتب مقالات سياسية و فلسفية و حاصل على جائزة وزارة الثقافة للشعر في الجمهورية العربية السورية عام 2007
   نشر في 03 فبراير 2019 .

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