Middle East Ethos

Well that’s an oxymoron! The term ‘Middle East Ethos’ conjures towering meanings that will most likely end in cancelling out competing theories and value statements. Just like real life in the middle east! Warring camps of religions, histories, cultures and nationalities. People claiming ownership of the one true god, intermingled histories over 2000 years of strife, as well as an image of future heaven on earth as defined by their self styled theologies. Room for disagreement there!  Much room.

And the disagreements emerge continually as expected. The creature we know as man has a natural behavior that will seek difference as much as it seeks agreement. In this process war and peace becomes a daily struggle seemingly without an end. For many however, the end is misery and death. The cycle reels onward as it always has in the past. Generations after generations fighting the same fights and to similar ends.

The ethos – or credibility of the region – is another way of saying the overriding cultural values which help define the region and its people. Aristotle wrote much of ethos, but also of pathos and logos. Pathos is the appeal of emotions and rightness of it. Logos is the logical flow of what is right or wrong or what fact is or not. Ethos, however, is how credible is the character of the person or the people in establishing what the culture is or ought to be.

Imagine the lineage that followed!  Thousands of years of distrust, personal animosities, imagined slights and to top it all off – theologies that do not agree with one another. The words of God mismanaged by man to bring them not closer to God but to set each man apart by religious affiliation. What was meant for peace came to be the root of war.

That is the middle east. Trust few, even our own. Allow help from the outside, but keep them at arms length. Blame them for all things that do not resonate well with our sense of self and belief in God.

This international stage is fraught with calamity at every step. History has proven this to be the case. No surprise there.

Helping Kuwait in the mid 1990’s was noble of the world. Doing the same for Iraq later on was doomed to failure. Building a working relationship with Iran is of similar futility. Afghanistan? Pakistan? Syria? Libya? The list goes on. The failures mount. They war among themselves as much as out-of-region foreign powers.

The nature of the Middle East is one of unsettledness. Perhaps that is the best we can say about it.

America and many other foreign nations have convened in the Middle East to help them make the most of their economic promise through oil, minerals and commercial transactions. These attributes have grown in power and influence and have become the ever burgeoning cause for strife at the same time. Perhaps that is the source of the oxymoron itself?

My opinion is fairly simple. Leave their region alone to their self management. Remove ourselves from any influence on their lives. Withdraw all interest in their oil and minerals.

On our own and in concert with other foreign partners, let us invent our own future on an energy source that is not related to oil. Use our vast scientific knowledge and produce a sustainable source of energy based on physics and health. No pollutants. No sapping the planet of subterranean deposits that cause earthquakes or sinkholes or pollution of soil and water. We can do this. And we can use our resources more stingily as well.

The future we share is of enormous potential. It requires attention and ethical goals for all of mankind. First we have to believe this. Then do it!

The Middle East will soon realize that their life apart from the rest of the world leaves them with little. It is their ethos to manage. It is our ethos to avoid theirs where little agreement is possible.

Such is the state of international relations today, yesterday and tomorrow. A harsh reality. But there it is for all to see.

September 6, 2013