This is interesting. It’s written by an old friend who is himself involved with helping out in a freelance-humanitarian sense with Gaza. But this is something that anyone involved in conflict resolution, or in any kind of change-bringing commitment, needs to ask themselves: what is it that drives me to do this?
https://mike-scialom.medium.com/born-and-raised-in-egypt…
It came up for me too. In my case, my maternal grandfather was in General Allenby’s British invasion force in Palestine in WW1, my father was in Egypt in WW2, and I have Roma and German (though not Jewish) ancestry – Holocaust stuff. That’s what I’ve identified in myself that hooked me into it.
But also, growing up in a polarised and violent city, Liverpool, in the 1960s, played its part – overcoming the effects in myself of being bullied in early life. We teach best what we ourselves have had to learn.
If you have a bee in your bonnet about particular issues, driving you into activism, it’s worth looking into your ancestral background and your history. It can help make it all more conscious.
Many Palestine and other activists would do well to look at the emotional source in themselves of their despair, anger and commitment, because this will help them become more effective, tactical and compassionate in pursuing their vision.
It’s important because issues like this will not be resolved overnight. Yes, a ceasefire has been needed and is still needed, but a ceasefire without resolution of fundamentals might not be the best thing. Sad to say, sometimes the horror has to get worse, until a point comes where peace and resolution are the only options left.
We need to own up to the perverse fact that many of us worry about Gaza and similar places only when blood and horror happen, impinging on our comfort-zones. But actually, the reason why blood and horror happen rests on causes that are brewed and fermented during quieter times. If we’re going to succeed in a mission such as peacemaking of conflicts that have deep roots, it has to be sustained in the longterm.
And here’s an awkward truth. If campaigning for our beliefs polarises society, then we shall fail. Because if others have different beliefs, thinking of them as nasty ‘them’ people itself lies at the root of conflict. People who are anti-anything, who wish to ban things or people, and who dehumanise people with different viewpoints, become part of the problem they’re sincerely trying to resolve.
We really are all in this together, if we wish to resolve the fundamental issues that the world faces today. Peace will not come, and ecological and societal issues will not be resolved, unless we all work together.
This is not idealistic thinking. It is a very real socio-political issue. If we don’t get through this in the coming decades – global consensus-forming – then we’re fucked, really. War arises from polarisation, and there is little value in trying to stop war or save our world by polarising society.
Working to overcome polarisation and build bridges makes things more difficult. It means we must work longer and harder on this. It means we are challenged to walk our talk more consistently and for longer.
When the shooting and dismay stop, if everyone just goes home, back to normality, then peace will not come, because the matter is not sorted. And in this century we really need to sort things out, changing and ending the patterns of centuries and millennia.
That’s my thought for the day. However, there’s something else too – a new podcast.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | HUMAN INTELLIGENCE
I recorded this in January and completely forgot about it! That was a memory question. And that’s why it’s coming out now. I remembered.
Jean Piaget once said that intelligence is not about what we know, but what we do when we don’t know. How we figure things out when we’re in new territory or out of our depth.
The problem with AI is that it works by drawing on data and on what is known, on memory, and on the way things have happened thus far.
That’s not true intelligence. Human intelligence is better at dealing with the unknown. That is, if we humans act intelligently – which we do only occasionally.
So AI is unlikely to be as wondrous in its problem-solving capacities as tech-bedazzled AI cultists would like us to believe.
And there’s a hidden twist here concerning human intelligence – it’s in the podcast! Recorded in January 2024, down by an old silted-up millpond in the stream below our farm. 27 mins long.
With love, Palden.
Listen to it here:
https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/vSPHJFc1FJb
or go to my podcast page here:
www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Notes from the Far Beyond 
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