Communities and Hope: Language for fahm (understanding) vs. language for wahm (illusion)

After the dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the claim that there is only one Super Power in the world, I wrote an article entitled “The Eternal Super Power”, referring to the peoples of the world. The main “possessions” of this power are communities and hope. The history of the past 500 years (starting with the European invasion of the Americas) has been a systematic brutal attempt to wipe out both communities and hope – not only among the colonized but also among the colonizers. The story of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, which started in 1994 (exactly 500 years after the invasion), is one of the most inspiring movements in the world today: it brings out – more than anything else – the force of life and living as manifested by communities and hope.

The Zapatistas are not the only example where the force of life in communities and the spirit of hope are manifested; they are there in many places and peoples around the world. The story of the Iranian revolution in 1978 (which Foucault referred to as ‘spiritual politics’, a phrase that made most western “experts” attack him viciously) is an example of the force in communities and in hope. Living dynamic cultures form a most important ingredient of such force.

Most of my experience in Palestine has been living with community and hope. They have been the main ‘things’ we have. In this email, I would like to elaborate on this as part of the discussion towards our meeting in Iran; and, in particular, how this relates to the theme of language for fahm (understanding) vs. language for wahm/ vahm (illusion).

Power is not only defined by what it tries to impose but also (and in my opinion, more so) by what it makes invisible or deems valueless, or by robbing words of meanings used by people in the context of living. Hope is an example of words that are made invisible or valueless, while community is an example of words that have been robbed of meanings created in the context of living, and replaced by professional or official meanings.

Ivan Illich wrote in 1971: “The history of modern man… is the history of fading hope and rising expectations.” I read this statement in 2003, and like other insightful statements that moved me, Illich’s statement clarified many dimensions of my experiences and my living; it deepened my fahm. It is especially meaningful in relation to the Palestinian situation. Between 1948 and 1993, hope – as manifested by people and communities – was the main spirit among Palestinians. In 1993, the World Bank, UN agencies, and other big development organizations were allowed – for the first time – to function fully in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (after the Palestinian Authority was formed). Since then, the story of the Palestinians has been a story of ‘fading hope and rising expectations’ – we were transformed slowly from doers to complainers and demanders. It is the same story everywhere, where communities were replaced by nation-states, which robbed people of what they could do without institutions and professionals – in addition to tearing apart the fabric of communities and planting in their stead artificial and monopolizing institutions/ organizations governed by values of control and winning. (This happened even in a place where only the smell of a nation-state was allowed, like in Palestine!) Hope was replaced by expectations, and community by ‘civil society’ (which we were told is made up of NGOs). Calling such organizations ‘non-governmental’, without feeling embarrassed, is part of the wahm: we all know that non-governmental organizations need to get the approval of governments for every little step (in addition, of course, to approval of funding agencies)! The term ‘civil society’ – if I ever have to use it – would refer to being made up of communities and not NGOs.

One point is worth mentioning in relation to the idea of nation-state: it is the main loser in recent events in Palestine! Like in many other instances (such as exposing Western hypocrisy concerning democracy, where not one western country respected the choice of Palestinians), Palestine exposed the real role of nation-states: it is either to rally its citizens to invade and steal other nations or to suppress its own people. In other words, a nation-state is a tool for external occupation or for internal occupation! I don’t know of any instance to the contrary! [It is worth mentioning that people like Gandhi, Tagore, and Iqbal were strongly against the idea. We witness today how it led to the formation of 3 ugly nation-states in the sub-continent, and to 22 ugly nation-states in the Arab region! The main tools of a nation-state include: ‘national’ curriculum (that controls language, meanings, and minds); ‘national’ army (that suppresses people within the ‘nation’); and ‘national’ bank (that transfers the nation’s money to outside banks and corporations)!]

A main challenge we face today (not only in Palestine) is how to nurture hope where it is still flourishing and how to re-cultivate it where it is fading, and how to protect the fabric in communities where it still exists and help stitch it where it is being torn apart.

I am going to choose the decade of the 1970s as an example of a period that embodied hope and community. When the PLO was expelled from Jordan in 1971, the atmosphere in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was one of uncertainty and despair. We didn’t know where things were going, what to expect, and no one had the slightest idea what would happen next. At the same time, however, I don’t remember I met anyone (during that period) who did not have an idea of what to do in one’s immediate place and time. What helped that attitude to flourish was the fact that the reference of every person – in relation to what s/he should do – was himself/ herself. There was no authority to tell people what to do, which provided space and freedom for people to do what they felt they could and should do. We were left alone with no big goals (liberation during that period was more like a spirit that was lived than a goal for the future), no organizations, and no formal structures; we were left only with what we had as persons and as communities: ourselves, each other, and what was there socially, culturally, naturally – and the reality we were living in. It is in this sense that hope is connected to abundance: to what is available, inspiring, and beautiful in people, communities, and culture. The spirit was simply amazing. We were so immersed in life that we were not fully aware of that spirit – which we were creating for ourselves and for each other. No one planned what was happening, no one pre-thought it, and no one preached it; it just happened. People felt energized, alive, attentive to surroundings and ready to do whatever they felt they could do and was good to do. In a very real sense, that was the only way to go: to move in harmony with the force of life. This is what I refer to as hope: being attentive to surroundings and full of aliveness, and just act accordingly. It is very similar to the hope that exists in a poppy seed buried under hard soil, and pushing its way up towards sunlight and fresh air (an image that I chose to reflect the spirit of Tamer Institute which I established in 1989 during the first intifada). Hope, for me, refers to the ‘blind’ faith that exists in all living creatures when they act in harmony with life, and when they are left with nothing but the force of life. That feeling and spirit were widespread and spontaneous during the 1970s: we felt free, hopeful, and self-ruled (in Gandhi’s sense).

A Palestinian folklore story (which probably exists in other societies) embodies the spirit I mentioned above. It is about a fire that started in a jungle. All animals, birds… escaped and sat on the top of a hill watching with sadness and despair the jungle burning – except for one bird. It kept flying to a stream, getting wet, and flying back to sprinkle water over the fire. The animals laughed and asked whether that would extinguish the fire. The bird said that it was doing what it could and was good to do. Hope resides in doing what one can do, rather than in lamenting, complaining, demanding, accusing, and just watching.

If back in the 1970s we tried to analyze what was happening in a rational way, things would have looked very dark and depressing; we would have done nothing – we would have sat down, lamented, complained and waited for relief from outside. This is why I would not describe how we felt as pessimistic or what we did as optimistic. I would rather say that what we felt and did embodied hope. Optimism is related to some positive result in the future (an attribute of the mind), while hope is manifested by doing something in the present (an attribute of the vitality of life). This is what women in Gaza and refugee camps in Lebanon did every time the situation seemed impossible: hope (as manifested in the desire to go on living) has been a main secret of their vitality over the past 60 years.

It is worth mentioning two words in Arabic that are very relevant here: the words for culture and civilization. Thaqafah, which is the word for culture, has a root which means ‘to straighten and to sharpen’, which – in relation to humans – means to work on self and try to sharpen and straighten it constantly. The word for civilization is hadaarah حضارة which stems from the root hadara  حضرand related to haader  الحاضرand hodoor  حضور(from being present, in the present time, in the presence of others). It is bringing the past and the future into the present; one focuses on the present and what one can do at the present time and in the presence of others. The two words are connected to hope and community through working on self and focusing on what one can do at the present time in the presence of others.

In short, hope – during the 1970s – was manifested in thousands of spontaneous autonomous small acts. It was neither connected to a super goal nor to a utopia nor to an optimistic dream nor to a progressive ideology. It didn’t spring out of people figuring out in a rational way what they should do. It didn’t result from a rational decision that we should be optimistic and should not act in a pessimistic way. It was not a conscious act against feelings of despair. It was simply an expression of living in the place each one happened to be in and at the time one happened to be there. A story that I keep telling, which embodies what I said above, is one that happened during the first intifada. It reflects a common scene in the West Bank and Gaza Strip then. A number of soldiers were harshly beating a young man in central Ramallah. Several women rushed toward the scene shouting and trying to pull the soldiers away. Suddenly, a woman carrying a baby ran up and started shouting at the young man, ‘l told you not to leave the house today, that the situation is too dangerous. But you didn’t listen; you never listen to me.” Then she turned to the soldiers and said, “Beat him; he deserves this. He never listens. I am sick of my life with him.” Then back to the man she cried, “I am sick of you and your baby; take him and leave me alone.” She then pushed the baby into his arms and ran away. The soldiers were confused. Finally they left the man and went on. A few minutes later, the woman reappeared, took back her baby, told the young man to go to his home, and wished him safety and a quick recovery. I then realized that they were total strangers to one another.

Her action was a manifestation of hope in human beings: how incredible, how unpredictable, how creative human beings can be. She was simply acting humanly, as a concerned, responsible, and compassionate human being. Her power and her inspiration stemmed from this fact, and from her understanding that her survival, and that of her community, is at stake. She acted spontaneously, creatively, and courageously; feeling a sense of community and solidarity beyond the usual uttering of slogans.

At the same time, her action embodied a risk: her baby could have been hurt. She did what drove her naturally to save the young man from brutal action, without pondering where it would lead. Her action was not a calculated action, and it can’t be labeled pessimistic or optimistic action. In addition, her behavior shows that in order to deal effectively with systems of control, the meaning of words must be produced in the form of action, in the context of action. In her case, this was true of the words: hope, freedom, community, faith, creativity, and courage. Such words nurture fahm (understanding and harmony). In addition, it is clear that meanings of such words cannot be fully comprehended by minds or expressed by words; they can only be ‘digested’ through experiences and contemplations. Put simply, life is much richer than what minds and words can capture.

Two Languages Not One

[crucial to understand the ‘disease’ and the way to heal from it]

Ivan Illich: For Dante (1265-1321), a language that had to be learned, to be spoken according to a grammar, was inevitably a dead tongue… In 1492, Queen Isabella [of Spain] receives a petition which unlike the request of Columbus, who wanted resources to establish a new route to China, that of Nebrija urges the queen to invade a new domain at home. He offers Isabella a tool to colonize the language spoken by her own subjects; he wants her to replace the people’s speech by the imposition of the queen’s lengua – her language, her tongue. What for Dante was dead and useless, Nebrija recommends as a tool. One was interested in vital exchange, the other in universal conquest, in a language that by rule would coin words as incorruptible as the stones of a palace… The decision for colonial conquest overseas implied the challenge of a new war at home – the invasion of her own people’s vernacular domain, the opening of a five-century war against vernacular subsistence, the ravages of which we now begin to fathom.

John Piper: In the 1520s, William Tyndale translated (hiding in Germany) the Bible into vernacular English [vernacular language refers to living language which people learn without teaching/ tutoring]. He did it in hiding because King Henry VIII and the church were against translating it into a language which people understand without the help of institutions and professionals. In October 1536, at only 42 years of age, William Tyndale’s one-note voice was silenced as he was tied to the stake, strangled by the executioner, and then consumed in the fire.

Thomas Macaulay:

“I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education [in India]… …

We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect… We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue”. From Thomas Babington Macaulay, “Minute of 2 February 1835 on Indian Education,” Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, selected by G. M. Young (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp-721-24.]

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A friend wrote: The idea that the university is the only site of learning is a rather modern idea. In fact, in most civilizations, there have historically been numerous sites of learning and pedagogy. One of the many ways in which modernity has insidiously asserted a deadening homogeneity is in installing the university as the sole site of learning–indeed, it is not even “learning” of which we are speaking, but rather an education which these days seems to have no purpose except to prepare students to acquire jobs and become minions of either the state or the corporate world. The so-called “world universities” are by far the greatest culprits in this enterprise. The university is now part of the game of ranking, metrics-driven…

Emmanuel Liscano of the Open University of Madrid wrote: Basque group celebrate their grandfathers who fought against metric system…

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Concerning my conviction that every person is a co-author of meaning:

Since 1971, a main conviction in my mind (which kept deepening within me ever since) has been ‘every person is co-author of meaning’; ‘every person is a source of meaning and understanding’. I refer to this conviction as ‘democracy of meaning’, which I consider most basic of democracies. Democracy of meaning is our main immunity at the intellectual level. Intellectual enslavement is very corrupting at both the personal and community levels. ‘Every person is a co-author of meaning’ leads to meanings that stem from contemplating upon life, and independently investigating the meaning one makes out of it. This is a biological ability, a duty, and a right – excluded from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rights of the child. To protect ourselves from the onslaught of manufactured words, we need to practice our ability and duty to be co-authors of meanings. It is a most urgent act in today’s world in our quest for freeing ourselves from the harm done to humans, communities, and nature; it frees us from being parrots and robots at the intellectual level.

Words which I co-authored their meanings since 1971 include: learning, science, math, knowledge, illiterate, evaluation, vision, freedom, cultured person, mind, education, plurality, fundamentalism, professor, expert, teacher, values, medium, progress, illiterate, intuitive mind. I will elaborate on some of these words for clarification:

For a long time, especially after the Oslo agreement between Palestinians and Israelis, when the World Bank took over our future, the word ‘expert’ became dominant in the West Bank region of Palestine. I have been trying to see what is common among ‘experts’ who came to Palestine. I noticed that one thing that is common is making the past look backward, obsolete and out of date

‘Professor’ has a very beautiful meaning in English: a person who professes what has brewed and matured within her/him (as a result of engaging in real situations in life and contemplating upon them) and sharing that with others – and not a person who has a degree or academic rank. I keep trying in my interactions with academicians to remind them of the need to regain this meaning.

The father of modern science, Francis Bacon, talked about science as ‘subduing nature’. Science before Bacon revolved around the regularities people saw in nature in order to live in harmony with it, and to remedy the harm done by people to nature; it was more healing than dominating. In other words, it was close to living wisely.

According to modern physics, time moves forward along a straight line; for an organic farmer, who lives in harmony with nature, time follows the life cycle; i.e., it is circular. Darwin held the principle of ‘survival of the fittest’; an organic farmer who knows nature from a radically different angle, holds the principle of ‘survival of the weakest’: earth worms that keep the soil healthy. The survival of earth worms is crucial to the survival of healthy soil and thus to the well being of people. What earth worms do is nothing less than a miracle in relation to the well-being of the soil and of humans. At the intellectual level, what takes the place of earth worms is the intuitive mind whose survival is crucial to having a healthy intellectual life. Modernity made the intuitive mind invisible or worthless.

When I saw the similarity between what the flush toilet does and what official education does, I started referring to official education as the flush toilet of knowledge…

The spirit of regeneration is a value. Modern science – in words and in action – seems to treat this spirit as an enemy to its progress. Elite universities confuse progress at the level of tools with progress at levels where this spirit is protected in order to keep life as an act of mutual nurturance at many levels. Such universities deal with excellence, truth, and creativity as if they are values, although they are tools that can serve totally different values. Harvard at the age of 380, still does not realize that truth (VeRiTas, its motto) is not a value but a tool that can serve different values.

Finally, I want to mention how a young Palestinian ‘Khalil Sakakini’ (at age 18) in 1896 co-authored the meaning of official education (as he experienced it in the schools that were established in the Jerusalem area) as “wearing someone else’s shoes” which he chose as the title of the book he wrote then. Few years later he referred to official education as degradation of students and established a school in Jerusalem with its motto (in words and in action) as ‘dignifying students not degrading them’.

Very briefly, for me, knowledge is action, whose meanings are contextual; it is what becomes part of one’s lifestyle rather than just texts and skills that we parrot as robots.

I can’t stop without mentioning the meaning I worked with concerning math since the 1970s. In 1979, I introduced a course for entering science students into Birzeit University (near Ramallah in Palestine) which I called “Math in the Other Direction” which revolved around several aspects that do not get enough attention in schools and universities, such as: seeing the underlying logic in social phenomena, seeing similarities among different phenomena in terms of their inner structures, inter-connectedness among different aspects and forming a mental picture of that, and using math as a means of discovering aspects in one’s lifestyle in order to remedy the harm done by living with the pattern of consumption…

More on Theory and Practice, Knowledge and Action

As a result of our correspondence and conversations “knowledge and action, theory and practice” kept popping up in my mind. As usual, I went back to my mother’s world to seek a deeper clarity of this dichotomy. That search clarified something I talked about, so far, vaguely; namely the connection between knowledge and action in her life. Western ideologies (American academia in particular) fragment knowledge and separate theory from practice. They also stress that life is made mainly of matter and thoughts; the mystical is ignored. The absence of the mystical is related to the absence of wisdom. Contemplating again on what my mother was doing, I realized more clearly that my mother’s ‘world’ was not a mixture of knowledge and action, not a synthesis of both, but embodied a totally different ‘cosmos’: a world where knowledge and action have never been separated. In this sense, her life constituted a mystical dimension which cannot be explained or expressed via concepts and words. In her life there was no separation between knowledge, action, and the mystical; they were united ‘biologically’. She led an undivided life in the various aspects she lived: mathematics, religion, and our upbringing. There is no word to describe this better than wisdom! Her knowledge is like looking in an unbroken mirror; mine was like looking in a broken mirror where my face appears fragmented, nothing in its right place, no coherence, distorted. Courses I took in math never formed a coherent picture in my mind.

The first big icon who was ‘squeezed’ to his real size by my mother was Bertrand Russell, whom I loved and read much of what he wrote starting in high school. As a result of ‘discovering’ my illiterate mother’s math and of the role of dominant math in contributing to corruptions we witness today, I realized his unawareness of two things: math embedded in people like my mother, and the role of dominant math in today’s mess. What is strange in this is that he was not only aware of injustices created by the West (such as in Vietnam and Palestine) but actually took actions against them; yet, he did not see the role of math in much of the destruction in today’s world! My realization of the unity of knowledge, action, and the mystical in my mother’s intuitive mind, her undivided life, ‘squeezed’ (in addition to Russell) two other icons in my life back to their real sizes: Hegel and his dialectical theory, and Freire and his perception of liberation as praxis, which he defined as ‘the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it’… and also in order to heal from alienation. All three – Russell, Hegel, Freire – seem to have not been able to see the richness, wisdom, depth, and rootedness of the knowledge real people have [I use real rather than common or ordinary]. Wisdom is closer to the intuitive mind (which cannot be felt via language and thinking) and is in the heart where the senses, the intellect, and the mystical meet. For the senses we need the facial eye; for the intellect we need the mind’s eye; for the mystical we need the spiritual eye. My mother was protected by not being a parrot or copy of anyone which made her able to live an undivided life – which is the basis of freedom. Freedom at the roots does not mean having choices but, rather, being bound to an undivided life! A person who has no modern symbols is more free and equipped to live an undivided life. This requires being aware of other main aspects of wisdom: respect and humility.

Some people may look at my mother’s inability to separate knowledge from action, theory from practice, as weakness, ignorance, and inability to connect. We are so used to the artificial fragmentation of everything that makes it difficult for us to see (let alone to live) an undivided life. Academia in this sense is the exact opposite of living an undivided life; it is almost a crime against wisdom. Referring to fragmenting knowledge and thought as specialization is a desperate attempt to give it a positive connotation. Wisdom is an experience. Even a word like reflection is not enough; my mother did not get to the level of unity and harmony in her life as a result of reflection but out of being attentive to life every day, in every action, in every expression, and in every silence – without being conscious of it, without her mind taking over, and without institutional words and academic categories controlling her perceptions and her actions. Such undivided attentiveness to life and making sense of it is the experience we call wisdom.

A main question that stems from the above is: how can we live an undivided life in schools and universities? My first response is to heal from the perception that change can come only from institutions. There is a vast world out there outside institutions; there are even ‘pockets’ of hope and action within institutions. We can live an undivided life anywhere we find an opening, a space where we can squeeze ourselves via mujaawarahs. We don’t need to wait for institutions to change; we can do a lot if we free our imaginations from modern blocks. For example, in schools ( as well as outside them), we can whenever we find an opportunity, work around two aspects in life, namely: the earth soil and the cultural soil as the two main soils that nurture the body, the mind, and weaving fabric at the social, intellectual, economic, spiritual levels; a fabric woven between children in their relations with one another, with nature and with the collective memory of the place and community. In addition, we can encourage students to reflect on two questions (ignored in schools): what are you searching for in your life? what do you yuhsen (i.e. what you do well, useful in the sense of nurturing, giving, has an aesthetic dimension, and respectful)?