I went to see one of my oldest friends yesterday. We had a drink in the city. We avoid the issue because he and I completely disagree. He's a liberal successful Jew who listens to neoconservatives and worries about another Holocaust. Still, the issue comes up.
He wanted to talk about it. He said, "Where are you going from here?" I said a meeting, and when he persisted, I said, It's about Gaza.
He said, "Do you ever think you're being used by those people?"
"I've thought about it," I said.
"The way that some Jews were used by the Nazis," he said.
I shrugged it off. "Jim [fake name], I've come to a new understanding. I realize I'm incurably Jewish, I was raised in this very ethnocentric household, and formed by my early friendships, girlfriends, you name it, and I'm just Jewish through and through--"
"Yes you are." He nodded seriously.
"And I see my writing in an ethnocentric way. I think, I love Jews, they're my people, and I want to help save them from what they're bringing down on themselves. Because they've made a terrible tragic mistake. And I really think I'm doing this out of some love of my people."
Jim is very thoughtful. He tilted back in his seat and stared at the ceiling with a painful, open mouth. I imagined his face would look like that on his deathbed. He shook his head.
"No. You're not. The reasons you're doing this--" He paused, he's always been very psychological, and smart that way-- "On the one hand you're looking into things out of a sincere and noble concern for injustice, which you've always had. And that's inspiring. Things I couldn't bear to look at you're looking at. But the other part of it is that you're scratching an itch. It's your issues, and you have to keep scratching it."
"You mean about my parents, my mother."
He nodded. He had a tragic look now, as if what I am doing is a terrible thing. "You're scratching it. Your mother, whatever she did to you. And it will never go away. But it's still satisfying to you to scratch it. It's like poison ivy. It actually spreads from your scratching it."
I just listened. I don't like getting in arguments, especially with people I love. We moved on. But the subject came up later when we said goodbye to one another, walking out together. We gossiped about an old friend who has sex/gender issues and I declined to judge her. I said, "She's got mishigoss. I've got mishigos." "And me, too!" he chirped.
That was a nice note to leave on, a kind of absolution. Mishigos means nuttiness in Yiddish.
I thought about the conversation for the rest of the evening. It didn't make me feel bad, as these conversations used to. I thought: he is deeply engaged in a generational way with an old narrative of Israel as just compensation for us as victims of the Nazis. Nothing will make him let go. He admits he can't look at the actual conditions now. It's too much a part of his ethnocentric inner identity; and the alternative would involve looking honestly at Jewish power and philosemitism and having to adjust his worldview to accommodate those conditions, and even give up some of his power. No: he loves the lobby because it assures Israel's immunity from its crimes, which he rationalizes by saying Palestinians are the new Nazis.
I thought about my mishigos. I thought, Yes I have had a difficult relationship with my parents at times, which has caused me to act out against powerful people in an assholic way. But I'm over that with my parents and have a loving relationship with them, and I hope that's affected my power relationships in the world. I'm a reflective person, and a body can think about this psychological stuff too much. A lot of smart people have mishigos. I bet Robert Caro, whose daddy issues have worked their way out now through an unending number of volumes of a biography of a monster, doesn't think about this very much, he just acts. How much of Noam Chomsky's inability to look at religion as an important social factor stems from his father being a Hebrew school principal? Well that hasn't stopped him from expressing himself. Etc.
I thought, well this is who I am, I like to scratch this itch now, I think it's important. I'm too old and at last mature to change my being, whatever its source, and I'll just have to go down with that ship, or on with it.
YOur friend was very accepting of you, and gave you important information.
You’re wrong about being too mature to change, if its important to you.
Learning, fundamental learning, happens at every moment through life. Life itself gives us feedback, and then the very very big learning comes near death.
EVERYONE has to learn to give in to death, as illness or old age shifts one’s consciousness from adolescent fascinations, to accomplishment, to mentoring, to acceptance of mortality.
The point is that its a fundamental shift in consciousness that is learned by information given in one’s experience.
Everything in between continues to be learnable, including primary unhealed wounds or old decisions.
I can imagine it is difficult to be free from your inner patterns so long as you make the inner patterns your vocation, semi-permanent with many relationships tied up in your political and emotional stance, that urge or even compel some conformity in ways.
” I can imagine it is difficult to be free from your inner patterns so long as you make the inner patterns your vocation”
Yes, Richard, you can only “imagine” Phil’s difficulties. It’s not like you have any personal obsessions, nothing you need to free yourself from, no mindless ideology that dictates any sort of conformity in your case.
If one wants to understand Richard commentary here, its most useful to realize that most of his admonitions are really mis-directed self-admonitions. The super-ego is working overtime trying to get through to the id, but the ego keeps directing the instructions outward instead of inward.
I have mixed feelings about Freudian models of psychology, and furthermore, I think you are being too generous. I think Witty’s solipsist to his Zionist ideology and really doesn’t see anything else as possibly valid if it doesn’t serve his agenda directly. Just look at how often he steers the conversation toward himself and his perceived “privileged relationship” with Mr. Weiss.
The only reason I indulge him in that regard is it’s such a pathetic maneuver that it makes it that much easier for the rest of us to expose Zionism for the sham that it is.
I think it was pretty underhanded of your friend to try to equate your sense of justice and duty to make things right as if it were some sort of Freudian reflex to lash out at your mother, actually.
No offense, Mr. Weiss, you’re a wonderful and honorable guy, but if Witty’s any indication, your ability to choose friends who are honest with you and support and understand you is rather spotty, at best.
Chaos has a point here. Your friend “Jim” was projecting his issues and weaknesses onto you. He is the one who cannot face issues that make him uncomfortable. He calls himself liberal and yet he follows a neoconservative line on Israel and refuses to look for fear of upsetting his childhood fantasies. Richard has the same penchant for projecting in his own way. Perhaps you are better off taking the “advise” of old friends as merely indications of their issues and weaknesses, not yours.
And, BTW, your friend is wrong on another fundamental level. Poison ivy rash does NOT spread because you scratch it.
I meant “advice”, of course, not “advise”.
one wants to scratch at poison ivy because the body is having a reaction to the exposure … the urge to scratch the itch is letting you know you’ve been exposed to something harmful and you’d better do something about it
an educated person knows that to scratch the itch just spreads the infectious agent and a more prudent course is to seek a remedy that actually helps control the symptoms and/or treats the infection
so you are absolutely right to feel the itch because you have a conscience and your are groping around for a way to treat the infection without making it worse – Mondoweiss is a wonderful way in which to satisfy the urge to scratch without doing so – you are actually sharing information: don’t go near those bushes, don’t get any on you!”
all in all a good metaphor methinks to this debate over zionism
So because some (likely) well-off professional guy in New York doesn’t have the balls to look at reality, millions have to suffer in Palestine? Because some Jewish guy in the USA needs a “just in case” place, millions of people in Palestine will sufer endless oppression?
Your friend’s unwillingness to look at the facts… indeeed, his ability to go on about his life knowingly ignoring them, is exactly why BDS is the only long-term solution.
Philip’s old friend chooses to wear his Jewishness as if it were a kind of body armor. The protection it gives requires hm to live in confinement in body and, more important, in mind.
One of the extremely effective evolutionary motors for spread and development human beings throughout the world is conflict with parents.
Animals forget the short time of conflict when a young adult is kicked out from the exclusive parental feeding territory, and they happily repeat the cycle as soon as they find feeding territory for themselves.
Human beings dwell on the conflict with parents pretty much for the duration of their active live.
Conflict with parents, (and its twin sister of sibling rivalry), is pretty universal in all cultures. It pushes us to take positions which are different from those of our parents, and it requires us to rationalise our new positions.
The black and white world view of young adults contrasts sharply with jaded views of elders tilting young generation in the directions of idealism.
Mr. Weiss’s mishigos is the force that grows civilisations. The itch is a sign that he never outgrew idealism of calling out good and evil.
I just wish a was lucky enough to antagonise my children into the pursuit of something more useful to the world community than just befriending elderly neighbours and volunteering in the food kitchens for homeless.
RE: “It’s your issues, and you have to keep scratching it.” – Jim [fake name]
ME: No Phil(l)ip, it’s that missing ‘l’. I’m certain of it.
P.S. And you have a ‘brutal compulsion for the truth’. You “conscious pariah”, you!