On Olives and Sake

This post was written and sent to me by a dear friend in Damascus, who wishes to stay anonymous. I publish it as it is.

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If you stop any taxi in Damascus, the driver would most probably be a member of one of the numerous internal intelligence bodies in Syria. These days, those recruited drivers are useful for the regime as a propaganda tool. They are ordered to keep the official and the unofficial radio stations on so that as many passengers as possible would be exposed to the official narrative.

Many drivers might open a discussion with the passenger. It would mostly end by criticizing the demonstrations and the demonstrators, or by depicting the Security forces and their brutal crackdown as heros. One driver passed by a demonstration in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, one of the most unprivileged neighborhoods in Damascus, he described them as “animals without honor, they obviously appeared like they are not even from Syria.”

The animosity against “the demonstrators” is not as simple as some would think. It is systematic, discriminative and above all xenophobic. When the first demonstrations broke in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, the pro-regime supporters launched a campaign against its people. The first comment you would have heard from any pro-government supporter would be that “they are tribal and Bedouins, most of them are primitive weapons smugglers,” thus; presumably they deserve to be treated brutally.

And now that the demonstrations have spread across the country, excluding very few regions and cities, the accusations have escalated drastically. Usually, by the pro-regime media, all demonstrators are grouped in one category: greedy people who take money from outsiders so that they demonstrate and destabilize the country.

There is a considerable percentage of the population which believe these ideas. I had the chance to witness one argument between a young man and a woman who work in the same company talking about the demonstrators; they believe that each of the demonstrators take about 5000 Syrian Pounds (approximately 110USD) funded by external powers, namely the USA and Qatar. They also believe that the demonstrators take hallucination pills prepared and distributed by Al-Jazeera News Channel. The guy explained that this tablets make the demonstrators “immune” against physical and psychological torture; “Some of them laugh while they are beaten up, others don’t show any response” the guy said. The girl assured that in every demonstration there is someone atop of a building who sprinkles a stimulant material over of the demonstrators so that they become aggressive.” “The picture is clear now,” the guy said, “These people are willing to cooperate with the devil for a silly bunch of dollars. Now, there is no good demonstrator.”

In an afternoon BBQ, a friend of mine was having a chat with her friend whose father is a famous Baathist, the friend bended towards the grill and picked a piece of a lamb meat, he smiled and whispered in her ear: “Fresh!.. From Daraa.” Later that same week, a fifty year-old lady revealed to me that “all the demonstrators should be shot by an automatic machinegun.”

When President Bashar al-Assad made his famous speech in March noting that “you’re either with us, or against us”, an MP interrupted the speech telling the president that “he should not be the leader of the Arab world, instead, he should be the leader of the whole world.” All the MPs clapped and chanted for the life of president. Ironically, after this speech the term “global conspiracy against Syria” started to be widely used by the pro-Assads. They believe that Syria is targeted by the EU, USA, Qatar, and until very recently Syria’s strongest ally: Turkey.

In a Pro Assad rally, the supporters chant “if you do not clap with us then your mother is a Qatari.” To a lesser degree the same slogan is used but by replacing “Qatari” with “Turkish.” They even launched a campaign in order to boycott everything related to Qatar and Turkey. Listening to Turkish music is frowned upon by many of them, while a demonstrator stood in front of an ottoman building in Damascus and started shouting “Drown it! It’s Turkish.”

Alongside these new slogans used by the pro-Assads, the old ones are still popular especially “Allah, Syria, and Bashar only.” The Demonstrators have changed it by chanting “Allah, Syria and Freedom only.” The Demonstrators keep on assuring that achieving freedom is their main goal. But for the pro-Assads the word freedom puts a threat on the regime and is considered recently a taboo word.

In a park, a 4 year old child runs towards me smiling and chanting “Allah, Syria, and Bashar only.” I smiled and said, and don’t you want freedom? The kid responded automatically, “I hate freedom, and I only love Bashar.” I looked at his mother, she knew what I was going to say, she whispered in my ear “you don’t have to be angry at me, I did that in order to protect him from torture.”

Someone says, “I support the poor”, the other replies, “…when I come back home I’ll try to remind you again (through links) how I always did [support the poor].”

Childish Facebook conversations aside, the question of the poverty and oppression and how it drives our moral decisions in societies overwhelmingly dominated by class differences, is an important one to investigate. These are two accomplished people, intelligent, cultured, and certainly well-intentioned, but in their attempt to claim a moral posture, they fail to notice their paradoxical statements. How can it be that someone who is part and parcel of the paradigms of power and production that first produced poverty and oppression (and then their many reincarnations) claim to support the impoverished and the oppressed. The simple answer to that question is a categorical, “No, they (we) can not.”

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(Do note that this not an attempt at a serious exploration of the subject. I am less than qualified, and less than eager to foray into such territory. These are only a collection of subjective observations, personal opinions and reasoning, and should be read as such.)

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Class-based societies are as old as civilization. A natural by-product of specialization in production, the fluctuating prosperity it brings, and the paradigms of power and production that they entail. Religions and ideologies are the intellectual expression of these paradigms, and thus they are the long-term guarantor of their survival. All modern societies are class-based, to varying degrees and forms. This is a matter of fact of the world we live in. Another matter of fact is that poverty and oppression are two powers that feed into each other. Oppression reinforces poverty, and poverty reinforces oppression, so when we speak of one, we are speaking of the other.

Human civilization as it is, encourages and is based on the excesses of power and production, or “wealth”. A society that encourages wealth, is one that has to oppress with other face of wealth, poverty. We are born into a dichotomy that has evolved since the beginning of time. We do not choose which side we’re born into, and from our infant years we are raised to be a part of this dichotomy, to accept it, and consequently to reinforce the dynamics implied by it.

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The class struggle is the most important of said dynamics. In fact Marx goes to say that it is the very driving force of social evolution and of history itself, “The history of all hitherto existing human society is the history of class struggles,” he says. This struggle, so far, has been internal to that same dichotomy. It shifts classes, and rearranges them, but always within the strict boundaries of the dominant paradigms of its day. Attempts to break these boundaries, and externalize the struggle in order to create new paradigms date as far back as time as well and Marxism is but one intellectual approach to the subject.

Since its articulation as a political and economic ideology in the 19th century, it has expanded to explore other dimensions of the subject. Situationalism, and existentialism are probably the most prominent social theories that are related (not entirely, and to different degrees) to Marxism. I shall not expand on that further as it is of marginal importance to our specific question, except to remind the reader that attempts to break the dichotomy we live in, while still unsuccessful, have a prominent place in both the material and intellectual realm.

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The moral dilemmas arising from such an enforced, inhumane and unnatural struggle are quite severe. Especially considering that these are matters of fact to many of us, for we do not choose to which parents we are born. We violently deny them, we inhibit the thought, and we come up with different ways to reach temporary cease-fires, so to speak. Charity, empowerment and aid, modern words for a modern age, are nothing but temporary cease-fires. But they reproduce the same conditions that feed into that dichotomy. They reproduce the same classes, in different shapes. They dare not even attempt to touch the paradigms of power themselves, in fact they reinforce them. But they also serve to diffuse the pressure building up inside such a closed ecosystem. Something I believe, Guy Debord referred to as the “Spectacle”.

It should come as no surprise then, that all religions, and ideologies are products and guarantors of the survival of that dichotomy. Within their absolutism, they reinforce the absolutism of the “Spectacle”. They speak of the oppressed, their alienation and suffering in absolute terms and consequently they dilute the class-struggle into a struggle between classes.

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“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”

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It follows that the only way to really help the oppressed, and the impoverished is to fight against this dichotomy. In a sense, to join the oppressed and the impoverished, because that is the only place where such a fight really happens. Only the proletariate can break this cycle, because it is the one class which exists independently from the paradigms it is trying to replace. The fight against this dichotomy comes from the bottom, and it entails the destruction of the bourgeois as a class and of all the conditions that preclude its existence.

Some will point out examples where evolutionary ideas reached high levels of social equality and suggest these examples as valid models to replicate and build upon (e.g. northern Europe). But they need only be reminded of the hefty price the rest of the world had to pay for that “evolution”. Thus, a revolutionary, rather than an evolutionary context is both necessary (to have the destructive power needed to evaporate the dominant powers of history and culture) and implied in the end-result.

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So, where does that leave us with regards to our main question? Where does that leave me?

Like every true revolution, one is either with or against, there are no neutral grunds. It is not easy to admit to oneself to being on the wrong side of history. Nor is it easy to change it. But it is a choice one makes, and to make an informed decision means to accept the consequences that come with it.

Chances are, excluding some unforeseen twists of fate, I will die on the wrong side of history too. And thus I have to admit to myself that I am not prepared, personally, to abandon my place, my (petty) luxury, and the system that allows me such luxury, in order to take an active part in that struggle. At the same time, I also choose not to delude myself as to where I stand, and that is as much a conscious choice as the first one. Which means to be fully aware, at all times, that my own luxury (my internet, hot shower, subway, etc.) is the direct consequence of someone else’s oppression.

Having said that, I am also not prepared to align myself with self-delusional and self-gratifying movements, ideas and attitudes that only reinforce this dichotomy. I am not prepared to play an active role in the reinforcement of these conditions. I am not prepared to be a part of this modern reincarnation of France’s “mission civilisatrice”, regardless of its intentions.

This is the compromise I find myself in. Passive, painful and, eventually, self-destructive as it may be. My only consolation is the knowledge that when, and if, the march of progress, of history and of the proletariate, reaches my doorstep, I will happily walk outside and place my own head in a guillotine.

Incoherent Bullshit, is an old series from the blog, this fits in quite well. On the other hand, It may feel out of place, considering everything that’s going down back home, but then again, I am out of place. I’ll publish this when I get access to internet.

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“How can we live without internet?” was my question 4 days ago. My internet (the word alone, is almost fantastical) was shut down a few days ago because I forgot to update my credit card information online.

I am 24, and in my own lifetime I’ve seen that last paragraph turn from the absurd, into the most banal of facts. Yet, reading it again now, and even though I know how true, and how real it is, it still sounds absurd. What bubbles we live in, is what I keep asking myself now.

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Pierre suggested the other day that it may not be a great idea, for someone who’s hardly been leaving his room, to be reading Proust. I disagree. I think it may possibly be the best idea I’ve ever come up with. It may just be that he was writing for a certain breed, his own.

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It’s absolutely insane. This life is insane. And I can not escape it. The days go by, and they go by, they add up to years, and my timeline in Japan keeps growing further. In a bed in a city in eastern Japan, I sit down and read Bo Ali Yassin, eat Belgian chocolates, speak with a woman half the way across the planet and read news of Syria. It’s insane, and I’m nowhere. The only place I could possibly be is Japan. But I’m not. I have little pieces of me scattered across the earth. Not even across the earth, but rather across the little optical fibers that transmit us as sequences of 1s and 0s. I’m nowhere, and I’m not stardust, I am 1s and 0s.

I’ve run out of Asahi, so here’s another Yebisu.

Five years on, and I feel more lost, homeless, and homesick than ever. I need no words of affirmation for the only words that matter, at least in this present state of mind, are my own, and I have none. I admire no one. The people I look up to, are dead. I am not sure whether I think too highly of myself, or too little of everybody else. It matters little, right now.

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Imagination. Delusion. That great power we possess. I walk down the same streets everyday. I can hardly recognize any changes in scenery. Faces change, but the landscape, the photo, never does. I walk these streets and I suffocate inside my own mind. I think of school, of graduation, of plans, travels, memories and people, finances and work, of women and men. I suffocate and I keep on regurgitating all these thoughts. Placing myself in the world. Placing myself in my social, political, intellectual and cultural landscape. It crushes me. I feel a lump in my throat and I need to turn my mind off. I need to stop all these thoughts seeping into my brain. Only then, does it happen.

I find myself in another place, in another time, or to be more precise, in no specific place, in no specific time. With people that I know. But they’re not real, they’re how I believe they are. Reality is tricky matter, really. For I know they could not possibly be exactly how I believe them to be, but I also know no other way. So they are. I am with them, and we are having conversations we never had.

In the mind, you see, there’s no place for games, for the vain exploits of normal conversations. It is a place where all subtleties come with meaning, all subtleties have their corresponding body movements, where all words are heard and felt. Where a kiss is an orgasm and a knife is a scar.

The phone rings. A worried, and faint voice disturbs my flow of utter incoherence. But I need to write. I need to go back to that last paragraph. I need another sip of Yebisu. These times don’t come often enough, I need to savor them. Beer, and words being written, that is.

I can’t. Anyway, what I was trying to say is that these are times where I am truly happy. These are moments, fleeting ones, where I feel I’m real and not some character in an old woman’s dream.

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I spent a week in China last March, did you not know? Well, I wouldn’t blame you. I, myself, only remembered it last week. Going through the photos on my camera, there were those of Zied and Maad, in China, of all places. We smoked, we drank, we laughed and we fought. Maad cut a piece of star fruit like you do in that fruit ninja iPhone game. We looked over the morning fog every dawn and then we slept until three in the afternoon. Then Maad left back for Latakia and I for Nagoya. It was the most absurd, and the most fitting, transition between Tohoku and Daraa.

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What else is there to say? Between Godard and Proust, Foucault and Barthes, and between all the beautiful Francophiles that seem to surround and watch over my every step, I feel utterly and completely lost. Couldn’t someone sane put a bullet to my head and relieve me from this? For I, and they, obviously can’t.

Nagoya, 3 June 2011