War, Peace And The Quest For The Ordinary Good Life

This artificial mound was erected in Waterloo, Belgium, to commemorate the victory of European armies on Napoleon. The Lion's gaze and one of his paws are directed at France in a sign of defiance. It is called 'La Butte du Lion'

Napoleon's defeat was achieved in 24 hours in a fierce battle that is reenacted at the site in a Panorama of images and sounds.

Listening to the sounds of the battle I thought that it must have been very brave of these men to fight and die. Of course, most of them were forced to go to war but then some did it willingly, as in every battle. But as in every battle, all were expected to act heroically.

Heroism was the number one moral value in ancient societies but this moral value is replaced in our modern societies by 'The quest for the ordinary life', as argued by Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor in his book 'The sources of the Self: the making of the modern identity'. Taylor views 'ordinary life' as no less interesting than heroism on the battlefield when it is oriented toward the Good in us and others. However, it is characterised by the rejection of suffering. It is within this quest for the better in ourselves and others that the ordinary life becomes the good life.

The question that occupied my mind for quite a while after visiting 'La Butte du Lion' was: how are we to reconcile, in the West, our shifting moral values from heroism on the battlefield to the quest for the ordinary life ? I wasn't sure of the answer until my husband asked me the question differently: how come people are ready to suffer and die and sacrifice their life and renounce the 'ordinary life' and the pursuit of happiness?

I realised that we live today in a divided world. There are those who live the ordinary good life and those who die. As I am writing this post, I learn by Al-Jazeera that Israel had just invaded Lebanon. The move is designed to exhaust the Resistance. I hear from the leader of Israel terrible statements about the use of 'full force to turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years if the Israeli soldiers were not returned'.

But these threats won't do. The Resistance definitely belongs to the category of the people willing to die. It is not because they do not like life or they are not engaged in the pursuit of the good life, it is just that there could be no good life if you are daily threatened, and occupied. Without dignity, there could be no good life. Heroism is still a thing for those the West wants to keep humiliating through a neocolonial proxy like Israel.

Birthright Israel

I read this blog today with great interest. A fellow blogger on his experience in Israel with Birthright Israel as a Jewish. Eloquent.

Troubled times in Europe

My first week of vacation was spent among my In Laws who live in Belgium. My husband left Belgium to finish his medical studies in France where he became an expatriate acquiring the citizenship and moving later to Canada.
Although a visit to his parents does not leave us time to tour the country, he always likes to check what has changed in his native country since he left. Therefore, the picture of the cooked snails sold on the street in Bruxelles. This was just next to the most famous tourist attraction in Bruxelles: Mannekenpis.
During our stay and outside family conversations, two subjects of concern emerged: climate change and immigration, most specifically Muslim immigration but also Polish seasonal immigration to Belgium. One British blogger had a recent post on the subject. Reading his blog from Canada, these subjects seemed far to me. However they are palpable among ordinary people.
I have never known Belgium before under a constant sun in the summer during seven consecutive days with no rain and 30 degrees Celsius.
My husband's family used to shy away from immigration talk in my presence and I knew that this was an implicit understanding between us. I had arrived this time to Belgium with the magazine 'The Economist' bought at the airport with its cover on EuroIslam and when I left Bruxelles, their first national french newspaper was publishing on a remote page Tariq Ramadan's manifesto for a new Islam in Europe. Opinions diverged in my husband's family about Islam. His cousin and his wife expressed their fear while his brother who lives in the European quartier in Bruxelles told me that the problem with the talk about Islam in Europe was that ordinary people were hearing from the media more loudly about extremists than about moderates.

There was also a discussion between me and my mother in law on the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I explained to her my point of view (which every regular reader f this blog knows well by now) and she explained to me hers which is representative of the seventies (my mother in law is 73) point of view of European leftists on Israel and Palestine: 'We are responsible to what happened to jews during the second world war and therefore Israel has the right to exist', typical zionist propaganda. After a 30 minutes conversation we agreed mtually to stop the discussion.

My husband's family is a typical socialist family, half Flemish on his father's side and half Francophone on his mother's side with a grand'mother, now deceased, who was among the rare people who had their Belgian communist party membership during the second WW and after. She was taken prisoner to Ravensbrück by Nazis for 4 years.
I liked the grand'mother. She was quite a character and probably the person in the family to whom I was most close. She died in 1995, after having seen the fall of the Soviet Union and the total demise of the ideals she and others fought, suffered and died for.

There was another problem I noticed in Belgium, the rise of the Facist racist Flemmish party, Vlaams Block, the second largest party in Flandres. In a trip to Bruges, we were greated on the road by a large picture of a smiling blonde on her bicycle. My husband explained to me that she was a Vlaams representative. The Vlaams party people are not only racists but also nationalists and separatists. There is talk in Belgium that if the Vlaams becomes the first party, they may vote separation from the rest of the country, like the people of Montenegro.
And so Nationalism is another problem on the rise in Europe.

This picture is taken from the Bruges beffroi and shows the Cathedral of Saint Sauveur. Another Bruges church hosts what is believed to be the blood of the Christ taken by Beligan crusaders from Jerusalem. I reminded my husband that this was a time when European christianity was even more belligerant than Islam. I remember, when we met, the first thing my husband told me jokingly was that one of his ancestors, Godefroy de Bouillon, had occupied my piece of country, northern Lebanon, and built a fortress that we can still visit to this day in Tripoli. Of course, this is a far away past, but a past that Europe still rely on and a past that is hindering, in my opinion, the understanding of Islam in Europe.
I know that these problems, climate change, immigration, racism, nationalism and Islam are not only specific to Belgium but exist also in other European countries. My feeling is that these are troubled times for Europe. I am writing this while listening to BBC world and the commemoration of the London bombing. My sympathies to the victims and to all random victims of terror. These are not only troubled times for states but also for citizens and ordinary people taken in the spirale of fanatisms and cynical politics.

P.S: I apologize if I will not be able to answer the comments soon but my access to an internet connection is limited.