Archive for December 12th, 2011
Syria: When geographic borders do not correlate well with historical social structure
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 12, 2011
Syria: When geographic borders do not correlate well with historical social structure
Lebanon journalist Jihad Zein is touring Paris old bookshops with the purpose of collecting books related to Syria and Lebanon during the French mandate after WWI. The idea is to have a clear comprehension of how the French governments perceived the social structure in Syria and Lebanon that led to dividing Syria into five “self-autonomous” districts and the creation of Greater Lebanon…
The French mandated power divided Syria according to the religious minorities:
1. The north-east district of Al Jazira, including Aleppo, had many old Christian sects such as the Assyrian, Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Maronites… (who will eventually flee the region after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003)
2. The north-west coastal area, extending from Alexandretta (Iskandarun), and ceased by the French to the Turkey’s Attaturk before vacating Syria, to Tartous. This district witnessed heavy concentration of the Alawi sect, used to be called Nussiria.
3. The south of the Hurran and Golan Heights with concentration of Druze,
4. The east-central district extending from Hama to the Euphrates River, and including Tadmor with Sunni concentration
5. Damascus districts with heavy Moslem Sunni sect and many Christian sects, mainly the Greek Orthodox…
In 1936, many Syrian and Lebanese political parties and groups converged to Paris to negotiate a treaty for the independence of Syria and the status of Lebanon. The Syrian parties coalesced under the Syria National Block, represented by many disparate political groups. Lebanon Maronite Patriarch Arida was deeply involved in the negotiation and was demanding that the Syrian Constitution includes a special clause to safeguarding the right of the religious minorities…
Here is an extract of the dialogue between the Maronite Patriarch Arida and the delegate of the Syria National Block Fakhry Baroudi:
Baroudi: “It is not appropriate for the Patriarch to send a delegate in order to demand a special clause in Syria Constitution. There is no need for such a clause referring to religious minority rights. The Constitution guarantees total equality among the citizens…”
Arida: “Great…Why then the Constitution includes the clause that Islam is the State religion and that the PRESIDENT should be a Moslem…?”
Baroudi: “This clause is of temporary nature…until affairs stabilize…”
Arida: “Fine, let the minority rights clause enjoy also this temporary facility until the political conditions do no longer require it…”
In the last 75 years, what was supposed to be temporary in both Constitutions (Syria and Lebanon) is still of an everlasting temporary nature…
For example, the political landscape in Lebanon in the 1930’s was as follows:
1. The Christian Catholics, Maronites, Greek Orthodox, and Armenians professionals…who constituted the majority of deputies in the Lebanese parliament (13 out of 25 deputies)
2. The Maronite Patriarch block representing the large land owners, and the biggest Christian merchants
3. The “patriotic” Sunni Moslems, represented by Shakib Erslan and Abdel Rahman Shahabandar who worked toward an Arabic/Islamic empire in the Levant region (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan)
4. The pro-mandated power (mostly Christians), headed by Lebanon Patriotic Block of Emile Eddeh, who wanted France to remain in order to achieve the development of State institutions and necessary infrastructure…
5. The countless religious minorities that demanded self-autonomous statuses…
Note 1: Lebanese journalist Jihad Zein referred to the French book “Secret history of the Franco-Syrian 1936 treaty” by Marcel Homet
Note 2: In the mid 1930’s, there was the Communist party, totally obeying the dictate of Stalin. This party suffered discredit as the Soviet Union voted for the creation of the State of Israel. Stalin was under the illusion that Israel will quickly become the first communist State in the Middle-East. How whispered this falsehood in Stalin’s ear?
Note 3: By 1936, many political parties started to emerge, mostly sectarian groups (such as the Phalanges or Kataeb with the facilitation of the French mandated power. The creation of sectarian parties was in reaction of the creation of a national secular party called “The Syria national social Party” and founded by Antun Saadeh.
Note 4: France gave away the Syrian territory of Adana and Alexandretta to Turkey, mostly in retaliation for the constant unrest of the Syrian people against its mandated power.
Part 2. Hard-wired and “Effort-self” of “who we are”
In a previous article https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/he-was-a-great-man-he-was-convinced-he-could-change-who-he-was/ I positioned that by the age of 5, the nurturing process has achieved the fundamental building blocks of our brain’s “constructs” or hard-wired networks of how we’ll mostly behave, view, and judge the universe, nature, people…the automatic processes of how we carry out our daily routines, judge, and survive…the hard-wired “who we are”
The “Effort-self” or twin-self of “how I love to see myself” after the age of 5 is the fresh memory we acquired of the countless conscious efforts we invested in learning, “changing” our behavior, new developed skills, revisiting our perception of the universe, nature, people… This “Effort-self” is what we love to associate our-self with, that transformed us and reformed “who we were” to our current ever-changing self
All our life, we are struggling to reconcile the hard-wired self that basically guide and direct our behaviors of “how come I ended up making this split second decision…?” and “How come I got so stubborned pursuing this irrational decision…?” and the “Effort-self” that tries hard to counter-react to our “natural tendencies”.
This article is intended to develop on the demonstration that we are what our brain constructs are. For example, if you experiment with a subject wearing a 3-D helmet of vision let the subject see a mannequin, even of a different gender, and repeat the experiment with simultaneous touching gestures of the subject and the mannequin, the reaction of the subject is to feel one with the mannequin: You slap the mannequin and it is the subject feeling the slap; you verbally abuse the mannequin and the subject takes the insults very personally…
I contend that the subject will react exactly if we substitute the touching with the sense of smell and taste. The senses of touch, smell, and taste are the trinity factors, including the sense of equilibrium, constitute the external senses that are the most fundamental in creating the initial constructs in the brain. The stimulus of the senses of vision and hearing require many transformations before they are perceived by the brain as information. Thus, vision and audition can be applied as surrogate factors in experiments.
In the former experiment, there is a confounding situation: Can we claim that it is the simultaneous touching of subject and mannequin or the “seeing” of the process that the reactions of the subject?
We can easily demonstrate that the senses of taste and smell have the same effects as the touch. For example,
First, the subject is “trained to coordinate the action of vision with touch and audition (music). The subject listen to a piece of music, see the mannequin, and is touched simultaneously.
Second, the subject is blindfolded and is trained to associate music with the touching procedure…
Third, the subject hear the music without being touched and he also hear a slapping sound of the mannequin
Four, the subject brain should light-up as if he was actually was slapped.
The same procedure could be exercised with the sense of smell by approaching an aromatic plant to the subject and the mannequin. We can also make the mannequin move his mouth, lips and jaws to simulate the eating or tasting or a particular ingredient. Once the music starts, the subject knows that the mannequin is smelling or tasting something familiar to the “trained” subject…
Now we have to handle another confounding situation: Is the subject reacting to the music, the other senses, or according to the trained conditions? Data of the areas in the brain that are activated can be statistically analysed to sort out the proper variable that is significantly leading to the “construct” blocks in the brain.
Obviously, there are many other ways to control the “confounding variables” in the experiment. I have just opened opportunities to experimenting with various hypothesis that appears very promising in establishing the hard-wired nature blocks in the brain during the initial stage of nurturing
Note: You may read an application of the hard-wired constructs https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/deterministic-or-free-will-behavior-what-is-priming-the-thief-program/
Hot posts this week (Dec. 13)
Posted by: adonis49 on: December 12, 2011
- Hot posts this week (Dec. 13)
- On the road to discovering the living: Who is Alain Mabanckou?
- He was a Great Man: He was convinced he could change “Who he was”
- Kicking and alive: What “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are demanding?
- Voices of the time: In very short stories by Eduardo Galeano
- Back to Hosni Mubarak’s election/censure-kinds? Are Egyptian military ever to leave the political scene?
- Free Tribune for the Third Voice: In solidarity of civil neutrality?
- Playing with fire? Review of my story on Syria upheaval
- Are you a woman? Are you pregnant? What is HPV (virus): what tests determine the foetus health conditions…?
- To Aicha bashers I say: “Cut it out”
Adonis Diaries 