Hi Lawry,
Difficult challenge you are presenting us. I wasn't going to respond because
I didn't feel like I knew enough about the situation but it is such an
interesting challenge I can't keep away.
--I think it is cool that you are asking for a new solution. It reminds me of
Dalai Lama's letter to President Bush after September 11th asking for a new
response to violent act we just experienced.
--In trying to figure out what the MOQ would suggest as a just solution I was
trying to figure out what it would say about justice in general--not sure??
Perhaps because justice is supposed to be blind and the MOQ is not?
The MOQ is a good guide to build a quality environment but doesn't seem to say
anything about how to build it- sort of a "build it and it will come".
---I am not really sure if it possible to do but if you compared the two
group's outlook and found one more MOQ compatible is it moral to support them
more--meaning should the solution be biased in giving more power to that
group.
Also is the higher quality group responsible for lower quality group?
-- That may be a really bad route because there is so much emphasis on the
differences of the groups (like religion) but I think that environments the
groups live in are the issue. It is the low quality environments that breeds
violent acts. In a previous discussion of wealth I quoted somebody who had
commented that we may be a part of "axis of gluttony" in response to Bush's
pointing to "axis of evil". Somebody living in poverty is going to resent
their wealthy neighbor regardless of which religion, ethnicity etc. It might
be helpful to look at the levels as needs. The areas of poverty (or "evil")
don't have basic biological needs met.
-- Offerings of land to the Palestinians are not going to decrease the hostility between the two groups. I wanted to talk about a study concerning the in-group/out-group phenomenon. I know this is oversimplified and not a good analogy to the seriousness of the situation in the middle east but still seems interesting to me. There was an experiment that created this bias at a summer camp. It was easy to do- gave different names to the two groups and had them compete. After it was created they wanted to see what worked to decrease the animosity betweent the two groups. Talking about the merits of the other group did nothing. I forget what else didn't work but what did work was forcing the two groups to cooperate at some task. There have also been jigsaw classrooms that have reduced ethnic tensions by reducing the competition of teacher's attention (creating groups where there were different "experts"). I know this is kind of sappy for such a serious situation you are facing but why I wanted to mentioned it is because of this-- In my opinion Americans seem to be biased toward Israel's side. I wanted Bush to take a neutral stance but with his motto " If you harbor terrorists, you're a terrorist" I was expecting for him to very pro-Israel. I have heard that his conservative behavior is due to "having a business partner in Saudi Arabia.". I have also heard a lot of Americans talking about wanting to be less dependent on the Middle East oil for this very reason. Is America being forced to cooperate because of oil?My point is that having separate land doesn't seem like it will reduce tensions. The groups are competing and one group seems to have a lot more power. Is it a good idea to make them more dependent on each other - forced to cooperate. If each had a precious resourced the other needed do you think they would play nicer with each other?
I know it is very tragic serious situation. I don't mean to downplay it with these "solutions". They are just random thoughts. Do you think there is a MOQ based solution?
Erin
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