Which Side of History?

I watched Obama’s Oval Office Address on terrorism. There we some things in it that I like; there were something I thought were fairly useless. There was one thing that really upsets me.

One thing that I like was that he did point out the connection between Islam and terrorism. Radical Islam is a perversion of what Islam is for most Muslims and what it should be for all of them. But that does not mean that it is not closely connected to Islam. Along with that comes a huge responsibility for all Muslims to deal with radical Islam. I am very glad he made that point.

One thing that I didn’t like is that he seemed to layout the same plan to deal with ISIS that he has laid out over and over again. This is not as effective as he seems to think it is, but he keeps presenting it as if it is, or will be. I am not sure what else should be done, but his confident and detached repetition of the same approach is frustrating and makes him seem like a clueless manager trying to convince his boss and his subordinates that everything is under control. Part of his demeanor maybe connected to the thing in the speech that I found supremely annoying.

The phrase “we are on the right side of history” is one of the most impotent and out of touch (and maybe even arrogant) phrases I have heard from world leaders lately, and Obama is not the only one to use it. Granted, I used to like the phrase, but now I see it as a sign of cultural decadence and naïve faith in progress. In the context of Obama’s address it implies that we don’t have to change what we are doing in a drastic way to get our way in the future, in the long run. It implies that we don’t have to examine our habits, our values or our social and economic structures to try and better them. It implies that we are good and that we just have to keep doing what we are doing to triumph over extremism. The only way we can lose is to ‘go backwards’ and indulge in Muslim bashing and giving in to the fear that terrorism inspires. I agree that those things would be going backwards, and I think we need to fight against those tendencies. However, I think that there is much more to do than ‘staying the course’ if we want to defeat ISIS or any organization based on radical Islam.

We need to take a serious look at our own culture(s) and values. We need to take a look at the ways in which we have dumbed down our beliefs and discourses that have led to increased polarization in our societies and politics. The radical Islamists have done the same to Islam, and we should take note of that and work with Muslims to fight against that perversion of Islam. But we also need to not be hypocrites and deal squarely with those problems in our own society. 

The reduction of economics to dollars and cents which strips it of other human values is rampant in modern Western societies. That needs to be dealt with. The mudslinging and soundbite (or meme) based political and social discourse needs to be stopped as well. It paints everything as black and white, buries complexities and makes conversation, compromise and cooperation nearly impossible. The over reliance on technology and treating people like computers or mere sources data is also a problem; it dehumanizes people and alienates us from our humanity.

These and other things have created a society where people can easily lose all sense of hope, all sense of value (for anything but money and technology) and all sense of meaning. It is from that point that many take the leap to radical Islam, Christian fundamentalism or crony-capitalism. Or they pick up guns and start shooting people just to go out with a bang. None of these things are conducive to progress, or at least not any sort of progress that I would look forward to. 

We can’t simply think that “we are on the right side of history.” This is like insisting that ‘God is on our side’ and will protect us and see us to victory. It makes it far too easy for us to abdicate responsibility for so many things that are going on in our lives and in our society that need our attention. 

We can’t just follow the current of progress and history to victory. We need to make a future. We need to work for progress. We need to do it now more than ever in our lifetimes. To me, Obama’s comforting address on Terrorism seem to make it all too easy for us to ignore that.