The Arab Israeli conflict is very, very Simple

The Arab Israeli conflict arose from vibrating energy “strings” – it really is that simple in a sense, if you want to take a purely reductionist view.  Which you probably should.

The Tao Te Ching talks of the “ten thousand things” and suggests we largely let them float by us.  As with Eastern religion in general, the idea is “flow”, and effortless “going with”.

We don’t really need to take too much notice of the “ten thousand things” – we notice them and let them go. Or at least that is the general intention. Not that Taoism or any other doctrine or religion has managed to achieve what it promises: liberation, the alleviation of suffering, wisdom, moksha.

At one level life can seem extraordinarily complex. I was writing about the Arab Israeli conflict earlier and some would see the situation as serpentine, byzantine, incapable of unravelling.  I would take a different view.

At heart science has shown us that our universe is extremely simple at the most basic of levels. What we see around us may seem complex in the extreme but it appears that a few simple rules are all that it requires to exist, grow, expire.

Emergence occurs when “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts,” meaning the whole has properties its parts do not have.  At rock bottom the latest theory is that our universe is built from one dimensional vibrating strings. From which everything else emerges, including our own consciousness.

Conway’s Game of Life is a good way of understanding how evolution has made everything around us from a few basic rules.  The same can be said for chaos theory and the Mandelbrot set.  The beautiful images are produced by a formula of extreme simplicity: a vast complexity again arises from a few simple mathematical rules.

And so it is with human society.  The incredible complexity of human affairs arises from a few basic, simple human needs: food, water, shelter and medicine.

And these simple physiological needs bring with them human emotions and qualia.

I am not so foolish as to claim that such things are easy to understand. What I do say is that human behaviour is easy to understand when you see where it comes from. And then complexity falls away and we are left with utter simplicity.

Every conflict in human history results from our physiology and our needs.  All of which (remember) arose from vibrating energy “strings”; or so the theory goes!  And that’s it.

So back to the Arab Israeli conflict.  Do you need to know much about Hamas, the PLA, Ben Gurion, Zionism, Arab Nationalism?

Well actually, no you don’t. Despite the fact that countless thousands are:

• employed reporting the conflict,
• engaged in it
• trying to solve it.

It’s about basic human need and basic human behaviour. Jews and arabs alike need food, water, shelter and medicine. Jews and arabs alike suffer from human emotion and qualia. Jealousy, anger, pain, pleasure.

Oddly enough it’s the philosophers and the more balanced clergy who get it right.  Certainly not the politicians, all of whom have their own agenda.  Bishop Michael Curry calls it love.  Philosophers would put it in a more sophisticate way but nonetheless the entirety of human conflict and its avoidance boils down to the way we treat each other.

And the necessity to tame our baser instincts.

It may not be easy to achieve, but please do not tell me that it is complex. It is not.