Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society

This was the first book I read by an Australian Lebanese academic and I found its discussion of fundamentalism and suicide terrorism most informative. It opened my eyes to our own Australian nationalism as so widely expressed being just as fundamentalist as any other kind: it enables one to say in response to our collective or government led or other mob or military abuses and crimes "Well even if we make a few mistakes we are 'fundamentally' good at heart, by our nature or character" and thus gloss over our sins as mere unfortunate 'human' abberations. This is true of all fundamentalist mindsets, whether religious or other nationalisms. As for the suicide terrorism bit, it enabled me to see how personal despair, humiliation, hopelessness, -- and end of real life on an individual level -- is so unbearable that some prefer to swap their physical existence for a symbolic existence. His discussion of the Palestinian situation is trenchant, apt and the point more broadly applicable: when the Palestinians finally give up and turn to drink and vagrancy and park benches like the other barbarians we have subdued (aborigines, Indians) we will have "peace". Hage pleads with society to embrace their minorities as fully human; to fail to do so is to negate society's own humanity. While I have great respect for Hage's argument and wish everyone would read and take to heart his book I also personally see us as less swayed by "ideas" than by "genetics" -- we need to study our evolutionary heritage to understand our current mass and personal psychologies and work as much with that as with ethical truisms. (This and other reviews on my blog at http://sweetreason.wordpress.com )