Michael T. Darkow, author of Our Promised Land (March 22-April 4)

Please welcome Michael T. Darkow, author of Our Promised Land. Michael will be chatting on LibraryThing until April 4th.

Hi!

First I would like to thank LibraryThing for being the fabulous community you are, and especially you for joining me here! I am honored! I am indeed privileged to have you sharing some of your time with me!
Being that we have the wonderful luxury of a two week conversation, I will not introduce myself here, but invite you to read the brief biography posted on my profile page.
Let us, instead, cut to the quick. Let me begin this chat by describing my strategy in constructing Our Promised Land.
Our Promise Land is about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, truly one of the most emotional, tragic, and divisive conflicts of ours or any time.
Our Promised Land does not conform to convention, either in structure or theme. Rather than having a conventional plot, it is a series of vignettes. These syncopated scenes challenge the reader, not to identify with a hero, but to experience both sides’ perspectives. Neither side is the “good guys.” Neither side is the “bad guys.” The reader is challenged to step outside and beyond conventions, to feel and experience what both sides do, outside and beyond our natural cultural preconceptions and prejudices.
Quick story: Two children are fighting over a toy. One wrestles it away from the other and holds it. The other continues trying to wrestle it away. Neither is able to play with it this way, but neither wants to share. Which one is the “bad guy?” Mother, hearing the ruckus, enters. How shall she settle the dispute? Is the best way to insist they take turns, or to urge them to share and play nice? Is this not the sad actual historical irony of the land broadly called Palestine? Each side has had their turn, only to have the other wrestle it away again, this not once, but a number of terrible times.
Yet, I believe they and we can learn to live together in peace, sharing our hallowed earth, and mutually prospering, even though we all have been each others’ tragic enemies as far back as our human memories can remember. Our Promised Land seeks to more than just inspire the hope. It seeks to instigate the empathy, the conversation, which must inevitably be the means to that we have all yearned, that elusive refuge from the madness our history has been, but always does not have to be. Up till now we have dreamed of that refuge calling it “the” Promised Land. But can it actually ever be that refuge, the madness finally ended, except that it is “Our” Promised Land?
Upon this, I offer not merely my mind but my heart for you to pick. This is a provocative subject. Let us not allow that to inhibit us. I am open to all questions, structural and thematic. I invite and encourage you to – please – fire away!

Hello Michael,

I must admit that I have over the more recent years shyed away from reading anything nonfiction and political about Israel/Palestine, instead preferring to read novels by Israeli and Palestinian writers. I feel in despair about the situation in Israel today. I lived in Israel as a volunteer nurse in 1972-1973, at which time I fell in love with the country of Israel and the multitude of cultures within it. I was fortunate to have been a visiting nurse in Jerusalem and had been graciously allowed to visit the homes of Jews, Christians, and Moslems alike. That was a time of relative peace so I , especially as an American, didn't *really* know the fear and mistrust between the various cultures, even within one city.

Why do you think your book would be of special interest to me? Wouldn't it just be another read to make me feel more depressed?

SqueakyChu,
I thank you for taking the time to engage!
I sense in your comment the sensitive soul, despairing all of our unfulfilled hopes for this troubled region. No question the situation there can justify the abandonment of all hope for any peaceful resolution.
My own work is a fiction, determinedly addressing that in both sides we must listen if there ever is to be peace. I, personally, do not despair it is impossible we will ever come to listen to our hearts and consciences rather than our worst instincts. Rather, I seek for the device. Must not empathy, maybe even tearful admission, finally be “the” bridge?
Whether my book at all succeeds in erecting this bridge, should it not be attempted for the difficulties? There is no doubt in my mind, I have passionately expressed, with some subtle nuance, the way. I, personally, refuse to lament the unquestionable difficulties, to sadly equate these difficulties with futility. I do not address myself merely to hope, but an assured way. And, then, how shall this be inspired? I am but a poor artist trying his best, nothing more persuasive than that can I offer you in recommendation.

Michael(the author)

Thanks for your response, Michael. I didn't realize your book was fiction.

What led you to write a novel of this nature? Is this just one novel that expresses your hope for world peace, or do you have a special interest in the Middle East?

Hi again, SqueakyChu,
I thank you for your thoughtful excellent questions!
I would confess a special interest in the region, it being the cradle of Western civilization, its tumultuous history and richly complex culture. I am acutely interested in a fair and just peaceful settlement to this dispute, but really what I am arguing is the logical basis to confront and shame all violent conflict resolution. The deeper philosophical arguments are only subtly hinted at in Our Promised Land. This particular book, through dramatic exposition, sets the emotional basis for these arguments, which I make elsewhere from a scientific evolutionary historical perspective. In your own experience in Jerusalem, experiencing all the different cultures, I sense you were directly aware of just how shared our humanity, our humanness literally is. This is really what Our Promised Land is all about. The prejudices creating the dispute are our worst voices. Only by our own determination shall the better ever be heard, much less heeded. My book is my humble attempt, not only to have the better voices be heard, but be heeded. And I do remain optimistic that reason shall triumph over irrationality, the pen is mightier than the sword, not in a rose colored glasses kind of way, but solid and pragmatic logical argument.

Michael

And I do remain optimistic that reason shall triumph over irrationality, the pen is mightier than the sword, not in a rose colored glasses kind of way, but solid and pragmatic logical argument.

*Sigh*

My experience in the Middle East has shown me that there arguments are very much based on emotion and fervent theology (not unlike many other places!). I'll be very curious to see responses to your novel. I do hope and pray that rationality will indeed prevail in the middle east someday, and not in too the distant future, either.

I do not just hear your “sigh, but feel it to my bones.” But I refuse to allow my own weariness to cripple me.
Does not all extremism traffic in emotion? Yet, is not emotion the common thread, what must and does ultimately bond?
Is it an etymological coincidence: “Prey” and “pray”?
Naturally, a writer calculates an intended reaction, but never knows for sure until…
Given the ominous clouds on the horizon, our present course, if we presume, in advance, our efforts are doomed to be futile because they have been, always, up to now, must they not then and by this be assured futility? If we give up determinedly seeking with hope, are we not essentially agreeing to accept a suicide pact?
And is not art itself, wonderful forums like this one here, where the discussion must begin if it is to be broached at all, if the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is ever to be claimed?
MichaelTDarkow

SqueakyChu, having asked such excellent questions, so to the heart of the matter, no others have been posed. Indeed, this is the Wall, very much the “Wailing” one, many great minds have butted up against, that it is only natural to ask, to what avail?
Nothing could be more frustrating for any writer than to face: Why is my own elegance of language, my own clarity of thematic vision insufficient to establish the reason?
Forgive me for being so long winded. I had this thought this morning relative to China’s battle with Google and itself. It may be afield of Our promised Land discussion, but very much to do with my own world peace theme. Does it further demonstrate what you and only you in the end can decide, if it is worth your time or not, I do not know…

Is It Giving the New Seed to the Wind?

What was it in the Emperor’s rule that justified the Revolution? Do you still discuss it, to keep alive, not just its body, but its spirit? What if the Emperor, through the application of his intelligence and foresight, had agreed with the Revolution’s arguments, and admitted the criticisms were justified, the Chinese people could achieve far better? What if, instead of resisting the social transformation the Revolution sought, the Emperor himself had led those transformations?
What was the vision of the Revolution? Do you ever openly discuss it, to remind and renew yourselves? Was it to end injustice, unfairness, arbitrary authority, and corruption, or simply to change who administered it? Was it to realize a more egalitarian form, or simply to tap a new source of autocrats?
What is the purpose of censorship? How do they who impose it justify it? Is it that what was despised in the paternalism of the Emperor is retained by the Party, for precisely the same noxious reasons. Nor is the insistent claim of this paternalism, that it is for the people’s good, it is for their protection, why the emperor was, and the party now is. Inflated self importance, personal ego, I am the people, what would they be without me: This is what the emperor declared for himself, what the party now does. Are not specific individuals, at the head of the party, behaving exactly as the emperor once did? What is the dangerous knowledge the people are being protected from by filtering “search engines”? Is the danger in the knowledge to be gained, what the aspirations of an enlightened people must become, what ignorance might accept, but the informed will no longer? And, is this spirit resisted for the People’s good by the party, as the emperor once did, doing not?
What, after all, is veneration for tradition, respect for one’s ancestors? Is it slavish conformity to what has been, its unchanging replication? Or is it the blossom, remembering the seed, with the help of the bee, recreating it for the next generation to be born, but, in the fall, releasing that new seed to the wind?

Is the danger in the knowledge to be gained,

Briefly, I believe it's that "knowledge is power" which would be a threat to those presently in control.

It only poses a danger to ignorance, and to nothing else.
As true it is, knowledge is power, the only currency which can purchase it is a free and open dialog.
Tyranny, for no other reason, attempts to control this currency, to prevent its purchase.

What sense would make it reasonable to declare, no peace initiative has ever succeeded, why should I ever listen to another?
Assuredly, finding the challenge daunting is fully appropriate realism. However, is dismissing the potential altogether anything like realism?
I am going to make this statement and invite your thoughtful reaction.
I predict the catastrophic collapse of the human species before the 21st century ends if there is not substantial progress in fulfilling these three criteria:
1.) No human conflict is resolved violently. Every human dispute is resolved, through rule of law, voluntarily and consensually.
2.) All conclusions deemed valid are arrived at through the direct observations of our waking senses of the objective realities actually constituting our universe, voluntary and consensual intelligent comprehension.
3.) We consciously acknowledge the objective reality of our evolutionary origins. Upon this acknowledgement, we make this our conscious goal and determinedly seek its accomplishment. This is to actually cross the Threshold, one side is instinctive animal, only in crossing over to the other is intelligent being. This is accomplished by overcoming and transcending our natural motives which are demonstrably counterproductive and even tragically destructive, and replacing them with motives clearly more productive and constructive, this by an active and conscious effort.
I am suggesting it is not unrealistic, it is not impossible for us to alter our human natures. This is “the” Gift intelligence offers us. It is totally unrealistic, not simply just unrealistic, but fatally unrealistic to embrace complex technologies that enable us to so overpopulate ourselves we degrade our environment beyond sustainability, and simultaneously refuse to socially interact with each other with any greater sophistication than dumb jungle animals. Whether it is an outright cynicism or a, forgive me, sad weariness that declares it is impossible to alter our human natures, therefore peace can never be achieved, it is impossible to achieve it, it is an unrealistic idealism to think it ever can be, I assert the exact opposite is true.
Anyone care to comment?