Mediterranean Sea: Hedonism vs. Tragedy

We had a very interesting discussion on hedonism in my French class this week.  The chapter titled "Plaisirs" in our textbook contains a segment introducing French philosopher Michel Onfray, who is described as a hedonist, atheist and anarchist.  It's been a long time since I last heard the word hedonism in any context and I could not immediately define it if I had to, but I would certainly link it to pleasure.  The revelation of what the word means in different cultures was intriguing and thought-provoking.

The American students in the class commented that "hedonism" has a negative connotation in the United States because it describes the tendency to put one's own enjoyment before duty and responsibility, in the extreme cases doing it at the expense of others. 

The French teacher was incredulous. She said the word is very positive in France where it describes people who pay attention to beauty and generally want to make the world a joyful place.

Onfray, quoted in the textbook from a radio interview, said that a pessimist sees the world worse than it is, an optimist sees it better than it is, and a hedonist sees it as it really is, which is tragic.  Therefore, Onfray said, a hedonist is better equipped to offer antidote for the tragic.

After this lively discussion, I proceeded to my office where a plethora of bad news awaited: bombings, killings, water shortages, and the ongoing tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea, where on that particular day 400 migrants drowned while the luckier ones just barely made it to the Greek and Italian shores.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YASfrgnSfOU

No sooner did I finish my story, than 700 more drowned off the coast of Libya in an attempt to cross the sea to the Italian island of Lampedusa.

"Vergogna" wrote my Italian friend Antonio Guizzetti on his Facebook page. "Shame! The Mediterranean Sea which was once a cradle of civility, where the Greeks and the Muslims came to trade with others, today is a deplorable cemetery with thousands of dead at its bottom," he said.  "Meanwhile, the Italian government is spending billions of Euros to buy U.S. F-15 war planes and EU leaders are blackmailing Greece for a few billion in debt." 

I used to think of the Mediterranean as an ultimate hedonist paradise - a place where one sits under a palm tree with a cool drink, breathing in the pine-scented air, while Zephyrus sends gentle breezes from the sea.  The region is now increasingly linked to the images of death and suffering.  What is a hedonist's antidote?  Surely not blotting out the dark side of the region's dual reality?  Is it possible to enjoy a pricy cocktail at a French Riviera bistro, knowing that not too far away people are dying of thirst in some rickety boat.  And how enjoyable is dipping in the sea with thousands of dead bodies at its bottom?  

Quoting 18th-century moralist Nicolas Chamfort, Onfray said the imperative of hedonism is to have pleasure and give pleasure to others, without hurting anyone.  Our goal should be to maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain for ourselves as well as for the others.  It seems that many would-be hedonists today conveniently forget this important stipulation - "as well as for the others."  

Yet, when you come back home, exhausted from work and burdened with your own problems, how much mental and physical energy do you still have to dwell on the troubles of others? Don't you need to blot out the negative and seek at least a little peace if not outright pleasure? Many Greeks and Italians rightfully ask who is going to take care of the immigrants in the countries that have their own problems to worry about.

European Union leaders are planning an ad hoc summit to discuss what can be done.  Angela Merkel said the bloc should go after the smugglers who put people's lives in danger, and work to alleviate the problems that cause mass migrations from some parts of the world.  

Most urgently of all, she said, Europe has to stop the dreadful deaths on its own thresholds. Her plan is good, although it reminds me of a quote from the Bible saying "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."  It would take a lot of flesh to stem the widespread poverty and violence that cause people to flee their homes and risk life and limb on a journey into the unknown that can take more than a year.  

Around the world, more money and effort is spent on wars and the production of arms, including improvised explosive devices, than on education.  Philosophy, which is still taught at high-school level in many European countries, is an unlikely subject in the countries beset by violence.  Onfrey's and Chamfort's ideas have little chance of taking root in sub-Saharan Africa or in the Middle East.  But Plautus's "homo homini lupus" seems to be widespread, especially among those who have never heard the phrase.  

To end on an encouraging note, hedonism in its real sense is not completely dead.  Here is a heartwarming example:

http://www.voanews.com/content/german-program-helps-migrants-overcome-traumatic-experience-at-sea/2728275.html

When next I enjoy a cocktail under a pine tree on the Dalmatian coast, it will be in the hope of getting inspired to do more to alleviate the pain of others.

Pope: World War III Fought With Crimes, Massacres, Destruction

During a visit Saturday to Italy's memorial honoring 100,000 soldiers killed in World War I, Pope Francis said that the current spate of crimes, massacres and destruction around the world could be considered a "piecemeal" World War III.  Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich made a similar statement in 2006.  

Pope Francis, Redipuglia Cemetery, Italy

"We’re in the early stages of what I would describe as the third World War," Gingrich said in an interview to NBC's Meet the Press, as he called on U.S. Congress to pass a law that would enable the United States to use all its resources to fight terrorism. His remarks elicited mixed reactions.

Dennis Showalter, professor of history at the Colorado College in Denver, said current ideological and armed conflicts, as well as terrorist attacks worldwide, constitute a major global crisis equivalent to a world war.

“One never wishes to overuse this world-war trope, but certainly we are dealing with a comprehensive crisis with a global dimension," said Showalter. "Its scope far exceeds the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and the question of Muslim acculturation in Europe. I think it’s comprehensive and I think it’s something that has deep historical roots.”

Showalter said that global war on terror actually has more characteristics of a world war than the first two world wars, which he likens to civil wars.

“Both World War I and World War II were essentially civil wars within Western civilization; World War I obviously. I mean, this was a case of states in societies with a very broad spectrum of common values, tearing each other apart.”

According to Showalter, one important characteristic of a world war is that it has an ideological dimension. He noted, for example, that the Nazis, the Communists, the Christian Democrats and others all fought for their worldviews. In that respect, he said, World War II was more of a global conflict than World War I.

“And I would say that the key to a true world war is global, universal involvement. And that involves communications technology. It involves transport technology and it involves what our French friends call mentalité. And I think in that context, this thing we are in now is at least as much of a global war as World War II.” 

Michael Ledeen, author of the book, The War Against the Terror Masters, defined the campaign against global terrorism as World War IV.  

“I call it [World War] Four because we had the two hot world wars and than we had the Cold War, which was also a world war. So that would be World War III for me. And this is the fourth [world war] because our Western civilization is under attack from violent jihadists all over the world: from South America to Asia, Indonesia and, of course, Western Europe and the Middle East, and the United States. So you can’t get much more global than that.”

But some scholars have rejected comparisons between world wars and war on terror. Alex Roland, a professor of military history at Duke University in North Carolina, said the two world wars were exceptional events, peculiar to the first half of the 20th century. One of their characteristics was the ability to determine the future of nations.

“Nazi Germany and the imperial Japan –- that is, Japan under the absolute control of the emperor -- their future was at stake and they both disappeared in the same way, for example, that in World War I, (Ottoman) Turkey disappeared," said Roland.

"So the fate of nations was at stake. It’s not at stake now in the so-called war on terrorism. This is just the most recent in a whole series of terroristic campaigns that have been made against advanced industrialized states in the 19th and 20th centuries and it is not to dismiss them as unimportant. Each one has been significant in its own way, but they don’t come any place near being world war.”

Roland said another characteristic of world wars is the unprecedented number of casualties – tens of millions of people. The Cold War, he says, was actually waged to prevent another world war.

“And the Cold War never resulted in a direct major exchange of weapons between the United States and the Soviet Union, but rather a whole series of proxy wars among their satellite states. But even those wars didn’t add up to anything like the scale of the world wars.”

Roland said a world conflict of that scale is not likely to happen in any foreseeable future. He notes that Americans often use the word “war” as a way to emphasize the gravity of an issue.

“We’ve had a war on cancer. We’ve had a war on poverty. It is part of the rhetoric of the United States in the 20th century to declare war on things. Franklin Roosevelt back in the depression, even before World War II, declared war on the depression and used explicitly military combatant language to indicate the height of the priority that he was giving to this as a national issue. And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since. But it’s all rhetoric.”

Meanwhile, Islamic State insurgents have taken large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria as they seek to carve their own state. The fate of at least two nations depends on whether they succeed in keeping the occupied territories or not.

Russia's annexation of Crimea and its involvement in eastern Ukraine has de facto changed Ukraine's border, and its continued involvement in eastern Ukraine may affect the country's ultimate fate. 

The death toll and destruction these and other conflicts are leaving in their wake, and the massive displacements of local populations bring to mind world war disasters. New conflicts cropping up while the old ones have not been solved do make the whole world seem to be at war.
 
Scholars and political analysts may not have a unified definition for the current conflicts in the world, but at least as far as terrorism, all agree it is a serious threat to humanity that must be defeated.