From: Osher Doctorow [log in to unmask], Sat. Dec. 8, 2001 3:56PM
The answer to the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, is
*we may never know, but quite possibly either.*
The current Israel-Palestine conflict, which is really an Israel-Islam or
perhaps even a Jewish-Islamic conflict, belongs to the same category. We
have here two ancient Semitic peoples, and if we include the Ancient
Egyptians we have the three greatest Ancient Civilizations outside the
European and Chinese and India worlds.
The statistical answer - and the fact most relevant for statistics in this
case, which is POPULATION DENSITY in my opinion - is similar. It is
irrelevant for the modern world and the future world who came first, and it
is equally probable that any of the categories did, and it is more important
to know who is coming to survive in the future. Forget Holy lands - I want
to talk about Holy People. I don't care who gets Jerusalem or Mecca or
wherever - I want to know that each person gets land in accordance with the
available land and in accordance with the population in the Middle East,
which boils down to population density. There is more than enough land to
give each person in the Middle East a large amount of his/her own land
(including the large almost empty areas of Saudi Arabia and North Africa) -
even if much of it is desert or semi-desert. Both Jews and Moslems have
made the desert bloom, have taken arid land and made agricultural land from
it. As for Jerusalem and Mecca and similar places, what better control
could they be under than international control by all nations?
Is the Chicken-Egg Path not the answer? In my opinion, it is not only
the wrong answer, but it may end humanity and the planet Earth. It is the
direction of Russian Roulette with atom bombs, chemical weapons, biological
weapons. It is not a forum for convincing somebody that one side is
dictatorial, against free speech, invasive. There have been too many
errors on too many sides of which the worst is probably anger and what it
has caused, but there have also been many good things on many sides. It
takes courage to ignore the smaller issues of precedence in time and details
of who did what and when to whom and focus on the deeper statistical and
human issues like survival of the planet and population density for survival
of humanity. Our social ties urge us to come to the defense of one side or
the other - but are these social or nationalistic ties, humanitarian or
political ties, ethical or guilt-laden ties? Are we motivated by creating
something or by the anger/fear of destruction?
What are statisticians to do when nobody listens in a political crisis of
terrible dimensions? We can use no weapon but knowledge. If neither side
listens, and the outside world does not listen, then humanity will live or
die according to how it behaves under emotions - and the past has not been a
cause for optimism. Nevertheless, there is only one path for statistics,
and it is a path that has won time and again over fear, anger, disease,
inhumanity, ignorance. It is Knowledge. It is making the future a
priority when the past becomes an excuse for violence. It changed the Dark
Ages to the Renaissance. In China, it created the Civil Service from the
system of power rewards, in India it created spiritual search from
materialism. It caused the fall of empires. It created the Industrial
Revolution. It created the Scientific Revolution, and I believe that we
are a part of that and I hope that we will triumph in that capacity.
Osher Doctorow
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