<nettime> May Basket: a Path Toward Peace in Gaza

[Max Herman via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

The land of Gaza is currently plunged into a terrible war.  Many on both sides, and all around the world, want the fighting and killing to stop or at least subside, and almost as many want healing and rebuilding to start.  The prospects of either are not, at this moment, bright.

Key decision-makers on both sides of the Gaza war do not want to stop fighting.  Many people are telling these key decision-makers to stop the war, but they have not as yet decided to stop it.  Each side has demands the other side is not willing to meet.  

Should these warring decision-makers have their power to decide taken away?  Perhaps.  Each side has their processes, cultural and otherwise, for granting and removing the power of decision.  Removing such power is not always easy and is almost never simple.  Sometimes for combatants the concept of removal cannot even be comprehended due to tunnel vision caused by combat.  After all, there were reasons, causes, and forces that led to the granting, and they may not mesh well with the reversal and the removal.  Further conflict might even escalate from such attempts.  It's a web, where pulling one string always pulls another, often in ways that cannot be foreseen.

One could start on a peace by trying to convince China to help end the war in Gaza.  Perhaps this would be a cultural gesture, as diplomacy has sometimes used, for example when mangoes were given to Mao and then photographed in all kinds of different settings and locales, one mango being sent to each major city.  Art prints were made, the color of the mangoes elevated, and finally the fruits were pulverized into syrup and diluted with water so that millions could partake of a small sip of them.  Or, when Japan gave Washington its cherry trees.

The cultural overture to China could therefore be on one level absurd, and on another level very practical.  This is the manner of expressing in diplomacy, which requires tact and discretion, that the world is made of both the real and the ideal, the actual and the imagined, and both are important, necessary, and in the final analysis fundamental to the beauty of life which is to say peace and well-being.  

Let's say this overture, then, is from La Gioconda; that she represents Esperienza, Italian for experience and experiment, a non-denominational legacy from one far-distant painter urging upon all humans a sustainable plan for the planet; and that this plan requires placing Machiavelli -- might makes right -- second not first, to avert the tragedy of the commons.  Is this absurd enough?  Yes.  Is it practical enough?  Yes.  The outward form of the overture of the Mona Lisa can be a gift of poplar trees (a variety of which La Joconde is painted on), maybe populus trichocarpa, symbolizing the serene yet sharp vision of the year of the Wood Dragon and other important elements.

Numerous practicalities will be required, wrapped in this diplomatic wrapping paper as it were, the nuts and bolts of a ceremonial robot in the shape of an auspicious animal which charmingly navigates the stage and hands a bouquet of flowers to the mighty rulers while they laugh/cry for the hopes of all living things.  One basic practicality could be the offer of assistance with China's transition from an export-heavy economy to one that is less so.  This is not an easy transition, and help helps, friends befriend, so they might listen.  It's possible anyway.  

They could also be asked to ask Russia to stop its war in Ukraine.

Russia's war in Ukraine is not acceptable to Ukraine or Europe.  They want it to end immediately, but without giving Ukraine to Russia.  Russia wants control of Ukraine.  Once they decide to stop fighting to achieve this the war can end.  China can influence their decision.  After all, if the US and Europe are going to give mangoes why make them miserable with war on their doorstep?  Russia can shift their focus elsewhere, toward say internal progress and reform, symbolized by a gift of lingonberry.  Help can be given them to transition away from fossil fuel production to ecological preservation technologies, reviving and rejuvenating their productive and technical know-how. 

Then Russia could, and would, ask Iran to help end the war in Gaza.  Iran fears being attacked and destroyed, and their decisionmakers see the war in Gaza as a way to be more safe.  How to change their minds is not clear at all, nor is the practical side of the symbolic, absurd gesture.  However, intelligent conversations could yield a shift from confrontation to cooperation, in which the recognition of Israel might be leavened by cultural respect -- a gift of, say, juniper -- and help with economics and internal reform.  That may be the very toughest part of all this, convincing Iran.  But if cutting-edge AI/GPT can't figure out how, perhaps a roomful of moderately intelligent and imaginative people can.  I would be happy to help this discussion if needed but might not have anything useful to contribute.  

Leonardo, however, and Cervantes both had imaginary visions of peace between Europe and the Islamic world.  The war was already, back in 1503 and 1604, wreaking immense suffering and stagnation on all sides.  Whole forests and entire cities were being razed to the ground in sacrifice to the weird hostility.  Both creators, one verbal/visual and one visual/verbal, or vice versa, imagined impossible forms to help bridge peace.  One was a floating pen, in a kitchen (the case of Don Quixote aka Cide Hamete Benengeli) and the other was a span over the Bosphorus for Bayezid II, a tiny little sketch in a notebook with a ship floating freely under it (to symbolize exchange as one part of the antidote for invasion).

Leonardo and Cervantes have convinced a great many people over the centuries that war is ignominious, a false paradise, and they might well convince a few more before we forget them completely.

Yet even if the USA, Europe, China, Russia, and Iran all call for peace in Gaza, the combatants and of course their chosen decisionmakers have to choose it too.  Peace is sometimes as painful as war, because you have to forego further revenge as well as the wartime command structure.  Both sides in Gaza want very much to retain control and some may even covet the intoxicating, sickly-sweet liquor of bloodletting.  Yet others before them have forsaken war -- the Golem which can ruin every abode and poison every well -- and they can too if shown a path and encouraged forward.  

What is absurd enough to convince the combatants in Gaza, and their respective backers protesting around the world, to end the war?  Only a powerfully absurd realization can break the spell of protracted organized killing.  My offer to both sides is wild rice, a local specialty from the region where I live, and copal resin, a kind of incense made from tree sap, not local here but from the same continent.  The wild rice symbolizes water, and nourishment; the copal freedom and healing.  

These gifts are therefore both absurd and not absurd in the slightest.  That's how you get the sudden break, the hoped-for breath or pause.


Wishing peace to all today,

Max Herman
The Mindful Mona Lisa
Leonardo.info/blog

ExperienceDemocracy2024.org/experience-democracy-is/
Commedia Leonardi Vici MS available free in PDF form on request


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