The Psychological Disconnect of the Petro-Dollar

Whether you are among those that consider the jihadists to be “terrorists,” or are among those who consider US foreign policy to be “terrorism” in its own right, or at the least is the source or cause of terrorism, has become quite irrelevant at this point of the conflict. Once one enters into the quasi-mystic world of moral and cultural relativism, all connections to logic, reason and historical precedent get left behind. This is how and when this particular form of political correctness becomes an obstacle to understand and addressing the clash of cultures between the West and Islam.

If one were to listen to much of the Arab and Islamic world and it defenders in the West, the source of the West’s “crime” against Islam has been our mere presence in the region, infidel boots desecrating the “sacred ground” of Islam. Since the dawn of time stronger nations have been influencing and manipulating if not conquering weaker ones as an instrument of foreign policy for their own benefit. How then is Western colonialism any different than the Moor’s occupation of Spain or the Ottoman Turk’s conquest of Greece and the Balkans? It’s not that there is anything inherently wrong with the concept of taking pride in a national or cultural identity. The problems arise when the element of religious fervor spills over into becoming a moral justification for an irrational blood lust exercised in the name of the supremacy one concept of “god” over another.

Such is of course the greatest of human weaknesses and failings over the centuries and indeed the hardest to overcome. “My god is better than your god.” “Worship my god, my way or be put to the sword or burned at the stake … etc… etc.” For much of the Arab world and particularly among the extremists elements, it is not just the presence of the “infidel” on their sacred soil, be it for whatever reason, that creates the offence, but that a modern world of advanced technology, mass and instantaneous communication, Western culture, be it in whatever form, automobiles, music, movies, television and now the internet have infiltrated and corrupted the desired static “purity” of their would be medieval 8th century societies.

Irrespective of whatever may be the foreign policy machinations of our governments, I’d think that most Westerners would be more than glad to limit our dealings with that part of the world to simply buying their oil at whatever price and wash our hands of most all the rest of it. Sadly the world of economic interaction does not work that way. The accumulation of all those petro-dollars does the recipients little good if they can’t in turn further exchange them for some other more tangible goods or services. Therein lays the rub, the source of the conflict. How can the Arab street aspire to maintain some ethereal and static 8th century cultural “purity” and at the same time desire all those technological innovations that are the epitome of, the very manifestation of the Western capitalist and cultural system? Under what paradigm can they benefit from interaction with and indeed absorption of these elements of Western culture and at the same time hope to remain apart and uninfluenced by it? Is there not some failure of logic, some rational disconnect in blogging on some jihadist web site that calls for the death of the great Satan and the imposition of Sharia law on the West and at the same time using the fruits and benefits of Western technology in complaining about the corruption of Islamic culture by influences of this same Western technology?

We are left then to assume that the desired interpretation of Arab and/or Islamic cultural “purity” would be one where children are seen but not heard, where women are neither seen nor heard, and the delusion that the intellectual liberation that comes from the exposure to a myriad of sources of information and influences from outside a previously closed society, is a genie that can and should be forced back into the bottle via the instruments of violent religious fervor, and failing that, at the point of a gun.

The fact remains that in spite of their adherence to tribalism, narrow moralistic interpretations and tolerating elitist, corrupt leadership structures, those Arab states floating in petro-dollars enjoy some of the highest standards of living in the world. At the same time these so-called sovereign states remain xenophobic in the extreme. They import the vast majority of their labor force to both, build, maintain and operate the means of exploiting their oil resources and to build the fabulous modern architectural infrastructures they now enjoy. They then keep their hired help largely confined to enclaves, kept separate from Arab society in general.

All this new found wealth has led to a considerable percentage of the native populations to have transitioned from the camel to the Corvette, from the goat herd to the art collection, and from living in tents into living in luxury high rise condos, and thus becoming, if not the idle rich, at least the idle well to do. Doing so absent any history of their fathers and their father’s fathers working hard, saving and sacrificing to provide for their progeny’s future and to build the society and the benefits they now enjoy. Deprived of the Western model of a generational economic, social and cultural evolution they find themselves, quite understandably in a state of culture shock, weather they want to admit it or not. How else then does one interpret Islamic families immigrating to the West to create a better life for their families and then turning around and slaughtering their wives and daughters for the cultural crimes of becoming “too Westernized,” or refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, or dating a non-Muslim, absent this contention of culture shock or a psychological disconnect in reason or logic?

In the West the transformation and growth of the middle class into widespread economic affluence took place over generations and decades if not centuries, driven by advances in technology and the governmental systems that grew out of the enlightenment. The accompanying changes and normalizations in social mores and attitudes about class and religious differentiations were slower to develop, take root and gain general social acceptance, often only after a great deal of social turmoil and conflict. A shorter-term example would be the contentious evolution of the American civil right struggle. A longer-term example would be the protracted and violent conflict brought about by the Protestant Reformation. The point being, that changes in social attitudes do eventually catch up with the economic changes that drove them, but it takes time and generations.

In the oil states of the Arab world, when measured against the Western example, this economic transformation has been revolutionary rather than evolutionary and has taken place in a virtual blink of the eye. There has been no generational time frame to allow for any gradual changes in the social attitudes to catch up to the implications of this economic revolution. This retardation of changes in social attitudes catching up to the economic changes has been exacerbated both by the absence of any underlying long-standing traditions of individual liberty and self-reliance as found in the West and the continuance of adhering to tribalism and narrowly constructed moralisms as defense mechanisms against the social implications of an irreversible economic revolution. It is emotional discomfort of this embedded culture shock and psychological disconnect from reason and logic that has become the fertile ground of Islamic nihilism and its demagogic practitioners. And we have been reaping the whirlwind of their corruption for the last 30 years.

Now throw in the added pressure of rapid inflation in food prices and you not only ignite the fires of even more social unrest, you further accentuate the contradiction with one of the most basic and universal of human desires, one that knows no borders or states; the desire to lead a better life than your parents, to provide a better existence for your children and grandchildren than you had yourself. Clearly the Arab and Islamic world has a lot of catching up to do. The questions becomes not ones of if it will be tumultuous and violent but ones of how much of that tumult and violence is the West responsible for, how much of it will spill over into the rest of the world and how deeply will the West get drawn into it while acting in its own self-defense.