PROXIMITY
MATTERS
In the Digital Age our reach is global, but our expertise
is local. We have access to information from around the world, but we really
know only what’s around us. We know whose coffee is best, and the bartender who
fills your wine glass more than anyone else. This local knowledge is tacit: we
don’t even realize it unless asked by others.
This is true for coffee and wine as well as for economic
and political issues. The price of corn futures may be up at the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange, but it rings true when drought conditions fan the fires of
Colorado rather than the fields of the Midwest.
We hear of the banking industry, but only when we try to
get a loan from the local branch and are turned down—even for a great idea that
would add much needed jobs to the local economy—we appreciate the great banking
fraud: claim disaster, threaten to collapse, ensure we believe you are too big
to fail, divine the ripple effects of your demise, and collect billions in
interest-free support to maintain profitability.
Large bank profits are up, ours are down. Equilibrium is
restored once again to the great capitalist marketplace where the Invisible
Hand rules and the laws of supply and demand regulate prices. The Invisible
Hand has been replaced by a Visible Grease that oils the wheels of commerce for
the largest banks at the expense of other, worthwhile small businesses who
could use some grease, visible or not.
The same goes for social and moral questions when they
hit close to home. It’s one thing to argue about the merits of capital
punishment, and quite another when your daughter is raped. I have asked many
fathers over the years what they’d do, and even the most bleeding-heart
liberals turned vicious in their responses: I’d kill him, they admit. The faint-hearted
said they’d hire someone else to do the job. Proximity matters!
When it comes to political shenanigans, we remain even
more in the dark, not knowing which “Hand” is doing what. It’s all happening
far away in the corridors of Washington buildings or the many bars and
restaurants reserved for the elite, the lobbyists. And here, too, distance
makes a big difference.
Having returned from the Middle-East where three hot
spots remain the focus of the international media, it became clear how much proximity
matters. Visiting a friend some ten miles from the Syrian border, you can
appreciate how close everything is, how refugees cross borders to safety in
Turkey, Jordan, and Israel (primarily Druze), hoping to escape the cruelty of
Assad’s minions.
Iran is also not that far off when you see Israeli
citizens given gas masks and instructions about how to use fortified
underground parking garages as shelters from nuclear or chemical bombs. Yes,
it’s only a possibility, and yes, even when one in three hundred bombs has a nuclear head, the probability of being able
to spot the nuclear one as opposed to the other 299 is small and terrifying.
And to the south, where the border with Egypt is only an
hour’s drive from the pristine Mediterranean sandy beaches, where the water
right now is as warm and inviting as a bathtub, any altercation is frightening
as well. Is the Multinational Force and Observers sufficient deterrent for any
border crossing? Is the Sinai safe from terrorist activities?
From the distance afforded to us living in Colorado the
Middle-East is far away. It’s like the photojournalistic reminders we got from
Iraq and now still coming from Afghanistan. For those who live in Israel,
geo-political maneuvering means life or death, a real threat to one’s survival.
Living under survival conditions, one’s thinking gets
twisted. Everything is contextualized in war terms, with the worst scenario
being played in one’s mind. Some listen to the hourly news obsessively, trying
to glean any new morsel of information; they read the newspapers daily and
listen to television newscasts nightly.
Others ignore all news media, not as if they were
ostriches burying their heads in the sand, as someone explained herself, but as
a way to remain calm and not clutter her mind with anxiety. This is as good a
coping mechanism as one can muster under these circumstances.
The rest of Israel finds itself somewhere in the middle:
listening and caring, worrying and shrugging their shoulders: what can we do?,
they ask fatalistically. If the war comes, we’ll deal with it then. The
inevitability of yet another war in the region is palpable, you see it on
people’s faces.
Perhaps this is why they drive like crazy, fill up all
the restaurants nightly, and make passionate love whenever they can.
Raphael
Sassower is professor of philosophy at UCCS who served in the IDF. He can be
reached at rsassower@gmail.com See
previous articles at sassower.blogspot.com
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