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The 21st Century Kultur Kampf: Fundamentalist Islam Against Occidental Culture
Shlomo Giora Shoham
"I thank God that my sons Oudai and Koussai and my grandson Moustafa have sacrificed themselves for this country".
—Sadam Husein in a recorded message to the Iraqi people.
Before September 11th, the scourge of fundamentalist Islam was mostly felt by the Israelis, the victims of the Taliban in Afghanistan reflected symbolically by the toppling down of the giant Buddha statues; the suppressed students in Iran and by the slaughtered villagers in Algeria. After September 11th, the political hierarchies in the U.S.A., Britain, and some other countries realized that a war was going on – fought with different weapons, but awesome frightening and quite effective – between fundamentalist Islam and western culture. How did it happen? Why has it been over looked and what may be expected to happen? We must, however, clarify some preliminary questions: what were the socio-cultural processes, which preceded these outbursts of war, which most observers prefer to denote as terrorism? What is the conceptual infra-structure with which this war may be analyzed and finally can this war be dealt with, with conventional methods or novel tactics and strategies have to be devised to cope with it. Since we hold the present war to be a sequel to a harsh cultural conflict which raged throughout the ages between the Islamic more Tantalic social characters and the occidental largely Sisyphean social characters we have to deliberate on the concepts of Tantalic and Sisyphean social characters. These are related to our personality theory which we have developed in extenso elsewhere[1].
This theory identifies two opposing personality types: the 'participant' and the 'separant'. 'Participation' means the identification of the ego with people, objects or symbols outside the self, and the desire to lose one's separate identity in fusion with these externals. 'Separation', of course, implies the opposite. These two character types define the poles or extremes of a continuum of personality types.
Our personality theory also posits out three main developmental phases. The first is the process of birth. The second is the crystallization of an individual ego by the molding of the "ego boundary." The third phase is a corollary of socialization, the achievement of an "ego identity." The strain to overcome the separating and dividing pressures never leaves the human individual. The striving to partake in an all-encompassing whole is ever-present and takes many forms. If one avenue towards its realization is blocked, it seeks out another. Total participation or fusion is, by definition, unattainable. In addition to the objective impossibility of participation, the separant trait acts as a countering force, both on the instinctive and interactive levels. At any given moment of our lives, there will be a disjuncture, a gap, between our desire for participation and our subjectively-defined distance from our participatory aims. We call this gap the "Tantalus Ratio," that is, the relationship between the longed-for participatory goal and the distance from it, as perceived by the ego.[2]
Another basic premise of the theory concerns the fixating of separant and participant personality types. This is related to the stage of development, at later orality, when a separate self crystallizes out of the earlier undifferentiated whole. There is an ontological base-line by which the self is defined by the non-self - the outside object. The coagulation of the self marks the starting point for the most basic developmental dichotomy.
Two separate developmental phases can be distinguished: the first, from birth and early orality until the point at which the ego boundary is formed around the emerging individual separatum; and the second, from later orality onwards. In the first phase, any fixation that might occur, and thereby imprint some character traits on the developing personality, is not registered by a separate self capable of discerning between the objects, which are the sources of the fixation-causing trauma, and itself as recipient. The entity which experiences the trauma is a non-differentiated whole. However, if the traumatizing fixation occurs at the later oral phase, the self may well be in a position to attribute the cause of pain and deprivation to its proper source: the objects. We therefore propose a personality typology which is anchored on this developmental dichotomy of pre- and post-differentiation of the self.[3]
The process of molding the separate individual determines the nature and severity of the fixation, which in turn determines the placement of a given individual on the personality type continuum. However, the types themselves are fixed at different stages in the developmental chronology; the participant at pre-differentiated early orality and the separant after the formation of the separant self. The participant factor operates, with a different degree of potency, on both these personality types, but the quest for congruity manifests itself differently with each polar personality type. The participant aims to achieve congruity by effacing and annihilating himself, by melting back into the object and regaining the togetherness and non-differentiation of early orality. The separant type aims to achieve congruity by overpowering, or "swallowing", the object.
Social Character
When our core personality continuum is applied to the characteristics of groups or cultures, it relates to a social character. The family and other socializing agencies transmit the norms and values of the group, which the individual then internalizes. It is important to note at the outset, however, that a social character as the composite portrait of a culture is never pure. It portrays only essentials, not peripheral traits. One culture may absorb the social character of its conquerors. This social character may thence be classified along a continuum similar to our personality core continuum. The separant pole can be denoted as Sisyphean, after the Greek stone-manipulating Titan; we denote participant as Tantalic, after the stationary, inner-directed and abstract demi-god. Thus the social-character constitutes the cultural dimension of the personality continuum.
Patterns of Culture and Social Character
To Fromm, a social character does not consist of those peculiarities which differentiate people, but of "that part of their character structure that is common to most members of the group."[4] The social character is, therefore, a common attribute of individuals, ingrained in them by socializing agents, which display the characteristics of a culture. Riesman, who uses mutatis mutandis, Fromm's definition of social character, relies for the sources and genesis of this social character on Erikson who claims that "Systems of child training ... represent unconscious attempts at creating out of human raw material that configuration of attitudes which is the optimum under the tribes' particular natural conditions and economic-historic necessities."[5] Erikson's mesh of social Darwinism with Marxist material dialectics is too concrete and harsh in our view as an explanation for the volatile concept of social character. We prefer to see the social character as a "collective representation" in the sense used by Levy-Bruhl,[6] of acts, symbols, and transitions from the concrete to the abstract displayed by groups in their interaction with the individuals which comprise them, or with other groups. This involves the transmission of the social character from the group to its young, and from generation to generation by a process of learning and socialization, and not by heredity, as postulated by Jung.[7] The social character is the psychological type of a character as displayed by a collectivity, and not by the individuals comprising it. Yet, when this social character is implanted in the individual by the group, it provides the necessary link between the phylogenetic and otogenic bases of the personality structure.
Our five polar characteristics of social characters are summarized in figure 1. These patterns are by no means exhaustive, but rather illustrative. They point out the highlights of a given social character, but do not constitute a precise definition
Figure 1. Polar patterns of social character
Separant Participant
Object-manipulation Self-manipulation
Reason Intuition
Flux Constancy
Plurality Unity
Action Resignation
Our use of a continuum to describe social characters means that no culture may be tagged by one definitive label. Consequently, in every participant social character there are separant patterns, and vice versa.
At the separant extreme, we may place the north-western European societies imbued with the Protestant ethic which burst forth in the full-blown flames of the "American Dream." On the participant pole we find cultures dominated by the Hinayana Buddhist doctrines of quietist self-annihilation.
The social characters like the personality types may be arranged along a continuum with the extreme Sisyphean and Tantalic social characters at its two poles. The social characters which embraced during the last millennium and a half the Moslem creed's ethics and way of life tend more or less towards the Tantalic pole of our social character continuum whereas the occidental cultures tend to move towards its Sisyphean pole. Other concepts which are related to our theoretical approach also developed in extenso elsewhere[8] are dialogue, structure and mythoempiricism. Being existentialists of the Kierkegardean, Shestovean and Bubersean brand we believe not only that existence was and is prior to essence but also that ontologically relationship and dialogue are the Dings - an - Sich. The "things–in–themselves" as sought by Kant. Hence our interactions both with individuals and with groups may move from an I-thou dialogue within which meanings may be generated to a mutually petrifying I-it relations.
The relationship between the self and its human and objective environment is, therefore, conceived within the context of a Buberian dialogue. If an I-thou encounter occurs, there is a sense of revelation and meaning. If a dialogue is not effected, the self feels that its environment is menacing, opaque, and absurd. A dialogue may be affected, according to Buber, only if the self opens up voluntarily to the other. When the choice has been made, and the self enters into a dialogic relationship with another human being, or into an authentic relationship with words, music, or a painting, the alternatives—to use a quantum mechanical simile—collapse, and the relevant mental energy is infused exclusively into the dialogical relationship.
The complementarity principle in the field of cultural norms may be envisaged in the following manner: Every organism needs a system-in-balance to function and survive. This holds true for artifacts as well as human aggregates. Hence, Hellenistic cultures stress the need for contextual harmony. The Egyptian ethos, like the Greek kosmos, which literally means order, anchors on the need for balance. The most important Greek norm is meden agan, nothing in excess, and the cardinal sin is hübris, the divergence from the golden mean. In a similar vein, the Egyptian goddess Maat is in charge of the all-important cosmic order, to be maintained as a precondition for the cycles of life. Conformity to group norms is a prime Greek mandate; deviants—both transgressors and outstanding achievers—were ostracized and expelled from the polis. The Jews, on the other hand, were socialized to strive for the absolute. This makes for revelatory insights, but poor team workers. Indeed, the Jews, wherever they were, tended to contribute brilliant ideas to their host cultures, but usually did not excel as contextual performers. The viability of a culture depends on a complementarity between the revelatory virtuoso, spurred by directional insight, and the contextual performers, who integrate the ideas into a durable system-in-balance. Bohr intended the complementarity principle to serve philosophy better than Aristotelian causality, scholastic coincidentia oppositorium, and Hegelian dialectics.
The link between subject and object has been one of the most relevant psycho-philosophical problems from time immemorial. Solomon Maimon, the disciple of Kant, posited the matter in metaphoric terms: ‘To find a passage from the external world to the mental world is more important than to find a way to East India, no matter what statesmen may say.’ Still, our concern is more pragmatic: We wish to understand how the mental revelation of an Archemedian ‘Eureka’ is structured into an objective creation. We hypothesize that this creative linkage is affected by a mythogenic structure, the meaning of which has, of course, to be presently explained.
Andrew Lang, a pioneering student of mythology, stated towards the end of the nineteenth century that myths are not just cautionary tales to frighten young children into eating their porridge, but causal and ætiological explanations of phenomena that had taken place in historical reality. He, therefore, denoted mythology as a proto-science.[9] Freud claimed that ‘myths are the distorted vestiges of the wish-fulfillment fantasies of whole nations…the age-long dreams of young humanity.’[10] Freud actually raised his intra-psychic interpretation of dreams on to the group level and claims that the myth is an expression of the tribe’s ‘social characters,’ the nation’s or social aggregate’s wishes and visions. Surely, the myth of the Flood was not dreamful wish-fulfillment, but a projection of actual experiences of disastrous inundations by rivers—especially in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Myths are, therefore, also a projection of experiences and of spectacular events borne by a group before written history in ille tempore. According to Bachofen, ‘The mythical tradition may be taken as a faithful reflection of life in those times in which historical antiquity is rooted. It is a manifestation of primordial thinking, an immediate historical revelation and, consequently, a very reliable source.’[11] Eliade further claims that, because myths reflect the occurrence of events on a high level of abstraction, they also reveal the principles or designs underlying events. He writes that ‘the myth discloses the eventful creation of the world and man, and at the same time, the principles which govern the cosmic process and human existence. The myths succeed each other and articulate themselves into a sacred history, which is continuously recovered in the life of the community as well as in the existence of each individual. What happened in the beginning describes at once both the original perfection and the destiny of each individual.’[12]
This brings us to Jung, who regarded myths not only as means of individual psychic expression, but also as the archetypal contents of the ‘collective human unconsciousness.’[13] As an interim summary, we may regard myths as a projection of wishes and experiences both on the individual and group levels. Some two decades ago, in Salvation Through the Gutters, we stated:
...Our methodological anchor is the conception of myths as projections of personal history. Individuals are aware of their personalities as the sole existential entity in their cognition. This awareness of existence is the only epistemological reality. Myths cannot, therefore, be divorced from the human personality. Whatever happened to us in the amnestic years and even later, is projected onto our theory of the creation of the universe, magic and other human beings. The events that happened in the highly receptive amnestic years have been recorded and stored by the human brain. Events that happened after the amnestic years may be recalled cognitively, but whatever happened within these first years of life is recalled, inter alia, by myths of cosmogony. Myths as personal history may, therefore, be regarded as the account of some crucial developmental stages in the formative years. Moreover, human development, in the early formative years, passes in an accelerated manner through the evolutionary phases of the species.[14]
Consequently, myths are also a projection of the development of the species, as paralleled in the development of the individual. It is interesting to note that this conception of myths as a projection of personal history may be inferred from the Apocalypse of Baruch, which stated that ‘every man is the Adam of his own soul,’[15] which may in turn be interpreted to mean that every human being experiences original sin. Karl Abraham, as early as 1925 in his article ‘Character Formation on the Genital Level of Libido Development,’ expressed a basic idea, which may be relevant for our present purposes, thus:
In the two phases of development…we are able to recognize archaic types of character-formation. They represent in the life of the individual recapitulations of primitive states which the human race has passed through at certain stages of its development. Hence, in general in biology, we find the rule holding good that the individual repeats in an abbreviated form the history of his ancestors. Accordingly, in normal circumstances, the individual will traverse those early stages of character formation in a relatively short space of time.[16]
Hence, the myth of the Fall of Man is the projection of a stage of development of the individual, yet also a universal human developmental experience. However, myths become archetypal projections of human experience only when they are widespread. The more common a developmental experience, the greater its chances of becoming a mythical projection. The converse is also valid: The more widespread the myth, the higher the chance that it is a projection of a widespread or even universal development. The universality of the myth of the Fall of Man, for example, points to a corresponding developmental phase—the separation of the individual self from the unified whole of early orality, which is indeed experienced by every human being.
Therefore, we hold that myths structure meanings for human behavior and serve as motivation and prime movers for both individual and group behavior. As myths are projected models of human behavior at all levels, they may be records of past experience as well as a structuring for future longings and goals. Myths are also expressions of both overt behavior and of covert dynamics; of the here and now as well as of transcendence. The dimensions of myths may also vary greatly, ranging from micro-myths, like names of persons and places representing meaningful experiences or quests, to meta-myths representing the polar type of human behavior on both the individual and group levels such as the myths of Sisyphus and Tantalus. They vary with time and place. Every society and culture has its own indigenous mythology. Myths move in time from sacred myths recorded before history to modern myths, like master detectives Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, or the master spy, John Le Carré’s Smiley, or even Superman, who realizes the dreams of omnipotence among the downtrodden, henpecked inhabitants of Metropolis.