Remember that Robert De Nero film when he said those words? I think it was Taxi Driver, and believe me; you wouldn't want to be the one talking to him. You probably have enough troubles without getting a crazed animal on your ass.

 

Is it just my imagination, or do people in the Middle East get pissed off easily? Do you think that some of them, at least, get up in the morning wondering where the next insult will come from? And once they lose their cool, they don't easily forget so easily, do they? And it's not a religious thing, either. Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle East all seem to be afflicted with the same malady. Maybe it's a tribal thing? Who knows?

 

I remember getting married some thirty-three years ago. We were married on the Champs Elysees in Paris, my wife having grown up there. We invited family from all over the world, and a lot of them actually showed up. But of special concern to us were my two uncles, on my father's side, who hadn't spoken to one another for some twenty-five years. How would they get along at the wedding, we wondered. Would they even come?

 

Well, both ended up coming, and we assigned them to be the two witnesses to sign the Ketubbah, which is the marriage contract in the Jewish tradition. God forbid you give one an honor, and not the other. But would they speak to one another after all those years of silence?

 

My fiancé and I came up with a strategy. We would spend a day with each one separately, showing each some of the sights of gay Paris. We asked one, "Tell me uncle, what was the fight with your brother all about?" He didn't seem to remember. We asked the other. Same response. Hmm. Twenty-five years of not talking to one another, and no one remembers why? Interesting.

 

The day of the wedding, believe it or not, everything went well. The two brothers signed the Ketubba, and that seemed to break the ice. They chatted away, and stayed close ever since, until they passed on.

 

I've often wondered about the psyche of the Middle East. Could it be that people there are particularly sensitive, and prone to bear a grudge? And what are the implications for peace if this is so?

 

If I had to guess, I would say that there is a strain of ultra-sensitivity in the Middle East. Obviously, not in everyone, but the tendency is still there as part of the regional culture. Many Middle Easterners are very proud of their cultural and religious heritage. But the flip side of pride is extreme sensitivity, and a tendency to hold a grudge.

 

Do you have a father, or a family member, that has to be spoken to in just the right way? And if you miscalculate your wording, do you begin to feel the heat just as the words slip off you tongue? And do you sense that your faux pas will not soon be forgotten?

 

Why is any of this important? A sense of honor is important, but a craving for honor could easily bring dishonor. Honor killing is an extreme example. Honor killing brings dishonor to the family, even as the family strives to protect its honor. A sense of pride is important, but too much pride can shut one off from criticism, and can induce long term hatreds due to perceived insults. And like an elephant, one never seems to be able to forget, or to move on.

 

The business of peace in the Middle East will not be clean or comfortable. People abused by the scars of history will hurl insults at one another, to give expression to their collective sense of grief and injustice. How we react in light of those emotions will make all the difference in the world as to our success in brokering a peace.

 

It is natural for people to be emotional. And emotions run particularly high in the Middle East, and for good reason. But it may be time to cool the emotions, even if only a tad. It may be time to go about the business of peace with a cool, calculating, collected mind, one bent on strength of purpose, instead of emotional relief.

 

We may well have to swallow our pride, to create a reality that we can really be proud of. If that means shelving our emotions for a while, so be it. If that means bringing some flexibility to our sense of honor, well that's how it goes. If that means giving up a piece of ourselves in the process, c'est la vie. We will have to be big enough and wise enough to admit that it's not just about us, but about those who will come after us. We will have to step out of who we are, to become something more than we ever were, or could ever imagine.  

Sometimes, as I write about Selling a Vision of Hope, I think to myself, "How are you ever going to sell this stuff?" At a certain point, people are naturally going to wonder, "What's in it for us?"

 

In the past several blog entries, I've tried to show that Selling a Vision of Hope could be a useful framework not only for the Middle East, but for solving other problems as well, such as Global Warming, Globalization, and our Inner Cities. The basic idea is simple enough: think straight and believe in what makes sense, make common sense your ideology, use common sense and some well placed investment dollars to inspire people with a Vision of Hope, sustain the hope with programs which prop the vision up and carry it forward, and when necessary, fight, and fight hard, but position the fight within a Vision of Hope. That's it, in a nutshell.

 

Our development as a species has led to a lot of good things. Some of us are lucky enough to enjoy the full bounty of modern life: incredible technological innovations, state of the art healthcare, outstanding academic and cultural institutions, a cornucopia of material wealth, political systems which protect our personal freedoms, and so forth. The list of human achievements goes on and on.

 

But unfortunately, alongside each and every achievement, there still remain problems to be solved; big scary problems, some of which threaten our very existence. It is not a coincidence that man's technological advances have brought with them a whole host of seemingly insolvable problems. Each discovery seems to bring its flip side of disaster.

 

We're choosing to play God, and we may not be winning the game. We have plenty of smarts, but do we have the wisdom? We can create all the various pieces of modernity, but can we figure out how to put all the pieces together, and make them whole? God is a hard act to follow.

 

Sometimes it seems as if each innovation we come up with opens yet another compartment in Pandora's Box. We design and build beautiful cars for transportation, but end up with global warming. We build nuclear weapons for defense, but end up with nuclear proliferation. We enjoy tinkering with the genes a bit, but end up with the potential for human clones. We inspire ourselves with our deeply held religious beliefs, but end up with religious strife. We celebrate the material wealth at our disposal, but end up with an emptiness of spirit. We build towering cities that reach for the sky, but can't quite find a way to hide the desolation of our poorest slums. At every turn, man's reach for the stars comes up a tad short, and leaves yet another problem in its wake.

 

Selling a Vision of Hope will help us solve some of our big-ticket problems. It will inspire us to think straight, to reconfigure our priorities, and to invest accordingly. But just as important as restoring order in places like the Middle East, is the need to restore who we are as a nation. By investing in others, we will be investing in ourselves.

 

The United States is not only the greatest country on earth, but probably the greatest country that ever was. We have much to be thankful for: a vibrant democracy which protects our personal freedoms, a high standard of living, the hallmark of scientific research, outstanding academic and cultural institutions, abundant wealth and material resources, unparalleled military power, and the laundry list of our blessings goes on and on.

 

Yet, in our pursuit of progress, we have lost something as well. If we are honest with ourselves, we have lost our spirit as a people, a spirit which we must recapture, if there is to be hope for setting things straight in the years to come. Big problems require big solutions. For the sake of our children, and our children's children, and the countless generations of children yet to come, we have no choice but to rise to the challenge, as did our forebears, and to grow our hearts and minds to the task that lies ahead.

 

Along with America's wealth and power there remains a question to be answered: To what purpose will America put her wealth, and to what end will she use her power? The answer is simple enough-Sell a Vision of Hope. With hope, all things are possible. Yes we will solve some of the seemingly intractable problems which lay waiting at our doorstep. But even more so, we will restore, within ourselves, our sense of idealism, our can-do spirit, our sense of compassion, and our belief in who we are as a people, and who we can become if we merely choose to make it so.

 

We need to rekindle that sense of awakening. Like the rest of humanity, we need hope like air to breathe. We will bring back to life our rightful sense of destiny, a sense that has been lulled to sleep by the passage of time, and the fullness of our bellies.