See You in the (Deadly) Funny Papers

(First published in the Bali Advertiser, February 15, 2006)

“We are angry – very, very, very angry. No one can say a bad word about our prophet.” – Jamila Al Shanty, elected to represent Hamas in the Palestinian Parliament, referring to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, International Herald Tribune, Feb. 2, 2006

I’m not going to drag out that tired old argument -- I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it -- because, buddy, if you use your freedom of speech to willfully offend cultural taboos, you are on your own. Freedom of the press should be almost absolute, with government-set limits restricted to libel, slander, and incitement. But if you lack the wisdom to stop yourself from gratuitous provocation, don’t expect my sympathy or support when people are provoked. I’m not crazy about defenses unto death anyway.

I thought at first that the editors of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten just didn’t know depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are considered blasphemy by Muslims. They knew. Fleming Rose, the paper’s culture editor says his intent was to “see if cartoonists were self-censoring their work out of fear of violence from Islamic radicals,” according to a Feb. 5 article in the International Herald Tribune. Rose said he commissioned the cartoons after reading of a Danish comedian, “who said in an interview that he had no problem urinating on the Bible but that he would not dare do the same to the Koran.”

Aren’t comedians supposed to be funny? What’s funny about peeing on a holy book? Why should a newspaper’s culture editor care what a humorless Danish comic will or won’t pee on? And don’t try to tell me the mixing of bodily fluids and sacred objects is art. It smacks more of snickering at the back of the classroom because somebody said “doo-doo.”

In principle, yes, European papers have the legal right to publish caricatures of Muhammad, Moses, Christ, or any other iconic figure. To do so with full knowledge of their potential to offend – particularly in the present political environment -- is immature. These cartoons aren’t noble free speech. “We don’t go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence,” Simon Jenkins put it in a Feb. 5 editorial on the Times Online (www.timesonline.co.uk).

Whatever point the Danish paper wanted to make about Islam and censorship, the hijacking of Islam by a militant minority, or even about a violent, militant philosophy at the religion’s core, could be made without deliberate, overt offense. Intellectual, moderate Muslims frequently make such arguments on the editorial pages of other newspapers. By being deliberately offensive, the Danish paper has only stirred up a deadly fuss. The violent reaction and protests in the Muslim world don’t prove anything except that if you set out to make people angry, you can easily do so.

Yes, calls for the beheading of the editors of newspapers that have published the cartoon, or to cut off the hands of the cartoonists that drew them, are an overreaction. But don’t confuse the ill-judgment in publishing the caricatures with the ill-advised attempts to stir up violence in response. This tempest isn’t about a conflict between press freedoms and respect for cultural taboos. It’s about punching somebody in the nose and complaining about (or enjoying) the howl they make.

Up to the writing of this column, protest rallies in Indonesia have been relatively mild, with protesters numbering in the hundreds rather than thousands. Action was limited to the throwing of eggs and rocks and the burning of flags. “Let’s slaughter the Danish ambassador!” said one poster, according to a Feb. 3 account by the Agence France-Presse. Compared to embassies burning in Syria and Lebanon, protest rallies by tens of thousands of Palestinians and Afghans, and calls for the heads and hands of those responsible for the cartoons, that’s almost a reasoned response. Perhaps that’s to be expected in Islam’s largest working democracy, where at least the theory of press freedom is understood.

Hopefully, by the time this is in print, the furor will have passed with no more dead or injured. And maybe the editors of newspapers that published the cartoons will feel chastised by the many Western voices telling them they have abused their freedom – but don’t count on it. Some folks never outgrow the “Mine!” mentality of a two-year-old.

On the other hand, Muslims and their leaders need to examine the violent nature of their response. I understand the philosophy behind the ban on images of the Prophet. And I agree there is an abstract danger in creating images of human and animal forms lest the image or the artist’s skill takes precedence over living, breathing creatures. But violating an actual living form by chopping off body parts strikes me as a greater blasphemy than the creation of an image, no matter how unflattering it is to the original, no matter how close a pleasing image is to idolatry.

Copyright © 2005 Lee Roy LeRoi

Happiness is not a Warm Puppy

(First published in Bali Advertiser, February 1, 2006)

I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves. – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Happiness is one of those Zen things: You cannot find it if you go looking for it. That’s not psycho-drivel. American university research studies cited by psychology professor Timothy D. Wilson in the International Herald Tribune (Dec. 30) confirm what wise men have been telling us all along.

People asked in one of the studies to analyze and evaluate a romantic relationship usually ended up less happy than people asked to give only a gut reaction on their satisfaction with a romantic partner. Two groups of depressed college students in another study were asked to spend eight minutes a day either thinking about themselves or about something else, such as “clouds forming in the sky.” Not surprisingly, the group that contemplated clouds was happier.

The researchers should have just read some of American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”

Or maybe they could have read this bit from the French Algerian writer and philosopher Albert Camus: “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

My question -- what of the researchers themselves, who studied happiness to learn that happiness dissipates as it is analyzed and evaluated? Are they happy? Or does happiness research kill it for them, too?

Personally, I distrust ‘happy’ people, always have, I think. I told university classmates to be wary of anyone that smiled too much, and thought it sage advice. And I liked what a small-town university rebel-hero said when he heard a mutual friend was happy most of the time. “I thought you were smarter than that,” he told her.

Nothing wrong with me, after all – I was just too intelligent to be happy. It caressed my ego to use that to explain my twenty-something angst. But not setting happiness as a goal isn’t the same as setting out in the other direction in a leap of extrapolation -- if the intelligent cannot be happy, geniuses must be miserable. Still, I feel somewhat vindicated that the research indicates the less one thinks about happiness, the less one tries to analyze it, the happier one is. It makes me feel less inadequate at not knowing what to answer people when they ask, “Are you happy?”

I don’t like the question, and I don’t like the whole happiness, self-help industry, which promises happiness if you buy into a particular creed, a certain brand of personal management, one regimen of meditation and diet, a single philosophy of auras, aromas, oils, crystals, and essences. Once you are hooked there is always one more therapy session, one last instructional booklet, one final initiation rite that will complete the process to a new, shiny, happy you.

What are the secrets of happiness? There are none; at least, there are only open secrets that we have to be reminded of now and then. It is as simple as Jesus and Buddha said. The university researchers confirmed that as well: people who do kind things for other people are generally happier than the rest of us – as long as they don’t stop to think they might be doing kind things to other people only to make themselves happy.

Maybe the kindness-happiness link is innate, and we forget it when we grow up and recall it in old age. One of the youngest people I know, my son, offers some of whatever he’s having to everyone in the room. And one of the oldest people I know, a Balinese farmer who passes our gate everyday, sometimes brings us duck eggs or coconuts just because he likes to do it.

“Being good to others will ultimately make us kinder, happier people – just so long as we don’t think too much about it,” wrote Timothy D. Wilson in the IHT.

Or take it from George Bernard Shaw: “The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.”

And the best way to keep yourself busy seems to be to take a neighbor some fresh duck eggs and a young coconut. Or maybe you could offer everyone in the room a warm bottle of soya milk. It will make you happy. Trust me. It’s been proven by science.

(Quotes taken from www.quotegarden.com and www.wisdomquotes.com.)

Copyright © 2006 Lee Roy LeRoi