A Mutual Solution to the Problem of Being Mortal

Can we, just for a minute, dispense with the hand-wringing and acknowledge that the problem Israel and the Palestinians have with one another is actually their mutual solution to the problem of being mortal?

Of course to understand what I mean it is first necessary to recognize that it's not love or sex or money that makes the world go around but the fact of death; that what drives virtually everything we believe and do is the need to reduce, to at least a manageable degree of fear, the terror and panic the anticipation of death causes us. (If you can't quite grasp this notion, if you have to be reminded that terror and panic constitute the human default condition, then whatever you're believing and doing is working for you.)

Of the myriad subtle and blatant ways we've come up with to make living with an impossible reality tolerable, one example would be the symbolic immortality we assure ourselves of by leaving behind a scientific discovery, or a work of art, that will continue to have an influence on the world. Another is the accumulation of inordinate wealth. The god-like trappings great sums of money buy enable us to feel not just superior to the common man, but less vulnerable to the common fate. Still another is getting high, which is about getting aboveand to assure themselves of the post-corporeal rewards implicit in the anointmentand remain intact, the Arabs are every bit the blessing to Israel that Israel is to the Arabs.

It follows that the violence each side visits on the other must be measured; balances and proportions need to be kept. For one side to win, after all, would be for both sides to lose; would, that is, end the game and return bothbearable species of horror than the fact of oblivion does.

The pain we are witnessing is a palliative. These are not the worst of times in the Middle East.