Emotions are a big part of what binds any society, any culture, any people together. We are social creatures, and most of us are happiest when we feel like we belong to a group. The nature of those groups varies, but for the most part, they are family, community, and even nations. We are happiest being a part of something, something greater than ourselves.
But it's the belonging that counts. Where the real difference comes in, of course, is in what emotions bind a society together. They seem to come in two varieties: Love and hate.
The former applies in most of the Western world. The other day, I was surfing through some of my music lists on YouTube, as part of curating one of my Friday music posts, and I stumbled across a real gem: the singer Nanci Griffith, and a live performance of her utterly lovely song, Love at the Five and Dime. Watch:
First, look at the audience. A sea of smiling faces; people in a temporary community, an audience. Then, listen to the song: It's a beautiful ballad of a lifelong romance between two people, Rita and Eddie. They meet in the Woolworth's store, and they went on to share a love that lasted a lifetime, with all the ups and downs that go with a lifelong love. And the refrain, repeated throughout their lives together, speaks volumes:Dance a little closer to me
Dance a little closer now
Dance a little closer tonight
Dance a little closer to me
'Cause it's closing time and love's on sale tonight at this five and dime
In the Western world, before Shakespeare, before Chaucer, families and communities have been bound by love: Love of family, love of community, love of country. Americans, traditional Americans, follow this pattern. I certainly do; I love my little rural community, I love Alaska, I love my country, I love my kids and grandchildren, and most of all I love my wife, beyond my capacity to describe.
That's the dominant pattern in Western civilization: We are bound together by many things, but love is paramount.
Rita and Eddie's story concludes:
Eddie traveled with the bar room bands
'Til arthritis took his hands
Now he sells insurance on the side
And Rita's got her house to keep
Dime store novels and a love so sweet
They dance to the radio late at night
It's a beautiful song, and it resonates with those of traditional Western values. We all know people like Rita and Eddie; we all feel a warm glow at their story.
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But there are other societies outside the realms of Western civilization. Some of them operate on a very, very different unifying principle, and if you look at much of the majority Islamic nations, those binding emotions seem to be mostly hate with a big dollop of fear thrown in. That's a very real problem. That is the great conflict of our time. Only hate drives people to some of the acts we have seen in recent years: the Beirut bombings, the destruction of the World Trade Center, the October 7th, 2023 attacks on Israel. Some of these actions, most notably the Oct. 7th atrocities, included actions beyond barbarity, actions so horrible that decorum will not allow me to describe them here.
Only hate can drive such actions. And we are, as I have spoken and written about for years, a major clash, worldwide; not a clash of civilizations, but a clash of civilization vs. barbarity. It is a clash of love vs. hate.
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It's not to say that people in Western cultures cannot hate. We certainly can, and sometimes that hate is appropriate; some people have earned it. Right now, in Gaza, in Lebanon, the Israeli Defense Forces and the Mossad are hunting down every individual who took part in the Oct 7th attacks; they are not seeking to arrest them and try them; they are simply hunting them down like mad dogs and treating them as one would any other rabid animal. But that kind of hate is temporary and focused. The other kind, the kind that drove the barbarians, is permanent and implacable. No deal may be made with people like that. They are driven by hate; their cultures for several generations have been founded in hate, and they cannot be reasoned with.
In America, we warm to a song that describes a couple in a lifelong love. In the Islamic world, music is haram, women are property, and there is no love. There is instead hate, and there is fear. These people are raised to hate, and they do, with a passion that's difficult for us to completely understand. It's a lifelong hate that drives them to atrocity.
It remains, as Golda Meir once said:
There will be peace in the Middle East only when the Arabs love their children more than they hate Israel.
That, in and of itself, explains the very basic nature of this conflict more than anything else I can think of. It is, as I have written many times, a clash between civilization and barbarism, and that will end only when the barbarians are, one way or another, civilized.
