Doron Rosenblum
From the Ha'aretz supplement
"Towers are falling
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
there really isn't
(TS Eliot)
It all started (allegedly, maybe, who knows) in the last decade of the century
the previous one; And befitting a desert mirage vision, the first signs
to the disintegration of factual certainty appeared for the first time (allegedly,
so to speak, supposedly) somewhere in the deserts of western Iraq, before, during and after
Gulf War.
Not that until then we lived with blinding clarity in everything related to the facts of life; but
At least we relied on some general conventions about reality. for example:
six two plus two is four; that in winter it is cold and in summer it is hot; of the superpowers
The large ones have deterrent power and weapons of mass destruction, while remote tribes -
Hamsin and all kinds of fever; that sophisticated information and intelligence systems, which rely on
All-seeing satellites, supercomputers, talking experts, give us an idea
Good for the real reality in the world. Moreover: the man of the 20th century
Considered more knowledgeable than all his predecessors in the complexities of life's facts, in the hard components of
reality; So much so, that there is talk of excess information and an "explosion
information".
The victory of education, based on empirical facts and experience
Actually, it seems to be a finished matter in the second half of the 20th century
And the defeat of magical thinking, superstitions,
The mass hysteria, the fears and the amorphous heartbreaks. and when they came
The computing, information and technology revolutions, which were based on the sciences
the exact ones, it seemed as if the victory of the spirit was finally sealed
Modern.
But something strange and disturbing - like a kind of unidentified cloud - started to bother me:
First cracks in the status of the simple fact were discovered in "Iraq" -
The concept, more than the place. And indeed, to this day, a decade after the war
The Gulf, and more so with the outbreak of the new terrorist war, did not deter her
A strange and elusive sense of mystery, which returns the more they reveal to us, the more it is
We actually know less. Fact (fact?): precisely as it increased
The intensity of the control and supervision teams, precisely as they have been refined
The satellites - this is how it becomes less and less clear what is actually happening: there is or there is not
A biological weapon? Are there chemical arrowheads or not? Stayed or didn't stay
Missiles - and how many? Is this even Saddam, or is it his duplicate? And not just the present
And the future became ambivalent, but even the past we had already experienced: the mother
Did the smart missiles even hit significant targets? in the launchers? What actually?
Are the American soldiers sent to the Gulf sick? What is actually sent to Israel,
In the same missile with a concrete head? In short: what the hell is going on? what are the facts
Now it is becoming more and more clear (or actually: blurring and disappearing) that all this was just
The "coming soon" towards the real movie; Because since September 11 something has been happening
How much more strange to the picture of global reality: the mystery grows as it unfolds
the plot; The more we see and know, the more we know we are not
know This is no longer "disinformation"; This is already a kind
"Post-information".
From among the huge clouds of dust that suddenly covered them - simply "out of the blue"
Literally - the Manhattan, the clouds came together and rose at the same time
The mystifications, the vanities, the rumors, the delusions, the lies. looks like
At once, all the walls of modern urbanism collapsed on everyone
Its meanings (among them: refinement, sophistication, triviality, knowledge, intelligence), and this
Thrown all at once far back - into an ancient world, full of anxieties and magic,
And surrounded by riddles: suddenly - like a "sign from heaven" and the "signs of the idioms" in my day
The intermediate - "figures" of "God" and "Satan" "appeared" in the clouds of dust
that rose from the Twin Towers; Suddenly, mini nutricons and geometry of
Computer software's; Suddenly millions embraced the mystical prophecies of
Nostradamus. False rumors are running around on the internet and in the media like
Ancient plagues - lest the ancient plagues spread as rumors.
The facts became flexible, loose, struggling - explosive and widespread
As bacteria, not least because of the speed of distribution and accessibility of the Internet:
Was a figure seen at the top of the towers? The disciple prophecy about the disaster? and what is there
In the envelope brought by the postman? And what about the tanker traveling on the road? Is there
Bin Laden "atomic suitcases" stolen from Russia? Does the Taliban have
Atomic Bomb? Yes and no, and maybe. And who knows.
"Not really." And maybe "there really is"? The facts themselves not only no longer exist
"eye-brightening", but on the contrary - they create a kind of "white fog" of
Rumors and fears and speculations. As in José Sarmago's book "On
The blindness", suddenly we grope around and grope the facts without realizing it
To know what we are actually touching: "According to all the signs, we are witnessing an outbreak
An epidemic of blindness, temporarily known as the White Plague"…
Because, in addition to all this, on September 11 the West became aware of the phenomenon that was
Known so far mainly to us in Israel: Gali Hadaf, which comes in a package deal
Along with the suicidal Islamic terrorism, in the form of irrationality, reversal
The cause and spinner, the permeating and widespread lies no less than spores
the anthrax; The disruption of linear rationality, which tortures the Western psyche
No less than terrorism itself.
This is the new type of logic, which came out of the desert, according to which the action of retribution works
Terrorism is the reason for the attack, the blockade and the barrier are the reason for the attack that they are
are intended to prevent, and the willingness to make concessions is a reason for war. also
The attacks in America are a priori punishment for America for the penalty bombings
hers in Afghanistan; The soul-searching is demanded mainly from the victims of terrorism,
And terrorist murder is actually a call for compassion and understanding.
Suddenly the world had to deal with, for example, the "fact", which prevailed in the countries
Arab, on the one hand - the attack on the Twin Towers was carried out by "the Mossad" (also
took the trouble to warn the Israelis not to go near there) to alienate Islam
about the world; And on the other hand - Israel is guilty of the Islamic hatred it caused
for terrorist attacks; And on the third hand - the jubilation of the Palestinians' identification with his act
Bin Laden's were staged by Israel, or they are a rebroadcast of readings
The genocide from the time of the Gulf War (which is considered legitimate, but not
It is about New York but only about the destruction of Tel Aviv). So who actually committed the
The attack? Is it harmful or beneficial - and for whom? Even according to the BBC
(for example in the "Date-Line" show that aired this week), the question of who-has-done-what already
Less important than the question of who is to blame anyway (Israel, but what).
And the factual "white blindness" will testify to the fact that it is a contagious epidemic
which also descended upon us and within us since the beginning of the intifada: are we really
Do you know what is happening in the field? Is there an increase or decrease in attacks? There are concessions or
Is there a tightening of the closure? What does the IDF do, and under whose orders? Who steers our lives:
the government? Shaul Mofaz? And accordingly, the factual obfuscation is slowly spreading as well
To the actions of the Americans in Afghanistan: what is actually happening there, despite and maybe
Because of all the reports? What and who is bombed? you will know…
The empirical fact has come a long way since its heyday -
Since then it has been miraculously raised in the mouth of the formidable Victorian educator Thomas
Gradgrind - that caricature of "the man of reality, the man of facts, the computer
his way", from Charles Dickens' book "Hard Times": "This is what is needed -
facts! Nothing but facts should be taught! The facts alone are a necessity
Life! In this life you don't need anything but facts! Facts and more
not! … facts! Facts! facts!"
Dickens makes fun of that pedagogue, who "has a ruler and scales in his hand, and a board
The multiplication is not from his pocket"; about the man who wishes for the day when a "council" will be established
Ovadot, consisting of Ovadot supervisors, who will force the people to be a people
Factual"; about the education system that holds that a horse is nothing more than "a four-legged creature
My legs, herbivore, number
The teeth are forty, of which twenty-four are molars, four canines
and twelve
cutters"…
"hard times"? Dickens had seen nothing yet. out of the haze of reality in him
we
Today, even the century-old obsession with "factuality" is fumbled and lost
The 19th already
Looks like a nostalgic sweepstakes district.
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