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Recipes for healing by fanaticism

a Fanatic

Amos Oz

2002

; A fanatic is a walking exclamation point, but it can heal with some imagination and inject some humor pill.

In his "Against fanaticism", a collection of three lectures at the University of Tubingen, Oz presents a fairly simple recipe to heal from any kind of intransigence.

Beyond, however, the 'irony that hovers between the words of the writer is a serious issue, the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with digressions about other ways in which in our world, manifest intransigence and intolerance.

Oz, jew, non-European, a writer, a former soldier, self-described expert in comparative fanaticism "and rightly so. Born in Jerusalem

more cosmopolitan than you might imagine, that of the forties, he has seen, irrevocably, to grow the conflict between Jews and Arab-Israelis-Palestinians from the worst years of armed clashes between the two armies, today reports a little more civil, but dense and tense.

Yet there must be remedies and the author, fine and acute observer, try to search for and list a few, without ever leaving the irony and take themselves too seriously, indeed, precisely to avoid this part amusing asides and anecdotes .

Funny and touching at the same time the story after which Oz defines his grandmother as "severely immune from fanaticism."

With these brief notes in the margins take a breath, it is lighter and later threw in his dissertations not avoiding sometimes unflattering comments at the address of its own people.

Oz says and as I read I could not help but smile thinking of fanatics who know first hand, that his life has not seen a fanatic who had a sense of humor and to quote the author himself "The fanatics are very often sarcastic. Some of them have a deep sense of sarcasm, but no soul. The humor includes the ability to laugh at themselves. Humor is relativism, you may see could be seen as the next ... " and continuous paraphrasing Oz, humor also the ability to see how others would see, to put yourself in their shoes, imagine how we would be and what we in the head if we were born into an environment totally different from ours, or perhaps just beyond the barricades built by ourselves.

Oz I have already defined as a non-European, and it is true, his parents have sent a love-hate feeling for Europe at some point, emerges from the words of the author does not some violence. But Oz does not forget to let us know: what is about to say will not please anyone, and probably not even him, I might add. Not appeal to us Europeans with our romantic vision of peace, always ready to point the finger, still need to know who the good guys and who the bad guys, not like the Palestinians and certainly not like the Jews. Oz is about compromises, painful separation but necessary recognition of rights, concessions and abandon.

Someone might say, is perhaps a statesman Oz to express opinions, to give his recipe? No, it is not and he knows this, but one wonders in a country where everyone has the solution in your pocket and do not lose at the next tumbler, why do not I?
And is it not true that the solution to fanaticism in general can only be a compromise between all possible solutions, "the ability to exist in the context of open situations, [...] with the diversity of others?

READ: be read and then not agree with the author, to challenge its solutions, to dissent, to angry, to draw their own conclusions or to agree but here in full, however, draw their own conclusions.