Liberal Arts Blog —Substantive Counting — The Case Of The Math Of Israel Palestine — Seven Questions
Liberal Arts Blog — Monday is the Joy of Math, Statistics, Shapes, and Numbers Day
Today’s Topic: Substantive Counting — The Case of the Math of Israel Palestine — Seven Questions
The Israel-Palestine conflict is a Gordian Knot of complexity. Is there an Occam’s Razor to cut through that complexity? What set of seven logically sequenced questions does the job best?
How about these?
What logically sequenced series of three quantitative-graphic images tells the story best?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
HAVE YOU DONE THE CURRENT POLITICAL MATH? DOES THE MATH MATTER?
1. How many Christian countries are there?
2. How many Islamic countries are there?
3. How many Jewish countries are there?
HAVE YOU DONE THE HISTORICAL MATH? HAVE YOU COUNTED THE NUMBER OT TIMES THE JEWS HAVE BEEN EXPELLED FROM OTHER COUNTRIES OVER THE LAST MILLENIUM?
4. Why do so many people think that Christians and Muslims have a right to so many countries the Jews don’t have a right to one?
5. Is it true that without the Torah of the Jews, there would be no Christian Bible and no Muslim Quran?
DID YOU DO THINK THROUGH THE 1945 AND 1948 ANALOGIES?
6. Should the US not have insisted on the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945?
7. How do the expulsions of the Jews from the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East feature in your ethical calculus?
The ball is in your court. Let us learn from each other. What set of seven questions tells the complicated story of Israel-Palestine best? What set of three images? What substantive civic issue that matters to you would be clarified by doing a little substantive counting? by the discipline of identifying the three most important quantitative-graphic images related to a problem and exchanging them?
Thinking Citizen Blog — Israel-Palestine — Historical Context Matters — Three Indispensable Charts…
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
Last four years of posts organized thematically:
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to math, statistics, or numbers in general.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to math.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
