With Hamas' recent overwhelming victory in the Palestinian elections Israeli media is full of details on the dangers of Hamas and their desire to wipe Israel off the map.
What scares me most about this new reality is the stark way in which it makes clear that the majority of Palestinians are religious. Why this scares me is because the Thomas Friedman argument of giving economic hope to the deprived being the best way to fight terrorism and conflict falls apart when you introduce religion.
Monday, February 06, 2006
After death where does all the knowledge go?
My family experienced a tragic loss last week when my wife's father died suddenly after suffering a major stroke at home.
My father-in-law was an extraordinarily unique and talented individual that had an almost visceral aversion to taking anything that was handed to him, rather he needed to create his own opportunities in life and overcome all challenges through his own sheer ingenuity (and stubbornness).
Since his loss I have not been able to stop thinking about the question: what happens to all of a man's knowledge when they die? my father was a true renaissance man with a depth of understanding things as varied as how to build the ideal wood-burning stove to having nearly memorized the complete works of Uri Tzvi Greenberg . So where does all this knowledge go or is simply lost to the world?
It is a fact that energy never dissipates and the religious amongst us believe that the soul finds a new home but I cannot help but feel that the knowledge of this man will forever be lost to this world -- the thought makes me profoundly regret not having worked harder to try and capture more of it.
My father-in-law was an extraordinarily unique and talented individual that had an almost visceral aversion to taking anything that was handed to him, rather he needed to create his own opportunities in life and overcome all challenges through his own sheer ingenuity (and stubbornness).
Since his loss I have not been able to stop thinking about the question: what happens to all of a man's knowledge when they die? my father was a true renaissance man with a depth of understanding things as varied as how to build the ideal wood-burning stove to having nearly memorized the complete works of Uri Tzvi Greenberg . So where does all this knowledge go or is simply lost to the world?
It is a fact that energy never dissipates and the religious amongst us believe that the soul finds a new home but I cannot help but feel that the knowledge of this man will forever be lost to this world -- the thought makes me profoundly regret not having worked harder to try and capture more of it.
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