Discrimination- or discriminating- were once fine words, describing the ability to discern between right and wrong, good and evil, sweet and bitter. But with the recent evolution of that word into a negative political incorrectness, we have evolved into a gray sameness of all ideas, ideals, sexual identities and religious faiths, afraid to discriminate between them lest someone be offended, and we be convicted of a hate crime for disagreeing.
A discriminating person could be counted on and trusted to differentiate between a good idea and a bad one, and thus lead the way to a happy and healthy outcome. Qualitative differences that may be obvious by simple quantitative standards and observations are now so suppressed that one is hardly able to allow oneself to consider them as a possibility, for fear of being stigmatized as a politically incorrect racist bigot. And so we have been set adrift into an indiscriminate fog of non-distinction.
One example is the Nobel Prize. The Nobel prizes are indicative of advanced contributions to the good of humanity, such as the coveted Peace Prize. Approximately one hundred ninety Nobel prizes in all categories have been awarded to Jewish people, at least 20% of the total, from a people that represent less than 0.5% of the world population at some fourteen million. One the other hand, over 20% of the Earth’s population is represented by the Islamic world, at above 1.6 billion souls. Of this vast population spread across the globe, but a dozen Nobel prizes have been earned by Muslims, including Yasser Arafat, the father of modern terrorism, who received the Nobel Prize for Peace, mind you. Anwar Sadat of Egypt is another, due to his brave effort at making peace with Israel after launching and losing a war against the same, for which he was soon after assassinated by his own Muslim brothers.
Could one draw any conclusions from the unbalanced data presented above? Or would any dare to do just that for fear of being branded a ‘’right-wing-racist-bigot”. But the facts seem to lead to undeniable conclusions, and to what is to be attributed these wide differences in the data? It is probably not a magical spell cast over either group of players, I would think, but other factors. For example, the Jewish people have a book of collected memories forming their collective memory stretching back some three thousand years, like a single mind passed through the genetics of their generations to never forget. In that memory book is a standard of expectation, of right and wrong, good and evil, and the instruction to pass those memories and standards forward to every following generation- through education, teaching their children to read in a world of pervasive illiteracy.
And in the long struggle to survive in the furnace of afflictions and prejudice and injustice, the mind of the Jew was smelted and honed to razor sharpness. With that refined instrument the Jew has overcome alienation and rejection and dispersion as a mocked and hated social outcast to discover for the world the hidden internal workings of the universe and of the mind, have conquered diseases, advanced science and technology, developed the creative arts and literature, and taught the world to laugh at itself. Jewish comedians who made the world laugh abound, whereas Muslims who make the world laugh- rather than weep- seem to be as rare as rooster’s eggs.
Since its distant heyday of the invention of algebra and mathematical numbers, and the refinement of Islamic art and architecture, the Islamic world has all but stagnated, and offered the world little for the last five hundred years. But for the discovery of oil beneath their sands in modern times, which was extracted by western technology and well paid-for by western money, it would have remained poor and in the dark ages of history. Since its inception and spread by conquering hordes in the 7th century AD, it has produced fear and oppression for men and women of every race, strife, violence and poverty, and seemingly unending internecine wars unto this very day, blamed mostly on the ‘infidels’. On the world marketplace of ideas it is not a very good one, but it somehow nevertheless goes on selling.
The Jew has never been one to try to spread his religious knowledge by force, but by good deeds. By doing so, he and his book of memories have gone on to help shape the ethics and morality of the western world to the benefit of humanity, and the preservation of just and happy civilization. Like Don Quixote, they dream the impossible dream, and overcome the impossible odds.
That quintessential Jew, Jesus, who taught his disciples and the world to love, never killed anyone, but healed folks some six centuries before the illiterate Muhammad came into the world as a warlord whose sword would spread his new religion by fear and force, setting an example for his disciples unto this day. Thus much of the illiterate of the world are drawn to their romanticized patriarch and prophet, along with his promise of a heavenly orgy with multiple virgins (for men only) as reward for committing atrocities and martyring by murder to please the Islamic deity.
Where the devout Muslim is forbidden to touch alcohol but many permitted to rejoice in unhappiness and death, the Jew will raise a glass of wine to toast his fundamental philosophical and spiritual motto: L’Chaim! (to Life). Like Shrek the hated but misunderstood good-hearted ogre, he would settle all disputes with his enemies over a pint of beer-but alas. Indeed, there are good ideas and bad ideas in this world for which to discriminate between, but this is now anything but politically correct, and an indiscriminate thing to say, though discriminatingly true enough.