Time Heals All Wounds.. And Then Kills the Patient

Mon Jun 7 11:59:21 2004

Fast before the meal

Topics:

Israel

Yesterday evening, a time with one less event than I expected, I retired to Coffee Tree, and while I was there, I overheard yet another conversation about the justification of Israeli's national policies. This being Squirrel Hill, there was no lack of pro-Israel sentiment, and of course there was the other side. I just listened -- it's rare that I get into this discussion anymore. As usual, there was wrangling over historical fact, mention of the Holocaust, and high tempers on both sides.. people telling sob stories about how their relatives had been killed or exiled from their homeland by Israelis, the Germans, and the Arabs. The second part of the discussion, which I listened to more, was led on the Israel side by an acquaintence of mine - an atheist who left orthodoxy, so there wasn't any mention of the religious nonsense from that side of the argument. The dove in the first part of the conversation was an Israeli guy who was called a traitor numerous times, in the second, a random nonjewish coffee-tree frequenter. One of the things that was brought up is that the Arab liberals who want to work out a settlement don't feel free or safe to speak up. I wonder what it looks like when one side in a political conflict in general doesn't feel safe/free to be visible -- it's a mark of disaster in the making.

It got me chewing on varying views of religious demands, mostly on lifestyle issues. I've known, for example, many atheist people from Jewish-culture/Muslim families that keep the dietary laws, and I've always wondered why. Some possible classifications...

       Word of god, obey unconditionally, don't question it
       Collection of ideas representing perfect order that we can't
               see entirely, obey
       Represents underlying values, try to understand them to go beyond
               just law-conformant, but obey the law too
       Represents underlying values, when you understand them, you don't
               need the law
       Represents some universal content, and some other stuff, obey to make
               sure one hits the universal
       Represents some universal content, and some other stuff, obey the good
               stuff, not the rest
       Represents an identity, obey to maintain that identity

On the way back, I swung by Giant Eagle, again happy that it's now 24-hour. I'm again amazed at the crap some people eat, and how much of it there is in the store. It would be nice, I think, if supermarkets gently tried to steer people towards healthy living.

On my way to the Doctor's this morning, for a regular checkup, I had an accident. Go figure.. It turns out that some schmuck changed his driveway around so the sidewalk has steps going down and up to driveway level, and this was not there the last time I took this path. I noticed just before I hit the up-steps, and put on the breaks, but my rear brakes are currently unhealthy, so the bike flipped. Fortunately, as always, my head is undamaged from the fall (used the rest of my body to keep it safe), but my right knee/leg/hip is messed up (hurts to walk, and I'm limping) and my right arm also took a blow. Oh well. My doctor seems a lot happier with my health this time than he was last time -- apparently my pulse and blood pressure are now well within the healthy range (blood pressure is actually a bit low now), although he's concerned that I don't weigh enough for my height (right now I'm in the 160s and am 6 foot 1). We'll see how my cholesterol and the like are doing when the results of the blood test come back. Actually, I'm not going to worry too much about the weight for now -- I hadn't eaten breakfast yet at the time I came in, so I probably weighed less than I usually do. I do notice now that my cellphone took another beating in the fall -- a rubber guard on the phone is now gone, and the antenna is again broken.