The author of the Song of Songs wrote that “Jealousy is as cruel as the grave”. In my youth I remember thinking that this was such a silly claim; for how can a mere sentiment be as bad as death itself. If one is lucky, age occasions a measure of wisdom. I now see the truth in the claim.
Jealousy is typically destructive and has no genuine basis. Or, in any case, things are blown way out of proportion. So while it may be true that I smiled at Rachelie, my jealous wife will turn that smile into a full-fledged sexual fling—something that never entered my mind. The hallmark of jealousy is that it does not listen to reason, no matter how loud and clear the voice of reason is. At least in death, reason has the last word. Not so with jealousy.
Bitterness is rather like jealousy. Typically, bitterness takes a wrong that has been done to one and turns the wrong done to one into an explanation for practically all failures that follow. There is absolutely nothing to be said for being wronged. Wrongs should never be trivialized. However, there are very few wrongs from which a person cannot recover significantly if not completely; and a substantial recovery always diffuses the sting of bitterness.
Bitterness invariably results in missed opportunities to make oneself better off; and, of course, the fault for even missed opportunities is always said to lie elsewhere. I hold that the wrong that someone did to me is never an excuse not to do for myself the good that it is within my power to do.
Bitterness at its worse is none other than self-hatred masquerading as self-respect.
A striking difference between bitterness and jealousy is that bitterness is readily inculcated. So if children are taught from the outset that they have been wronged by others and that this wrong is the explanation for why they do not have certain advantages, then children can become bitter. Such children will become bitter even if it is manifestly true that the explanation for the plight that they are in is not so much the wrong that others have done to them, but the misguided behavior of their parents and community members. This was the substance of Bill Cosby’s point regarding blacks and racism, a matter that I have already addressed.
The Muslim Arab world in the Middle East seems to be a very bitter world. It is certainly the case that the U.S. and other governments are partly to blame for the predicament that Muslim Arabs are in. But, alas, so are Muslim Arabic leaders; and it is this truth has got to be grasped. Both Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat had access to million upon millions of dollars which they could have used to build schools and universities for their citizens. Citizens could have been elevated beyond their wildest dreams. But this is not what happened. And who is to blame for that? The wrong here is independent of the wrongs done by the U.S. Yet, both Arafat and Hussein were masters at creating a culture of bitterness among their denizens.
Rather than build schools, both leaders saw it as more fitting that their citizens believe, for example, that Jews eat the blood of children for Jewish religious holidays. For the record, this view about Jews has its roots in Christian antisemitism. That, alas, does not change the fact that the Muslim Arabic world in the Middle East has mightily availed itself of it.
I believe that evil is opportunistic. Evil will use any crevice or portal available. And nothing serves evil better than hard-core bitterness towards a people or country; for such bitterness will excuse, if not entirely justify, any wrong doing committed against the people or country. Moreover, with hard-core bitterness towards another, then one’s own shortcomings or those of one’s compatriots are utterly irrelevant.
I do not know whether the world will go up in flames in the very near future. But I do know that if the Arabic Muslim world of the Middle East were to be as ingenious in educating their children as they were in carrying out the terrorist act of 11 September 2001, then the Muslim Arabic world of the Middle East would be second to none in the realm of intellectual power. If their cooperation in terms of educating one another were as extraordinary as their cooperation in carrying out the terrorist attack in London on 7 July 2004 or Madrid on 11 March 2004, then the Muslim Arabic world of the Middle East might very well have what it most wants, namely a West that is utterly beholden to it.
But alas the Muslim Arabic world of the Middle East seems hell bent on destroying the very world that it wishes to rule. But this is one of the signature marks of bitterness:
One is so committed to harming the other no matter what that one causes irreparable harm to oneself.
The horrendously jealous husband says regarding his wife “If I can’t have you, then no one else will”. Then he kills her. The horrendously bitter person says “I will destroy you if that is the last thing I do”. The problem is that those words prove to be more literal than metaphorical, because the bitter person is so besotted with the delight he gets from destroying the other that the irreparable destruction that he is doing to himself has no weight in his life.
The Muslim Arabic world of the Middle East is inculcating raw bitterness in its children, laying all ills at the feet of the West. Never mind the wealth that Hussein and Arafat squandered. When the Muslim Arabic world succeeds in destroying the West, what then will it say to its children?
