Peripheral Visions

American prophet speak of the doom to be visited on Euro-Americans, my father leaned over and sang to me, sub voce , “The bells of Hell go tingalingaling, for you and not for me…” A very popular idea.
    There are other visions, however, which prosper in times of expansion and new technology, and which suggest that prosperity is not limited and neither is love or blessing. In the contemporary world, we restate these conflicting views in the ongoing debate about whether technology will always be able to refill the cornucopia emptied by human prodigality, or whether we must indeed accept “limits to growth.” Yet economic and population growth are not the only kinds of growth, for lives can be enriched and deepened in ways that do not exclude or strain limited resources.
    The stands that people take on these issues are not based on rational analysis, they are based on very early learning of how the world really is, reinforced by teaching of other kinds. It is impossible to avoid some rivalry between siblings, just as it is impossible to eliminate completely the themes of dominance and dependence that all human beings must deal with because we are born so small and weak, so dependent on larger and stronger beings. Today American thinking on child rearing urges parents to avoid invidious comparison between siblings and suggests patterns that promise enough for all and a fair division, but competition is affirmed at school. Because this kind of calculus is so simple, it tends to force out other ways of thinking, particularly in the ambiguous encounters of strangers. It provides a map, ultimately a destructive one, for finding the way through interactions in which no code is shared.
    Middle Eastern cultures reek of envy. Everywhere that you see charms against the evil eye—bright blue beads, the hand of Fatima, an eye painted on a house—you know that you are in a society where envy is a major source of anxiety. The evil eye is caused by envy, often involuntarily. If you admire the fat and healthy infant of your neighbor, that baby may sicken and die, so in voicing admiration you should always invoke a protective charm: heaven forfend that he should come to any harm (the admired baby is almost certainly male—female infants are not enviable). A baby is protected from birth by charms attached to clothing or body, kohl on the eyelids. Concealment is another sign of an envy culture, as in Iran, where women are veiled and gardens surrounded by high walls to protect them from covetous eyes. The flashy houses built by the nouveaux riches under the shah were an innovation, for the wise man does not flaunt his wealth. The traditional merchants of the bazaar hid their money away and kept their luxuries invisible.
    A few coins to a beggar are a protection against the evil eye, but serious efforts at social programs are often ship-wrecked on disagreements between those who feel that everyone will be better off when no one is starving and those who feel that every penny going to the poor will come from their own pockets. When the economic shoe pinches, increasing numbers begin to grudge any advancement to their neighbors, even welfare payments. In many countries today there is a curious tension between the effort to keep competition for wealth alive, as a carrot to motivate economic enterprise, and the effort to establish a basic standard of welfare, eliminating the stick.
    The Ottoman Empire represented long-term neglect and deterioration, with the result that populations in many areas, unprotected from nomadic raiders, declined. Systems of irrigation and drainage were allowed to run down, so land that was once cultivated was given over to wilderness. When Jews first began to immigrate into Palestine, some set out to buy land, sometimes from owners living on it but often from absentee landlords who did not care about the displacement of their tenants. During the British mandate, legislation was passed to protect tenants, so that often the only land settlers were able to buy was uncultivated (although generally it was used for some other purpose, like grazing or gathering firewood). The Jews were legalistic about ownership: what they had paid for was theirs. No doubt the purchasers of Manhattan felt the same way. Although the new settlers were initially inept farmers, they soon began to bring in know-how and farm more productively. There are many stories in Israeli lore of the kindness of Arab neighbors to the early arrivals,