When the slogan "the pause that refreshes" came to me this morning, I thought I was remembering it from Pepsi Cola advertising. Maybe I was, but in an article on cola advertising, that particular slogan isn't listed as having been one of either Coke's or Pepsi's, although the word "refreshing" occurs in several other slogans.
Well, never mind. The refreshing pause that I'm talking about is the pause that an aware person interjects between a stimulus and the person's otherwise automatic response. That pause is (or can be) refreshing precisely because it gives the person the opportunity to exercise a choice as to whether to act automatically or in some new way—even a very innovative way.
In the religious context, a person's automatic response to "the stimulus of life" (or perhaps more poignantly to the stimulus of learning that we all die) might be to believe as the person's parents believed.
Muhammad Asad reports in his memoir, The Road to Mecca (1952), that he found very attractive to himself personally what he observed in the 1920's to be the cultural tendency of Arabs to do just that: believe as their parents (and virtually everyone else around them) believed. To Asad, this was a very good thing, integrating an Arab's physical and spiritual life into something peaceful, natural, anxiety-free—unlike the European's neurotic, awkward, spiritual anxiety. In other words, whatever pause the Europeans had taken to cut themselves free from precedent was, to Asad, anything but "refreshing" spiritually.
Yet myself, very unlike Asad, I feel rather at home and comfortable with pausing to exercise my thought and creativity. I can hardly imagine ever becoming a "Muslim automaton."
Anyway, that's my current take on one of Asad's theses in The Road to Mecca (as I now read Chapter 5 of 12).
Well, in accord with Asad's thinking, I would have followed the precedents of my childhood and today be a narrow-minded, bigoted fundamentalist who calls for waging a crusade against all Muslims everywhere. Fortunately, I was able to sever the bonds of precedent that enveloped my childhood. Not that my parents were that prejudiced, but my community was, and is. So much for believing as every around one believes. Isn't that how the Nazis came to power? The Stalinists? The Maoists? Every extremist police state in humanity's history? Didn't they all start out with people marching in lockstep down that very slippery slope to intolerance?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that Asad was referring to the beneficial aspects of precedence in the Arab community, and I maintain many of the beneficial precedents from my childhood community. However, we must also exercise the ability to overcome the harmful precedents of our community. Without that ability, and the vigorous exercise of it, humanity will never improve.
Keith, one harmful aspect of "the Arab community" that I got from Asad's book is an "honor practice" among the beduins. Their blood feuds can go on (or, at least, at the time Asad was writing about—the 1920's—they could go on) for years and years. However, they could be ended if a man from the family that suffered the most recent killing abducted a virgin from the offending family and married her. Her virginal blood would benignly symbolize the alternative act of killing someone. These "symbolic" abductions and marriages could even be set up and arranged, such that "the elders" would identify a suitable virgin, one who would likely please the abductor (for otherwise, the abductor could further offend the other family if he grew tired or disgruntled with her and cast her off—that would be as bad as having just gone ahead and killed someone).
ReplyDeleteI was struck by Asad's apparent equanimity in describing this beduin practice. His indulgence of virtually all things Arab indicates to me that his disgust with European culture must have been profound....