Paradise breached and burnt
Arabic translation available here
Once upon a time, a man and a woman were given everything they could ever dream of–eternal life, health, beauty, peace, each other. They pranced around naked in a garden of infinite abundance with only one catch: they were not to eat from one tree, lest they come to know the value of what they had by becoming aware of what they had not. Like the toddler who is told, over and over, not to touch the hot pot no matter how inviting the rising steam might appear, the man and woman did not know pain nor consequence, nor anything outside their serene, secure existence. After all, how can one know how good one has it without knowing how bad it could be?
In their world of infinite goodness, where the womb of their creator was so vast as to preclude all dreams or thoughts beyond what already was, there remained one limitation: the tree. Day after day, perfection became more and more common in their eyes, the absolute sublimity more and more dull, a routine standard, while the secrets of the tree remained the only thing standing beyond, the only thing worth wondering about. Soon, the man and woman realized that there was only one thing left to do if they were to escape the endless repetition of their deathless days, to interrupt the tedium and banality of paradise: they would have to break the one rule imposed on them. They would have to eat from the tree.
The story of Adam and Eve’s transgression and subsequent expulsion from Eden is read in various ways by different philosophers and theologians alike. Standard Catholic thinkers would like us to read it as a reminder of the sin we are all born into, a condemnation of being born a child of Adam. Others, like Carl Jung or Neville Goddard, invite us to read it psycho-spiritually, as an initiative moment in the birth of consciousness. And still others, such as Erich Fromm, suggest that we read it as an inauguration of human history, an act of initiation that set humanity free from their fetus-like existence. In his book, On Disobedience, Fromm writes, “Man had to leave the Garden of Eden in order to learn to rely on his own powers and to become fully human”1. Fromm’s suggestion, on which he expands throughout the chapter, is that disobedience, rather than being the vice to the virtue that is obedience, is often our only chance of becoming more of what we are, of accessing the freedom that is our human right, and embracing our becoming as individuals and collectives. Ultimately, to Fromm, there comes a point in every system, particularly those where irrational authority reigns supreme, when the only path to evolution is through revolution. And our myths and holy books are full of gods and prophets who challenged dominant, irrational authorities in the name of justice and human becoming, from Prometheus to Mohammad.
Today, we watch Fromm’s proposal play out most notably in the wake of Al-Qassam Brigades’ October 7th breach of the Gaza barrier. Like Adam and Eve’s decision to defy God’s orders, and like all revolutionary disobedience, the Palestinian decision to challenge the occupation’s authority comes at a hefty price. Since that day, over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed according to the records of the health ministry in Gaza, which only accounts for those who were announced dead in the hospitals, while tens of thousands more remain missing, buried under the rubble of the occupation’s environmentally catastrophic bombardment of Gaza’s infrastructure, and as I write this, over a million people hang on the brink of starvation. One might look at these facts and think that the decision to defy such a powerful military state was unwise, but if that’s the case, then we must ask: would we then also condemn Adam and Eve for their decision to challenge the suffocation of paradise? Would we condemn the child who reaches for the hot pot? Were Adam and Eve unwise to choose the joy, pleasure, labour, and suffering of life and death over the monotony of uncomparable (and therefore, unrecognizable) perfection? Is the child unwise to follow their curiosity to inevitable pain at the expense of blissful ignorance?
What distinguished, however, the October 7th breach from Adam and Eve’s transgression and the child’s act of curiosity is that while the effects of the latter two are contained to the realities of the transgressors themselves, the effects of the former have rippled out onto the wider global consciousness of the international community. Adam and Eve’s disobedience awakens Adam and Eve to the knowledge of good and evil; the child’s disobedience awakens the child to the notion of pain; but the Palestinian resistance fighter’s breach of the barrier that has held him captive in his homeland since the day he was born–this has awakened the world to the awareness of his life in silenced captivity.
In the Spring of 2021, as a result of the evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the outspokenness of a handful of Palestinian activists, most notably Mohammad el Kurd, the world began to hear about the plight of Palestinians at the hands of the occupation. But that news, coming in only a year after Covid lockdowns, soon faded into the background of vaccine conspiracy and the threat of cyber wars. A small rupture was created in the conversation, but there was no definitive act of defiance to truly rupture global awareness of the issue. It was yet another injustice enacted by yet another authority, no different than any other happening all over the world, and the media handlers and hasbara bots were quick to quell the discussion with claims that to suggest there was anything special about Palestine was simply antisemitic. I myself was bullied into silence on my social media platforms by zionist smear campaigns that threatened my account growth and livelihood.
Two and a half years later, with Covid now a fever dream of the past, on October 7th, 2023, something new happened: the siege was broken, a barrier was crossed, the authority of the most righteous, well-paid, internationally supported occupation force on the planet was defied, and the spirit of resistance, its whispers already on the breath of youth all over the world, rippled throughout the international community. The narrative support that had upheld the occupation’s image of righteousness quickly began to crumble as activists of all faiths, colors, and nationalities took to social media to share their knowledge, and the gruesome face of militarism, terror, and 100 years of propaganda was finally unmasked. Adams and Eves everywhere were and continue to be awoken from their blissful ignorance, and everyday, Palestinians continue to pay the price of that awakening with their lives.
Zionist settlers and apologists like to scour the accounts of Gazans before that fateful day and parade photos and videos of them smiling, eating, dancing, and celebrating with loved ones as a kind of “gotcha,” to say “well if they were so oppressed, why do they look so happy?” as if one must always wear their desperation like an impermeable mask, an inescapable identity, otherwise their suffering cannot possibly be real. Those of such great privilege, who stomp around with pompous entitlement and impunity wherever they go, have trouble understanding what it means to make the best of one’s circumstances. They have perhaps never stopped to remember that even Eden, even paradise, became prison when the mind was forbidden to wander. What then of the body trapped within 365 square kilometers of besieged land?
- Erich Fromm, “On Disobedience and Other Essays“. Chapter one: “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem” (1963).