The Meritorious Rebel
AUSTIN WAYNE LUEBKE
Foreign Correspondent
Amman, Jordan
A man called OSHO, originally named Rajneesh, now passed away, in his book titled “Book of Man,”describes a number of archetype personalities among humanity. One of these archetypes was a spiritual model he termed, “Zorba the Buddha,” an ideal model suited for the enlightened human of the 20th century. Zorba the Buddha took personality traits (and I suppose soul traits) from the character Zorba in Kazantzakis’ famed novel, “Zorba the Greek” in addition to personality traits (and I suppose soul traits) from the Buddha Sakyamuni. Zorba, in the novel, was a free soul, living at his whim without care for the future, chasing women, working hard, partying harder, and enjoying nature. The Buddha, on the other hand, had steady, concentrated knowledge of the nature of reality and acted under the guidance of a firm, principled moralistic code intended to benefit all beings. Combine these two personalities and OSHO’s archetype emerges. A Buddha in a materialist age.But OSHO may have done well adding another archetype to his book to respond to a different era. A more active archetype suitable for the revolutionary age ushered in the moment Pluto entered Capricorn. A personality appropriate to respond to the excesses of brutal dictators, institutions of oppression, and the deceptions propagated by the elite. What is this archetype? The model personality? It is The Meritorious Rebel, detailed in Patrick Cockburn’s account of the fall of Sirte, Libya.
“He was a strange fighter,” says Enrico. “I never saw him fire any bullets. He would shoot only to save his life, saying he wanted to capture Gaddafi loyalists and there was no need to kill anybody if you were not in danger.”
A strange fighter. If any reader here has been following the Arab Spring, especially in Libya, then one knows there are many battle-hardened rebels fighting with a kind of brutality which strikes fear in the heart of a weak Westerner. And so it is true, in Libya, Gadaffi was violently lynched then stuck in a grocery store freezer to be taken pictures with for one’s family photo album. A scary prospect indeed, though one should refain from judging these rebels with the eye of an observer alone, as Gadaffi was responsible for killing their fathers and uncles and more. In a situation where you caught your father’s murderer, whom you happened to know lived in immense luxury for decades, how would you respond?
Regardless, the Transitional National Council and the actions of the rebels on the day Gadaffi was lynched should not be celebrated nor replicated. Compassion, logic, and the restraint of emotions so that proper justice can be served rather than the animalistic inverse of justice, i.e. vengeance, should be celebrated and revered. And those celebrated values are manifested in the human that was the rebel fighter Ahmed Abdullah al-Ghadamsi as recorded by the eminent journalist Patrick Cockburn. And so it is I implore you, the reader, to read his article and know this unique archetype, The Meritorious Rebel. An archetype suited to a revolutionary age.
Read it here: One Death In Sirte
Austin Wayne Luebke is a Fulbright Student residing in Amman, Jordan. The views depicted are mine alone and do not represent the Fulbright organization or have anything to with Fulbright whatsoever.