The Seven Pillars of Wisdom

[Dedalus]

I've read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom for the third time and I can't recommend it enough to anyone. I went to a local bookshop to get it for this girl I'm kind of involved with and the bookshop doesn't have its books on a computer so you have to find them. The guy at the counter had read it and we had to search the autobiography, military history, spirituality, philosophy, middle east, classics, and politics sections for it until we found it in the humanities section. I hope that illustrates what an eclectic mix of a book it is.

At its basic it is T.E. Lawrences auutobiographical account of how he united the Arab tribes and engineered a revolt with them against the Turkish rulers during the First World War. But it is so much more than that. You very much have to read between the lines too...he speaks of his theological views, the origins of civilisation, the uniting factors between all men, his philosophical views, psychology, of Arab and Muslim culture.

A huge part of it resonates with modern times and the current Second Gulf War and the Arab mindset. One paragraph wrote about how a section of the Iran was ruled by a religous sect (basically Taliban) and that in Arab history these rulings come and go like the winds. The Arabs expect it and they expect it to go away again with or without a little help...and to put that in modern terms...

There was another notable section where he was explaining to the Arab leader about how the West is dominant because it is constantly getting new information and developing better and newer science like how it can count more stars and planets than the Arabs can with their eyes. The Arab leader then turns and asks 'Why Westerners must what everything? We can see God behind our few stars, yet behind your millions you can't.' Lawrence carries on and eventually says 'We want to know how the world began and we want to know how it will end.' The response was 'But that is God's. And even if God doesn't exist, that knowledge certainly isn't ours. And what use is it anyway? It doesn't help feed your children or look after your wife or feed the poor.'