Every Ending is a beginning
Every ending is a beginning,
People are condemned to go on treading,
the same paths they laid low so long ago:
Kali laughs, Loki plays his tricks, Puck has his humor,
People file out of their houses and set them on fire,
Burn old ladies as witches in their furor;
And burn the libraries of ideas, that they want to ignore;
all because, in the grip of illusion,
they act on tired old delusions,
and worship Gods of paper, wood, metal and stone,
that never were,
again and again.
And after all the destruction:
the self-immolation,
the flagellations,
the bombs launched at enemies,
they look in the mirror in the water,
and the enemy is still there,
but they are too tired to fight anymore;
and there is nothing left to fight over.
So after this round of destruction and stupidity,
do you think we'll get up and rebuild?
After we destroy all our gains,
and fight enemies, real and imagined,
it is time to pick up and rebuild.
The end times?
History is made of people convinced it is the end of history?
Barbarians at the gate?
I'll grant you that, which side are they on?
I'd suggest inside.
It is the beginning of great times,
We live in interesting times
and that is sad,
Because construction is so much more satisfying,
and choosing life is so much more constructive.
Chris
We all are architects of our lives. No matter what happens, we have the natural ability to define our dreams, and to build; given the chance.
Individually, and collectively, our lives are governed, at least in part by chance. A hurricane here, a tornado there, winds of economy, games of dice, chess, and politics; all have a tendancy to wipe out even the best of plans or intentions. People have trouble understanding how a thousand years of effort can be wiped out with a single fire, but that is reality. On an individual and a collective level we are subject to the whims of chance, of "God" when he plays dice with our lives. On both these things represent "risk" and "opportunity."
This chance nature of individual fortune leads some people to see life as like a poker game. For one person to win, someone else must lose. To these people there is no room for compassion because to have winners, there must be losers. You see this attitude a lot in ideological conservatives. To them the notion that "Gubbornment" should or even can help the average person or level the playing field is something they cannot believe is possible.
These people also don't see anything wrong with looking out for number one and cutting the legs out of their opponents. They tend to see life as a kind of warfare, in which the only way to win is to kill, defeat or destroy ones opponents. These people know that winning requires them to play a game in which the stakes are high. Winning that game means admittance to a country-club. Failure means washing dishes, cleaning streets, or dying. When they get ahead they attribute it to their skillfulness. When they fail they blame God, their opponents, or some other skapegoat.
I'm sure you know people like this. Yet, the reality of life is that while individually our lives are subject to chance. Collectively, that very matter of chance gives us a way to mitigate risk and ameliorate problems. Individual chance is random, but our collective lives are statistically pretty predictable. One can look at a population over time and figure out ways to spread out the risk so that no one person has to bear it all. My odds of getting stomach cancer might be a given percentage. A single person with stomach cancer might have a nasty doctor's bill that he couldn't possibly bear, yet if we determine the odds and spread them out, we might find that the collective cost of such a condition is far lower. That is the logic of insurance and large scale social programs. They can't eliminate risk, but they can make it manage-able.
And they can help fund things that benefit everybody by lowering the risk of a particular outcome.
For example, New Orleans is below Sea Level. So what do we do about it? The first view would put the costs of protecting New Orleans as purely up to the City of New Orleans, and morally, to the individuals living in New Orleans. If their house is below Sea Level and the Dykes break -- "well that's not our business" people will say. But it is our business.
Do we collectively need the oil rigs, sea-ports, and shipping channels? Yes. Do they benefit us individually? yes? Then it is in the functional national interest to have a healthy New Orleans. Therefore it is in our evident collective self interest to help that city -- as a nation. A functional Sea Port at New Orleans directly benefits everybody in the Mississippi Watershed, and most of us on the coasts as well.
Now that we've seen the cost of a relatively low risk event, we can see the value of minimizing the chances of that event; New Levies, restoration of the wet-lands and lagoons of the lower Mississippi, raising the level of the streets and building new buildings that are more resistant to hurricanes; all are in the national interest and are not just the risk of the people living in New Orleans.
Understanding chance also means appreciation of the full meaning of the line from John Donne's poem "no man is an Island." Man as a single creature has a poor chance of surviving very long, or doing anything worth while. For every human being who can survive, the odds are bleak that he will be able to unaided. Yet collectively we can do things to mitigate the random chances that make such life possible. We human beings have been doing that since we started evolving a brain. It is a shame to see so many people refuse to use their brains on the notion that they should be like rogue elephants or other solitary creatures. The odds are a hundred percent that you or I individually will suffer disease, cancer, or other life-threatening disease. Yet using the power of being part of a larger aggregate our own individual odds can be mitigated. I can help you pay for and fight something you are suffering now today, and tomorrow you can help me deal with something I'm suffering from.
That is the value of things like insurance, social programs, and health systems. It is also the value of international trade and international law. The laws of probablity dictate that things may happen to us that we cannot individually bear. Like Job each of us may be tested even if we are humble, hard working and pious. Yet, when looked at on the aggregate, each of the probabilites can be accounted for and dealt with. We can look at each risk factor and calcluate the aggregate costs of something that individually would be more than any one person can bear and then spread those costs across society that we, collectively can afford them. Collectively we have to stand together or we will all fall together.
This is common sense, this is scientific, and this was taken as unassailable logic to the point where social scientists and "liberal democrats" were supprised when these assumptions came under assault.
Chris
One thing one learns in dealing with modern day authoritarian-conservatives, is that they are not nearly as conservative of principles as they claim to be. American principle has never been so cut and dry as they would make it and the notion of the application of the constitution as being a living, evolving understanding is not a new invention. When dealing with genuine conservatives often their Point of View needs to be considered because it is true, but when arguing with authoritarian "neo-con" or "pseudo-libertarian" demagogues, the arguments are much more difficult because these arguments reflect corrupt sophistry and misuse of source material. I've been examing the various threads of conservativism in the second half of the 20th century and comparing them to the sources that they claim to hail from, in the process I found that some so-called "conservatives" corrupt (twist and distort) the material they used to justify their positions and are arguing from corrupt versions of history and from distorted concepts. In the case of libertarianism, specifically, some of the most vocally voiced opinions are based on this sort of analysis. In some cases the authors seem to be guilty of nothing more than importing their own ideological arguments and giving them a historical gloss.
I am specifically referring to the notion that the founding fathers were "strict constructionists." A book I have on the Nullification Controversy explains that: "Strict constructionism argues that Congress only possesses expressly enumerated prerogatives. The elastic clauses give no additional authority. The enumerated powers alone define the ways in which congress could promote the 'common defense and general welfare.' The 'necessary and proper clause'" [solely] "gives Congress Authority to use means indispensible to carry out enumerated powers." The author goes on to give the example of strict constructionism; "The Bank Charter was unconstitutional because taxes could be collected without a bank. Internal improvements were unconstitutional because the power to appropriate money for building roads and canals was not one of the enumerated powers which determined how Congress could further the common defense and general welfare."
But who argued Strict Constructionism? Was it Jefferson? No. Jackson argued some elements of Strict Constructionism, but not others. The only place where strict constructionism ever dominated was in South Carolina during the slavery controversy when South Carlinian radicals argued that the Federal Government should have no power over their own "peculiar institution" while they should have the power to force the rest of the country to accept slavery, return slaves to their property owners, and to oppress and tyrannize their own anti-slavery minorities, blacks and black seamen. South Carolinians argued that their state should have the power to nullify any laws or legal decisions they deemed 'unconstitutional.'
Strict constructionism arose as an interpretation out of a conflict over the "Alien and Sedition Acts" during the Adams administration and two polemics, that were published in Kentucky and Virginia as Resolutions by Jefferson and Madison. The resolutions attacked the Sedition Act, which extended the powers of the federal government over individuals inside the states. The resolutions declared that the Constitution was a "compact between the states." According to that view it was basically like a treaty between sovereign powers. No powers were given not expressly given. Ironically the motivation of limiting the Federal Government was to stop Federal tyranny over individual rights. The other states refused to support these acts, noting that this view constituted a minority view. Alexander Hamilton and Adams obviously disagreed about the limits of Federal power.
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were really polemics, because even Jefferson and Madison were not strict constructionists when it came down to practice. The Louisiana purchase was justified by the elastic clauses. Certainly Adams was not a Strict Constructionist. Andrew Jackson opposed the National Bank, but his opposition was largely on political and ideological grounds. He just feared that it would lead to an entrenched class of idle rich drawn from the profiteers of such a bank. His opinion on the binding power of the Constitution was stated aptly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_and_Virginia_Resolutions
Decades after the Resolutions were published, during the "nullification crisis" of 1828–1832, the notion of "strict constructionalism" and the ideas of the Constitution as a "compact" became the source for a constitutional crises. "South Carolina threatened to nullify a federal law regarding tariffs."
But the nullifiers were never even more than a bare majority even in their own State. Strict Constructionism was not the initial philosophy of the great Politician John Calhoun, for instance. Even Calhoun argued that the necessary and proper clause and the "common defense and general welfare" clause gave the National Government all the reason necessary to pursue genuinely national and common causes. Going by his principles, canal and road construction was just fine as long as it benefited the country as a whole. Applying his principles to the present moment, he would have opposed earmarks for individual states on the grounds that they don't benefit the country as a whole but only one region. But going by his principles welfare, a national health insurance program, etceteras... because of the "elastic clause" would have been just fine. Strict constructionists would have opposed such things because they are not "expressly enumerated."
But majority opinion about the Constitution has always been one of "broad Constructionism" which basically holds that while the 1787 Constitution "the contracting agents delegated power"and "reserved the rest to the States" the delegated powers included not only the enumerated powers but the powers to carry out those powers including such power as needed to promote the 'common defense and general welfare.'"
Andrew Jackson issued a resounding proclamation against the doctrine of nullification," stating:
"I consider...the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed." He also denied the right of secession: "The Constitution...forms a government not a league...To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States is not a nation."
Calhoun himself is the author of the article which explains why the plain text of the constitution nullifies nullifier and strict construction theories. Even Calhoun could never rescinded the arguments which undermined his arguments about nullification. When he once argued that National Sovereignity gave ultimate power to the 3/4 of the States with the power to change the Constitution and interpret its meaning He wrote
"by an express provision of the Constitution, it may be amended or changed by 3/4 of the States and thus each State by ascenting to the Constitution with this provision has modified its original right as a sovereign, of making its individual assent necessary to any change in the political condition; and by becoming a member of the Union has placed this important power in the hands of 3/4 of the States in whom the highest power known to the constitution actually resides."
Later, Abraham Lincoln also rejected the compact theory saying the Constitution was a binding contract among the states and no contract can be changed unilaterally by one party. Again, for the Constitution to be changed, 3/4 of the States would have had to agree. For the South to Secede they would have to do so peacefully and with a super-majority. The underlying principle here is that consensus and super-majority are necessary for major change.
Historians have been ambivalent about the resolutions because of their long-term impact. As Jefferson's biographer explains[Wikipedia]:
"Called forth by oppressive legislation of the national government, notably the Alien and Sedition Laws, they represented a vigorous defense of the principles of freedom and self-government under the United States Constitution. But since the defense involved an appeal to principles of state rights, the resolutions struck a line of argument potentially as dangerous to the Union as were the odious laws to the freedom with which it was identified. One hysteria tended to produce another. A crisis of freedom threatened to become a crisis of Union. The latter was deferred in 1798-1800, but it would return, and when it did the principles Jefferson had invoked against the Alien and Sedition Laws would sustain delusions of state sovereignty fully as violent as the Federalist delusions he had combated."
Both the notions of the Constitution as a limited "compact" and the notion of "strict constructionism" were minority opinions, only held majority opinion by certain quarters in the Slavery South who feared the power of the North to end slavery. Where the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions were promoted to protect individual rights, these people promoted the Civil war to protect their collective property rights over individuals.
Now we get these same ideas resurrected as if they'd been the majority view of the "founding fathers." What gives here? It's the same deal as with the "nullifiers" of old, only the new "nullifiers" want to exert that power as individuals.
chris
Someone asked me: "are you still chanting, and doing Gongyo? If yes, are you still getting "benefits"?"
Thanks for asking that question, you made me reflect a little. In short the answer to me is yes we can practice seperate from the Gakkai and No! we cannot practice separate from other loving people who share our common goals.
I am still chanting daimoku (though not as much as I did when I was active), and I still occasionally recite the sutra. It is almost always on my mind and I try to live it in my actions.
However, I no longer evaluate my life on whether or not I'm receiving divine protection or not. Nichiren once said something to the effect that "even if the Gods were to abandon me I would not give up my path." I really believe that we should act in a certain matter regardless of whether it produces immediate benefit or not, and that if we do we benefit inside even if the "outside" doesn't immediately reflect that.
What matters are; "what kind of causes I'm making, how accurate and strait my thinking is, whether I have self control and behave like a complete human being, and how I deal with my fellow human beings and the environment."
I find that if I behave right and make the right thoughts, decisions, and actions; I get better reactions, environments and consequences. That is causality. Causal thinking is the opposite of magical thinking and generates better results for everybody.
I'm not anti-Gakkai (or particularly anti-Nichiren Shoshu) but simply want to see them honestly. That involve quite a bit of self reflection because I'm not proud of everything I did before I woke up to what I was doing. Like Nichiren says "he is like a drunk person who on awakening realizes he has killed his father and savaged his mother, what is he to do?" I haven't done anything so bad literally, but being dishonest, twisted or fanatical is a bad path like being drunk -- and dishonors the path and teachers one would claim to be following.
I think that if participating in an organization is only causing confusion, one should first step away from the confusion and conflict, then study what is causing that confusion and conflict (not who), what the truth of the matters involved are, and then try to help those in the organization to see what they are doing wrong and why. If they refuse to listen, or even attack one for ones opinions, then it is time to step away. The Buddha did this. Shakyamuni saw a fight among his disciples, and according to legend went to live with the rogue elephant he'd calmed earlier when that elephant had been sent to kill him. The two got along quite nicely and the disciples eventually came to ask him why he wasn't among them and to see that they were making a grave error by playing religious politics and fighting over nonsense.
The Buddha dwells among us anywhere where people practice to become enlightened and we too can "walk with the elephants if we need to." This doesn't mean abandoning the Gakkai (or NST) or the community of friends. It does mean abandoning the "ways" and "means" of conflict. That is not always so easy, there are many conflicts in the world, and a person needs to be engaged in this world. However, with the sword of relentless truth-seeking and mastery of principles, teachings and wisdom, we can make a difference.
That means learning what the Gakkai has to teach, mastering the lessons of the Buddhism behind those teachings, and if necessary moving on.
Recently there was a thread on Daniel Pipe's blog where people were arguing about whether Islam could ever be anything but what the Bin Laden's, and Ayatollah Khomeini's have made of it. I actually argued in defense of Islam as a whole there because for all the present evil of the religion, it has been a positive force in the world at times in history, and relative to the darkness of the dark age that spawned it.
The reason is my dawning perspective of what the Lotus Sutra is talking about and what Buddhism is really about. There was a time in the early 20th century when the prevailing view world-wide, even in Buddhist Countries, was that Buddhism was completely irrelevent to the modern times. Indeed, until the Dalai Lama was sent packing from Tibet, and Western Englightenment ran up against Western Darkness, that was a legitimate view. Buddhism as a mere religion is no better (and no worse) than any other religion out there, but certainly does not guarantee world peace. People flock to it because it is new and different, but I don't see much difference between Buddhists and Christians, Buddhists and Islamicists, except in the statistical probability of extreme violence. There is a reason for this. I believe that the Lotus Sutra talks about these things. I believe that Nichiren talked about these reasons 750 years ago.
Because I believe that Buddhism has to transcend religion as dogma, I believe that Buddhist principles can be applied to Buddhism, and to Islam to resurrect them both from irrelevence; and indeed to all the religions. There needs to be a dialogue about what is relevent and what is not.
I'm liable to go off topic here, but I want to keep this focused on Islam. One religion at a time. The dominant source for genuine humbleness is the story of the blind men and the elephant, because that is the story of the religious leaders of our days. What I liked about the History of Islam, the "selling point" was that they eschewed intermediaries and postulated a direct connection to the divine, to "G-d." This was an improvement over priest, caste, and esoteric religions that tended to hide the facts about their stories and parables and treat people as if they should never grow up. Mohammed's take on religion was very superior for his time. The vision of a single unified divine entity is designed to break the hold that superstition and shrines (and those who tend those shrines) try to place over human beings. If we need intermediaries (From God -- Ba-'l in hebrew), then we give up some element of our self, our self-determination to others. And those others always take advantage of that.
All the stuff about him being the "seal" and making his words infallible represents the efforts of clerics and priests to find a way into the "back-door" of control over religions. After all when they speak for Mohammed they are speaking for God, and when they speak for God they are speaking as if they had their eyes more open than the rest of us and as a result for all their professed humbleness they are not humble at all. They make a death penalty out of Criticizing "Mohammed" but they really fear criticism of themselves. Nobody can criticize Mohammed, because nobody directly apprehends the guy. What we have are the representations of him coming from Clerics. They may not be physical Idols, but they are idols, because the Clerics seek to convince people to idolize them as messengers of Allah, of Mohammed, of God. You see this strong in Shiism, but it is also true with Sunnah. Thus when a Cleric claims that his fatwah is about Criticizing Mohammed, his Fatwah is really about criticizing the cleric.
And this succeeds because the clerics turn Islam into a self-referential cult. Moslems talk about Christians and Jews as "Kaffirs" or "kufre", when they should be talking to them. Because their religions tell them everything they need to know to interpret everything that happens, they project onto current times the imaginings of past times and words that were about those times. Islam like Christian Spain has its Don Quixotes, Torquemadas, and Pizarros. These are people who see Islam as a "nation of peace" despite all the internecine wars going on in Islamic countries; and who see the chaos and wildness of Western Cultures as "nations of war" even when those countries are as peaceful as the Netherlands or as Civilized as Britain. They read into the present the words of Koran, Hadith and tradition -- as interpreted by Clerics and their own self-referential world view.
To go into more detail about the dangers of self-referential cults. I have to do Brian's homework. That is for a later post and it doesn't leave my own life and beliefs untouched. But my topic here is "can Islam be saved."
And I think it can, because of the power of the PaRDeS. Interpretation doesn't have to be self-referential, prophesies don't have to be self-fulfilling, and the logic of religion is not opposed to science and philosophy, truth and reality. We should take religious truth as the truth, but not as literal truth (Nirvana Sutra seek the meaning not the words). We should use allegory and allusion with wisdom to guide our approach to reality -- not to create fantasy systems that disregard it. We should use sermons and interpretation to guide people to wisdom and realization of inward truths -- not to befuddle, stoke anger and hatred, or to destroy. And finally, each of us has the capacity to get at inward secrets. The "Esoteric" is only esoteric (Sot) because we humans haven't yet put the effort out to share or the spiritual effort to wake up. Islam has this concept of PaRDeS too. Their clerics can be an agent for good, just as fast, or faster than they've been an agent for bad. And if they aren't, the people, with their direct access to God, should be hearing what "God", the buddha, Allah, etceteras, is saying to them -- and it is not Jihad against the West but Jihad against lies and deceptions, injustice and hatred.
So I think that Islam can be saved, by Moslems who are willing to wake up enough to change the POV from which they see their religion. It's funny how the same words can mean different things to someone who is unenlightened versus someone who is not. Take "love thy neighbor." How many Christians really practice this? How many rationalize it as an excuse for Adultery or philandering?
How many Moslems truly practice the principles of their religion? Does Jihad really mean putting bombs on Airplanes? When cartoonists put a bomb in a man wearing a turbine they aren't insulting Mohammed, they are pointing out the foolishness of contemporary Moslems. Salmon Rushdie pointed out some stories from Moslem scuttlebut and a cleric put a price on his head. A cartoonist was killed for drawing pictures. Long ago a poetess was killed for making fund of the founder... Bad Mojo here, but interpretation of religion means that we seek the wisdom in stories, and that we don't do so by turning any founder into a God. Obviously if God could pick flawed human beings like David, Soloman, or, yes, Mohammed, then he's saying something about our ability to see the entire elephant of the Divine. So cartoonists see the hind-quarters and not the face, does that make them worthy of death? People need to pull up their pants not kill someone for being mooned.
It is dangerous to have a real sense of humor when there is a war going on. But these wars come from ambitious and deceptive human beings. The sooner we all learn that the sooner we can start to make peace. Jews have as much claim on the land of "Israel/Palestine" as Christians and Arabs, and they have as much right to name that land as any other holder of a piece of Real Estate. And they have a right to live in peace. They can call their parts "Israel", eventually they'll have to let others call the rest what they want to call it. It is time to settle with them. Pay those who lost land for what they lost, make sure everyone who lives there has a job, a good education, an honest government and a home -- then what the hell else is there to fight about? But don't make people subject to other people. Don't continue using Palestinians as a foil for a proxy war against Jews. Jews, Christians or non-Moslems, may not be superior to Arabs, but they certainly are not in fact inferior to them either. The distinction between the "lands of peace" and the "lands of war" is an illusion, a self-referential delusion, and is in fact a lie. Everywhere where Moslems dwell with other Moslems or non-Moslems they are in conflict. When Moslems really live in the "land of peace" then they'll have an immigration problem not a diasporah. Judaism (not Islam or Christianity) teaches that Israel has a diasporah because of the failure of Israel to live up to its covenant 100%. That is an almost impossible standard, yet there is no blame there for Moslems among the religious who understand this. Israel fights Moslems because they have no other choice and because they do feel they have a right to live in peace on land their ancestors have lived on.
It is time to settle the ancient feud between Sunnah and Shiism as well. The Catholics could finally admit that Martin Luther was right about something, why can't these folks? Why, because of the weight of years of hate and foolishness. It is okay to laugh at enemies, but to laugh at the foolishness of ones' own actions? Now that takes a real man (or a real woman).
But that is what Moslems are going to have to do. They are the only ones who can stop their brothers from putting bombs on planes or sending a radioactive missile at New York or Tel Aviv. The US can't, even if we bomb the smithereens out of Iran like we tried to do to Iraq. It won't work. We have to talk to them, and they have to really talk to us -- and both sides have to listen.
Chris
In my last two posts I've introduced the notion of "truth" and "Truth", but this is part of a nuanced issue that is actually broader and deeper. The lotus sutra talks about "skillfulness", and surface readings of that term have led people to believe that life is not about "truth" but about "skillfulness." This idea has been popularized in cultures and led to the notion that the esoteric reality of life is that there is no reality, that life is entirely a fiction we make up as we go along, and that there is no "ultimate meaning", no "ultimate meanings." It is all a bunch of nonsense invented by enlightened souls to give unenlightened souls something to hang onto so they won't kill themselves. The skillful doctor fakes his death so his children will taste the reality that life is in the here and now and there is no reality to future lives, past lives, or abstract notions like "God", "Buddha" or whatever; "all dharmas are empty."
But that is a partial awareness.
The fact is that while "dharmas" are indeed empty, their purpose is important. We human beings can literally be the architects, (and gardeners) of our own lives. If we can get past the Nihilism of attachment to a single path, and see all the converging paths for what they are, then we are on the road to enlightenment to this.
We can build. Nature will destroy. We can rebuild. We live to build and then die. We live to experience these things. If we dump our attachment to "this particular body" we can find that our mild attachment to this life is, well, okay. This world is a place of woe, but it is also a garden. The same effort it takes to blow people up can put people on the moon. The same anger that is so destructive, can motivate us to change for real.
Human beings wrote the great books, they are full of fictions and parables, myths and legends, and stories told to illustrate a point. That doesn't mean they aren't true. These stories illustrate how our lives should be. They illustrate how our fore-fathers thought they should be. And the changing stories tell us that those images have changed. We should accept the changes and change the traditions to accommodate the truths of our lives, not cling to irrelevent stories, but find ways to make them relevent to us now. Jews call this "reconstructionism," it grows out of the realization that "reform" that "cuts the shoots" (as mentioned in the Talmud in the story of the 4 who studied in the Garden of interpretation), only leads to destruction and the need to reinvent the wheel. And they have done this repeatedly with their religion. It's not the same religion it was when Moses was alive, It is different from when Jesus was alive, it is even a little different from when Mohammed was alive.
And of course Christianity is not the same as it was when Jesus was alive -- it was a Jewish Sect. Islam is not the same as it was when Mohammed was alive. Buddhism is not the same as it was when Shakyamuni was alive. It really, in fact, doesn't matter if these people were real live historical personages or not. The stories attached to their lives weren't told to recite dry historical facts. The Bible, the Koran and the Sutras are not history books, science text books, nor are they meant to be frozen in time and to be used as a whip or an axe to goad people back to some ancient golden age. There was no ancient golden age. We are living in a time that is as close to a golden age as can be and even our time is no golden age. Conserving and reconstructing are part of life.
The bible actually doesn't open with "And God created the world." It opens with a hebrew sentance that can better be translated, "with creation God re-created the world." And "world" means time and space. Literalists and fundamentalists don't realize that all the seven days of figurative creation are present in each moment we live. God is literally creating the "World" of Time-space, in this moment. We are the eyes of God, the ears of God, the mind of God. Not individually -- we are limited beings. Not literally, what is God? But figuratively. If the Universe is sentient, it is because the beings and elements of the Universe start acting in a sentient fashion. If people act evil, the Universe is evil. We construct our gods and smash them all in the same mind of either delusion or awakening. They don't have independent existence. Our rich inner life requires us to eat to sustain it. Our rich inner life can cause us to build towers or smash Airplanes into them. We choose. And the Bible suggests we should "choose life." Sometimes if we act if something is so that is posibly so, reality will start to act like it actually is so. The "one ultimate reality" is the fruit of us creating one. And paradoxically one ultimate reality is true whether we create a paradise or not.
Wisdom comes, not in cynically manipulating religion, nor in mindlessly believing what we are told, but from seeking wisdom. The true believer should be a true believer in the possibility and evitability of creating a better world. Other people cannot slander such a law, such a Truth. They can chose to live by it's admonitions or suffer its curses -- that is all. We live or die by the way we live. In the end we all will dwell in peace. Do we want our memorials to be sad and echoing with loss, or full of vibrant memories? Choose life! Find the truth in all religions -- and rebel against those who would harm others -- whatever their reasons and excuses.
A lot of people wake up to the "emptiness of dharmas" and the power of religion to bind and transform, make money, and bedazzle folks. Not many get past that to the wisdom to refuse to "cut the shoots" and keep their hold on life, reality and their humbleness. Too many come from partial enlightenment with only a strong desire to make money from their illumination and with a cynical attitude towards religion. The result is the blind and fanatical led by the corrupt, fawning and manipulative. I'm going to do some homework from Brian's Blog in order to talk about this in my next post.
Chris
Right now I'm using "truth" with lower case, because I'm not talking about abstract, high value, chill up the spine kind of truths, but the mundane kind. Somehow religious people in their pursuit of "Truth" tend to forget about truth. They so want to stand at the equivalent of a "Ceremony in the Air" that they think they can fly above mundane requirements like telling the truth, acknowledging their role as relatively blind human beings compared to the "Truth" and the fact that those who don't see their wonderful august "Truths" may well be valuable human beings with a valid perspective.
Many converts or "recommits" to religion do this.
I first observed it among born again Christians, among whose ranks I once counted myself. The attitude they had towards "heresy" -- or thinking -- was that of "I don't go there;" mention the subject and you'd get a scriptural quote and a blank stare.
Then I fled to Buddhism where I observed this phenomena among Gakkai and Nichiren Shoshu members. To them simply observing inconvenient truths was "slander" of their organizations and a grievious transgression. If there were a flood on a street where Gakkai and NST members (once they started feuding) lived, you could be sure that someone on either side would attribute the flood to the other. Personally I attribute such things to both sides engaging in fantasy thinking rather than improving the drainage and building flood control. And now I observe the same phenomena among Moslems, and to be fair; among some orthodox Jews.
But the key realization is that a focus on "Truth" cannot leave out truths or the "Truth" sought is delusional. Nor can it account for truths in a way that twists or bends the truth to near breaking. Its okay for Christians to spin the story of their founder (Mr. J) but not to make him into things diametrically opposed to what he said, did, and to the ideas of the religion he founded. Christians who do so may call themselves fundamentalists, but they are fundamentally wrong about their religion when they do so. There is nothing in any modern religion that justifies waging wars of conquest or behaving savagely because the truths of all these religions; their history, the facts, the realities, are that they have noble ideas and that those ideas have been found wanting in practice.
The "Truth" is a strictly internal way of dealing with truths. And peace starts when we learn peace within. Moslems, Christians and others seek to fight one another because their insides are unsettled, and because they are willing to lie rather than reconcile inside with outside. A person who does what he says, says what he means, and is honest, is as rare in this day as a 100 carat diamond -- and worth as much. How many leaders can tell their followers about a subject; "This is as much your responsibility as it is theirs." How many people are willing to be responsible enough to say; "well maybe there is an other hand there?" Not very many, and that is the reason we don't have peace.
If groups like the Gakkai -- with wonderful ideas -- can't even look at their behavior and say "I was as responsible for the problems with NST as the priests were" how can we expect less responsible religious groups with traditional ideas of "I'm white, you're black." or "I'm right and you are evil and white;" to look at their own behavior objectively and seek truth and reconciliation? Starting at the truth, everything becomes negotiable and solve-able.
Further, starting at the "Truth" often means that people embrace lying. Abstract principles, and reasoning from Scripture, can be used to put false frameworks on reality. If the "truths" are the work of an "anti-christ" or of "kuffirs" then there is no truth to the "Truths" being stated because the truths are being distorted. That is why such groups can't look at themselves objectively.
Chris
Clown writes on the previous thread (001133html):
> I will simply state that your saying something
> didn't happen and it's not having happened are
> not the same thing.
If something didn't happen, then it didn't happen. I cannot find any evidence anywhere, in any web-search of Hezbollah responding to an Israeli Incursion or of an incursion into Lebanon prior to the one into Israel. Hezbollah's excuse for the attack was Sheba farms, which was in dispute between Israel, Syria and Lebanon, but it wouldn't attack Syria or Lebanon about those farms because it doesn't consider those country "Kufra" by it's current authoritarian and aggressive standards. It chose to attack when it did precisely because Lebanon was doing better, because the US is hamstrung with its self-destructive efforts in Iraq, because Iran wanted to test its Rockets, and because Israel was duking it out with Hamas and its cheaper and smaller home-made rockets and attacks and counter-attacks.
In the real world people lie, cheat, and steal. People exaggerate their opponents peccadillos into major faults, and project their own feelings onto their opponents. People make enemies out of potential friends and then blame the resulting state of war on the people they attack. And finally people attack others repeatedly and then get mad when they get caught or fail to kill them. None of that makes their behavior right. Wishing a reality doesn't make a reality. Inventing a reality is not inventing reality, it is inventing a lie. Unless one can tell fiction from fact one cannot go from idealized vision into concrete reality. The tendancy to wish away inconvenient facts becomes to strong. The tendancy to scape-goat when things go wrong becomes unavoidable.
You have to know that there are Yahoo groups where people discuss their opinions on the subject quite openly and I read those opinions, and believe me they mean what they say and mean to do all who don't submit to their version of G-d's truth what they need to to make us all submit to their name for G-d. You have to know that already, so why invent a lie?
I know that you feel very strongly that Israel is the most evil country in the world next to the United States, but that feeling is no more objective than my fears that Iran means to test its next Missile and nuclear technology on the US or Israel. In fact I'm sure they'd like to, and that is why there are folks in the US who think we need to "take out" their installations developing those things. I don't think this is a good idea, because I'm realistic enough to know that the effort and pain required would not be worth it. We had better seek a rational path or we won't make it. We had better recognize the abusive reality of Islamic fundamentalism, argue with it, and contain it -- or the resulting state of war won't continue until God punishes the lot for their arrogance and hubris -- by letting them get what they say they want.
srael's situation for more than 50 years has been to suffer one attack after another. Sometimes the attacks have been genuinely provoked, most of the time the attacks were based on lies, flimsy excuses, and complete intollerance and labelling of Israel as a "Kufre" country. Israel has managed to parry off one attack after another to the point where for a time it forgot it was David and started to act like Golliath. In the middle of all that it built roads, factories, invested in people, things and industry, and it managed to become a first world country.
The Arabs have managed to make and export messes. Why the difference? Think about it. Moslems are involved in sectarian violence in every country where they live: India, Pakistan, Africa, Argentina, Britain, etceteras. When they don't justify it by calling their opponents kufre, they do so on the basis of religious differences and ideological purity. The only thing that Hamas and Hezbollah agree on is that Israel should be destroyed. Even before destroying Israel, these stiff-necked, hard-headed and hard hearted people prefer to fight each other. The US didn't have to fan flames of Shiite-Sunni hatred, all they had to display was a little bit of arrogance and hubris, the Iraqis did it themselves. And they all blame the US and Israel for their shameful behavior.
The only good thing about Hezbollah is that they seem to be learning from Israel. They talk about rebuilding their country, and when they do they talk about rebuilding it as Lebanon. I think that represents a positive shift. In past conflicts all they could talk about was rebuilding the means for Attacking Israel. Unfortunately they are rebuilding so they can attack again so they haven't gotten the entire point and they won't until they abandon fundamentalism and this current abusive and violent version of Islam they are teaching.
On my way to the Air-Port I talked to a guy from Nigeria. In Nigeria Moslems have a slim majority in the polls and are using that and their dominance of the military to ride rough-shod over the rest of the country. In Sudan Moslem is busy trying to massacre Moslem. Religion of Peace? What a joke!
I believe that Nichiren established a higher order of religious criticism than simply aimed at the four pillars of 13th Century Japanese society. To me his layer of Criticism was based on carefully examining the doctrine, practices, historical and documentary evidence of religion to ensure that it -- in fact -- corresponds to Buddhist Principles. This requires looking at religion from a deeper level than that of literal-minded acceptance/rejection of the surface teachings. From this point of view Islam is salve-ageable, but not as presently taught. A decent Islam would probably resemble current Ba-Hai or Sufi ideas, and would take a broader view of what is "kufre" and what is halaal. One could dialogue with such an Islam. But one can only engage and argue with the current version of Islam, and one certainly cannot apologize for or support the goals of imposing Shariah on Non-Moslems or even of the literalist and fundamentalist notions currently being propagated as Shariah.
I say "not as currently taught" because I have tried to talk to the current lot of Islamo-authoritarians, and they are too convinced of their dogma to even listen to a dialogue. The result ends up either being a shouting match or actual death-threats and warnings. The only thing to do with such people is to watch them and try to catch them breaking the laws of human decency and threatening to do actual violence so they can be prosecuted. When people transgress from evil thoughts to evil actions and intentions, that is not to be excused or supported -- but to be resisted. As some would say "they have bad guts." If we can resist them non-violently, maybe eventually they'll give up. But resist we must -- spiritually as well as physically.
At least members of the old PLO could sometimes be reasoned with. They even almost signed a peace treaty which would have given them 90% of what they wanted and made the other 10% possible -- and they refused.
So why defend Hezbollah and Hamas? They both transgress human norms, and their excuses are mere excuses for violence and authoritarianism. If they get their way women will be suppressed, ordinary people repressed, information restricted, and 9th century Ideals upheld. Not to mention that they will do to the middle east what they claim Israel did to them. Where is the wisdom or progress in that? Where is the joy in a nuclear Middle East? Does the higher authority really want this?
One reason that the Bush administration lost the United States a lot of its prestige and respect, is that they did not respect even the forms of US tradition when it comes to military aggression. He invented a false causus belli and should have been caught on it. This was "war on pretext" and is also "war as campaign of lies." The US cannot afford to fight such wars because we are in a world where we are indeed struggling against ideology, and 80% of that struggle is in the press and the flow of public opinions. By launching a war of naked aggression on flimsy pretext, Bush stripped his arguments of what otherwise might have been legitimacy. He made us seem no better than the Iraqis and the Iranians.
The result was as I mentioned in a previous post, Bush became like the "Boy who cried wolf." He cried wolf when there was no wolf, so who is going to believe him when there is a wolf? More-over this "wolf" can't be effectively fought by buying into its arguments. Doing what the Islamo-fascists and Arab Street expect us to do just reinforces the position of the Islamo-fascists in the Arab (and Iranian, Indonesian and Pakistani) street. But at the same time we can't be naive about what is really going on.
We have a genuine and long term enemy. We just can't use the presence of that enemy to undermine our own principles of democracy, freedom, and liberty and Justice.
The President would do this in the name of "freedom" because he represents a new wind of Conservative-Authoritarians, whose goals aren't that much different from the Islamo-Fascists. The target of the Islamo-Fascists is the subjugation of the world by Islam. The target of the neo-Conservative-Authoritarians is the subjugation of the country to the moral strictures of their notion of Christianity. In both cases ideas like Dialogue, Compromise, or even common sense play no part. Both groups love this fight because it gives them free-play with their own people. If there is war between Christianity and Islam than it is perfectly acceptable to do just about anything in the name of that war and to suppress "liberals," Women, gays, big-mouths, and other "traitors" in the process. The war on terrorism has been an excuse to produce societies with the forms of Democracy -- and no democracy.
The war on Iraq was launched, obviously, for other reasons, and the stated reasons were "pretext." Likewise the war against Israel, the United States, and the West is based on "pretext." If Israel gave into every Islamic demand, for the core, there would still be war. If the United States pulls out of Iraq, there would still be war. Other pretexts would be found. That is how fascism works. In a Fascist state the goal is complete dominion, uniformity and conformity. There is no room for Jews, minorities, or "peaceful co-existence" unless this state is accepted. Compromise on a subject is seen as a victory and a pretext for more demands.
Countries like Egypt and Pakistan already have the foundations of fascism in place. They are not democracies, and they don't have the tools for democracy in place and those tools are not being nurtured. Instead Islamo-fascism is being nurtured by the very means used to fight it. All forms of Fascism breed on injustice, fear, and envy. Fascist methods only breed more fascism. Hezbollah might become less fascist if its leadership so determines, but mere participation in democracy will not make it a democratic movement. For that to happen the people have to see the value of compromise, respect for differences, and pluralism. They have to be open to new things. Do you see that happening?
Fascist regimes have transitioned to Democracy. A good example is Spain, an ugly example is Argentina. There is hope that fascism can be reversed. The key is that fascist leadership inevitably has a kleptocratic side, they inevitably so enjoy their power they act as thieves. Eventually this leads to self-destruction. But that takes a while to rear its face. These leaders know how to use marketing and propaganda to hide their true faces. As long as they present an alternative to corrupt, moribund governments, they will seem a viable alternative. People vote for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah out of desperation.
Chris
Posted from Mar De Plata:
This was a truly awful war. There is never anything that isn´t awful about any war, but this one was truly awesomely ugly. On the other hand one had to admire the intelligence of those directing it. At least of most of them. Something I could never do with the previous generation of this conflict. There was something diabolically clever about the way Nazrullah, with the help of Syria and Iran, manipulated Israel.
Israel was drawn into responding to an attack on its troops, which provided a justification for Hezbollah to commence a long thought out plan to bombard the entire country with rockets. This in turn allowed Iran and Syria to test and refine their designs. All the while provoking Israel to do what any country would do in the same situation.
Would the world have protested if Syria were attacked by Hezbollah rockets and responded by attacking the positions and command centers from which the rockets were launched? Would the United States have tolerated rocket attacks on San Diego from Mexico? Would the world have protested if Syria had bombed the launch sites and killed 10,000 people with its own less accurate weapons? Of course not. Yet somehow the entire world labelled Israel as the aggressor and reported on poor pitiful "civilians" who were killed because they were purposefully put in harms way by Hezbollah. Somehow the world ignores the massive efforts to kill Israelis by these groups. But one has to admire Nazrullah, he seems to have predicted this reaction and provoked it. Nazrullah played the propaganda game well and with the cooperation of CNN and most other News Channels as well. The only exception was Fox, but unfortunately Fox is the exception that proves the rule.
At the same time I have to admire the Israelis. They did miscalculate in thinking that air power would be enough to soften Hezbollah positions and that they could avoid a massive incursion. On the other hand, they also knew that had they launched a massive incursion from the beginning they´d have been labeled as aggressors. So they got labelled as aggressors anyway for trying to minimize civilian damage and thus not killing enough of their enemies to stop them right away. They did try to minimize civilian casualties, but the Arabs wanted civilian casualties so they could talk about martyrs, and that was unavoidable. They warned people to flee contested areas -- and the plain fact is that most people didn´t try to flee until it was late. Once Israel saw that their air war was going to fail they finally launched incursions. And they met a prepared, violent, seriously mortal enemy in the process.
They did some damage to Hezbollah, one can see the bodies of the insurgents being removed from the towns they defended, labelled cynically as ¨civilian¨ casualties. But the fact is that their every move was anticipated, and they took casualties in the process -- most of them in the international media and among the two faced among the politicians in their ¨allies¨ and the rest of the world. By the end of the war they had succeeded in Uniting Lebanon around Hezbollah. That was some accomplishment.
Finally we get to the only fools in this battle. And I´m afraid to say they live in my country. The only ones who played the propaganda game the way the Arabs used to play it were the Republican Right wing. My progressive left wing friends all played to the Arab conductors. I´m sure this war even played a role in the defeat of ¨moderate¨ politicians in this last election.
I already complained about how Randi Rhodes, one of my favorite people, saw this war as a Republican plot. It was in a way. Syria and Iran are playing the Republican Right Wing´s game, and doing it well. If the US wants an enemy they are darn sure that they are willing to provide them with one. It tickles the cockles of their pride to be taken so seriously. When have Arabs deserved to be taken seriously before? Their real problem up until now hasn´t been Israel, it has been their own ineptitude, but with the US invasion of Iraq and the misunderstanding of what is going on on both left and right in my country, they´ve finally found somebody more inept than they are-- us. It is sick. With Friends like these for Israel, who needs enemies?
The US has been like the ¨boy who cried wolf¨here. Fox news was fairly accurate about this war -- but because they are such ideologues and cheer-leaders about Iraq -- nobody was listening. I found myself agreeing with Olivar North -- which truly scares me. They are pro Israel for the wrong reasons, and advocating the wrong methods. They seem to have been the ones pushing Israel to use Air War, even providing the mis'named ¨smart bombs¨whose failures killed so many civilians. Somehow the US is more of a target of hatred universally than ever. Indeed the Arabs see Israel as the US´s puppet and hate us more than they do Israel. All those weapons being tested on Israel, as the Israeli Ambassador noted, are also ultimately aimed at intimidating or harming seriously the United States. Iraq didn´t have Nukes, and we attacked it knowing that. But Iran, whatever progressives like me would like to believe, really does aim at getting nukes. And they´ve already avowed that their first target would be Israel.
The Christian Right would like to see that happen, but I don´t think the rest of us would. We can´t avoid it by not being willing to see it for what it is. We can pray that if they actually get the damned things (literally) they will wake up enough not to use them. I really don´t think that the US can use bombs to stop them.
The only good thing that has come out of this war, is that maybe people will start to realize that diplomacy and conflict resolution are as necessary as guns in order to resolve things here. Somehow we have to get people talking before they hurt each other the way we did during World War II. Maybe they are almost to that point. I hope it doesn´t take a nuke falling on Haifa, followed by nukes falling on Tehran and Damascus. I also pray that we can avoid planes falling out of the sky and Fanatic ¨Islamo-Fascist¨ Moslems getting what they wish:
70 virgins, all over 80, male and built like sumu wrestlers.
I posted the other day to Daniel Pipe's Blog http://www.fraughtwithperil.com/blogs/holte/archives/001115.html, I don't think his premise that one shouldn't "negotiate" with terrorists, or that being a hard ass is necessarily the best way to go about bringing peace in the world or settling conflicts. I didn't say that much I just quoted a few things I've read and agree with. My post took a while to show up, but I'm gratified that it did.
I've been having a battle with one of my, ordinarily, favorite hosts, Randi Rhodes. She's been shopping the conspiracy theory that Israel is causing all the trouble in the middle east because of her over-reaction to Hezbollah rockets. She thinks that Olmert is being played by the Israeli version of the Neo-Cons. For a while I bought her arguments. But as I noted in the post "between a rock and a hard place" Israel cannot gain much by tangling with Hezbollah.
Instead I have to accept the arguments of cooler heads who suggest that the mess there has been fomented by Hezbollah, which has a lot to gain by tangling with Israel, by Syria and by Iran. The US could be contributing. I wouldn't put it past the Cheney crowd to sell Israel defective 'smart bombs', they wouldn't have to do it on purpose. More likely the excesses of Israel can be chalked up to no-win strategy. They used air-war because it saved their own soldier's lives. Air War leads to attrocities. It can't be helped. You try hitting a target from 50,000 feet and see how well you do.
So in this case I have to disagree with Randi Rhodes. For all the suffering Hezbollah has brought on themselves, they are the ones with the most to gain from instability. And if the red cross says there is no evidence of rockets in Qanaa, that doesn't make it so [doesn't make it not so either]. In either case you can't chalk it up to people causing suffering just to cause suffering. She gives the US and Israel too much credit for accuracy.
In today's Post David Ignatius is trying to spin that somehow this war might have a silver lining by noting the similarities to 1973. I think all his arguments, absent the spin, sound gloomy. There are vast differences in the dynamics. For all the public hatred of Israel in 1973, the leaders of the Arab world were privately sympathetic and feared Islamo-fascism more than they did Israel. Sadat paid with his life for seeking peace, and any Arab who did so in the current day would do so too. And there is nobody in this administration with the courage to do the right thing, even in the machievelian fashion that Henry Kissinger played in 1973. Condi would probably want to if her leash wasn't so tight, but George Bush is too much of a fool to do the right thing. For him the "right thing" would be blowing Lebanon, Syria and Iran back into the stone age. And that is the opposite of the right thing.
The other change is that technology is favoring "light infantry" if modernly armed. As the sale of "Stingers" to the Afghans showed -- and the history of the AK-series guns shows -- small arms are changing the balance of power. And Hezbollah, by traiining its soldiers is teaching them to not "cut and run" when under fire and to fight professionally. This negates the advantage that fixed forces once held. For all the Propaganda, Hezbollah is a serious threat to Israel and one that won't go away even if Israel's army reaches the Litani river. Rockets are a future threat, because eventually they will be deadlier, more accurate and carry an even more lethal load. If the Arabs don't take the path of peace, than Israel will have to fight even harder and in a bloodier manner than it already is -- just to survive.
Still we can hope that somewhere in the Middle East are people who have the self-confidence to do the right thing. Who can say to themselves, "this is nuts. Israel is not worth all this hate. We hate them for all the wrong reasons. Instead of hating them for planting trees, we should be planting trees. Instead of hating them for having superior technology, we should have superior technology. Instead of wasting money on missiles, we should be doing constructive things like putting people into space or providing water, food and opportunity for our people. If we want to be seen as the "people of peace", then we should demonstrate that we are peaceful people."
The problelm is that their interpretation of their religion tells them that killing Jews is the right thing.
But of course that is asking too much. It's like asking the pseudo-fundamentalists I know to actually follow in the footsteps of Jesus instead of trying to kill others for having motes in their eyes. Still one can hope.