Last night at about 10:30, I had just put my book down and was about to go downstairs to bed, when the phone rang. A call that late usually meant it would be from one of two people, and it was: from my son, calling from college. He was out of breath, as he was walking the mile to campus from where he has to park his car, and he was mad. He had just been to a mandatory lecture for a mandatory class on Diversity, and he explained the situation: after a monologue on "white privilege," questions were asked from the audience. As he got up to speak, he was told by the lecturer to "shut up and sit down and listen," and at that, only "minority" attendees were allowed to speak, talking about the harshness and unfairness of living in "white" America. It was not so much what they said that made him mad, but the attitude - he, as a "privileged" person had no right to an opinion, for surely his opinion was tainted with white privilege and therefore worthless.
This is not a political blog, and I do not raise this issue for the sake of this issue. Rather, it shows how often violence, whether current or historical, leads to violence (emotional or physical) - which leads to more violence and so on. It is the greatest sorrow in the world.
I have often questioned the pacifist religions here in this blog - not to say that they are wrong, but to put forth their apparent paradox. For instance, it is hard to deny that a pacifist people or nation will sooner or later become a slave people or nation. Such has been the lesson of history, corroborated by personal examples: the bully will keep on bullying until the bullied fight back. How can one survive in this world as a pacifist? On the other hand, over the course of time, the aggressors are met by the growing ranks of the oppressed, and they, too, are annihilated or oppressed. It may take a while - for Rome, it took about 800 years, but it does seem that what goes around comes around. But that does not end violence; instead it changes the locus of violence to a new people or geography. The cycle of violence never stops.
So, how to end it? As I know Christianity best, I will use this philosophy as an example, and its answer is simple: turn the other cheek. Meet violence with peace and brotherhood. Treat everyone as you would have yourself be treated.
Madness. But how else to stop the cycle? That is why I have asked,"who will be brave enough take that first step?" Certainly not me. But we are forced to see the wisdom, for without taking that first step - a step that will most likely lead to martyrdom or worse - the misery will continue, and, as Thomas Merton said, the last man on earth with the last bomb will not be able to resist the temptation to blow it off. We will be compelled to destroy ourselves.
If one were unusually gifted with divine insight, what other solution could one offer? We do now certainly understand, as people before us did not, that we are all spiritual equals, each one deserving certain unalienable rights. With a little more insight, many of us also understand that our enemies are more often than not our shadow - and that in fighting them, we are doing a type of violence to ourselves. And yet - certain people and nations are demonstrably evil. Do we sit back and let them do their evil things, which inevitably will affect us all?
Yet again, in this we do not stop the cycle. Too often, as my son learned, the formerly oppressed do not seek peace after victory but revenge. Christ and the great sages of the east understood this, and called for one or another form of passivity - or at the very least, victory without triumph, the end of oppression without more oppression.
It is in the latter where it seems the best possibility lies, but can we do it? Can we, to rework the Lord's Prayer, forgive our trespassers (after the evil of hostile trespass has been stopped) so that they might forgive us? Can we realize such equanimity? Or must we really go all the way, to complete pacifism and martyrdom, to save the world?
Perhaps there is room for both, the one buttressing and keeping alive the other - the pacifists keeping the peace makers from turning to vengeance, giving us justice and real forgiveness and peace, all at once. This approach walks the razor's edge, but it seems we are doing that already, with no end in sight. FK
This is not a political blog, and I do not raise this issue for the sake of this issue. Rather, it shows how often violence, whether current or historical, leads to violence (emotional or physical) - which leads to more violence and so on. It is the greatest sorrow in the world.
I have often questioned the pacifist religions here in this blog - not to say that they are wrong, but to put forth their apparent paradox. For instance, it is hard to deny that a pacifist people or nation will sooner or later become a slave people or nation. Such has been the lesson of history, corroborated by personal examples: the bully will keep on bullying until the bullied fight back. How can one survive in this world as a pacifist? On the other hand, over the course of time, the aggressors are met by the growing ranks of the oppressed, and they, too, are annihilated or oppressed. It may take a while - for Rome, it took about 800 years, but it does seem that what goes around comes around. But that does not end violence; instead it changes the locus of violence to a new people or geography. The cycle of violence never stops.
So, how to end it? As I know Christianity best, I will use this philosophy as an example, and its answer is simple: turn the other cheek. Meet violence with peace and brotherhood. Treat everyone as you would have yourself be treated.
Madness. But how else to stop the cycle? That is why I have asked,"who will be brave enough take that first step?" Certainly not me. But we are forced to see the wisdom, for without taking that first step - a step that will most likely lead to martyrdom or worse - the misery will continue, and, as Thomas Merton said, the last man on earth with the last bomb will not be able to resist the temptation to blow it off. We will be compelled to destroy ourselves.
If one were unusually gifted with divine insight, what other solution could one offer? We do now certainly understand, as people before us did not, that we are all spiritual equals, each one deserving certain unalienable rights. With a little more insight, many of us also understand that our enemies are more often than not our shadow - and that in fighting them, we are doing a type of violence to ourselves. And yet - certain people and nations are demonstrably evil. Do we sit back and let them do their evil things, which inevitably will affect us all?
Yet again, in this we do not stop the cycle. Too often, as my son learned, the formerly oppressed do not seek peace after victory but revenge. Christ and the great sages of the east understood this, and called for one or another form of passivity - or at the very least, victory without triumph, the end of oppression without more oppression.
It is in the latter where it seems the best possibility lies, but can we do it? Can we, to rework the Lord's Prayer, forgive our trespassers (after the evil of hostile trespass has been stopped) so that they might forgive us? Can we realize such equanimity? Or must we really go all the way, to complete pacifism and martyrdom, to save the world?
Perhaps there is room for both, the one buttressing and keeping alive the other - the pacifists keeping the peace makers from turning to vengeance, giving us justice and real forgiveness and peace, all at once. This approach walks the razor's edge, but it seems we are doing that already, with no end in sight. FK
RSS Feed