I’m no historian, but it seems to me this entire thing is not too difficult to understand if one actually gets his or her facts lined up properly so as to make a sane conclusion.
The “problem”, it seems to me, is one of education. It is difficult for many people in the United States to make sense out of a society (whatever that society claims as the justification for its actions) that, as part of its “Code of Correct Conduct”, cuts off the hands of a thief, shoots teenaged girls in the head, slits the throats of convicted criminals in public in an unused soccer stadium, and commits such a multitude of other heinous and barbaric acts that the average American is revolted by simply reading about them. We don’t even need photographs. The facts are so unpalatable, so difficult to conceive as being actually true, that many people choose to put the label of “insane” on those that commit them and then cease to look at the situation any further.
Consider the disparity: I sit in my home, well lit and cooled or heated, well fed, and well informed of global events, and commenting on these events by editorializing on an electronic communications network called “The Internet”. Another fellow, perhaps not so fortunate as myself, has seen his father hanged (in public), his mother shot in the head (in public), his sister raped, tortured, and then murdered, his wife beaten with a stick (in public) and his child’s skull smashed by the stock of a rifle – and all this for the greater glory of the Supreme Being.
I have a job, an education, a car, several musical instruments, and frozen pizza in the fridge. But much more than that, I have hope. I have hope that my daughter will succeed in her goal to be a professional musician. I have hope that my son will live a full and happy life. I don’t even consider that I might drive my car down the street and get shot in the head by some guy shooting at me because I have blue eyes from a window on the second floor of the mall.
But that other guy doesn’t. He is screwed, and it’s the same for his family. Somebody has already done some very bad things to him, and more bad things appear to be coming up shortly. No car, no pizza, no food, no roof. No nothing. Guns and bombs going off right at the moment. Life on Earth is such a horror that suicide is a viable alternative. The “Anti-Supreme Being” seems to be running the projector in the movie of his life (if you can call it life) – that is about the only thing that is clear to him.
Why? How can this be? What is wrong? How can it be fixed?
Why? It’s a well known fact that if one group of people on this planet oppresses another group of people long enough, the oppressed eventually are left with two choices: die or fight. The fight, if they choose to fight, may be interpreted as “moral” or “immoral” based either on the group’s point of view or the oppressor’s point of view. After it’s “over”, the people who write the history books try to make sense of it for the kids that missed it. The truth of why this is happening is that some people have been oppressed, and they have come to the point where they see no alternative to implementing the complete destruction of the entire planet.
How can this be? It exists because a long time ago, a group of people that followed the teachings of a specific prophet of the Supreme Being lost some bloody fights, and they have been losing bloody fights ever since. We don’t need to get into the details. That is why “this is”. They have been oppressed for a long, long time. And they are still oppressed. The group has divided over the years into those that are tolerated by the oppressors, and those that are not. Some of the ones that are not tolerated have gone mad. Perhaps they went mad and were then not tolerated, perhaps not being tolerated made them go mad, the result is the same – insane oppressed human beings.
What is wrong?
good n.
1.
a. Something that is good.
b. A good, valuable, or useful part or aspect.
2. Welfare; benefit: for the common good.
3. Goodness; virtue: There is much good to be found in people.
evil n.
1. The quality of being morally bad or wrong; wickedness.
2. That which causes harm, misfortune, or destruction: a leader's power to do both good and evil.
3. An evil force, power, or personification.
4. Something that is a cause or source of suffering, injury, or destruction: the social evils of poverty and injustice.
What is wrong in this particular case is that some of the people who are being oppressed have gone over to the Dark Side. I am not talking about “evil deeds” here. I am talking about somebody assuming the role of Master Doer of Very Bad Deeds. There’s a big difference. There are some evil individuals on Planet Earth. Unlike the nonsensical interpretations supplied by Hollywood, an evil individual does not have a “conscience”. For whatever reason, he’s chosen to be an example of pure unadulterated evil. He intends to torture, mutilate, and kill a lot of human beings he doesn't know, simply because they don't see things his way.
It's not the first time.
What is wrong, as I see it, can be seen only if one views the entire conflict. Not to belittle it, but we could call it The Conflict of Mammals Having a Spiritual Essence.” Some people might argue with that – if they don’t believe in a Supreme Being, for example.
But I think that what is wrong cannot be fully understood unless it is viewed as a conflict taking place among the entire human race, and the conflict is being broadcast as having a spiritual nature, at least in part. Since I personally believe that humans have a spiritual nature, I’m fine on my definition of the conflict.
Simply stated, it’s The Common Good against the Insane. It’s “what is good for the human race” against “that which causes destruction to the human race”.
We have to understand what holds the human race together and what tears the human race apart, or we cannot make sense of this and we will never understand what is really wrong. We must make sense of it. We have no choice.
Human beings want to be free. Arguing about what exactly they should or should not be allowed to do since they are free – is it 51% good for the rest of the humans or is it 49% good - presupposes that they have enough freedom to argue about it in the first place. It’s not black and white, it’s not all or nothing – it’s more like a journey. It’s the path to freedom.
To achieve freedom, we need a vehicle.
civilization n.
1. An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.
2. The type of culture and society developed by a particular nation or region or in a particular epoch: Mayan civilization; the civilization of ancient Rome.
3. The act or process of civilizing or reaching a civilized state.
4. Cultural or intellectual refinement; good taste.
5. Modern society with its conveniences: returned to civilization after camping in the mountains.
It is obvious that this advanced state we call civilization includes tolerance – tolerance for differences in behavior, language, local customs, and religion. There is just no way that the different societies on this planet could develop the civilization – indeed, could have done what they have done already - without tolerance for the freedom of others in the civilization to be different.
That’s where this conflict is, at the moment. A small group of people have taken it upon themselves to destroy the fabric of civilization completely and change it into their dream world. It’s the definition of insanity. They have gone insane and can now justify any atrocity as being a good thing.
Like all the times before, the leaders of this particular insane plan for changing the civilized world via Death to Those Who Reject Our Plan must be shut down. Their actions threaten civilization. They are outside the laws of civilization. They have no “right” to try and destroy civilization on this planet. They do not have the “freedom” to take the planet back in time two thousand years and fight that fight again so they can win it this time. They lost, and they are just going to have to learn to live with it. If those individuals in the society who are not evil can come to see they have been duped, and can then learn to be tolerant of the rest of civilization, they will - like all the others before them - be welcomed into the aegis of the civilized human beings on this planet, and their needs as a part of the whole can be addressed and hopefully handled to their own satisfaction as well as everyone else's. If they can’t, they will be extinguished.
Civilization will go on, because the only alternatives are barbarism or total annihilation. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will always be. |
