This is a follow up to a friend of mine's response to my last posting "The Latest Tragedy". He agreed with what I said, but "... just hope[d] they get the bastards, and quick."
One of the hardest things to do when passions are high is to say that victims - and by extension, ourselves - must also forgive the perpetrators of the terrorist acts. The victims will have to do this, otherwise the evil that has been inflicted on them will eventually consume them as it constantly and repeatedly consumes us. You may consider this bullshit or some new-age crap, but really what good is vengeance? It just passes the violence down the line. & if it is justice you are after, well, justice is for the rich. Re-education is not an option, because I don't think we live in a Clockwork Orange world (yet.) There is a dark seed of violence in the heart of man & this was what I was NOT trying to say, because this exposes my own own beliefs/agenda & I was trying to be egalitarian about the whole thing.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
The Latest Tragedy
Well, I really don't want to have anything to say about the latest tragedy.
Actually I do want to say something. Everyone's trying to find out, collectively, who did it, why they did it, and what to do about it. Everyone is going to project their own agendas into this event, and use it to forward their own ideas. (I am struggling not to do that here.)
But here is my attempt to say something about the tragedy - aside from that it was evil, heinous, et.al. It's perfectly natural that we, as storytellers and listeners of stories, want to cloke a horrendous act with a comfortably familiar narrative. It keeps us at arm's distance from our mortality.
But we are mortal. and we have choices as to how we deal with events of this magnitude. And it is my wish that we make some good come from this:
Actually I do want to say something. Everyone's trying to find out, collectively, who did it, why they did it, and what to do about it. Everyone is going to project their own agendas into this event, and use it to forward their own ideas. (I am struggling not to do that here.)
But here is my attempt to say something about the tragedy - aside from that it was evil, heinous, et.al. It's perfectly natural that we, as storytellers and listeners of stories, want to cloke a horrendous act with a comfortably familiar narrative. It keeps us at arm's distance from our mortality.
But we are mortal. and we have choices as to how we deal with events of this magnitude. And it is my wish that we make some good come from this:
- Live life boldly. Don't shrivel up in a corner and give up.
- Help others come to grips with this event, and try to steer them into productive - not vindictive - outlets for their feelings.
- This is time for soul-searching, not finger-pointing. Rampages and inflammatory rhetoric just spread the evil fallout further downwind.
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