Monday, July 17, 2006

A Certain Blogger


A certain blogger writes: “If you live in the light, then the darkness is visible. But if you yourself live in horizontal darkness, then it’s a case of a very dark night in which all the cows are black. It's just a "cycle of violence," tit for tat. To quote one of the most morally idiotic statements ever made, "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."

Our blogger implies that he and the majority of his regular readers live in the light rather than the darkness that Leftists, Islamists, and much of the rest of the world inhabit. I wonder, then, how he and they see the violence of vengeance that plagues the Middle East and most of the rest of the world to varying degrees. If they don’t view it as an endless cycle of “tit for tat,” how DO they view it? As progress? Do they see progress in the Middle East? In the “drive-by” shootings of urban gangs? Anywhere else where people repay bloody violence with bloody violence year after year, decade after decade? Or is there progress only when someone is willing to take a leap of faith and break the cycle of revenge?

Our unnamed blogger may sneer at Gandhi’s famous maxim quoted above as “morally idiotic,” but to me it seems supremely wise, and “an eye for an eye” seems idiotic. For if no one is willing to break the cycle of revenge, won’t it continue until there are no more “eyes” to take on either side?

In that same post, our blogger writes:
“I’ve never given it much thought as to why people are uncomfortable naming the subhumans in our midst, but it must be because of the experience of nazi Germany. For nazi Germany represented the case of a subhuman ideology attempting to extinguish a divine one. It is as if the Left came away with an entirely backward lesson: that it is bad to call anyone evil or subhuman. But you will notice that when this happens, it is not as if evil disappears. It just gets relocated and projected into things that are patently not evil. Thus the deep moral confusion of the Left that sees George Bush or Israel as evil, even subhuman.”

Perhaps our blogger should have given it more thought, for he seems to contradict himself. He says the Left learned from Nazi Germany the distorted lesson that we shouldn’t call anyone “evil or subhuman.” But then he turns around and reports that Leftists call George Bush and Israel these things. I guess the Left didn’t learn the lesson our blogger says they learned after all.

Our blogger suggests that the lesson we should have learned from Nazi Germany is that there are “subhuman” or “infrahuman” “monsters” “in our midst.” Yesterday, there were Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Today there are Hamas, Hezbollah, the “Iranian mullahs,” the “chinless wonder who rules Syria,” Kim Jong Il, and Castro. All are “pure evil.” All are “subhuman monsters.” They and their followers should be eradicated with the military grade “chemotherapy” of bullets, bombs, and missiles. And then the pure goodness characterizing our blogger and his community will prevail and Earth will become heaven, or something like that.

I don’t see it that way. I believe that the Nazis should have taught us all the lesson our blogger says it both did and didn’t teach the Left. It should have taught us that when one group of people sees another as “subhuman” or “infrahuman,” this is when it gleefully perpetrates the most horrible evils against the group it has dehumanized, and, in so doing, it dehumanizes itself. Not literally, mind you. A human being can’t make other human beings or itself truly inhuman, subhuman, or infrahuman. Human beings are human beings, no matter how they behave. Human beings love and hate, make love and make war, heal and destroy, do wondrous good and perpetrate unspeakable evil. All are the very human behaviors of human beings.

But when human beings see and despise other human beings as “pure evil” or “subhuman” “monsters,” as our blogger would have us see and do the Islamists, the communists, and maybe even Noam Chomsky, you can bet that you’re going to see them commit the worst of human behaviors, usually, ironically, in the name of goodness or God. And then the other group will take its revenge. And the murderous cycle will continue until someone understands the profound moral truth and wisdom of Gandhi’s words.

7 comments:

Mary Lois said...

I understand where you're coming from, Steve, but I believe that when you're able to let go your obsession with a certain blogger and write things of significance to yourself, based on your own voyage of self-discovery, your blog will grow. Your readers are sure that this will happen...but it's up to you how soon this will be.

Steve said...

FFH: I appreciate your advice. But many of the arguments from "a certain blogger" that I've addressed here are arguments with which many agree, including parts of myself. For instance, there's a part of me that believes in an "eye for an eye," especially after someone does something horrible to someone else who doesn't deserve it. I'm trying to focus anything that I may have to say about the posts of others, whoever they may be, on arguments they make that are important or "of significance" to me in some way.

However, I hear what you're saying.

Namaste,
Steve

Anonymous said...

I ditto FFH's thoughts, because I am too lazy to come up with something different that would basically say the same thing.

Dr.Alistair said...

the eye for am eye modality resonates with sin consciousness which makes christianity abhorent to jesus himself...........he wasn`t a christian. he was a prophet of freedom from rules, regulations and dogmas that give people the permission interfere in the affairs of others. if we all ust minded our own business........we wouldn`t need guns or bombs or fighter jets now would we.
if you insist in getting tangled up in the moral machinations of some psycho therapist (two words...) then you will resonate with his sentiments, most of which you obviously disagree with. speak your heart, not your mind.

Steve said...

Dr. Alistair: I think the "eye for an eye modality" resonates with virtually all of us at some level. There seems to be an innate human predisposition to take revenge that is difficult to overrride, especially on the group or cultural level.

I don't think I'm getting "tangled up" in anyone's "moral machinations." I think I'm using other people's posts to explore ideas and mindsets that parts of me entertain as well, although what I would like to think is a higher or wiser part of me doesn't. That higher or wiser part of me speaks with what I would like to think is an integration of mind AND heart.

Namaste,
Steve

Dr.Alistair said...

yeah, revenge is a hard emotion to cope with. don`t get boiling over with mr. moral high ground though. it`s a perfect opportunity for you to let it go.
i`m frankly not sure that the mind and heart can integrate........i find that when i intellectualise my blogs and thoughs in conversation i come off sounding moralistic and dogmatic, but when my heart speaks i am moved myself with the poetry and i then think how nice it would be to get out of my own way more often.

Steve said...

Dr. Alistair: I believe that we CAN integrate heart and mind to a significant degree and that the best writing does it.