for ALL Humans--Left and Right, BLMers and Trumpers--"the line separating good and evil..."

FOR ALL HUMANS, left, right, BLM, Trumpers:
"...the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years.”

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers...we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Revisiting Death Boat Ethics

At times, doesn’t much of religion and politics seem like a lot of crock? Yes, and so it did through most of history, though few humans realized it. And, even now, not much has changed. Billions still rush pell-mell into religious and political debacles and horrors. Abyss after abyss.

The current slaughter, such as the one in an Egyptian mosque 2 days ago, usually involves devout Muslims killing devout Muslims, a very delusionary, destructive life-stance Speaking historically, however, most worldviews have engaged in destruction, including the killing of children.

And then there are the modern views which also justify killing for the good.
A prominent one is Integral Theory, a secular version of Hindu philosophy.
Consider the books of its religious thinker Ken Wilber. At first, Wilbur's
modern synthesis sounds positive. His writing is lucid, and he makes plenty
of insightful points in the Vision and his other books.

Wilbur shows the fusion of a vast amount of learning and much creativity, and has a light-hearted sense of humor as well.
His Integral Theory seeks to combine modern psychology, spirituality, and science into an integrated whole. No small undertaking!

BUT Integral Theory is a modern re-envisioning of "death boat ethics."

What of stopping massacres? According to Wilber, killing is necessary that the nations of the world stop tyrants if they are killing unarmed civilians. Yet at the same time, Wilbur claims that it is really God, in the Hindu sense, who is using the tyrants to do the slaughtering. Furthermore, Wilbur emphasizes that war is necessary.

According to Integral Theory, it is God who brought about 9/11, slaughtering the helpless civilians in the Twin Towers.
See, God, is playing both sides of the fence. See, God is both good guy and bad guy.
From Wilbur: "Totally insignificant, infinitely significant--no difference, truly. Atoms and Gods are all the same, here in the world of One Taste; the smallest insult is equal to the greatest; I am happy beyond description with every act of torture, I am sad beyond compare with every act of goodness."
No, I don’t get it. I don’t see that at all.

But, of course, this is only another horrific version of the hard determinism of Augustinianism, Reformed Christianity, Islamic theology, and modern Atheistic determinism.

The only difference is Wilbur promotes his philosophy with vivid secular prose and throws a few sacred bones to spiritually inclined humans.

Then Wilbur begins to argue for his “Life Boat ethics.” According to him, NOT all humans can live on this earth; so we higher ones must decide which lesser humans—people of less value--
to cast over the sides to their deaths.

This is according to his “depth and span” ethical system. We should/must throw out lesser people from the Life Boat to their deaths! (from Wilber’s Kosmic Consciousness Interview tapes)

Here we have the fallacious view that the “end justifies the means.” It is from such ethical systems that so much of the horrific tragedies and mass slaughters of the 19th and 20th centuries came about.

Haven’t you noticed that when the “end justifies the means," it is always to the advantage of the killing nation or ideology, never for the enemies?

If other countries torture, that is horribly wrong, but if we do it, well, it’s not really torture, and, besides, the end justifies the means for us.

If someone else lies, how wrong, but, of course, if we lie, it is necessary. Yes, Wilber defends some forms of lying! As do most religious and nontheistic humans.

And then, his views get really weird, definitely not of the puritanical Gandhi sort: For Wilber says that it’s okay for husbands and wives to have sex with individual outside of their marriage in an "open marriage”!
(Ken Wilber website)

Furthermore, he seems to agree with another author that Jesus may have had sex with Mary Magdalene.
(“The Meaning of Mary Magdalene” by Cynthia Bourgeault and Ken Wiber, kenwilber.com)

These “Life Boat” ethics are really anti-life. They go against the moral views of Jesus and Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh and Abdul Ghaffar Khan and many other ethical leaders.

It’s time to realize that all such “Life Boat” ethical systems are really moral death boats.

Of course, according to Wilber most of the humans who oppose his system are lowly “oranges” on his rating scale of human development. What is an “orange”? Don’t ask; it’s not good; a large number of stages down below Wilber’s own advanced spiritual trans-human stage.

Well, at least it’s better for us to be “orange” rather than being “red.” Reds are even worse.

Later, Wilber points out that we do need to include the lesser valued humans, up to a point, (unless we have already bombed/executed them, of course).

And besides, according to him, they will be reincarnated.

Doesn’t this sound a bit like the designations of humans in the highly satiric novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley? Or George Orwell's very bitter fable, Animal Farm?

What about Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Thich Nhat Hanh, Kurt Vonnegut, and others who emphasize that humans ought to learn to show benevolence their enemies?

No, Wilber emphasizes. On the contrary, he thinks that even in a thousand years humankind probably won't overcome the need to war.

In his novel, he has one character say “turning the other cheek is exactly what you don’t want to do with pre-orange memes.”

But Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, in contrast, reached out to the marginalized “less integral” humans, to their political enemies, even to terrorists.

But as mentioned above, Wilber emphasizes that it is all humans’ duty to kill.
Like in the Hindu religious classic, the Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna doesn’t want to kill his relatives in war, but the God Krishna tells him it is his duty to go into battle and kill his relatives.

So the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria are justified and so are other wars which our particular nation thinks we ought to fight out of duty.

Again, the end justifies the means.

Are we to forget about the nonviolent ethics of Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, and Palestinian Eli Chacour?

Jesus dealt with the powerful immoral Roman Empire, with ruthless Roman soldiers who crucified thousands of Jewish individuals, yet Jesus didn't become a zealot and slit Roman throats saying they hadn’t reached his level of spiritual development.

So have many other spiritual leaders down through history, going against the dominant human way of slaughter.

In contrast, Ken Wilber’s view (as expressed by his characters at wilber.shambhala.com and in an extended interview in Kosmic Consciousness by Sounds True) is that nonviolence only works when your nation’s enemies are, basically, nice people.

Also, Wilber emphasizes that humans shouldn’t live by nonviolence because, not only does peace-living not work, but “your death doesn’t even buy you good karma, but the karma of the coward”!!! (wilber.shambhala.com).

Wilber claims if we don’t kill in war, then we are responsible for what the enemy does! So were the Jewish people of Europe responsible for what the Nazis did? Etc.?

And what makes this all the more confusing is that Wilber has one of his characters later say that God is actually ‘behind’ all such human evil:

"Precisely because I am not this, not that, I am fully this, fully that. Beyond nature, I am nature; beyond God, I am God; beyond the Kosmos altogether, I am the Kosmos in its every gesture. Where there is pain, I am there; where there is love, I am present; where there is death, I breathe easily; where there is suffering, I move unconstrained."

"On September 11, 2001, I attacked me in a distant part of the galaxy on an unremarkable planet in a speck of dust in the corner of manifestation, all of which are wrinkles in the fold of what I am. And none of which affects me in the slightest, and therefore I am totally undone, I cry endlessly, the sadness is infinite, the despair dwarfs galaxies, my heart weeps monsoons, I can't breathe in this torture."

"Totally insignificant, infinitely significant--no difference, truly. Atoms and Gods are all the same, here in the world of One Taste; the smallest insult is equal to the greatest; I am happy beyond description with every act of torture, I am sad beyond compare with every act of goodness."

"I delight in seeing pain, I despise seeing love. Do those words confuse you? Are you still caught in those opposites? Must I believe the dualistic nonsense that the world takes as real? Victims and murderers, good and evil, innocence and guilt, love and hatred? What dream walkers we all are!”
(Ken Wilber Website)

Wilber’s God is the One behind all the evil (as well as the good)!

Yet Ken Wilber thinks the “God” of Christian Fundamentalism is a “nightmare”!
(Page 155)

Whew!

Think about it: Somehow in Wilber’s philosophy humans need to be executed and bombed, but
behind all those horrendous evil actions is really Ultimate Reality playing:-(!

“until I decided to play this round of hide and seek, and get lost in the objects of my own creation.” (Page 204)

Finally, Wilber states, "Well, it does if you use the W-C Lattice...
Begin using IOS and suddenly it all starts to make sense, at least enough to climb out of the nightmare of fundamentalism…”
from The Integral Vision by philosopher Ken Wilber (pages 147 and 155)

The devil in the “Integral Vision” is hidden in the ethical details. Wilber’s worldview turns out to be much worse than the fundamentalist Christianity he thinks is a “nightmare.” His own philosophical dream makes even less compassionate sense.

How can such a brilliant, knowledgeable, insightful individual be so deceived?

Some ethical issues are so difficult, so ambiguous that morally concerned individuals may disagree.
For example, I could agree to disagree with Wilber’s strong support for execution.

His adamant support for capital punishment doesn’t seem to square with his own spiritual philosophy, but every ethical system has its conundrums. And, besides, capital punishment is a tough, ambiguous issue.

However, Wilber’s attitude is very troubling. When asked if he thought that criminals guilty of murder should be helped to turn from their actions, to change ethically, he said that he didn’t think it was worth society’s effort to help them.

And besides, with reincarnation, the criminals would be reincarnated anyway, so it’s time to “recycle” them. (Ken Wilber’s answer in Kosmic Consciousness tapes)

Again, here is displayed a tragic, uncaring attitude that has often clung like dung to the belief of reincarnation in the past, where the doctrine contributes to the problem of human evil rather than encourages humans to try and solve unjust systems and to help those who do wrong.

Wilbur's view is, Why help the low class, low caste? Why help criminals? Why help the poor? They are all paying for bad karma!

Those humans did something wrong in their past lives. Or since ‘they’ do evil now; why help them? They’ll be back soon with another life.

That’s definitely not the way of the Light. Jesus showed compassion for all the lost, even for criminals and terrorists. While no one should be excused for murder, (like often happens in U.S. courts today, where intentional murderers sometimes get off with only serving as little as 4 years in prison), mercy to help is vital.

All of us need to keep in mind that something like 80% of criminals in prison were abused as children. As Thich Nhat Hanh so wisely pointed out, how do we know that we wouldn't be like the individuals we condemn if we had grown up in their abusive environment?

Though their evil actions as adults are inexcusable, and they do need to be separated from society to prevent harm to others, surely these morally deformed individuals (some of whom had their arms burned by their mother’s cigarettes or were bashed in the face, or sexually abused, etc.)--surely, they do deserve to be rescued.

Hopefully, they will choose to change. At least that is the philosophy of psychologist Eric Berne's Transactional Analysis and other forms of human hope and creative change.

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

What Is the Essential Nature of Reality? Many Leaders Claim to “Know.”

How do so many human leaders "know" the essential nature of reality?

Exactly how and why such human hubris exists among most Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Atheists is uncertain.

I’m not going to try and unravel that conundrum in one blog post.

Rather I am going to describe the most common alleged claims for us seekers to take a careful look, study, and then make a tentative, educated guess about.
Here goes; hold on to your virtual hats;-):

Living in a universe about 27 billion light-years across, and about 13 billion years old and, according to cosmologists, a cosmos that will last more billions of years, that is the huge existence which we humans in cosmic time 'blipped into'. And there is a real possibility that this cosmos is only one of an infinite number in an alleged multiverse--
that is educated speculation by many prominent human thinkers, scientists, and philosophers.

What is "essential or inherent reality"?

#1 All reality came about by cosmic chance. Seemingly the view of the French biologist Jacques Monod in Chance and Necessity, a powerful book I read a few years back, and the view of the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould.
The human species came about by “luck.”

My take on this as an average person: I think this view is possible. I guess given cosmic time even the "laws" of nature, math, reason, life, ethics, consciousness could all blip into existence eventually.

#2 All reality came about by a cosmic determinism of meaningless matter and energy which is eternal. Everything is lock step. There are no choices, not even about what to have for lunch or whether or not to commit murder or what to choose for my career.

Indeed, every molecule, everything, every event, every human action was petrified to happen at the moment of the Big Bang. Consciousness, reason, etc. are all illusions. According to the scientist Sam Harris, even our sense of “I” is an illusion. And even if existence happened again a “trillion” times, everything would happen exactly the same.

So the Germans will gas millions in the Holocaust eternally, never able to choose a different action:-(
Despite my studying this determinism at university, and for many years since, and so many times trying to imagine my "I" as an illusion who is only 'done to' by the cosmos, I still think this is one of the least likely views of reality.

But the view is very popular these days--sort of an atheistic version of Calvinism.

#3 All reality came about somehow by a temporary, finite, imperfect, even distorted, expression of the perfect eternal Ideal Forms of Platonism.
But why did this happen? Where did evil come from?

#4 All reality came about by emergent possibilities in a quantum singularity vacuum or some unknown ultimate reality. But how did the quantum singularity vacuum originate? Here goes "turtles all the way down."

This view seems to posit an eternal matter and energy reality with no meaning 'transcending' it.
Like in #1, life, consciousness, humankind, reason, ethics are all "flukes," "accidents," "lucky" breaks.

#5 All reality came about by an impersonal ultimate reality of cosmic beauty. Scientists such as Albert Einstein stated this was his view, that he thought the cosmos was meaningful, but impersonal. This view seems similar to a combination of #3 and #4.

However, unlike #2 and #4, the emergent-possibility cosmos isn't meaningless and purposeless, but is filled with intellectual meaning.
Interesting, but I doubt it.

#6 All reality is coming about by the everlasting but limited cosmic reality that is becoming. This is the view of thinkers including philosopher and mathematician Alfred Lord Whitehead, process philosopher Charles Hartshorne, etc.

This cosmic but limited God who is far beyond human understanding works toward changing matter and energy and conscious life such as homo sapiens into increasing patterns and forms of beauty, meaning, and purpose. This is also the view of some Reform Jews.

But where is the evidence for this?

Process thinkers explain that consciousness, reason, ethics, mathematics, natural law, creativity, aesthetics, life itself, etc. are evidence, the hints that this isn’t a “meaningless” cosmos.

This view is appealing, but most of the technical philosophical explanations are BEYOND me. I'm still trying to understand the science tome, The Elegant Universe by the cosmologist Brian Greene.

I'm a relatively average literature teacher (who got born with a "why" in his throat;-)

#7 All reality came about as just one of an infinite number of universes of an infinite multi-verse, the view of some modern cosmologists. What is the ultimate of the multi-verse is unknown or maybe the multiverse itself is ultimate. And, besides, while finite humans can seek to understand, the actual nature of reality is probably forever beyond finite mental abilities.

Intriguing, but seems too speculative for me. However, I'm not as skeptical as Martin Gardner, one of the co-founders of the modern skeptical movement who wrote a scathing dismissal of this view.

#8 All reality came about by the impersonal Brahma God of Hinduism and modern New Age
(such as Ken Wilber with his Integral Theory, and Deepak Chopra, etc. ).

The impersonal God Brahma is conducting a cosmic dance in which IT forgets its self and dreams into billions of separated forms including in one minor edge of the universes, illusionary thinking humans.

But all is illusion. And all events both good and evil are produced by Brahman. That is why Ken Wilber and other such leaders claim that Brahman caused 9//11, causes all murders, all rapes, etc.

Not significantly different from Christian, Muslim, and Atheist determinists who use very different terms but come to, basically, the same results.

Given that I am a human rights worker, ethicist, and educator from way back, for about 55 years, obviously this isn't my cup of philosophical tea.

Also, I still vividly remember as a Gandhi devotee in the 60’s being shocked when a Hindu priest in L.A. tried to persuade me to go to Vietnam to kill (when I was drafted), saying insects are killed all the time in reality.:-( Or as I learned later that Gandhi claimed, that all humans are “playthings” of the gods.

#9 All reality came about by unknowable factors. Everything beyond and before the Big Bang is such a complete unfathomable mystery that it will probably not ever be solved by finite humans at least not for a very long time.

Allegedly, this is the view of the Mysterians such as the modern skeptic Martin Gardner and Roger Penrose, the English physicist, mathematician, and philosopher, etc.

#10 All reality continually comes about by infinite impersonal reality which never had a beginning. No creator god exists. Some forms of Buddhism hold this view (though other forms of Buddhism are theistic).
--

At this point in my life, I lean toward some view of #3 and #6, though I am open to #1 as a real possibility.

And furthermore realize, as I already said, that maybe we finite humans don't have enough knowledge to even decide this question.
But we need to operate from some worldview, engage in life as it happens, hold to some form of ethics.
So.

In the Light,
Daniel Wilcox

"No Wind Is Strong Enough..."

"Tonight I bring you a light: a bright yellow poem—
because no wind is strong enough to blow out
the flame of memorized lines"

from "Yellow Poem"
by Geoff M. Pope

And no bad wind is strong enough to blow out the flame of lived lines and lived lives of Light.

One Example:

1846-49, New England, U.S.
After spending a night in jail protesting against the Mexican War and slavery, an American Transcendentalist gave a lecture and then wrote his vision up into a brief essay, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience."

In 1849, and ever since, it has become a world changer, a brilliant light which has lit millions of individual humans
into seeking human rights and justice--

|
1920-1948, India
Used by Gandhi to obtain freedom for India from Britain. It was a very long campaign lasting from the early 1920's to 1948.
|
1938-1943, Germany
Considered by Bonhoeffer to oppose Hitler.
|
1950's, the World
Banned by every U.S. library around the world during McCarthyism.
|
1954-1968, USA
Martin Luther King wrote that the essay was the central factor that moved him to start the Civil Rights Movement.
|
1963-1974, USA
Used to oppose the Vietnam War.
|
1955?-1992, South Africa, USA
Method of opposition to oppose Apartheid of South African Government by Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and others.
|
1960-1990's, California
Adopted by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers to seek just working conditions and pay.
|
1960's-2016, USA
Practiced by both pro-abortion and anti-abortion groups.
|
1950's-2016, the World
Used by people opposed to nuclear weapons.

1972, France
Farmers protested against a military base being extended into their farming area. They used civil disobedience including hunger strikes. President Francois Mitterand cancelled the extension after he was elected in 1981.

1983-2016, Palestine
Mubarak Awad founded the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence. He and led nonviolent actions including the planting of olive trees on Palestinian land that the Israeli goverment was confiscating.

The Israeli government arrested and deported Awad even though he had been born in Jerusalem.

1984-1990, Central America
Civil disobedient actions against U.S. war polices and actions of President Reagan in Central America, especially Nicaragua and El Salvador.

1997-2011, U.S.
Used by various groups of environmental demonstrators including tree huggers. One woman, Julia Lorraine Hill, lived in a tall 1,500 year old Red Wood tree for 2 years to save it from being cut down by Pacific Lumber Company.

2003-2011, Iraq
Acts of civil Disobedience carried out by those opposed to the First-Strike War and Invasion of Iraq by the United States

2003-2016, Cuba
The "Ladies in White" civil protests against the wrongful arrests of journalists, librarians, and human rights defenders by Cuban Government.

For their perseverance, they won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 2005. When President Barack Obama was scheduled to visit Cuba, the government arrested 50 members of the Ladies in White because of another protest.

And so many other civil disobedient actions and campaigns.

Also, here are some other human leaders who were influenced by "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience": Leo Tolstoy, Martin Buber, President John F. Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Marcel Proust, Ernest Hemingway, Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and William Butler Yeats.

Three brief quotes from the short essay that changed the world:

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison..."

"If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible."

"It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right."

from Henry David Thoreau's brief essay, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" and from his 1848 lecture, "The Rights and Duties of the Individual to Government."

No bad wind is strong enough to blow out such a brilliant Light of great lines and lives.

Daniel Wilcox

"The Past Is Never Dead" and the Great Hope of One Brief Essay

Is “it true that living in the past---to be a kind of…Miss Havisham—can be bad for the mind and the soul, preventing us from engaging in the battles and causes of our own time”?1

Depends on how long we live in the past and for what purpose. According to Jon Meacham, “When we are at our best, history and heroes enable us to look ahead, not backward. We are the sum of the stories we tell ourselves…memory” creates the present and then the future.

First the negative, then the positive, the hope:

“History is bunk. History is myth.”
Henry Ford

“…If you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree…The purpose of history is to explain the present…tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power.”
Michael Crichton, Timeline

“History is a contest of evidence…like archaeology: you need to dig.”
Patrick Lockerby

An historian thinks about the "dead" past in order to reveal our relationship with a past that lives in us.
Anon.

“The past is never dead; it’s not even past.”
William Faulkner

Then quotes of hope:

“Stories are the center of the human condition. Everybody dreams. Try to dream in nonfiction.”
Jim Trelease

“If you believe the impossible, the incredible can come true.”
Phil Alden Robinson, Field of Dreams

And so forth, maybe…

“The future is unknowable, but the past should give us hope.”
Winston Churchill

“…the past should give us hope”? How unlikely.
It’s been my avid vocation, but misfortune, to read hundreds of scholarly books on history, especially about Christianity. From Jesus Wars2 to the Great War to First-Strike Iraq, history of the Christian sort mostly brings tragic sorrow and despair. Not that Islamic or Hindu or secular history is any less horrific.

Another writer wrote that history is HISstory, meaning, of course, that history is God’s story—that God sovereignly ordained/caused/willed/predestined whatever has come to ‘past,’ and what is, and what will be.
3(To see my honest reaction to that statement see footnote.)Unlike what Churchill says ought to be, the more one reads the past, the more one’s hope will often fade, weighed down by millions of gutted bodies, of so many horrific wrong turns.

If it weren’t that “the past is never dead; it’s not even past” but very present, it would probably be better not know the despair of the past.

But, leave all of that in the past:-)

Here's a silver lining, a redemption of actions that show how one single action by one individual human--the writing of a brief essay--can bring great hope and change to the world.

How did Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and many other social reformers of the 20th century come to act as they did for peace, justice, and compassion?

The central past event was one short essay of American literature, "On Civil Disobedience," by Henry David Thoreau. This brief reflection written n 1848 against the U.S. invasion of Mexico, though unknown by most Americans, has had more impact on world history than all other American literature, except for the Declaration of Independence. And the essay continues to influence events and will do so into the future.


Follow the links to see how the essay has changed millions of peoples lives since it was written.

1848, New England
Written against the Mexican War and against slavery
|
1920-1948, India
Used by Gandhi to obtain freedom for India from England
|
1938-1943, Germany
Considered by Bonhoeffer as a way to oppose Hitler
|
1950's, the World
Banned by every U.S. library around the world during McCarthyism
|
1954-1968, USA
Stated by King to be the central factor that moved him to help start the Civil Rights movement

|
1963-1974, USA
Used to oppose the Vietnam War
|
1955-1992, South Africa, USA
Method of opposition to oppose Apartheid of South African Government
|
1960-1990's, California
Adopted by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers to seek just working conditions and pay

|
1960's-1998, USA
Practiced by both pro-abortion and anti-abortion groups
|
1950's-1990's, the World
Used by people to oppose nuclear weapons and chemical weapons

1990-to the Present
Used by protesters against oppression by both Palestinian and Israeli governments, against the Gulf War, First-Strike Invasion of Iraq, immigration deportation, economic disparity, etc.


What historical past has inspired you to live now and to hope for the future?

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

1"From The Stories We Tell Ourselves" by Jon Meacham, Newsweek, July 7, 2008
2Jesus Wars by Phillip Jenkins, a history of the twists and killings of early Christianity
3To hell with that. What an obscene joke.

Our Human Culture of Violence and Future Choice

Though the horrors of war and lethal violence occur much less now in the world than 70 years ago,*
there are still so many innocent victims
and far too many misguided victors, and not a few sociopaths.

How ought a human being--just one of your average "I"s--respond to all the urgent calls for war?

How should I respond?
Take a brief trip down into memory hell...

What is the best way to respond to injustice, inequality, aggressive attack, and terrorism?

1. Like many Jewish people in the Holocaust?

2. Like the Deists in the American Revolutionary War?

3. Like the Girondins and Jacobins during the French Revolution?

4. Like Howard Gilmore, the Medal of Honor submarine captain fighting the Japanese?

5. Like Desmond Doss, the Medal of Honor medic?

6. Like the Allies using carpet bombing on German cities ending with the firebombing of Dresden?

7. Like American sniper Chris Kyle in the American first strike war in Iraq?

8. Like General Sherman in his "March to the Sea" in the American Civil War?

9. Like Gandhi in his nonviolent struggle against colonialism?

10.Like Muslims such as HAMAS and Islamic Jihad in their religious fight for land?

from Liberty Magazine

11.Like the Israeli military bombing of Gaza after Palestinians murdered 3 Israeli teens and shot rockets into Israel?

12.Like the Greeks in the Trojan War?

13.Like Krishna who ordered Arjuna in 3,000 B.C. India to kill his own relatives in war because that is a soldier's duty?

14.Like 19th century Europeans who escaped being drafted into their countries' wars by immigrating to the United States?

15.Like the Crusaders when they conquered Jerusalem in 1099?

16.Like Viet Cong soldiers against other Vietnamese, the French colonists, and American soldiers?

17.Like General Santa Ana in fighting invading Americans in the Mexican War? And the leaders of the Mexican Revolution against each other in the early 20th century?

18.Like Emperor Qin when he conquered Zhao in China about 220 B.C.?

19.Like John Woolman, the famous abolitionist and Friend to the Indians in the 1700's?

20.Like the fictional character in the movie Collateral Damage who emphasizes only the killer ought to be killed, not any innocent bystanders?

21.Like American leaders in the killing of about 450,000 civilians in the bombing of Japanese cities?

22. Like Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Muslim community activist and nonviolent warrior in the 1920's who opposed the British?

23.Like Napoleon against the European countries that opposed the government of Revolutionary France?

24.Like Joshua and the armies of Israel who killed everyone for Yahweh--"both men and women, young and old" living in the cities they attacked? And David and his band who robbed villages and then massacred everyone so that there would be no one to report their attacks?

23.Like the Prophet Muhammad who beheaded 600 to 900 Jewish men and older teens and then had their women and children sold into slavery? And like Muhammad when he had a Jewish poet executed because she wrote a poem against him?

24.Like the Confederate army which sometimes executed Union army troops after they surrendered?

ETC. (Come up with your own variations on how to deal with war.)


*The Fallen of World War 11: https://vimeo.com/128373915 and http://www.fallen.io/ww2/


In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Forgiveness and Justice after Being Attacked by a Murderer

A masked man dressed all in black grabbed a colleague’s girlfriend at the doorway of their apartment and held a gun on her. My peaceful friend acted, forcefully, stopping the thug, and got stabbed repeatedly in his lungs. Fortunately, he and his girlfriend both survived. And finally, the attacker was caught by the police; it turned out he had murdered another victim in a separate crime.

Sounds like the daily news does it not? Both horrific and usual, a troubling combination.

All across the world, millions of humans are being imperiled, attacked, and slaughtered, and understandably, many leaders are calling for revenge, for an “eye for an eye” against such killers. It’s payback time.

And can anyone blame the compatriots who yell out for vengeance and justice against such evil-doers?

But here’s where a few humans take a different road. These life-changers strike with a very different choice, a very different ethical response. For in the end, Phill Courtney got up in court and spoke personally to the murderous criminal who had stabbed him. He faced his attacker in the dock and said,

“So Mr. Scott does this mean that I think you are evil? Do I think you’re an animal? Scum? Human garbage?”

“It does not. Your acts were evil, but you remain a human being. I may find your behavior unfathomable, but I am reminded of the words of the ancient theologian Tertullian who said, ‘Nothing human is foreign to me.’"

“Human beings are capable of an immense spectrum of behavior ranging from the most heinous acts of cruelty and mass murder to almost miraculous feats of self-sacrifice that leave us gasping in astonishment. The great mystery is what causes one person to head one direction and someone else in another. I cannot begin to solve that mystery, but I know that you and I headed in opposite directions before we met that night…”

“I know that I grew up in a stable home with two parents who loved and nurtured me. I know that you grew up in foster homes and I know about the instability of your mother. I know that when we begin to talk of such circumstances many people begin to think that we are talking about an excuse for your behavior, instead of an explanation. It doesn’t matter that some people raised as I was become criminals and some people raised in your condition become pillars of the community. In the final analysis, the human race does a poor job of protecting its children from hate, dysfunction, and cruelty. We are told that we have control over our lives and we are responsible for our actions, but children have no control over their lives…”

“What does this mean for those wounded children who grow up and then seek to wound those around them? What is to be their punishment? Plato wrote that “punishment brings wisdom; it is the healing art of wickedness.” Would capital punishment bring healing?”

“Before I was attacked, I believed that the execution of human beings was a violent and primitive act. I still believe that. Yes, I would have done whatever it would have taken to stop you that night, Mr. Scott, but now that you are confined, I believe that despite what you have done, you remain a human being and must be treated as one. A wise man…said that a society should be judged not by how it treats its best, but by how it treats its worst.”

“…You must remain separated from others as long as there’s a shadow of doubt you are capable of violence against them. If that essentially means the rest of your life, then so be it.”

“Finally, Mr. Scott, I forgive you for trying to murder me."

"I know that’s just a word. But to forgive you does not mean to forget what you did and what you could do in the future, for besides tragically destroying and damaging the lives of others, you have ultimately destroyed your own. I hope that by reaching, at long last, the end of this agonizingly long trial, we may move on and find whatever peace and comfort can be had in this less than perfect world.”
--

Wow. Reflect on Phill Courtney’s unusual, brave, and compassionate action--speaking personally to the vicious attacker who had tried to murder him and his girlfriend, telling that dangerous thug that he “forgives” him.

It still takes my breath away.

Would you be deeply committed enough to wisdom, compassion, and forgiveness to do that? Would I?

They say talk is cheap…but in this case, verbally forgiving a violent criminal who had stabbed you, was very powerful and ethically the opposite of cheap. That action must have been very difficult for Phill Courtney to do.

Phill isn’t your average human…but an ethical thinker and doer. He has spent his life standing up for the environment, justice, peace, and forgiveness. A passionate peacemaker, he was one of only two teachers who stood up against the attack on Iraq, and is a former Green Party Candidate, active socially concerned citizen, a person who seeks to live the ethic of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and other world-changers.

What are your thoughts on his views of capital punishment, criminal justice, and ethics in general?

*Phill Courtney has written several books including one on this harrowing experience.
He is also a columnist for the Redlands Daily Facts, and a published playwright and poet.
Please check with him for more information.

Why Did Israel Deport "the Palestinian Gandhi"? And Inherit the Gazan Whirlwind of Death?

Why in the past did Israel deport a Palestinian leader dedicated to nonviolence, yet now negotiates with HAMAS leaders who are guilty of murder and allows them to live there!?

It makes NO sense.

Not only is HAMAS dedicated to lethal violence and the destruction of the state of Israel, but it admits it killed the 3 Israeli students on July. That despicable murder is called a "heroic operation" by HAMAS Spokesperson Saleh Arouri.

In contrast the Palestinian Mubarak Awad said that Palestinians should engage in peaceful protest, carry no gun, and plant olive trees on land, etc.

But he was deported though he was born in Jerusalem!

It makes no sense.

But then does anything in Palestine/Israel?

Only a few days after signing a truce with HAMAS leaders, "the Israeli government announced Sunday that it would appropriate almost 1,000 acres of land in the West Bank that could be used to build homes for Jewish settlers." The Washington Post, August 31, 2014

So Israel will steal land from Palestinians to give to Jewish people moving from other parts of the world. But deny Palestinians who were born there their own land!

Recently, the Israeli military bulldozed the orchard of the Palestinian Nassar family south of Bethlehem. The Nassar family are committed to nonviolence and promote reconciliation at their farm, Tent of Nations.

Tragic.

Please read this short article by Jeff Stein in Newsweek Magazine about Mubarak Awad,known as the "Palestinian Gandhi or Martin Luther King."

http://www.newsweek.com/where-palestinian-gandhi-263653