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| Politics: Another spark |
Posted by
callei on Sunday, March 30, 2003 - 06:18 AM PST
I think some of the places that we fall down when gauging this "war on terrorism" is when we try to decide what we think in terms of what we feel. Are the figureheads "good" or "evil"? Are other countries "against us"? What or who is "unpatriotic"? Do we have the "right" to "invade"? These are all emotional feelings, not logical ideas, yet they are debated as some sort of fact.
This is foolish, or ignorant to use a Buddhist idea, and allows us to avoid the real facts and real questions that would allow us to talk and think about it rationally. When we are faced with something that is both a very emotional issue and a very rational issue, we are often, at least at first, overwhelmed in our thinking by our feeling. If we allow it to continue, we can accidentally allow ourselves to think that what we feel is more real that what we know.
I'd like to give a few examples here to make this more clear: Just because you love someone doesn't mean that you think they are good for you. Just because you want a new car doesn't mean you can afford one. Just because you don't want to get up doesn't mean that you think it would be a good idea to stay in bed all day. See what I mean? What we feel (love) and what we think (that s/he isn't a healthy person for you to be involved with) don't always match.
Are the figureheads "good" or "evil"? Even the worst sociopath does good deeds and every saint has done something less than praiseworthy. Even the most power-hungry can be kind to others. Even the most timid can fight back. There is no "good" or "evil" when it comes to people. There are just circumstances that interact with intentions, time, energy, and resources. When they are long dead and time has given people generations to see that total sum of the impact they made on the world, then we can, to a degree, judge if they stayed true to their beliefs or not. That is about as far as we can ever delineate "good" or "evil".
Are other countries "against us"? Who is "Us"? What do they have to be "against"? Are "they" "against" the individual people, the separate ideologies of the various groups of people, the policies of the government, or the actions of the government? Are "they" "against" the propaganda of the government, the individual people, or the groups of people?
We are not a homogenous country anymore than these other countries are. People migrate, get conquered, get ejected from their home country and have to settle somewhere, or just travel for fun and education. Many of the people that live here don't like the government, not just the people in the government but rather the style of government. Many of the people that live inside the borders of "America" aren't citizens either by choice, by circumstance, or by law (illegal "aliens", convicts, legal aliens that are waiting to go somewhere else, Native Americans, Eskimos, Aleuts, Hawaiians, etc. this list is actually huge). Are they part of "us"?
What does "Against" really mean? Does it mean that these other countries would bomb us, not trade with us, not allow us in their borders, or speak out about our method of government, social policies, or methods of living? Does it mean that they won't throw all their resources behind any action that we choose to do, that they try to give us advice, or tell us what happened to them when they tried it? If we can't say who "us" is and we don't know what "against" means, then we can't answer the question.
What or who is "unpatriotic"? What is "patriotism"? Is it joining the military, voting, signing petitions so that things can go to a vote, buying "American"? Is it actively participating in the political process? Is it working hard to achieve the "American dream"? What is "unpatriotic"? Is it unpatriotic to oppose war from which you don't profit? Is it unpatriotic to speak out against policies with which you disagree? Is it unpatriotic to protest? If we cant say what makes us a patriot then how can we decide what is unpatriotic?
Do we have the "right" to "invade"? This is a very tricky one as the ideas carry so many connotations. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to pursue happiness. But, do we have the right to kill, to bomb and destroy thousands of homes, to assassinate, or to force "our" worldview on some other country and all the people that live there? What does it mean to "invade"? Has no one asked us to go in to this other country? Would a minority be enough to change it from an "invasion" to an "invitation"?
I have avoided the emotional words "war on terrorism" because I am not talking about propaganda here. I am talking about the everyday citizen (person that is alive and conscious of the world around them and able to differentiate between pain and pleasure) and how we/they are trying to think about this huge, garbled, issue. I am not trying to change anyone's opinions about anything, gain better understanding of anyone nor asking them to better understand others. I am writing this because I am unclear about these concepts/emotional words and what they actually mean.
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| Another spark | Login/Create an account | 3 Comments |
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Re: Another spark
by Shade (Shade@Gothcult.com)
on Mar 30, 2003 - 05:27 PM
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While I'm sure my views on this war are, by now, quite well known; I'll say on anyway. The idea of the "right" to invade, attack or in any way interfere with the ongoing actions of our fellow countries is an interesting one. There are in fact no true "rights" for countries. We have a fwe interenational laws that govern how we wage war, and a few more that govern how we intereact with each other in terms of trade. But historically, the right to attack another country has been governed by Darwinian logic more than anything else. Of course everyone else has the same right to attack back or defend or aid on either side.
In reality, the only issue of "the right to invade" has been created by internal pressure. In the US the presididn't has to ask permission from the congress to declare war. Which explains why we've had so many police actions over the past few decades. Externally, the US doesn't have a whole lot of pressure to do anything because they can always say ne of two things, either "We'll nuke you into the darkages" or "we'll trade embargo you into the darkages"
It's scary, but this nation has become bloated on it's own power and the only way IMHO we will see a change in the spreqad of american imperialism is going to be if the internal pressures get to great and there is a revolt. But that will depend on the citizens actually getting so fed up with this kind of invasion and comensurate spending of their tax dollars.
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A Rose By Any Other Name Stinks
by Monolycus on Apr 01, 2003 - 07:40 PM
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While the game of "define your terms!" is often used as an oratorical dirty trick, there is a great deal of merit to your suggestion that we examine a thing for what we can narrowly determine that it is, and not what we feel it to be and presume that everyone else feels it to be. Sadly, by keeping concepts as vague and fuzzy as possible, there exist those who are able to get away with a great many more atrocities than if they were to simply "lay (their) cards on the table" (as one very highly profiled gentleman of extremely dubious character has recently suggested).
Feral touched upon the Orwellian use that is being made of language recently, and I feel that you are both very correct. If we defined, in no uncertain terms, what a "terrorist" is and outlined a specific method for dealing with them, there is no way that we could hold José Padilla and other American citizens indefinitely and without charges or access to legal representation. It would simply be inconcievable. As it stands in the current atmosphere of nebulous, poorly-defined threats floating around every corner, just about any hateful, racist, undemocratic policy you can name can be put into practice as long as it can be covered under the blanket of fuzzy terminology like "defense" or "national security". The only thing that we have actually been "told" at the end of the day is that we should carry on about our business normally (read: don't question the man behind the curtain), while at the same time, we should BE AFRAID... VERY, VERY AFRAID (read: don't question the man behind the curtain)!
Much more regrettably, the people who want to push the envelope of questionable policies are perfectly aware of the effects of this fuzzy language. They foster uncertainty and terror to get their way. Why else would one use meaningless colour codes to describe how likely the poorly defined threats are without describing any genuine course of action (except maybe to buy duct tape), except to terrorise people into pushing through very questionable policies? With no real way of quantifying what we are referring to, the panicked populace has no recourse except to believe everything that they see on news programs that have been established to be coming directly from the Pentagon (see the firing of NBC reporter Peter Arnett for reporting news as he saw it instead of how he was told to see it). Just like Orwell's Big Brother, we have been told that the big nebulous enemy is Al Quaeda, then the Taliban in Afghanistan, then Saddam Hussein... and, according to the headlines this morning, tomorrow's enemy du jour will be Iran... and we have no alternative except to accept these statements or jabber amongst ourselves in Newspeak. We have never been given anything solid or remotely well-defined enough to be able weigh the actual merits of what is being done until it has become too late to prevent it.
This is why it is imperative that a person examines not only their lives, but the world at large on their own and codifies what is right and what is wrong BEFORE they find themselves influenced by political doubletalk. It is practically impossible not to wind up as somebody else's puppet when you have a morally relativistic paradigm (read: making up right and wrong as you go) and you are being buffeted about by external forces with specific agendas who won't give you a clear and concise answer about anything. And if anyone plays the sophist's game of insisting that you "define your terms!", you will be able to smile and do precisely that without missing a beat. Thank you for bringing that up, callei. I am, I was, I will be
your faithful servant,
~Monolycus.
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