Humanize the Earth!

4 Comments

1. Yes, I say look to the Buddhists. They will show us the way to obtain peace.

   http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060817/od_nm/srilanka_monks_dc_1

   Our country was founded on the throwing of fists and bombs. We didn’t become a free nation founded on principles of liberal humanism by talking King George III into submission. And the Civil War helped put an end to slavery. Again, talking didn’t accomplish that end. Those are just a couple of obvious examples of what violence accomplished. I guess anyone who likes our country and opposese slavery must be insane.

   Comment by Bepah Benoweh — August 18, 2006 #

2. As you well know, the media will distort any story. We have no way to know what really happened based on this story. I’ve been in public actions where police made unprovoked attacks on demonstrators. The headlines afterwards are about how a peaceful protest “turned violent” implying that it was the demonstrators that initiated the disturbance.

   It is also false logic to assert that because a certain negative condition ceased after violence that violence was necesarry in the situation.

   I would also assert that because the end of slavery was forced, the backlash continues to this day. The inner violence of discrimination was not addressed during the civil war and thus we still see it being very active more than 150 years later.

   Comment by ted — August 27, 2006 #

3. Ted and Bepah–

   Thanks for carrying this conversation further.

   There are those who do not want to engage in an I-Thou dialogue. Perhaps King George was one of those. Perhaps “the” Southerners, the slavers, were of the same turn of heart. There is perhaps little we can do about such as these, except try and try again.

   On the other hand, the purpose of I-Thou conversation is not to “talk anyone into submission.” The purpose may be to change us as much as or more than the “other.”

   If our first engagement with another is to throw a fist or a bomb, then we get violence returned in almost all cases. If our first engagement is to try to argue or debate–the verbal equivalents of violence–then we do no better.

   When we see violence as the primary answer, it is often because we are operating from memory, not from the reality of now. I recently spoke with an American Israeli and an American Lebanese man. Listening to them was listening to a recital of all the atrocities and injustices that had taken place over the last 60 years–with no attention paid at all to the on the ground effects on the people involved in this war–innocents and otherwise. It is said the memories are long in this part of the world, and for reason. But when we make current decisions based upon memory, we are to that same extent turning our backs on reality. And on the future.

   Is violence sometimes necessary? The jury is still out on that. Is force necessary? Probably, it seems to me, in the sense that a police officer might need to use force to put a criminal behind bars.

   So has conversation really been tried in this conflict? How might it be tried to better effect?

   :- Doug.

   Comment by Doug Germann — August 27, 2006 #

4. Sometimes I find myself caught in what feels like a debate. I say caught not because I didn’t go there by choice, but because when I’m truly awake, I choose not to go there. Why? Because, as Doug points out, there is inner violence there.

   So to Doug’s questions, no, I don’t think conversation has really been tried in this conflict.

   And more to the point, I’m still working on my own inner violence. That’s where I feel I can have the most effect. And those of us working on that internal part also need to keep that work public, and work togehter whenever possible, to allow others the possibility to also work on their own inner violence, in case they don’t already see that they can.

   Comment by ted — August 29, 2006 #

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