An
email
Hi Patrick:
It was a very interesting show about anger this afternoon.
Thank you for taking my call and allowing a discussion of this timely and timeless
subject concerning terrorism in general and the terrorist attack at the
offices of “Charlie Hebdo” in particular. I agree with you and Bill Donohue in
supporting the right of Islamists to be angry with Charlie Hebdo. And I agree with you in supporting
the rights of the German protest groups to be angry with Muslim immigrants. However, I also support to the
creators of “Charlie Hebdo” in their anger at religious leaders of all denominations
(and satire is really just sneering anger thinly veiled as humor).
Everyone has the right to feel and express their anger.
However, I would assert that the expression of that anger must respect the boundaries of the other person or
group. Expressing anger at someone by killing them is an obvious and extreme
boundary infringement. The terrorists allowed the satire to affect them by voluntarily
picking up the magazine and reading it. They invited the insult to come
within their boundaries. They could have ignored it. But I would imagine that
they would still feel that their dignity and the sanctity of their spiritual
leader had been compromised in the eyes of the rest of the world as well and
that would matter very much to them, which is a pity, for we cannot control
others and what they think. And what they think of us or what we hold sacred
is truly not important. We can only control what we allow to affect us
personally. We impute dignity and sanctity where we will and what others feel
need not be our concern.
One of your other callers had a provocative suggestion for
how to deal with the anger of Muslims and their feeling of entitlement to
express it by killing others. His proposal was that we mount a modern Crusade
or Holy War against Islam. By extrapolation I assume that he meant that the
winning of such a war by the Christian countries and their allies, would
teach the Muslims to not be so violent and to not retaliate with killing when
they were angry. The irony is obvious to us, but not at all to him or to many
people. After all we are not so far from The War to End All Wars that was
quickly followed by WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Operation Enduring
Freedom (my personal favorite) and numerous other US deadly covert operations
all over the world.
You did immediately express your disagreement with his Modern
Crusade idea, but only in that you thought that the situations were
different. I heard you say that you felt the Crusades were justified in that
the Muslims had attacked Jerusalem and were killing innocent Christians. You
seemed to see it as a heroic rescue mission.
However, I feel that most, if not all wars are draped in
altruistic ideals in order to seduce young men to make their bodies and lives
the willing tools of the power brokers with much more selfish motivations and
who remain safely distant from the
front lines. Their incentive is fear and their goal is control of people, territory
and resources so they can feel more powerful and therefore safer.
So I found your acceptance of the Madison Avenue version
of The Crusades a bit naïve.
The real reasons, at the start of the “Holy Wars” of the
10th century were much like those held by Truman and Eisenhower,
and their cohorts had for sending troops to North Korea and Vietnam a thousand
years later in the 20th century. Variously Truman, Eisenhower and
Pope Urban II felt that the sword-point of the enemy (be it Muslim or
Communist) that was entering the heart of a distant country, would soon be
entering the heart of their own region if they did not stop it where it was.
Also, and very importantly, Pope Urban II saw that his
power as the highest ruler of Europe, could not safely be maintained for long,
because he was being drawn into the various power struggles and in-fighting
among the various kings and princes of his domain. So far he had done well with picking and
betting on the winners, but what if he should back a loser some time? It
could be disastrous for his own reputation and career. (A good reputation, to
my mind, is an extremely dangerous thing to covet.) So he hedged his bets by creating an
exterior conflict. He distracted the
combatants at home and united them in a common cause—fighting the infidels of
Islam. He maintained undisputed kingship
in Europe by giving his squabbling courtiers, as it were, an external
enemy at which to aim their anger. For there was huge fear and a huge appetite for war, then
as now; and it was then and is now an appetite that needs to be fed continuously
--seemingly. Urban was canny enough
to know how best to do that in order to preserve his own power. He was the
consummate politician.
I don’t know the specific psychological motivations of
Truman, Eisenhower and the rest who came after who have continuously felt
that killing others was necessary for their personal gain or for the safety
of their citizenry. But I know without a doubt that the same generalized fear
that grips the populace gripped them as well.
There is a growing suspicion that the most recent of US
wars “against terrorism” were in fact designed and implemented and
manipulated by some of our own leaders: Dick Cheney for one. I did not
believe these at first but have seen mounting evidence that now leaves me
feeling it is plausible. I know that the historic lust by men of power for
land, resources and the allegiance of people can lead them to do horrific
things. For they fully believe that the end justifies the means and that as
long as the end serves them in some immediate way it is allowable.
This is absolutely the polar opposite of the truth. For
whatever means are employed to gain an end, will without a doubt shape that
end to be just like them. The means create
the end.
Meanwhile the idealistic reasons given the public for waging war in Southeast Asia –was put out to
be about defending the underdogs in S. Korea and Vietnam and elsewhere. This
is strikingly similar to the reasons you, Patrick, mentioned (and which many
people believe) about why Pope Urban II sent crusaders into
Jerusalem--to right the wrong done to the martyred Christians and save the
living ones.
Brave idealistic young men and women will lay down their lives and kill others for the patriotic
ideals of keeping the homeland safe from present or future real or imagined
dangers, and of rescuing the down trodden. They find it tremendously
difficult to even entertain the possibility that they and millions of other
military personnel have been manipulated by this same love… and it is love…
down through the centuries. They will find it impossible to believe that they
have been manipulated by their own desire to reach for something greater than
their mundane selves—by reaching for something finer to surrender to wholly
and to even sacrifice themselves to it unreservedly.
This sacrifice to war and killing is all a horrible
perversion of something genuine and beautiful. The real spiritual surrender
that the intellectual ideal arose from, has become twisted by anger that is
not allowed on the one hand (as children) and is allowed excessively and
inappropriately on the other (as combatants).
Children for the past 6000 years of our 160,000 year
history have been increasingly taught that emotions are to be controlled and
suppressed. And this is absolutely deadly. For the emotions are our direct
link with our God-Self. Our emotions in their purest form lead us to conscience.
A collective human awareness of and refined use of the emotions as guidance
for the life would lead everyone individually and collectively towards peace.
We would automatically know right from wrong without the need of any code of
ethics delivered by either the philosophers or the theologians.
There is a natural, genuine drive towards altruistic
surrender, towards service that verges on self-sacrifice, but it has the
saving grace of genuine self-interest within it. It must feel good to the
self as it is being delivered. If it doesn’t it is out of alignment with the
God- self and it is wrong. Self-interest is of prime importance. But with the
suppression of anger that is taught in virtually every family, every church,
every school and every community a terrible perversion of genuine healthy
surrender with self-interest has
occurred. People are unnecessarily hurting themselves and each other. The
surrender is simply to a higher deeper, wiser, more Divine part of the self.
I noticed that in another instance during the show, that
you displayed the same preference for idealism that glosses over reality. You
read a long list of Muslim terrorist attacks and the body counts. Then at the
end you drew a contradistinction between “us and them.” We the Christian
countries may have anger too, you admitted, but we do not go about killing
the people who “made” us angry [quotes mine].
I was tremendously shocked to hear you say that, for the
obvious truth is that anger has been behind all of our wars. We were all
abused children, in terms of being taught to ignore our emotions and to look
to outside of ourselves for authorities who supposedly held the Truth, when
all along all the truth we needed resided within us, in the kingdom of God
which is within.
It was angry American leaders and angry American citizens
that sent American troops to Iraq and Afghanistan to kill 132,000 citizens and
another 25,000 combatants after 911. It was angry citizens and leaders who
sent US killers to Pakistan for the covert operation we are conducting there—sent
there to kill another 35,000 children, women and men non-combatants. And
because God allows everything, he allowed that those who had childhood anger that
had been turned inward and became guilt, would feel like victims and would
attract those who had anger that they turned outward and would inflict it on
others. They would blame the weaker and feel justified in killing them for it
would seem that those others had caused the unhappiness that the perpetrators
felt.
So it might be the unhappiness of having one’s most holy
object of spiritual devotion made the object of derision and salacious, demeaning
“humor.” Or it might be the unhappiness of having had 2000 people in the twin
towers murdered by the suicidal mission of religious zealots who were full of
hate and self-righteous indignation. Both sides feel the same things. They
feel disrespected, they feel victimized and they feel they have the right to
retaliated in the most violent ways imaginable. And they are both wrong.
Love is the way. Love is the starting point, the means and
the end. But those words are almost devoid of meaning in today’s world. So I
will dilute it and make it imaginable. One [place we can begin to love is
with the children. We must start to end the endless retaliation by loving the
children. The children must be raised with vastly more respect. They must be
seen as arriving in this world bearing an inner template or “app” of how
their God-self wants them to live their lives. They must be seen to have a precious
innate tool of knowing how their God-self wants them to live. That tool must
be recognized to be the tremendous gift of the emotions.
When an infant cries there must be a loving response so
the child feels empowered. When a two year old says no, they must be
respected. When a child asks his weeping mother why she is sad, she must not
say “Oh I am fine. Nothing’s wrong.” That is a lie and emotional lies to self
or others—especially children--are extremely destructive. The parents of a
child whose wishes they want to respect must also learn to respect their own feelings and desires at the
same time. But ideas and beliefs must not be confused with feelings. We all
have many ideas and beliefs we have gotten from others and from the past that
simply are not valid. All beliefs and ideas must be examined for emotional
validity and released if they have none.
The emotional needs of both parent and child can be ameliorated
and accommodated successfully every time… with a little creative thinking and
intuiting. For example, children do not like school the way it is presented
today. They learn to tolerate it and to be as happy as they can. They learn
to make the best of it. But they are not really happy. So when a child says I
don’t want to go to school, then the parent should take this seriously and see
if she can accommodate the child. If her answer is, “but if my child doesn’t
go to school then I can’t go to work. And I MUST!” Then ask yourself, “do I
really want to go to work?” Does my inner child want to go to work? Or is it
my intellect, my rational mind (which is vastly overrated) that is saying I must go to work. What would happen if
I didn’t? What would happen if I started to ask for what I really wanted?
Fewer hours, better conditions, more pay etc. Or perhaps I would realize I had
really wanted to work at home for some time now, but hadn’t dared act on it.
I had not trusted my feelings. I had “thought
better of it.” I had tried to be “practical” but had really allowed fear to
rule me. Nothing is more practical than listening to one’s emotions and
intuitions. They can always lead us to the perfect God-given solution that
works best for both us and our children.
When the whole world is turning within for this wisdom we
will be raising the children very differently. School will not be compulsive.
Better child-centered schools will begin to appear. True love of learning
will be allowed to be more important than discipline and control by the
adults. Bells and clocks and rigid schedules will disappear in favor of an
inner timing based on intuition and feeling. Children (not parents) will be assigned educational subsidies
they can take wherever they want. The best child-centered schools will
receive the most students and the most money that way. Other schools will
quickly adapt and become child centered as well.
Emotional intelligence will be taught in every
school. They will learn to ask, “what
am I really feeling?” What are others likely feeling (although this is a
distant second to what the self feels) How can I best express my feelings?
What are the boundaries I want respected around myself? How do I allow others
that same respect—for they will be taught that there is a Universal law that
says, “what goes around comes around.” So they will not put out to others
anything they would not want for themselves, for it will come back to them eventually.
And so anger will begin to subside in the world. Compassion
will take its place. There will be no further need for finding targets for
suppressed anger. Wars will end because love has become the way. Loving the
child and allowing them to remain the genuinely self- loving/other loving beings
they are when they are born, will change the world. The children will no
longer feel terrorized inside by all the emotional falsity around them. They
will not be terrorized by the domination of the intellect over the feelings
(from others and eventually within themselves). Then outer terrorism will
end. There will be no more “Charlie Hebdo’s” or war. There will be universal
peace and amelioration of thought and feeling. Thought will serve feeling.
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This blog is a catch all for all of the things I am doing in my life. It covers my interests in art, writing, fashion design, interior home design, social/political issues, mind/body self-healing and other spiritual/metaphysical issues. It also covers my experiences with "hearing voices" -- the non-psychotic kind.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
EMAIL RESPONSE TO THE KILLINGS AT CHARLIE HEBDO MAGAZINE
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