http://www.scribd.com/doc/338338/Edmund-Leach-Political-Systems-of-Highland-Burma-A-Study-of-Kachin-Social-Structure-introduction
For years, I naively assumed that "anarchy" meant the total absence of law, order, government. Then I read that in the Bible, the Prophet Samuel advocate a kind of anarchy when he cautioned regarding the drawbacks of choosing a king, as the other nations had. It struck me that the opening scene of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai described a feudal time of anarchy, where each clan or village was on its own, to secure defense and justice. In these times, the tribal regions and clan justice in places like Afghanistan/Pakistan seem to me to be that sort of anarchy. And the opening testimony of the introduction (above) speaks of negotiating an alliance with another clan. This reminds me of the times of Prophet Mohammad, when someone would seek the protection of a clan, as client, and where blood revenge was a major deterrent to homicide. Am I mistaken in my notions regarding the nature of anarchy?
In a desire to highlight some differences between our culture, and Arab cultures, one journalist remarked that in an a Muslim society, people's very first thought in any situation, would likely be "is it Haram or Halal (forbidden or permitted under Sharia).
I suppose one great touchstone of any society is the degree of stability and also longevity. We should easily be able to point to the most stable and enduring of cultures in history, as well as the most volatile, much as we can rank the elements in chemistry, from most to least stable.
...
I am thinking about Karen Armstrong's "A Short History of Islam." People who lacked a strong tribe or clan, or a strong defense, would forge an alliance with a strong tribe or clan, and become their client.
When the Shah of Iran fell, and the Ayatollah Komeini came to power, one change enacted was to lower the age of marriage for girls from 14 to nine, since this is the age of Aiyesha, when the Prophet Mohammad took her in marriage. I asked an engineer acquaintance in Tehran if he ever saw a nine year old bride. He said that in the cities, one would see brides as young as 13 or 14, but, only amongst the nomads would one see a nine year old bride. It occurs to me that, from ancient times, the exchange of a bride between families was one way to form a strong bond, an alliance, to to achieve a greater degree of political stability. If this is true, then, the ethics of the transaction, the moral justification, is a political consideration, rather than some subjective individual consideration of the bride or her desires, or her capacity to make choices and give informed consent.
...
Imagine, the numerous tribes of native Americans, living for millenia in this form of tribal anarchy, some loosely associated, but most not associated at all. Justice was maintained by custom and oral tradition, and not by the written word, interpreted by some organized body of authority.
...
I see the benefits of the tribal life of the native Americans to be benefits for the species or group as a whole, in a system where the individual's interests are subordinate. The group as a whole remains very hardy, with little need of medical science or antibiotics, but an individual may suffer greatly. In our modern, technological society, the comfort of each individual is maximized at the expense of the robustness of the species as a whole, since we become ever increasingly dependent upon science and medicine to survive and propagate.
...
Let us be fanciful and conjure some hypothetical situation, in ancient history, where the natives of the Americas foresee the coming of the European, and realize that their entire way of life shall be destroyed; and that they shall be enslaved by their invaders. Surely, the North American natives would consider their culture and life style to be far superior to that of the invading Europeans. The natives would most likely see the concept of private property as a perversion; and see monarchy and church as the enemy of natural liberty. Furthermore, let us imagine that the native North Americans possessed some biological weapon, to which they are naturally immune, but which would be utterly lethal to the invading Europeans. Certainly, the natives would feel it their righteous moral duty, both to themselves, and to the plant and animal kingdom under their stewardship, to methodically destroy the races of Europe and Asia, in a mass genocide.
Whenever we see an evil of the magnitude of, say, Hitler and the Nazis, then, we do not find it strange at all that a pastor such as Bonhoeffer (author of The Cost of Discipleship with its concept of Cheap Grace), should attempt an assassination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cost_of_Discipleship
I see ethics/morality as relative, and not absolute. Many feel a desparate need to cloak duty in absolute terms of some divine scripture, or, in the case of someone like Kant, in axiomatic principles.
But, if we look at the logic of a Nixon or Bush, who sees themselves as heroes, defending the very culture itself against some demonic enemy, then, any injustice, however monstrous, becomes dignified and respectful as a means to an end, in the face of some absolute morality.
Under normal circumstances, we see both suicide and genocide as morally repugnant. In a curious way, suicide is genocide turned inside out. Each tactic has the goal to make the adversary disappear.
When the entire human species, in prehistoric times, is a mere million, then the first mitzvah or commandment becomes "Be fruitful and multiply." Yet, China, faced with demographic
In 70C.E. the Jews, besieged at Masada, saw suicide as the only option, and an acceptable, honorable option, when faced with capture by the Roman forces.
Would the Athenians have hesitated to annihilate the Persians, if they had the technological means?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Why Me? Why Not Me?
We so often hear someone afflicted with misfortune exclaim "Why me?" Less frequently, and in a less obvious fashion, people with some great unfulfilled desire will, in so many words, say "Why not me?" Why don't I win the Lotto? The key word in these two questions is obviously "ME". Or is it so obvious? For the majority of people, the significant word is "WHY" and they take the word "me" for granted as a given. What I am trying to get at by mentioning the word "me" is an exploration of the illusion of "self" and the personal which gives rise to the question "why," which underscores the desperate frustration and disappointment of our unfilled desires and expectations.
Let us imagine a beautiful summer day. We gaze at the blue sky and notice a number of white clouds. We see those clouds as "INDIVIDUAL" clouds; that is, we impose upon them in our imagination separate unique identities, we count and number them (which implies separation and individuality) and we may even go further in our imagination and see them shaped as certain animals or objects, thus endowing them with characters and attributes and personalities. If we were to ascend in a plane or balloon then as we approached higher and higher to a particular cloud it would at some point lose its shape and character and uniqueness and, as we entered into it, would become for our perception no longer a white and fluffy shape but a gray, damp fog which would surround us and obscure our vision. Yet, whether we behold from afar or near or within, we are never conscious of the individual water molecules and dust particles which actually comprise the cloud nor of the wind which gives it shape and a life of its own.
Any cloud, whether a cumulus cloud on a summer day, or a nebula of galactic proportions, has a certain overall temperature which we can measure. And yet we know that some of the molecules in that cloud (or even in the air of the room in which we sit) are extremely slow and cold, of a low energy, while others are extremely hot and excited, of a high energy. The temperature of the cloud or our room is a composite of all the molecules. In fact, in a sense, room-temperature itself is an illusion. If we were to centrifuge the air in our room, and concentrate all the low energy molecules, they would be cold enough to freeze and form ice, while a concentration of the high energy molecules would cause steam and be hot enough to burn us. What if each molecule in the air were a personality saying "Why me?" Why am I a cold low energy molecule? Why am I not a high energy molecule? The reality is that each molecule passes at various times through high-energy states and low-energy states.
It is the dollar tickets of millions of unlucky losers that make one lucky winner. We understand objectively that the very nature of a Lotto is that only one in millions can win it, because of the odds and statistics and mathematics inherent in the process, yet we cannot understand why WE PERSONALLY are not that one who is lucky and wins, though we fully realize that in some LOTTO heaven, where EVERYONE wins and hits the jackpot, why the process is rendered meaningless and unfeasible. We can have ONE Bill Gates or Rockefeller per country, per century, but it defies the laws of economics for everyone to be opulently wealthy. The nature of economics and world resources cannot support such a heavenly vision of prosperity. It takes millions of loyal subjects to make one King, one Queen, one Throne. There are no rivers of honey and milk and wine in the real world, only in the imagination and in hallucinations. We understand objectively that life is not possible without the random chances which cause mutations (both beneficial and detrimental) and malfunction and misfortune and illness and death, yet we fail to understand when we ourselves become the victim of that random process of chance. Why was I born blind? Why did I develop cancer? Why did my kidneys stop functioning? Why me?
A beautiful statue such as Michelangelo's Pieta has a character and a personality and a uniqueness all its own and yet for millennia that statue remained "hidden" within a huge block of marble, until Michelangelo's skillful hands chiseled away all the marble which "IS NOT" the statue. When we view the statue in a museum, we are like someone on the ground perceiving the clouds in the "PERSONAL mode". When we think in terms of the huge block of marble concealing the Pieta (and countless other statues) in potentiality, then we are perceiving or conceiving of the Pieta and the marble in the "IMPERSONAL mode".
Each of us is an individual unique character or personality with gifts and shortcomings and a predictable nature of behaviors. But we are also like dust particles and molecules comprising a particular society and culture and nation, whether that is the USA or Iraq or the Australian Bush. Furthermore, like the cloud, we are comprised of a countless myriad of cells, molecules, electrons and quarks and muons which behave as if they are quite unaware of the person which they comprise. In fact molecules are constantly entering and leaving our body so that every 7 years we are not the same person "materially," since so many molecules have been replaced. Often we are unaware of the greater society, nation, culture, world which is comprised of so many and of which we are but an infinitesimal part.
Sometimes we focus in so much upon the "why me" of a loved one's death, or the affliction of a chronic illness which causes blindness or paralysis that we miss the "bigger picture" of life and existence and the universe. We become so focused that we are in a different sense unfocused since we loose sight of so many good things for the sake of a few bad things.
I know of a case of a woman who in old age was afflicted with a stroke and left paralyzed. She literally spent the last year of her life, her every waking moment, constantly screaming "Why, why, die, die!" Life is not heaven and is not of our own making, but sometimes hells are our own creation.
When we view God as personal, then it is only natural that we assume some relationship with God. God becomes our friend and heavenly father whom we look to for all our needs. Or when we are disappointed then the personal God becomes for us a cruel and sadistic prankster who constantly disappoints us and then sits back laughing in amusement. God can even assume a devil's mask of punisher and tormentor, angered by our sins, or possibly simply angered because we did not sufficiently "BELIEVE" in Him or pray in a certain fashion or bow in the correct direction. Perhaps each of us IS God if only in the sense that we impose such roles and natures upon God and give God a certain character and nature and personality. We are a reflection of God and God is a reflection of us. Psalm 19 curiously expresses this phenomenon of Divine Reciprocity.
In order to explore the thoughts of Psalm 19, I shall now quote an extensive passage from
Forgiveness and the Amish - Page 314
==========================
(beginning of excerpt):
Forgiveness" IS the proverbial 'light at the end of the tunnel', at least for the Amish.
It is their hope that by cultivating a forgiving nature in themselves, that they will one day enjoy God's forgiveness.
I think it is Psalm 18 which has a very interesting verse:
"God repaid me in accordance with my righteousness, according to the cleanliness of my hands before His eyes. With the devout You acted devoutly, with the wholehearted man You acted wholeheartedly, with the pure You acted purely, and with the crooked You acted perversely."
God is sort of like a mirror, reflecting back to us what we ourselves are, or have become, through our free will choices.
A mirror reflects. Meditation is often called "reflection". And a "reflex" is an action which we do not even have to think about because it arises from our nature.
If we truly see God as merciful and forgiving towards us, it is only because we see REFLECTED back at us our own merciful and forgiving, patient, long-suffering nature which we have painstakingly cultivated in the sufferings of this fire of adversity which we call life.
One of Socrates' favorite sayings in the Dialogues of Plato is:
"Chalapa ta kala" which means "Beautiful/good/noble things are difficult.
You have touched upon the very essence of what is so difficult about forgiveness of one's enemies.
The ability to forgive, taken to its extreme, to forgive even the most vicious enemy and the most heinous monster of a criminal, reaches almost supernatural proportions. Whatever faults or shortcoming one might see in Christianity as it is practiced by the hundreds upon hundreds of sectarian groups, one must always (as Gandhi did) see the divine aspect of the words of Christ and the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. When we have more than ample incomes, it is a small thing to give a few dollars to a homeless person, or even thousands of dollars to a charity, which will also provide some sort of tax write-off.
But the widow in the parable (the "widows mite") who had only one small coin (called a "mite," similar to our 'nickel' or 'dime') to her name, and contributed it to the Temple, gave all that she had, and the magnitude of her gesture did not go unrecognized.
Of course, if "forgiveness" is not "your cup of tea," then perhaps Christianity is not for you. But that is why (at least in my mind) there is such a "smorgasbord" of religions set out before us. There are other religions which do not stress forgiveness or "loving ones enemy" (in the interest of political correctness, I shall refrain from naming those religions, but you can figure it out for yourself).
In the Gita, Lord Krsna says that different people worship different things, some worship ghosts, some demons, some ancestors, some demi-Gods, and some say "Vasudeva is all". But God is a good sport (at least in the Gita) and receives all forms of worship, even from those ignorant of His nature. Furthermore, Krsna says "Whatever form they choose to worship, I grant unto them UNWAVERING DEVOTION".
Sometimes we choose to see this unwavering devotion as something else, and call it "pig-headed-ness". But there is some sublime mystical reason why there is evil in the world, and why there are people who worship devils but call them God, and why each of us does whatever we are habitually drawn to do. Everyone is born into this world (I believe again and again) to work out some kind of issues. Some work them out as criminals, prostitutes, and drug addicts. Others work them out as Mother Theresa, Gandhi and the Dali Lama.
(end of excerpt)
==========================
Can we find it within ourselves to forgive ourselves for what we are and what we are not, to forgive God for what God is not, to forgive the Lotto for it's mathematical stinginess and subatomic molecules and life itself for its less than perfect nature? Perfection is only in the imagination.
In Tulsidas' Ramayan, even the Rakshasa demons and Ravanna have their own religion. In the Gospels, Satan quotes the Bible chapter and verse. There is even honor among thieves.
The Jewish people have had great difficulty in reconciling the horror of the Nazi Holocaust with their notion of a good God and his chosen people. Some Jews have abandoned their religious practice and their belief in God out of their anger and bitterness over the Holocaust and its cruel concentration camps. We can cease to believe in the existence of God and yet continue to feel anger and bitterness towards something or someone which we claim does not exist.
Perhaps an ore of silver of gold, if it had consciousness, would view the heat of the refiner's furnace as a torment. In one instructive story from religious tradition, the ore takes on a personality and cries out to the refiner's apprentice saying "Oh, when will this terrible inferno end? (Oh, why me)?" The apprentice answers, "When you soften and melt and become so pure and tranquil and shining that the Master sees His face in your reflection, then and only then will the process of refinement be complete."
Let us imagine a beautiful summer day. We gaze at the blue sky and notice a number of white clouds. We see those clouds as "INDIVIDUAL" clouds; that is, we impose upon them in our imagination separate unique identities, we count and number them (which implies separation and individuality) and we may even go further in our imagination and see them shaped as certain animals or objects, thus endowing them with characters and attributes and personalities. If we were to ascend in a plane or balloon then as we approached higher and higher to a particular cloud it would at some point lose its shape and character and uniqueness and, as we entered into it, would become for our perception no longer a white and fluffy shape but a gray, damp fog which would surround us and obscure our vision. Yet, whether we behold from afar or near or within, we are never conscious of the individual water molecules and dust particles which actually comprise the cloud nor of the wind which gives it shape and a life of its own.
Any cloud, whether a cumulus cloud on a summer day, or a nebula of galactic proportions, has a certain overall temperature which we can measure. And yet we know that some of the molecules in that cloud (or even in the air of the room in which we sit) are extremely slow and cold, of a low energy, while others are extremely hot and excited, of a high energy. The temperature of the cloud or our room is a composite of all the molecules. In fact, in a sense, room-temperature itself is an illusion. If we were to centrifuge the air in our room, and concentrate all the low energy molecules, they would be cold enough to freeze and form ice, while a concentration of the high energy molecules would cause steam and be hot enough to burn us. What if each molecule in the air were a personality saying "Why me?" Why am I a cold low energy molecule? Why am I not a high energy molecule? The reality is that each molecule passes at various times through high-energy states and low-energy states.
It is the dollar tickets of millions of unlucky losers that make one lucky winner. We understand objectively that the very nature of a Lotto is that only one in millions can win it, because of the odds and statistics and mathematics inherent in the process, yet we cannot understand why WE PERSONALLY are not that one who is lucky and wins, though we fully realize that in some LOTTO heaven, where EVERYONE wins and hits the jackpot, why the process is rendered meaningless and unfeasible. We can have ONE Bill Gates or Rockefeller per country, per century, but it defies the laws of economics for everyone to be opulently wealthy. The nature of economics and world resources cannot support such a heavenly vision of prosperity. It takes millions of loyal subjects to make one King, one Queen, one Throne. There are no rivers of honey and milk and wine in the real world, only in the imagination and in hallucinations. We understand objectively that life is not possible without the random chances which cause mutations (both beneficial and detrimental) and malfunction and misfortune and illness and death, yet we fail to understand when we ourselves become the victim of that random process of chance. Why was I born blind? Why did I develop cancer? Why did my kidneys stop functioning? Why me?
A beautiful statue such as Michelangelo's Pieta has a character and a personality and a uniqueness all its own and yet for millennia that statue remained "hidden" within a huge block of marble, until Michelangelo's skillful hands chiseled away all the marble which "IS NOT" the statue. When we view the statue in a museum, we are like someone on the ground perceiving the clouds in the "PERSONAL mode". When we think in terms of the huge block of marble concealing the Pieta (and countless other statues) in potentiality, then we are perceiving or conceiving of the Pieta and the marble in the "IMPERSONAL mode".
Each of us is an individual unique character or personality with gifts and shortcomings and a predictable nature of behaviors. But we are also like dust particles and molecules comprising a particular society and culture and nation, whether that is the USA or Iraq or the Australian Bush. Furthermore, like the cloud, we are comprised of a countless myriad of cells, molecules, electrons and quarks and muons which behave as if they are quite unaware of the person which they comprise. In fact molecules are constantly entering and leaving our body so that every 7 years we are not the same person "materially," since so many molecules have been replaced. Often we are unaware of the greater society, nation, culture, world which is comprised of so many and of which we are but an infinitesimal part.
Sometimes we focus in so much upon the "why me" of a loved one's death, or the affliction of a chronic illness which causes blindness or paralysis that we miss the "bigger picture" of life and existence and the universe. We become so focused that we are in a different sense unfocused since we loose sight of so many good things for the sake of a few bad things.
I know of a case of a woman who in old age was afflicted with a stroke and left paralyzed. She literally spent the last year of her life, her every waking moment, constantly screaming "Why, why, die, die!" Life is not heaven and is not of our own making, but sometimes hells are our own creation.
When we view God as personal, then it is only natural that we assume some relationship with God. God becomes our friend and heavenly father whom we look to for all our needs. Or when we are disappointed then the personal God becomes for us a cruel and sadistic prankster who constantly disappoints us and then sits back laughing in amusement. God can even assume a devil's mask of punisher and tormentor, angered by our sins, or possibly simply angered because we did not sufficiently "BELIEVE" in Him or pray in a certain fashion or bow in the correct direction. Perhaps each of us IS God if only in the sense that we impose such roles and natures upon God and give God a certain character and nature and personality. We are a reflection of God and God is a reflection of us. Psalm 19 curiously expresses this phenomenon of Divine Reciprocity.
In order to explore the thoughts of Psalm 19, I shall now quote an extensive passage from
Forgiveness and the Amish - Page 314
==========================
(beginning of excerpt):
Forgiveness" IS the proverbial 'light at the end of the tunnel', at least for the Amish.
It is their hope that by cultivating a forgiving nature in themselves, that they will one day enjoy God's forgiveness.
I think it is Psalm 18 which has a very interesting verse:
"God repaid me in accordance with my righteousness, according to the cleanliness of my hands before His eyes. With the devout You acted devoutly, with the wholehearted man You acted wholeheartedly, with the pure You acted purely, and with the crooked You acted perversely."
God is sort of like a mirror, reflecting back to us what we ourselves are, or have become, through our free will choices.
A mirror reflects. Meditation is often called "reflection". And a "reflex" is an action which we do not even have to think about because it arises from our nature.
If we truly see God as merciful and forgiving towards us, it is only because we see REFLECTED back at us our own merciful and forgiving, patient, long-suffering nature which we have painstakingly cultivated in the sufferings of this fire of adversity which we call life.
One of Socrates' favorite sayings in the Dialogues of Plato is:
"Chalapa ta kala" which means "Beautiful/good/noble things are difficult.
You have touched upon the very essence of what is so difficult about forgiveness of one's enemies.
The ability to forgive, taken to its extreme, to forgive even the most vicious enemy and the most heinous monster of a criminal, reaches almost supernatural proportions. Whatever faults or shortcoming one might see in Christianity as it is practiced by the hundreds upon hundreds of sectarian groups, one must always (as Gandhi did) see the divine aspect of the words of Christ and the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. When we have more than ample incomes, it is a small thing to give a few dollars to a homeless person, or even thousands of dollars to a charity, which will also provide some sort of tax write-off.
But the widow in the parable (the "widows mite") who had only one small coin (called a "mite," similar to our 'nickel' or 'dime') to her name, and contributed it to the Temple, gave all that she had, and the magnitude of her gesture did not go unrecognized.
Of course, if "forgiveness" is not "your cup of tea," then perhaps Christianity is not for you. But that is why (at least in my mind) there is such a "smorgasbord" of religions set out before us. There are other religions which do not stress forgiveness or "loving ones enemy" (in the interest of political correctness, I shall refrain from naming those religions, but you can figure it out for yourself).
In the Gita, Lord Krsna says that different people worship different things, some worship ghosts, some demons, some ancestors, some demi-Gods, and some say "Vasudeva is all". But God is a good sport (at least in the Gita) and receives all forms of worship, even from those ignorant of His nature. Furthermore, Krsna says "Whatever form they choose to worship, I grant unto them UNWAVERING DEVOTION".
Sometimes we choose to see this unwavering devotion as something else, and call it "pig-headed-ness". But there is some sublime mystical reason why there is evil in the world, and why there are people who worship devils but call them God, and why each of us does whatever we are habitually drawn to do. Everyone is born into this world (I believe again and again) to work out some kind of issues. Some work them out as criminals, prostitutes, and drug addicts. Others work them out as Mother Theresa, Gandhi and the Dali Lama.
(end of excerpt)
==========================
Can we find it within ourselves to forgive ourselves for what we are and what we are not, to forgive God for what God is not, to forgive the Lotto for it's mathematical stinginess and subatomic molecules and life itself for its less than perfect nature? Perfection is only in the imagination.
In Tulsidas' Ramayan, even the Rakshasa demons and Ravanna have their own religion. In the Gospels, Satan quotes the Bible chapter and verse. There is even honor among thieves.
The Jewish people have had great difficulty in reconciling the horror of the Nazi Holocaust with their notion of a good God and his chosen people. Some Jews have abandoned their religious practice and their belief in God out of their anger and bitterness over the Holocaust and its cruel concentration camps. We can cease to believe in the existence of God and yet continue to feel anger and bitterness towards something or someone which we claim does not exist.
Perhaps an ore of silver of gold, if it had consciousness, would view the heat of the refiner's furnace as a torment. In one instructive story from religious tradition, the ore takes on a personality and cries out to the refiner's apprentice saying "Oh, when will this terrible inferno end? (Oh, why me)?" The apprentice answers, "When you soften and melt and become so pure and tranquil and shining that the Master sees His face in your reflection, then and only then will the process of refinement be complete."
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