With the end of August in 2006 came the end of free time for a loooooooooong time. It was my first semester in my first academic job, and I could not believe how busy I was. I had thought graduate school kept me busy! Yet I found time (usually in those few minutes before sleep, to help my mind wind down) to read a few pages of fiction or something non-work related. And finally, in November, I had something of relevance to this blog to say.
November 12
What is on my mind today? Mostly my book (A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry), and India in general. Here’s the puzzle – how can the most ancient, most enlightened, most cosmic and yet most sensible religion the world has ever produced, spawn such evil? There are times when I wonder if there isn’t something inherently wrong with Christianity, since it so regularly leads to exclusion, discrimination, intolerance, hatred and injustice. But one only has to look at India to see the same things, and for Buddhism look at Cambodia and Sri Lanka and China. For Islam there is Egypt and Sudan and Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Jews also have bloody history and the current state of Israel could hardly be more evil. You know what they did this week? After the Palestinians had managed to hold to a cease fire for 7 months – a remarkable feat considering the heterogeneity of political/military groups in their midst – the damned Israeli army sent a succession – 6, not 1 – missiles to destroy a civilian apartment building in Gaza. 14 children were killed, 6 or 7 all from the same family. And what do the Israelis say? “We’re sorry, it was an accident.” Animals!
It is easy to see why some would come to the conclusion that religion is the root of all evil. I don’t believe that, but I do wonder why religion is so weak. Pundits talk about the power of religion to motivate people, etc., but really isn’t it that religion is powerless in the face of human greed and hatred? It certainly seems to me, looking back at all of history, that it is much more often the case that evil people turn religion into a tool, than that religion transforms and uses evil men.
I presented this to Jim just now over a cigarette and it spurred an hour long debate/discussion that began philosophically but ended with application. He first tried to make it about creating a stronger religion, one that could stand up to human evil, but we didn’t get far with that. It did lead me to say that I think humans are so fallen, so evil, that we can’t base a religion on human nature. He said I sounded like I was talking about Original Sin. I said not necessarily, the original “sin” could simply be a factor of how we evolved. Competition, he said, is the root of all evil. We are hard-wired to compete. Yes, and we discussed that awhile.
But, as I’ve said before, we are also hard-wired to cooperate. Our species would have died out had we not cooperated with one another. Jim made/used a clever metaphor of the Strong and Weak forces in physics – it looks like the strong force is stronger, it is when measured immediately. But it is the weak force that holds the universe together. So we both agree that what needs to happen is an increase in our awareness and practice of cooperation, rather than competition. We argued awhile about how to do that, and the extent to which it is already occurring.
November 13
Oh my. This book I’m reading . . . It is just one heartbreaking tragedy after another. Nearly unbearable to read. I keep looking at the table of contents, scanning the chapter titles for some sign of brightness, some hint of a happy ending. It doesn’t provide much optimism. How can people be so terrible to one another? Modern psychology, with its almost complete lack of attention to issues of power, provides no help in understanding it.
I, from my relatively safe, secure, loving childhood and privileged white middle class status, have no capacity for understanding what makes people hate so globally. I get being angry at someone you know, hating individuals for hurting or thwarting you. But how does that translate, or mutate, into a rage and hatred so general that one can be cruel to perfect strangers? And the contempt! How is it that people can sort others into categories and the despise and reject their humanity based on that category and their membership in it?
I have certainly felt contempt for individuals, and have bordered on hatred because of it. And I admit I’m more prepared to despise people who fall into certain categories – Neo-con Republicans, Bible thumping bigots, bigots in general. But I at least give individuals a chance. Its only when they open their mouths and utter opinions I find despicable that I feel contempt. And I don’t believe I have the capacity to deny food, water, or shelter to even those I despise the most, like Bush. I don’t believe I’m capable of beating or raping or setting their houses on fire, either. Or even shipping them off to be beaten and exploited and worked into the ground.
So how do so many humans find it so easy, so casual, to do all of the above and worse, to people they don’t even know? Just because they are poor, or black, or Mexican, or Buddhist, or Jewish or French, or female or working class or a stranger? I don’t even know how to begin to understand it. And it is so common! Much more common than simple kindness.
We talk about Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot as if they were rare aberrations. But really, aren’t their feelings and theories and callousness closer to the norm? There have been so many evil, despotic rulers, but for each one of them there are millions of soldiers, prison guards, gang members, lawyers, business men, shopkeepers, farmers and even religious leaders (high and low), who feel and behave in exactly the same ways. They just don’t have the power to do it on a grand scale. Although the inhuman decisions of CEOs and bankers destroy lives in vast, uncounted numbers.
How can one not despair? Why do we have it so good in the U.S.? Because we wrote laws and voted on them in an attempt to curb the worst abuses, to try to protect ourselves from the monstrous people in our midst. But now people, in their fear of unpredictable and largely fabricated threats of terrorists, are ready – no, eager – to suspend all those laws that protect us, just to have the illusion of security. Please tell me how removing all of our civil rights and liberties will prevent the spread of anthrax, or stop a nuclear missile, or prevent explosives from exploding? It’s a myth, but frightened people eat it up.
Maybe what they really need is a reminder of what happens in places without these protections. And someone to connect the dots for them, so they see why we must have freedom of speech, law of habeas corpus, and the right to face one’s accuser. Maybe they are so uneducated, taught all the wrong things in all the wrong ways, so that they don’t know.
December 21
Jim shared some of his struggle for meaning. By the end of that conversation I was convinced more than ever that he would benefit from Taoism. So I brought him down the Tao te Ching before I went to bed.
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