by Sweejak » Thu Jun 01, 2006 11:12 pm
<!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>a green wrist band with the word PEACE stamped into it.<br>I wonder if that was intentional to that particular photo. Just a little thing I noticed.<br><br>"You can pull my peace band off from my cold dead wrist". <hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Yes it was. Don't you love the irony?<br><br>I believe in the second amendment and the collective.. was that unconciousness or consciousness?<br><br>I think guns are the very, very last resort, and one about which I don't have a clue if I would or could use them. But I asked my father about it, specifically if when he was arrested by the Gestapo if he had a gun would he have used it. He said yes. Then too there is the popular Solzhenitsyn quote:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>"How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every police operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive?"<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>But then during a conversation somewhere online which was about the right of self defense I asked:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Isn't self defense an 'inalienable right'? Whether<br>someone is killed or not as a consequence is somewhat besides the point. The rightness or wrongness would depend on intent. Will you aim at the knees of someone attacking your family or shoot to kill?<br><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>To which the reply was:<br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Yes, I suppose so, inalienable in sense of being instinctive. But the<br>sense of this particular "right" depends upon how "self" is defined. For me the "self" is a psycho-social reality, i.e. a netword of<br>relationships of which I, in my perception, am but one nodual. Apart<br>from these relationships, I may have an ego but no sense of who I am. As a worshiper of Jesus of Nazareth, I perceive my mission in life as doing all that I can to help those about me expand their sense of self so that their identities become more and more catholic in nature excluding no one. This is for me the meaning of Jesus' command to "love one's enemy."<br><br>Thus killing other human beings to keep my own organism alive or to keep other individuals alive who are more intensely a part of my sense of self than the one(s) who are assaulting us is self-defeating and in a sense suicidal as it would be a rejection of the primary reason I have for being alive. Put simply what most people mean by self-defense to me makes no sense. For me 'self defense' means struggling to overcome whatever alienation I encounter that hinders me and the other person(s) I am in conflict with to realize that we are in fact "one body." The instinct I have to keep my own organism alive or near relationships alive at all costs is something I renounce every time I acknowledge that I am a "member" of that all embracing reality "the Body" that has been revealed to us in the person of Jesus by having intercourse with that<br>reality in Holy Communion.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br><br>Well I know the religious talk will be too much for some but maybe you can sort of take it out and go with the general thought.<br><br>When I passed this response around it was greeted with general admiration, like "wow", and " a high mark to achieve, what a great guy". One reply was "yeah what a great guy, he just gave me permission to cut off his son's testicles" [this was around the time that John Yoo's statement was making the rounds].<br><br>So, I don't know what I'm trying to say, it's just thought provoking. I don't have any real conclusion... What would Jesus do? Well the story is that he was crucified. Does all humanity have to be crucified?<br><br>Anyway, regarding Ghandi, there is the spinning wheel story:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.earthguild.com/products/spinning/spcharka.htm">www.earthguild.com/produc...charka.htm</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Which wasn't really a strike, in that they didn't just do nothing it was very pro-active.<br><br>So I think Ghandi would be all for a strike, a massive general strike and that would starve the system out. If people are awake why would it not be possible to do this? How much would you pay to bring down this system?<br><br> <p></p><i></i>