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Showing posts with label Sacrifice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sacrifice. Show all posts

6.11.2016

*****  Eureka! The missing proof that justice is a necessary but entirely insufficient anti violent goal: throughout my life I have wanted Justice to be a sufficient goal. 15 years ago I was.........

*****  Eureka! The missing proof that justice is a necessary but entirely insufficient anti violent goal:

Throughout my life I have wanted Justice to be a sufficient goal. 15 years ago I was told by someone that didn't like me so much, an African American  female pastor in a prestigious completely White Main Line Philadelphia Church, ''James, you love Justice more than anyone I have ever met.'' ''No,'' I respectfully replied. ''Thank you, and I can't explain just why, I know what you're referring to in me, but that isn't it. I think what you're seeing is that I may love living beings, all of creation, more than anyone that you have ever met.'' I couldn't explain why better than that. I couldn't explain why to myself, but I knew it deep in my spirit.

Several years ago in an extremely deep study of the theological scholar Dominic Crossan on the historical Jesus I almost became persuaded he was correct, when he asserted, as later has also done Harvard African American Scholar Cornel West, that Justice is loving made publicly manifest. Subsequently I realized that that is sometimes true but not necessarily true. Think of those that wield Justice, True Justice out of hatred, out of blind self-righteousness, arrogance, evil. Think of Inspector Javert in Les Mis. 

But that was not sufficient proof that justice is an insufficient goal of the anti-violent warrior.

The proof, not the proof to you, the proof to me, just clicked into place as I pedaled this 200 lb ELFusion vehicle from the Washington Monument to my abode 3 miles away. In the 90-degree heat, dehydrated, mostly uphill and with a debilitating chest cold in its third day.

Several pieces clicked into place.

1. Gandhi said that physical force is a superior choice in the case where one's wife is being raped and the only way that the husband can stop the rape is with physical Force. Gandhi cited this example many times. What clicked into place is that he never said that physical Force was justified in protecting oneself, and he always behaved as though it absolutely was not. This may be an oversight but I think not. Why would that be?

2. Gandhi was not about his own life, ultimately he was not about the life or even the Dignity of the wife being raped, nor of the husband. He was about achieving an infinitely larger good, a prevailing Justice for All of humanity, indeed for all of creation. In being about winning that greater good it is necessary to tap into the ultimate power in the universe which he described as Soul Force, truth Force, the love of a mother for her child. He cited the love of a mother for her child as the ultimate power that he tried to tap into. He never said the love of a mother for justice. He never said the love of a mother for herself. Why? Because neither of them are as powerful a moral Force for the engagement of the mass of passive onlookers as the love of a mother for her child, which involves self-sacrifice.

3. That shows the third proof which you can prove to yourself I suspect. Ask yourself which moves you more, the mother protecting herself, or the mother sacrificing her life for her child? I did not ask if you were unmoved by the mother trying to protect herself. Of course you are, of course you should be as am I. But which moves you more? The Mother Out of Love sacrificing or risking her life for her child! The Ultimate Force in the universe that the anti-violent, loving, nonviolent Warrior devotes their very being to embodying for the joy of it, because they can't do otherwise, tapping into is that Force which can only be activated in the onlookers, you in the question I asked you a moment ago, can only be tapped into in the onlookers when they witness someone offering or giving their life for a cause Beyond and greater than themselves equivalent to a greater good for another or a greater good for others. The Selma Marchers were putting their body In Harm's Way for their children, for their race, for their brothers and sisters.  The Freedom Riders, Alice Paul and her sisters,  the tens of thousands of Egyptians in Tahrir square, Malala, the school children in Soweto. And finally, number

4.  The anti-violent Warrior  the loving Warrior,  cannot tap into the ultimate power within them self  for justice, neither Justice for everyone, or just just for their self.  We don't work that way. We're not built that way. It's a function of our DNA.  Justice is a motivating force. It is not as motivating a force  as the heart connected to the well-being of another(s)  and thereby being engaged to protect the life or the Dignity of the other.  'Man hath no greater love than to lay down his life for his brother.' The ultimate need, the ultimate motivating force, of the healthy human being is meaning,  the potentially great meaning to the life of another. The definitive work on this is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for meaning.  Whether one  got out of the death camp alive in Nazi Germany he observed was not a function of how healthy and strong the individual was coming in. It was a function of how desperately important  the inhabitant perceived it to be that they survive  so that they could get out to help someone else,  the wife,  or in the case of Frankel,  a much larger Community by publishing his psychological treatise.

The ultimate motivation that mother nature gave us was not  the desire for self-preservation, or for justice, even for justice  for the larger group.  It is to protect the very lives and dignity  of others.  Yes, she gave us the desire for justice, and the drsire to protect oneself. But if that's all she gave us, we essentially socially dependent species from the very beginning, then we would not have survived through the Millenia.  She gave us the ultimate motivation  of caring more about the group then about our own lives.  This is the only Force sufficient  to enable the anti violent Warrior  to go as far and as deep with as much courage and selflessness as an Alice Paul, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali,  and the others that we Revere have to go. This is a huge step for me.

In part I departed from the Democracy spring action a month ago because I sensed it was only about Justice. I do love justice, immensely, but I knew even then Justice is not enough. It's too little too late. Part of my long hesitation to get involved in support of what Bernie Sanders was doing was because although my soul realized that he was going for a much greater good for and all of creation , many most or near all of his followers were simply pursuing Justice and in large part Justice for themselves. I'm not opposed to that per se. I don't deny their right to do so. But I knew deep in my soul it was too little too late.

Now I have the proof I was looking for. The pursuit of justice as an end goal now is way too little way too late. These are the final nanosecond on the clock and they are ticking down.

11.18.2011

D85 50H R 'SL DON'T DIE. MY ELDERS DON'T DO WHAT YOU DO.' SL

Note:  Today or tomorrow was terminal or hospital - the Hill I could take yesterday morning in 4 stops to avoid pass-out, this morning was 16, worst ever by far - Day 50, and Day 4 no fluids.  Sometimes I wonder if there is a Sentient God.  Hmmmmmm.

"Start, you drink something, you can't die.  None of my elders don't know how to stand like you do," cried (literally) Princess Lea (she may be. Pray that she is.) from among the group of young Jedi she brought to meet me last evening.  It was my 2nd time meeting with her, and two other youngsters from Occupy DC - the day before they came to meet - and we did for an hour or more.  Last night only our passion for all Creation let us focus through our quaking bodies - with the frigid temperatures and wind in front of the at about 8pm.

"OK," I said, "I'll drink something, and put the Hunger Strike Fast to Kill Carbon in 2012 on hold starting now, so I can see if this is the Fire I needed to see starting."  It may be.  I'll be holding at day 50, and taking fluids, and rolling back for each day I take of more than a day's calories; all so at an instant's notice I can go back on Hunger Strike Fast if needed.  We'll see.

So sure was I of being hospitalized today or tomorrow that I had one of my only two friends in the DC metro area, Leon, take my computers so it would be easier to liquidate them for Diane Wilson funding, not having to wrestle them from the hospital, even though I've been carrying a Last Will in my pocket with instructions.

Now I'm sending an urgent plea to Leon that I retrieve them immediately, but I'm on FedEx now with the meter running so that's all for now.  Sorry for the typos.

6.14.2011

Pilot Mr Nerandzic sacrificed himself by ordering his passengers from the airship.

Mr Nerandzic sacrificed himself by ordering his passengers from the airship. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/zeppelin-pilot-knew-his-fate-wife/story-e6frf7jx-1226075223030
www.heraldsun.com.au
THE Australian pilot of a Goodyear blimp who died in a fireball after crashing the zeppelin in a German airfield screamed "I crashed the airship" before it burst into flames, a passenger who leapt to safety says.

3.16.2011

3.08.2011

"Maniacal Unreasonable Committed Champions to Plane (think speedboat) Sacrifice EVERYTHING NONESSENTIAL to the mission. ALWAYS." SL

"Maniacal Unreasonable Committed Champions to Plane (think speedboat)
Sacrifice EVERYTHING NONESSENTIAL to the mission.  ALWAYS." SL
 
Windows on SL's Skunk-works:  Start Loving blog, FB StartLoving1, YT StartLoving4, Twitter StartLoving1  <<< GOING DARK MARCH 10 2011


2.13.2011

AFP: Egypt's Wael Ghonim (Muslim?) Kissed EVERY Soldier that beat him, on release.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i-WOaE413jF_V9oB6rsTafRiNZWA?docId=CNG.64b40623ef755670eb1e7e108c8d3448.121

Egypt cyber activist kissed soldiers on release

WASHINGTON — Released after 12 days in custody, Egyptian cyber activist Wael Ghonim kissed the soldiers who had kept him blindfolded and given him the occasional beating.

"I removed my blindfold and I said, 'Hi,' and kissed every one of them," the Google marketing executive for the Middle East said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes" aired Sunday. "All of the soldiers."

"And, you know, it was good," said Ghonim, who emerged as a leader of the street protests which brought down President Hosni Mubarak. "I was sending them a message."

The 30-year-old Ghonim said the beatings were "not systematic."

"It was individual based, like, and it was not from the officers," he said. "It was actually from the soldiers.

"And I forgive them, I have to say. I forgive them, because one thing is that they were convinced that I was harming the country," he said. "I'm sort of like a traitor, I'm destabilizing the country.

"So when he hits me, he doesn't hit me because... he's a bad guy. He's hitting me because he thinks he's a good guy," he said.

Ghonim, who started a Facebook page, "We Are All Khaled Said," that has been credited with helping mobilise the demonstrators, said the protests which led to Mubarak's ouster would not have happened without online social networks.

"If there was no social networks it would have never been sparked," he said. "Because the whole thing before the revolution was the most critical thing.

"Without Facebook, without Twitter, without Google, without You Tube, this would have never happened," Ghonim said.

"One of the strategic mistakes of this regime was blocking Facebook," he continued.

"Why? Because they have told four million people that they are scared like hell from the revolution -- by blocking Facebook.

"They forced everyone who's just, you know, waiting to read the news on Facebook, they forced them to go to the street to be part of this," he said.

Ghonim said he had received death threats and been accused of being a spy and a traitor.

"But I think, in the next few days, when all the black files of the regime are going to be out for everyone to read and see, and, you know, we know about the money that was stolen from this country things are going to get better," he said.

Ghonim was asked by 60 Minutes what other authoritarian leaders should be thinking after the protests in Egypt.

"He should freak out. He seriously should freak out," he said.




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