What I can add is that what you are so powerfully describing is a feature of imperialism and its might makes right worldview. In that worldview, violence is the only possible means for resolving conflict. Order cannot be established or maintained without it. In the mind of empire, violence is redemptive, even holy.
Imperialism is a worldview founded in human infancy and the infant's experience of itself as the center of all things. As far as it understands, the earth and its abundance exist for its pleasure. Whatever it wants it must have right now. This is perfectly healthy in actual infants but extremely unhealthy and terribly dangerous when practiced by grownups.
In this worldview, where everything is mine and nothing is yours except what I give you, other people are, as you say, just extra. Some people might be "mine" and I will deal with them as I wish. The rest are either enemies who contend for what is mine or they are just part of the landscape; non-player characters in the game of my life.
In my understanding, all of us who are citizens of empire have a highly developed inner imperialist. Furthermore, empire has evolved over these milennia to subvert, repress, corrupt, and outright extinguish every impulse and opportunity that would support our maturation beyond its own infantile understanding of the world. This is how we get adults who think that good policy involves hurting the right people. Yet, here so many of us are, empathy intact, still reaching for a world that works for all of us and the planet we share.
I am excited about your work because you not only lay it all out so plainly, you are also charting the counter moves we can make to non-violently overcome empire's rule. With sufficient understanding and the right tools, we might just survive our species' infancy. 🌼
Zero-sum is a fearful way of looking at the world, I think the same as your use of "lack". And it's only one of many ways of approaching any field of study (including economics which is the worst perpetrator of that kind of thinking).
Thanks for this raw exposé, writing words to voice my own soul's groanings about what it means to be human on this planet right now. Also, a thought:
"Yes, there seems to be an instinct to seek safety through harm; it’s an instinct that seems more entrenched the closer we get to the reins of power and privilege and the attendant ability to deliver either abundance or harm, but which we can see expressed by those who exist most directly in harm’s path, too." I'm hearing echoes of Girard here and the inescapability of mimetic rivalry and the founding murder of the world that continues to reverberate in the myth of redemptive violence.
"Hurting the right people". Yeah. I understand the impulse. Of course, for me, the "right people" are the rich and powerful. That doesn't make me a better person. It just means I hate a smaller part of the population.
"If there are to be only two sides, the other side of this equation seems to be those with some combination of ruthlessness and power and reputation and will, who create a world to their specifications, pursuing those things that escalate the urge to massacre: a spirit of escalating hate, informed by a spirit of lack, and the more reputable they are as they pursue it, the more effective they can often be at delivering it."
I think you're right; the other side here is Hamas (fervent extremism in general, Islamist in this case), whose philosophy/motivation is not driven by the occupation, but by the gall of Israel's very existence.
I so so wish that I could present an idea for how to fix this without more massacre.
Thanks for this. I have been struggling with the haste with which an overwhelming counter-attack was called and executed. I founf myself recalling Nelson Mandela admonishing George W Bush on the eve of the Iran invasion that he was a president who did not know how to think! Mandela was right, but Bush, worse than unthinking, turned out to be a liar, corrupt, and a war criminal. I see now how Biden cinfirms the beheadings of babies that never happened, how Blibkin's anger is unchecked, abd Bibi's
Thank you for another stunning piece. I greatly appreciate what you are laying down. My wife's favorite thing to say about her faith journey is that we are here to share in the abundance - that this way of living increases it.
Thank you for this. I've been frustrated and sad all week, feeling my own compulsion to say something, to push back against the tsunami of destructive and hate-filled declarations about who should do what to whom. I've been especially confused about this thin you describe, where speaking out against the massacre of one population results in assumptions that I am in favor of massacre on the other side. Making the statement that nobody should be massacred seems to be met with either accusations of being utterly unrealistic or somehow missing the point and being out of touch. This has been very confusing, but you have described it such that now it all makes sad-but-true sense. I just commented on another article a few minutes ago, with this quote, which seems to me appropriate here, too, as a compliment to what you have written:
"For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support." - Audrey Lorde
The worst thing of that period after 9/11 is probably the fact that while we supposedly were hurting others to be safer, we kept being told we *weren't* safer, as witness the periodic "Orange Alerts" we'd get when our paranoia needed juicing.
Thank you so much for what you do.
What I can add is that what you are so powerfully describing is a feature of imperialism and its might makes right worldview. In that worldview, violence is the only possible means for resolving conflict. Order cannot be established or maintained without it. In the mind of empire, violence is redemptive, even holy.
Imperialism is a worldview founded in human infancy and the infant's experience of itself as the center of all things. As far as it understands, the earth and its abundance exist for its pleasure. Whatever it wants it must have right now. This is perfectly healthy in actual infants but extremely unhealthy and terribly dangerous when practiced by grownups.
In this worldview, where everything is mine and nothing is yours except what I give you, other people are, as you say, just extra. Some people might be "mine" and I will deal with them as I wish. The rest are either enemies who contend for what is mine or they are just part of the landscape; non-player characters in the game of my life.
In my understanding, all of us who are citizens of empire have a highly developed inner imperialist. Furthermore, empire has evolved over these milennia to subvert, repress, corrupt, and outright extinguish every impulse and opportunity that would support our maturation beyond its own infantile understanding of the world. This is how we get adults who think that good policy involves hurting the right people. Yet, here so many of us are, empathy intact, still reaching for a world that works for all of us and the planet we share.
I am excited about your work because you not only lay it all out so plainly, you are also charting the counter moves we can make to non-violently overcome empire's rule. With sufficient understanding and the right tools, we might just survive our species' infancy. 🌼
Zero-sum is a fearful way of looking at the world, I think the same as your use of "lack". And it's only one of many ways of approaching any field of study (including economics which is the worst perpetrator of that kind of thinking).
Thanks for this raw exposé, writing words to voice my own soul's groanings about what it means to be human on this planet right now. Also, a thought:
"Yes, there seems to be an instinct to seek safety through harm; it’s an instinct that seems more entrenched the closer we get to the reins of power and privilege and the attendant ability to deliver either abundance or harm, but which we can see expressed by those who exist most directly in harm’s path, too." I'm hearing echoes of Girard here and the inescapability of mimetic rivalry and the founding murder of the world that continues to reverberate in the myth of redemptive violence.
Every week you give voice to what is only a half-formed whisper in my soul. Thank you.
Thank You, once again, for reframing the issue in terms of human possibility instead of blind inevitability.
"Hurting the right people". Yeah. I understand the impulse. Of course, for me, the "right people" are the rich and powerful. That doesn't make me a better person. It just means I hate a smaller part of the population.
The emotional torture of all of this. Well said.
"If there are to be only two sides, the other side of this equation seems to be those with some combination of ruthlessness and power and reputation and will, who create a world to their specifications, pursuing those things that escalate the urge to massacre: a spirit of escalating hate, informed by a spirit of lack, and the more reputable they are as they pursue it, the more effective they can often be at delivering it."
I think you're right; the other side here is Hamas (fervent extremism in general, Islamist in this case), whose philosophy/motivation is not driven by the occupation, but by the gall of Israel's very existence.
I so so wish that I could present an idea for how to fix this without more massacre.
Thanks for this. I have been struggling with the haste with which an overwhelming counter-attack was called and executed. I founf myself recalling Nelson Mandela admonishing George W Bush on the eve of the Iran invasion that he was a president who did not know how to think! Mandela was right, but Bush, worse than unthinking, turned out to be a liar, corrupt, and a war criminal. I see now how Biden cinfirms the beheadings of babies that never happened, how Blibkin's anger is unchecked, abd Bibi's
Thank you for another stunning piece. I greatly appreciate what you are laying down. My wife's favorite thing to say about her faith journey is that we are here to share in the abundance - that this way of living increases it.
Thank you for this. I've been frustrated and sad all week, feeling my own compulsion to say something, to push back against the tsunami of destructive and hate-filled declarations about who should do what to whom. I've been especially confused about this thin you describe, where speaking out against the massacre of one population results in assumptions that I am in favor of massacre on the other side. Making the statement that nobody should be massacred seems to be met with either accusations of being utterly unrealistic or somehow missing the point and being out of touch. This has been very confusing, but you have described it such that now it all makes sad-but-true sense. I just commented on another article a few minutes ago, with this quote, which seems to me appropriate here, too, as a compliment to what you have written:
"For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support." - Audrey Lorde
The worst thing of that period after 9/11 is probably the fact that while we supposedly were hurting others to be safer, we kept being told we *weren't* safer, as witness the periodic "Orange Alerts" we'd get when our paranoia needed juicing.