Michael Hawkins of the excellent and enlightening Spontaneous Arising has put out a call for people to dialog and make some sense of current events--I'm heading out for a camping trip and will respond when I get back:
Tonight we enjoyed a relaxing bull session on the front porch, tipping back some beer and conversing with Mrs. S.A. and three friends.
One friend (who shall remain anonymous for the time being) has been following our blog and says he has experienced outrage similar to our own over the violence and suffering going on in the Middle East. He offered some constructive criticism, however, around the content of this blog since Israel attacked Lebanon three weeks ago.
We had to admit that we've become fixated on the carnage and its political fallout, to the detriment of our normal mix of music, art, spirituality and other assorted mind candy. Also, due to the sheer volume of posts relating to Israel's militarism and its effects on the region (not to mention its effects on the entire world), it's clear that, in a sense, we have "taken sides" with those whom we've identified as "Israel's victims."
All our lives, we've naturally gone with the underdog, the marginalized, the oppressed. We've identified with the victimized for as long as we can remember. We majored in Sociology in college, during which time we exposed ourselves to one outrage after another -- massacres, genocides, bloody occupations, you name it, we magnetized to the suffering masses and felt our moral superiority over the oppressors.
We catharted through pointing fingers and laying blame.
Our friend very eloquently described what he believes to be a danger in taking sides in any conflict, especially from the viewpoint of someone who would work for peace. This danger involves the effects of polarization, when two (or more) sides are so busy hurling accusations and escalating rhetoric... that they can no longer find enough common ground to stop the madness. We may, if we're lucky, lure our friend as a guest poster here, so that we may all engage in this dialogue -- with Your Proprietor pleading for social justice, our friend pleading for a neutral field on which to redeem our common humanity.
Right now, we could really use a clue as to how we may best respond to what's going on. Something tells us that this is a dialogue we must traverse to answer the question.
Respond to Pointing Fingers and Laying Blame
1 comment:
Thanks for putting this out there, Thivai.
And have a great camping trip. When you get back, my "working for peace" friend will most likely have put up a guest post at my place, which should add more weight to the dialog.
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