No Tolerance For Terrorism

 

One More About Defense

 

Not So Simple

Political discussions are important, but we must avoid a world vision that is excessively simplistic.

This kind of simplistic vision  can lead people to automatically hate anyone who is generically placed on the "other side".

Moreover, it can make people think that everybody on the planet who is generically placed on "their side of the fence" politically will always be on their side, no matter how badly they act towards their fellow human being.

No matter what your "algorithm" tell you,  there is still more to the world than that, thank God.

One More About Good And Evil

 

Do Something or Do Nothing?

 

The Button & The Brain

As I've said before, I believe there is a deterministic aspect of our existence and a real free will, that don't exclude each other, they are just diferente angles of seeing the same things. Our actions have causes, but all the web of causes and effects of the World could only be seen by a highest point of view which we will never posses, so from the human perspective, we do have free will.

Still, the deterministc angle raises some questions. Are there people who have more "luck" than the others? On the other hand, is anyone guilty for having "luck"?

I think we can fairly agree that good things happen to good people, bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to bad people. If being good was always easy, it would be not really "being good". One things that I find important to note, however, is that when "good" things happen to bad people, I firmly believe it doesn't really give them inner peace, it doesn't give them real joy.

But, are the people who do bad things somehow innocent because of the deterministic angle? The free will angle shows that people have choice, and, even though it's tragic, if a person takes an evil path, that's what he becomes. That becomes what he has inside.

And as for the bad things that happen to good people, as far as I know, every religious tradition have among their most important commandments, that we all should try to do something for the people for whom life is not being the kindest.

The problem comes when a lot of people start to think about this as if the people who have some "luck" have an "original sin" to atone for.

This idea of "original sin" comes from a purely economic point of view. From seeing the goods of the World as limited, quantifiable, and thinking that what someone has, the other will be lacking.

Of course this thought encounters its "perfect" expression. in an ideology that sees all the processes of human life as having their origin in material economic diferences.

Money is quantifiable and easy to be considered s limited, so they can oversimplify everything and say that what abounds here will surely lack there. But it is not true because Civilization started and developed precisely because of the fact that the Earth does give more than what we put in it. So does the Universe.

And more importantly, Money is far from being the one and only big fator behind everything. And suffering is not a monopoly of the economic poor.

Imagine a little girl that sees a man pointing a gun to her father's head. There is pain, there is trauma...

Now of course, we must care for the poor, but the problem is the illusion that the solution is easily achieved. That ending the economic problems would be the most simple thing in the World.

It is easy to tell people to think: "why don't rich people just give everything right now"?

Okay, imagine if you have 300 millions and there is a million people in you country starving. You could give 300 bucks to each of them and solve their problem... for a week.

And if you pick 300 hundred people at random and give a million to each, what is the evidence that everybody's problem will be solved in long term?

If we made the - impossible in practice - total distribution, that is, we gather everybody's money then distribute it equally among the people, how should we keep producing everything we need?

I mean, the Earth gives more than what you put in it, but for that there are tools, techniques, strategies. The "distribution" would produce a chaos, and more poverty. Who would produce what? With what tools? What would happen with the money value and the inflation?

To be honest, I do think rich people, especially the super rich, could be doing, in a lot of stances, better for the World.

Take those big tech giants. I personally don't think they are doing the best they could. But if they are not caught in crime, then assaulting them is wrong, and they are caught in crime, only legal procedures are acceptable. That being said, I have a right to imagine, and say, that guys like them could do better.

I know nobody has a trillion in his pocket to dispose of it anyway he wants, they have to respond to stock holders all the time. But yes, I think they have a chance to do something much more inclusive and fruitful than they are doing. But why would they listen to someone like me, anyway?

By the way, my main contempt with the Internet giants, is that they do not behave in an open and clear way with their algorithms, with their rank numbers, and have the power to "ban" people and make it virtually impossible for a person who gets banned to defend herself and get back.

They are like restaurant owners who shouldn't have the right to refuse to serve someone. Or better yet, they are private builders and administrators of roads, that have a duty to make it safe, acessible and democratic.

But anyway, it's the idea - the false idea - that everybody that have swimming pools in their houses could just push a button and all the suffering in the World would be disappear, that is the biggest poisonous idea, a mental poison given to many people.

"Not building" a swimming pool does not magically solves the problem of someone else.

But the idea that everybody that is prosper could push a button - or snap their fingers - then all suffering would disappear - is extremely dehumanizing.

Because, if it is that simple, then why don't they just push that button? Why don't they just snap their fingers? The insane conclusion is that they don't care for nobody, not even for children, right?

And once you start seeing things this way, violence becomes justifiable. It would be okay to hurt these "monsters", right?

And once people start taking the path of violence, something happens within them. In their minds. I'm no pshychologist, psychiartrist or neurologist, but I am pretty sure there is damage. Or better yet, it shapes who they become. They become people for whom violence is the main things, destruction is not only normal but desirable. It becomes harder and harder to return to a path where peace and joy are achievable.

Take the problem of Israel and their neighbors. In the past, History shows us, in the end of Empires, two things: Jews expelled from antisemitic Arab countries and Nazi Europe, and Arabs being displaced from part of the Palestine. By seeing only the problem of the Palestinians, and not the pain of the Jews, not the fact that more than 99 percent of the Middle East still belongs to the Arabs, and that some Jews always lived in Palestine and returning for Israel is a deep cultural dream and became the only possibility of real Jewish Independence - not count on the goodwill of others all around the World - by seeing only one side, you make the Jews the great villains.

And you kill the chances of finding a real good solution. As if the Israeli were just witholding the happiness of the Palestinians in their hands for cruelty, and not just defending themselves in a violent region.

You sponsor an ideology where killing is acceptable, violence is the goal, destruction serves a good purpose. Bomb killings, stabings in the street, all creating an absurd system of reward in their minds, that culminated in a diabolical attack where more than a thousand - by no means a small number - people were mudered at random, raped and kidnapped, which started this war. And fed an insane form of thought in the minds of many Arabs, that only takes them further from the possibilities of inner peace.

There is an old little story, that I quote here as illustration, that, when a Nazi officer went to kill an old Jew, the Jew turned to heavens and thanked God. "What are you thanking him for?" The Jew answered, "because he didn't make me like you".

As students and others go to the street and chant "Gloablize the Intifada", I would say that, well, you seem comfortable in wishing evil to the Jews, we are realizing that, but do you see what you are wishing upon the Muslin Arabs?

The worst. The worst for their minds, the worst for their lives.

As is anyone who says things like "let the poor take arms and kill the rich".

Killing opportunities of peace will never bring happinness.

The T word... could be you

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