A Humanist's Christmas Offering
The below is an exchange in response to my Postform post of December 22, posted originally to iNoodle.com.
The topic of the post was the Independent (UK) newspaper's headline story of the same day which reported that, beginning in 2006, "every journey by every car will be monitored" by the UK government via a nationwide network of CCTV cameras linked to central databases. The cameras are equipped to read registration numbers, day and night, at each point along a car's journey.
Jacques René Zammit said...
Incredible. Big brother indeed. However I still find it difficult to balance the needs of security in today's world and that of privacy. Where do we draw the line? And how?
Fri Dec 23, 09:57:33 AM CET
Sean M. Madden said...
Thanks for your comment, Jacques. Good to hear from you, as always.
This is why it is crucial that we stick to fundamental questions, to focus our energies not on the effects but on the underlying causes, the radical roots. We need more postform thinking. Otherwise, our subsequent actions are likely to be (they already are) far worse than that which we fear and use to justify our own violence and repression, directed abroad but increasingly at home, too, against the citizenry our government officials have sworn to serve.
Why are there individuals who are desperate enough in their suffering to, literally, end their own lives in order to destroy the lives of others whom they see as their oppressor? Why are there individuals who are desperate enough in their greed (suffering) for wealth and power to end not their own lives but to destroy the lives of, literally, countless others (100,000, 200,000, 300,000, ... ) whom they see as mere collateral damage?
US and UK foreign and domestic policies are the primary focal points of my political activism, inquiry and writing, not for nationalistic reasons in that I am an American living in the UK with my British wife and our British-American daughter, but because these nations wreak, and have wreaked throughout their sordid histories, so much death, destruction and suffering the world round.
No serious inquiry into Middle East terrorism, for instance, can ignore that terrorists do not attack us because of our freedoms, but because the US and UK have willfully destroyed and precluded the freedom of so many in the region.
But, in neither the US nor the UK does the media facilitate a full understanding of the situation at hand. No, the American and British publics must remain ignorant as to causes. They must learn to face, to fear, only the effects which must forever remain faceless and vague so as to haunt our darkest depths and empower our worst atrocities for ends not sought for these respective publics, for they would never dream of such ends, but for pathological politicians, their propagandists (the media) and the major corporate shareholders which they both ultimately serve.
If the US and UK governments were serious about the "war on terror" they would act immediately to undermine the causes; yet, instead, they seek to inflame them.
Let us, first, seek to relieve the suffering for which these governments are responsible. They have long failed the peoples of the world and, yes, us at home. Let us tend to the seeds of democracy in our own garden and perhaps we'll achieve it, an historical first. Let other peoples decide for themselves how best to organize their respective societies. Democracy, as many of us knew long ago, cannot be inflicted upon another; it must develop within. But, again, we must stick to the fundamentals, democracy was never meant to be, in Iraq or at home.
All people want happiness. All of us suffer. This is universal.
Let us nurture our natural sense of compassion, for ourselves and for others, and terrorism will cease to be, the problem of how to deal with it will be annulled. While this, I know, sounds idealistic, anything short of this approach, I think, is infinitely more unrealistic. On the other hand, any act of compassion will immediately bear good fruit, we need not await the fulfillment of some far-off future ideal.
Let us act rightly as individuals and organize our own rightful governments, and let us let others do the same.
Sean (iNoodle.com)
Sun Dec 25, 02:53:45 PM CET
The topic of the post was the Independent (UK) newspaper's headline story of the same day which reported that, beginning in 2006, "every journey by every car will be monitored" by the UK government via a nationwide network of CCTV cameras linked to central databases. The cameras are equipped to read registration numbers, day and night, at each point along a car's journey.
Jacques René Zammit said...
Incredible. Big brother indeed. However I still find it difficult to balance the needs of security in today's world and that of privacy. Where do we draw the line? And how?
Fri Dec 23, 09:57:33 AM CET
Sean M. Madden said...
Thanks for your comment, Jacques. Good to hear from you, as always.
This is why it is crucial that we stick to fundamental questions, to focus our energies not on the effects but on the underlying causes, the radical roots. We need more postform thinking. Otherwise, our subsequent actions are likely to be (they already are) far worse than that which we fear and use to justify our own violence and repression, directed abroad but increasingly at home, too, against the citizenry our government officials have sworn to serve.
Why are there individuals who are desperate enough in their suffering to, literally, end their own lives in order to destroy the lives of others whom they see as their oppressor? Why are there individuals who are desperate enough in their greed (suffering) for wealth and power to end not their own lives but to destroy the lives of, literally, countless others (100,000, 200,000, 300,000, ... ) whom they see as mere collateral damage?
US and UK foreign and domestic policies are the primary focal points of my political activism, inquiry and writing, not for nationalistic reasons in that I am an American living in the UK with my British wife and our British-American daughter, but because these nations wreak, and have wreaked throughout their sordid histories, so much death, destruction and suffering the world round.
No serious inquiry into Middle East terrorism, for instance, can ignore that terrorists do not attack us because of our freedoms, but because the US and UK have willfully destroyed and precluded the freedom of so many in the region.
But, in neither the US nor the UK does the media facilitate a full understanding of the situation at hand. No, the American and British publics must remain ignorant as to causes. They must learn to face, to fear, only the effects which must forever remain faceless and vague so as to haunt our darkest depths and empower our worst atrocities for ends not sought for these respective publics, for they would never dream of such ends, but for pathological politicians, their propagandists (the media) and the major corporate shareholders which they both ultimately serve.
If the US and UK governments were serious about the "war on terror" they would act immediately to undermine the causes; yet, instead, they seek to inflame them.
Let us, first, seek to relieve the suffering for which these governments are responsible. They have long failed the peoples of the world and, yes, us at home. Let us tend to the seeds of democracy in our own garden and perhaps we'll achieve it, an historical first. Let other peoples decide for themselves how best to organize their respective societies. Democracy, as many of us knew long ago, cannot be inflicted upon another; it must develop within. But, again, we must stick to the fundamentals, democracy was never meant to be, in Iraq or at home.
All people want happiness. All of us suffer. This is universal.
Let us nurture our natural sense of compassion, for ourselves and for others, and terrorism will cease to be, the problem of how to deal with it will be annulled. While this, I know, sounds idealistic, anything short of this approach, I think, is infinitely more unrealistic. On the other hand, any act of compassion will immediately bear good fruit, we need not await the fulfillment of some far-off future ideal.
Let us act rightly as individuals and organize our own rightful governments, and let us let others do the same.
Sean (iNoodle.com)
Sun Dec 25, 02:53:45 PM CET
posted by Sean M. Madden at
2:47 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home