Essential to ... BE NONVIOLENT

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In a message dated 12/3/00 1:19:50 AM Eastern Standard Time,

MJartisian writes:

 

 

> I find the following statements by Dietrich and Barry to be very astute and

> right on target and must add some comments.

> Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>

> > I do share

> > Barry's interest with the psyche of such people, but perhaps we might view

> > some of these people as simply lacking one specific attribute of the human

> > mind, just as some people are born without certain senses (seeing,

> hearing,

> > etc.). Such people might simply be amused at the sight of someone else's

> > suffering, and in that sense in fact resemble that cat playing with the

> mouse.

>

> And in fact, that seems, to greater or lesser degrees, to be the case.

 

I see a huge number of persons coexisting in the world.

If we look to other human beings for examples and support in becoming ethical,

we may not be supported as we had hoped. We might be rerouted --

erroneously.

 

There are religions and spiritual communities which some folks seek for

support in their existential, moral, and religious quest.

 

All these communities and human examples are just that -- human beings.

The wisdom of the ages that they share coaches them about the advisability of

not blindly following the examples of others. We could rightfully be just as

cautious in considering the individual example of any person or the

collective example of any community.

 

Yet we know -- from some psychological sophistication -- that each of these

individuals is, as the phenomenologists say, " consciousness bodily, " but

taking place in individual and only somewhat unique and personal ways, but

with social implications, because every life is public, as is every personal

action, even if we school one another to disregard certain actions as being

someone else's " privacy. "

 

I'm not sure that we can thoroughly understand the " psyche " or

" phenomenology " of every (1) misguided or (2) emotionally or morally immature

or (3) willfully malevolent or malicious person (sinner?), but our public

condition obliges us who are searching our world, sensitive to the impacts of

others, to comprehend at some level the pluralistic reality we share with all

those others--to cultivate, at least for ourselves, and perhaps for a few

others as well, sufficient insight to illuminate our paths and to steer our

ships through the social and situational complexities we encounter constantly.

 

But sometimes we dare to steer by " markers " that are evident to us. Some

folks wish to guide themselves by social, political, religious, metaphysical,

scientific, or academic beliefs. I doubt the wisdom or legitimacy of that,

although I have long done that, or tried to do that, and I continue to try to

use such information. Yet people are highly individual.

 

Minds are targets for speakers, but speakers abound. What people think isn't

always exactly " where they are, " and how could we know in advance how deep

and profound a relation with one's behavior there is with their

conversations, regular speeches they hear in school or faith community,

conceptual agreements (longterm or tentative) with their communities of

identity, and " representational interfaces " that we encounter in so many

circumstances?

 

We might think that we share some " objects of consciousness " with others, but

yet feel betrayed by their less than optimal behaviors. " What does it all

mean? " We're tempted to abandon those mental objects that we collectively

encountered in this " broadcast culture " that homogenizes dissimilarities, or

at least to thoroughly rethink them, perhaps in line with the Socratic maxim,

" The unexamined life is not worth living. "

 

Perhaps, as I think Bart Gruzalski would suggest, we may not need those

mental objects, and surely they don't define the goodness as we had once

figured they would, nor are lipservice to values and ideas necessarily

constitutive of personal or social goodness, even though there may be

communities who agree to think that way. (Lots of people really DO WANT to be

good.)

 

(I've lived for a long time doubting the potential for real community at

significant depths, interpreting beliefs in community as individual beliefs

which have functional interfaces. I had decades ago read Sadler's Love and

Existence. Human beings may have emotional or even " religious " needs, but

what evidence is there that these needs are being met, or even addressed,

when communities gather for such purposes? " We may have had your doubts " was

to me a shocker from another person, and it gave me a sense of realization

that I wasn't alone in holding deep doubts about some common references, nor

unique in the desire and commitment to think much more deeply about the way I

had once thought. Surely it was a moment of interpersonal communication from

a fellow thinker, which I had not expected. I had expected isolated subjects

in a community -- or society -- of somewhat commonly synchronized

representational impacts on sentients.)

 

The overwhelming concern we have is around the issue of personally-executed

violence towards other persons, who suffer because of it. Intentional,

willful violence has been related to malice, and malice is a vice in most

wisdom traditions, regardless of its victims.

 

What people lack or what people have experienced is yet a matter for

continuing study in the social sciences. I'd like to see some of the

vegetarian movement's professional psychologists, sociologists, economists,

anthropologists, linguists, philosophers (like Bart Gruzalski), religious

scholars and disciples, and other social scientists address this topic with

the breadth and depth of their disciplines.

 

We all have opinions, and socialization, acculturation characterize all

opinions.

Few if any of us have been thoroughly empirical regarding our opinions.

Hardly a soul in any community or locale is scientific about her or his

social beliefs. Evaluations and interpersonal judgments have interpretive or

" hermeneutical " background for us all, and not all of us " source " those

" interpretive vehicles " carefully or from as respectable or meticulous

sources as some others. IMO there are better ways to " start off " , and I

don't credit the political left or right with being more consistently

compassionate or humane. They may vote for candidates who are " better " or

" worse " on some of these issues, but I'm not convinced that their attached

social agendas have unilateral claims to bring us historically forward

towards a more compassionate future. (We see folks from both perspectives

running around in leather coats and gratuitous fur. That ought not to become

an encouragement for uncommitted people to do the same wrongs that the others

do. But we see " new ethnics " slowly becoming acculturated and not thinking

critically about the process of socialization which is teaching them cruelty

from the inside out. Yes, we SHOULD grieve, and surely the malevolence and

wrongdoing are NOT causes for rejoicing and celebration, but thorough

justification for grief, whether public or contained in our privacy. The

future may lose some of the promise it once had, and some humanitarians may

actually unleash more harm than good, since few of us can predict the

outcomes of our beneficence, and it's always partial.)

 

Immanuel Kant said that " there is nothing good but the good will " , but many

of us have moved over towards the utilitarian side in calculating the actual

harms and benefits which result to varying numbers of sentient beings, all

sentients included.

 

Surely there are few of us today who wish to look ONLY at individual

intentionality, but surely, just as surely, individual intentionality is a

vital component of what is done and how that is done, and its impacts are

related to individual intentionality, both directly and inadvertently.

 

We want to excuse and accept others, yet they may objectively lack the

necessary component for our deeper acceptance, and that is a personal change

from the inside out that has the reference points that we think we have

clearly identified. Those references help to constitute what would be for us

" authentic community. " However, for the majority of those seeking " authentic

community " with others, the majority of others " aren't there " and " just don't

get it " and " aren't even on the same page. "

 

For ethically sensitive individuals who care about the harm deliberately done

to others throughout the world -- but with different objects of violence in

different cultures (for psychological reasons, to be sure) -- the problem

endures. We can agree with Carol Adams, the psychoanalysts, and the Bible

that the source of wrongdoing has some independence from the victimized

objects, and we are discussing the psychology of victimization. I'm pretty

sure today that most folks today know that they are discounting the moral

implications of their systematic victimization of nonhumans or of some

humans. However, human-centered ( " humanistic " ) religion doesn't seem to be

able to tap the resources for understanding the significance of those who are

not from our species, our form of life.

 

Is that where we would LOOK for a " lack " , a deficiency, a deficit? Perhaps.

But if we're seeking individual and wholesale societal transformation, we'll

need to look respectfully and sensitively.

 

We don't want to lose site of any realities which are essential to the

longterm and inwardly-motivated commitment to and practice of nonviolence,

nor do we wish to convert vegetarianism into a gratuitous " bellyfest " of

sensuous self-indulgence, nor one's ethical mandates into detached

spitefulness, like an armed sniper in an unnoticed tower on campus, analogous

to the old poem:

 

I wish I were a little English sparrow.

I wish I were a little English sparrow.

I'd climb upon the steeple

And drop on all the people.

I wish I were a little English sparrow.

 

Let that NOT be the goal of our seeking a succinct explanation of human

fallibility and waywardness, of the malice and overt hostilities that are so

frequently " indulged " by our fellow humans.

 

We believe that we " know " that, even though our appetitive bodies might cease

to thrive tomorrow, the story of sentient life will continue, and with that

continuing story all the moral imbroglios of the millennia about which moral

theorists and " phenomenologists " have studied and anguished for nearly that

long, perhaps since the birth of systematic observation and critical thinking.

 

Maynard S. Clark