Slip - a very interesting and timely topic. Thanks for introducing
it.
I agree that our community, local, regional, national or
whatever, used to be far more friendly, given to helping one another,
gracious, gentlemanly and gentlewomanly, willing to reconcile and
forgive. Now extremeism, hatred, and revenge seem to be so prevalent.
I think a large part of this change is due to political gerrymandering
- the drawing of political boundaries to encompass only those of a
particluar party, or viewpoint, or attitude. Thus, to get elected the
candidate had to be extreme, and this extremeism had carried over into
our communal life. There are hardly any moderates any more, whereas
when political boundaries used to be drawn without regard to -isms,
moderates got elected and were our leaders. The Supreme Court had an
opportunity to strike down political gerrymandering a few years ago
but did not. So we are stuck in a society now filled with extremeists.
Anyway, that's my two cents. Jim
On Jul 26, 3:22 pm, Slip Disc <[email protected]> wrote:
> Are we losing the ability to reconcile in the world? Have we slipped
> so far from the understanding of brotherhood, of forgiveness that we
> have simply become a world of hatred and revenge. We are literally
> mortified by the specter of terrorism that is plaguing the world. The
> mindset of terrorism is anchored in the inability to allow forgiveness
> to override anger and instead caters to hatred, anger and violence
> towards those deemed the wrongdoers without regard for the harm
> imposed upon the innocent bystanders.
> Aside from that our culture seems entrenched in the business of
> revenge, we rather employ legal means to inflict suffering upon those
> who we think have done us wrong before we would sit down directly and
> discuss the problems. Politics seems to be leaning more toward
> instilling anger and fears among us which leads to a polarization of
> society while most media seem devoted to divisive and anger driven
> reporting with a general attitude of who is to blame.
> Can we ever stop sending messages attached to missiles, bombs and
> bullets? Our attempts to establish peaceful means of resolution have
> failed miserably because there is never a general consensus on any
> issue. We sanction and punish to no end in order to force change but
> to no avail. People are at war in every quadrant of the planet while
> new agitations are festering in the background waiting to emerge as
> full scale skirmishes.
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