From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 22:19:14 BST
Dear Erin,
You wrote 12/10 19:14 -0400:
'I want to hear opinions about if there is justification for a moral war and
exactly the basis for the opinion.'
Martin Luther King wrote quite some time ago (translated the Dutch):
'Light or darkness
Darkness can't drive out darkness. Only light can.
Hate can't drive out hate. Only love can.
Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and viciousness
multiplies viciousness in a downward spiral of destruction.
The chain of evil: hate generating hate and wars generating new wars has to
be broken. Or we throw ourselves in the darkness of ruin.'
Pirsig wrote in chapter 32 of 'Lila':
'The Metaphysics of Quality translated karma as "evolutionary garbage". ...
Karma is the pain, the suffering that results from clinging to the static
patterns of the world. The only exit from the suffering is to detach
yourself from these static patterns, that is, to kill them.
A common way taken to kill them is suicide, but suicide only kills
biological patterns. That's like destroying a computer because you can't
stand the program it's running. The social and intellectual patterns that
caused the suicide have to be carried on by others. From an evolutionary
point of view it's 'really a backward and therefore immoral step. Another
immoral way of killing the static patterns is to pass the patterns to
someone else, in what Phaedrus called a "karma dump." You invent a devil
group, Jews or blacks or whites or capitalists or communists-it doesn't
matter -then say that group is responsible for all your suffering, and then
hate it and try to destroy it. On a daily personal level everyone has things
or people they hate and blame for their suffering and this hatred and blame
brings a kind of relief. ... If you take all this karmic garbage and make
yourself feel better by passing it on to others that's normal. That's the
way the world works. But if you manage to absorb it and not pass it on,
that's the highest moral conduct of all. That really advances everything,
not just you. The whole world. If you look at the lives of some of the great
moral figures of history-Christ, Lincoln, Gandhi, and others- you'll see
that that's what they were really involved in, the cleansing of the world
through the absorption of karmic garbage. They didn't pass it on. Their
followers sometimes did, but they didn't.
On the other hand, Phaedrus supposed, when you're on the receiving end of
some karma dump like that it sets yon free.'
War on Iraq (any war) is a karma dump. It is normal. It fits relatively
low-level social and intellectual patterns of values. It is moral in the
context of those social patterns of values, but is not the highest moral
conduct possible. It doesn't break the karma dump chain.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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