This morning on the way to work, I heard an ABC News report out of Gaza. The reporter was listening to a couple of Palestinian women rant about the war, one saying "we should kill Israeli women and children" (she thinks they haven't been?), and another claiming to be tired of it all...In an effort to seem even-handed and humane, no doubt, the reporter ended by saying the real question was "how to explain war to bewildered children." (Paraphrasing from memory.) She didn't back that statement up with any witnesses. If she'd investigated, she'd've found that explaining war to children is easy...especially if those children are boys. Simply have schools and a community that teach them the national myth, the dominant religion, or both...just as the Palestinians do (and Israelis too). Then a ready explanation will come to them.
(Is that a good explanation or a truthful understanding? Separate question, and the answer differs from myth to myth. But neither Palestinians nor most peoples in the world...outside of modern-day Americans...are at a loss for an answer, the way that reporter was.)
11 comments:
You don't have to explain war to boys at all. You just have to get out of the way.
Sometimes the dominant religion is a brake on war, you know. Even if it's Islam. We used imams regularly as brokers for tribal reconciliation talks, because the one thing they could agree upon was their faith in Islam. Their mutual respect for the faith was what allowed them to consider a third-party's input on how to settle their dispute, rather than clinging to their own tribe's interpretation.
Not, mind you, that I judge religions by whether or not they serve as a brake on war. "I came not to send peace but a sword," a man once said; and sometimes a sword is what is wanted. Nearly always, from where I sit -- which is preferably a saddle.
Poetically put. Though in context, I think he wasn't referring to a sword of battle...but a sword of strife between family members, the ones who would follow him and the ones who would not.
Reading Matthew by "plain meaning" -- I saw a lot of "no excuses" passages in there. "Don't say you were too busy making a living to follow me" (consider the lilies); "don't say you had to keep the old ways for the sake of the family" (I come not to bring peace, but a sword), etc.
I don't doubt that your 'plain meaning' reading is the most obvious one. There is a substantial metaphysical argument lurking behind my sense of the passage, which it would be the work of several hundred pages to expound. But here, at least, let's stick to poetry: including the fact that the author of the words, allegedly the author of the universe, spoke to a world in which birds as well as boys need no teaching about war.
Especially not doves.
The Lord is a man of war.
I don't understand the common notion that the "real problem" is how to explain something like war to bewildered children. Is the real problem with cancer how to explain it to bewildered children? Or is the real problem instead that the children are sick, or their mothers are sick, and we must find either a cure for the disease, or the patience and resignation to deal with its horror? Is the real problem with death how to explain it to children? How about the real problem with bridge collapses? Crime? Daddy's alcoholism?
It's just a meaningless phrase, indicating that the adult in question refuses to think about something like an adult and take responsibility for doing the best he can to deal with a horrifying fact of life. But instead of appearing childish and irresponsible, he wants to robe himself in the innocence of an uncorrupted child.
A tougher question such a person might encounter from a really sharp child is, "Why didn't we evacuate when the Israelis announced that this building was targeted as a result of Hamas having stationed rockets in it?" There's a question the adult actually has the answer to.
To even ask that question would mean having to consciously divest oneself of the emotional comfort of the important myth/delusion of that very "innocense" and admit the brutal reality of the situation. And that is not something that many westerners are willing to do. Especially the "well educated". They are either too emotionally invested in their myths to be able to admit how self destructive they really are or deep down they seem to believe that they, and by extension those like them (Thanks guys....). deserve to loose or suffer. I can offer no direct evidence of this, it's just how things seem from where I stand.
William sends.
I agree with Grim. "Blessed be The Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle;".
Psalm 144:1
Larry
If reporters all died and gave back the power of the press to the people, as originally intended, most mass shootings would die off.
War? First look to their homes.
Islam only refuses war between the believers, sort of like the Crusades for Christianity. They needed a way to externalize all of humanity's angst and hatred. It just so happened that in the Crusades, the Christian Pope found a worthy target in Jerusalem and other Holy Places the Islamos were refusing travel to by non Muslims. But for Islam, they stop fighting amongst themselves only because there are territories to conquer.
Persia. India. Spain. Most of what people consider Arabic inventions, math, and numerals.... aren't Arabic or Islamic in origin.
The Middle East has fallen far, except for the Arabs, which didn't have far to fall.
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