Happy New Year! (As It Were)
Today is Saturday, 1 January 2010.
“Atone” – that’s a sectarian religious thing with limited current relevance.
Of course, we’re all inheritors of guilt, when we inherit the goodies generated by the myriad crimes of our predecessors. History didn’t begin anew with us.
And have I ever suggest tearing it all down? Honour our victims, by building a better world. Stop using the crimes of yesterday to justify the crimes of today and tomorrow.
Some 8,000,000 human beings were slaughtered during the Indochina Wars of 1945- . USA/USE financed most of it. When many Americans tried to stop this horror, almost none of us chose violence, unlike those we were trying to stop.
A modest proposal: can you think of a better way, to help the violent see it’s a stupid way? I’ve not done so good.
(Apologies for the delay in reply. I never know when the big arthritis will strike, when all my joints complain at the onset of winter, and it's hard to walk and write. That was my Happy New Year. No complain: I'm alive. Hope, dear reader, yours was better).
I wish for all of you, a different year, but we know what it will be: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Cheers.
“Atone” – that’s a sectarian religious thing with limited current relevance.
Of course, we’re all inheritors of guilt, when we inherit the goodies generated by the myriad crimes of our predecessors. History didn’t begin anew with us.
And have I ever suggest tearing it all down? Honour our victims, by building a better world. Stop using the crimes of yesterday to justify the crimes of today and tomorrow.
Some 8,000,000 human beings were slaughtered during the Indochina Wars of 1945- . USA/USE financed most of it. When many Americans tried to stop this horror, almost none of us chose violence, unlike those we were trying to stop.
A modest proposal: can you think of a better way, to help the violent see it’s a stupid way? I’ve not done so good.
(Apologies for the delay in reply. I never know when the big arthritis will strike, when all my joints complain at the onset of winter, and it's hard to walk and write. That was my Happy New Year. No complain: I'm alive. Hope, dear reader, yours was better).
I wish for all of you, a different year, but we know what it will be: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Cheers.
posted by HH at 6:02 PM
2 Comments:
"can you think of a better way, to help the violent see it’s a stupid way?"..."Wounded Knee is our common crime, and must never be forgotten or forgiven."
Isn't the refusal to grant and/or to seek forgiveness the father of all blood feuds? The story of Abraham, Sarah and Ishmael comes immediately to mind. What is less clear in the story of the Semitic schism is which part(ies) should seek forgiveness.
By Christian tenets, (whose moral authority is styled the 'Prince of Peace') the presumption is that all have wronged their neighbors. "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of the lord."
Seeking forgiveness was prescribed by the Prince of Peace and seems to take precedence over granting forgiveness if the Lord's Prayer may be relied upon as a model.
Perhaps some attention is due the ethics of forgiveness.
Well said, rtr.
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