A Letter from an Octogenarian to an
Octogenarian – Why is that?
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 24, 2015
Henry,
For all our angst over the way things
are, they are rapidly changing. Every
institution we know is in a state of flux, rebirth or demise. This has been going on while we remain focused
on the here and now with our heads metaphorically stuck in the sand. Why is that?
We are entering a new day!
Can’t anyone see that? Old rules and old biases, even old thought
processes are in the way.
Your focus on government while mine on
Western culture has beguiled us both, and for reason. Yet, certainly despite us, surely not because
of us, both are changing. The fact that
this change is resisted is not news.
ISIS we like to think is a mirage with its
violence and failure to operate within the Geneva Convention. In Iraq, Ramadi was taken over this past week
by ISIS with 200 men while 2,000 Iraqi military forces fled for their lives,
leaving thousands of citizens of this great city to fend for themselves. Why is that?
The United States, war weary in 2015,
reminds one of the pusillanimity of the French when German tanks pushed into
the Ardennes and along the Somme Valley on May 10, 1940 with little opposition,
making WWII inevitable.
When you have lived as long as we have,
you don’t have to be a politician or a military expert, much less an economist
or any other exulted discipline, to see that we as a society have a penchant
for repeating the same mistakes. It is
as if no learning is possible to take place.
Why is that?
Here in my modest study I entertain
myself by reading books, books written by people who are said to be in the
know, people be they academics, politicians, pundits or naysayers. They can lace words together with some
eloquence, but never seeming to actually make a difference in the scheme of
things. They are like court jesters in
our major institutions and might as well be wailing to the wind. Why is that?
David Brooks, the conservative
journalist of the New York Times, with an almost “gee whiz” engaging likeability,
has a new book out, The Road to
Character. He claims virtue and
kindness matter, but we are too self-centered, self-obsessed and selfish to
notice.
His declaration, I’m sure, resonates
with many. Who can be against virtue and
kindness? I’m confident neither of us
can. Brooks goes so far as to say we’re
too caught up in self-actualization to notice, while, clearly, his book
demonstrably is an expression of that pentacle in Maslow’s “Hierarchy of
Needs.” Why is that?
My view, and it is only my view, which
I have shared with a parochial audience, is that we are not centered enough;
that we have misplaced our moral compass and therefore our own personal
guidance system, and are looking everywhere for it – perhaps expecting to find
it in “The Road to Character,” but I doubt with success. Why is that?
There is a serious flaw in the
Christian-Judaic code, and that is that virtue and kindness are impossible
without being selfless, centerless, and obliging to satisfying the needs of
others before meeting our own. Why is
that?
I have a throwaway sentence in Being Your Own Best Friend (2015):
“To attempt to do for others what they
best do for themselves is to weaken their resolve and diminish them as a
person.”
The same applies to nations as the Romans
found out when it went into the nation
building business a couple of millenniums ago. Yet, here we are with ISIS rampaging through
the Middle East and Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and yes, Israel, waiting for
America to spend treasury and blood to right the situation because America has
spent treasury and blood to make these nation-states counter dependent. Why is that?
The National Security Agency is under serious
attack and may lose some or much of its funding, as well as its blank check on
surveillance strategies, because it is now nearly fourteen (14) years since
9/11, and we have had no serious disruption equivalent to the downing of the
Twin Towers on September 1, 2001 with the loss of nearly 3,000 lives.
Yet, in a country, indeed, in a Western
Society, geared only to crisis management strategies, should this safety net,
this umbrella of security start to leak, and an American city be removed from
existence, the most draconian measures ever imagined will be immediately put
into place.
Then the politicians, the academics,
the pundits and the naysayers, like social termites coming out of their hovels,
will be seen everywhere with accusations and answers, books and polemics with
“I told you so, and you wouldn’t listen,” while freaks will be chanting “these
are our last days.” This scenario
resembles very much the one I’ve uncovered with my research for the “Jesus Story.” Why is that?
While on that theme, there were no
better spin doctors than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of the New
Testament. There is no historical proof that
Jesus said or did any of the things they alleged for him to have said or
done. The times then were as insane as
ours, and no one personified that insanity with more efficacy than did the man
named Saul, then Paul, then St. Paul.
There is not a word of the Four Gospels
that can be verified much less the authors as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John may
be names of convenience. Scholars simply
do not know. On the other hand, much of
what Paul said is in some form of verification.
Religion is now and has always been a
political movement wrapped in a spiritual tunic. Why is that?
ISIS justifies its revolution with the
words of the Koran from the prophet Mohammad who was a military, political
leader.
Emperor Constantine of Rome made
Christianity the state religion, a religion he never bothered to practice but
used for political advantage. Why is
that? Or better yet, why don’t we have a
problem with that?
Man has been on this planet for tens of
thousands of years, perhaps in the millions of years, yet religion as a spiritual/political
system is relatively new, even for ancient faiths. Are we to believe there was no organized
religions or political systems before 3,000 years Before the Christian Era
(BCE)? Why is that?
Buddhism has been around only since the
sixth century BCE as has Confucianism. Christianity
came into being in the first century of Christian Era (CE), while Judaism claims
to have existed for 1500 years BCE and Taoism since 2700 BCE. Obviously, there are other ancient faiths,
but none that have managed to survive so holistically until now. Why is that?
Would it be too much of a stretch to
suggest that organized religions and, indeed, political systems, given man has
been around for hundreds of thousands of years, represent the equivalent of a day
in the time of humans?
And given that all of these religions
have had violent histories before they settled into respectability, even
Buddhism and Taoism, less so Confucianism, which is more an ethic than a
religion, we might better look at what caused them to turn from violence to
sensibility.
We look at ISIS in terms of its
violence – beheadings – and fail to process the fact that Christian history competes
with that violence with its Inquisition, its Crusades, and other gratuitous
wars in the name of the Christian faith over two millenniums.
We selectively forget that ancient
civilizations, grand civilizations, existed in Central and South America, and
that after Columbus discovered America in 1492 C.E., these Great Civilizations
were erased from the globe in the name of Christ as Europeans believed they
were civilized and could act uncivilized with these peoples of other cultures and save them by destroying their cultures for
their own good. Why is that?
Henry, one of the privileges of being
an old man is (1) nobody takes you seriously; (2) nobody expects you to be
around much longer; and (3) therefore you can say and think what you like to
your heart’s content. And people will
feel good about themselves by allowing you that privilege. Why is that?
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