Tuesday, July 18, 2006

On International Co-Dependency

Darlings, Pretty Lady doesn't usually read this sort of thing, because it engenders a sense of helplessness and despair, but she did today. And now, difficult as it is, she encourages you to read it, too.

The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the number is nearer 60.

The horrific thing about the killings is that the area had been cut off for nearly two weeks by Ministry of Interior security forces and Americans. Last week, a car bomb was set off in front of a 'Sunni' mosque people in the area visit. The night before the massacre, a car bomb exploded in front of a Shia husseiniya in the same area. The next day was full of screaming and shooting and death for the people in the area. No one is quite sure why the Americans and the Ministry of Interior didn't respond immediately. They just sat by, on the outskirts of the area, and let the massacre happen.


Sadly, this is not a terribly surprising outcome, given our nation's well-intentioned but hopelessly naive attempt to bring peace, stability and democracy to a 'nation' with no intrinsic understanding of these concepts. Problems can generally not be 'fixed' from the outside in. This is true of individuals, and it is true of nations.

Someone very close to Pretty Lady recently noted that nearly every nation goes through a historical period marked by genocide. The United States is no exception. This person remarked that even if enlightened aliens from outer space had arrived and forcibly prevented the Americans of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from massacring the Indians, they would simply have waited until the aliens' backs were turned, and stepped up the importation of smallpox blankets. Elimination of the 'other' appears to be an ineradicable symptom of human adolescence.

Pretty Lady knows, from empirical, personal experience, that when another person is behaving insanely, he cannot be reasoned out of his behavior. You cannot go in and tell him, "Look, you're making yourself miserable; if you'd just stop doing this, you'd be happy." You cannot love him out of it by allowing him to abuse you, either. As painful as it is to sit back and watch, you have to let him experience the consequences of his actions. The best that can be done is damage control; getting young children out of his vicinity, for example.

If a person finally comes to the realization that he is making himself, and everyone around him, miserable, you can then be of some moderate assistance by supporting him in his decision to help himself. You can provide a listening ear, the occasional bit of practical advice, the discretionary economic boost. But he has to do the work himself.

Pretty Lady offers no solutions for the current state of world affairs. She merely offers the observation that attempting to solve a problem often makes matters infinitely worse. The best, and only, solution she has ever found is to let go, and let the Holy Spirit sort it out.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder, maybe our military wasn't so naive. It is a big undertaking to reverse a country's direction. Will the US be successful? Don't know yet.

And as far as being a christian, and listening to the present media (tv/internet/newspaper), I must apologize for the crusades, inquisition, all wars ever fought by a christian nation, Israel, our economy, the intolerance in the country, and slavery of blacks.

Even though I didn't do that stuff, I am guilty and I apologize, but I will say this. To all the people that accuse people of my ilk, your day is coming... and it is going to be utterly horrible. I wish you wouldn't have to go through it, nor suffer it. But you will just the same. I tried to tell people about it, but I have yet to get someone to listen to me. I usually get laughed at. But that is ok. I am not a great speaker.

And PL, I was NOT refering to you in anyways. I felt like venting, and your website seemed right for some bizarre reason unknown to me.
I hope you have a great day!

dlkjdfsa said...

Can god be disproven?

I ask a question to answer the question. Can a cockhead unicorn be disproven? A. No, We can't be certain that evolution will play some strange dice and cause this animal to come into existence. There are literally an infinite amount of things that can not be disproven thanks to our powerful imaginations and the limits therein, which in a weird way proves the existence of infinity. Seeing as though infinity has just been proven moves me to my next conclusion about why it is irrational to believe in g0d and another tuff question. What is infinity? The simplest answer is something that has nether a beginning or end. Notice anything strange with that sentence? I called infinity a thing which in a sense it is. A thing can only be composed of two things which in actuality are the same thing, matter and energy. You may ask what does infinity look like? Stand before a mirror and you will see it. I'm not referring to you because you are anything but infinity. I'm referring to what you are made of, matter and energy. Once you die your body and mind will be given back to the universe. You see there is a funny quality of energy and matter. Neither can be created or destroyed. That being said, is why it is irrational to believe in god and also why the best logical definition for god is zero. Though a very strong theory and massive amounts of observable evidence we have been able to deduce that the laws of physics remain consistent all the way back to the first few moments of the big ban. Why can't we know the state of our universe in the first few moments of it's beginning? Because it is just to complex to use words or numbers to describe. This is where you would expect God to be hiding.The truth is nothing can come from a total void, also known as zero. And if God were to exist in any form there still would not be a total void an posses an even more ridiculous question. Who made God? Answer, Man made god. The good news. As shown infinity does indeed exist and zero can never exist and /0 makes number machines very pissed off. There is only one thing missing. If you haven't guessed yet it is you.You are 1. also known as an individual. You may be thinking that my logic is flawed because our universe had a beginning. Nothing has been shown that our universe is the only one and the thought gives me the creeps. Perhaps there is an infinite amount of universes and they are all made of the same stuff.

Spread the good news.