Comments on: Bringing the violence home

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:40:46 +0000

there were some people whose resentment and bitternenss were such she wouldn’t have trusted them not to turn to betrayal or violence if the opportunity presented

Yeah. I think about that sort of thing a lot, how people I know would behave under conditions of social breakdown and economic collapse. That’s what I like about Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple character: her view that her village was a microcosm, and that every kind of human failing and depravity could be observed there.

to discuss is to assimilate. The unavoidable impulse to gain perspective, to compare, to find context is immoral.

I think there’s a certain amount of truth in that. The myth of the dispassionate observer has so often been used to cover crimes against nature and other human beings.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:01:44 +0000

Sorry, I get excited and jabber. I meant to write, in the last paragraph “…I am once again MET by decency…”

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:51:12 +0000

These subjects of morality, religion, seem very bounded by decency. I appalled at the way my comments here have evidenced my ability to view horror with detachment. I woke me last night with the feeling that I had stated my complicity with horror. But still I wish to say more, but my honest simple responses would be transgressive, as were, quite knowingly on my part, my earlier comments. My imagination is like a fire. Dave, your statement that violence solves nothing was incendiary to me, so ready to be oxidized, so ready to metabolize to the easy nourishment and ashes of “violence solves everything”.

Your topic in this post, in a way is indecency, indecent behavior. I am fascinated that in inspecting it, discussing it, I am once again by decency and turned back. It seems as if to discuss is to assimilate. The unavoidable impulse to gain perspective, to compare, to find context is immoral.

By: beth

beth — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:42:27 +0000

Dave, I agree with you about the good vs. evil side of Christianity, as interpreted by Bush et al., but that criticism could also be leveled at a number of religions, as we see played out all over the world. As for blood sacrifice, it certainly didn’t originate with Christianity, and the early Christians abolished it as a practice. Many contemporary Christians don’t buy the doctrine of atonement (Christ as the lamb sacrificed for our sins), and Jesus’s teachings are anything but violent. But you are quite right that these interpretations (which I would call misguided, but no one is listening to me) underlie much of our political history, to tragic effect. I’m certainly not going to be an apologist for Christianity, either way.

By: Lucy

Lucy — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:42:28 +0000

We were talking over this kind of thing this morning, how some people seem to be simmering with a need to hate, even in well-regulated society. My sister lived in a ‘nice’ Devon village, but when times for her personally got tough, she said she could see another side to some people ( others came very good). She said she was glad she didn’t live in times of civil war or occupation, because there were some people whose resentment and bitternenss were such she wouldn’t have trusted them not to turn to betrayal or violence if the opportunity presented.

I like what you did with Jean’s post.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:40:27 +0000

Bill, no need to apologize — contrary opinions are always welcome. You just can’t expect us to read your mind. Thanks for elaborating.

By: Bill

Bill — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:17:08 +0000

Shit Dave, this sucks. I’m sorry. I just don’t see how to hold ethnic cleansing as separate from my own intimation that I myself, am violence barely contained, as are all things living and inanimate; that violence and life are pretty much the same.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:14:18 +0000

Joan – Goggling “restorative justice” turns up a lot of good stuff, such as http://www.restorativejustice.org/

Thanks for the additional background on Cookie’s death.

Bill – Arguments about semantics, such as what does or doesn’t constitute “violence,” bore me. Are you trying to argue that ethnic cleansing is natural? If not, what is your point?

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:56:31 +0000

Drinking a glass of milk is a violent act.

By: Joan

Joan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 19:46:03 +0000

I’m interested in this weregild. Where can I find that info? Also..as I look at my garbled post it might appear that the two incidents were one, and they are not. The latest 5 people masacre ended with Cookie’s death by the police. I sometimes wonder if the young man who shot the officer a couple of years now facing the chair had not meant this to be a murder but a murder suicide. One would hardly pre-meditate a murder in front of the entire neighborhood and cops.

This current thing all started quite awhile back with Cookie’s going on a 3 day vacation and parking his ‘work’ trucks around his house. He came back to not 7 tickets but 21 tickets.. one for each day. All who think they’d have gotten by with that with a white man stand up and holler.