[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Dan, sorry for the delay, but I had some pondering to do.

Dan Lusthaus schreef:

>>You may
>>ask yourself what would be the smartest move: building many huge prisons
>>and raising a hugy army or helping the poor to live a decent life.
>>    
>>
>
>Eric,
>If this were a different kind of email list, we could devote some time to
>enumerating and debunking the ten most common fallacies (or 25 most common,
>or 100 most common) mindlessly and inappropriately reiterated to prevent
>insight and thinking (and blame someone else). 
>  
>
Allright let's stop the blaming game.

>Bin Laden not only has more money than the collective readership of this
>list, ...
>
Right, so being rich doesnot stop you from being miserable or mean. 
Let's not blame the money. But I bet many gangmembers would become 
decent citizens if the could find a good job. You see, recognition is 
one of the most powerfull drives for us humans.

>
>Exercise number one: mindfulness, sm.rti, which means listen to what they
>say carefully. What do they want? A hallal chicken in every pot, or
>hegemony?
>  
>
Maybe they don't litterally mean what they say. Maybe you listen the 
wrong way. Like the Israelis and the Palastines: each vowes to 
annihilate the other, but they know they will have to settle for a 
compromise. I have a reason to write this. I recently finfished a short 
piece about Mohamed Bouyeri, the killer of Theo van Gogh. I compared his 
closing speach with Albert Camus'novel: 'The Stranger'. There are 
striking similarities and I learned something from Camus about this 
terrorist. He just fell from the human world without realising or 
wanting it. There are circumstances which can make persons terrorists 
and it's much more effective to prevent people to become terrorists than 
to put them in jail afterwards.
By the way, Bush twisted the truth once again (probably the only thing 
he understood from the teachings of Leo Strauss). He said that Mohammed 
B. didn't feel compassion for the mother of Theo because she was an 
infidel. The exact words of Mohammed were: 'I confess honestly that I 
don't sympathize with you, I don't your pain, I cannot. I don't know 
waht it is to lose a child that's been brought into the world wiht so 
much pain and tears. This is partly because I'm not a women and partly 
because I cannot sympathize with you because I believe you're an 
unbeliever. You can blame me for this and you may blame me for this.'

> On the other hand, if you really believe what you said, you should be 150%
>behind Bush's invasion of Iraq, since that has been one of the goals for
>creating a decent nation in post-Saddam Iraq (the "beacon of democracy"
>spiel). For some reason, there are people -- most not even Iraqis -- who
>would rather kill women, children, clerics in their mosques, and anyone else
>who gets in *their* way, rather than allow a decent infrastructure to be
>built that would provide a decent living for Iraqi citizens. Ponder that
>long and hard, my friend.
>  
>
Well if old Georgy had converted the Iraki's to the religion of Santa 
Claus and had convinced them that he's The One, they surely would have 
invited all Yanks with their heavenly presents ;-) . But somehow they 
don't. So there must have been some miscommunication. Maybe someone just 
should explain them!


Erik


www.xs4all.nl/~jehms