[Buddha-l] Dissent or Service?

[Joy Vriens]

>> I expect that since Quakers were present right from the founding of 
>> America, when everything still needed to be built, together with other 
>> Christian sanghas that left the European continent for similar reasons, 
>> there weren't any autochtones to befriend first, there simply was a 
>> promised land to be implemented. 
 
>It's not clear to me what you are expecting. Quakers were among those who 
>opposed war with the native peoples who got to the Americas before the 
>Europeans. John Woolman and other Quakers made attempts to befriend the 
>native Americans and to discourage other Christians from feeling justified in 
>taking their ands away from them. 

My expectations were a bit unclear as often is the case and expressed even less clearly. I wasn't thinking of the "native Americans" as any autochtones, in the form of a state or a nation or even a people, to be taken into account. There was no existing system in place to try and fit into. Simply ressources to be taken and to be exploited by the fittest and strongest. But my knowledge of American history is nearly zero and I don't know how soon and how much of the British system was aready established there, or behind the organisation of "recruiting" and transporting colons. But even in that case the newness and new hopes and possibilities that America offered seemed to have inspired some Christians sanghas sufficiently to try and set up "there" what they were unable of setting up "here" (old Europe). 
 
>Quakers also opposed the unseemly series of armed uprisings against the 
>British that led to the independence of the United States. My guess is that 
>if any Buddhists had been on hand, they would have endorsed the Quaker 
>dictum: "We cannot be instrumental in the setting up or pulling down of any 
>government." 

Do you know why that was? E.g. the Cathars equated power with evil and were very weary of it. Did the Quakers have a similar take on power, did they somehow know/believe that pulling down a government gives one the responsibility of setting up a new one replacing it and that this would bring one in contact with power and therefore with evil? 
 
>The American habit of imprisoning people who might be harmed by dangerously 
>intolerant Americans is not much different in principle from the Taliban's 
>putting women in purdah to protect them from the unwanted attentions of 
>undisciplined males. The difference is that when Muslims do such things it's 
>backwards and evil, but when Americans do such things it's promoting 
>democracy and freedom. 

If it doesn't taste and feel like democracy and freedom, it surely can't be democracy and freedom.

I have been watching the documentary Power and Terrorism on Chomsky. He says one of the few diferences he has with the Quakers is that the Quakers suggest to tell the truth to the people and to those in power, whereas Chomsky thinks that those in power know the truth and that there is no point in telling them.

Joy

 
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