[Buddha-l] Arizona law and human nature

[donna Bair-Mundy]

Aloha,
   The good news is that an astute judge blocked implementation of much of 
the law.
   The bad news is what the law re-confirms about human nature.
   Throughout U.S. history whenever people felt fearful, whether of an 
impending war or a failing economy, the Congress pushed through 
legislation to rid the country of immigrants, legal or otherwise.  The 
first alien and sedition act was pushed through on the basis of a 
trumped-up fear of the French and their revolutionary tendencies, as I 
recall, and was actually meant to give the executive branch the power to 
silence its critics.
   I don't have the citation at hand but there was a very interesting study 
of fear and politics in which the authors talked about how fear causes 
people to want to be surrounded by people who are just like themselves. 
Other studies have shown how the basic wiring of the brain allows fear to 
override higher thinking processes.  The desire to be surrounded by those 
we deem to be just like us seems to be a very basic, tribal instinct that 
crops up repeatedly.  That tribalism is why it is so hard to have a truly 
"universalist" religion.  People keep turning universalist religions into 
tribal religions.  Hence Catholics agains Protestants.  Sunnis against 
Shiites.  Buddhist sect against Buddhist sect.
   Here in Hawai'i the Republican governor recently vetoed a bill that 
would have offered civil unions to gays and lesbians.  The religious right 
were admantly against the bill.  They gathered at the capitol loudly 
praying and thrusting their hands heavenward asking their god to help them 
in denying a significant portion of the population their basic human 
rights.  Gays and lesbians are "different."  They're not members of a 
tribe whose boundaries are rigidly defined by a very self-righteous group 
that sees themselves as the only true Christians.
   I would say that tribalism also is what allows human beings to engage in 
the torture of sentient beings in the name of research.  As in cutting 
open the chest of a living being with no anesthesia or anesthetic. 
Non-human animals are not part of our tribal group.  Inflicting pain upon 
them in the name of possibly helping members of our group is therefore 
ethically permissible, according to this way of thinking.
   Perhaps one of the hardest task of any religion that teaches compassion 
is to overcome the us-versus-them dichotomy.

                    	Have a safe and joyful day,

 			donna Bair-Mundy, Ph.D.
 			Instructor, LIS Program
 			Information & Computer Sci. Dept.
 			POST Bldg., Room 314-D
 			University of Hawai`i at Manoa
 			1680 East-West Road
 			Honolulu, HI 96822
 			Voice: 808-956-3973 Fax: 808-956-3548
 			<donnab at hawaii.edu>

>
> Oh shit. Correcting a [typo] turned into a tirade. Oh well.
>