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 Mason's
Meditations
If
you're looking for something to chew over, some thoughtful seeds
for mental cultivation, bookmark this page for Jeff Mason's monthly
meditations. To think in or take away...
Number
Twenty-Eight: What To Do
Things
are looking bad. What does one do about it? How ought one respond
to the horror, mayhem and rampant injustice in the world? Should
one be angry? Sad? Depressed? Full of hate? Of Love? Of Indifference?
What is the right attitude to have about all this? Should the lucky
ones be happy while the world goes its evil way, with men oppressing
men, children and women in large areas of the earth? Just considering
the injustices perpetuated against women, we see horrific spectacles
of rape, machine-gunning, bodily mutilation, and now self-immolation
of teenage girls in Afghanistan. . Even where women have the vote,
civil rights, and opportunities to advance, there are still systematic
inequalities in the treatment of women. These systemic inequalities
are not gone from the countries that are most progressive in advancing
the cause of women’s equality, and are very striking in countries
where the question of the equality of women, as we understand it,
does not even arise. Similar things can be said of the oppression
of men by an economic power system that exploits their labor, or
the oppression of children in sweat shops and forced prostitution.
The
passions at work in our world today are very negative. Prominent
among them are anger, hate, the desire for revenge, and the desire
to kill one’s enemies. We have seen this many times in the
course of human history, but after the horrors of the last century,
their return in forms undreamt of then, fills us with dismay. Does
mankind have no memory? Are the delights of power so overwhelming
as to put all future planning out the window? Is greed so wonderful?
Is money all that we should ever think about in the end? Obviously,
it is not, but what then?
Should
we be angry at what we see going on in the world that is unfair
and oppressive to the human spirit and what it could be, if loosened
from the ties that bind it to a brutal power system? Again, the
answer is "yes." How could one not be angry about genocide,
the unequal manner in which women are treated by many men, the way
profits become ends-in-themselves? One conclusion, then, is that
it is right to feel angry about injustices. Now the question is
what to do with this anger? Should it be allowed to turn into hate
and the desire for revenge? Not if we want our miseries to end in
anything other than death. It cannot be right to return a wrong
for a wrong, no matter how understandable the feelings are that
lead to the desire to do it. We have to be smarter than fall back
on the old standby of the scapegoat and the "enemy" in
a black and white world. It is too complicated for that, now. We
must be creative and find a way to work from where we are to a world
in which we would all want to live and have something to live for.
.
Mason's
Meditations will next be updated early January 2003
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Previous
Meditations
27.
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18.
17.
16.
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14.
13.
12.
11.
10.
9.
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3.
2.
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