'If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? ' - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.
quote from plep{me. I am. I will. I have before, and if the moment comes again, I will again. there are evil people. irregardless of why or how they became evil. the relativistic fog that covers all distinction is a refuge for cowardice. too much peace is death. too much war is death. neither one works always.
all these human-centered religious impulses start fresh and clear, healing so much corruption when they're new. but they become refined, they become mechanisms, tools for survival, and eventually they become what it was they started out being an antidote to.
in a world where all large carnivores have been beaten to their knees, locked in the prisons of entertainment or driven to extinction, the idea of peace as some higher attainment is a mask for the privileged weak to wear, as they enjoy the peaceful aftermath of the most violent activity the mammalian world has ever known. it is precisely from that blood-filled calm these philosophies arise, and become bloody in their time.
the tiger's mouth is evil, the great bear's paw with its claws extended, the snake hidden, suddenly too close, the list is easy to make, death in the natural world can seem evil.
the heartlessness of one human being's disregard for the life of another, that seems evil to the privileged majority, raised in this safe place. but there are many who will say by too successfully removing our predators we've only deferred a limited threat, transforming it into an inevitable one. most of the killing has been done for us, and it's then we can afford the luxury of tolerance, condemning the man who kills the lion, the snake, the bear, because we live so far from them, and from their teeth.
this 'war' in Iraq is wrong because of who it kills, and who that killing benefits.
