Pick one. Any one. Yes, I was referring specifically to the horror which has been going on in the Middle East almost forever, but the base of almost every problem we face as a nation and as a world is traceable to our determination to differentiate ourselves from each other rather then to remember that we are the one species on Earth who have in our hands the means to end all this madness.
Pick one. Any one. Yes, I was referring specifically to the horror which has been going on in the Middle East almost forever, but the base of almost every problem we face as a nation and as a world is traceable to our determination to differentiate ourselves from each other rather then to remember that we are the one species on Earth who have in our hands the means to end all this madness.
p.s. One approach to the fundamental problem of "other-ism" that you identify:
Look for ways of thinking that transcend other-ism.
In western civilization, at the dawn of the Age of Pisces, Jesus Christ universalized the old Hebrew commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself." In the thought of the time, this got intertwined with Cicero's writing that love of our fellow humans is both essential to the preeminent virtue of justice and the way toward happiness.
I will suggest, following Cicero, that we have a natural inclination to act out of love toward others, understanding "natural" (as Aristotle and Cicero did) to mean maturely developed.
That thought leads to the problem of moral education of adolescents, which seems to be sorely lacking these days.
The question of 'natural inclination' in human beings is a murky and controversial one, given our ancestry and our own inclination to think of ourselves as motivated largely by intellectual independence and rationality. Granted, I speak as one trained as an anthropologist with a specialty in human origins. What exactly we brought with us in terms of genetic inclinations as we crossed the boundaries from mammal to primate to Homo is fraught with complexity. Having said that, I do think that one of the most powerful of those inclinations is territoriality. In animals, of course, this is necessary survival mechanism, but we have taken it to an intellectual and imaginative level far above that, and it has greatly helped to create in us all those 'us and them' tendencies which so bedevil us. Do we have a natural inclination to act out of love toward others? Within whatever groups with which we identify ourselves, perhaps. But we are also, as were all of our ancestral groups, an intensely parochial species. I'd suggest that what MacBeth heard upon his stage was the sound of that of which we are truly made, the animal, the poet, the builder, and the would-be god. It is the sounds and the effects of our fears, our dreams, our tools, and our hubris that has filled the world since the Agricultural Revolution began to fill the earth with enough of us to make us heard well above the sounds of other life forms.
As to the moral education of adolescents, speaking as one who taught boys on the verge of adolescence for over 40 years, I'd ask whose moral code you would prioritize, for there are many, and the boys brought them in from home, from their peers, and from all the myriad and conflicting sources with which we live in these days of far too early a universal access.
"Will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?
"I donтАЩt mind telling you that this matter has haunted me; it has haunted me particularly over the past five years. It has haunted me because I know that if I am tried I will be found guilty, very guilty, without extenuating circumstance...."
As heir to a long line of English teachers, I'd suggest that Mr. Budhoo's letter, whatever its factual nature would have benefitted from a great deal less self-immolation and verbiage and a great deal more specificity. I say that not as a comment on the actual nature of what he's trying to describe but rather to suggest that if he wanted to get his point across to a sufficiently wide audience, he went about that in far too verbose and convoluted way.
Budhoo's letter was an international sensation, but it was blacked out of the U S. news media. His use of college-level English from the 1980s challenges today's younger generation.
You can't have read much of his 100-page letter that has quite a bit of specificity.
p.s. My father was an English teacher; I grew up in a house full of books.
Perhaps you are aware of Strunk and White's Elements of Style (the Little Book, as it is known), which has been one my guides to clear English prose. Applying its dicta to the letter in question would be enlightening.
I'm ignoring nothing. But in the midst of enough horror going on in the world to make angels weep, one with a point to make about any one situation should eschew a mountain of verbiage and come straight to that point or he will lose the audience he hopes to convince. For example, Mr. Budhoo's entire first paragraph is little but inchoate guilt and rage. That is simply sound and fury with little to engage the reader in the actual situation he wants to convey. If he wants to convince people, he should leave the emotional outpouring to a minimum and get to the point.
Pick one. Any one. Yes, I was referring specifically to the horror which has been going on in the Middle East almost forever, but the base of almost every problem we face as a nation and as a world is traceable to our determination to differentiate ourselves from each other rather then to remember that we are the one species on Earth who have in our hands the means to end all this madness.
p.s. One approach to the fundamental problem of "other-ism" that you identify:
Look for ways of thinking that transcend other-ism.
In western civilization, at the dawn of the Age of Pisces, Jesus Christ universalized the old Hebrew commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself." In the thought of the time, this got intertwined with Cicero's writing that love of our fellow humans is both essential to the preeminent virtue of justice and the way toward happiness.
I will suggest, following Cicero, that we have a natural inclination to act out of love toward others, understanding "natural" (as Aristotle and Cicero did) to mean maturely developed.
That thought leads to the problem of moral education of adolescents, which seems to be sorely lacking these days.
The question of 'natural inclination' in human beings is a murky and controversial one, given our ancestry and our own inclination to think of ourselves as motivated largely by intellectual independence and rationality. Granted, I speak as one trained as an anthropologist with a specialty in human origins. What exactly we brought with us in terms of genetic inclinations as we crossed the boundaries from mammal to primate to Homo is fraught with complexity. Having said that, I do think that one of the most powerful of those inclinations is territoriality. In animals, of course, this is necessary survival mechanism, but we have taken it to an intellectual and imaginative level far above that, and it has greatly helped to create in us all those 'us and them' tendencies which so bedevil us. Do we have a natural inclination to act out of love toward others? Within whatever groups with which we identify ourselves, perhaps. But we are also, as were all of our ancestral groups, an intensely parochial species. I'd suggest that what MacBeth heard upon his stage was the sound of that of which we are truly made, the animal, the poet, the builder, and the would-be god. It is the sounds and the effects of our fears, our dreams, our tools, and our hubris that has filled the world since the Agricultural Revolution began to fill the earth with enough of us to make us heard well above the sounds of other life forms.
As to the moral education of adolescents, speaking as one who taught boys on the verge of adolescence for over 40 years, I'd ask whose moral code you would prioritize, for there are many, and the boys brought them in from home, from their peers, and from all the myriad and conflicting sources with which we live in these days of far too early a universal access.
I identified my "problem" of choice a year ago, in this reply to HCR:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-15-2023/comment/11967315
"Will the world be content merely to brand our institution as among the most insidious enemies of humankind? Will our fellowmen condemn us thus and let the matter rest? Or will the heirs of those whom we have dismembered in our own peculiar Holocaust clamor for another Nuremberg?
"I donтАЩt mind telling you that this matter has haunted me; it has haunted me particularly over the past five years. It has haunted me because I know that if I am tried I will be found guilty, very guilty, without extenuating circumstance...."
As heir to a long line of English teachers, I'd suggest that Mr. Budhoo's letter, whatever its factual nature would have benefitted from a great deal less self-immolation and verbiage and a great deal more specificity. I say that not as a comment on the actual nature of what he's trying to describe but rather to suggest that if he wanted to get his point across to a sufficiently wide audience, he went about that in far too verbose and convoluted way.
Budhoo's letter was an international sensation, but it was blacked out of the U S. news media. His use of college-level English from the 1980s challenges today's younger generation.
You can't have read much of his 100-page letter that has quite a bit of specificity.
p.s. My father was an English teacher; I grew up in a house full of books.
Perhaps you are aware of Strunk and White's Elements of Style (the Little Book, as it is known), which has been one my guides to clear English prose. Applying its dicta to the letter in question would be enlightening.
You have moral depravity to ignore Budhoo's confession to crimes against humanity while quibbling over the style of his English.
I'm ignoring nothing. But in the midst of enough horror going on in the world to make angels weep, one with a point to make about any one situation should eschew a mountain of verbiage and come straight to that point or he will lose the audience he hopes to convince. For example, Mr. Budhoo's entire first paragraph is little but inchoate guilt and rage. That is simply sound and fury with little to engage the reader in the actual situation he wants to convey. If he wants to convince people, he should leave the emotional outpouring to a minimum and get to the point.
You are entitled yo your opinion.
I am, as you are. Discussions about such things are always enlightening as long as they do not descend into insult.