Thursday, March 10, 2005

To whom it may concern:
I have an opinion I believe is shared and wrangled over - among many of my angst-ridden, flower-child, baby-boomer, hippie and college-grad brethren.

Many have been searching their entire lives for answers to many human (earthly) and spiritual (religious and ethical) questions, especially now that a real war is upon us.

Viet Nam was not our war, although the oldest of us fought in it. The first war we are directly responsible for our country participating in – and our sons dying for is the War on Terror.

Many of us hold an opinion at our core, that war is so wrong as to be immoral. I am convinced, this core belief is what drives a generational New-Age Pacifism. And that pacifism is wholly used as a weapon against us by our enemies.

Sometimes, it takes one to know one and I hope that others who read my letter to a friend (below) will benefit from an understanding that Spirituality and Ideology can co-exist, especially when one’s survival is at stake.

Where Spirituality & Ideology Meet
I have a really great friend who is a very left-leaning guy and I am right-leaning guy - so we email each other and occasionally go round and round.

Recently I sent him a link
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2005/02/24/cstillwell.DTL about a woman who became a “9/11 Republican”. So my friend sent me back an email that basically dismissed the author and her epiphany as "limited thinking" and implied that he had “grown past all that” and started giving me this mantra about the Spiritual Masters, blah, blah, blah.

Dear Nathan, (name changed)
With all due respect, you wish me to believe that you have gone spiritual all of a sudden. I have always known your spiritual side - and it's what really makes us friends, I believe - BUT - I have seen too much vitriol and opposition from you - - in one single direction - - to swallow that concept whole.

I, too, believe that All-is-One. But I also believe that if one doesn't take a purposeful stand somewhere - one could get run over. I've chosen the side I believe is doing the greatest good - for the greatest number. States and Governments are organizations that serve a purpose - and must stay organized and viable in order to function and serve their population base. Whether wars are fought to battle religious or economic ideologies - the facts are, that in order to maintain viability, one sometimes must *defeat* the enemy.

It would be oh, so nice, if there were no enemies and man could just, "get along" with each other. But the reality, as I know you know, is different. To dismiss *reality* on the plane in which you live, as "limited thinking", I believe is foolish. If a thief breaks in your house because he doesn't know how to make a living for himself and has no respect for your rights, I can conceive of that as "limited thinking". But what if he then kills you because you are Christian, or any faith different from his - and he was raised to hate non-believers and kills you. OK, that can also viewed in a twisted sort of logic as “limited thinking” also. And, you're also just as dead. But should any of us stand for people living in our communities who openly hate others (because they believe or worship differently) and believe they should be killed?

Some day - man will be able to make decisions as a race - for the good of the human race and the planet. But we're not there yet. History is currently a much better teacher than the Buddha, when it comes to survival. We still have to make our decisions as a smaller subgroup for the sake of survival... So, let's take the subgroup of oh, say, the United States of America - for example. Perhaps you consider yourself above and beyond, as-well-as more enlightened than this small, piddley-little interest group? Well guess where you live? If you would like to survive till you are old and gray, your chances *will* be greater if you have fewer people around you who'd like your group exterminated, http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/bleinsatz7.htm don't you think? If you still do not believe that humans beings would exterminate one another - or if this concept is not real to you - then follow the web links and have a look at some photographs from our generation and from our parent's, that would prove otherwise. http://massgraves.info/

From the most homegenous standpoint of blending the human body with the spiritual being - and then bringing forth a viewpoint to describe how this can all work together to advance us all, - does it not make sense that we have to treat our bodies as temples, taking care of not just our own bodies but also of those whom we love - so we can then *all* advance to a higher spiritual plane before we die? In order to get to the spiritual plane, your physical body has to be alive during your study of our spiritual nature - it's not as if you can grab the rest of your life-lessons and experiences and take them with you (if you are dead...) like they were a homework assignment.

May Peace and Logic, be with you.