Turning the Other Cheek

"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."
—Matthew 5:38-42, NIV

This is why I fall short of calling myself a Christian. That’s a hard rule to follow. ‘Do not resist an evil person.’ That means, should a person attack you, you should be meek. You should take harm rather than give back harm. This results in another bruised cheek. This results in criminals walking the streets, this results in your family getting hurt.

I think this is the make it or break it rule. The dividing line between the ideal Christianity and Christianity in practice. Quite a few people accept the text so far as following the text will help sustain them in the present, physical life. Some will justify their violence using the New Testament.

That’s how Christian people call for assassination or war. Because they are unable to follow the rule, and sometimes justify breaking it as going for the public good. That’s like Michael Corleone going to church. So to me, when a Christian shows or feels ill will toward another, that is about the most serious sign that that Christian lacks an adequate faith.

I know, because when I learned, some time ago, that ill will was the definitive sign of a lack of faith. I find believing in God difficult. If I believed in God, using the heart, I would mind my ill will. Instead, bitterness carried itself to the point that I lost the affection of quite a few acquaintances. I learned that death, loneliness and pain are only feared in the absence of faith. Without faith, family members cry at funerals. Etc.

Yet what Christianity seems to be about the aspiration toward holiness. It accepts sinners. It takes it for granted that practitioners have sinned. Jesus died for sinner. Sin is the major, even definitive, point of the religion. It serves as the foil of how people should act. It serves to show that life should be lived in the service, for the sake, to the goodwill of others so that they can have Heaven on Earth.

I aspire to become a Christian. I aspire to purge my heart of evil. To become a selfless person, or close enough. I am definitely at the stage where when I see that Christianity is used as a justification of ill will, I get pretty pissed.

Imagine a guy with a club shouting: “God loves you, faggot,” and bashing another man in the skull.

It’s something beautiful warped inside out.

Vengeance (1st draft)

I have yet to meet God. I am uncertain of a metaphysical engine that fumes with love, and sneers at the slime dripping through the streets. I am uncertain of its form, and more uncertain of its existence. Therefore, this essay--and perhaps all my essays--restricts itself to the form of the universe. The way it seems to me rather than the way it has been told to us.

A completely ninhilistic viewpoint of the world fucks up the need for an essay, since it assumes that nothing matters, inherently speaking. IE. That all meaning stems from the biological, rather than biological steming from the meaning. Maybe that's true, that there is no substantial meaning in the world. People, do, however, react with feeling and constructed meaning. From this, I can only assume that they is a meaning in our heads. Should there be no God, and our lives built upon wholly biological processes, there is nothing to say that there is no meaning in the universe. Only that there is no God, and that what we call the souls rests in our skulls. But this fails logically knock out all ideas of morality. This may mean, however, that meaning varies from person to person, from biology to biology.

The problem of vengeance stems on the idea that those who have been hurt deserve to seek retribution. They should, in a moral sense, hurt those hurt who hurt them. For vengeance to be justified in a utilitarian sense, more good must come from it than harm. It the target of vengeance will likely hurt others again (eg. a serial killer) retribution will be warrented since an act of vengeance will eliminate all possibility of the future atrocity occuring. If the target serves the public good, however, then utilitarianism can mess things up. Should the target be a billionaire philanthropist, sending him to jail for an assault charge may cause more harm than allowing him to remain free, since his money should save hungry children, send people to college, aid the efforts to clean up after an environmental disaster, etc.

Let's assume, to complicate things, that people have a difficulty understanding the public good. They have a difficulty separating their needs from the needs of others. In this case, which I believe to be pretty damn pervasive, utilitarianism is only an idea. It's pretty damn hard to stick to. Maybe if the billionaire's assault ended in an black eye, then the victim might be able to forgive and forget. But let's say the assault ended in the victim becoming a quadrepligic. Then the parents of that victim would sure as hell have a difficult time sticking to a utilitarian view of the word. I mean, shit, unless technology fixes things, their kids is going to be physically dependant forever.

FOREVER.

The parents will be inclined to purchase a weapon, repay the quadrepligia, and then some. Even if they decide to not seek vegeance, they will almost certainly have some trouble getting over the situation, if they ever do get over it.

"Vegeance is mine, I will repay" says the LORD, in the most hard-ass declaration of all time. If this is true, then everything is okay. No matter what happens, and who is hurt, GOD will settle the score. He will know what to do with the billionaire.
Let's assume, though, that God doesn't exist. So where are we? Obviously, in pretty fucky situation. And this situation gets evewn more fucky when people's perception of God allows them to take violence into their own hands. Many people of the Abrahamic faiths have been involved in a considerable amount of violence throughout history. I reject the notion, however, that the violence stemmed from the faiths, but from the interpretation of the faith (my interpretation, in all fairness, could be mostly wrong as well). That people have been able to skew the commandments of God to allow mass atrocities is something that says more about Man than about God.

The 9-11 attacks are very interesting since they are direct antagonism between two cultures that serve separate religions--Christianity and Islam. My knowledge of the islamic tradition on violence is incomplete, so I'll focus on the Christian interpretation of this event.

America has been considered a Christian nation, in a cultural sense. this is true. Most of our presidents and people have been christian. Some would argue (perhaps incorrectly) that this nation was founded wholly on Christian ideals, and therefore should look at the Christian faith as a moral backbone.

"Turn the other cheek," Jesus says, in the most difficult-to-follow commandment of all time. Submit to others, though they persecute you. Love, though others hate you. For Jesus (I can't remember which gospel at the moment, I think it's in Matthew that he says this) loving our enemies is the most commendable act a person can do. However, some people can define love for friends differently from love for enemies. A mother protecting her son from a burgler, may think, "I love you enough not to wish death upon you," before stabbing the burgler in the eye with a butterknife."

Taking a leap of faith, and allowing God pay vengeance is very difficult to do. For anyone. Only iffier in a situation is someone taking vengeance, and hurting people who may deserve this.

The 9-11 attacks further illustrate this. Perhaps the attackers believed that the people in the planes and buildings deserved death since they were American. Or that God's judgement render the deaths of innocents justified. However, in an atheisitic sense, vengeance only leads to more vengeance. When they attacked the buildings, they gave the US gov't reason and an opportunity to engage in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Deaths caused by US forces would make the friends and relatives of the dead wish for earthly retribution. When the attacked flew those planes into those buildings they began (actually, continued) the chain of violence.

"I'm going to go to Afghanistan to get the bad guys who did this to us," says a volunteer to the US marines in 9-12-01.

"I'm going to make those American pigs pay for this," says a farmer after a missile blows up his house.

And then the violence spills into more violence, and different groups go for what they think they deserve. And the chain goes on and on, with everyone saying in their hearts, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay."

Resolved: Organized Sports are More Dangerous Than Organized Religion

Written December 2006

Is there really any need for comparison? Really? Isn’t the main point we must consider is that people are crazy?
On the part of religion you’ve got
people blowing themselves up,
killing pretty much every person in Jerusalem during the crusades,
murdering no less 6 million in Europe,
and much death.

On the part of religion, you’ve got Fred Phelps and his congregation protesting the funerals of soldiers because the United States government doesn’t take a tougher stance on homosexuality.

Yes, yes, religion is more dangerous than sports on a sociological standpoint because God has been used for justification of mass slaughter. Not so with sports--at least not so often.

But look at organized sports. I once met a guy who played for the NFL who said that basically everybody there was a rapist.

You’ve got Mike Tyson—I don’t know if all the stories are true, but you’ve guy a million peoples saying that punches old women in the mouth, has bipolar disorder, threatened to murder his first wife.

And he’s a convicted rapist.

You’ve got Don King, who still, in the most sympathetic portrayal of him, comes off as really shady.

You’ve soccer riots, drunken fights. During the 1960s, in a boxing match, Bernardo Paret got tangled in the ropes, and his opponent, during the next 3 to 4 seconds, hit him 18 times before the referee pull him off. Paret died before he hit the canvas.

Beer, beer, beer, beer,

And traffic jams after a game, people just take your fucking time, if you take your time, then no one is going to crach, why don’t you understand that trying to squeeze through a small opening with cause problems

The only good thing that sports has done for us is that during a tampa bay buccaneers home game, two men got into a fight, and the security arrived, pulled out a tazer, and everyone in the surrounding seats crying

"TAZER"

"TAZER""TAZER"

Look, everyone, before you say sports are the downfall of civilization,
or religion is the cause of all of societies problems, just consider humanity by itself. People will kill you just to watch the blood pour out.
People rob from each other. They are untrustworthy, fake, selfish, domineering, abusive. If you give them the chance, they will rob you. If you give them the chance, and it serves their interests, they will do whatever they want to you. Even if it’s just for fun.

So let me review.

You’ve got Neo-Nazis in Europe hanging out at soccer matches and maliciously booing the non-white players.

You’ve got Ultraconversative Jews getting into fights with the participants in a gay-pride parade.

You’ve got The Tampa Bay Devils Rays, and they haven’t had a winning season in history.

And you’ve priests, from the Roman Catholic Church, my church, diddling little boys.
Obviously when they were weighing eternal damnation with their immediate urges, they decided "To Hell with Jesus."

Awesome quotes and the state of women

"He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive."
- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

***

"I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us."
- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

***

16 And Jesus said, Are ye also yet without understanding?
17 Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.
19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.
- The Gospel of Matthew

***


"All right, then, I'll go to hell!"
- Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn


***

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go, —
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
- Shakespeare, sonnet 130


***

Holy shit, where are the quotes by women? It kind of disturbs me--In preparation for a speech regarding people who smoke, I researched cool famous people who smoked. And while I could easily find intellectual, go-getting dudes who chomped down cigars, I had trouble finding women who happened to smoke and weren't movie stars. Where were the physicists? The writers? The politicians? They are in such short supply in the world, compared to bad-ass men. To find them, one must dig hard to find a woman with influence who isn't an actor. (I'll save this for another entry, but, honestly, actors [and a lot of writers, for that matter] contribute little to the world.)

Now, I myself haven't had much experience and exposure to women who have contributed to culture. Yes, I'm a big fan of Joyce Carol Oates (aka Ms. AWESOME). But I don't read that many female novelists. (For some reason, I just haven't had the urge to pick up a novel by Toni Morrison, and I dislike Emily Dickenson.) However, when I do look at women who have contributed to certain fields, the list is pretty small. Now, we can get into a big big big discussion here about why that is (culture, the patriarchal society, etc). But that isn't the point of this particular blog.

The point is immortality. The point is badassery (which is a word because I say so). My point is that I write this essay in the computer lab of Butler Library at Columbia University, and several stories above me, there is an papyrus fragment of the Odyssey, centuries old. Think: a poem created by a men (or men) 28 centuries ago is still read by thousands of people each year. Amazing.

- James Blundell (the first person to do a successful blood transfusion)
- Lester Wire (inventor of the modern traffic light)
- Abbas Ibn Firnas (inventor of revolutionary glass-manufactoring techniques, and one of the first people ever, if not the first, to attempt to fly.)

These men have gained immortality through their works. They have caused change, and influenced the others of those who lived after them. Their lives carried weight. Even if all human acts are futile, their acts approached the level of having true meaning.

So, women: do you want that kind of immortality? Or, if not, do you at least have a burning, obsessive ambition in you? (If you don't, you're probably a worthless leech.) I hope you live your life for more than just looking good. I hope you live your life for more than picking up old, rich men. A phat ass is a phat ass and big tits are big tits. One hot woman is another hot woman, if one doesn't take their personalities into consideration. Besides that, looks matter little. You get old, your tits sag, and guys stop checking you out. And during middle-age you will wonder, "What was done? What was done?" During middle-age, you will wonder if you lived for more than fucking and having children--because what's the point of having kids if the only point of having kids is just to have kids?