Another hero falls...
Truly sad.
People always ask me, when I tell them about being a member of the Religious Society of Friends, about pacifism. In the face of the gross injustices in this world, the rampant violence and the sheer bloody brutality of some human beings towards others, how can one follow a path of non-violence and expect to not only stay alive, but to prosper and help others to prosper as well?
I believe the answer is now and always will be simply choice.
Choice is what elevates us, makes us unique and individual. We have instincts, natural reactions, inborn desires and reflex responses. It is by being able to evaluate them, the roots of their impulses, their outcomes, and then choose to override them that we become, and stay, human.
For myself, I must admit, that choice is made by me in not joining Christian Peacemaker Teams (although I have considered it) and going into areas like Iraq where their sort of support is desperately needed. By not doing this, I choose to not put myself in harm's way and, perhaps, this somewhat lessens the power of my individual choice. My preference is to stay at home and work to help those around me, be it with prison reform or more popular charities like literacy programs and homeless concerns.
However, when something like this happens, when a Friend falls, it hurts and the first reaction is always to hurt back, to unleash one's natural anger at the misguided people who killed him. Failing to find them, though, the next impulse is to hurt anyone who sort of resembles them in either form or deed. Then, you want to hurt everyone, who with casual stupidity an disrespect for human life, from Saddam to Osama to Bush, created the situation that put him in harms way in the first place. Then you want to hurt everyone who allowed those leaders to get away with these horrible decisions because we're all responsible for all these deaths and they will all weigh on us in whatever judgement awaits after this life. Finally, you want to hurt yourself for not working harder to raise the awareness of the people and get rid of the leaders who guide us down these dark paths. Or hurt yourself because you are uncertain if you would be as firm in your beliefs as someone like Tom Fox was, even to the end.
The trouble is, now that you've hurt everyone in the world, it doesn't make anything better and Tom Fox is still dead. Only now, everyone is hurt and everyone is nursing a grievance just like yours and everyone wants to hurt everyone else that much more and it just grows unchecked like a cancer, eating away at what makes us human beings.
So there has to be a choice. There has to be a conscious decision to disconnect at some point in the chain, and forcefully choose not to wander down that path. The support is there, both spiritually and rationally, but that doesn't make it any easier of a choice. It's a choice that must be made, however, if any good is to come from any of this. It's a choice that always must be made if any good is to come from anything. You can't choose for others, only for yourself. You can hope that your choice calls out to that of God in others, though, and makes them at least consider what choices they make. But that's as good as it gets. You make your choice with no guarantees other than the knowledge that your choice is right by humanity, although it may not always be acknowledged or appreciated.
Frequently, I reject the questions people ask me about pacifism and being a Friend. I charge them with stacking the deck. They give me some scenario like, "What if a killer had a gun up to your mother's/aunt's/lover's/wife's/child's/your head? I bet you wouldn't believe in pacifism then." I say they've created a lifeboat situation and that I refuse to allow the metric of my everyday morality to be based on a case so extreme that I will most likely never have to deal with it. After all, extreme situations are by their very definition not normal, so do normal rules of behavior, belief and morality even apply? I also refuse to play the game as they've set up the rules. The situation isn't designed to test my choices, or even to try and understand them. It is specifically created to break them. Indeed, it seems as if they seek to bring my own choice into question in order to somehow further validate their own moral code. It's as hostile as using a gun.
This is, however, just so much rhetoric. It sounds nice as I get ready to go volunteer at a homeless shelter or teach an adult how to read or scramble for freelance writing jobs or study to get into pharmacy school or whatever I do to fill the individual moments of my daily life. When compared to Tom Fox's practice of his faith, however, it seems useless. As useless as people debating the virtues of pacifism who will most likely never have to deal with a real world "lifeboating" of their beliefs.
Although it's tragic, in a way Fox's death is also heartening. It shows that, even when in those lifeboat situations, even when one is past all hope of rescue or return and all one has left is a choice between the principles one holds dear and one's own life, in the middle of an ocean of grief and regret and loss, people can still make a choice. A positive choice. People can still choose to be something better than circumstances and instinct would make of them.
It's also, in a very selfish way, deeply troubling because who knows if I could have made the same choice as he did.
People always ask me, when I tell them about being a member of the Religious Society of Friends, about pacifism. In the face of the gross injustices in this world, the rampant violence and the sheer bloody brutality of some human beings towards others, how can one follow a path of non-violence and expect to not only stay alive, but to prosper and help others to prosper as well?
I believe the answer is now and always will be simply choice.
Choice is what elevates us, makes us unique and individual. We have instincts, natural reactions, inborn desires and reflex responses. It is by being able to evaluate them, the roots of their impulses, their outcomes, and then choose to override them that we become, and stay, human.
For myself, I must admit, that choice is made by me in not joining Christian Peacemaker Teams (although I have considered it) and going into areas like Iraq where their sort of support is desperately needed. By not doing this, I choose to not put myself in harm's way and, perhaps, this somewhat lessens the power of my individual choice. My preference is to stay at home and work to help those around me, be it with prison reform or more popular charities like literacy programs and homeless concerns.
However, when something like this happens, when a Friend falls, it hurts and the first reaction is always to hurt back, to unleash one's natural anger at the misguided people who killed him. Failing to find them, though, the next impulse is to hurt anyone who sort of resembles them in either form or deed. Then, you want to hurt everyone, who with casual stupidity an disrespect for human life, from Saddam to Osama to Bush, created the situation that put him in harms way in the first place. Then you want to hurt everyone who allowed those leaders to get away with these horrible decisions because we're all responsible for all these deaths and they will all weigh on us in whatever judgement awaits after this life. Finally, you want to hurt yourself for not working harder to raise the awareness of the people and get rid of the leaders who guide us down these dark paths. Or hurt yourself because you are uncertain if you would be as firm in your beliefs as someone like Tom Fox was, even to the end.
The trouble is, now that you've hurt everyone in the world, it doesn't make anything better and Tom Fox is still dead. Only now, everyone is hurt and everyone is nursing a grievance just like yours and everyone wants to hurt everyone else that much more and it just grows unchecked like a cancer, eating away at what makes us human beings.
So there has to be a choice. There has to be a conscious decision to disconnect at some point in the chain, and forcefully choose not to wander down that path. The support is there, both spiritually and rationally, but that doesn't make it any easier of a choice. It's a choice that must be made, however, if any good is to come from any of this. It's a choice that always must be made if any good is to come from anything. You can't choose for others, only for yourself. You can hope that your choice calls out to that of God in others, though, and makes them at least consider what choices they make. But that's as good as it gets. You make your choice with no guarantees other than the knowledge that your choice is right by humanity, although it may not always be acknowledged or appreciated.
Frequently, I reject the questions people ask me about pacifism and being a Friend. I charge them with stacking the deck. They give me some scenario like, "What if a killer had a gun up to your mother's/aunt's/lover's/wife's/child's/your head? I bet you wouldn't believe in pacifism then." I say they've created a lifeboat situation and that I refuse to allow the metric of my everyday morality to be based on a case so extreme that I will most likely never have to deal with it. After all, extreme situations are by their very definition not normal, so do normal rules of behavior, belief and morality even apply? I also refuse to play the game as they've set up the rules. The situation isn't designed to test my choices, or even to try and understand them. It is specifically created to break them. Indeed, it seems as if they seek to bring my own choice into question in order to somehow further validate their own moral code. It's as hostile as using a gun.
This is, however, just so much rhetoric. It sounds nice as I get ready to go volunteer at a homeless shelter or teach an adult how to read or scramble for freelance writing jobs or study to get into pharmacy school or whatever I do to fill the individual moments of my daily life. When compared to Tom Fox's practice of his faith, however, it seems useless. As useless as people debating the virtues of pacifism who will most likely never have to deal with a real world "lifeboating" of their beliefs.
Although it's tragic, in a way Fox's death is also heartening. It shows that, even when in those lifeboat situations, even when one is past all hope of rescue or return and all one has left is a choice between the principles one holds dear and one's own life, in the middle of an ocean of grief and regret and loss, people can still make a choice. A positive choice. People can still choose to be something better than circumstances and instinct would make of them.
It's also, in a very selfish way, deeply troubling because who knows if I could have made the same choice as he did.
posted by QuakerJono | 3:05 PM
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