| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Fifth Column | |
| Tikkun favors navel gazing to war | |
| 2001-09-20 | |
The "religious" Left has begun to weigh in, and the results aren't pretty. In the wake of the bombings, "we need to ask ourselves," says Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine,
Why, if it's plausible to them, isn't it plausible to us? And why is it that our immediate response to violence is to use violence ourselves — thus reinforcing the cycle of violence in the world?" What's the precise reason we shouldn't? Not why did the terrorists do it, you see, but how did we make them do it. Naturally, he has an answer: "We may tell ourselves that the current violence has 'nothing to do' with the way that we've learned to close our ears when told that one out of every three people on this planet does not have enough food ... We may tell ourselves that the suffering of refugees and the oppressed have nothing to do with us ... On the other hand, what's the evidence that we have anything to do with them? Other than our mere existence, of course. But we live in one world, increasingly interconnected with everyone, and the forces that lead people to feel outrage, anger and desperation eventually impact on our own daily lives. The same inability to feel the pain of others is the pathology that shapes the minds of these terrorists." | |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |