librarygeek (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
librarygeek) wrote2022-11-07 07:44 pm
librarygeek) wrote2022-11-07 07:44 pm
A year later...
Last year, I made this post: https://librarygeek.dreamwidth.org/44452.html.
The affirmation I came up with then still applies: Tie rope swings, not nooses, and yet, *WE* persist.
I will still pray that this state of Pennsylvania, and this country United States of America, has enough votes in tomorrow's election that want to maintain "a democracy, if you can keep it" (Dr. Benjamin Franklin), and wants us to persist.
One of our candidates in Pennsylvania is a doctor that doesn't understand that septic tissue with a cardiac pulse that had started and stopped, needs to be removed to prevent septicemia. He (because of course it's a he) thinks its removal is murder, but at least he seems to be a decent human being, if not a good medical doctor. A different office's candidate I believe flunked kindergarten. He doesn't want to share, he says mean things, and thinks calling climate change fake science is going to work. He was *also* present at that infamous rally on the Mall January 6th, 2020, but he didn't go into the Capital Building, which as he keeps pushing the election denier spiel, just makes him a coward, without even the courage of his convictions.
Contemplation question to answer if you choose:Are your actions in love with Power, or with the Power of Love? It's basically the bedrock mystery of mysticism: If you have felt that Universal Love even once, you can't hate anyone.
The affirmation I came up with then still applies: Tie rope swings, not nooses, and yet, *WE* persist.
I will still pray that this state of Pennsylvania, and this country United States of America, has enough votes in tomorrow's election that want to maintain "a democracy, if you can keep it" (Dr. Benjamin Franklin), and wants us to persist.
One of our candidates in Pennsylvania is a doctor that doesn't understand that septic tissue with a cardiac pulse that had started and stopped, needs to be removed to prevent septicemia. He (because of course it's a he) thinks its removal is murder, but at least he seems to be a decent human being, if not a good medical doctor. A different office's candidate I believe flunked kindergarten. He doesn't want to share, he says mean things, and thinks calling climate change fake science is going to work. He was *also* present at that infamous rally on the Mall January 6th, 2020, but he didn't go into the Capital Building, which as he keeps pushing the election denier spiel, just makes him a coward, without even the courage of his convictions.
Contemplation question to answer if you choose:Are your actions in love with Power, or with the Power of Love? It's basically the bedrock mystery of mysticism: If you have felt that Universal Love even once, you can't hate anyone.
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But I do think "do you care about those who have less than you do?" is a good litmus test, pretty much universally.
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+1 At best, it's quietism. And it can get much worse than that.
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Ecclesiastes: "a time to love and a time to hate." We have the range of emotions we have for a reason. I don't hate easily; I don't want to hate without reason or for a bad reason; but there are, I think, times when it can be appropriate.
(I guess there are multiple definitions of "hate": one is an emotion, and one refers to violent expressions of bigotry - which I think is often more linked to sadism than to the emotion of hate. And sadism has to do with experiencing positive emotions when inflicting suffering. Fine emotion, bad context.)
I'm pretty suspicious of anything as a universal solution. I think the Ecclesiastes passage is a reminder that living well is about having the appropriate responses to various contexts, not one response to all contexts.