Good bye, Simone

Dear Participants,

It is with motivation and determination to put myself to use towards things I believe in, that I say to you adieu. Over the past two years, this forum has seen many topics, discussions on love, war, morality, even the physics of time. Hopefully, if you've participated in the discussions, you have thought critically about them, perhaps incorporating something new into your beliefs. I know that I have.

One of the greatest lessons I've learned from this forum has to do with the meaning of morality. It has become evident through our varied discussions and radically opposing positions, that morality is subjective to the individual. The evidence is in the forum. Simply look back at the replies to topic questions. Not one of us has agreed on all points on the exact meaning of morality. Unfortunately, the vast majority of us have difficulty accepting this truth and labor intensively to force a particular idea of morality onto others.

Morality is an odd beast, meaning everything and nothing. It is and it isn't. To those of a particular faith which condemns "immoral acts," morality is a defined set of rules. Yet the irony of that fallacy is that the rules seem to change according to the needs of the day--which sadly often are based on a narrow and selfish agenda.

I have my own idea of morality, and thanks to a very few key participants of this forum, I have had the opportunity to develop and refine what I find to be truth (those that have most affected my thinking and to whom I am most grateful are Shahrazad1973, RedHairedCelt, Czolya, Nance1, and italian_culture, but of course each of you has helped make it the interesting forum it has sometimes been). Since changing the focus to discuss Contemporary Moral Issues, I have allowed myself to share some of those truths refined herein with you: that killing is wrong, that pacifism should be explored, that all people should be treated with the same respect and dignity we want for ourselves and our children--regardless of if they are a blood relation or a stranger around the world. It is difficult to express just why, but I will try.

If we fail to uphold these basic moral truths, we fail ourselves, falling without a net, for in the end, we will have nothing in return for the nothing we have given, as those that would have been there to catch us will no longer exist; we had long ago let them fall to a preventable demise. 

To put it plainly, it is in our own best interest to care for others as we would want to be cared for. It is a social contract that we must abide by because if we don't, when it comes time that we need a hand, that social contract will not be there for us either. To put it bluntly, we are destroying ourselves and assuring our own disaster by failing to uphold this social insurance policy. Regardless of your idea of morality, this applies to you.

For our children and their children, we must not allow this to happen.

Thank you to all my subscribers who have come to enjoy and appreciate this forum. I will keep this site open as a resource for those of you who appreciate having it on hand.

And now for a parting question, what do you do to uphold the social contract? If you would like to share something you do to help make the world a better place, you may leave your comment as a reply to this post. By doing so, others will see that helping is a necessary and popular idea, good for them to try as well. And maybe I will get some useful ideas of how I can constructively apply my own energy.

Genocide. On our Watch?

The resources of the United States, although vast, are limited. Especially the resources involving money and manpower. Given that fact, one has to wonder how we prioritize the spending of that money and use of that manpower. Fortunately, we still have rights as individuals. We have the freedom to choose for ourselves how we spend our personal money and personal efforts. Yet we also have rights as individuals of a democratic nation to demand our government use those resources for constructive, humane purposes, rather than destructive, inhumane purposes.

The question has been pondered over and over in my head as I watch us, day after day, continue to send our troops to foreign lands for questionable purposes and devote billions of tax-payer dollars to support that effort while millions of impoverished in other lands are ignored and neglected. In fact, we, as a nation, seem to have forgotten our promise after WWII that we would not ignore the very types of atrocities that are being committed in these other lands. Yet we do.

If you aren't yet familiar with what is going on in Darfur, Uganda, and the Sudan, please take some time to visit Human Rights Watch to get some information.

How do we excuse the manner in which we are using our human and monetary resources, given the dire need to stop genocide and mass human rights violations occurring at this very minute? What is our moral responsibility as a nation and leading world power in the global community?

Death for Oil?

If history finds that we have participated in the death of countless people so that a few could profit from oil production, will our compliance with the war have been a moral act?

Today, I listened to another edition of the Diane Rehm Show, entitled simply Iraqi Oil. Both sides of the issue were represented; however, either J. Robinson West, chairman of PFC Energy, is an idiot, or he's incompetent in the art of debate. Antonia Juhasz, analyst, Oil Change International and author of "The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time" blew him out of the water with her argument that the Bush Administration is using our military to secure its oil agenda. Currently on the table, a law that would give 75% of Iraqi oil to international corporations for a lengthy 35-year contract with no responsibility whatsoever for those corporations to share technology with Iraqi oil scientists or engineers, train Iraqi workers, or even employ Iraqi workers--all to be decided conveniently by a weak, puppet government of our own creation. (Be sure to listen past the first interview with Edward Wong, New York Times reporter on site in Baghdad).

After you listen to the program, please weigh in with your opinions on the war (have your opinions on our motivation for war in Iraq changed?) Are we guilty of ignorant and weak compliance? Or can we brush off all responsibility for the deaths of innocents by our own military as the act of a greedy few?

For the convenience of everyone, please keep your responses to the topic at hand. Also please limit your response to your own argument, rather than just pasting in someone else's article, email, whatever.

Did we, as a society, fail Cho?

Edit Saturday 9:25: the following question is not meant in any way to belittle the deaths of 32 innocent people at Virginia Tech this week. We mourn for them with the rest of our friends and neighbors. Instead, it is meant to serve us by encouraging us to look at ourselves and our society for ways we can keep such atrocities from occurring in the future. If you are feeling overwhelmed by grief, this may not be the best time for you to participate in this discussion.

~~~

It's easy to broach the subject of how we, as a society, failed the 32 dead Virginia Tech students. But I'd like to address the question from a different perspective.

Did we, as a society, fail Cho?

A little immigrant boy new to our country, placed in a new and foreign school where he didn't know the language. He didn't know how to talk to them or make friends. The kids laughed and taunted him, and he became more and more reclusive. By the eighth grade, out of anger, frustration, and bitterness, he had written his first hit list.

Was Cho any different than many other immigrant children new to our country? Do we treat them any better? How about the smelly homeless guy on the corner? Or the strangely dressed man that walked just a bit too close to your car? Or the grungy lady scrounging for spent cigarettes and begging for change?

We willfully ostracize those we deem different, weird, or weak. We insult them with our fear and our air of superiority.

Is this not a moral failing on our part?

Does our culture promote mass murder?

My husband said no. He explained that even without guns, various groups have massacred other groups, with machetes, even. But wouldn't it be much more difficult for one person to massacre thirty-two without a gun? Does the ease of obtaining guns in our country promote such mass murders? Do our various freedoms, taken to extremes, promote mass murders?

This isn't to say that the United States is the only country with problems, but we seem to be an icon for such violence. Isolation in our modern culture is surely a factor as well, and we could discuss all kinds of causations for the behavior of Cho Seung-Hui. Imo, Cho was no different than the boys at Columbine, deeply disturbed, vengeful, and dangerous (amongst other things). I find myself wondering where the parents were and why this boy was allowed to live such an isolated existence (where was his community?).

But given the nature of our society to encourage distance between family members and isolation, shouldn't we also be downplaying (rather than glorifying) violence? And isn't part of that downplaying enacting strict gun-control laws and harsh punishments for violators? And before you say that I'm just a flake, let me tell you that I come from a pro-gun family. These thoughts are erupting as a result of studying our modern culture.

What do you think? Do we create our own hell?

Edit 4/19 Thursday 7:40 p.m. Blip32962 has shared an article from The Guardian by Lionel Shriver on the subject of the shootings and gun control. If you have the time, give it a read (say thank you and a few words to Blip), and come back here and post your thoughts.