Allow us a moment to share our views of significant historical global event.
Tuesday morning, 11Sep2001 we continued work on our review of Clifford Geertz' Available Light, and were just commencing a precursory read of Chapter VII.
Beth called home, from work, at 08:05 local CDT. She said, "Doug, you must turn on TV and watch what is happening!" I did, and of course, by now, all that is history. As TV networks heralded, "Attack on America." For sure, that is what it is.
Seldom do multiversal cultures of Earth's global variety experience events like we all did.
Personally, I am just now recovering enough to continue review efforts here. It is Thursday, 13Sep2001, about 51 hours since "Attack on America" conveyed its mortal sentients on chaotically fitful transitions to their isomortal quantum complements.
My first emotion was simply, to have revenge, "to kill, kill, kill." But that reaction uncloaks a purely SOMitic either/or facet of Doug. I am personally working hard to leave that terrible way of thinking behind. I pulled my wits into their more recent quantonic modes of thought. There, more quieted, more coherent, I considered what Geertz has been trying to tell us here, in his Available Light, and how quantum and how good his instincts and intuitions are, and how superb his intellectual and rhetorical depictions of them are.
Compenetrating Geertz, what would Pirsig say? Bohr? Feynman? Kuhn? Bergson? James? Sidis? And perhaps most important of all, what does Nature tell us by her own cooperation in this human tragedy?
I concluded naïvely, given my own limited and finite intellect, this: Just like people, diverse cultures must learn not to hate each other. But why do some cultures hate each other? Why do some people hate each other? Again, my naïveté says continued global practice of SOM is Earth's largest cultural threat at Millennium III's beginning. We, as Earth's people, her most highly evolved Homo sapiens (literally, "named wise"), must work together to begin a long and arduous process of discarding classical methods of thinking and gradually adopt more quantum modes of thought. That is what I have to offer. That is what Quantonics is about.
But since most of our world's people are currently SOMites, i.e., 'rational' and 'logical' fundamentalists, what can we do now? Well, let's pretend some fundamental 'logic.' We agree that those who perpetrated this hyperbolic hate should be eliminated. Too, those who supported them and succored them should be eliminated. How can we do that fairly and with some assuredness we anihilate most perpetrators? I suggest, just as we are doing, we determine as many perpetrators as possible. Then identify, just as we are doiing, those nations who most directly nurtured them.
Differently from an anticipated approach, I think we should apportion our total casualty count evenly among all those nations. Then demand that those countries choose or ask for volunteers, mandatorily including their perpetrators, members of their own societies to be eliminated. Use NATO to enforce and observe said elimination. Yes, it's Old Testament logic, but most New Testament fundamentalists think that way implicitly. Consider: our attackers would eliminate all of us, if they could. Actually, that is Osama bin Laden's mission, isn't it! Not only do our globe's people need vengence, they need public explanation. This process, or simlar one, will make that possible.
Also consider, crucially, that this approach puts responsibility back in laps of those nations who backed an "Attack on America." Their leaders are now forced to make those hard, political choices of who lives and who dies, just as they did about our own American citizens on 911. America should not, nor does not have to make that decision!
In my most modest and apologetic demeanor, I think that approach offers at least a modicum of payback, and (however ugly, and unGodlike) a tinge of retribution. Our attackers violated that most fundamental of all anthropocentric civilized edicts, "Thou shall not kill." However uncivilized, however contrary our own beliefs, we must briefly return to nature's own edict, "Kill or be killed."
Enough.
Almost four and one-half years later, February 28, 2006: "What can we do now?"
Still a good and potent query, agree?
Beth offers another video of her choice, a 1982 movie, Gandhi, Special Edition. Swept 1983 Oscars.
This is simply a quantum, fabulous movie which Doug had not seen prior. Gandhi offers humanity an approach. His approach juxtaposes and pits individual wills of masses of individuals against social will of 'societal masters' AKA 'self-proclaimed sovereigns.' Gandhi's approach nearly worked. It is an amalgam of Hindu, Judaic, Muslim, Sikh, and Gnostic Christian beliefs and its main component was extreme individual nonviolence.
Indeed, Gandhi refers himself as a quantum~included~middle of: Hindu, Judaic, Muslim, Sikh, and Gnostic Christian. For Doug, this is Gandhi's way of saying what Doug believes, "G¤d is in us and we are in G¤d."
Why did Gandhi's approach only nearly work? Violence is a social pattern of value. Societies value violence. Societies use violence and fear to impose societal hegemony upon other societies and individuals. Especially, dialectical societies value violence.
It is apparent to us that Gandhi was sure that individuals could initially practice and gradually learn to believe in n¤nviolence. We sense that he did not see social violence as a manifestation of leaders whose belief in society overrode their belief in individuals and thus quite readily chose to use violence, even atrocities, against individuals.
In order to achieve what Gandhi wanted, using his approach, our cultures' "classical society as master and individuals as 'subjects'" has to be inverted. Individuals must first make society servant of individuals! Now Gandhi's approach will work.
In Quantonics, we call that a "Quantum Society." Said society agrees with memes propounded by Dana Zohar (author: Quantum Self, and Quantum Society) and Mae-wan Ho (author: the Rainbow and the Worm).
Gandhi was way ahead of Doug, even during 20th century's first quarter! However, we have an improvement to offer which appears relevant.
Doug - 28Feb2006.
Doug.
(13Sep2001; 11:00 CDT; ~51 hours since 911)
(14Dec2001 rev - Add top of page frame-breaker.)
(28Feb2006 rev - Add red text 'Gandhi' note near page bottom.)