(no subject)
Madness and Shame
... Very few voters are aware of Mr. Addington’s existence, much less what he stands for. But he was the legal linchpin of the administration’s Marquis de Sade approach to battling terrorism. In the view of Mr. Addington and his acolytes, anything and everything that the president authorized in the fight against terror - regardless of what the Constitution or Congress or the Geneva Conventions might say - was all right. That included torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus, you name it.
... To get a sense of the heights of madness scaled in this anything-goes atmosphere, consider a brainstorming meeting held by military officials at Guantánamo. Ms. Mayer said the meeting was called to come up with ways to crack through the resistance of detainees.
“One source of ideas,” she wrote, “was the popular television show ‘24.’ On that show as Ms. Mayer noted, “torture always worked. It saved America on a weekly basis.”
... “After reviewing 517 of the Guantánamo detainees’ cases in depth,” she said, “they concluded that only 8 percent were alleged to have associated with Al Qaeda. Fifty-five percent were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the United States at all, and the remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, including having tried to flee U.S. bombs. The overwhelming majority - all but 5 percent - had been captured by non-U.S. players, many of whom were bounty hunters.”
The U.S. shamed itself on George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s watch, and David Addington and others like him were willing to manipulate the law like Silly Putty to give them the legal cover they desired. Ms. Mayer noted that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the late historian, believed that “the Bush administration’s extralegal counterterrorism program presented the most dramatic, sustained and radical challenge to the rule of law in American history.”
After reflecting on major breakdowns of law that occurred in prior administrations, including the Watergate disaster, Mr. Schlesinger told Ms. Mayer: “No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world - ever.”
***
"Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek."
--Tom Robbins
***
I'm babysitting for friend L. this afternoon. She's taking an exam at the local community college; she's been in classes for several years now learning beadwork and jewelry making, and her talents show it.
Am bringing tons of books and philosophy stuff to work some more on understanding the philosophy/ethics/theology of pantheism. It really is a completely different paradigm from traditional theism/atheism. Most atheists would call me a theist (in fact, friend K. from church calls my pantheism "residual Christianity"!); most traditional theists would call me an atheist because of my rejection of personal deity. Neither is entirely wrong, but it's rather like living at right angles from everyone else. Very frustrating trying to describe pantheism to people used only to the traditional theistic paradigm. (Imagine trying to explain quantum mechanics to Isaac Newton...)
Was looking on Google Books yesterday looking for philosophy info on pantheism. Found and skimmed through a book on the history of pantheistic thought, written some time in the late 1800's or early 1900's. Well written, and also full of good criticism of the flaws of pantheism (like the lack of a divinely-inspired morality, which can be considered a flaw, though I disagree on moral grounds with this assessment). But even this book completely missed the boat when it reverted to the traditional paradigm and said that the major failure of pantheism was the lack of a personal relationship with the divine.
I do have a personal relationship with the divine. But that doesn't mean the divine has a personal relationship with me. Imagining that the universe is personally concerned with little old me involves the "sins" (if pantheism can be described as having such) of anthropocentrism and egoism.
It's like having a relationship with our mulberry tree. I love that tree. I love watching it grow taller and broader every year. I love hand-picking, washing, preparing, and eating the berries. I love the fact that it bore so heavily last spring that we made a pie and three sets of tarts.
But the tree doesn't know I'm there. It simply grows according to its nature. I'm irrelevant. But the fact that I'm irrelevant to that tree in no way diminishes my appreciation of it. It even enlarges my appreciation for it: I know that it was not placed there especially for me; it might not have grown there, and therefore I appreciate it even more.
I might not have lived. There were a million different potential children that could have resulted, rather than me, and yet here I am. And there's that mulberry tree. And the patterns that our separate lives have woven have brought us together. That's something to be aware of, to be thankful of, and a reason to treasure life.
That's the pantheist's relationship with the divine, in a nutshell. It's not one of mutual love, it's one of constant appreciation, a joy in living rather than a fearful hope for continued existence after death; it's the realization that love is now, rather than wasting life in exchange for an imaginary afterlife.
"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
Look at that phrase through a pantheistic lens, and you might see why that sort of belief makes people like me shudder away in horror.
... Very few voters are aware of Mr. Addington’s existence, much less what he stands for. But he was the legal linchpin of the administration’s Marquis de Sade approach to battling terrorism. In the view of Mr. Addington and his acolytes, anything and everything that the president authorized in the fight against terror - regardless of what the Constitution or Congress or the Geneva Conventions might say - was all right. That included torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus, you name it.
... To get a sense of the heights of madness scaled in this anything-goes atmosphere, consider a brainstorming meeting held by military officials at Guantánamo. Ms. Mayer said the meeting was called to come up with ways to crack through the resistance of detainees.
“One source of ideas,” she wrote, “was the popular television show ‘24.’ On that show as Ms. Mayer noted, “torture always worked. It saved America on a weekly basis.”
... “After reviewing 517 of the Guantánamo detainees’ cases in depth,” she said, “they concluded that only 8 percent were alleged to have associated with Al Qaeda. Fifty-five percent were not alleged to have engaged in any hostile act against the United States at all, and the remainder were charged with dubious wrongdoing, including having tried to flee U.S. bombs. The overwhelming majority - all but 5 percent - had been captured by non-U.S. players, many of whom were bounty hunters.”
The U.S. shamed itself on George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s watch, and David Addington and others like him were willing to manipulate the law like Silly Putty to give them the legal cover they desired. Ms. Mayer noted that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the late historian, believed that “the Bush administration’s extralegal counterterrorism program presented the most dramatic, sustained and radical challenge to the rule of law in American history.”
After reflecting on major breakdowns of law that occurred in prior administrations, including the Watergate disaster, Mr. Schlesinger told Ms. Mayer: “No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world - ever.”
***
"Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek."
--Tom Robbins
***
I'm babysitting for friend L. this afternoon. She's taking an exam at the local community college; she's been in classes for several years now learning beadwork and jewelry making, and her talents show it.
Am bringing tons of books and philosophy stuff to work some more on understanding the philosophy/ethics/theology of pantheism. It really is a completely different paradigm from traditional theism/atheism. Most atheists would call me a theist (in fact, friend K. from church calls my pantheism "residual Christianity"!); most traditional theists would call me an atheist because of my rejection of personal deity. Neither is entirely wrong, but it's rather like living at right angles from everyone else. Very frustrating trying to describe pantheism to people used only to the traditional theistic paradigm. (Imagine trying to explain quantum mechanics to Isaac Newton...)
Was looking on Google Books yesterday looking for philosophy info on pantheism. Found and skimmed through a book on the history of pantheistic thought, written some time in the late 1800's or early 1900's. Well written, and also full of good criticism of the flaws of pantheism (like the lack of a divinely-inspired morality, which can be considered a flaw, though I disagree on moral grounds with this assessment). But even this book completely missed the boat when it reverted to the traditional paradigm and said that the major failure of pantheism was the lack of a personal relationship with the divine.
I do have a personal relationship with the divine. But that doesn't mean the divine has a personal relationship with me. Imagining that the universe is personally concerned with little old me involves the "sins" (if pantheism can be described as having such) of anthropocentrism and egoism.
It's like having a relationship with our mulberry tree. I love that tree. I love watching it grow taller and broader every year. I love hand-picking, washing, preparing, and eating the berries. I love the fact that it bore so heavily last spring that we made a pie and three sets of tarts.
But the tree doesn't know I'm there. It simply grows according to its nature. I'm irrelevant. But the fact that I'm irrelevant to that tree in no way diminishes my appreciation of it. It even enlarges my appreciation for it: I know that it was not placed there especially for me; it might not have grown there, and therefore I appreciate it even more.
I might not have lived. There were a million different potential children that could have resulted, rather than me, and yet here I am. And there's that mulberry tree. And the patterns that our separate lives have woven have brought us together. That's something to be aware of, to be thankful of, and a reason to treasure life.
That's the pantheist's relationship with the divine, in a nutshell. It's not one of mutual love, it's one of constant appreciation, a joy in living rather than a fearful hope for continued existence after death; it's the realization that love is now, rather than wasting life in exchange for an imaginary afterlife.
"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."
Look at that phrase through a pantheistic lens, and you might see why that sort of belief makes people like me shudder away in horror.