Freedom, truth and progress
I’ve been losing sleep the past few weeks, not just from the tropical weather here in Massachusetts, but because of a couple of stories about censorship and freedom of speech that have been buzzing around and refusing to settle down.
The one that’s made most noise over here () is about an American called Kevin Barrett, who propagates the view that the attacks on America on 11 September 2001 were carried out not by militant Islamists but by agents of George Bush. He is a part-time teacher of Islam at the University of Wisconsin, and when the authorities there threatened to suspend his contract the American free-speech industry leapt to his defence.
The other story is about an Iranian called , a wonderful, multi-lingual, multi-cultural philosopher who returned to his native country a few years ago, was arrested on 27 April, and as far as I know has not been heard from since. (He was by the jounralist Danny Postel.) Why on earth is there not a bit more fuss about Ramin Jahanbegloo? World powers, especially the US, have tried to bring Iran to heel by calling the regime evil and spreading rumours about post-diplomatic sanctions; how about a bit of effort to support the opposition instead, starting with Ramin Jahanbegloo?
But as I’ve said before, you can’t talk much about freedom without bringing in politics and patriotism and national rivalries too.
I just got back from a trip to New York City, showing the sights to Lotte who was born in 2001 (and does not yet know that the year of her birth marks a historical epoch). For some reason she was determined to see the Statue of Liberty and get herself a Liberty Crown, made of green foam rubber and not a great bargain at $3 (you don’t need the photo). We looked at the Statue from the New Jersey shore, and if it’s not a refined work of art, it is certainly a bold monument to the notion of a Franco-American coalition for world-wide freedom. (The Statue was a gift from the French to the Americans, to celebrate an alliance that began when the French monarchy supported the American rebels in their Revolutionary War against Britain in 1776; it was supposed to be ready for the centenary in 1876, but in fact it was unveiled ten years late.) What the monument left unmentioned is the big difference between the French and American traditions of freedom. The American revolutionaries insisted (for strongly-held religious reasons) on complete religious freedom, and hence on an absolute separation between religion and government. But the French revolutionaries (to the great annoyance of their British and American supporters) would not go so far: they insisted (for strongly held political reasons) on retaining government control of religion, and integrating it into the state. Hence, I think, a large part of their difficulty in making sense of each other’s claims – or indeed those of Britain or anywhere else – to be the freedom capital of the world.
Looking out from New Jersey, the skyline behind the statue contains the space where the twin towers used to stand – where they were, in fact, last time I was in New York. I must admit that over the past five years I have sometimes felt that I have had enough of American grief over September 11th, but when I stood there and saw the space in the air where once I stood (my trip to the top of the World Trade Centre had not seemed specially significant at the time), I felt a bit contrite. Even more so when we got the Port Authority train from Jersey City under the Hudson to what is still called ‘World Trade Centre’. There is something sublime about the place where your carriage emerges from the tunnel you find yourself looking onto a vast hole in the ground, completely covered in concrete. The neighbouring buildings seem to lean over the site like mourners round a grave.
It is impossible not to be impressed by the austsere simplicity of the scene. You come up from the station to a viewing area that is an extraordinary example of studious understatement, even a kind of dignified banality. (Maybe my surprise is no more than a vestige of unconscious anti-Americanism.) There are no flowers, nor even an American flag (they seem to be every else, but certainly not here). Just a few dozen quiet people, a small restrained poster saying ‘this is a special site’, and a list of the almost 3000 people who died.
You may say want to wrangle. You may want to tell me it was really closer to 2700, and that in any case the numbers of deaths don’t amount to much compared with those caused by AIDS or global warming or the callous foreign policies of the great world powers, not least the US. But (as the English painter, essayist and philosopher William Hazlitt once said) murders are utterly different, and what fascinates and appalls us about them is our idea of – even sympathy with – the murderer. What makes us shudder about murders is not so much the destruction wrought on the victim’s body (Hazlitt says) as the destructiveness that brewed in the perpetrator’s mind.
We spent the afternoon in Central Park, which I would swap any day with the Statue of Liberty as a symbol for what Americans mean by freedom. Can there be anywhere in the world more tolerant, accessible, cheerful, and welcoming to all sorts of people (and I really mean all sorts)? Can there be nicer, happier, safer, more tolerant children’s playgrounds anywhere in the world? Are parents elsewhere so genuinely interested in their children and what they may have to say? Of course Lotte and I and the rest of us and all the other leisure-seekers in the park have no greater right to safety than anyone else in the world; but the fact that people could argue their way into wanting kill a few thousand of us simply for being there … I had never really taken the measure of it before, and I am still a little giddy from the shock.
Kane killed Abel and that was just the start of it. Joking aside, the capacity to take life is always there in all of us, infact we are as equally capable of evil as we are good. Some call this free-will, religion is vague on this issue, as if free-will is a gift from god then the capacity to murder was also a gift and therefore not virtuous.
Jean-Paul Sartre would pah at a discussion on murder, dismissing it as nothing more than a bad moral choice inconsistent with the self. This doesn't exclude the existence of a self that wanted to murder; just that such an action is not morally agreeable, and why should it?
It is possible to construct many hypothetical scenarios that lead to the reader choosing to take one or more lives to save one or more others. That this is the case leads to the conclusion that taking a life is not wrong, only the reasons for taking it can be argued against. These notions are reflected in the laws of self defence.
This leads straight back to belief systems of the individual and the choices that the individual acts upon based on these beliefs. Politics constructs belief systems with ideology, religion with theocracy and there are numerous philosophies. Whether any of these schools of thought are better than the other is wholly irrelevant, it is the interpretation of the beliefs by the individual that matters as this will guide the individuals actions.
Indoctrinating a sytem of beliefs takes place in many ways, some overt such as the official education of the system, others in subtle ways like the gentle rocking of prayer. But they are all open to mis-interpretation and distortion, they are all subject to the potential flaws of the follower.
"3000 people who died"
How many citizens of iraq or vietnam have died at the hands of american foreign policy ?
There is a new theory out or is it really a rehash of an old Buddhist theory that there is no such thing as right or wrong or good and bad or good and evil
THERE IS JUST ACTION AND REACTION
part of this new theory though also suggests that we on planet earth are part of one big experiment conduct by God!
Yes we ARE given free will according to this theory and really given free will to do what we wish - kill, abase,love, terrorize etc!
And the reason - absurdly simple - God is so divinely pure that he/she is unable to see anything else but this purity. And out of God-damned or is that God loved curiosity decided to re-creat him/herself - thus the human race - and then give them free will. In this way and in this way only he/she is able to see the opposite of purity!
But don't worry we may experience pain, and disillusionment and fear etc etc - but they are all temporary - scripts and parts on a play and once the play is over we get back to purity ourselves.
Now isn't that a nice heart warming story!
the truth is simpler, no god
not believing in God doesn't mean he/she doesn't exist - it just means you haven't expanded enough yet - but given time it will happen to you and all of us!
If..
not believing in God doesn't mean he/she doesn't exist
then..
believing in God doesn't mean he/she/it exists
I love this site!!!!!