the so-called war on terrorism

the articles begins:

"We've lost some of our nation's finest men and women in the war on terror," Bush said in a speech to military spouses at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington.

war on terror? a term i have been dreadful of since its conception. it is one thing to demoralize our enemy and paint them as faceless and inhuman. that, though a horrible thing in and of itself, is something societies have done since the beginning of history. when we fought the vietnamese, they were charlie: mean, cruel, and faceless gooks that deserved to die. this is obviously not true, and the veterans of the war saw men on both sides slaughtered and many to this day can't sleep at night because of it. war is humans killing humans, no way around it. but my point is that it is nothing new to create a faceless enemy and from a strictly functional view, it is a necessary and good way to handle war.

but this isn't what we are doing. we are going to a whole different place by declaring war on an idea. that idea is terrorism. we can declare war on certain terrorists or aggressors, but on the idea of terrorism? that doesn't even make sense. it sounds great. it sounds just. but it isn't logical or legitimate at all. if a man killed your family would you declare vengeance against him or against the whole idea of murder. sure, idealistically i'd love to tear down the whole notion of murder, but let's be honest about how the world works. idealism is important and has it's place, but this isn't it.

i consider myself a pacifist and wouldn't condone war in almost any case. to say that i would never be for war is absurd because i have not been faced with every circumstance under the sun, and i am sure something could happen that may remove me from the stance of a pacifist... and you better believe that if someone pulled a gun on my wife or even smacked her, i wouldn't be reacting in a pacifistic manner.

but whether or not i am a pacifist, how can a country declare war on an idea? it can't, at least not a REAL war. and i assure you, this is not a metaphorical war. this article is about hitting the 2000 casualty mark. 2000 men and women that i could have shared a meal with, sat next to in class, or working in an office with. that's no metaphor!

the so-called war on terrorism is termed such because it allows us to come into this war with a moral hiugher ground and, thus, makes it harder for officials and the public to voice their opinion against it. "what do you mean you don't support the war? do you support suddam hussein? or the devils that were responsible for 9-11? or worse yet, ARE YOU A TERRORIST?" so we invoke neo-mccarthyism and start a new witch hunt. even the liberals didn't say a word when this war started. after some time, people started to question things, but to no avail. we still have the same administration in office, no changes have occurred in iraq and it seems each day it becomes less evident why we are there in the first place. i am not even sure anymore, and i know i'm not the only one.

don't kid yourselves anymore, this is the new vietnam. we have already lost this and it will continue to drag on. and the less we know why we are there, the greater the loss becomes. and no one even wonders how may iraqis have been killed... soldiers or civilians. if that number were ever to be calculated and released, we would probably not even believe how large it is.

but this is where i find myself at a loss... what can i do? is it enough to invoke questions in others and pray that God's will be done? or should i be writing to my senators and other officials? or more? i feel stuck so many times when looking at large scale issues and trying to see how i can act on a small-scale. the alienation and frustration sets in and i become just another complacent american... or do i?

as always, thanks for reading.

standing in opposition

upon discussion of some of my personal goals and mission statement, a colleague and friend told me that he thinks that the way in which i engage others is often a 2nd person you approach. as the church, you need to be focusing on the poor and oppressed more. you are part of the problem when you indulge in mass consumption... blah blah blah. the point is that the way in which i try to invoke change is in an oppositional approach, rather than focusing on we, or even i, approaches to changing the world. how can the church want to take what i think as an important message if i am not part of the church? how can i tell my friend that having 3 coach purses is over-consumption if i own a library of several hundered cd's?

i am not saying that i have been engaging the church or any other populations much with ideas... because i haven't been, but i have this urgency for something better in this world within me and i want to be a world-changer. yet, i am so distracted by good and bad things... and, moreover, i am not focused on becoming better from within first, which is where i need to focus.

my oppositional mindset probably have psychological and sociological roots in the situations of my upbringing, my family, and my current life. and the mindset is much more than how i approach engaging the world for change, it is how i deal with personal matters... which is a problem. whenever i am unhappy, i automatically become someone who blames others... but not out loud in a very open way. i am manipulative. i tell others that i am to blame and invoke them into disagreeing with my and taking the blame, even though in actuality the blame needs to be shared because most often both sides of an argument/confrontation are wrong about something. and perspectives count for alot, as well... i see it differently than he/she does and thus who was the first to screw up is different in our opposing viewpoints.

at this smaller, more intimate, and personal level is where it must begin. i must start to work on my relationships and friendships by focusing on how i can improve upon them rather than how they can improve. this is very true with those closest to me, i need them to see that i am truly putting them before me and before other things in this world that can cause friction between us.

another co-worker gave me a philosophy article about the philosophical views of john lennon. i found the article less than riveting for the most part, probably because most of what is said can be summed up into the lyrics of imagine, which i am already familiar with. it was nothing new until i reread it and saw that this focus shift for me was displayed in mr. lennon. he was an idealist who wanted world peace (i can relate to this) but his focus wasn't on the world, but on contiunally changing himself from the inside. true, i won't declare that God is simply a force or that meditation is necessary to bring you to a higher plane... and i won't learn to be free of worry by experimenting with lsd... BUT the idea is where he got it right. if we all continually tried to be better, world peace would be realized.

one day, when i become a professor, i am sure i'll play devil's advocate and use some of my oppostional tactics to invoke thought and rattling of paradigms. the key is that i am able to know that not everything is about blaming others, but understanding that for change to happen i need to focus on what it is that i can do. i know that it starts from within me and it starts now.

entertainment and entertainment alone

i received batman begins from netflix on tuesday and got around to watching it with my wife last night. i saw it in the theater and absolutely loved the movie and loved it even more yesterday. i believe it is one of those movies that i will purchase and watch over and over, liking it more each time... but my enjoyment of the movie moved me to thing about creating a blog about it.

first, i thought, i could analyze the many masks and facades in the movie: batman is a masked vigilante of justice, scarecrow uses his mask to horrify those he experiments on... then i began to think about the less tangible and more metaphorical masks in the story... but i stopped myself. why do we always do this? why must our entertainment we looked at on a deeper level? of course, many times it is made to illustrate a deeper meaning. of course, it is good to learn from everything we take in. but can't entertainment be about entertainment?

i decided not to plague this movie, in its pure form, with my misguided philosophical interjections about what the move was really about. i'll tell you right now what is was about. it was about a man who overcame his fear in order to help the world. it is a hero story and it's purpose is to uplift us and entertain us. i walked upstairs after the movie last night and i was uplifted because for those two hours i was batman. i could escape my everyday what-have-you and just enjoy the story.

this is a funny argument when you look at the fact that i began my college coursework as a literature major. finding themes that may not even be there is what literature folks do... the homoerotic subplots of shakespeare, poems that have 300 different meanings and interpretations... but it's not just literature, it's academia in general (the place in which i aspire to belong to in the coming years). philosophizing everything and using language that is above the average reader is a whole industry in an of itself now. if the common man down the street can understand, chances are it's not by a ph. d at a major university... right? but that doesn't change the fact that i look forward to joining academia or even looking for the deeper levels of classic literature, modern sci-fi novels, my favorite songs, or even batman begins at some point. i just think sometimes we need to sit back and realize that we can read a book or watch a movie and not need to turn it into a dissertation. (read my study elitism and over-analysis: the problem of academia set to be published in 2022)

are there other layers in batman begins? maybe. but i don't care. i will pop the dvd in again and just enjoy myself because that is what it really was about sometimes. and tonight i will watch the original buffy: the vampire slayer and i won't wonder if the vampires represent manifestations of her superego or communists of eastern europe. i'll just sit back and laugh.

why acts of mercy are not enough

these thoughts represent my reaction to a lecture by eastern university professor and head of urban studies department, kimberlee "k-lee" johnson.

for those who are unfamiliar with the term mercy ministry, it is meeting people's physical needs through the performing of tangible acts. when we serve as the samaritan did in jesus's parable, we are performing acts of mercy, or mercy ministry.

when i was doing my bachelor's work at eastern, i had to be part of a "service learning " project where i ended up working a few hours per week at a soup kitchen for folks with aids and other terminal illnesses, but mostly hiv/aids. though the experience was more about my own learning than it was about serving, the thing that i believe eastern wanted to teach us through the experience was the importance of these acts of mercy.

but, what k-lee said on friday was that these acts are not enough. it is important to note that these acts are NECESSARY, but not ENOUGH.

my bachelor's degree is in sociology, so studying social structures and social change is nothing new to me. in fact, since beginning my sociology coursework, it has been impossible for me to look at the world without trying to find the connections of society and the individual things i look at... from nature and how society impacts it, to faith and how it influences society, to the guy who lives down the street and his interaction with the world he lives in... but i love to hear others declare the necessity of addressing root causes rather than just symptoms.

in america, and perhaps beyond (though i am not as well-informed about the beyond since i live here specifically), we tend to never get to those root causes. our response to disasters, attacks, or whatever else happens on the national level, tend to only put bandaids on the wounds and forget about where the wounds come from. when we were attacked on that fateful morn of september 11th, we went on the offensive and so many of us were so focused on getting the bastards that we didn't look at why the bastards got us in the first place. true, their fundamental beliefs were a part of it, and true they were trained to attack us... but WHY? why did someone go through teaching them them that we were the enemy? i don't have the whole answer, but for the sake of this particular post, i don't need any answer. the point is that people didn't ask the question.

bringing this back to the topic of acts of mercy, this is the fundamental flaw with mercy ministries... we often stop at helping people and don't go further. we don't seek out the root causes of why the man on the corner is poor. we don't try to find what social systems were are part of placing him there. we just hand him a sandwich, maybe give him a hug, and go on our way. we use a reactive model to address symptoms, but we need to also be employing a proactive approach to address the roots of these symptoms.

ron sider, who teaches at eastern's seminary, palmer tehological seminary in wynnewood, started a group years back called evangelicals for social action. his model for impacting the world has four basic levels: relief (give a man a fish), individual development (teach him to fish), community development (give him fishing equipment), and structural change (assure that everyone gets fair access to the fish pond). i love this model because it addresses needs at every level. the structural level is the level i feel like so many average folks don't even begin to think about and where i feel like i am being called towards educating people about. it excites me when i begin to make connections about social policies/systems and individual events/situations. one may label me a "sociology dork", but i feel such a tug on my heart to open the eyes of others the way that my eyes have been opened. i also feel that i need to continue to learn everyday so that my focus can broaden and i can better understand this world, my life, my God, my wife, and... everything.

the final piece of k-lee's lecture was on spiritual systems. she stated that she felt that spiritual systems were the most neglected element in any model of change she presented or has encountered. she indicated that prayer was always necessary, whether performing acts of mercy or challenging power of unjust systems (and everywhere in between). she indicated that her belief was that spiritual warfare would probably become even larger and more difficult to work against when we begin to work in those structural levels and we need to always remember that prayer is powerful and necessary. i don't know that i have any reflection or comment on this because it seems pretty straight forward. whether or not i always follow through with or remember it, i need God in whatever i do... we all do.

introductory monologue

thanks for checking out my new blog everyone. i had been inspired to create a blog for some time, seeing as most of my livejournal posts revolve around either my personal frustrations in work or in life or on rants about this or that. i intend to rant here sometimes, but i'd like it to be a bit less strictly opinion oriented when i do (ie. i won't say "bush is so stupid, i can't stand him", instead i'll say "bush's new healthcare bill seems very flawed and here's why...") . mostly, this blog is going to be where i can think on paper, or on screen rather, about pop culture, world issues, books i am reading, movies i am watching, music i am listening to... things that seem relevant or spark something in me.

for example, today i attended one of eastern university's weekly lectures (each friday there is a lecture that is part of eastern's "windows on the world" series). it was entitled, "why acts of mercy are not enough" and focused on systemic and institutional issues that can't be solved simply by treating the symptoms. i plan on taking some time to reflect on this lecture in this blog, though not today because of two reasons: a. i am at work and hence SHOULD be working and b. i need some time to think and process what was discussed.

once again, thanks for taking the time to stop by and read this brief introduction to my new blog. i look forward to sharing some thoughts with everyone and being able to see what others think about what i think.