| Timeless Wisdom
"Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it
helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know
his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic
weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow
and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the
pposition." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam:
A Time to Break Silence", 4 April 1967
Dr. King was talking about Vietnam, but what he's saying here applies to
whomever we call "enemy". I'm not saying that violence is never called for.
I am saying that I see the wisdom here in looking at just why it is
that we have an enemy. What it is in us that engenders this enmity. And
before we jump up shouting our usual cry of "Jealousy!", why don't we take a
more critical look at our own involvement in their lives, and how that might
have shaped them.
I'm not making excuses. I'm talking about reasons. In the above cited
speech, Dr. King goes into great depth about how our own policy led us to
this terrible place, how our own foolish interference created the problem we
were allegedly trying to solve.
We did this in the Persian Gulf too, and guess what, we got Saddam
Hussein. We did this in Afghanistan, and now we have Osama Bin Laden.
The whole point is national self-examination, rectification, and, most
importantly, prevention.
More passages which impress me especially in these times:
"On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's
roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see
that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will
not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's
highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not
haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces
beggars needs restructuring."
---
"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary
spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility
to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall
boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day
when 'every valley shall be exalted, and every moutain and hill shall be
made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places
plain.'"
---
"Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole
in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. "
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