Appeal and Fight
Dear Eugene,
Why do we find it so difficult to speak a meaningful word in face of something like the mass shooting in Las Vegas?
Trump called the massacre "pure evil"--as compared to what less-pure ones? Mistakenly opened your neighbor's mail and dumped the evidence in the garbage?
The adjective "pure" is meaningless, because the words "evil" and "goodness" are both undefined. We can't give a definitive meaning to either because we cannot face up to goodness and thus cannot face down evil.
Facing up to goodness means we'll need to acknowledge how "purely evil" we all are; facing down evil means to recognize there's still a last semblance of goodness in us, however feeble in its evil-mitigating power, however impossible it often feels to make tangible again a long-lost memory of our first commitment.
We were commissioned to be moral creatures. A commitment was made in our inception--on our behalf?--just for being created human.
We say, It ain't fair! Can I not commit to discern between good and evil? Can I not struggle to live right and not wrong? But isn't our appeal to "fairness" already a discernment, our often troubled conscience a call to answer to our commitment to fight a way out of our moral quagmire?
And sure enough, appeal and fight we do.
When a CBS lawyer proclaimed on social media that she wasn't sympathetic about the Vegas shooting because "country music fans often are Republican gun-toters," she was appealing to some moral standard and fighting for some cause. In response to that, many will appeal and fight for her and against her. The gunman too obviously had some deeply committed appeal(s) to fight for.
When people put a France flag filter on their Facebook profile over the Paris Attacks, they were showing their commitment to appeal and fight. We didn't do the same for many other massacres happened at that same time or ever since. Today our inability or unwillingness to speak a meaningful word on social media about the Vegas massacre shows how unfair, influenced, conditioned, capricious and shallow our moral commitment is.
We pick and choose what appeals to us enough for us to appeal for it. Some people are more lovable--and thus their loss more lamentable--than others. Some parts of the world we just can't do anything about. Some skin-color speaks for itself. We reduce people to a faceless crowd for ourselves to emerge on the right side of the scale.
Like the gunman did.
To say there is no meaning to it all is to suppress our humanity. To make appeal and fight for meaning is to see how suppressed our humanity is. Our appeal must be answered for and our fight must be fought and won for life to have meaning.
We are in need of a mighty act of rescue, from each others, and from ourselves. We need something more than our own narrow cause and standard to appeal to, someone unblemished, truly fair and good, to fight a good and definitive fight for us. To face down evil, look it in the eyes, and eradicate it once and for ever.
The world is crying for salvation.
Yours, Alex
Why do we find it so difficult to speak a meaningful word in face of something like the mass shooting in Las Vegas?
Trump called the massacre "pure evil"--as compared to what less-pure ones? Mistakenly opened your neighbor's mail and dumped the evidence in the garbage?
The adjective "pure" is meaningless, because the words "evil" and "goodness" are both undefined. We can't give a definitive meaning to either because we cannot face up to goodness and thus cannot face down evil.
Facing up to goodness means we'll need to acknowledge how "purely evil" we all are; facing down evil means to recognize there's still a last semblance of goodness in us, however feeble in its evil-mitigating power, however impossible it often feels to make tangible again a long-lost memory of our first commitment.
We were commissioned to be moral creatures. A commitment was made in our inception--on our behalf?--just for being created human.
We say, It ain't fair! Can I not commit to discern between good and evil? Can I not struggle to live right and not wrong? But isn't our appeal to "fairness" already a discernment, our often troubled conscience a call to answer to our commitment to fight a way out of our moral quagmire?
And sure enough, appeal and fight we do.
When a CBS lawyer proclaimed on social media that she wasn't sympathetic about the Vegas shooting because "country music fans often are Republican gun-toters," she was appealing to some moral standard and fighting for some cause. In response to that, many will appeal and fight for her and against her. The gunman too obviously had some deeply committed appeal(s) to fight for.
When people put a France flag filter on their Facebook profile over the Paris Attacks, they were showing their commitment to appeal and fight. We didn't do the same for many other massacres happened at that same time or ever since. Today our inability or unwillingness to speak a meaningful word on social media about the Vegas massacre shows how unfair, influenced, conditioned, capricious and shallow our moral commitment is.
We pick and choose what appeals to us enough for us to appeal for it. Some people are more lovable--and thus their loss more lamentable--than others. Some parts of the world we just can't do anything about. Some skin-color speaks for itself. We reduce people to a faceless crowd for ourselves to emerge on the right side of the scale.
Like the gunman did.
To say there is no meaning to it all is to suppress our humanity. To make appeal and fight for meaning is to see how suppressed our humanity is. Our appeal must be answered for and our fight must be fought and won for life to have meaning.
We are in need of a mighty act of rescue, from each others, and from ourselves. We need something more than our own narrow cause and standard to appeal to, someone unblemished, truly fair and good, to fight a good and definitive fight for us. To face down evil, look it in the eyes, and eradicate it once and for ever.
The world is crying for salvation.
Yours, Alex
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