Examining the Exchange Rate of an Erg of Hatred.

[The Whiskey Priest]

CNN just finished airing a film of the latest fighting in Iraq. The film was very unsettling as I watched a seven year old boy’s body pulled from the rubble of his home. The home had been a collateral damage; his death just one of those things that happens in a war. His name was not mentioned. Perhaps it was unknown? The film of his body will be archived and we will soon forget the images of the small torn body.

The fading of the images started as I stepped out on to my patio to finish my morning coffee, but, not totally, because an old thought formed and I begin to think of my old hypothesis dealing with the circle of hatred and the exchange rate of an erg of hatred.

The hypothesis goes like this; an act of violence is committed generating an erg or unit of hatred against the perpetrator. That erg creates the need to commit retaliation against the perpetrator. The commission of an act of violence against the perpetrator results in an act of violence creating an erg or unit of hatred against the retaliator, who now has become the perpetrator, and so on and so on. This continues until the circle of hatred is self-perpetuating and the human race builds once more a history of gore and sorrow.

The violence of 9-11 is hard to forget. The sight of two planes become balls of fire as they slammed into the twin towers; followed by the images of people jumping to their deaths is not something anyone who saw it can forget.

Those images created ergs of hatred and those ergs were channeled and direct by our leaders towards the citizens of Iraq. I know, it was one man we hated, but, it was the citizens of Iraq that were in the buildings that sat under our falling bombs. Each bomb that took an innocents life, a baby’s life, that bomb was the creator of an erg of hatred towards us. We can rationalize that things like that happen in war and that in the long run the people of Iraq will be better for it. But, for the father or mother who dug their baby from the ruins, for the son or daughter who dug their mother or father from the carnage, the long-view of history is impossible. What is possible and what does happen is an erg of hatred is created.

That person who suffered an injustice from our bombs now goes on to plant bombs beside the road to kill our young men. Our young men are there because of the ergs of hatred used by our leaders to persuade us to send the young men there to avenge the wrong done to us. So the bomb goes off kill our young men, creating another erg of hatred, which must be released through more acts of vengeance, which creates more ergs and so on and so on.

The solution will be found in how do we stop the creation of the need to hate? That is not an easy thing to do, especially when the leaders of a country are not deep thinking and sincere people.

Until that day, may God have mercy upon all of us.

[patrice]

1. Meditation helps. Prayer, unfortunately, is toooooooooo often

just us focusing our puny wishes and desires into an idolatorous image of something we call "god". Prayer could be like meditation, opening to un-anthropomorphized, un-adulterated Truth, but I suspect mostly it isn't.

You're right, ergs, units of energy, accumulate in complex systems. It is helpful to look at things in terms of their energy, momentum, and trajectory and how one either contributes to the organization or to dis-organization of the energy.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. The Law of the Conservation of Evil

"Evil can neither be created nor destroyed -- only changed in form."

So I used to think, until someone invented the Atomic Pile of Hatred.

--p!