Unquiet

Now that I’ve posted [such a serious entry][1], I felt that I should explain why I believe that

>The most terrible thing in this world is the force that drives people to do evil things in the name of good.

My premise is extremely simple. I believe people only act when they feel justified in their actions.

_Justification_, however, comes not only from law and shared moral values but also from individual circumstances. How else could we justify killing in self-defense as a separate act from killing in cold blood?

When you realize that the same conviction that causes people to jump in front of speeding cars to save kids (or cats) also causes people to blow each other up, the world’s dark, deeply etched lines suddenly erode as if never there. That very same Muslim next door who you fear is plotting your bloody demise may in fact some day push you out of the way of an accident at the cost of her own well-being.

Most people find life easiest when their actions align neatly not only with their own beliefs _but also_ with prevailing cultural mores (legal or otherwise). I’d go so far as to say that, in general, actions that __promote “life”__ can be far more easily justified in our minds than the opposite.

So what distortion encourages people to justify not only their own death but also the deaths of others? What suffering moves terrorists to justify murder and suicide, for example? What terrible frustration seems so overwhelming that human life itself seems expendable?

Reading [Bin Laden’s speech from 2004][2], you’d find the story of oppressed men seeking freedom. Listening to Bush speak, you’d hear the story of a population whose freedom is threatened by those very men.

Freedom itself, like any other ‘value’, is ambiguous. Good and evil exist not in the content of values themselves, but what we do with our values, what we justify by them. What frightens me is that both sides (assuming both sides exist) justify killing — of innocents, military and civilian –, justify final and total dissolution of a person’s freedom, by pointing to freedom.

__This__ is the point that terrifies me. For our existence is dependant on causes and our actions become the causes of many other things; in the midst of a million reasons we choose our actions which in turn create and recreate us, orienting our path through life. What are the causes, what are the reasons, what are the choices that turn us from a life of joy and giving to a path of darkness and destruction, culminating in the explosive release of fury to no ultimate end?

I don’t know. What’s more, I don’t know whether or not to be troubled by not knowing.

I do know that we cannot win freedom for all by destroying it for some. Perhaps we’d find more peace if we chose to seek understanding of our differences…

…rather than vilifying each other and turning our enemies into grotesque caricatures of cartoon nightmares before we send them to their slaughter.

[1]: http://blog.unquiet.net/archives/2005/07/08/fear/
[2]: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Text_of_2004_Osama_bin_Laden_videotape