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Being hit with an interesting lesson this evening... the lesson that groups which, in essence, have similar goals and even similar methods can bring about drastically different ends depending on how they approach the things they do. It's like one Flow is a dark mirror of the other.
The particular example that I came across tonight were two approaches used by those who are willing to die for their beliefs and to secure an end to injustice. In the middle east and many other areas, that impulse seems to have most often manifested as the suicide bomber... a practice which I think most people would have to agree is immoral and a tactic only used by terrorists, as it targets the guilty and innocent alike. But something was brought to my attention this evening which I'm surprised that I haven't heard about before... something amazingly similar to that practice, but which is not a tool of terror. In the early 1960's, Buddhist monks in Vietnam set themselves (and only themselves, no innocent victims involved in this) on fire to protest repression. These two practices seem so similar to each other... both trying to use suicide as a tool of social change, both involving people willing to give up their own lives to try to help others who will be alive after they are gone... but it's obvious that one is terribly, terribly wrong, while the other is actually rather noble.
I wonder what the world would be like if more people stopped and explored similar Flows like this, found the good ones of which the others are dark mirrors, and pursued them instead of the negative alternatives?
The particular example that I came across tonight were two approaches used by those who are willing to die for their beliefs and to secure an end to injustice. In the middle east and many other areas, that impulse seems to have most often manifested as the suicide bomber... a practice which I think most people would have to agree is immoral and a tactic only used by terrorists, as it targets the guilty and innocent alike. But something was brought to my attention this evening which I'm surprised that I haven't heard about before... something amazingly similar to that practice, but which is not a tool of terror. In the early 1960's, Buddhist monks in Vietnam set themselves (and only themselves, no innocent victims involved in this) on fire to protest repression. These two practices seem so similar to each other... both trying to use suicide as a tool of social change, both involving people willing to give up their own lives to try to help others who will be alive after they are gone... but it's obvious that one is terribly, terribly wrong, while the other is actually rather noble.
I wonder what the world would be like if more people stopped and explored similar Flows like this, found the good ones of which the others are dark mirrors, and pursued them instead of the negative alternatives?
