25 July 2008
RIP Randy Pausch (1960-2008)
"Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist whose 'last lecture' about facing terminal cancer became an Internet sensation and a best-selling book, died Friday. He was 47." He'd been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer almost two years ago. More at NYT and at Carnegie Mellon. This is his update page, which I've been following for about a year (servers at Carnegie Mellon must be overloaded; it's taking many tries to download today).
His Last Lecture is moving and inspiring, imo. Watch it.
12:06 Posted in death , education , other people said it , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
24 July 2008
What I'm Reading Lately: Death, Dog Poisoning, Novelty, Flawed Heroes, Psych Experiments, Limiting Generalisations
A mish-mash of my recent online reading, pondering, etc.
>> Alpine murder mystery: Are sheepdogs being poisoned to save the grey wolf? (Independent, 18 July 2008):
So far this year, 17 sheepdogs (including Great Pyrenees) have been poisoned -- with slug poison placed inside pork meatballs -- in the high Maurienne mountains, just inside the French border with Italy. The killings seem to stem from an ongoing dispute between sheep-lovers (and shepherds) and wolf-lovers. "'The pork meat balls were left, some time during the night, most likely just before dawn, in a place where the dogs would be sure to find them. This is the work of a maniac – a madman. What if the meat had been found by a small child? There are tourists everywhere at this time of year, including many British tourists.'"
"The dogs have often died in great agony.... [The poison] causes instant and catastrophic diarrhoea and lung failure in small mammals like dogs. 'They finish up dying completely dehydrated but, before that, they drown in their own bronchial fluids.'"
There are about 100 wolves in France. There is a sheep-protection plan in place in the area, and there have been no wolf attacks on sheep in the Maurienne area for more than two years.
>> If you haven't read it yet, I recommend "Cancer & Creativity: One Chef’s True Story" (Food & Wine, July 2008):
"While undergoing treatment for tongue cancer, Grant Achatz temporarily lost his ability to taste. Paradoxically, it taught him brilliant new ways to create flavor."
>> Impossible Experiments (Psychology Today, 1 July 2008) is a small collection of research psychologists would like to do "if neither ethics nor practical reality stood in your way." What interests me is that almost all the comments (so far) are about one hypothesis, that how parents raise their kids doesn't influence them significantly. The experiment I would jump on is Tamler Sommers' "Another Man's Shoes." (The YouTube video at the end makes clear that the whole thing is a joke ... or is it?) Other never-done experiments.
>> "Our Infantile Search for Heroic Leaders" by Johann Hari (26 June 2008, Independent). Hari's thesis is two-fold: That there are no perfectly good leaders and that we can't expect leaders to solve our problems because "every civilising advance in history ... was won because ordinary people banded together and agitated for it." Not much new there, but what interested me about this article was Hari's critique of Mandela, Gandhi, and Churchill as flawed leaders. I never knew that Churchill, for instance, was "strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes." His portrayal of Gandhi as a murderer (of his wife) seems overdone, not because I don't believe it's possible but because even as Hari presents it, it sounds more like a matter of adhering to principles in one case (his wife's illness) and not in another (his own illness), a rather ordinary though insidious trait.
>> Reframing Questions by Dave Pollard at How To Save the World (16 July 2008) seeks to promote critical thinking, to help us think beyond our own "false myths and limiting generalizations." He gives some examples of some limiting myths and generalisations he encounters everyday in business, then reframes the questions, and then asks his readers: "What are the false myths and limiting generalizations that you are struggling with, and how might you use appropriate questions to reframe them, disempower them, put them to rest?" Some day I may give some energy to it and respond to that challenge here.
>> "Why We Like New Stuff" (Mental Floss, 16 July 2008). Basically, "our brains are actually hard-wired to prefer novelty and adventure. ... In fact, research on the ventral striatum (the part of the brain associated with rewarding behavior) seems to indicate that sating our sense of adventure provides us the same sort of satisfaction we get from sex and food." Dopamine figures, too. Full study (7 pages, PDF).
>> "Italian Outrage Over Roma Drowning Photos" (21 July 2008, CNN) is confusing to me. "Italian newspapers, an archbishop and civil liberties campaigners expressed shock and revulsion on Monday after photographs were published of sunbathers apparently enjoying a day at the beach just meters from where the bodies of two drowned Roma girls were laid out on the sand."
I think I might be creeped out if dead people were lying on the beach -- I'm creeped out when a dead seal or horseshoe crab is lying on the beach -- but the sunbathers' critics aren't shocked that they're not repulsed enough, presumably; they're shocked that the sunbathers are indifferent to the bodies. Shocked that they can act as if they aren't there, that they can do what they would ordinarily do without creating a sacred space for the bodies, without making their deaths the focus. That doesn't seem so bad to me. In any important way, the girls are not there, so why regard the dead bodies as something sacred, something whose presence means we should act differently than we do ordinarily? I guess it's because death is seen as such a powerful force.
The Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crecenzio Seppe, said in his blog that "'To turn the other way or to mind your own business can sometimes be more devastating than the events that occur.'" I'd agree if the girls were injured or needed lifesaving efforts; then it would be cruel to be indifferent. But I don't see how the sunbathers' can really mind the dead girls' business now, or why they should.
I've been in the presence of someone in the moments of her death, and in the presence of her body, as it lay in her house, for a couple of hours after that. The moment of dying, yes, that felt like something happened, something a little unusual and yet not, like breathing in and out. But for the hours afterwards? My experience was that life went on in its ordinary way. If I hadn't felt that all along that morning, I would have when the mortuary folks came with their plastic garbage-like bag and heaved her body into it. It was about as sacred-seeming as bodies under beach towels on a sunny day.
(In a twisted way, it kinda reminds me of this ...)
06:15 Posted in animals , death , neuroscience, psychology, the mind , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture , science and tech , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
22 July 2008
Noose Watch
A surprising number of noose incidents in the southern New England and mid-Atlantic states ...
Click on map to learn details of each of the 78 incidents reported to authorities within the last year in the U.S.)
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The Mechanism
"In a nutshell: before the advent of Judaism and Christianity, in one way or the other, the scapegoat mechanism was accepted and justified, on the basis that it remained unknown. It brought peace back to the community at the height of the chaotic mimetic crisis. All archaic religions grounded their rituals precisely around the re-enactment of the founding murder. In other words, they considered the scapegoat to be guilty of the eruption of the mimetic crisis. By contrast, Christianity, in the figure of Jesus, denounced the scapegoat mechanism for what it actually is: the murder of an innocent victim, killed in order to pacify a riotous community. That's the moment in which the mimetic mechanism is fully revealed." -- René Girard, in Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on the Origins of Culture
Quoted by Chronicles of Atlantis, with accompanying photo at that website.
This may not be what was intended, but reading Girard and learning about mimetic theory these last few years has led me to become extremely wary of all sacrifice (making sacred) -- which actually I think is intended -- and also sceptical and even perhaps cynical of self-sacrifice, in myself and others.
Sacrifice seems so often to go hand-in-hand with feelings of righteousness and resentment, and the act of scapegoating, and it offers an enormous payoff both for acknowledging the sacrifice as such and for denying all else. I see self-sacrifice now as mostly an acceptable way to make oneself sacred, a kind of self-divination that can be deeply satisfying and comforting to the sacrificer. (A short time ago I would have agreed that 'we are all sacred,' and yet now I think that such language amounts to a sort of trick, a means of identifying and attacking 'the profane,' that which we think is unworthy.)
I think we are called to compassion -- i.e., suffering with, abiding with, experiencing what the other experiences without clutching onto the experience -- which sometimes entails sacrifice of one's ego, one's desires, and at times one's life; and yet I can't be unaware of the ego-needs and the desires that are met in the act of sacrificing oneself in both mundane and extraordinary ways, in the stories we tell ourselves and others about the sacrifice -- before (if premeditated or foreseen), during and particularly after the fact -- and in the refuge taken in false modesty that seeks to lift up our own altruism and to deny our own selfishness. And contrariwise, even boasting of our selfish motives can itself become a show of ego self-sacrifice, a twisted pretense of appropriate humility that serves only to enhance the perception of oneself as a hero, a god, someone who isn't even aware of the good they've done. We are a tricky, tricky lot, it seems to me, capable often of hiding the complexity of our own motives from our own minds and hearts.
I can imagine self-sacrifice as a consequence of feeling in the flow of all life, as a heartfelt response to feeling loved, as an act intertwined with living an abundant life, though I have a more difficult time imagining that the story about the act could leave it at that without justification, fabrication, meaning-making, and so on.... What I can't imagine is self-sacrifice as a measurement on a moral scale without also thinking about the Pharisees and their sacrifices, abstinences, denials of pleasures, etc., for the sake of God, and how good they felt about their worthiness under God because of those sacrifices.
Self-sacrifice that comes from a sense of duty and a need to 'do the right thing,' and that carries with it a sense of having done right, done well, been worthy and pleasing, feels to me likely to slip unobserved into a self-congratulatory act, and perhaps to leak into resentment, bitterness, anger and eventually accusation when the act is unappreciated, unrecompensed, unacknowledged, unnoticed, and even unaccepted, and/or has an outcome considered bad by the sacrificer. (Or, alternately, the sacrificer may view the lack of appreciation and the bad outcome as yet another burden added to the sacrifice s/he is making, which just enhances the satisfaction s/he feels in making such a sacrifice.)
If such an act derives from wanting to measure up, wanting to do what's right and to be right, then it seems mined with explosive devices that will likely damage the sacrificer, as it did the Pharisees, without their noticing it. If, on the other hand, such a sacrifice derives from a feeling of being loved completely for who one is (and isn't), from a knowledge at the core -- or perhaps simply from a quick glimpse that's never been quite edited out -- that we are the recipients of a gift that our word 'life' doesn't even begin to describe -- Well, that kind of sacrifice could, it seems, be experienced not as giving up anything, not as an unequal exchange, not as suffering at all except in the sense of 'suffer' as 'allow' or 'undergo.' We might then undergo sacrifice as a bit of ash undergoes a lava flow or as a drop of rain undergoes a thunderstorm. What would that be like?
(I ordered Evolution and Conversion yesterday, and a few days ago received a copy of Girard's other book published this year, Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953-2005, from which I may occasionally quote as I get into it. I'll probably skip around ... Writers whose works he explores include Stendhal, Voltaire, Valéry, Tocqueville, de Beauvoir, Proust, Racine, Sartre, Hugo, Dostoevsky, Shakespeare ... I haven't read most of the original texts, so it may be hard going. See TOC here.)
08:10 Posted in death , girardian anthropology , other people said it , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
21 July 2008
Taking A Life
"When it became clear he wasn't going to move out of the way, I closed my eyes, covered my face and held my breath.
"By the time we were stationary, four of my eight cars were in the platform and I was on autopilot. I told the passengers there would be a delay in opening the doors due to an 'incident', and was calling the line controller for assistance when I heard a tap on my cab door. A smart man inquired, 'Do you know there's a person under your train?' I looked at the blood on the windscreen momentarily before assuring him that, yes, I was aware.
"He paused for a heartbeat, looked at his watch and said, 'So, how long before we get on the move again?'"
(from "Last Year I Killed a Man," by Vaughan Thomas, in the Guardian, 19 July 2008, via Scott)
11:36 Posted in community , death , health and medicine , other people said it , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
20 July 2008
More Funeral Stuff
A short McSweeney's list: Phrases I'd Rather Not Be Used At My Funeral by Harry Burt, with my anxious additions:
"autoerotic asphyxiation" [likewise: "left 10-inch clawmarks"]
"found by cadaver dogs" ["according to the forensic entomologist"]
"hopped up on goofballs" ["ate her weight in Oreos"]
"minutes from rescue" ["last-second airline flight change"]
"prehensile tail" ["cascading sheets of mucus"]
["salvaged what we could," "leaned over the rim a smidge too far," "must have been in unimaginable pain," "what's that on his forehead? 'syawliarT'?"]
20:45 Posted in death , lists , silliness and humour | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
19 July 2008
Canadian Feet Update
The first of the five feet that have washed up so far in British Columbia has been identified as belonging to "a depressed man who went missing a year ago." (Previous stories linked here.)
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15 July 2008
Favourite Funeral Music
Looking for music for your memorial service? Check out these ideas, which include the Monty Python song, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'; Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem (Kempe or Klemperer versions, 79 minutes long); Bach's 'Sleepers Awake;' Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy;' Gillian Welch's 'I Dream A Highway;' Crash Test Dummies' 'At My Funeral;' requiems of Verdi, Faure, and Mozart; AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' ...
(My list includes, at the moment, Louis Armstrong's 'What A Wonderful World,' Kate Smith's 'I'll Be Seeing You,' and either Ella's or Bobby Short's 'They Can’t Take That Away from Me')
12:30 Posted in death , lists , music | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
14 July 2008
Solutions: Religion (Notes from Status Anxiety)
Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the tenth post on this topic; the first is here.
PART II: Solutions
CHAPTER 4 - RELIGION
Death
Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan llyich (1886) is a Christian memento mori. Ivan Ilyich is all about status. When he realises he's going to die, he recognises he's wasted his time on Earth by leading an outwardly respectable but inwardly barren life. He always wanted to appear important and to impress people whom, he sees now, don't care for him at all. Those around him love his status, not his true vulnerable self.
The prospect of death may cause us to do what matters most to us and to pay less attention to the verdicts of others. We see we cannot "afford to defer forever, for the sake of propriety, our underlying commitments to ourselves."
Ruins! They comfort us, reveal our "punishingly high-minded sense of the gravity of what we are doing," our own exaggerated self-importance. Our miseries are tied to the grandiosity of our ambitions.
Community
We all have the same vulnerabilities and the same two driving forces: fear, and a desire for love.
The Christian would say that there is no such thing as a stranger, "only an impression of strangeness born of failure to acknowledge that others share both our needs and our weaknesses."
Christianity attempts to enhance the value we place on community -- through ritual (a transcendent intermediary) and through music (great leveller and social alchemist -- we see that others respond as we do, which forges connection).
Twin Cities
Jesus is the model for Christians' understanding of status. He has two different sides, as ordinary carpenter and as the holiest of men. We can see the difference between earthly status (determined by occupation, income, others' opinions) and spiritual status (related to one's soul and merits in God's eyes).
The City of God, Augustine, 427 AD: All human action can be interpreted from either the Christian or the Roman (earthly) perspective, which are different. Christian status derives from humility, generosity, recognition of one's dependence on God, etc.
Divine Comedia, Dante, 1315: Dante's Hell is home to many who enjoyed high status while they lived.
Christian lore asserts the superiority of spiritual over material success and endows its virtues with "a seductive seriousness and beauty" through music, art, literature, architecture, etc. "Through its command of aesthetic resources, of buildings, paintings and Masses, Christianity created a bulwark against the authority of earthly values and kept its spiritual concerns in the public eye."
Heydey of cathedrals, 1130-1530.
Christianity never abolished the Earthly City or its values, but that we retain any distinction between wealth and virtue is largely due to the impression left on Western consciousness by Christianity.
06:00 Posted in books and reading , community , death , girardian anthropology , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
04 July 2008
RIP Jesse Helms 1921-2008
Southern politician Jesse Helms, who served in the U.S. Congress for 30 years, has died at age 86 of natural causes. He died around 1:15 a.m. this morning, Independence Day.
Full story at the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer. Also at the Washington Times, the Heritage Foundation, and the NYT. The AP has collected some quotes by Helms.
When I heard, the lyrics of the disappear fear song, Sink the Censorship, came to mind: "Hey, Jess, just take one black man / Or one lesbian, one Lithuanian / Or any U.S. senator / Cut open their hearts - it's the same, it's the same."
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24 June 2008
Tuesday Bits: Grief, What Moves Through Us, How Will We Be Remembered?
Some of what moves through us, and how it keeps us moving.
sunlight, air, water, nutrients, blood, instincts, our neurons' electric spark, sensations, perceptions, information, ideas, conceptions, conversations, emotions, communion...
I like it, and I think I like the colours he uses for the words even more.
---
Leroy Sievers (My Cancer) asks how you want people to remember you. My instinctual response is, I don't. Maybe, somehow, in these things Dave Pollard lists, above, that move through us, but without my name attached. Maybe I don't want to be remembered or missed in my absence so much as felt in my presence. Ask me another day and I might respond differently. Sometimes I feel anxious and sad when I think about so much personality and experience (each person's) removed from our midst in an instant, never to be replicated in exactly the same way (or so I believe) ... Of what use was it all, all this striving, all this becoming, all these relationships, all this unique composition of particles, waves, energy, self? Then I answer myself: of no use. That's a calming thought somehow.
I like this aspiration, in the comments: "That I went through my bout with cancer with ... a sick sense of humor." Another one says, "Off to get fresh bread for breakfast. Please remember that I did things like that."
---
Addicted to grief ... In the journal 10 May 2008 issue of Neurolmage, UCLA scientists report a study of grief that may help explain why some people "grieve and ultimately adapt, while others can't get over the loss of someone held dear." Grief may be an addiction; thinking about the loss may stimulate the reward region of the brain, which provides the griever with a kind of pleasure in the midst of pain. The reveries about the loved one may not be felt as emotionally satisfying, but they may be craved and re-enacted because of the reward response they trigger in the brain.
The lead author of the study, asst. professor of psychiatry Mary-Frances O'Connor, explains:
"'The idea is that when our loved ones are alive, we get a rewarding cue from seeing them or things that remind us of them. ... After the loved one dies, those who adapt to the loss stop getting this neural reward. But those who don't adapt continue to crave it, because each time they do see a cue, they still get that neural reward. Of course, all of this is outside of conscious thought, so there isn't an intention about it.'"
In the study, women whose mothers or sisters had died of breast cancer looked at either a photo of their loved one or a photo of a female stranger while their brains were scanned. They found that while both those with complicated grief (the kind that continues and can be debilitating) and with uncomplicated grief have activity in the pain network of the brain after looking at the photo of the loved one, only those with complicated grief showed significant activation in the nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain associated with reward.
What this synopsis of the study doesn't say is whether someone is chemically determined to have complicated grief with every loss or only with some losses.
Abstract and link to full report ($) here.
11:17 Posted in community , death , health and medicine , neuroscience, psychology, the mind , other people said it , simple living | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
23 June 2008
RIP George Carlin (1937 - 2008)
Comedian, political humourist, anti-censorship crusader and thinker George Carlin died yesterday of a heart attack at age 71. He released his first comedy album, Take-Offs and Put-Ons, in 1967, acted in 'That Girl' and the movie 'With Six You Get Egg-Roll,' and by the end of the 1960s, "he was one of America’s best known comedians." In 1970, feeling he was "living a lie," he ditched his clean-cut, conventional image and material for the long-haired look and seven-words-riddled, edgy patter he's known for. That switch resulted in the cancellation of a 3-year-contract and "he was advised to leave town when an angry mob threatened him at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club"!
Time magazine already has "How George Carlin Changed Comedy" on its website.
Transcript of "The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," from his 1972 album Class Clown. (NSFW)
An editorial cartoon featuring Carlin, printed in today's Chicago Tribune, which went to press before news of Carlin's death.
10:05 Posted in death , media, film, tv, radio , language , silliness and humour | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
20 June 2008
Collective Violence - Examples - Part V
It's been another month since I last blogged about mob violence, which continues pretty well unabated. Below are some of the latest incidents reported, and some commentary on the phenomenon by others. (And here's why I'm doing it.)
I won't be making the Girardian connections for each of these as I have previously because the connections are the same as always -- scapegoat is often someone from the margins (disabled, poor, stranger, female, old, young, from another caste or class or country, seen as privileged, etc. ), mob often forms spontaneously or grows larger as the scapegoating occurs due to accusatory mimesis, perpetrators easily justify the scapegoating as necessary and right, scapegoating's intention is to bring about peace in the community.
INCIDENTS
** 15 May 2008, Baltimore MD: "Child Was a 'Demon'"
"One Mind Ministries of Baltimore, MD, allegedly starved an 18-month old child because he was viewed as a ‘demon' ... after the baby wouldn’t say 'amen' at mealtime." The baby's "body was found last month in a suitcase in Philadelphia two years after his death." Immediately after his death, "the baby was placed on a mattress, on which cult members said God would resurrect him from the dead." Examiner article here.
** 31 May 2008 Para, Brasil, in the Amazon: "Brazilian Tribes Say Dam Threatens Way of Life" reported at NPR
Indigenous people protesting a proposed hydroelectric dam on the "remote, pristine Xingu River," near the mouth of the Amazon River, attack Paulo Fernando Rezende, a representative from the state's electric power enterprise, with machetes as he speaks to them about the dam:
"Roquivan Alves Silva takes the microphone and declares: 'If necessary, I will make war to protect the Xingu and the people of the entire region.' Moments later, the Indians rise in unison. A mix of warriors and women moves menacingly across the room toward Rezende. Then suddenly they're on him. Machetes and sticks flailing, they push Rezende to the floor, poking him with their weapons. The warriors rip his shirt to shreds and carve a deep gash in his right arm. Blood pooling on the floor, Dom Erwin, the Catholic Bishop of Xingu, steps in. The gymnasium hangs suspended between fear and euphoria. Chief Tabata, whose tribe lives in the Xingu National Park in the state of Mato Grosso, says he feels the Eletrobras representative lied. ... 'We have to hurt them. They weren't respecting the Indians. ... That's our fight. I want the people, the white people to understand why the Indians are so angry.'"
** 2 June 2008 Imphal, Manipur, India: Woman killer lynched: Mob justice at Umathel:
"In a macabre incident, a woman (45) was hacked to death by a man (60) who was subsequently lynched by an angry mob at Umathel Mamang Leikai under Waikhong Police Station this morning. ... According to police report, at around 6 am today, Sangai was returning home from collecting monthly subscription of a Marup from a person at Umathel Mamang Leikai. While she was preparing to cross a bailey bridge, Khullachandra, who was then splitting bamboo, came from behind and hacked her on the neck killing the woman on the spot. When the news of the incident spread, angry locals came out in large number and beat up Khullachandra to death. The body of Khullachandra has been picked up by the Waikhong police. None of his family members have come to claim the body so far."
** 2 June 2008 Flushing, New York: "Mob Violence Against Falun Gong Worsens in Absence of Police"
"About forty Falun Gong practitioners were surrounded on Main Street in front of the Flushing Library Saturday evening between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. by a large, angry mob. According to eyewitness reports and Epoch Times reporters on the scene, the mob was emboldened by the absence of the police. ... 'These mobs, there were hundreds of them, at least 200-300 of them.'" ... There is speculation that the Chinese consulate is organizing the mobs and that "some of the violence is being aggravated and encouraged by well-placed individuals among crowds of Chinese. On Sunday, an unidentified Chinese man, standing among a large crowd of Chinese on Sanford and Kissena Streets, described how he had attacked a female Falun Gong practitioner the previous week, ripping the sign she was holding and knocking her to the ground. The man, who was described as about 5'7" and in his mid-40's with scars on his face, encouraged people in the crowd to attack Falun Gong practitioners themselves." More on an earlier incident here.
** 9 June 2008 Bagamoyo, Tanzania:
Kate Kozonasky reports on her blog of an incident of mob violence: "A few nights ago ... us girls were sitting outside at night, probably around 730, inside out home base just talking. All of the sudden, we heard this massive ROAR of people coming from outside the gate; it was ridiculous. at first it just sounded strictly like shouting, but as we ran outside our protective gates to see what the fuss was, we realized that at LEAST 150 people were running down the road with torches and spears, screaming "THIEF!" Our Tanzanian security gaurd explained that this often happens in Bagamoyo when there is a crime; when something happens and a citizen witnesses it, he has to scream to get others attention to catch the criminal themselves, because police are not affective here. So apparently, a man stole from a local store and they were literally chasing him out of the town to kill him!"
COMMENTARY examining triggers for mob violence:
South Africa: Ugly Politics Aggravate Xenophobia by Terence Corrigan and Faten Aggad, 4 June 2008: The "recent eruption of mob violence targeting foreigners living among us" in South Africa" have been put down to "xenophobia," but this, the authors contend, "cannot on its own explain the violence. After all, South Africans have been living alongside foreign nationals for decades. This suggests that other factors are involved. We need to understand what they are – urgently." Factors the suggest and explore are (1) the inability of the existing democratic process to mitigate conflict; (2) the 'uneven' South African policy on immigraton, which leads to grievances such as "anger at competition for jobs and services, envy at the perceived success of foreigners, and suspicion of other cultures;" (3) a political system that fails "to channel people's grievances into formal channels;" (4) "a lack of understanding on the part of ordinary people as to how they can make themselves heard."
South Africa: Graca Machel Warns of Revolt Among Victims of Pogroms, 10 June 2008:
"Mozambique's former first lady, Graca Machel, who today heads one of the country's most respected NGOS, the Community Development Foundation (FDC), on Tuesday warned of possible revolt among the tens of thousands of Mozambicans who have fled from anti-foreigner pogroms in South Africa. ... Should the government prove unable to satisfy their demands, and to reinsert them into Mozambican society, that could lead the victims of the pogroms to revolt against their own government" with mob violence. ...
"She added that the solutions to such problems must lie in the establishment of governments that are able to respond to the needs of their citizens, and reduce the likelihood that they will be driven to the margins of society. Machel claimed that the mob violence in South Africa was aimed more against the sub-human living conditions in the townships than against foreign citizens. She argued that the attacks had been unleashed by people who were 'rejected, marginalized and unused' by the South African system. (However, contrary to this view, there is good evidence that the initial riots were far from spontaneous, but were organised by self-styled 'community leaders'). Machel argued that the development models adopted by African governments have produced millions of marginalized and excluded people, living in conditions favourable to outbreaks of brutal violence. 'Extreme poverty dehumanizes people and leads them to madness,' she said. 'That's what happened in Rwanda over ten years ago.'
South Africa: Xenophobia on Trial at Boekehuis: Dark Tales and Hope by Liesl Jobson, 2 June 2008:
"Johannesburg readers crammed into Boekehuis" recently to "talk about xenophobia in literature. ... Store manager Corina Van der Spoel [chaired] the event," introducing "the topic with a series of salient readings and reflections, starting with an excerpt from the Goldstone Report of 1993/4, which noted the different ways that perpetrators, victims and bystanders react to massive human rights abuses -- the callousness with which innocent people are murdered, raped and tortured, and the shallow excuses produced by the perpetrators for such brutality.
"'He finds similar behaviour everywhere,' said Van der Spoel. 'The situations are universal. Throughout the world one must recognise that any people, anywhere, has the potential for evil on a massive scale. And all victims, whoever they may be, need the opportunity to heal. No continent, no region, and no people are immune from it.'" ...
"Van der Spoel also quoted from the Southern African Migration Project's World Values Survey on International Attitudes to Immigration, which she described as 'astounding'. In calibrating attitudes to foreigners it was found that South Africans held the harshest anti-immigrant views among the 29 nations surveyed. 'More than 20% of people surveyed here wanted all foreigners barred from entering the country on any grounds, compared with 13% holding this view in Britain, 11% in China, and 4% in the USA and Mozambique.'"
Pakistan: Burning of robbers shows lack of justice, police inefficiency by Zamir Sheikh, 26 May 2008:
Speaking of "the unfortunate burning of two alleged robbers by an angry crowd in Karachi recently" -- due to "a daylight robbery in a flat located in the congested locality" -- Skeikh points to "the rising unbearable cost of living" as a possible cause.
He also notes, "The desperate element in the street justified the mob justice arguing that there is no other way than to handout instant justice to the perpetrators of heinous crime. ... It is difficult to single out one single factor as the cause of the incident. It was just the instant anger with no restraining saner voice in the mob that caused the gruesome and inhumane act. But if discussed from various angles, one could reach the conclusion that snail pace process of justice, overburdened police force dominated by a few corrupt elements, tribal justice system prevalent in some areas the country and lack of trust of the judicial system were some of the factors that forced the unconscious mind of an enraged mob to indulge in an act which is prohibited both by the God and the man made laws.
"None other than William Shakespeare had written about the mob mentality in his famous drama Julius Caesar, how Mark Antony is his funeral speech played with mobs emotions in order to whip them into a frenzy of rage.
"The crowd that caught hold of the robbers as soon as the victims raised hue and cry had to react immediately and in the fit of mob anger they found no alternate than to beat them near death. Some one in the crowd who might have seen or undergone the sufferings of facing a similar personal experience lost his sanity and resorted to an act which otherwise under normal circumstance he would have just avoided and handed over the culprits to the police."
Pakistan: Rule of the mob by Ishtiaq Ahmed, 7 June 2008:
"In the wake of viciously gruesome attacks recently by angry mobs on criminals -- robbers and thieves -- caught recently red-handed on the scene in Karachi and other parts of the country, Gallup Pakistan conducted an opinion survey on May 18 and 19, 2008 ... Fifty-two percent (52%) of the total respondents were of the opinion that beating to death and then burning the bodies of those robbers apprehended on the spot was the "right thing to do" while 42 percent (42%) disapproved of such brutal methods. ...
"If we now recall that in the past few weeks a Hindu worker has been killed in a similar fashion by a mob which suspected him of blasphemy, incensed lawyers beat up pro-Musharraf ministers of the previous government in Lahore, and rival groups of lawyers fell upon each other in Karachi, causing a number of deaths, then the situation becomes very worrisome. It is symptomatic of not only a state and its institutions failing to establish and uphold law and order but civil society failing as well to inculcate norms and ethics that discourage violent conduct.
"When such a situation becomes endemic the name for the phenomenon is ochlocracy, devised by the ancient Greeks to describe mob rule or mob justice. Sometimes another word, "mobocracy," is applied instead to describe the power of the masses, in contrast to the power of an established ruling elite. ...
"The outbursts of mob fury and the concomitant 'rough' justice meted out to the culprits [in Pakistan] reflect not only loss of faith in the political leaders and state institutions' ability to maintain law and order and practice justice. Rather, in a more serious manner such extreme behaviour is a manifestation of helplessness and despondency in relation to the ruling class. "
More on Pakistan's blasphemy laws and the consequences for those accused of it. ("The blasphemy laws impact everyone, regardless of religion -- and the tragedy is that almost every case is completely fabricated. ... The reason is simple. The blasphemy law requires no evidence other than an accusation made by one person against another.")
06:00 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , politics, government and law , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
18 June 2008
What's with the Feet?
Now a sixth severed foot has washed up on the shores of British Columbia, encased in an athletic show like all the others.
It was a hoax!, an animal paw skeleton stuck in a shoe. (Isn't that a bit obvious? I guess not.)
Anyway, the first five feet were real human dead feet, four of them right feet, the fifth foot, which washed up on Monday, the only left foot. The leading theory seems to be that the feet and shoes might belong to four of the five men who were killed in a float plane crash in the area in Feb. 2005 (the fifth man's remains were found and identified soon after the crash). Where are the rest of the bodies? Why would the feet all detach?
I don't know if I would be taking more beach walks or fewer if I lived near the Campbell River in Vancouver, B.C. ... Hello, CSI: Canada!
More facts and theorising ... "The leg bone was still attached to the foot bone and there was no remaining muscle. The leg bone was 'cut on a straight line" just 3 to 4 inches above the ankle.' ... DNA profiles developed for the first three feet do not match any known missing-person cases. ... It's unlikely the feet are washing in from the Pacific Ocean. Rather, they're probably originating from B.C. waters. ... A disarticulated foot could float for up to 1,600 kilometers in a buoyant sneaker."
23 June 2008 update: More speculation, particularly as DNA testing has now concluded that three of the feet don't belong to any of the plane crash victims. Results are still pending for the remaining two feet.
10 July 2008 update: Two of the five feet belong to the same person, a male, and one of the feet belongs to a woman. As that article mentions at the end, another foot washed up on Tuesday in southern Sweden. Photos of the 'Canadian'shoes at the National Post, plus more details.
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17 June 2008
Change is Hard
From Morning Edition this morning:
Romanian Village Re-Elects Dead Mayor. The news that he had died of liver disease just after voting started on Sunday "did not deter supporters, who gave him a 23-vote win over a living opponent." One said: "I know he died, but I don't want change." More here,
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26 May 2008
Nuala O'Faolain RIP (1940 - 2008)
Have you heard about Irish writer Nuala O'Faolain's response to her terminal diagnosis? I'm very attracted to the way she chose to live her last months, to her grief and depression as she says goodbye to what she finds meaningful and beautiful, and to her honesty as she faces the end of her time on earth.
The Guardian has the story and obituary; below are some excerpts from an interview with her at independent.ie in mid-April. She died on 9 May, about two-and-a-half months after her diagnosis, at age 68:
"I was just reading about some best-selling man who says 'Live your dream to the end' and so on and I don't despise anyone who does, but I don't see it that way. Even if I gained time through the chemotherapy it isn't time I want. Because as soon as I knew I was going to die soon, the goodness went out of life. ...
"It amazed me, Marian, how quickly life turned black, immediately almost.
"For example, I lived somewhere beautiful, but it means nothing to me anymore -- the beauty. For example, twice in my life I have read the whole of Proust. I know it sounds pretentious, but it's not a bit. It's like a huge soap opera. But I tried again the week before last and it was gone, all the magic was gone from it.
"And I'm not nice or anything -- I'm not getting nicer. I'm sour and difficult you know. I don't know how my friends and family are putting up with me, but they are, heroically. And that is one of the things you learn."
"You see, the cancer is a very ingenious enemy and when you ask somebody how will I actually die? How do you actually die of cancer ?... I don't get an answer because It could be anything.
"It can move from one organ to the other, it can do this that or the other. It's already in my liver, for example. So I don't know how it's going to be. And that overshadows everything."
She says that she doesn't believe in an afterlife, or an individual creator, and goes on:
"Let poor human beings believe what they want, but to me its meaningless. ... And yet I want to mention one thing that you might play at the end, particularly for dying people, ... a song I heard a few years ago 'Thois I Lar an Glanna' -- a kind of modern song sung by Albert Fry and other Donegal singers. And the last two lines are two things, asking God up there in the heavens, even though you don't believe in him, to send you back even though you know it can't happen. Those two things sum up where I am now. (Crying)"
"I am sick, but I am trying to say goodbye. So much has happened and it seems such a waste of creation that with each death all that knowledge dies. [and all that experience ... ]
"I think there's a wonderful rule of life that means that we do not consider our own mortality. I know we seem to, and remember, 'man thou art but dust', but I don't believe we do. I believe there is an absolute difference between knowing that you are likely to die, let's say within the next year, and not knowing when you are going to die -- an absolute difference."
The interviewer asks: "One of the things that you wrote about and wrote about is that what you thought mattered in life was passion?" to which O'Faolain responds:"That seems a bit silly now. What matters now in life is health and reflectiveness. I just shot around. I would like it if I had been a better thinker.
MF: What about the passion?
NO'F: The passion can go and take a running jump at itself, that's what it can take.
MF: And love?
NO'F: Well, love's different, but I always [get the] two mixed up anyway."
"I know everyone says the hair matters, but that is not true. You can put a little cap on or something for the hair. That is irrelevant compared with having to leave the world behind."
05:50 Posted in books and reading , death , other people said it , theology, spirituality, philosophy | Permalink | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
21 May 2008
Mob Violence - This Just In
Reported today at CNN: "Mob burns to death 11 'witches, wizards'" in Nairobi, Kenya:
"Officials say a mob has burned to death 11 people suspected of being witches and wizards in western Kenya. Deputy police spokesman Charles Owino says the mob hunted down the 8 women and 3 men in two villages in the western Kenya district of Kisii Central. Owino says most of the victims were between 70 years old and 90 years old. Only one of the victims was 40 years old. Senior administrator Njoroge Ndirangu says ... 'These people identified who is to be killed by accusing their victims of bewitching their sons and daughters.'"
A BBC report on the attacks adds:
"The mob dragged them out of their houses and burned them individually and then set their homes alight, our correspondent says.
"Residents have been ambivalent about condemning the attacks because belief in witchcraft is widespread in the area...."
The International Herald Tribune put the size of the mob at "300 young men" and said that in some cases the victims' throats were slit or they were clubbed to death before being burned.
One police officer, Mwaura Njoroge, questioned how the young men could prove someone was a wizard and suggested that "'It is likely that the people who committed these killings had personal vendettas against their victims.'"
Added 22 May: In depth article on the issue of witch-hunting in Malawi, from the Women's Internatonal Perspective: "Mob Justice in Malawi: Accused of Witchcraft, the Elderly Are Rarely Protected by the Law"
16:40 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , politics, government and law , theology, spirituality, philosophy , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
Collective Violence - Examples - Part IV
It's been almost a month since I last blogged about mob violence. Again, that's not because it's not happening but because it continues relentlessly. Here are some of the latest. (And here's why I'm doing it.)
26 April 2008 in the Erie Times-News, Erie, PA, USA: "Police charge 3 as victim remains on ventilator": Kyle Miles, 28, is in critical condition after being attacked by "a group of 10-15 people" who chased him and beat him severely after "a perceived slight triggered mob violence on a spring evening. ... The [original] assailant told Miles the assault was all about respect, said a witness. ... 'He was telling him that he (Miles) can't come down to this neighborhood and disrespect nobody.' ... The attacker boasted that he had dropped Miles with one hit. ... Arrington estimated up to 15 men in their late teens or early 20s chased Miles and gathered to watch the assault, as if it were a spectator event. 'Some girl said something. He said something. Someone took offense, and all hell broke loose.'
Conformity: The assault was a bonding experience for most of the onlookers. The cause of the brutal attack was a 'slight' that nonetheless seems to have justified the brutality in the eyes of the perpetrators. The victim was apparently someone from outside the community, since he ran the wrong way seeking escape.
28 April 2008, Karachi, Pakistan: "Jagdeesh Kumar, a 22-year-old Hindu worker in a garment factory in Pakistan's largest city, was beaten to death by a mob [as police looked on] for allegedly making blasphemous remarks about Prophet Mohammad. ....'His murder may have nothing to do with blasphemy. What we saw was an honour killing, coloured as a killing for blasphemy. Most, if not all, of the cases of killing for blasphemy have a different, more mundane and criminal reason. Blasphemy provides a cover,' says [A.H.] Nayyar [, an Islamabad peace activist]. He has reason to believe that the Hindu boy was in love with a Muslim girl." Hindus make up less than two percent of the population in Pakistan. (Sify News)
Conformity: Hindus, a tiny minority of the population in Pakistan, would be prime scapegoat material because they are non-conforming, marginalised and have been historically persecuted in Pakistan since the Partition of India in the 1940s. The scapegoating is cloaked in religious terms -- the scapegoaters claim to kill for sacred reasons -- while the truth seems rather different.
6 May 2008, Madurai, India: "A police official was stabbed and 17 policemen injured while a police jeep and four motorcycles were set on fire in mob violence which engulfed Eliyarpathi Village of the district today. Police sources said the trouble started when members of Mutharayar Community resorted to road blockade demanding action against some Dalits who allegedly desecrated a portrait of King Perumpidugu Mutharayar in the village. The incident was sequel to the stoning of Dalit houses in the villages by Mutharayars over a petty quarrel in a tea shop last night." (MyNews.in)
Conformity: Apparently a revenge attack. Dalits are the lowest caste in India, the so-called untouchables, and here they are alleged to have desecrated something sacred.
8 May 2008, Patna India: "Villagers pour acid into man's eyes in Bihar": "A man was severely beaten and acid was poured into his eyes by residents of a village in Bihar's Purnia district. ... The villagers "overpowered Vinay Yadav alias Pappu Yadav, wanted in connection with the February 28 killing of Bihari Lal Yadav and his grandson, and beat him mercilessly with sticks and iron rods on late Monday night. As Vinay collapsed in pain, the villagers poured acid into his eyes. The police soon arrived and took him into custody. He was rushed to the Purnia sadar hospital where his condition was stated to be stable. ... A mob had recently gouged out the eyes of two alleged thieves in Bihar's Nawada district. "
Conformity: Not much based on this report, other than the mob aspect and the escalation (if acid in the eyes is worse than being beaten with an iron rod ...) . Ruthless revenge attack of an alleged murderer.
10 May, Patna, India: "Mob justice takes 5 lives": Four bank robbers (including a murderer) and a would-be thief were beaten to death in Bihar in two separate incidents.
"In Siwan, Chand Quereshi (29), was beaten to death right in front of Siwan police station early in the morning. The incident took place around 3am when Quereshi broke into the Jai Prakashnagar residence of Vinod Mehta. 'Some 10 to 15 neighbours rushed to the house, overpowered the thief and beat him up till he fell unconscious.' ...
"At Buxar, four robbers were beaten to death by a mob, while another drowned in the Ganga while trying to escape the crowd. The robbers ... were part of a group of seven, who were trying to flee after a loot this afternoon," which they had taken from a branch of the State Bank of India at gunpoint after shooting and killing the bank's guard. ... The alarm alerted residents and they chased all seven and overpowered six of them within 500m from the bank. A mob of 100 started beating the men up and attacked them with bricks, stones and sticks -- anything they could lay hands on."
Conformity: Again, pretty common story of retaliation, in one case a small mob for an attempted crime and in another a large mob for an apparent robbery and killing. "Anything they could lay hands on" gives a sense of the frenzy of the mob. And did 100 men all start beating at one time, as if on cue, or did one start, and then another, and then the rest joined in?
12 May 2008, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India : "2 Dalit boys paraded naked for killing birds": "In yet another instance of mob justice, two Dalit minors were paraded naked for allegedly killing birds at Byawar village in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district. ... The minors, identified as Vinod (12) and Sagar (10), belong to the Kanjar tribe. The two were caught by villagers while they were catching birds and, on rummaging through through their bags, were found with a few pigeons and partridges. Furious villagers then beat up the boys and stripped them naked in public, police said. The villagers then called a barber and got their heads tonsured before parading them naked in the village."
Conformity: Humiliation of two Dalit boys, the lowest Indian caste (the 'untouchables'), easily scapegoated. I don't know enough to know what the aparent crime was here, what made the villagers 'furious': that the boys killed the birds (animal cruelty? the birds belong to someone else?), an 'untouchable' touching the birds that others might want to eat? Keeping the birds for themselves (stealing)?
13 May 2008 in the Sun News Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: "Police chief warns thugs following swarmings": Edmonton police chief Mike Boyd proclaimed that his city would not tolerate "this kind of mugging and swarming mentality against our police officers and any citizen in this city" after "the school resource officer at Eastglen high school was kicked in the head when he tried to stop former students from stunting in a vehicle. ... One pulled out a baseball bat but dropped it when the officer pepper-sprayed him. During the fight, the officer was pulled to the ground and kicked in the head, leaving him unconscious and having to be taken to hospital. ... Boyd said there have been other swarming incidents and muggings in which civilians are also being targeted.
Conformity: This story points to the no-holds-barred nature of group violence when the group feels provoked, including against law enforcement officers. (Perhaps drugs were involved, too?)
14 May 2008, Karachi Pakistan: "Residents of an apartment building attacked and set on fire three alleged robbers here on Wednesday, killing them all, police said. Police officer Amir Shaikh said residents of the building heard gunshots from an apartment where a neighbour had resisted robbers trying to steal his possessions. A mob of residents confronted the thieves and beat them with burning wood from the oven of a nearby bakery, setting them on fire." (That's the entire reported story.)
Conformity: Another brutal act against would-be thieves. The intention and outcome, as it often is, is not just to keep the thief from one's possessions but to punish the thief indelibly -- either because there's that much rage towards the thief or to signal to others that such an act won't be tolerated. Does the mob really feel that their actions should be tolerated? Is there that much perceived justification?
17 May 2008, Calcutta, India: "Shop fire triggers mob attack": "Over a dozen youths today stormed the home of the owners of the Sodepur shop where 12 people died in a fire yesterday, and failing to find them beat up a heart patient who stood nearby." They were thwarted from setting fire to the garment shop owners' house by neighbours. Two of the owners were in intensive care after the fire while other family members had fled to avoid retaliation and/or probable arrest. "Faced with a locked house, the young men ... vented their anger on a local youth. Raju Nag Biswas, 30, was standing in front of the house ... when he saw the cars pull up. About a dozen men jumped out and rushed to the house, but seeing it locked turned towards Raju," whom they apparently took to be the shop owners' watchman. Raju "pleaded with them saying he was not the guard and was a heart patient. 'But some of them grabbed my collar and began slapping me.'
Conformity: Retaliation. The beating of the innocent bystander when the intended victim can't be found -- and the justification that the bystander was culpable by association, is as guilty as the intended victim -- is a hallmark of scapegoating. Any victim will do to discharge the rage, to bring about peace. Interesting that according to the victim, only 'some' of the dozen youths/men continued to attack him after he denied association with the shop owners.
06:05 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , politics, government and law , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
03 May 2008
The Contagion of Violence
Long cover article titled Blocking the Transmission of Violence by Alex Kotlowitz (author of There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America, 1992) in the NYT Magazine today about CeaseFire, a group of mostly ex-cons working in Chicago and a few other cities to contain the contagion of violence. The key point: violence is contagious, like an infectious disease:
"THE STUBBORN CORE of violence in American cities is troubling and perplexing. Even as homicide rates have declined across the country -- in some places, like New York, by a remarkable amount -- gunplay continues to plague economically struggling minority communities. For 25 years, murder has been the leading cause of death among African-American men between the ages of 15 and 34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has analyzed data up to 2005. And the past few years have seen an uptick in homicides in many cities. Since 2004, for instance, they are up 19 percent in Philadelphia and Milwaukee, 29 percent in Houston and 54 percent in Oakland.
"The traditional response has been more focused policing and longer prison sentences, but law enforcement does little to disrupt a street code that allows, if not encourages, the settling of squabbles with deadly force.
"CeaseFire tries to deal with these quarrels on the front end." 'Violence interrupters "suss out smoldering disputes and to intervene before matters get out of hand. ... [It] doesn’t necessarily aim to get people out of gangs -- nor interrupt the drug trade. It's almost blindly focused on one thing: preventing shootings.
"CeaseFire’s founder, Gary Slutkin, is an epidemiologist and a physician who for 10 years battled infectious diseases in Africa. He says that violence directly mimics infections like tuberculosis and AIDS, and so, he suggests, the treatment ought to mimic the regimen applied to these diseases: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source.
"'For violence, we’re trying to interrupt the next event, the next transmission, the next violent activity,' Slutkin told me recently. 'And the violent activity predicts the next violent activity like H.I.V. predicts the next H.I.V. and TB predicts the next TB.' Slutkin wants to shift how we think about violence from a moral issue (good and bad people) to a public health one (healthful and unhealthful behavior)."
About violence and murder, Slutkin is convinced that "longer sentences and more police officers had made little difference. 'Punishment doesn't drive behavior,' he told me. 'Copying and modeling and the social expectations of your peers is what drives your behavior.'"
The interruptors, Slutkin says, "have to deal with how to get someone to save face. In other words, how do you not do a shooting if someone has insulted you, if all of your friends are expecting you to do that? ... In fact, what our interrupters do is put social pressure in the other direction."
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About this contagion of violence, and its cure, Girardians have a lot to say:
** Rene Girard, in "Are the Gospels Mythical?" talks about the contagion with reference to Peter's denial of Jesus:
"Peter spectacularly illustrates this mimetic contagion. When surrounded by people hostile to Jesus, he imitates their hostility. He obeys the same mimetic force, ultimately, as Pilate and Herod. Even the thieves crucified with Jesus obey that force and feel compelled to join the crowd. And yet, I think, the Gospels do not seek to stigmatize Peter, or the thieves, or the crowd as a whole, or the Jews as a people, but to reveal the enormous power of mimetic contagion -- a revelation valid for the entire chain of murders stretching from the Passion back to 'the foundation of the world.'"
** James Alison, in a 2007 lecture entitled "Love Your Enemy: Within a Divided Self," talks about Jesus's command in Matthew 5, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you":
"The instruction is not one about being a doormat, it is one about how to be free. 'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you' means 'do not be towards them as they are towards you, for then you will be run by them, and you and they will become ever more functions of each other, grinding each other down towards destruction. ... Instead of that, allow your identity to be given to you by your Father who is in heaven, who is not in any sort of reciprocity with them, and is able to be towards them as one holding them in being and loving them, without reacting against them.'"
Alison says that to change the pattern of our desires so wholly requires prayer, a recognition of our similarity with our enemies; this will "'eventually empower you to be towards your enemy as God is. Thus you will be free of any contagion from their violence towards you'."
Alison also speaks, in Blindsided by God: Reconciliation from the underside (2006), of the Holy Spirit's power to operate "neither from fear, nor from necessity, nor from togetherness, nor from contagion, nor from hate, nor from vengeance, nor from survival, nor from any other of the structuring forces of our society. And so it enables the person who is moved by it and recreated by it to begin to swim spaciously in the midst of violence without that violence infecting them."
** Drasko Dizdar, citing both Girard and Alison in his paper "Leaving the Temple" in the Australian EJournal of Theology (2004), says:
"Humanity is, indeed, so easily misled -- and not least by those who 'come in my name, saying: I am! – leading many astray' (Mark 13:6). The contagion of violence, working through fear, anxiety, indignation, anger, resentment, vengeance, etc, infects all who are not immunised against it: 'But when you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be terrorised (throeisthe); this must happen, but the end is not yet' (Mark 13:7). Maintaining peaceful balance in a storm of contagious violence is Christ's gift...."
** G. B. Caird (in Richard B. Hays, chapter "Revelation" in The Moral Vision of the New Testament, quoted here) explains the contagion, expressed in the book of Revelation, this way:
"Evil is self-propagating. Like the Hydra, the many-headed monster can grow another head when one has been cut off. When one man wrongs another, the other may retaliate, bear a grudge, or take his injury out on a third person. Whichever he does, there are now two evils where before there was one; and a chain reaction is started, like the spreading of a contagion. Only if the victim absorbs the wrong and so puts it out of currency, can it be prevented from going any further."
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The work of CeaseFire seems to be to convince the victims to imitate another model, to absorb the disease, to keep each other from reacting against 'the enemy,' and thus to keep the violent contagion from spreading and eventually to free the community from the disease.
---
Read the article for more details about the violence interruptors, why they turn from violent perpetrators to interruptors, how they operate (e.g., they "respond to every shooting and stabbing victim taken to the hospital"), founder Slutkin's background, the impact of CeaseFire on communities, its struggles for funding, etc.
20:40 Posted in community , crime , death , girardian anthropology , health and medicine , other people said it , politics, government and law , pop culture , theology, spirituality, philosophy , travel and place | Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) | Email this
25 April 2008
Collective Violence - Examples - Part III
It's been 16 days since my last Mob Violence post. The delay isn't due to lack of material but instead to being overwhelmed with material. The news from the Patna area of India would be enough by itself to fill this entry.
(If you want to know why I'm doing this, read the first posting.)
On with the show ...
1. 25 March, Port Harcourt, Nigeria:
The Advocate reports on the brutal beating of a chapter director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, a gay rights group, during a funeral service: "A man approached him while the congregation sang a hymn, asking him to speak with him outside. He said he was then attacked with slapping, punching, kicking, and spitting by a group of six men.
"'While beating me they were shouting, "You notorious homosexual, you think can run away from us for your notorious group to cause more abomination in our land?" Those who attacked me were well-informed about us, so I suspect an insider or one of the leaders of our Anglican church have hands in this attack.' ... The attackers "said they would not rest until gays are silenced from activism."
"Colin Coward, director of Changing Attitude England, said in the release that violence against LGBT people has been encouraged by the Church of Nigeria's leaders, including notoriously antigay archbishop Peter Akinola, who is primate of the Church of Nigeria."
Conformity: Homosexuals are likely scapegoating targets in a majority heterosexual society, particularly one that considers homosexuality 'an abomination.' The attackers seem to have found meaning in their violence, announcing that they would not rest until their mission was accomplished.
2. 9 April, Karachi, Pakistan: 7 die in Pakistani clashes
"Rival groups of lawyers fought Wednesday in Pakistan, triggering greater mob violence that left at least seven people dead in Karachi, police said.
"Five of the victims, including a woman, were burned alive when rioters set fire to Tahir Plaza, the Press Trust of India reported. Fifteen more people were reported injured, and a bank and several vehicles were torched, PTI said.
"The confrontation between the lawyers started near the office of the Sindh High Court Bar Association over the alleged manhandling of former federal minister Sher Aftgan in Lahore the previous night. The violence then spread elsewhere in the city with armed men exchanging gunfire at several locations, PTA reported." Per UPI
Conformity: Not much info here. The spreading of the violence to other quarters speaks to the contagion aspect of violence and mob actions.
3. 15 April, Zweletemba township, Worcester, South Africa:
&nb