bomb bomb bomb Isis: irrationality strikes again

 (Note:  this essay is incomplete. I may return to it. I am saddened to read headlines that seem to cheer France for its acts of terrorism today. Let's stop pretending war is not terrorism, at least?)

Just saw that France is bombing the hell out of what they believe are ISIS sites.  We reap what we sow.  War is irrational, of course, and warmongers are irrational. No one rational can believe more violence is the answer to violence. This widespread mass delusion, which all sides of the terrorism spectrum buy into, is widespread mass delusion. Collective insanity.

One of my FB friends criticized my use of the sentence 'we reap what we sow'. He wrote, on his wall, that we should all be focussed on the dead and mourning them. I find myself wondering if this person is down with France's bombing as a proper form of mourning the dead, wondering if that person believes a country bombing another country is not terrorism.  We in America have been soaked in propaganda since forever, since this country's founding. Many in America believe all our wars are just. Many in America do not see that invading Afghanistan and then Iraq and then other places (I don't try to keep track) is some kind of an answer.

Another old saying comes to mind:  an eye for an eye will soon have the whole world blind. This world seems largely blind when countries think their terrorism is okay if they call it war.

I've long believed, and sometimes said to friends, that I think the only way to defeat terrorism is to create human cultures that are unconditionally loving. As an example:  give everyone modest housing and a modest monthly stipend, while also allowing those who choose to work for more to be able to do so. Give good, free educations to all. Universal free health care. And fund all of this by properly taxing corporations and the already rich, eliminating corporate write offs.

Make France and America wonderlands of love, safety and trust and 'the terrorists' won't be able to recuite suicide bombers because those lost recruits will want in on the love thing.

When I lived in the Seattle area, I often heard a quote attributed to Chief Seattle:   "I will fight no more war forever."

And now I am thinking of that Christian thinker, who many claim as their God, Jesus Christ. Didn't JC tell us to turn the other cheek when we are hurt by others, to offer only ulnconditional love to all?

One of my most memorable undergraduate classes was a three-trimester, interdisciplinary course called "Irrationality". Each trimester had a different them. Professors from many disciplines gave large group lectures. At my small liberal arts college, large group lectures outside of introductory science classes were unheard of. My university prided itself on very small classes. We heard lectures on the irrationality theme from history professors, political science professors, literature profs. And then we met in two small group discussions with the touted 10-12 students to one professor ratio (that's about how many students were in most of my classes).

I had only expected to take one trimester. It was my senior year, I had met all my requirements and I could take whatever I wanted (whatever didn't have prereqs I didn't have. .  ).  I was instantly mesmerized at the gift of contemplating irrationality, coming at it from all kinds of angles I had never, heretofore, considered. Truth told, I had never given irrationality a thought until my senior year in college.

Irrationality explains a whole lot.

And now I am reminded of a session with my marriage counselor, when I continued to see him after we quite marriage counseling. I stayed in therapy to get well enough to get out of the marriage.  Week after week, I would go in and recount the latest abuse I had been subjected to.  My ex was physically abusive but his emotional abuse was worse.


SIDEBAR, segue: In fact, I went to two different weekly support groups for battered women for almost three years, during my custody battle years, for support. I met a lot of battered women in those years, in those groups, and without exception, every single one of them said emotional abuse was worse than physical, that they'd rather be smacked around a bit than be subjected to relentless emotional abuse. 

So I would go into therapy, cry the entire fifty minutes and recount endless stories of abuse. Until one day my doctor, who saved my life and my child's life (for his testimony kept my ex from winning custody of her), said to me "You are trying to be rational with an irrational person."

Although I had not applied the possibility that there was irrationality in my marriage to my marital woes, I instantly knew my doctor was right. That year studying irrationality kicked in.

Hitler and millions of Germans, then other colluding countries, irrationally marched into creating the Holocaust.

I wonder what my FB friend thinks of France's 'mourning' their dead by engaging in terrorism. He didn't like my reminding people that we reap what we sow. Is he down with terrorism in response?

Whatever happened to turning the other cheek? Lots of loonie tunes in the world who call themselves Christians and too many such loonies hold political office these days. If professed Christians took Jesus Christ's call to be unconditionally loving at all times, to turn the other cheek in the face of injury and to nonjudgmentally forgive ourselves and others when we fail, I could get into Christianity.

What would it look like if France had chosen to turn the other cheek?  I'd like to live in a world where I could know what that would look like because that is what France chose to do.

We have to start seeing the West's warmongering as terrorism.

And doesn't the West look impotent when it goes to war for imaginary weapons of mass destruction or bombs believed ISIS strongholds?  Responding to the Paris terrorism by bombing ISIS strongholds is terrorism, will generate more terrorism and will not make the world safer.

There is no safety but love and radical trust.