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NEWSLETTER
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Special Edition, September 13, 2001
THE HORRIFYING AFTERMATH... What now..?
By Edward Easton
By now we have all seen the unspeakably horrifying images from New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania.
InfoWorx wishes to extend condolences to all those who lost family and friends in this deadly terrorist attack.
Where do we all go from here..? The airwaves are full of commentators talking about the building righteous anger of the entire nation. Revenge and retaliation are on everyone's mind. This is the inevitable human response to any such tragedy and far is it from anyone to deny these feelings an outlet. The times cry out for a scapegoat. Suspicion seems to fall immediately on either Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan, or Saddam Hussein. Both of whom have crimes aplenty to atone for.
Afghanistan is a nation we were allied with against Soviet Russia just a few years ago. One or both of these camps may in fact be guilty, but we do not know this for sure, nor will we for some time to come. No one has come forward to claim responsibility for this dastardly attack.
Survivor accounts liken the images of the attack to the movie "Independence Day". Perhaps we should also call to mind another movie with a valuable message that preceded it by a decade.
"Ghandi" was a dramatization of the life of Mohandas K. Ghandi, known as the "Mahatma" worldwide. The word means "great soul". One of his famous quotes concerned the underlying cause of any war or act of violence. "An eye for an eye...making the whole world blind."
Single-handedly, this slightly built, gentle little man in a loincloth managed to unite his country and kick the British out of India, where they had held sway for over two hundred years. And he used no violence.
The biblical injunction of "an eye for an eye" has held sway in the Middle East for over half a century, and indeed far longer than that. And what are the results?
InfoWorx, or any infomercial producer, is a company that lives or dies by results. We understand results. You have either success or failure. Success can be measured in degrees, but nothing fails like failure. It is utter and complete.
That's what we have in the Middle East, and it's extension in time goes all the way back to Abraham, when Hagar and her son were driven from his camp. Off an on, the descendants of the sons of Abraham have warred ever since.
In the modern world, these long ago biblical events still resonate in the Jungian collective consciousness of the world's three great major religions. They are a seminal factor in the Holy Writ of all three and lie at the subconscious root of critical decisions being made today in efforts to solve the problem.
That problem seems to be a Gordian Knot of titanic proportions. An Alexandrian sword cannot even make a dent, nor indeed have all the swords on either side been able to for over 3000 years.
Perhaps it is time to try another approach, one that will require that most difficult operation of all, a pruning of the human heart of the vices that reside there so the good it also contains can grow. We know from Ghandi"s example that it can be done.
None of the above is meant to suggest that nothing be done to hold the guilty accountable for acts of terrorism. However, before we rush to judge any one person or group of people, or nation, let us examine our own hearts and try to understand what drives them to such desperate suicidal acts.
In the normal human scheme of things, life is sacred. All the world's religions trumpet this throughout numerous sacred texts.
Conditions in the third world are worsening in terms of poverty, misery, illness; in short, deprivation of nearly everything that makes life meaningful and fulfilling for the rest of us.
What is it like to simply exist the way they are all too often forced to do..?
The question is often asked of these unfortunates... but we seldom listen to the answer. Now they have our full attention, and in their minds the recent tragedy was the only way to get it. And that is an even greater tragedy...
As Lincoln reminded us all, we must begin to listen to the "better angels of our natures".
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