History is no jumping clown

Not even a mountain stands unchanged through the ages. No beautiful piece of architecture has stood unscattered through millennia. If you´ve read just a little bit of history you should also know that our societies have been even less permanent.

However - certain ideologies seem to want preservation of some kind of old order, usually what is perceived to be national culture, though not the present culture, but some kind of culture, perceived to have existed, maybe 50 years ago, maybe 20, or perhaps in the Middle Ages. Sadly, these opinions are quite often based on ideology, and not on careful historical studies. This means that this society often is halfway myth.

I say history is no jumping clown. History is a string of causally linked events. The Hungarian writer Imre Kertész, seems to mean that even Holocaust was in this sense, natural, because it was created from the upleading events, and can therefore not be written out of history as exceptional or unnatural. That doesn´t mean it is justified, of course.

In my opinion, dividing history into confined boxes, with breathing space between major events and eras, is nothing but propaganda and lies. There is no action that is taken out of context. Belief in such an action is like belief in divine manifestations. Simply, they are religious beliefs.

Every action leads to a result. This conclusion might seem basic, but the implications are not always taken into consideration.

Sometimes, it might seem like something is forced upon you from outside. This perception is often amplified by emotions. If someone you know has been unjustly murdered, you might find it hard to explain the event casually. A causal explanation might sometimes seem like justification. However, reality is constituted by causality, and looking a way from this fact is not honest.

If we were clearsighted enough, history wouldn´t really bring many surprises. We would be able to see the consequences of our actions before we made them. Thus we might have avoided wrongdoing. However - we are not there.

The view that today´s order is unnatural is wrong. Today´s situation has been created by yesterday´s steps and also by the actions in the era that nationalists and other ideologues want to go back to. However, the elements of the period they long for obviously carried the seeds of today´s flowers. In a way, also every view is in a way natural, nobody´s placed it from outside in a mind while the person was sleeping. It has evolved. It might be a wrong view, in the way that it is not correct. It is irrational and it is not explaining reality, but twisting it. However, it didn´t come about unnaturally, or if you want - supernaturally.

History is like a path in a forest, or a road. You walk and you drive, but if you want to return, you´ll also walk and drive. History is no jumping clown, you have no menu of histories to choose from. And even if you had, you would have to be realistic enough to see that once you´d eaten your stuff it´d be gone, even though it would still impact your body.

Let´s look at this on an individual level.

In secondary school I remember discussing a difficult topic. We were talking about rape. I think the class was trying to discuss what caused a person to do such unjustice to someone else. I raised my hand and started explaining my idea. As soon as I mentioned the words "upbringing" and "parents", my teacher began stomping on the floor: "you must never, ever, ever say that", she said. I never got to say what I meant. I meant that everything you do, everything you experience leads to the one moment you are in right now. You cannot exclude parts of it totally. You can pick out the most important, but chances are always you didn´t see correctly.

In a Norwegian nationalist´s view I might be doing something unnatural in being a Buddhist, or by living in another country. However, it is not unnatural. Truth is, I wouldn´t be a Buddhist if not my history, my life, and my environment had led me there. There was no supernatural injection. Something in Buddhism appealed to me, and if it did so, it was natural, because the path before that choice led me there. What would not be natural was to teleport back to birth and freeze myself at that stage of development. Like that is it also with society. What happens now is perfectly natural, and what happened before was perfectly natural. That doesn´t mean it is good, but it is not against nature. Everything that exists is natural. Again, everything that exists is not good.

Sadly, some people seem to claim that one state of society is natural and another not. Therefore, every action that leads toward natural society is okay. Again, the assumption is wrong.

What exists, exists. Of course, that doesn´t mean it is impossible to create something similar to a medieval society again. But also that will be built on choices.

To sum up, I´d say there is no essence, only progression or development. There is no object, but there is a process.

http://www.vl.no/samfunn/article139784.zrm
http://www.vl.no/samfunn/article139694.zrm

Sanity is international and interreligious

I have received messages from my friends outside Norway having heard about the tragedy happening on Friday 22nd of July, when a Norwegian nationalist extremist killed at least 76 people. The people sending me messages of concern are people who care, and people who have not dehumanised me because of having different passports, mother tongues or religion. These people are doing the opposite of Anders Breivik, the assassin behind the massacre at Utøya and the bomb attack in Oslo centre. My friends see me, other citizens of Oslo, the victims and their families, relatives and friends as individuals worthy of respect. The assasin did not. His ideology - extreme nationalism - cherish lines in the sand and mythological history, not extending far enough back in time, as the most important in life. This ideology, along with certain other political ideologies, threatens with wiping out what healthy religious practice and good ethical philosophy have tried to develop: compassion for all human beings and equality, maybe not of material possessions, but of personal worth.

Extreme nationalism manifests itself in violence everywhere in the world. However, as all educated people know, nationalism is a quite new ideology, which has its origins in the 19th century. Its dire concequences could be seen in the politics of Nazi Germany, and the nazi protectorates, and other right-wing authoritarian regimes. It could also be seen in the hidden Russian chauvinism of the Soviet Union, where national minorities were in a higher risk of repression than ethnic Russians. It can be seen in the actions of Hindu nationalist groupings in India, like Shiv Sena. It has been seen in tribal strife in Africa. It has been seen in the violent actions of IRA, or Palestinian activists and Israeli reactions. Less violent manifestations have been seen in the immoral treatment of certain asylum seekers in Norway, like the Ethiopian group having worked in Norway for years, paid taxes, learnt Norwegian and had children in Norway, whom the politicans have punished by taking their jobs and threatening with throwing them out of the country. These are the very people having paid parts of the politicians´ wages. In this case we have seen apathy from most of the Norwegian titulars. It shows us one thing: citizenship, modernity and political ideology have let people accept different moral treatment of certain groups than others. In certain discussions regarding this topic I have been met with the answer "... but it is OUR country". Differences in my criteria and these people´s criteria have their roots in the following: whereas I emphasize action, the fact that the Ethiopian group has contributed and done something for the rest and also has the same value because they are human beings and actually present, the others emphasize some imagined implisit quality or trait lying in people. This is manifest in their passport. 

Nationalism has been growing in Europe recently, and while most of the people are either apathic or against it, those who are not have been let do what they want. They have been posting their hatred on internet communities, online newspapers and the likes of it, without a proper response. The reason why is that lots of us are disgusted by the extreme nationalists´ dehumanisation of people, and lots of people feel that it is impossible to talk with these people. However - this situation has been there before. This was also the reactions of lots of Europeans when they saw the rise of Nazism. Apathy and passsivity don´t solve anything.

On the other hand - violent nationalism thrives in a climate of dualism. Where it is common and considered natural to draw lines in the sand between you and me, whether in terms of nationality, political view, religion, sexual orientation or anything similar, and considering these absolute - this mentality will more seldom be questioned. Computer games where the good guy has to shoot the evil zombies might not be so innocent as we think. For me - morality has to do with actions and not with qualities. 

Because speaking deeply - there are no inherent qualities. We are all human. This means we have a potential for change. This might be in a good direction or a bad direction. However, forgetting this - that the actions are what counts, might lead to dehumanisation. For the assassin killing so many people, these people were no people. They were manifestations of his enemy ideology, and just like a computer hero he went around shooting them. This mentality is utterly dangerous. 

Although we need to protest against wicked opinions, ideology and mentality, what we need most strongly to condemn is bad actions. Some actions are illegal. If the law is fair, it condemns certain actions, not imagined qualities. This means murder and violence are horrible actions. Furthermore, this means there should be no death penalty for any crime. This only carries on the mental dualism. No person is static. There is always a potential for change. Even the hardest stone is softened by the sea. 

One of my most cherished Buddhist tales is about the murderer Angulimala who collected fingers, but later in life he became a Buddhist and a pacifist. There is always hope for change in a positive direction. Seeing a person as lost in something you don´t like, and judging that person as undeserving of life, already contains the seed of dehumanisation - the start point of all totalitarian ideologies and mindsets.