The mutual impetus to change human conduct that threatens life on the planet concerns us all, no exceptions.
Samuel Scheffler, philosopher of New York University, published recently in the New York Times an article (see endnote) on the human condition, or situation. His viewpoint is premised not on the uncertainty principle, but rather on the certainty principle of human mortality. The viewpoint is not tucked into an atheist or theist stance which I as a believer in God feels uncomfortable in endorsing.
I ask of my fellow believers in not only God, but the God of justice, mercy, and compassion, to give his disposition the merit it deserves. Ethical conduct by the individual and by society remains our subject however. Scheffler is a proponent of mindfulness about the legacy we can and should leave to our successors on the planet Earth.
This can be viewed as a superior disposition to an old world notion which was concerned with ancestor worship, and tradition for tradition’s sake. Shame about one’s conduct often is framed in terms of having failed the expectations of our ancestors that placed their hope in our success in perpetuating and extending civilization.
In my life time, I can not forget the shame of America in suing for peace in the 1970s and abandoning its toe hold support of post-colonial powers and its control and influence on mainland Asia (outside of South Korea and Taiwan). It was indeed to have a reflexive assertion of power and influence in two wars in the new century’s first decade at the same time to assert the role of the American Empire in Asia: Afghanistan (from 2002 and by 2013 winding down) and Iraq ( from 2003 and by 2009-2010 winding down).
What is a little more difficult to assert is that society either has the will and the leadership or it does not to affect desirable conducts. Scheffler posits an idealist principle that intelligent acceptance of the realities of the human race has impetus for change. For example, current certainty about human causation of global warming is termed in a percentage (95% of concerned scientific appraisal).
As to what can or should be done to curtail the negative effects of global warming, politicians remain more beholden to trade and industry and current profit margins for capitalism and continued exploitation of the world’s resources to perpetuate wealth predicated on world markets and consumerism.
What issue I take is not with Scheffler’s humanism or his rationalism for indeed we currently resident on Earth do succeed or fail premised on the future hold of the human race on this planet, its habitability, and its fostering of life.
My issue would be with persons, Christians or not, who conclude that the tomorrow for the planet can be divorced from one’s view of the afterlife. The concern of Jesus was for the entirety of society and Christianity per se has as its concern all persons without exception as subject to redemption and salvation. He did not exclude generations yet unborn.
If one posits “end times,” then one lives with greater urgency the day God gives us to live. That urgency of which Scheffler speaks (regard for posterity) is just as valid with a personal afterlife as a guarantee of God’s provision for his children. Christians just can not, must not, separate themselves from theists and atheists whose common humanity is ever more apparent in the custodial role of the human race in its care of the planet that fosters life.
If faith is valid for the individual and the individual community (and I believe that it is), that faith can not abandon the perpetuation of life and the health of this planet as its concern. The common enemy is the devil in the details, the crass indifference to the planet's health and the human community's failure to safeguard life and its perpetuation by what means we have to do so.
Rick Hilber, Monday, September 30, 2013
End Note. See Star Tribune, Sunday, September 29, 2013, at OP4 for “What to do today if tomorrow never comes?” by Samuel Scheffler as reprinted from the New York Times prior publication of the article.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Monday, September 9, 2013
Obama and the Punitive Use of Fire Power as the Means to an End
Today, Congress at the behest of the President, is deliberating the use of American fire power (as opposed to invasion or start of war consent). Approval of use of American firepower to punish the Assad Regime in Syria for its use of chemical weapons on its own people is a curious use of Congress. Why is that?
Our representatives can look at the intelligence or not, but if they look they can not disclose either the content or the good faith of the dossier on Assad's conduct of suppression of the uprising in Syria. So we are left the public speeches of Congress which are scrubbed and sanitized and which leave us the American people in the dark.
It happened with the George W. Bush Administration's jingoism and lead up to the Iraq War premised on weapons of mass destruction that in fact the Hussein Regime of Iraq did not have (in so far as production of such weapons in the lead up to the start of war and the search for weapons that followed could or would ever establish). So, asking the American people to authorize a punitive action on the Assad Regime is wrongheaded.
The correct forum for every police action in world affairs is the flawed by design provisions of international law, specifically the United Nations. Disclosures in that forum by the United States can help establish that the removal of Assad from power is for the greater good of the people of Syria itself. Even then, the mayhem that results in the takedown of the regime will result in untold consequence for the people of Syria. The President wants to commit to a punitive action, one that must not have as its goal the removal of the regime from power. Why? Because the power vacuum that will result will be filled by jihadist and extremist elements who will exploit the opportunity to further not the cause of Syria and its people but their own insane delusions of power and right.
But then why ask the question of the American people? One is reminded that the government secrets are supposedly secret because of actual national security concerns for our undercover agents and those they come to exploit for America's cause. The President is on the hotseat by his own "good offices." Which leaves us where? The real ethical dilemma is Russia's and Turkey's dilemma. Each country has a sad history of pogroms and genocide to account for not just in days of the Russian and Ottoman Empires, but in the modern era of Republics. They are the power brokers who need the status quo in Syria for their own internal and national security interests.
So the real question is where does American power and influence stop, or should it stop? If this is about preservation of Israel, then take out the enemies of Israel. If this is about the Christian or non-Alewite Muslim populations of Lebanon and Syria, they will be decimated by America's firepower (much as the Christians of Iraq have suffered so adversely from America's invasion of Iraq). We know the chemical weapons and control centers will be housed in churches, schools, and mosques. How good are we with pin point use of fire power? Ask the 100,000 plus dead civilians of Iraq (but do not ask the survivors of these 100,000). My President seems bound and determined to excuse the death of innocents as the essential product of taking action, what is called euphemistically, not terrorism per se, but "collateral damage." No President wants to signal that the American Empire has its limits.
Time, Mr. President, to call you on this one and your true motivation for using American fire power for purposes of "credential" enhancement of American power in the Mid-East. I voted for you twice, but I'm still very much the critic of the power brokers of Washington, D.C., of which you by definition have become.
Our representatives can look at the intelligence or not, but if they look they can not disclose either the content or the good faith of the dossier on Assad's conduct of suppression of the uprising in Syria. So we are left the public speeches of Congress which are scrubbed and sanitized and which leave us the American people in the dark.
It happened with the George W. Bush Administration's jingoism and lead up to the Iraq War premised on weapons of mass destruction that in fact the Hussein Regime of Iraq did not have (in so far as production of such weapons in the lead up to the start of war and the search for weapons that followed could or would ever establish). So, asking the American people to authorize a punitive action on the Assad Regime is wrongheaded.
The correct forum for every police action in world affairs is the flawed by design provisions of international law, specifically the United Nations. Disclosures in that forum by the United States can help establish that the removal of Assad from power is for the greater good of the people of Syria itself. Even then, the mayhem that results in the takedown of the regime will result in untold consequence for the people of Syria. The President wants to commit to a punitive action, one that must not have as its goal the removal of the regime from power. Why? Because the power vacuum that will result will be filled by jihadist and extremist elements who will exploit the opportunity to further not the cause of Syria and its people but their own insane delusions of power and right.
But then why ask the question of the American people? One is reminded that the government secrets are supposedly secret because of actual national security concerns for our undercover agents and those they come to exploit for America's cause. The President is on the hotseat by his own "good offices." Which leaves us where? The real ethical dilemma is Russia's and Turkey's dilemma. Each country has a sad history of pogroms and genocide to account for not just in days of the Russian and Ottoman Empires, but in the modern era of Republics. They are the power brokers who need the status quo in Syria for their own internal and national security interests.
So the real question is where does American power and influence stop, or should it stop? If this is about preservation of Israel, then take out the enemies of Israel. If this is about the Christian or non-Alewite Muslim populations of Lebanon and Syria, they will be decimated by America's firepower (much as the Christians of Iraq have suffered so adversely from America's invasion of Iraq). We know the chemical weapons and control centers will be housed in churches, schools, and mosques. How good are we with pin point use of fire power? Ask the 100,000 plus dead civilians of Iraq (but do not ask the survivors of these 100,000). My President seems bound and determined to excuse the death of innocents as the essential product of taking action, what is called euphemistically, not terrorism per se, but "collateral damage." No President wants to signal that the American Empire has its limits.
Time, Mr. President, to call you on this one and your true motivation for using American fire power for purposes of "credential" enhancement of American power in the Mid-East. I voted for you twice, but I'm still very much the critic of the power brokers of Washington, D.C., of which you by definition have become.
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