17Sept05

Excellent summary, from one of our instructors:

"The national cultural attitude toward serious weapons is encapsulat ed in lines from a recent episode of a police drama on television. It oozes the egregious illogicality of many American's thinking process.

Speaking to a witness, an investigator says, 'So, Mr Smith, your gi rlfriend, Ms Jones, was assaulted and beaten by an ex-boyfriend. Therefore, you gave

her this pistol.'

'Yes I did. And, I showed her how to use it.'

'But, Ms Jones said that she was afraid that, if she had a gun, she might do something terrible...ad nauseam"

The 'designer logic' here is that a demon lives within every gun, and he just can't wait to hypnotize whoever picks it up. Our ancestors gav e up worshiping rocks and sacrificing humans eons ago, but the mendacious notion that inert objects are alive continues to be held even today by the willfully ignorant. Every logical person will see the blatant fallacy here! We have allowed the image of guns to be reframed from icons of personal power and independence, to mysterious and sinister talismans with a will of their own and even the ability for independent action!

We, you and I, preach to the choir, and then we're surprised when few others 'get' what is so painfully obvious to us. The people in the sad event you describe are decidedly different psychologically and culturally from those o f your and my salad days. We now have to retrain ourselves. We have to investigate, experiment, and advance the Art of our needful discipline. OU R COMFORTABLE INTROVERSION IS ULTIMATELY SUICIDAL. Every moment of inaction is a positive act of harm, because it isn't enough to merely inculcate sensible attitudes into ourselves and our disciples. We live with the residua of our doing only that, and, to the astonishment of no one, we'll continue to hear the familiar drumbeat for more restriction."

Lesson: Many a false step is made by standing still!

/John