A Reflection on the Impact on We Have on Others

by Nomad

On Saturday, 8 January 2011, at ten minutes past ten in the morning, U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen others were shot in the parking of a supermarket in Tucson.

Six innocent people were murdered. The list of victims included including federal District Court Chief Judge John Roll, a nine-year-old girl, Christina-Taylor Green and three people all past the age of 75.

Another person who died that day was 30-year-old Gabe Zimmerman, the director of Community Outreach for Giffords. As his obituary noted:

He was outgoing, interested in other people and had a knack for connecting with folks, according to his friends and colleagues. He died doing his job.

Over seven years have passed since his senseless murder and yet the impact he had on the people who knew him, who worked with him and who loved him endures to this day.

Aristotle on Justice and the Ordering of Society

by Nomad

When you look at the classical statues depicting Justice, there is the familiar image of a woman, blindfolded. The truism is, of course, true justice is blind to the distinctions of class, race, gender, sexual orientation or religious affiliation. In an orderly society- whatever that is- justice should prevail regardless. Otherwise it is a kind of pseudo- justice, merely a illusion of justice. 

However, Justice is not only blind to the distinctions of groups but also to the distinctions of individuals. The embodiment of justice also carries a measuring scale to show that justice must be balanced between individuals. Prejudice is the destroyer of justice. The scale, a once-common device, uses a recognized standard on one side. The image therefore is about the equality, in other words, there must be a single standard for all citizens. 

It is critical- in the name of fairness- that laws must be applied universally. There can be no law for the poor that doesn't also apply to the most wealthy. There cannot be one law for Christians and another for any other religion, nor a law for believers and another for non-believers.

Without that underlying concept, the idea of justice, as noble and an enduring as it may be, simply becomes a means of public control by overlords who have no reason to fear prosecution or punishment for their crimes. 

Becoming Somebody

by Nomad

Epicurus and the Prayers of Men: How Materialism Perverted the Quest for Happiness

by Nomad

The lost philosophy of one ancient Greek offers an answer to what's gone wrong with modern society. 

Quest for a Happy Life

The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus lived about 300 years before Christ. His writings survive in mostly in notes collected by later biographers. It's enough to understand, in a general way, the philosophy he taught back then and why the ancients thought so much of the man and his ideas.

According to Epicurus, the study of philosophy was actually a quest of a happy tranquil life, which he defined as a life free of pain, filled with tranquility and free from fear of things that could not be controlled. A happy life, he taught, could only be attained "by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends." 

Friendship, indeed, was key to happiness. 

Epicurus held that a wise man would feel the torture of a friend no less than his own, and would die for a friend rather than betray him, for otherwise his own life would be confounded.

Later his teaching would be criticized as being hedonistic since he taught that pleasure and pain were measures of good and evil.
Other philosophers would push the envelope even further with the idea of "eat, drink and be merry." An insouciant and indifferent life filled with luxury and no thought of tomorrow. 

The Romans later seized upon this Epicurean philosophy as a license to ostentatious excess and greed on a scale never seen before.

Wealth was flowing into the Roman capital and on an "unprecedented scale in the form of tribute, taxes, and profits from commerce and banking." It wasn't just gold and silver, but luxuries items too. All meant for the ruling class with none at all for the lower classes. (The trickle down had yet to be discovered, I imagine.)

Sage Advice from Walt Whitman about Listening to Your Conscience

by Nomad

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Monstrous Ideas: How Ayn Rand's Pernicious Philosophy Allowed Conservatives to Destroy the US

by Nomad

No philosopher stirs the conservative heart like Ayn Rand. Yet, her warped philosophy of selfishness and the glorification of greed is today a major cause of the American malaise.

Back in 1979, Phil Donahue interviewed Ayn Rand, a person who was later to become "a major inspiration for the Tea Party movement."
If, for that reason alone, the oft-quoted Rand deserves a little of our attention. The interview came at a key moment in American political history, It was when the American voter rejected Carter and instead chose the conservative Ronald Reagan to lead us on a new path. 

In 1966, Ronald Reagan was, in fact, a fan and had written in a personal letter, "Am an admirer of Ayn Rand."

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905, Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter and a philosopher beloved by the free-market conservatives. Her brand of philosopher was called Objectivism. Among its other tenets. this philosophic system supports the idea that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (rational self-interest).  Thinking of others is something that should be avoided. It is, she said, a dangerous thing to do.

No wonder it became a founding principle of the conservative movement. 

In the Ranks of the Insane

by Nomad

Martin Luther King on the Futility of Hating the Haters

by Nomad

A quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us that matching hate with hate, violence with violence, is not the solution. 

I saw this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. and thought it deserved a little more attention. In my opinion, what he said is the essence of Christian doctrine as preached by Jesus. (Nevertheless, we hear a lot of hate speech from people claim to be Christian.)

In Chapter six from the Book of Luke, it says:

But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you....

In Matthew we also see:

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 

To resist matching hate for hate must be the hardest advice to follow. I am not sure whether most of us are up to that task. I suppose the underlying idea is that love is an irresistible force. I hope that's true. But the idea goes beyond that. It is also a warning that hate is a contagion that can infect even the purest angels among us.