Saturday, November 11, 2006

True Coin and the Age of Terror

One of the big news items on the Danish TV News reports yesterday was the announcement by Blair of 200 [muslim] terror plans and close surveillance of 1600 [muslim] Brits.

This scared me almost as much as last summer when [muslim] terrorists, who had yet to order plane tickets or the three chemicals needed to make an explosive which is actually a bit dicey to mix.

Back then, perhaps because my cynicism was more vigorous, I assumed that the Big Bust had something to do with the fact that the elections were coming up and the Bush admin needed somebody to blow hard on the Terror Barometer.

But this new Blair blather comes just after the election.

Because of the Dem landslides, which weakened even my rather extensive cynicism, I was at first merely puzzled.

But then Blair continued to blather that these terror threats threaten not only Britain but Europe and the rest of the world. For some reason, I then recalled that Blair and his gov't mouthpieces have always denied that an increased threat of terror in Britain had any connection with the British involvement in Iraq.
Such claims are clearly a denial of reality!
And that is why I wondered, as my cynicism sprang to life once again, why the timing, just after the elections? Could it be that maybe it has to do with Bush stressing the importance of Dem cooperation with him in the "war on terra"?

I have no way to know. Even as I type, in the background on the Danish radio, an announcer is talking about [muslim] terror threats to attack air planes and trains in Europe during the Christmas Holidays.

What I do know is that all the bombs are in the hands of terrorists.

I also know that, just as certain that Western made bombs will continue to ravage in the Middle East in one form or another, we are going to have to accept as a fact of life that bombs are going to explode in our countries -- we are going to have to live with this threat just like we do with so many others that we do what we can to protect ourselves from or ameliorate the consequences of.

If we don't/won't/can't accept the fact, then we will have to accept the fact of hysterical run to military law in at least some Western states when something big goes off.

The fact is: we have entered an Age of Terror, as Robert Fisk has written so cogently about.

All this is but a single aspect of what threatens in both physical and spiritual ways this planet and our existence upon it.

The spiritual and physical aspects of the crisis are intertwined, in fact more than intertwined. They are two sides of the same coin. If you look at just one side, what you read there makes no real sense.

The fact is, you have to see both sides at once.

Have you ever seen those small disks with unintelligible writing on each side that, when you spin them, the script suddenly reads "I love you"?

What we need is a true coin which, when it spins, we read "Reality".

Perhaps we do have such coin. However, being multidimensional it has a lot more than two sides.

Where to find it? The only place I know of is in our daily lives and in our common humanity.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent post.

A wholesome mix of fine writing, malevolent snark, and the tiniest sneer of disgust for what is the increasing irrelevance of the upper crusts.

Chuck Cliff said...

Thank you very much.

One thing is a compliment, but better is a compliment from someone you trust and whose opinion you value -- as a matter of fact there ought to be a word for it!

Speaking of words, what set me of on this course was a post of yours from last summer where you were trying to explain your understanding of spirituality -- I would have linked to it in today's post but could not find it.

I tried to search on "spirituality" and came up with some interesting posts of yours, some of which I seemed to have missed which I'll read later, but not what I was looking for. Do you know what I am referring to?

Skimming through the posts I did find, I noted a question you asked: If prayer is when people talk to God, what is it when they listen?

Of the top of my head, I would answer: contemplation.

When they start trying to listen, that is what is called meditation.

Chuck Cliff said...

Jeeze, James, I'm kind of slow!

It was the first post that popped up, from September 15, "We are the Prayer and I have updated today's post!