Some quandaries
------------------------------------------------------------------
Oct. 16, 2023
Optimism is good, but time and time again, I find the world falls
far short of it.
I am blessed to live in a country, despite all its shortcomings and
chronic problems, that is relatively peaceful and enjoys political
and economic stability. Even though the news cycles are dominated
by ad-nauseam reports of "crime waves," for the most part, I do not
have to fear for my life every day.
Such is not the case in Ukraine, Israel, or Gaza right now. Wars
and instabilities turn humans into savage beasts ruled by the
"laws" of jungles. As human history repeatedly shows, murdering,
raping, looting, and pillaging become common occurrences in war
zones, whether or not there is a supposed military discipline or a
code of chivalry. Even for the United States, a supposed champion
of the rule of law and so-called "law and order," its values seem
to go out of the window as soon as its enforcers of "American
Justice" reach a constitutional gray zone, such as Abu Ghraib,
Guantanamo Bay, border zones, countless immigrant detention
centers, prisons, and county lockups.
It pains me to see Hamas terrorizing and massacring Israeli
civilians on a Shabbat right after the High Holy Days. It pains me
to see Hamas reportedly preventing Gazans from evacuating Gaza City
and instead insisting on using its own citizens as human shields.
It pains me to see the IDF bombing an entire city in what it claims
to be targeted attacks on Hamas. It pains me to see Russian
soldiers occupying Ukrainian towns and brutally assaulting,
robbing, and raping local residents. It pains me to hear about yet
another death in the U.S. prisons and at the hands of American cops
whose long-time slogan is "to protect and serve."
As a long-time libertarian socialist, I in principle have opposed
the institutions of state violence. Yet, in the absence of state
violence, there seems to be even more violence. Vigilantes, many of
whom are driven by racial hatred and ethnic prejudices, would often
step into the power vacuum, in order to combat burglars, looters,
highway robbers, and rapists. Globally, the weakening of Pax
Americana (largely due to the policy choices by Barack Obama and
Donald Trump) and the emergence of Chinese hegemony seem to be
destabilizing the world through undermining the rule-based
international order established post-World War II and resulting
benefits of human rights standards, global trade, and increased
exchange of culture and information.
Historically speaking, civilization, culture, and commerce
flourished when there was widespread political stability -- often
under imperialism. As far back as the first century CE,
Christianity spread thanks to the very empire that persecuted it:
the great Roman Empire that built Roman Roads and instituted Pax
Romana, resulting in safer and easier travel for the apostles and
evangelists of the nascent faith. And the presence of a
cosmopolitan empire also made it possible to spread the Gospel
using a common language that was understood by many ethnic groups:
Greek, and later Latin.
More importantly, despite what many critics say otherwise (this is
not to say I disagree with their assessment), law and order for the
most part protects the weak and vulnerable. In the past, I
interacted with many people in the anarchist organizing space as
well as in the American libertarian (ancap) movement. They did not
seem to understand that "government overreach" such as the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was indispensable in securing
disability rights. Even among the left-anarchists, ableism was a
chronic white elephant in the room.
Also: Those who claim that there is no such thing as sin and those
who naively believe that every path to the Divine is valid and is
therefore worthy of respect should look no further than the
atrocities of the ongoing wars in Israel/Gaza and Ukraine. And
there are toxic and harmful beliefs that can kill. It is a moral
imperative to repudiate this misguided notion that every
religion/spirituality/belief is equal -- or else, one must also
turn a blind eye to violent religious extremism such as Islamic
jihadism and Christian nationalism, as well as those toxic cults
that destroy people's lives through exploitation, manipulation,
abuse, and control.
Of course, we live in a complicated world populated by imperfect
human beings whose behaviors are often driven by ignorance, trauma
response, survival needs, destructive cultural conditioning, and
ego. As much as it may be tempting, there is no simple, quick fix.
Humanity wrestles with its own imperfection, as well as with the
God of perfection. Likewise, even as a government must be
instituted to contain evil, the same government often becomes an
instrument of even greater evil -- after all, a government is a
collection of fallible and imperfect humans and is almost always
ruled by egotistical, power-hungry, and corrupt politicians who are
backed by godlike powers of life and death over the populace.
Western civilization has struggled with this dilemma for centuries
and still does to this day.
