because they said so

The mad kitten, this week, has so far contributed 5 moths, a mouse and a bird to the house.


It is getting to be a bit like wild kingdom in here. I told you she has perfected the art of not harming anything when she grabs it in her grubby little paws. The mouse, I think, is a repeat visitor, beause he just didn't seem that bent out of shape and knew the drill.


I was working on finishing one of the walls (I discovered that 2 layers of cardboard and one line of tin foil have the same R-value for an interior wall as store bought) and in moving things I discovered little moths in hiding everywhere. I thought they all left the house after she lost interest. I spent half the afternoon carrying moths outside.


But I feel better to see the cave begin to actually take shape, albeit in a small way. I almost cooked myself yesterday because I did such a good job on building a halfwall that I didn't think through that it now blocked the path of the AC into the rest of the living area. I got a little...demented...from the heat.


But then went winging off to my 'Meet and Greet' for the fall workshop I will be teaching. I was completely taken off guard that the class is almost full and we are discussing having to open up another session. Last year no one signed up until the last week, this year, they signed up the second the catalog hit the mails.


And I have been thinking, and following the whole brouhaha on Revvie Terrie and the Burning of the Koran. Its easy to dismiss him as someone full of hate and ineffectual, however, one man with 50 followers has captured the attention of the world through right manipulation of media and grief.


I wholly condemn his actions, planned actions, and beliefs. This is an example of "nesting tolerances." He has the right to believe what he wants to believe, and burning books is protected under his first amendment rights.


But for the larger community, his actions will endanger the lives of Americans everywhere. Should he be censored? It is a tricky thing, the easiest way to handle it would have been to not grant it the validation of media exposure. But that has it own problems, because by not standing up against this kind of hate and violence (for burning someone's holy book is a form of violence) you also condone and validate it by letting it go unchallenged.


And on the other hand, Revvie Terry has a very good idea. Perhaps we do need a globally seen symbolic act of rejecting violence inspired by faith. He is just thinking too small. The reality being that all faiths be they religious, spiritual, psychological, consumer have been used by somebody to justify hate and violence. We should burn all scriptures in one blaze.


But even that is not realistic enough. Gather together all the movies, books, comic books, music recordings....any record of human thought and throw it on the blaze...someone has always used something to justify hate and violence.


Someone has always used something to justify hate and violence because deeply encoded in the human body is a rejection of hate and violence. Our minds, souls, our very wills cannot accept it without some kind of larger authoritarian stamp of approval - whether that be through saying "God told me so," or "for the Good of Democracy," or "for the Fatherland.'


It would be a mistake, I believe, to limit the understanding of all this to just the immediate groups involved. This is not so much about Islam versus Christianity, this is about the need for justification that originates outside of ourselves, the global evolution of the human race to eschew responsibility for their own actions.


Whoops, I am running late and the rain is coming. I have to figure out how to get where I am going without getting absolutely drenched.


c.2010 Cassandra Tribe. All Rights Reserved.