A long time ago, when I was studying philosophy in college, I got into an impassioned argument with a young professor I didn't like very much or take very seriously. I can't even remember now what the argument was about. I was interested in---as in "fanatical about"---the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead at that particular time; I don't remember the professor's particular field of study.
I remember that he became rather flushed; and eventually he lost his temper. "This is a philosophy course," he said. "It is the study of ideas. Why is it so important to you to believe or not believe in a particular system? I am not trying to convert you to a new religion. To do this well, you need to develop some detachment. Do you really believe that what Whitehead said is true? And how do you know that it is? That's part of what we're discussing here: not the truth of the idea, but the processes by which we attempt to assess the extent to which it appears to reflect reality."
That brought me up short because the fact is, I didn't believe that what Whitehead said was true---at least not in the sense in which some people believe, say, in the truth of the Resurrection. I wanted his view of the universe to be the right one; it was a beautiful thing, his cosmology, and left room for God without requiring him to get personal with his creation. Which at the time was what I wanted to believe.
One of my classmates argued that that truth was a construct of the human mind; something that doesn't exist in nature---because nature has no need of it. Later, that's what I came to believe: at least, as much as I ever believe anything. Studying Chinese philosophy helped rid me of some of the burden of having to believe or disbelieve in the reality of some particular "truth." It helped me realize the irrelevance of belief and disbelief. If something exists, it doesn't need my belief to sustain it. Furthermore, it's possible to contemplate an idea and even to live by it without concluding that it is true. The first words of the Tao te Ching are: The way that can be told is not the true way.
In my spiritual life, this is how I balance my will to believe against my modern scepticism. I think that eastern way of stepping back from an idea or construct without feeling the need to step into it, as it were---to live in it----was what allowed me at first to entertain (as in "try this on for size") some of the stranger aspects of Christianity I had previously rejected: the Resurrection, for example, but not only that. That same detachment allows me to entertain both the notion that it is true and the notion that it is not with equal complacency and without the least fear of divine retribution. I could cite authority in the Gospels to support my thesis that this is the only way to come to an understanding of what Christ meant by "the kingdom of heaven" but....I'm not going to. At least not now.
Right now, I am trying to understand and come to terms with the great anger I felt yesterday and my desire to assign blame. Stepping back from my own time and my own life, what can I say about the death and carnage in Lebanon? Can I say that it was Israel's fault? Can I say that it was the fault of Hezbollah? Can I say that it was the United States'? As for all serious questions about the reality, the correct answer to all questions is both yes and no.
You can always assign fault if you look only at a particular act at the time it occurred---at a given moment, so-and-so launched the rocket that laid waste to the ancient city of Qana---but is that the answer to the question of who is to blame? What about the moments that preceded that moment, and the whole complicated web of interlinked causes? How far do you go back in looking for the responsible party and in assigning blame? A particular moment such as that one has its root causes in acts that were performed generations back.
The law recognizes and distinguishes the concepts of a "cause in fact" and the "proximate cause" when allocating responsibility. I'm not sure it's possible or right to do that when allocating blame in a quarrel with roots as deep as these.
Yesterday I had to confront what we don't often have to look at here: the mad, raddled, and irremediable consequences of the consistent ability of human beings, individually and collectively, to value ideas over other people. It's a misanthropy so deeply ingrained and so hard-wired in that we don't even notice it; it doesn't even strike us as strange: ideas matter more than other people.
I suppose it must be the blight humankind was born for: if you want to get Biblical, that's been the theme since God and Lucifer first fought over whether creation itself was a good idea or a bad one. Later, Christ died for an idea.
The sad facts of the damage inflicted are all that we can ascertain. We can count corpses; but we can't tally up the losses. Those go on and on.
I, at least, need to refrain from meting out judgment. The wrong on both sides is grievous. The question is not who is to blame---even if it can be answered; the answer is useless as anything but a spur to further violence--- but whether the parties can be brought to believe that the ideas that are driving them are not worth the price you pay when you kill someone.
The path away from judgment is empathy---the sort of love I have always believed Christ intended to require in the gospels.
Before judging, you have to try to stand in the other's shoes. Which of course makes it impossible to judge.
Furthermore you have to bear in mind at all times the possibility---not easily processed by westerners brought up on "Aristotelian" modes of on/off logic---that in any given situation, it's quite possible for both sides to be wrong and for no one to win.
Which is the case here, I think
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