Tag: war
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The butcher repents
One of my repeating questions of Christianity was forgiving of sins. There is the story of Shirō Ishii the Japanese equivalent of Josef Mengele who got himself baptised on his death bed. He was baptised into the Roman Catholic Church and took the name Joseph. It seems to me that my father felt relieved somehow. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirō_Ishii#Death I’ve…
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Non-violent resistance and non-resistance to violence
I really struggled to understand these words of Tolstoy. Non-violent resistance and non-resistance to violence I thought somehow they conflicted. It’s so strange how they are seeming opposites, or they’re seeming like just a duplicate of saying the same thing. But its not. Its Tolstoy’s and Jesus’ core concept and its devastating to people that…
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Caring is resistance, resistance is caring
Not caring is the worst example of what humans can do. It doesn’t seem bad on the surface, but it enables to worst kind of crimes. They’ll care about their children and think that that makes them a good human. All people had to do during the holocaust was care about their Jewish neighbours. Protest…
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Satan’s delusion
The greatest trick the devil pulled is not to convince people he didn’t exist, it’s to convince himself he didn’t exist. There’s an excellent UK comedy sketch from Miller and Webb of a Nazi asking his commander if maybe they’re the bad guys. The film Conspiracy too shows it. Its just a business meeting to…
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Secular Islamic countries
Too often when people think about Islamic countries they think of those involved in war. Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan. In all these countries, they have religious rulers. Religion rules the state. Europe used to have this too. We burned witches and heretics. We burned, tortured, punished and cleansed. But through things like the French revolution…
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Antidote
In Buddhism they have a concept of antidotes. Klaus Barbie, was truly a Satan walking amongst us. But he had an antidote. Marcel Marceau. The Butcher of Lyon and a butcher’s son from Strasbourg who went on to be a world famous mime artist. Marcel Marceau ended up in Lyon where Barbie carried out his…
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A crock of shit
This is the tale of Klaus Barbie and the US. Why is this relevant to philosophy, religion and science? Well I consider Klaus Barbie to be the closest thing in recent times to what we could call the devil. So I sit here to examine what people do when they come in contact with the…
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Fumblings about compassion
“One with compassion is kind even when angry one without compassion will kill as he smiles.” Shabkar – Tibetan poet I went to Krakow, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II – Birkenau. It was surprising how un-horrifying it was. Birkenau was certainly bleak but its very hard to picture in my my mind the terror of…
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