The reason I choose to shut up about Afghanistan is that I don't
believe I am skillful enough to make much more difference on
this thread at this time. A lot of people are hurting after
911. A lot of people are having to confront a variety of things
that are painful and difficult to confront including where we
ourselves are not without wrongdoing and attitudes and policies
that feed such horrors. A lot of us are having to confront our
xenophobia and relative ignorance of others and uncaring about
them as long as we are "ok". It is difficult to confront these
things. It is difficult to reach past the wall within ourselves
and each other and acknowledge and begin to heal the pain, hurt
and so on inside of self and others.
I am not skillful enough to have not reached a point of
diminishing returns with what I have said. I do not wish to be
part of hardening attitudes and positions further on this.
- samantha
"G.P." wrote:
>
> You shoule not shut up.
> I have read many messages of the recent threat of Afghanistan and
> noticed that people, Samantha first, have been attacked for simply
> stating fact. Blind denial of objective reality does not seem very
> extropian to me. It is a fact that many in the underdeveloped
> non-Western world DO hate us Westerners, our policy, and first of all
> our culture. Of course we do not share this point of view, but by
> simply reading popular press of, for example, Arab countries, one is
> forced to at least ACKNOWLEDGE this fact. It is another fact that
> current and past Western policies can motivate this hatred. Again, I
> am just trying to state opinioins from a point of view that I do not
> share.
> The real question should be: how do we take corrective actions against
> these facts? Recent history shows that past corrective actions did not
> work. Perhaps we should try something else.
>
> On Fri, 23 Nov 2001 18:04:11 -0800, you wrote:
>
> >I will say not one more word on this list about Afghanistan. No
> >matter what I say or how carefully I attempt to say it it reaps
> >little more than abuse and tigtening minds rather than opening
> >ones. Choose someone else to be your scapegoat.
> >
> >- samantha
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