An opportunity for introspection

You have brought to my mind, Gregory, the following James Thurber fable written in the 1930's:

Several summers ago there was a Scotty who went to the country for a visit. He decided that all the farm dogs were cowards, because they were afraid of a certain animal that had a white stripe down its back. "You are a pussy-cat and I can lick you," the Scotty said to the farm dog who lived in the house where the Scotty was visiting. “I can lick the little animal with the white stripe, too. Show him to me."  “Don't you want to ask any questions about him?" said the farm dog"? "Naw," said the Scotty. "You ask the questions."

So the farm dog took the Scotty into the woods and showed him the white striped animal and the Scotty closed in on him, growling and slashing.  It was all over in a moment and the Scotty lay on his back.  When he came to, the farm dog said, "What happened?"  He threw vitriol," said the Scotty, “but he never laid a glove on me."

A few days later the farm dog told the Scotty there was another animal all the farm dogs were afraid of.  "Lead me to him," said the Scotty. "I can lick anything that doesn't wear horseshoes."  "Don't you want to ask questions about him?" said the farm dog.  "Naw," said the Scotty. "Just show me where he hangs out."  So the farm dog led him to a place in the woods and pointed out the little animal when he came along.  "A clown," said the Scotty, "a push-over," and he closed in, leading with his left and exhibiting some mighty fancy footwork.  

In less than a second the Scotty was flat on his back, and when he woke up the farm dog was pulling quills out of him. "What happened?" said the farm dog. "He pulled a knife on me," said the Scotty, "but at least I have learned how you fight out here in the country, and now I am going to beat you up."  So he closed in on the farm dog, holding his nose with one front paw to ward off the vitriol and covering his eyes with the other front paw to keep out the knives. The Scotty couldn't see his opponent and he couldn't smell his opponent and he was so badly beaten that he had to be taken to the city and put in a nursing home.

Moral:  It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers. 

In light of this fable, and Herman Hesse's observation - "If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." - I am prompted to ask:

What dislike of yourself has your perception of Islamic evil ignited?

I would not even dare to ask this question had I not already been there and done that with reference to earlier "evils."  I have directly experienced how my own perception OF evil represents my perception FROM evil, and that when there is no evil within me from which to perceive, there is no outer evil to be perceived - just horrifically flattened human beings with horrifically flattened attitudes. 

I choose the term "flattened" in the sense that it was used by psychologist Abraham Maslow:

"I find children, up to the time they are spoiled and flattened by the culture, [to be] nicer, better, more attractive human beings than their elders . . . The ‘taming and transforming’ that they undergo seems to hurt rather than help.  It was not for nothing that a famous psychologist once defined adults as ‘deteriorated children.

"Those human impulses which have seemed throughout our history to be deepest, to be most instinctive and unchangeable, to be most widely spread throughout mankind, i.e., the impulse to hate, to be jealous, to be hostile, to be greedy, to be egoistic and selfish are now being discovered more and more clearly to be acquired and are not instinctive. They are almost certainly neurotic and sick reactions to bad situations, more specifically to frustrations of our truly basic and instinct-like needs and impulses."


Evil: adjective or noun?

Another question I would like to raise with reference to the statement, "Islamic extremists are evil," concerns the status thereby being attributed to evil. Is "evil" merely an adjective (a descriptive term), or is it also a noun (a substantive term)? 

Is evil a force like gravity or motion? Is it a condition that exists independently of persons, with the power to take possession of them? Or is "evil" merely a categorical term for extremely malevolent feelings and behavior?


The root of unforgiveness

I would go one step further, Melitta, and say that fear is in turn based on something else - the feeling of being unable to prevent, alter or eliminate a threat to my sense of well-being, or to bring about a circumstance that I consider essential for my well-being. (Dr. Luskin's H.E.A.L process addresses the universal human root condition of being unable to control everything that happens.)

It was only a little over a year ago, at age 65,  that I recognized the ultimate basis of my most persistent experience (fifty years) of unforgiveness - my inability to change the unforgiven situation. When I saw that my own helplessness is what I was ultimately unforgiving of, and forgave myself for being helpless, my fifty-year-old bete noir of unforgiveness became a mere shadow of its former self, a shadow that continues to become ever more faint with the further passage of time.

Forgiveness now comes far more easily to me than ever before, because I now expend far less unforgiving energy on what I am helpless to change "out there" and far more redeeming energy on what I am able to change "in here," namely, my inner relationship to what is out there.

Whenever called for, I now play the trump card of forgiveness: forgiving myself for feeling unforgiving. The moment I forgive myself for feeling unforgiving, with no condoning, justification or other rationalized attachment to my unforgiving feelings, my energy of unforgiveness begins to dissipate, and continues to attenuate over time.

I have even gone so far as to forgive in advance my eventual experience of absolute helplessness that is commonly known as "death." In so doing, I realized that I have already been there and done that once before: when I died to my mother's womb and was thereby born into a greater expression of life. As a consequence of this realization, one of my most deeply heart-felt ongoing intentions is to experience my next transition with equanimity and expectancy, in my unshakeable conviction that just as there is life after death to the womb, so is there life after death to this world.

(I have also been aided in the formation of this conviction by a couple of "near death" experiences during which I instead felt nearer to life than I ever have while occupying my present physical body.)


Evil: depreciation of life?

The fourth Kabbalist evil brings to mind that (in English) "evil" is "live" spelled backwards. 

I therefore suspect that no matter what language one may speak, its equivalent of the word "evil" refers to something that is depreciating of life.