Unpitied Sacrifice in a Contemptible Struggle
Consequence is the cure.
I am just someone who has two part-time jobs and makes the occasional landscape painting, so I know nothing, but I had some questions about crime and punishment that I wanted to record, and what follows is an almost stream-of-consciousness entering of those thoughts.
Should some crimes be allowed? Allowed, not decriminalized.
Is it compassionate to go easy on lawbreakers that draw our attention to greater crimes? Is listening to a lawbreaker empathetic?
What is the difference between those that hosted the Boston tea party and those who vandalize museum artworks? Does Snowden fit in here?
Who defines what “good trouble” is?
There must be a rule of law. There must also be those willing to push against or break the laws that they see as a stumbling block of some kind.
Who is right? Is destroying a painting, sculpture, building, or person ever the right course of action? What if major beef producers killed their supply of cattle in protest of some government action? What if those who loved whales would sink a ship (drowning the crew) that was hunting whales?
Each one is appealing to something greater than themselves, something that they believe is VERY important, and no agreement on the standard is found because not all agree that the law/practice in question is unjust or unfair.
At some point, surely delusion sets in.
If I vandalize a painting after seeing others do the same thing with no real reward for their deed, I must think that THIS TIME it will be different somehow. It usually isn’t. Delusion.
This seems to be different from the sit-ins of America’s past. People knew what the sit-ins were for. I have no idea what the message of the museum vandals is. I have to dig to find out. Are we supposed to go to them with sympathetic expressions and say, “Now, now. Tell us everything…” or ask for a pamphlet?
Is a violent riot sometimes the right thing to do? Is destroying a statue that does not belong to you ever right?
I think of a time when a monk set alight a large image of Stalin (Gabriel Urgebadze). Was it right for him to do so? I agree with his actions, but was he right? No one was injured, but still. (Side note: he was beaten nearly to death, unconscious for weeks, and lived being able to only go out at night and died a pauper.)
Was Kathy Griffin right in raising a mask of Donald Trump as if he was decapitated? At least the message on that stunt was clear, unlike other protests and acts of disgust (informed or not. Also, Griffin is no Urgebadze.)
There seems to be an epidemic of brash, crass actions that our society tolerates. Maybe it’s just me. I don’t know because I can’t hear what everyone is yelling about. How can one hear the words when the volume is so high. It’s VERY loud in our culture. Loud and insistent, like cats invading a day care.
But it is interesting that I hear all the time about how intolerant America is.
In the absence of a harmonious sense of “right” among disagreeing parties, the strong-willed will eventually be seen as justified, no matter what they do, especially if average people do nothing to hinder them (probably out of fear of litigation or an over-fed sense of mind — your-own-business). The old quote comes to mind: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Burke did not say that, as everyone quotes, but he did say, “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
Therefore, my sense is that there will be more vandalism in museums (for one example), more loss of decorum in our government, and more encroachment upon the innocence of children who have no idea that they are being used as cogs. The longer it happens while people stand a few feet away doing nothing except making a video, the more likely it will grow to be seen as acceptable. Justified. Even “right.”
Live and let live, as they say.
And who knows, one day those people may be seen as lights along the way. As heroes.
But there remains a nagging feeling. A weight.
I don’t see any lasting repercussions. Some jail time, I suppose, is given in some cases. Maybe that is enough. I hope so.
Still, I see loud, lewd, and destructive acts become celebrated and applauded by many — that is, until it is their neighborhood, their child, their land, their job.
Is there a lesson for us on zeal versus patience?
Patience, it seems to me, goes along with the ability to focus, and we have completely lost it.
Zeal, however, thrives on RIGHT NOW.
I admit I do not know the way ahead, but I’m sure it will look like a past way we have already made. There is nothing new.
While I would support some instances of lawbreaking and advocate for leniency (see the monk referenced above), most of the time I think there ought to be consequences no matter what, hopefully doled out with fairness and humanity. Laws are made for people, not people for laws.
I am saying this from my own limited perspective which is, at its core, a Christ-centered viewpoint, and the balance between judgement and grace is not taken lightly or overlooked, but our culture cannot focus on anything for long enough to develop the ability to discern when to practice patience and use a guillotine.
Circumstances will not free us from consequence.
Consequence is the cure. I’m sure.
Unless it is grace.
If it is grace, who’s grace? God’s grace is good within the Church, but outside of those garden walls, grace looks and acts different.
Does this society have the capacity to understand when someone is being gracious and mirror the display, or will the lack of aggression be seen as a sign to press the will more and more?
The absence of consequences in our culture should get our attention.
From students being passed through high school like cattle through a chute — does anyone fail a grade anymore? — to school boards keeping information about children from their parents, to loud-mouthed, know-it-all news (entertainment) personalities saying whatever they want, our society has become team-based like sports.
Whatever you do is fine, so long as it demeans the other team or increases influence.
The absence of consequence in society will cause good people to stiffen their spine and begin to point out new disparities in whatever moral code is trending. This set of people will begin to look more and more strange, fringe, or militant as the culture moves away from consequences for actions and toward consequences for not supporting the trend in the name of rectification or justice.
The absence of consequences gives cause for this certain set of people — people who have lived by the rules, who have lived and let live, who have acted right even when the teenagers were running the house — to quietly look up, look around, and begin to pay attention again, if only to see a culture that they’d rather not fight for. A culture ablaze. A diminishing society on a sandy foundation.
All while the tide rises.
Are there finer points — always. I mean no disrespect to anyone honestly pursuing their passions, but we need clarity on the big WHY. We likely have a great deal in common. Here is part of my WHY, my core belief. How does this core belief differ from others around me? I don’t know, but I can see the differences.
I wrote this Sunday of the Last Judgment.
Below is an excerpt from Great Lent, by Alexander Schmemann. From Chapter 2: Preparation for Lent - emphasis mine.
It is love again that constitutes the theme of “Meat-Fare Sunday.” The Gospel lesson for the day is Christ’s parable of the Last Judgement (Matt. 25:31–46). When Christ comes to judge us, what will be the criterion of His judgement? The parable answers: love — not a mere humanitarian concern for abstract justice and the anonymous “poor,” but concrete and personal love for the human person, any human person, that God makes me encounter in my life….
Christian love is the “possible impossibility” to see Christ in another man, whoever he is, and whom God, in His eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for a “good deed” or an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God Himself. For, indeed, what is love if not that mysterious power which transcends the accidental and the external in the “other” — his physical appearance, social rank, ethnic origin, intellectual capacity — and reaches the soul, the unique and uniquely personal “root” of a human being, truly the part of God in him? If God loves every man it is because He alone knows the priceless and absolutely unique treasure, the “soul” or “person” He gave every man. Christian love then is the participation in that divine knowledge and the gift of that divine love. There is no “impersonal” love because love is the wonderful discovery of the “person” in “man,” of the personal and unique in the common and general. It is the discovery in each man of that which is “lovable” in him, of that which is from God.
….
The parable of the Last Judgement is about Christian love. Not all of us are called to work for “humanity,” yet each one of us has received the gift and the grace of Christ’s love. We know that all men ultimately need this personal love — the recognition in them of their unique soul in which the beauty of the whole creation is reflected in a unique way. We also know that men are in prison and are sick and thirsty and hungry because that personal love has been denied them. And, finally, we know that however narrow and limited the framework of our personal existence, each one of us has been made responsible for a tiny part of the Kingdom of God, made responsible by that very gift of Christ’s love. Thus, on whether or not we have accepted this responsibility, on whether we have loved or refused to love, shall we be judged. For “inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me…”