It is Memorial Day again in the formally titled United States of America.
28 May 2018

 

People are celebrating, or enjoying a day off maybe, and there are big celebrations and micro celebrations throughout all of the states and many of their towns.  And there are also plenty of naysayers, dissenters, and disturbers of the peace.
 

Once again, many of these latter are dissenters of government.  For many of them government sanctioned holidays serve as another means to use their brand of educational practices to enlighten those who support the idea of government.  Ultimately these practices end up being an act of aggression against a majority of people who do not understand.  Or worse, they end up being a reason for many government advocates to dig in their heels.
 

“What terrorist did that,” asks a little boy in a political cartoon asking his father / grandfather while an image of a nuclear strike is shown on the television in the same panel.
 

That may seem mild.  But it is in fact rigidly aggressive.  It is a cartoon that is meant to be satirical, to mock the power of the organization that engaged in an act of terror against others.  It was an act designed to strike fear into the hearts of those deemed to be the enemies of the organization which launched that particular attack during World War II.
 

While done supposedly as a noble means to bring a quick end to that awful war, it killed millions and millions of innocents.  That’s not courage.  It’s a lack of empathy.  It’s a lack of courage to find an alternative means to understanding many of the things those people wanted.
 

It doesn’t matter that most modern wars are provoked by centralized banking institutions.  It matters that people make the courageous choice and decide to understand one another instead of dehumanize or belittle one another with social, national, political, racial, or religious chest thumping.  All of that lacks empathy.
 

And it is that same lack of empathy that so many dissenters of government hide, protect, and stifle the development of in them.  The cartoon in question is by far the not most useful tool to educate others concerning the nature of government.  It is far less crass than many others too!
 

The point of all of this is:
Why make the time to criticize the symptoms of the barriers to peace and greater prosperity?
 

And that is precisely it!
 

I was guilty of this too once upon a time.  I was hurt by the very people I supported.  Government let me down.  My government supporting family let me down.  The family I married into which also supports government (albeit lesser government typically) let me down.  And the then a bulk of the online liberty communities I am aware of let me down.

All of these groups let me down because they didn’t understand the importance of empathy.  They decided that being sensitive about the way people feel about their choices is weak.  And in that constant betrayal, that constant belittling, I found that I could make deeper connections than ever before simply because I was / am what they claim to be as sensitive. 
 

It’s not a weakness to be empathetic.  It’s a developed skill that allows us to connect with others without being guilty of dropping our own emotional nuclear bombs on others in the form of fear, guilt, shame, and general hostility; all of which lack the teachings of love and compassion that recognize that people make mistakes and shouldn’t be blamed for what they truly do not understand.
 

While I had to choose between quantity and quality, the choice for me was clear.  The time and energy required to bond with another and so much deeper than before made it all worthwhile for me.  The few people I associate with are people who I am bonded with deeply.
 

We take the time to choose our words carefully.  We seek to ensure the communication we have is not just meaningful but clear.  We see each other not as individuals in the moment but entire souls with complex pasts and futures filled with all kinds of potential.
 

It is this inability or lack of determination to utilize such an ability which harms so much of what people on both sides of the government debate want.  Both sides remove the past, present, and future humanity from one another.  Simple observations by those that dissent against government lack the emotional recognition of those they claim they want to reach with such ideas as the aforementioned political cartoon.  Those who advocate government remove the Humanity from those they disagree with or employ countless logical fallacies to fuel their emotionally rooted arguments with logic instead of the other way around.
 

And of course the particular dissenters I mentioned tend to employ straight logic absent of emotion that is dismissive, condescending, or otherwise pejorative.  Then when these people come together, they never realize that they are both correct and wrong at the same time.  Specifically they are arguing the same thing but from perspectives that are just a hair off.
 

Essentially it is arguing that all color comes together to create white light versus all color coming together to create black.  Both are correct pending which perspective; physics or art?!
 

Neither recognizes that they are after the same thing(s) and choose to reject all criticisms that actually come fully equipped with constructive portions designed to help.  And then when it is pointed out, they both turn on the messenger. 
 

Memorial Day in the United States of America is about recognizing those who are heroes for something important; the defense of freedom from oppression.  To the dissenters Memorial Day is about a religious holiday where people worship their governmental deities.
 

The barrier to peace and achieving freedom from oppression, for obtaining true peace, is rooted in having the empathy to see the whole past of each soul we interact with individually.  Why they support or do not support something is rooted in there.  And the answers to understanding this will also include understanding why we want freedom, what we want it from, and how to ensure we acquire this equally for all in order to reduce the chance that we make future enemies by how we choose to make freedom a possibility.
 

Unfortunately, it is often easier to make generalize statement.  It’s easy to pass judgment on others instead of getting to know why they did what they did.  And it is easy to condemn them.
 

What is not as easy is to learn how to understand others.  But a good starting point is in understanding who we are as individuals; understanding who you are to you and why!
 

Just because something is irksome to you doesn’t mean you have to make an attempt to be the same or a lighter version in return as a benevolent gesture of proclaimed good will under the guise of the Nonaggression Principle or self defense.  I am not aiming to tell anyone what a true hero is.
 

However, I doubt it is someone who fights all or most fires with fire.  Just because your fire is the same size as a flame on a match doesn’t make it any less of a fire.
-JLD
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