Snake and apple, anyone?

What kind of man advocates murder to make a better world?

I had a disturbingly weird converstaion last month that’s still eating at me, except it wasn’t a conversation so much as a snake in the grass with an apple saying “Take a bite, it’ll be good for you; and if not a nibble, how about a little lick just to test the texture and taste; or at least hold it a bit and admire its sweet round redness awhile. (Book of Genesis, Garden of Eden anyone?)

I was standing in a crowd enjoying the sun and feeling good about seeing such a large outpouring of the young in their articulate awareness protesting all that’s wrong with our current economic and ecological systems, when a dude behind me said this is all well and good, but it won’t accomplish anything because working inside the system will never bring fairness and equality; in fact even letting us vote was just a trick to make us believe we had a voice in the process. (Unfortunately he has a point.)

I said we at least had to try, and that there were some encouraging signs of hope — for example, the Occupy Wall Street movement was growing explosively around America as well as the world, and it was already changing the minds and perceptions of millions; he poo-poohed it, said the cities will shut them down for their rich masters (again, he has a point), that the very system had to go — we needed a revolution to first destroy the current unworkable system, then rebuild a fair and equitable society.

Told him violence was not necessary, especially now that the internet and social media were wakening people to what’s going on, both the good and the bad of it all, and that the good was expanding. He said no, the government can cut off social media anytime they want (which is true — Egypt did it, as did San Fransisco). He went back to insisting we had no choice but to bring down the system, then rebuild.

I explained that even as angry as I was at the system, I was non-violent and tried (with great difficulty) to walk the path of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Then I asked him the obvious question: “Won’t your revolution kill thousands, maybe even millions of people?” ‘Yes,” he replied, “but not as many as would die if we don’t, so actually we’d be saving lives”.

“So basically you’re advocating murder.”

“I don’t like to use that word, it has such negative implications. I prefer to say killing.” Oh great, that’s supposed to make me feel better? I told him killing IS murder, even when sanctioned by governments, and he was just playing word games. He saw I was disgusted and moved on.

But his statement still chills me. How can anyone rationalize murdering people to make a more moral world?

Even if you set morality aside (as our Government seems to have no trouble doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Latin America, the USA, etc), exactly how do you go about killing a government composed of millions of people, an armed forces of millions, cops of millions? Do you kill their secreteries and chauffers too? What about their wives and kids and pets? Who chooses who dies, who decides who lives? And just where and when and how does your more moral and better world result from you becoming the very thing you’re fighting? How can a pure and fair Utopia rise from your neighbor’s decaying flesh? It certainly hasn’t worked very well in Libya.

Yet I can see his point. In one way, it’s simple self-defense.

I think I could kill a person who was attacking my wife; and I would defend myself were I physically attacked, be the attacker robber, rapist, soldier, policeman, or random chanced upon mentally disturbed individual. I can’t know this for sure untill I’m put in such a situation, so on one level it’s all a mind game; but no one has the moral or legal right to harm my wife or myself, so morally I believe I could would and should defend my family from actual immediate attack.

And as a people, we ARE being attacked. The corporations are killing us with their products, their processes, their prophets of profit, their purchased prostitution of our government which keeps sending our soldiers overseas to kill brown-skinned people for their oil and political beliefs.

So yes, our system is literally killing us, and killing the earth as well with greed and corporate global toxins. But you can’t fight force with force, especially when they have a much bigger force than you do because then you’ve changed nothing . . . you’ve either just been wiped out yourself, or else you’ve successfully killed them and then you become them and then you await the next them-to-bes who will come after you when they don’t like the way you’re running things.

You can’t defeat force with force because when you use force to overcome force you become the very force you’re opposing, as the past 3,000 years more than adequately proves.

No, you oppose wrong with awareness, education. You open people’s minds with words and actions and examples and humor and being the change you seek.

It is our job — the artists and poets and musicians and singers and activists — to open people’s eyes, to expand their minds and hearts, to help unite spirit and flesh, to raise their moral awareness and get them in touch with their inner Buddha/Christ/Cosmic Consciousness within each of us.

This is the real revolution, the revolution of minds opening, eyes seeing, ears hearing, hearts listening, people helping, sharing, coming together in tribe community family friendship patience compassion hope need and consensus.

You cannot enforce morality with a gun. You cannot make you, the world, or another better by killing people. This is true whether you’re government, soldier, policeman, or revolutionary. As we’ve seen over and over again, when our soldiers overseas kill people in government sanctioned murder, they damage something essential inside themselves, warp their basic humanity, making them shells of shame and rage when they return to the “civilized” societry that hired them to kill.

It’s scary because things are getting more complicated much faster, maybe approaching bad beyond fixing, and if we don’t come together immediately and start doing something right now, then the dude will get his wish – there will be blood in the streets in a vicious violant class war clash and the whole mess will start all over again because power and ego will continue to corrupt the winners and we’re back to “Go Directly To Jail, Do Not Pass GO.”

You don’t fight evil with evil. You don’t fight wrong with wrong. You don’t fight killing with killing. You can’t create a paradise while sleeping with slime.

And yet it looks to me like that’s where we’re heading. And all the blood and violence and death and destruction will not do one iota to help solve our problems of greed, ego, financial inequality, racism, worshipping Mammon, and global warming.

Or wait, I may be wrong. Maybe if we do hasten the process and start killing each other off in the name of right and God and morality, we’ll rid poor Mother Earth of our diseased stench that much faster and she and whatever animals we haven’t yet extincted can get on with healing themselves.

So maybe the dude’s right.

But count me out. As much rage as I have within due to the crimes against humanity and Mother Earth constantly committed by our Cioporate controlled Governments, I still have to try to walk the path of light and right, just so I can bear to look at myself in the mirror.

Power to the peaceful.