Spiritual Views on Violence and Killing

I was speaking with a friend the other day about some of my interests, things I am curious to pursue as careers in my future, namely tactical medicine (SWAT Medic) or the military.
We had, earlier in the same conversation, been speaking about our spiritual beliefs, and the idea of “life vs. death” (Life, in this context, being walking a road in harmony with the infinite, and Death being willingly walking a road out of harmony), and she asked me a rather poignant question, I didn’t really have an answer for – “Is a dedication to violence, conducive to ‘life’”?
(Not that I wish to pursue either of those things simply to be violent, and I know there is more to it than that – but I would be a fool, a damned fool, to pretend that the things I want to pursue don’t involve force.)

Personally, I believe violence can be necessary and in harmony – But I had no really good way to explain, even to myself, why I feel that some violence, some killing, doesn’t take someone out of harmony.
So, I’ve been thinking about it – a lot – in recent days.

I believe in the necessity of violence and killing. I believe that someone who violates the social contract (a sort of harmony) by deciding to pursue gains through unprovoked violence has forfeited their physical life should it be necessary to take it in order to stop their violence. I also believe that this is not so much a judgment, merely a part of survival and that survival can be in harmony. Violence happens every day in the natural world, and it is arrogant to believe that man is that much above any other animal.
Also, the death of someone who uses violence for criminal pursuits is a release of energy from the physical shell, a separating of the negative and temporal with the pure, to have another chance at life (whether you believe in reincarnation or not, physical death is not the end of life. No energy every truly ceases to exist, it just changes form).

But what about making a career out of being one of the people who stands on the line between everyday life, people and society, and the forces of violence for pleasure or gain?
It is hard to articulate, but I believe that is also necessary. Everyone has a calling in life, everyone has a role to play in the natural order. I think it is necessary that there be some people, who possess strong dualistic characteristics (what psychologists the Survivor Personality) and an emotional and moral constitution for witnessing and delivering violence and death – to stand the line between those who don’t, and those who would deliver cruelty, and seek to bring chaos to everything.
For those people I don’t think a dedication to that is counter-productive to a dedication to “life”. They are, simply, different – Their role in the order of all things is different and they were built different, to operate on a level of chaos and destruction when necessary and to return again, un-tainted, when their work is no longer needed.
I actually wrote a prayer awhile back, a battle prayer, that says this fairly succinctly I think:
Bless me,
That I may have Fluidity in Violence,
and Ferocity of Strength
That I may become as Death
and Return Again.

(Note – This is not to say I am one of those people. I don’t know. Being certain I am, or am not, and the subsequent decisions from those certainties, is part of my journey, as yet un-made. I simply wanted to use this blog to at least begin codifying my thoughts on this particular issue, and to share them with others.)

Code Pink

I was surfing one of the bulletin boards devoted to the tactical and special operations communities today when I came across this gem: http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=96

In short, in case that link is broken someday, CodePink is advocating a boycott on "war toys", with slogans such as "Dont let your child be a victim of G.I. Joe!" and "Violent Toys = Violent Boys". They are also advocating disruptng commerce by sticking labels on "war toys" in stores that carry such slogans.

This directly relates to the post I made earlier - where I said if we continue fighting so hard to supress the harder truths of human nature, in the end we will also destroy the beauty of things like love.
Movements such as Code Pink, for all their attempts at sounding educated and backed up by science, are actually going directly against the grain of nature. War toys dont make violent anyone... Look at wolf pups or lion cubs in the wild, they play fighting games.
Look at non-carnivorous species, such as big horn sheep, or elk, or even cattle. They too play fighting games in youth.
Fighting is a part of the world. It is biology. We will never overcome biology.

It is a waste of resources, at the very least, to create such advocacy as CodePink. Its junk science, holier-than-thou, message does more to harm positive causes than anything else.
The idea such groups promote is on the same level as saying that if you stop feeding a lioness meat, she will become a vegetarian. Its not a realistic effort to affect change... its a feel-good movement for yuppies and middle America to cling to, and get their "superiority" fix off of for awhile. Its not radical, its trendy... and thats all its trying to be.
To affect change we must change the way the world understands violence.
Our tolerance for un-neccessary violence, for cruelty, torture, tyranny and human rights abuses, must be absolutely zero. The consequences for such behavior should be swift, and very very permanent.
But we must also re-draw the lines between the small bit of violence that is truly necessary, and everything else. Necessity should be allowed... as a measure against the hateful, the cruel, the unnecessary, un-tolerable sorts of violence.
So long as men are willing to take what is not theirs, by force, the need for violence to defend against that will be there. We must set the world straight on this reality, once again. To bring an end to all the evils, we have to be honest about violence.
CodePink is not honesty... far far from it. And that hurts us all.

Violence is Destroying Humanity... But Not How You'd Expect...

In the media recently there have been several stories being kicked around about violence, of one form or another. Negative stories.
The first type is the sort where something awful happens, someone is hurt, and the instrument that did the damage is blamed, and condemned. This instrument of late has been guns - as it usually is, because its hard to convince Mr. and Ms. America that the Honda Civic is more deadly in the wrong hands and killed more people last year, than a gun.
I will never be able to understand the need to find some outside source to blame for the bad things that happen... especially when that thing being blamed is anything or anyone but the person(s) responsible for the bad thing.
It should be okay to blame people. People pull the trigger... more often than that, people get tanked, hop behind the wheel and plow their SUV's into the side of minivans loaded with families on their way to Christmas with Gran'ma. But people do it. People.
We never blame the car - We always blame the drunk driver. So when violence happens, why is the reaction always to blame the tool, never the user... the killer?
I guess because it’s easier. Guns, weapons of any kind, can be inflated into some greater evil... something on par with what the hearts of good people want the guilty party to be, a great malevolence hell bent on wreaking death and destruction. Satan himself. And no man, or even group of men, will ever... ever be as evil, as vile, repulsive and horrifyingly cruel as what we want to believe they must have been to commit such vile acts upon someone we cared about.
To see a human being as the actor responsible for violence, strikes too close to home to be comfortable for a great many people. It speaks far too loudly at the truth of the human condition, the truth of human nature. A truth that does not fit into the vision, the mythology, of goodness and decency that our society has created. So instead of blaming the person... we blame the weapon, the tool. Which is no more responsible than a drunk drivers car... for no metal thing, no inanimate thing, has a heart, or a mind. But to say a man, and just a man, can be responsible for cruelty, violence, the infliction of pain and suffering onto not just a victim, but the entire family of that victim, requires too much truth about the very nature of what is "Human".
To kill is human.
As is to love.
As is to care, protect, defend, hope, wonder, learn, teach, give, share, help.
But "kill" is an word we cannot let ourselves be comfortable with.
Killing is wrong... it says so in the Bible - "Thou Shalt Not Kill". But what it actually says... what the original wording was, is far closer to "Thou Shalt Not Murder". But, we've had a few thousand years of oral tradition becoming inscription in ancient and varied languages, becoming collection, translation and re-inscription into Latin, and then into French, and English... and then a series of major rewordings and removals of a few things, to create not only the King James Version, but the Holy Mother Churches approved version before it... and then hundreds of other versions, and translations into all the languages of the modern world. At the end of all that a few things are bound to be different... but "thou shalt not kill" is a commandment upon which even the non-religious will throw themselves, as if upon a sword. (Ahh, there I go again with the violence metaphors....).
And, really, why shouldn’t they? The idea that killing is bad is a powerful undercurrent in the mythology most people use to frame their understanding of the world around them, and what is good and decent in that world.
It takes great acts, of horror and depravity, to shock people into remembering that violence, at its ugliest, most horrific, is sometimes necessary. Acts like 9/11, when the passengers and crew of Flight 93 rose up and said, we will not go quiet into that good night... even if it means dying, even if it means killing a lot of people. But that is a massive thing for one little, and quickly fading, wake-up call.
I think it is for the best that most people - sane people - do not embrace the ability to kill and run with it. But to completely shun the ability, to the point at which we try to fervently deny the occasionally, horrible, need for it... goes completely against the natural order.
Like so many things in this world which go against the natural order, which fight so hard to fit the myth we have created about the way of the world that they approach the completely synthetic. It is a sad state of affairs where being human has become a thing to be shunned... the very essence of humanity must be wiped clean and replaced with one that fits the myth. In the end, by trying to suppress all the unpleasant, uncomfortable, parts of raw human nature, we will suppress those our mythology has come to idolize.... like love.

Visions of Armageddon

Driving in to town from the ranch this morning I saw a strange set of contrails in the sky.
At first it looked like two planes, and then two become four, branching off into wildly different directions at first, and then after a mid air explosion four become two, and two disappeared into nothingness.
They were not planes.
As suddenly as the previous two had disappeared through that far away place in the sky where everything turns blue and is hidden, four more appeared out of that blue nothing to the East.
The missiles chased each other, to the west and then turning back to the east, and then back west again, before finally ending it - Either dropping out of the air, or blowing up each intercept having met with its target.

Most people have never seen this.
I've seen it several times, living not far (not in air space terms) from the Stallion Gate of White Sands Missile Range.
Most people wouldnt know, for sure, what the missiles were until they hit their neighborhood. Most people of my generation anyway.
Those from the cold war - They know all too well what missiles look like in the sky, or would look like should that day ever come.

They are beautiful, really. Most of my shots were taken from a moving pickup, camera held out the window. and couldnt capture it, but missiles catch the sun and glitter like jewels against the pure blue sky.
The big ones, the Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles, would glitter like that too, streaking back into the atmosphere and arcing above the Earth, flying to their horrible, final, destination. And then, like God said, there would be light.

I am Pro-War (not any war - really not the current war - but the right war, absolutely), and Pro-Violence. When its necessary, its necessary - No two ways about it.
But I am absolutely anti-Nuclear. It is not a tool anyone needs to have. It is a tool I hope to never see used - but one that I am sure will be in my lifetime.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientist for the Manhattan Project, said as he witnessed the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Stallion Range, White Sands, New Mexico, "I have become death. Destroyer of worlds".