I was thinking about this in more depth when I sat on the can today. (It's a good place for philosophy, ya know?) Hope you don't mind if I use your comment to expand my hypothesis. ^__^
I think we mistake gravity and momentum for ease. Yeah, once the wrecking ball swings, it's doing its own thing - but by then it is out of control and can swing back and smack you upside the head, too. And the initial thrust of energy to get that ball moving for its first impact is extreme, requiring heavy machinery to lift and propel it.
Or how about a boulder that looms on a hill over the house of your enemy. It takes a lot of pushing and leverage to finally get that sucker moving... and once you do, you can just stand back and watch, right? Sure, because that's all you can do. But that doesn't make the moving of that boulder any easier to start with, or the watching, for that matter. And if that little rock you didn't know was in the boulder's path changes its course and sends it hurtling towards your own house instead? OOPS! Well, thems the breaks, AKA - the Law of Action/Reaction/Consequence, which has been mislabeled as "Karma" in Western culture. Battle plans are only as good as the paper they are on. Once the field is in play, anything can happen.
I think it's also a precision thing... You can use a wrecking ball with precision if you want to, to minimise suffering (euthanasia), But to hurt, it's simply a matter of losing control, and letting things go wild...
I think most people hurt when they go wild because they stop thinking of others and only themselves in that instant. It's a little hard not to when your emotions are winding you up so tight inside that you turn into a bouncy spring when that last bit of pressure is applied. This is when we feel the most justified in our rage, but we can easily become blind to what is good so that we can embrace the catharsis of anger. It's a human process by which we dump the emotions that are eating us from the inside out. Unfortunately, when we take a dump, shit comes out... and if we're not careful, it can splatter everywhere.
Then there are your precision hurters (the wrecking balls)... the ones that look for the vulnerabilities of those around them and make strategic and surgical strikes against them out of some sadistic pleasure or need to gain attention.
In essence though, we all hurt those we love, either by accident or design. It's impossible not to, because we are all wound up in our own heads and are usually blind to what is in the heads of others. As a race of solitary egocentric beings who crave companionship, it's amazing that we haven't just erradicated ourselves by now.
But Creation and Destruction are two sides on the same coin. Thinking even more deeply on this, I came to the conclusion that it takes equal effort and energy to heal as it does to harm. I still think that we are mistaken in that it takes more effort to destroy than it does to heal, because healing feels like a salmon swimming upstream and destroying is like the boulder going down the hill. Mayhaps this is a perception our culture clings to in order to understand why so much destruction happens around us while we blind ourselves to the miracle of creation that happens around us all the time.
There are few human beings who don't believe in their own essential goodness. We come prepackaged with that trait, too. Even the eternal victims, who whine about how awful they are, believe deep down that they are good and wonder why no one else can see it, which starts the cycle of maybe they are not... etc - welcome to the downward spiral. But it boils down to that basic principle of the human mind that tells us that we are good, even when we're bad. Al Capone considered himself the giver of delights in a market for those who craved them. Hitler also believed in his personal good for all that he was doing for the German people. Mao Tse-tung of China... the same.
In the end, the means must be justified by the final results - and that is how history will record them.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-18 04:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-18 05:07 pm (UTC)I think we mistake gravity and momentum for ease. Yeah, once the wrecking ball swings, it's doing its own thing - but by then it is out of control and can swing back and smack you upside the head, too. And the initial thrust of energy to get that ball moving for its first impact is extreme, requiring heavy machinery to lift and propel it.
Or how about a boulder that looms on a hill over the house of your enemy. It takes a lot of pushing and leverage to finally get that sucker moving... and once you do, you can just stand back and watch, right? Sure, because that's all you can do. But that doesn't make the moving of that boulder any easier to start with, or the watching, for that matter. And if that little rock you didn't know was in the boulder's path changes its course and sends it hurtling towards your own house instead? OOPS! Well, thems the breaks, AKA - the Law of Action/Reaction/Consequence, which has been mislabeled as "Karma" in Western culture. Battle plans are only as good as the paper they are on. Once the field is in play, anything can happen.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-19 02:39 pm (UTC)Thank you for the discussion bro :D
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-19 05:02 pm (UTC)Then there are your precision hurters (the wrecking balls)... the ones that look for the vulnerabilities of those around them and make strategic and surgical strikes against them out of some sadistic pleasure or need to gain attention.
In essence though, we all hurt those we love, either by accident or design. It's impossible not to, because we are all wound up in our own heads and are usually blind to what is in the heads of others. As a race of solitary egocentric beings who crave companionship, it's amazing that we haven't just erradicated ourselves by now.
But Creation and Destruction are two sides on the same coin. Thinking even more deeply on this, I came to the conclusion that it takes equal effort and energy to heal as it does to harm. I still think that we are mistaken in that it takes more effort to destroy than it does to heal, because healing feels like a salmon swimming upstream and destroying is like the boulder going down the hill. Mayhaps this is a perception our culture clings to in order to understand why so much destruction happens around us while we blind ourselves to the miracle of creation that happens around us all the time.
There are few human beings who don't believe in their own essential goodness. We come prepackaged with that trait, too. Even the eternal victims, who whine about how awful they are, believe deep down that they are good and wonder why no one else can see it, which starts the cycle of maybe they are not... etc - welcome to the downward spiral. But it boils down to that basic principle of the human mind that tells us that we are good, even when we're bad. Al Capone considered himself the giver of delights in a market for those who craved them. Hitler also believed in his personal good for all that he was doing for the German people. Mao Tse-tung of China... the same.
In the end, the means must be justified by the final results - and that is how history will record them.