VIOLENCE AND BELIEF

There is a wonderful book written by a former longshoreman, Eric Hoffer, about fanaticism. It's called The True Believer. One of its key points is that the more untenable a belief, the more fanaticallyit is held. To the point of killing the innocent and other unimaginable horrors. I don't have to mention Nazism and the Holocaust, the Inquisition,the Crusades, the fight between the Muslims and Christians in 1947 in which a million people died, or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks in the same year (another million killed).

Always it's over some stupid, stupid belief; and when the belief is especially stupid, the way out is insanity. There are millions of examples in the long history of mankind. Beliefs are a prime source of hate and violence.Christians even have a hymn based on an event in the Old Testament that begins, "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, Jericho...and the walls came tumbling down." It is one of the first recorded genocides inhistory, and we celebrate it!

The Israelites invaded another country to the extent of 2 or 3 miles, besieged the place for a week, circling it and making a lot of noise, banging drums and blowing on trumpets,until finally they were able to breech the walls.They then killed every man, woman, child, and animal in the place. It was such a wonderful victory that we still exult in it today.

Rememer that King David prayed to God to "smite" his enemies. Cardinal Spellman, during World War II, declared that "God is on our side." I thought it assinine at the time, and still do. I have a lot of ideas about meaning and morals, etc., but those I'll save for another time. Meanwhile you can read Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels, for one, where he illustrates some of the idiocies that get people fighting wars). And then clean your palate with Voltaire's Candide. -