philosophy from my musical partner Gil Dor, deep and interesting, i agree with every word.

to all our friends and foes wherever you may be


"Stop the war! War is bad! War is immoral! we seek justice! we want peace!"

well then, what's the problem? why does it never stop???

WAR

war is an outbreak of violence as result of subjective assessment of threats. this is true regardless of the type of conflict.
in nature we can see patterns of conflicts of the following types: predator vs. prey which is all about food. or predator vs. predator and prey vs. prey which are about territory and mating. these conflicts will display a variety of tactics: attack, retreat, submission, expulsion etc..
animals follow their instincts therefore, other then through long evolutionary processes, they have no choice in the type and tactics of their struggle. humans, on the other hand, seem to have many alternatives, but the tools we use to asses our threats are complex and invariably prone to mistakes.

MORALITY

moral judgement could be the original (biblical) sin : eating = benefiting, from the fruit = consequences, of the tree of telling good from bad = moral judgement

GOOD AND BAD

the long term effects of actions based on moral judgement are unpredictable. therefore the rule of thumb must be: keep it as reversible as possible! just in case you ever wish to regret your 'justified' actions.
it follows that absolute good has to do with reversibility while absolute bad has to do with irreversibility and this is as far as we can comprehend.

in this context:

JUSTICE

justice by sword, as in capital punishment, is bad.
war is a capital punishment for many, therefore it is bad
justice by dialog, as in compromise and settlement, is better!
in this sense justice is the prolog to reconciliation.
On a hopeful note: the growing number of countries abolishing capital punishment indicates that humanity have been moving slowly and steadily in this direction.

PEACE

peace is an outcome of reconciliation. peace which is just a the restoration of stability is not an insurance policy against war because submission and acceptance of a new order are by nature temporary. real reconciliation is possible when there is an acceptance of a common meta-philosophy
above particular beliefs and religions. humanism seems to be this philosophy.

MORALITY take 2

why didn't god punish Cain by death for killing Abel?
because god could not prove intention! no human action had caused death yet, in fact nobody had died yet. Cain acted on rage. but he created a precedence whereby people can foresee the result of their actions. Murder is bad because it is an intention to cause something absolutely irreversible!

MORALITY take 3

when the ancient hebrews were enslaved in egypt. young moses, who grew in the court of pharaoh,
saw an egyptian beating a hebrew slave. his sense of justice took over him, he looked around and seeing that nobody was watching, he killed the man and buried him in the sand.
even in those remote times, and even when we consider the royal status of the young prince, moses knew he was breaking some law. otherwise why look around? but he thought it was a justified act!
next we hear that he saw two hebrew slaves fighting. this time he said: why do you beat your friend? the slave answered: why, are you going to kill me just like you killed the egyptian?

over 3000 years ago a slave understood that killing in the name of justice is wrong! moses was shocked. after all the man should have thanked him for killing a brutal egyptian. especially when all he said is: why do you beat your friend. but the save knew the truth. here is a man who takes justice into his own hands in a deadly way. today its the enemy, tomorrow your own people.

old story, open to endless interpretations (this one was mine) but the enigmatic jewish people kept it for thousands of years as the context for moses escape and exile from his homeland , his people and himself to the desert where he finally met god!!!

moses, by the way, moses never killed a single soul since that event. (God did! and that is another discussion) moses never entered the promised land. he only saw it from the mountain. why? maybe because land is the subject of unavoidable bloody territorial conflicts. the jewish people seemed to adopt this view for many centuries. unfortunately territorial conflicts are far more abstract then just national wars in the traditional sense.

GOOD AND BAD take 2

moral judgement refers only to intensions! good intensions vs. bad intensions
judgement of actions regardless of intention is a lot more problematic.

a question
why didn't god prevent cain from killing abel?

because he couldn't!

god created everything! and that includes evolution. evolution favored anger, rage, teeth, claws, aggression and violence as survival mechanisms for “god created creatures”. even god could not settle the contradiction between the unfortunate demise of a certain specimen, and the survival of a whole species.

We want justice! - and the war rages on!!!

WHAT CAN WE DO

1.forget justice. we don't need justice to defend our lives. we simply fight, and kill, and destroy. then we feel proud, sorry, confused, tired, probably a mixture of all of the above.
the preaching of justice is often synonymous to the preaching of war! it makes us loose our human face and then it makes reconciliation much more difficult. animals fight and make peace in seconds because they have no sense of justice!
2. define what we really want. see that it doesn't conflict with the values we stand for.
3. lower the level of threats. make our deepest intentions very clear through a constant dialog.
4. be generous.
5. be PATIENT. processes take time. there are healing stages that seem to deviate from our ultimate human goal, yet they are either necessary or simply unavoidable.
6. keep the hope alive.

AMEN.