Images Passing Through My Head
I don’t know all the reasons the following images conjured themselves in my head lately, but they did. I personally feel pummeled by so many things going on in the world. I am struggling with many things. I think scribbling simple symbols is one way my mind tries to cope:
And here are some images that raised in my memory:
Christopher Reeve
I have a confession to make. I censored someone today. Not on this blog, but on my flickr account. They left a comment that people shouldn’t ‘fight’ for peace; instead, they should ‘love’ for peace. I understand their wishful thinking, and I even encourage their positive actions. But I chose not to condone their position. I perceive I have seen too many people harmed in history and personally because they stopped fighting and tried to be nice and ‘loving’ to the people who were harming them. In my opinion, peace is not passive. It must be active in supporting fairness, accountability, self-protectiveness and community-protectiveness. Sometimes you may have to turn and fight. Sometimes loving means non-violently confronting those who are hurting you or others.
Walter Simonson, Terry Austin, and Glynis Wein.
Walter Simonson, Terry Austin, and Glynis Wein.
© All rights reserved by the respective artists.
Most Recent Artworks Index of all the Artists’ Artworks my43things
Dear Sia: I often wonder what would have happened if Mr. Kerry hadn’t controlled himself…if he had stepped out from behind his debate podium, approached a TV camera, and with anger in his voice, asked Americans if they really wanted as their next president a man who repeatedly (McCain too) and maliciously attacked decorated war veterans? (i.e., if Kerry had fought back)
We’ll never know.
Hey man just read your sentiments on peace and I couldn’t agree more. You can put a flower in a gun but it won’t stop the bullet. Love and protect man … that’s what it’s about. Thanks for the refreshment kind one.
Unknown Hobo
Unknown SIA: Thank you. You are correct that it is important to protect. My concern arises when the “protection” rationale is improperly used as a rationale to do actions that exceed protective interests. There is a fine balance, always adjusting, in that analysis.
Fighting for Peace?
I agree that if you want the things you were talking about “fairness, accountability, self-protectiveness and community-protectiveness” that sometimes you must fight for what YOU think is right.
But the point of peace is not to make everyone do what you want them to do. It is to allow people to be as they are, without interfering. Peace is coexisting with everyone else.
By “fighting for peace” you go against the very meaning of the word. Because to you something ELSE is unfair, and to you someone ELSE is being unaccountable, but maybe to them YOU are the very same way.
Peace is the ability to get along with these people, without judging their views and positions of life.
So, you are right. If you want everything to be a certain way, to be YOUR way, then you have to fight, but that’s not what Peace is.
People do die when they don’t fight, and they die for the cause of Peace. Soldiers die for war; they die so that their country can spread it’s “wealth” and judgements and influence others. When you die for peace, you die because you wish the judgments would go away. It is more than fighting for “accountability or community-protectiveness,” it’s protesting the judgments and pomp that governments like ours have, and encouraging coexistence and understanding of all people by all people.
~
I hope this wasn’t taken the wrong way, and that maybe it helped. Please know that I completely understand what you are saying. I often struggle on which side I am on because, at times, it does seem that the evil in the world can overcome love.
In my heart, though, I know it cannot. I would only ask that you didn’t deem this sort of belief “wishful thinking” and instead perhaps just know that it is different thinking.
Sometimes the things that seems untrue right now can be true someday. If it is true on a small scale perhaps it is bigger somewhere else, in the future or even in a different world all together.
Thanks for you time =)
I loved your blog and especially the pictures.
Peace and Love,
Ash