Collective Civic Responsibility Vs. Individual Freedom

Collective Civic Responsibility Vs. Individual Freedom in the Third WorldB. Upul N. Peiris (bunpeiris), Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
To: <info-27537065@bounce.colonize.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: bunpeiris, Your opinion could be worth…$1,000.00!
I never collected a penny for writing from Americans or for that matter, from anyone else. Never mind. A man has to do what he has to do. His has to give his two pennies worth. All must contribute to the humanity, hell or thunder.END BEGINNING. So I see you have bothered to ask me of an opinion of mine. A top of the rack punk; the lead hack of the pack. There is no doubt this is a part & parcel of your American advertising & propaganda. You are purely driven by commercial interest. Americans, for sure, know how to make money: they would collect everything ranging from our opinions to our garbage, recycle, repackage, brand & market it. They have all the Imagination & all the courage coupled with vast resources of a continent to follow up with tremendous innovation. From Asia only Japanese could stand with them.But there are many others who are willing to lend their ears to the opinions of the Romans, Citizens, & friends. Let’s add Indians too, after all they are one billion now. Nobody listen to Chinese but they have their way & say & get others to say very sorry even when no offence was intended. That’s Chinese Chop Suey cum Kung Fu dish for you to be seasoned with American produced Soya Sauce. But then again, those that are willing to be simply polite & others who are genuinely sympathetic to the opinions of others are partly responsible for the chaos of our world. Everybody with an opinion end of taking up arms & causing violence: murder & mayhem; destruction& chaos & then others say that ex-marine thought different. (sorry for American slangbang English) Thought different my bum. The baby killer. May you burn in hell Bloody McVeigh!

Bring prosperity by killing 1.7 million. The 1.7 million Killer of Killing Fields himself was killed by a mosquito. John Lennon sang “Imagine”. Imagine no races, no religions, all for all & all are all. Lennon was gunned down. Today we are faced with million mutinies.. About a decade ago I happen to read a book review of a book written by one of the finest writers of our time. Even before start reading the article it dawned on me what it could be all about. The Name of the Book is
“Million Mutinies ” & the name of the writer was V. S. Naipaul. It is only in January 2001 that I got a second hand copy of the book by American second hand bookseller powells.com. Thy Pax Americana, the kingdom of Dot.Com lands on your desk. Yet your heart is a blank book: your so called new world order is in wherever you can stand to your advantage with no ethics of consistency at all. Nobody wish to have a leaf of it. Having said that, we mustn’t forget philanthropists of the caliber of Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates & numerous others.

Now to drop a big brick & drive the Indian friends mad, allow me. Indians with their passion & penchant for taking up colorful language named the last civil disobedience against then ruling British, “mutiny “. They were clamouring for their bounty: India. With all that long civilization & all those pretty maids-Miss Words with such sexotic faces & exotic names such as Aishwarya, Sushmita, Diana, in a row, with all those unashamed ancient erotic carvings on, with those epics, Mahabaratha, Ramayana with only Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to take up the gauntlet, the land of Kama Sutra among million other magic, India is a divine bounty indeed.
Nevertheless, if it was then a mutiny, now in India are million mutinies of many colours & patterns. Naipaul explored his life long love, Indian society: opinions & views of multitude of races; innumerable frictions & fractions within the caste systems; contradictions & compromises of religious faith; whims & fancies of political forces; heat & passion of the idea of an one country called India although it had been one nation only twice in the history, first during King Asoka & then the British bloody colonialists
Naipaul’s world was India & his million mutinies were confined to India. Once one is absorbed & then freed from Naipaul’s India, it wouldn’t be difficult to see the whole world in million mutinies. And that was partly thanks to those who propagate opinions & giving way to individual freedom of expression without impressing upon all bums & mutts it would be better idea to adhere to the basic conception of collective civic responsibility. Then again, once again, this is an opinion. But then again it would suit the Third World, given the billions in China & India & exceedingly high density of population in other undeveloped countries with limited natural resources.
There is no transitional value except to hold Collective Civic Responsibility over & above Individual Freedom in the Third World. Until the undeveloped countries become developed countries, so called Universal Values of the Western Counties may best stand behind.
As Rodney King asked subsequent to Los Angeles Black American riots a decade ago, “can we all get along?” Would it be possible for us to be magnanimous to the extent that we ourselves would suffer instead of making the others, even errant others suffer? One man did exactly that a couple of thousands years ago. Once I happened to view a part of a wonderful, beautiful film based on IRA. The young Irish Catholic, a would be terrorist argue with his mother in favour of taking up arms. “What else can we do if our grievances aren’t redressed?” “Suffer it”.
Other than your mother & your father there was only one man who had the right to say that. That was our man in Nazareth. Those people who had him killed are still waiting for their saviour: Waiting for Godot. It’s 2001. If Ten Commandments aren’t good enough, what is the option? To go with the blood & thunder, sword & fire, chaos & mutinies? So we will continue to have Million Mutinies.
The again, perhaps another man could say the same: the man who stood on the path of column of battle tanks in the Tiananmen Square during the civil protests of 1989, The silent hero is the icon of the century; a man standing down a tyrannical regime; frail flesh against unbending steel, mortality against on rush of terror, the very stuff of courage. That is the Right Stuff, indeed.
“There is no way that you can create a just society by wounding people, maiming people, and killing people”
Former IRA terrorist, the master bomber Shane Paul O’Doherty, renouncing violence
bunpeiris

Duties Vs Responsibilities: Law & Order Vs Justice 8 Protection of the weakest

1.There is technical Progress, but this is not the same thing as the progress of humanity as such. In every civilization this process is very complex. In western civilization-which used to be called Western-Christian but now might better be called Western-Pagan-along with the development of intellectual life &amp; science there has been a loss of serious moral basis of society.

During these 300 years of western civilization, there has been a sweeping away of duties &amp; an expansion of rights. But we have two lungs. You can’t breathe with just one lung &amp; not with the other. We must avail ourselves of rights &amp; duties in equal measure. And if this is not established by the law, if the law doesn’t oblige us to do those, then we have to control ourselves.

When Western society was established, it was based on the idea that each individual limited his own behaviors. Everyone understood what he could do &amp; what he could not do. The law itself did not restrain people. Since then, the only thing we have been developing is rights, rights, rights, rights at the expense of the duty.
Dissident Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Noble prize for Literature in 1970)

2. Solzhenitsyn & I differ most sharply over the defense of civil rights, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom to choose one’s country of residence, the openness of society.

For me, these rights constitute the basis for a fully human life &amp; for international security &amp; trust. I have no doubt whatsoever as to the value of defending specific individuals. Solzhenitsyn assigns only a secondary importance to human rights &amp; fears that concentrating on them may divert attention from what he sees as more important matters.
Father of Russian Nuclear Bomb, dissident writer Andrei Sakharov (Noble Prize for Peace in 1975

3. The words law &amp; order have so frequently been misused as an excuse for oppression that the very phrase has become suspect in countries which have known authoritarian rule. Some years ago, a prominent Burmese author wrote an article on law &amp; order as expressed by the official term “nyein-wut-pi-pyar”. One by one he analyzed the words, which liberally mean ‘quiet –crouched-crushed-flattened,’ &amp; concluded that the whole made for an undesirable state of affairs, one which militated against the emergence of an alert, energetic, progressive, citizenry.

There is no intrinsic virtue to law &amp; order unless ‘law’ is equated with justice &amp; ‘order” with the discipline of a people satisfied that justice has been done.

The Buddhist concept of law is based on “dhamma’, righteousness or virtue, not on the power to impose harsh &amp; inflexible rules on a defenseless people. The true measure of the justice of a system is the amount of protection it guarantee to the weakest
Aung San Suu Kyi (Noble Prize for peace in 1991)

Weep with these novels as if the reality itself wouldn’t do

Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

http://www.online-literature.com/hardy/tess_urbervilles

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

http://www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/les_miserables