Theos-Talk Archives (June 1997 Message tl00276)

On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Patrick Alessandra Jr. wrote:
>      I will look into putting together the exoteric confirming info,
> although I believe that if the stats in any well-researched book were
> combined appropriately it could be shown (as stats can be combined in
> many ways)...particularly if in the assessment terrorist violence is
> included.   However the UN's stats would I expect be skewed toward their
> desires as to how to change the world.  There are many ways of gathering
> stats and setting criteria.
	*All* stats will to some degree reflect the opinions of the
gatherers. Are you saying that you have some that are absolutely
"objective"? You don't think stats gathered in America by the American
government will not be as "skewed" as UN stats?
	And the inclusion of terrorism will do very little to help your
case. Terrorism is mainly a *political* tactic - designed to cause public
attention to be manipulated. The actual deaths from it are minimal. More
people were killed in America by drunk drivers last *month* than were
killed by terrorism in all of western Europe during all of last year.

>           Rather than statistical arguments which can be massaged in
> many ways the arms argument is one of essential inainable principle.
> More to the point is not UK but Europe...Bosnia is a perfect example of
> what happens when arms are controlled and people are unable to defend
> themselves.
	Is not extending the sample set to include a clearly anomolous
nation to make your point not a wee bit of that "massaging" of stats? Why
wouldn't Japan - where virtually no one is permitted to carry guns, and
that has extremely low crime rates - also make a perfect example?

	I'm sorry but this whole discussion seems slightly bizarre when I
step back from it - to follow a chain of logic that concludes that when a
nation is finally armed to the teeth ... and almost every citizen has a
weapon - is actually some mark of *spiritual stature*, some ideal that is
a *good*, something to strive for .... well, I guess we've just thrown out
Christ, and Buddha, and Gandhi, and the Dali Lama, and in fact the whole
tenor of most of the greatest teachers our race has ever known.
	I've never owned a weapon, and never will. Curiously, I've never
needed one either ... even in Detroit. Intuition has kept me perfectly
safe,but if it came down to it, I would die before I killed. I could
handle death ... what's one life in a long chain? But I could not live
with the notion that I took a human life .. regrdless of the
justifications its possible to construct for such an act.
	"Spiritual evolution", (IMO) is a state in which a population has
become so generally appalled at the thought of violence, weapons, and the
glamour of the attacking/defending modality (generated by the brain stem,
not higher thought) that no one is armed, and no one feels the need to be.
The ideal is *not* a state wherein criminals are as full of fear as the
rest of the citizenry because *everyone's* ready to shoot.
								-JRC