bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2006-08-19 04:06 pm
bigmacbear) wrote2006-08-19 04:06 pm
Entry tags:
Not good vs. evil, but evil vs. evil
I just finished viewing the first of three hours (!) of The Power of Nightmares, a 2004 BBC 2 documentary, which was linked in the comments to a post cited by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
poodler.1
I came away with a new perspective of how both sides in this War on Terror, the neoconservatives as well as the Islamists, deny reality in a quest to bring moral purity to the world. The common element of both the neocon and Islamist movements is that both do not trust the vast majority of people to behave in the common interest of society when given the freedom to behave as they wish, and so a myth must be created to wrest that freedom from the people.
This denial of reality and myth-building is shaping up not so much as the war between good and evil, but a battle between evil forces, each trying to stamp out what is good and right with the world to substitute their twisted notions of righteousness and take ultimate control.
My take is that the best purpose of religion is to convince people that their own interests are best served when they serve others, as in the Golden Rule (which is not "He who owns the gold makes the rules"). This has since time immemorial been twisted to serve dictators great and small. If that twisted mess is all that religion is nowadays, I have no problem with chucking it all and starting over. Life is too short to let clerics and politicians ruin it for everyone.
Suffer the little children indeed.
1I found the site that republished the documentary, One Planet One Nation, and did some research, and it appears that it is run by a non-profit corporation by the same name. Its domain is registered in Kelowna, BC, Canada, but its hosting provider is in Texas. Given the nature of the Internet and low-cost hosting, I find this not at all suspicious, and the documentary comes from an impeccable source (the original credits and copyright notice are preserved).
poodler.1I came away with a new perspective of how both sides in this War on Terror, the neoconservatives as well as the Islamists, deny reality in a quest to bring moral purity to the world. The common element of both the neocon and Islamist movements is that both do not trust the vast majority of people to behave in the common interest of society when given the freedom to behave as they wish, and so a myth must be created to wrest that freedom from the people.
This denial of reality and myth-building is shaping up not so much as the war between good and evil, but a battle between evil forces, each trying to stamp out what is good and right with the world to substitute their twisted notions of righteousness and take ultimate control.
My take is that the best purpose of religion is to convince people that their own interests are best served when they serve others, as in the Golden Rule (which is not "He who owns the gold makes the rules"). This has since time immemorial been twisted to serve dictators great and small. If that twisted mess is all that religion is nowadays, I have no problem with chucking it all and starting over. Life is too short to let clerics and politicians ruin it for everyone.
Suffer the little children indeed.
1I found the site that republished the documentary, One Planet One Nation, and did some research, and it appears that it is run by a non-profit corporation by the same name. Its domain is registered in Kelowna, BC, Canada, but its hosting provider is in Texas. Given the nature of the Internet and low-cost hosting, I find this not at all suspicious, and the documentary comes from an impeccable source (the original credits and copyright notice are preserved).
VI