Blog 288 – 05.05.2016

One of the Presidential Candidates was recently compared to Satan by someone of note in his own party. I do not agree with many of the things Ted Cruz says and does but I do not think he is a bad man. I really do not believe in an Enemy that is almost as powerful as Good.  I really do not think in terms of good versus evil.

In the movie The Usual Suspects one of the leading characters says, “The greatest trick the Devil ever played was getting people to believe that he does not exist.” I with my slightly skewed view of looking a things believe that there is only God or Good. Anything else is but an illusion or misunderstanding. I hear parents calling their small children “bad” and shutter. “Children may not always obey but children will listen.” Give them a reputation to live up to not down to.

We all act “bad” from time to time. Judging and condemning others for behavior we do not like is some of the worst behavior there is. And I know some of us were taught and believe “Spare the rod and spoil the child” but in my mind that’s just another thing the writers of the Bible got wrong. If people who were beaten as a children turn out to be upstanding citizens it is in spite of not because of beatings. In most cases children and wives who are beaten have emotional scars that go even deeper than the bruises and bloody marks caused by fists and whatever instrument of torture is at hand i.e. belts, electrical chords, wooden spoons or the like.

Behavior that is produced out of fear is seldom without other problems. Like the “magic pills” advertised each evening there are often disastrous side effects mental emotional, and even physical. I don’t expect to win a lot of converts. I hear over and over “The problem with kids these days is that they weren’t paddled, whipped, spanked enough.” These folks also think the answer to killing is to kill the killers. Violence always begets more violence. As the great Vietnam era peace song lamented, “When will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn? Not yet it seems for we are again sending “Advisers” to help train some of our brothers to kill others of our brothers.” They in turn will kill others. Someone wrote that Jesus’ one solitary life affected the life of man on this earth more than all the navies that ever sailed, all the armies that ever fought. The same could be said of others who preached and lived nonviolence no matter what the cost:  Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela to name but a few.

Some years ago I read a management book called The Ten Minute Manager where the idea was to catch your employees doing something that was a behavior you wanted them to repeat and reward them for it. Coaches who throw chairs and break the bones of their players might produce winning teams but it is in spite of those archaic and primitive motivational techniques not because of them. Managers who continually berate and verbally abuse their staff and employees are hard to work for and their business success, if they have any, is again in spite of not because of their management style.

I don’t believe people who beat their children, berate their teams or employees if they have coaching or management responsibilities, are evil. They are just misinformed. This is just my opinion but one I hold rather strongly. Try to convince me otherwise by more than anecdotal evidence or we can just agree to disagree.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White