Thoughts on Atwood's discussion of debt
By John Taylor; 2009 Jan 12, 13 Sharaf, 165 BE
While in Toronto this past weekend I finished Margaret Atwood's latest book on debt, Payback. The little scenario that she suggest in the following passage about forgiveness knocked me for a moral loop, especially after reading Comenius's definition of politics as peacemaking.
"Now take a deep breath, close your eyes, and try the following exercise in historical revisionism. It's the eleventh of September 2001. After two planes have flown into them, the Twin Towers have collapsed in billows of smoke and fire. Vengeful messages have been disseminated by al-Qaeda. The president of the United States goes on international television and says,
"`We have suffered a grievous loss -- a blow has been struck at us that was motivated by an obsessive desire to harm us. We realize that this was the work of a small group of fanatics. Other nations might bomb the stuffing out of the civilian population where those fanatics are at present located, but we recognize the futility of such an action. Nor will we accuse any bystander nation of having been involved. We realize that acts of vengeance recoil upon the heads we do not wish to perpetuate a chain reaction of revenge. Therefore we will forgive.'
"Just imagine the impact of taking such a position, not that there was a snowball's chance in Hell of this ever happening. Now imagine how much different the world would have been today if that position had in fact been taken. No ongoing Iraq war. No impasse in Afghanistan. And above all, no ballooning and ruinous and nation weakening and out-of-control big fat American debt." (Margaret Atwood, Payback, Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, Anansi, Toronto, 2008, pp. 160-161)
The job of politicians is to make peace. Instead the level of discourse sinks to that of an unsupervised schoolyard. Leaders have vengeful attitudes, which vent in infighting, bullying and squabbling while precious lives and trillions of dollars are wasted. Atwood, the novelist, portrays beautifully what might have been if only one man or one nation had seen it in their hearts to forgive the 9-11 atrocity. Instead they lashed back in hatred and revenge, perpetuating a blood feud that can only get worse before it gets better.
Thinking about this, I snagged the following quote from Baha'u'llah. I cannot resist bringing it up here again. "How often have things been simple and easy of accomplishment, and yet most men have been heedless, and busied themselves with that which wasteth their time!" (Epistle, 138) I should memorize that. Although it was written in reference to the language barrier, it certainly describes the problem of unforgiving, un-peaceful political leaders.
I think future historians will click their tongues in disapproval of how most North Americans waste their lives watching sports and idle, useless preoccupations while millions die of starvation and penury. At the same time the amount of money and knowledge has vastly increased, making a solution, in the words of Baha'u'llah, "simple and easy of accomplishment." And the worst of all are us men of North America. Our abdication of our sacred responsibility as world citizens degrades the public sphere and allows plutocrats and pollutocrats to do their will. In the meantime war and war spirit is spreading unchecked.
Another event last week primed me for appreciating what Atwood says here and throughout her book on debts and forgiveness.
For the past week I have been watching the second season of "Star Trek Enterprise" on DVD. Enterprise, for the non-trekkies out there, was the last series in Paramount Studio's Star Trek science fiction franchise. I used up every moment of my spare time absorbed in the Star Trek universe. This series was made not too long after the 9-11 attacks and the invasions prompted by them. I am an old Star Trek fan, missed most of the newer series after Star Trek TNG, when I gave up television completely.
One episode of this Enterprise series (set chronologically before the first Star Trek series) prepared me to appreciate Margaret Atwood's scenario above. It is called "Dawn" and is a clever rewrite of one of the oldest and most rerun episodes in the first Star Trek series (the Wiki article says that it resembles the 1985 movie Enemy Mine, but that probably ripped off the earlier Star Trek episode). It involved a staged battle in a rocky, desert planet between Captain Kirk and a rival captain of a lizard-like race called, as I recall, the Gorn. In it Kirk somehow scrabbles together sticks and powder and makes a blunderbuss that he uses to blow his opponent away.
The new series poses a similar situation where the engineer of the Enterprise, named Trip, is attacked in a shuttlecraft and stranded on a remote planet. His attacker is a member of an utterly antipathetic member of an unknown, hostile alien race, the Arkonians, has just discovered by the Enterprise. Neither officer understands the other's language -- unusual for Star Trek. Most species speak American accented English, even in the farthest reaches of the galaxy.
Anyway, the two enemies are stranded and must share and cooperate in order to repair their radio beacon and get rescued. Trip is captured and tied up by the alien, a formidable fighter. After some attempts at communicating with gestures, he escapes. A long fight ensues and after a hair-raising struggle Trip finally subdues him. He tries to establish communication so as to be rescued, but as repairs continue he has no option but to get help. He releases his prisoner in hopes of building enough trust to persuade him to cooperate. They both have to drag a beacon up a high mountain nearby in order to avoid interference.
But every time he is released, the suspicious prisoner immediately attacks him. They fight more, Trip wins, barely, and subdues him. Again he releases the opponent, they fight, he wins, barely, and subdues the alien, and so forth. Myself, I would have been worried at these close victories, but Trip takes an "is that all you got?" attitude to the confrontation.
The story is cleverly told, as I said, because there comes a point where the viewer thinks, what if I were in that situation? For me the situation is clear. I would just forget about making friends, kill the Arkonian and try to drag the beacon up the hill on my own. But Trip perseveres. His scrappy attitude finally gains respect and he cooperates. After much travail they succeed. The Arkonian does not have sweat glands and Trip saves his life as they wait to be rescued.
In the end the two are grudging friends, and relations between their races improve more in a day than the Vulcans had managed in a century. This is Star Trek at its best. Like Atwood's forgiveness scenario for President Bush, you think: "It is utterly fantastic but would it not be wonderful if such forgiveness and tolerance could happen? Imagine if our leaders were able to jack themselves up to this high moral plane! Imagine forgiving and even loving our enemies!" What a wonderful world that would be. Here is how Atwood introduces the above scenario in Payback,
"You may think that all of this forgiveness stuff is watery-eyed idealism of the clap-if-you-believe-in-fairies variety, but if the forgiveness is sincerely given and sincerely received -- both parts are admittedly difficult -- it does appear to have a liberating effect. As we've noted, the desire for revenge is a heavy chain, and revenge itself leads to a chain reaction. Forgiveness cuts the chain."
Imagine what a stance of forgiveness would have cost an American President after the 9-11 attack. He would have faced a flood of criticism from those unfamiliar with the admonition of Jesus to forgive wrongs done to us seven times seventy times (or, as Atwood puts it, less mathematically, forgive "as many times as it takes;" you know, like Trip did in Dawn... ).
But would the fear and sense of insecurity of Americans after the attack have been worse than it was, or better, if their leader forgave? If only they had had the discipline to shut down the ill feeling, prejudice and backbiting, I think they would have felt far safer in the long run. Consider the definition of security that Baha'u'llah gives in the Words of Wisdom,
"The essence of true safety is to observe silence, to look at the end of things and to renounce the world." (Tablets, 155)
And what about the crash of those precious markets that Bush put before everything else? What about the massive debt he ran up, and the frittering away of billions of dollars on military spending all these years? The fact is that this is no loss at all. Consider the following words of wisdom, defining what exactly wealth is:
"The essence of wealth is love for Me; whoso loveth Me is the possessor of all things, and he that loveth Me not is indeed of the poor and needy. This is that which the Finger of Glory and Splendour hath revealed."
Money, be it a dime or trillions of dollars, is not wealth unless it is somehow connected with the love of God. So, good riddance to all that filthy money. It was valueless anyway. We need to learn how to make pure money. So let us start by forgiving one another. Let us walk the paths of peace. Let us make what good we have into real wealth by loving our Creator and spending our all on the poor among our neighbours. That is the only way to cancel our real debt.
"The beginning of magnanimity is when man expendeth his wealth on himself, on his family and on the poor among his brethren in his Faith."
John Taylor
email: badijet@gmail.com
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