Message 126/147
Date: 22-Oct-02 @ 06:43 PM -
RE: guns
Why do my priorities have to be either/or? You're making things black and white when they're not. Yes, I prefer to survive until I feel I've accomplished my purposes here on earth, one of which I do think is setting an example. I'm considered a pretty generous and honest person, which is at least the start of an example I'd like to set. I'm also responsible, and that means that if I did own a gun, which I don't at this time, I would own it responsibly and you wouldn't see me out acting like an idiot with it. If I needed to defend myself with my bare hands or whatever, I would do that too. At the same time, I'm aware that I won't live forever, and at some moment may decide NOT to defend myself, or I may realize I'm beat if it comes to that. Just cos I might want to have a gun doesn't mean I'm going to use it on every possible occasion. Now your equation seems to be, if you have a gun you can't be for higher consciousness, and that's just bullshit.
Let me digress a moment and try to make this clearer for Psylichon. You're interested in compassion, I imagine. Maybe it's really non-violence you're about, but I'm going to talk about compassion because I think that's prolly the highest value there is. If someone brutally attacks me, I personally don't think it's necessarily compassionate to just let that happen and let that person continue being a brutal attacker. The type of compassion I'm aware of is being honest with people, and if they're doing something fucked up I am not going to smooth things over for them and make it easier to continue to be that way. This is my decision, in the moment, based on whatever happens. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll try to kill the person but fer damn sure I'm going to obstruct the progress of their fucked-up behavior. And yes, I do believe that is compassion and caring for others. I'm also caring for the next person that the aggresive person might consider attacking.
The point is, if more people in general would use their goddam sensibilities, we wouldn't be so violent and cruel, we would find better ways to vent or transform our aggression, and whether or not anyone has weapons wouldn't really be an issue. And I'll point out just one more time: making guns illegal would NOT make them DISAPPEAR, so all those arguments that go "this gun-related incident would never have happened if guns were illegal" really don't make sense. The guns in many of those situations are illegal anyway.
Hehe, have fun in SoCal, Luciferanda & Influx. :-)