Letters To The Editor: November – December 2004
Thanks
Dear Carol,
Came across your site (through one of my many serendipitous web journeys) and love it. Such a treasure of good information and decency. Thank you!
A. Brady
Canada
Animal Elders
Dear Carol,
Over and over, I hear misguided individuals describe their pet's wasting away to death as if it is more spiritual than euthanizing her by a qualified, caring veterinarian. I finally had to speak out when I read Nancy Aronie's piece (“On Cats, Mothers & Death”) in your July/August 2004 issue. The notion that a purring cat is always a contented cat must not go unaddressed!
I was under this common misconception myself until my now deceased cat was in the hospital and I remarked that she must be feeling okay since she was purring. The vet informed me that purring does not always mean something good. Cats purr when they are in pain, fear, anxiety, and distress.
Being a web designer, I researched it on the Internet and found countless sites confirming this fact. The hard part is having the inner strength and wisdom to end the beloved animal's suffering. At least our animal companions have the option of euthanasia that suffering humans do not. It takes a great deal of strength to help the beloved pet in this transition. However, if there is enough non-ego type love for the animal, one will find the strength to put the animal first and do right by her.
I hope you will publish this information so that other well-meaning pet guardians will be forewarned and have time to prepare for the likely event that one day they will have the opportunity to perform a very selfless act to facilitate the animal's transition out of pain. It is very hard to let go of a loved one but you may just find your pet thanking you from the other side…my little girl did.
In gratitude,
Sunnie Reardon
Online submission
America in the Dark Ages
To the Editor,
Terrorism is a tool. It is not something that is a tangible entity and so therefore one cannot wage a conventional war against it. By doing so it enables the people in power to fight a war for whatever reason they choose to with the outward appearance of moral justification to the general population. This is so because of the harsh connotations associated with terrorism and the fear it invokes in people. By playing off of people’s fears it is letting terrorists win and by fighting a conventional war it makes the conditions that produce terror in the first place more prevalent. This is a vicious cycle and it must be broken somehow.
The way you fight terrorism is by making the underlying motivations for it null and void. You do this through the principles of what made this country great to begin with — egalitarian compromise and open debate. This is the complete anti-thesis of how this “War on Terror” is being fought and it almost seems intentionally so.
Terrorist do not fight because they hate our freedom or for any other jingoistic factor. The reason why they attack us or other groups of people is because their social, political and economic needs are not being met. People are inherently good, including terrorists, and will not fight unless they have a legitimate reason to do so. This is just human nature. Usually when a group resorts to violence it is because one or more of their basic human rights are being violated.
I am not trying to justify terrorism. I only ask these questions to try to understand the root causalities of terror with an effort to try to rid the world of them. People will not fight if they have decent paying jobs and are not poor. People will not fight if they have food in their stomachs. People will not fight if they have an opportunity for social advancement. People will not fight if they have an education. People will not fight if they have a decent environment to raise a family. People will not fight if their land is not forcefully taken from them. And people will not fight if their land is not under occupation.
Making these conditions manifest in the world is the real way you fight terror. By doing what we are doing in this country, it will make these conditions worse and it will only increase terror for years to come. We are losing this war because we are going about fighting it in the wrong way and we are less safe three years after 9/11 for doing it. What kind of a world will our children have if the people currently in power have their way by waging a hundred year war on terror? Will it be a world worth living in?
The way that we are fighting terrorism is making the world a less safe place to live in. The only way to stop terrorism by a conventional war would be to take away the basic human rights that we Americans hold dear to the point that it would be a complete contradiction to the very principles we are fighting for. The real way you fight terrorism is to cure the underlying causes by wiping out poverty and hunger. A global redistribution of wealth is called for and it is the only way this world will last and get past the Dark Age that it has currently found itself in.
Sincerely,
Joseph J. Hrevnack
Stratford, NJ
Our Better Half
Dear Carol Bedrosian,
I am quite ignorant and detail-lacking, but the terror and sadness and faraway look of one Sudanese little girl consumes my heart. We — the so-called developed and civilized world — can we leap into and experience a death rattling reality such as Darfur, Sudan? A hellhole, 30,000 killed, millions fleeing to camps, girls as young as eight years old viewed as slaves are sexually mutilated by “happy singing rapists.” Sudan, the largest nation in Africa, lacking water and arable land, its recent war toll about 2 1/2 million, second only in the slaughter stats of 3 million humans in the Congolese.
The Sudanese people and all their African neighbors, colonized and now cursed by the aftermath fate of this brutal century and a millennium where their traditional heritage and time-honored ways saw torrents of change-exploitation-oppression-slavery. Here in Africa, the epicenter of suffering seems inexhaustible and unimaginable, better forgotten. As a suffering human (as all humans I think are), each of my suffering heartbeats is consumed by the expression of that Sudanese little girl. Unreality perhaps, but I feel tied, bound, as if her experience and the multitudes just like her were my experience. As I am a part of her so faraway, closer by, I am a part of you and you are a part of me. We come from each other, and furthermore, we are a part of Africa and our multi roots have African origins too.
We are each other’s, and as an all-included earthbody we are co-partners in taking responsibility for healing, rehabilitation and victory in Africa. And the same goes for saving the Earth and healing all and every of Earth’s children.
Healers, disciples of faith traditions, transformers, bold and big dreamers, rebirthers, uplifters, servants of the Earth. We are that in potential. I see no other way out, but in a new time, the extending hand of help and hospitality is the first order of business. Learning new survival behaviors, we must disarm our armored mind. Non-violence is humankind’s necessary mutation. Dialogue through patient empathizing leads to understanding, while name calling, blaming and labeling leads to a discourse surrounded by enemies.
To save our skins and save our sacred Earth we must learn to rediscover our better half and angel side of our nature and employ it generously and forgivingly. To live in order to give back our gifts to a world bereft of a moral imagination would challenge every world citizen to strike for the good of a higher purpose.
Richard Paul Baydin
Newton, MA
More Letters Please!
Dear Readers,
Please send your letters to Spirit of Change. Share your thoughts and opinions about things you’ve read or seen on our pages, or send in other ideas and insights which might be appreciated by others. We all have jewels to share through words on paper. Brief is usually best! Email to: info@spiritofchange.org Thank you!
