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Entry: When in Doubt . . . Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/when_in_doubt#6442 Post contents: Scott; I grew up in New Jersey - and in the old New jersey, before it became a gentrified bedroom community for Wall Street stock brokers. it taught you a few things. One of them is this: The Sixth Commandment does not read: "Thou shalt not kill... unless ya really gotta". And the reason for that is that *everyone* who kills does so armed with a perfectly good and sensible reason why they really gotta. Mobsters, street thugs, tyrants of all flavor - all of them have a good reason in their corner when they kill or hurt their fellow human beings. And it all makes perfect sense once it's explained to you. Unless of course there is *no* good reason. None at all. One day, sitting in a booth in the Bendix Diner, where, in the early morning, the air smells of home fries and diesel fuel, my father told me: "Son, everybody has a story that'll make ya cry". By this he meant that, as the Buddhists say, to be in human form is to suffer. But some will use their suffering as a justification to visit all sorts of injustices upon their fellow human beings. This is not to say that their suffering is not real or genuinely pitiable - usually it is. But it is an all too human temptation, and the road to terrible moral injustice, to make one's own suffering the center of one's universe so much that it justifies harming others. And it is unforgivable moral laxness for one to accept this coming from another person. On one level it may seem heartless not to accept it, but on another level, it provides evil, which always stands by, hammer in hand, looking for a weak spot in the foundations of goodness which it can strike, with just such a striking point. These women who have been raped have a story that'll make ya cry. Then again, so does every women walking into every abortion clinic in the world. So does everybody in prison for visiting violence and chaos upon common folk. Just ask them. Hackensack is a fine place to learn the great moral truths which govern the human condition. Sent at: 2008 11 20