How To Counter ISIS
Sunday, November 22, 2015
THE SPLENDID OF LIFE
(and
How To Counter ISIS)
By
Francis William Bessler
11/22/2015
As Tom, one of my idealist characters in a philosophical novel I wrote earlier in life, says: Life - unbelievably simple, though mankind generally makes it inexplicably hard. If you want to follow his reasoning, go to Amazon.com and put in "Francis Bessler" in the search bar. Then review the five books I have available there and pick the one called FIVE HEAVEN ON EARTH STORIES. Tom is a character in a story called ALL'S WELL WITH THE WORLD - one of five philosophically bent tales of that "storied" volume that I published earlier this year via Create Space, an affiliate of Amazon.com.
Why, you may ask, do Tom (and I) believe that Life is unbelievably simple? Well maybe "we" should have said that "life is evidently right" or some such. By that I mean that when Tom & I look at life, we can see no "evidence" that it is somehow wrong. If we can find no evidence that it is somehow wrong, then rationally speaking, it must be "right." Right? If life is "right," then we should find no fault with it. If we cannot find any fault with life, then we are fools to act like life is anything other than "splendid."
The problem with the greater world, however, as I see it, is that humans have assumed - almost from the beginning - that somehow life itself is faulty. Again, if you look at it for what it really is and do not approach it from some other way, then you will not find any "evidence" to support a claim that life is lacking.
What about illness and death? Is that not "evidence" enough that life is somehow lacking? Not when you look at "all of life" because all of life suffers - if you want to call it that - from illness and death. My argument, though, is that neither illness nor death is "evidence" that life is lacking. The way I see it, as human beings, we have assumed that illness and death are somehow out of order and that "splendid life" should not be subject to either one. Thus, we have created various doctrine that assumes that a "splendid life" can exist - perfect in that neither illness nor death resides within it. Then we have postured that only those can "achieve" such a perfect life by first, damning the life we have, and then looking forward to a "splendid life" somewhere else - or sometime else.
Accordingly, many of us live in Paradise and really do have "splendid lives" by virtue of the fact that life itself is really splendid - but we often walk right through life ignoring the splendid that actually exists. From there, we often justify for whatever reason, that we can just "dump life." And not only can we "dump life," we are often commanded to do the same.
Thus we "justify" martyrdom as a way to reach out to achieve a more perfect life somewhere else. If life is not splendid as it is, then who should care if we are killed or kill ourselves to be rid of a "non-perfect" life? After all, if life itself is not splendid as it is, why not do away with life in whatever manner we might choose to position ourselves to go to some other fantasy land and there attain a real "splendid" life?
I do believe that is the basis of the current ISIS phenomenon. Many within it are absolutely convinced that another life exists somewhere else that is "perfect" or "splendid," but to attain such a "perfect" life, the life we have must be obliterated. Thus, gullible suicide bombers willingly attach bombs to themselves to kill - first themselves - and then others as a product of their own murder. Why not? The ISIS mentality is: hey, let me do away with this non-splendid life - whether it be yours or mine. Murder - of myself or you - is simply a way to be rid of a non-splendid life and thereby "prove" to some fantasy benefactor that I really do believe that life itself is worthless so that my fantasy benefactor can "reward" me with a truly "splendid" life.
What, then, should we do to "counter" ISIS? My answer: deprive it of unhappy recruits by filling the airwaves - including social media - with a message that life is indeed splendid because there is no evidence it is not splendid. We should ask ourselves: where is the evidence that life itself is not splendid here and now; and furthermore, where is there any evidence that life someplace else might be more splendid?
But ISIS is not alone in its offering that life as it is somehow lacks, is it? Look about you - and there is plenty of "doctrine" that tells us to look elsewhere for the meaning of life. To really defeat ISIS, then, we have to begin with ourselves - because ISIS is only one font of many that dares to disdain the actual "splendid" of life.
Or so, I Believe!