Hollywood, California, is my spiritual hometown. I actually grew up in three other communities in California, but it hardly seems to matter which three. How could my heart take root anywhere under the tyranny of American public schooling?
I don’t have to work for a living. After my father died in December 1997, my family and I won a legal settlement.
The Blog About
Nothing: Sudheer of Hyderabad, India, is a big fan of Playboy and an
even bigger fan of Seinfeld. In this blog, he composes humorous
dialogues for the show’s characters.
Hit & Run: the official
blog of my other favorite magazine, Reason: Free Minds and Free
Markets; winner
of the 2005 Weblog Award for Best Group Blog; “the best
libertarian blog” according to the October 2005 issue of
Playboy.
Scoobie Davis Online: a self-described “filmmaker, surfer, and party crasher” in southern California. He’s also a Playboy fan, a left-leaning political gadfly, and a connoisseur of Jack T. Chick religious tracts.
The Search for
Health in Decadence: poetry and philosophical writings of Will, who has
engaged me in lengthy, good-natured debate through comments on my
blog.
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven
Pinker. With stylistic flair, a Harvard cognitive scientist
refutes myths about human nature underlying a multitude of political
beliefs—including many of those that would either favor or
oppose the sexual revolution.
God in Popular Culture by Andrew M. Greeley. A liberal Catholic
priest sees quasi-Christian messages of grace abounding in the
allegedly soulless realm of commercial pop culture. For all I know,
Greeley is not necessarily a Playboy fan. But his
interpretation of Madonna’s song “Like a Virgin” has
influenced my impression of Playboy. (In case anyone wonders, my religious heritage is Lutheran on my father’s side and secularist on my mother’s.)
Obviously, and for the same reasons, my question makes no more sense than Noam Chomsky’s inspired sentence-as-thought-experiment Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. But the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 forces me to think about it seriously as a U.S. citizen and a human being.
Christianity, Islam, and (by interpretation) the Bhagavad Gita have all sometimes made philosophically sophisticated cases for the possibility of just warfare. But let’s face something unpleasant about that: Whenever said possibility is conceded, the untangling of the legitimate moral questions surrounding a given act of war can sometimes last for generations on both sides of the conflict. Worse yet, the questions can arise over a massive range of military, political, technological, and diplomatic circumstances. Much of my earlier respect for Abraham Lincoln has been lost to the fact that he authorized the federal government’s first draft, which is slavery whether anyone dare call it that. And if President Truman can be grilled for lack of imagination and integrity in fighting the bloodthirsty Japanese, why not hold Lincoln to the same standard in fighting slavery?
Absolute pacifism is not the only answer, but difficult questions are the only alternative to absolute pacifism.
These excerpts from a 2005 BBC documentary series on World War II make the Hiroshima question as philosophically bewildering as anything, which probably means they answer my question about as well as anything:
Brandon left this comment at August 14, 2007 9:21 AM
Living peacefully definitely is something that takes slow, meticulous consideration. I do not support war in any form. However, I cannot and willonot say that I am nonviolent. I am anti-aggression. But I believe infighting back when someone is at your throat. As June Jordan said- "I am not wrong, wrong is not my name, my name is my own my own my own and I can't tell you who in the hell set things up like this but I can tell you that from now on in my self-determination and in my simple daily and nightly resistance it may very well cost you your life." My quote="Castration is the key to our liberation."
Brandon left this comment at August 14, 2007 9:21 AM
