Ooops... I hit "submit" for adding documentation for the information in my posting: All the material comes from the past week of postings on a list-serve called Sister-L, a list for women religious and scholars in the field of women religious. A group of nuns had organized a novena (9 days of prayer) for Central and South America, focused particularly on the goal of having the School of the Americas closed. It is a military school financed by the U.S. government; graduates of this school comprise some of the worst murderers in Central/South American history.

One last piece of info on the subject--doesn't sound like slave behaviour to me, but maybe I'm biased:

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious have passed a resolution of commitment to Closing the School of the Americas for the past two sessions. It is now a standing resolution until this issue is resolved. Religious congregations of the United States are praying, writing letters to their congress persons and making public their commitment to close the School of the Americas with some even being arrested and imprisoned.

Margo

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2000

Answers

I may be biased by having read Nietzsche after the lecture on it, but I must say, I was very sympathetic to his point. I'm not sure he necissarily would have been displeased by this man. If Neitzsche did feel that creative people were "Warriors" in a sense then I think he would have praised it, this is, from what I can tell, a beautifully subtle protest, no one can really forget as long as this man tends that garden. As for the priest, if that isn't a moder warrior I don't know what is. What I thought Neitzsche despised was mostly complacency. I saw it as a critique of false Judaism (Christianity) becuase what he really seemd to be trashing was the easy way out. Letting someone else do your thinking for you. I saw his big beef as being that he thought that the Rabis and even Jesus were trying to impose a view on people, not that I believe Jesus meant for that to happen, but how many "Christians" just take it at face value? How much harm has been done by trying to take the Bible literally? I stopped going to Curch because it makes me sick, these people sit back and think that if they give a little to the poor they'll go to heaven because the bible says to give to the poor, but then they turn around and use it to justify so much hate, they're not just going to heaven, they are better people than the rest of us. For the most part those people sit in that room for an hour a week, and they are spoon fed. It's like we're still stuck back in the days where we unwashed masses couldn't read and we have to have it interpreted for us. How can you live in a truly Christian way if you can't extrapolate from current data? If you never get the underlying point, because you never bother to read to deeply. The kicker is that these aren't bad people, they don't mean to be clueless they just are. They truly belive they are in touch with something, and maybe they are, I've been in that room, I can feel something there, and then it's gone, I don' t know how else to explain it, they touch it and then let it go. I don't mean to trash Cristianity in specific, it's in most of the organized religion I've encountered. When I first left Catholicism I had a real fasination with magic, I read a lot books (this is my problem, read much, do little, which in some ways misses the point entirly, but at least I know it!) and the curch could never really give me a good answer to why it was wrong. A while later, feeling a lack of religion, I met with a lady about joining the curch of Gaia. Having recently read a book on Chaos magic, I asked her about it, and whether they're were limits to what we could practice (it being primarily a wicken orginization). What she told is to this day one of the greatest disapointments of my life, Chaos magic is wrong. It's immoral because it is immoral. Period. This may seem to have no point, but basically it's this : I sympathise with Nieztsche because I know how he feels. These people who think that you can just find religion, just a simple as that, who see finding God as an event not a path make me angry. That's what I saw in this "Warrior" a quester, a searcher, someone who makes mistakes so they know what one feels like. I think it all stems back to my view that we are all here to learn lessons. How much do you learn by fearing to do anything? Maybe I'm missing the point, I haven't speant that much time reading Nietzsche, but the difference i saw in his warrior is that they were out to expereince life. If we were just here to be good little boys and girls why did we ever leave the garden of Eden? I thought we had to get further from God to really understand God when we came back. We're growing and learning, and I think on some levels that organized religion takes that from some people. It's too easy to think you've found the answer. I'm not really sure there's any point to heaven if you've never been to hell. I'm not suggesting that anyone go out and murder people just to see what it feels like, but why do recovered alcoholics make the best councilors? Another long winded example from my own life, sex. It's the best one I can think of. My catholic upbrining said no pre- marial sex. Ok fine, but I didn't understand this rule, and I broke it. Now I understand it. THe rule was there to help save me the hell I went through when I broke up with that first guy. I would have expereinced less pain if I'd just gone with the rule in the first place, but would I be better off? I don't think I would, I learned a lot from that experience and I wouldn't change it for the world. And that's what I empathise with. I wasn't a slave I bodly went where I wasn't supposed to go and I weathered the storm and here I am a better person for it. That's how I see the warrior, and I suppose myself, I can never seem to take the easy way, if there's a mistake to make I'll probably make it, and I'll keep marching on my quest for the point of it all. I'm probably drawing a lot out of this, and I think that maybe that's what Nietzsche missed, empathy, I think there would be a lot less "evilness" to his warrior with empathy. On a side note, I really think that's what the world needs in order to change. I think one person sacrificing that piece of themselves to enter into the system and try to change it from the inside is of more use than a hundered self-richous guys with signs on sticks. Maybe they're pure and unblemished, but what did they accomplish? Yeah, maybe that person has been tainted by the system and has had to do some ugly things to climb the ladder, but how much more can they do from the inside, trying to force it to bend to they're view instead of beating pointlessly with a stick? They may not have that pure beauty of the sign waver, but they have a strength that runs so much deeper. That to me is the warrior, and I'll take that roll any day. Wow, I'm not sure where all that came from, or where it's going, but there it is. Yeah... Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about.... Then again maybe I just have a lot of pent up agression...

Isis

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2000