h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Cass

I have just read (with some gremlins i this machine!) the above.
This PC is running verfy slowly a but like me.....

My first point is J.B Priestly and his view regarding 'christian civilization' which l believe is still to come.. No Christian country would enter any war because it completely goes against the teaching of Christ.

The real reasons for war are given in Scripture, and we do not (or it is useless to fight against flesh and blood) because others are not our enemy. We have more an enemy within ourselves if we listen and are directed by others without thought to our conciences.

The statement that war/is was seen as anyones 'finest hour' is imv topsy turvy. All men are diminished (though many are made rich or dead) because of such a failure of humanity.

Also mentioned is 'crisis in humanity' but that to me is the heart of the problem as l view it, from Adam and Eve to any war happening today. Either between individuals or nations.

Reading the piece above once again confirms my belief, that we can know very little about war or peace, until we understand that men are living under the influence and belief that man can make anything possible that he desires by gaining it through war.

History imv teaches us something that can not be ignored, that human nature does not change, if there is a desire not to see that anything requires changing. Not by war where the 'strongest' win for a moments victory.

I believe that wherever there was/is a war going on today (even those seen on the streets of any town/city) than it can be traced back to some unforgiven moment in history between waring nations.

The real war going on is within individuals that make up the masses.

It doesn't matter what the reasons given for peace may be, they will be overlooked throughout history in favour of war..And as l remember from my life in London that is like a red bus.....if you missed one..not to worry another will be along shortly.

I would like to add much more, but my energy is finite, l have a chronic illness, and can not get onto the computer every day.

Your study of history and the people who write it is very interesting, but l believe there is something missing from history and the people who write it...they forgo the power of the 'human condition' and the evil or the good it is possible to partake in.

You say your wife is French... for many years l read books on the French Resistance...what a tangled web of such bravery and self-sacrifice running alongside deceipt and self interest.

All made their choices with absolute certainty that they were doing the best thing, of course their reasons would have been very different.

Before l b egin m aking mor e mistakes, which l can see is happening. will close until l read the next chapter.

sunshineandshowers

Just a quick one..I have quickly skimmed through your post, but my computer broke down about 2 weeks ago, and I will not be back on line for the foreseeable future..

cass

sunshine and showers

There is much that I could say about your post but much of it is a statement of your beliefs, and you must be aware that there are Christians who would hold other beliefs.

From a purely historical point of view I was very interested in something that T.R. Glover wrote in his book about the Ancient World published in 1935, that I have quoted later on in this "TP", regarding the remarkable transformation that took place in the Roman Empire when Caesar Augustus totally changed the nature of the Roman Empire and established a great peace. This occurred in AD 28, which appears to have been not long before Jesus of Nazareth gave up carpentry and set out to spread the good news. His message involved encouraging the Jewish people not to think in terms of violent uprising and guerrilla resistance of the kind associated with the 'sicarii'; and moreover his attitudes to Pharisaical rules and refgulations that set the Jews apart from the Gentiles, and the famous parable of the Good Samaritan, all suggest that his message may well have been shaped by the particular "window of opportunity" presented by that Augustan Age.

It was an appropriate time to say "love thine enemy", which is not the same (though it now seems to be commonly treated us such) as saying "do not have enemies". And Jesus carefully avoided telling us what the Good Samaritan would have done had he arrived while the traveller was being beaten up and robbed. I was beaten up once and stuck to my principles of not responding with physical violence: on the other hand I was frequently in situations when I was "in loco parentis' when someone seemed likely to wish to attack, or did attack, one of my pupils. Then it was my clear duty to intervene one way or another.

The reality of life includes struggle, as Jesus said. "Those who are not for us are against us"..

And from what you have written before I understand that struggle/conflict/war was your chosen career- as was mine- Yours in nursing and mine in teaching.

I definitely encountered pupils who regarded it as their mission in life not only to resist any attempt to school them, but also to sabotage the educational process alltogether.. But this was in some ways a natural reaction when the "country" is a State. Because States are created largely to deal with evil, and as Machiavelli said at the dawn of political philosophy though it is nice for a prince to be loved, it is more vital that he is feared. We do not need the State to protect us from "lovely people" but from terrible ones. The misfortune of modern times is that we have become so totally dependent upon States, and therefore upon the things that the State depends upon- like financial systems. Such negative pupils often moaned that they did not want to be at school and were only there because "the law" compelled them: and that which we are compelled to do we may resent, though Jesus cleverly provided an answer- if someone forces you to walk one mile, walk with them two miles- so then you can be "even".


Within an English/British culture in which modern nursing is seen as beginning with Florence Nightingale, it is surely very apparent that nurses share much with other uniformed front line professions. In accordance with the hypocratic oath all medical professionals respect the sanctity of HUMAN life. But Miss Nightingale was taught by the German Protestant nuns and by her wider reading of Public Health reports etc that the struggle for human life in Victorian times was a very real one, calling for "cleanliness is next to godliness" and demanding the widespread devastation of bacterial and other life forms. One early P.G. Wodehouse novel written before 1900 and his mature comedy style that I read in my teens was entitled (if I remember correctly) "Bill", and the child of that name was carefully brought up by his parents in a home that was made as sterile as a hospital surgery run by the most efficient matron. The whole process is surely not unlike the devastation of a nuclear holocaust with so many harmless and benign elements of Creation being wiped out.

But I presume that many patients whose life you enhanced by your "struggle" were as appreciative of your ability to deal with "front line" realities as my pupils were in the many years I spent teaching near to what was called "The Front Line" in Brixton. The process of living involves us making choices and imposing them upon reality. Hopefully some of those choices are for "the greater good" and Human beings are more capable of both good and evil than bacteria.

But on the political level, Dorothy Whitelock in "The Origins of English Society" before 1066 explains that with the widespread adoption of Christianity in the southern parts of England by the eight and ninth centuries the kind of conditions that you have outlined became normal. English people learned to live in peace and to implement legal procedures to tackle violations of "The King's Peace" through legal process and accepted punishment. As opposed to many areas most notably the Danelaw the Southern English gave up the duty of revenge and the blood feud that passed down through the generations endlessly in other parts. My mother-in-law said in 2010 that she would never be able to stop hating German people.

But I believe that this tradition of English Peace and Commonweal which dealt with the evil of the Past and pointed the common people towards the positive of the Future was an essential part of the success of English history and the willingness of people to work together to build a better future, and to defend the English rights and freedoms to live within this framework that Lord Clarendon in 1660 called "English goodnaturedness".

And contrary to what you have written I believe that the English people were very effective in shaping English history according to their needs,in for example, making sure that William of Normandy won the throne in 1066. But these traditions were to some extent lost when the survival of English liberties during the age of Revolution made it necessary to make a monstrous Great Britain, with the capacity to fight the kind of montrous war that had been developed on the Continent.

Cass