Category Archives: religion

Freedom and its limits

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I’ve been thinking about the concept of freedom.

Let’s first see what we have here, because freedom seems to be one of those nice-sounding words, like love, that are used for manipulating emotions, and can mean anything to anyone.

To get the obvious out of the way, if we define “freedom” as “the ability to do anything”, nothing short of total omnipotence will match the definition, so, basically, only God can be free in that sense. Also, if we define “freedom” as invulnerability, so that you don’t suffer adverse consequences to your actions, it’s even more tricky, because here we face ethical issues. For instance, you would probably want someone who wants to kill you to face consequences for his actions. Also, any kind of choice shapes your personality, and you’re not the same person afterwards, because you made a choice, by doing A or not A you chose to become the person who does A, or not A.

So, we have potential limitations to freedom which belong to three categories: of power, choice and other beings. If you are not able to do something, you are not free to do it, and that’s the limitation on freedom that stems from the lack of power. If you can technically do something but you don’t want to because it would spiritually shape you in adverse ways, it’s a limitation on freedom that stems from ethical choices. If freedoms and will of other beings prevent you from exercising your own freedom and will to the full extent, it’s the limitation on freedom that stems from other beings.

So, let’s see the examples. A limitation on power is that you can’t visit Mars. Nobody is preventing you from going, and going there has no adverse ethical consequences, but you just don’t have the ability to do so. A similar limitation stems from the lack of available choices. For instance, if you were born 100 years ago, you didn’t have a choice to buy a PC or a Mac, simply because they didn’t exist yet. You also didn’t have an option to board a plane and fly around the world, because the planes didn’t do that yet. Also, if you are very poor and live in some uncivilized and backward part of the world, you don’t have an option to buy a new car, or to board a plane or to buy a computer, not because they don’t exist as options for others, but because they don’t exist as options for you specifically, because you can’t afford them. So, sometimes options exist for the powerful few, and sometimes they don’t exist at all, and in all cases, this limits freedom.

I am deliberately omitting the limitations that stem from logical consistency, because those are merely trickery; for instance, the ability to do A while doing not-A, or specifically, the ability to make wooden iron, the ability to make a rock so heavy even you cannot lift it, or the ability to factor prime numbers.

So, what does that mean? It means that total freedom doesn’t exist, not even for God. Even God has to choose whether to do something or not. You can’t really both kill and spare someone. You can’t both tell a lie and be truthful. Even if you’re a God, if you grant someone some privilege, you can’t both revoke it and be consistent. So, one of the most important things to understand is that there are limitations even for the Gods. For instance, if you create souls, and grant them the freedom of choice, you have to allow them to face the consequences of their choices, or otherwise you are canceling your grant of free will. What kind of a freedom of choice is it, when you don’t have the option to fuck up? It’s like going to school and getting an A regardless of what answer you give. Freedom of choice necessarily comes with the possibility of choosing the wrong thing, and “wrong” isn’t really wrong if there are no adverse consequences.

This is the true answer to the question of “why did God create or allow evil”? Well, once you truly understand the problem, it’s no longer a meaningful question. The true question is that of freedom – is God free to do whatever he wants, or is he limited by ethics, logic, consistency and reason? We then come to the paradox that a good God is a limited God – he is limited by the boundary between good and evil, truth and falsehood, reality and illusion. An unlimited God is an omnipotent indifference, a force of general chaos that is closer to evil than good, because for each thing such a hypothetical being could technically do, there is no reason not to actually do it.

A good God, however, can indirectly cause evil to exist. He can, for instance, create independent beings and grant them freedoms to exercise their will. They can then use this freedom to explore options that are beyond God’s limitations – they can decide to create illusions, where falsehood can prevail over truth. They can create veils of ignorance that can obscure the light of God. They can choose to inflict malicious harm upon other souls and instrumentalize them for their own purpose. Essentially, once you create an independent being with creative powers, you can no longer be fully in control of the course of action, because such a being can choose its own spiritual path which might be completely different from your own, with consequences that might differ greatly from what you personally would find acceptable. And you can’t just nullify those consequences, not because you technically couldn’t, but because it would nullify your previous choice to allow those beings freedom.

Because freedom to choose and to do implies the potential to fuck things up. Freedom to choose means necessity to suffer the consequences of your actions and, in theory, you can be more “free” than God. You can be “free” to lie or to deceive, however this cancels your “freedom” to be truthful, honest and based in reality. You can be free to betray, but then you lose the freedom to be loyal. So, in case of ethical choices, “freedom” is really a matter of rhetorical trickery, because what can be seen as bondage to some, is a freedom to others. Some see the truth as a restraint on their freedom to lie, while others see lies as a restraint on their ability to be truthful.

Obviously, there are some freedoms that aren’t really worth having – such as a freedom to lie and betray your friends and be a complete bastard. Even if you can technically do it, you wouldn’t want to, because it would adversely influence your spiritual vector and turn you into the kind of person that you don’t want to be. This is how satanic temptations are to be interpreted, because demons will tempt you, they will say they are more free than you because they can do all kinds of things that are forbidden to you. The answer is, “It is true that you can do those things, but not because I couldn’t do them, but because I choose not to. I am limited by my choices, and, if you ever try to reverse your course, you will find out that you are limited by yours.”

About tools

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Whenever I write something about the “material” things, I feel the negative reaction from the “spiritual” people who are “above those things”.

Let me write something about tools.

There is “logos” – the consciousness, the creative spirit, the mind presiding over matter. That’s where ideas are made. Then there is energy that sets things into motion and powers action until it is completed. And then there are the tools, that are driven by the logos, with energy, and they accomplish the creative act within the physical world. Whether the tool is a piece of stone, or a piece of paper and a pencil, or a camera, or a computer, is beside the point. Whether the energy takes the form of money, or gasoline, or food, or electricity, is also beside the point. The point is, without energy and tools you can’t get anything done here, and if you don’t appreciate them, you are ignorant. This means that your logos, the content of your spirit, which pretends to be too absorbed with spiritual heights to care about the material things, is full of ignorance and you don’t know what you’re talking about.

If one isn’t passionate about his tools, and if he doesn’t appreciate the energy that needs to be invested in a creative act, he probably never really created anything of value to begin with. A soldier is very passionate about his weapons and armor. An artist is very passionate about his instruments. A scientist is very passionate about his lab equipment. If you try to accomplish anything of value, you’ll understand that there are requirements, and you will respect and appreciate those things that make possible everything that gives your life meaning.

It is important to me how my lens draws. It is important to me how my camera handles, and how the sensor captures the image. It is important to me what kind of tactile feel my keyboard produces, or how my mouse handles, or how my monitor displays colors and reflects ambient light. It is important to me how quickly my storage drive responds to requests, how quickly my CPU processes multiple concurrent tasks, how securely my data is stored, how accurately my headphones reproduce sound, and so on. Why is it important? Because my mind connects with those tools and projects energy through them, manifesting ideas into concrete form, be it text or image. If the tools suck, the end result will suffer, and the creative process will not be seamless. If the tools are good, I can manifest thoughts and emotions more easily, without annoying interruptions caused by waiting for the computer to do something so that I can go on issuing mental commands that I already have queued. Essentially, if the keyboard and the computer itself allow me to type as quickly as I can, and if the computer gets me the information I need quickly and without pointless delays, I can proceed to elaborate on the line of thought that I’m following. If the tool lags behind me too much or interferes with the creative process in some other way, it doesn’t contribute anything positive, and can be a significant hindrance. If a camera handles very poorly, I am more likely to leave it at home and forget about photography altogether, than take pictures.

Tools are important. Energy is important. They are not a substitute for the guiding light of consciousness that reigns supreme over those things, deciding where to invest energy and how to apply the tools, but they control the result-side of the creative equation. You apply consciousness and energy to the tools and you get a creative act.

Any person who thinks he or she is above those material things is basically too fucking stupid to understand the first thing about doing anything useful, and above all, is too fucking stupid to be allowed to have an opinion about any kind of spirituality, because spirituality isn’t for idiots.

The role of intellect in spirituality (translation)

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(I received a request for translation of one of my older articles in Croatian, so here goes.)

What makes logical sense to the human mind does not therefore necessarily have much to do with reality. This is the reason why the overly intellectual systems, such as the medieval scholastics, that were based on the authority of logic and reason, historically fared rather poorly. Those systems, however, that placed intellect second, and observation of facts first, such as the modern science, gave much better results in practice.

One could now say that science is an extremely intellectual discipline. That is true, but it is only secondarily intellectual, and primarily factual, observational and perceptional. If observations contradict an intellectual construct, the intellectual construct will be discarded. In a scholastic, neoplatonic system the facts could contradict a theory all they want and it would still remain standing, simply because its adherents could say that their intellectual construct is founded in the world of ideas and as such superior to the imperfect, transitory and limited matter, which due to its deficiencies fails to meet the requirements of perfection set by their theory.

The human mind is, therefore, a weak instrument of cognition, and unless we keep it in check by a contact with reality, it will be capable of forming utterly ungrounded ideas that can exist in contradiction to facts and can be accepted without positive evidence of any kind, without any kind of correctional feedback. If we observe the history of human thought, which can be more truthfully called the history of human folly and nonsense intermixed with occasional sparks of lucidity, it becomes clear that the only way for us to avoid the pitfalls of navel-gazing madness, is to stick to the specific, to that which has foundations in experience and observation. To disregard observation because it doesn’t fit our theories is a common sign of psychotic behavior, to which few are immune, including science. The example of that is ignoring the transcendental experiences, which simply do not exist for science – they are either ignored, or attributed to delusion, hallucination or deception. Essentially, the witnesses are not trusted, in the same way in which Lavoisier didn’t trust the eyewitnesses of meteoric impacts. The lesson is that the ego-stimulation, caused by the sense of having it all figured out, and having the intellectual comprehension of the totality of all existence, is such a seductive and powerful drug, that it is capable of turning the otherwise reasonable people into fanatical cultists capable of ignoring absolutely anything that threatens their drug supply. What makes science, at least in theory, superior to the alternatives, is intellectual honesty, due to which a pet theory will be discarded if it is contradicted by the facts. At the point where science starts ignoring the facts, it ceases to be science.

In what way is all of that relevant to spiritual practice? Well, it is my personal opinion that there is no significant difference between physics and spirituality, other than the obvious fact that they are dealing with different kinds of subject matter, and vectors having a scalar component that isn’t kinetic, thermal etc., but emotional, karmic etc. All the basic principles, such as the law of conservation of energy and momentum, equivalence of action and reaction and all similar geometric laws therefore apply to both, they just need to be adapted to meet the specifics of the field of study, and we then get something that could be called the law of conservation of overall spiritual energy, or karmic momentum. Likewise, similar problems remain due to excessive fondness for a particular worldview and aversion to its dismissal when it is contradicted by the facts. The greatest difference is in the fact that in spirituality, human consciousness is in fact the laboratory in which the experiments are performed, and predictions are either confirmed or falsified. That is where the aspects of reality are perceived and interpreted.

If the fondness for delusion and errors of all kinds persists in physics, which is based on objective sensory measurements, it is significantly more so the case with spirituality, where everything takes place within the mind, which makes the concept of completely neutral sensory instrument and measurements impossible. This makes the situation so difficult it is really hard to find people who would indeed approach spirituality in a way that could be considered scientific. However, it is not only possible, but is a direction I think is necessary if the true advancements are to be made. For if the follies such as alchemy and astrology didn’t produce good results in physics, they will fail in a similar way in spirituality, and we should instead choose to rely on principles and methods that produced better results.

Now we get to the point where spiritual practice must part ways with the customary methodology of science, which tends to be cold and distanced. For if we are to use the spiritual states as a laboratory in which experiments are to be made, it means we must at the same time calmly observe the events, and at the same time be completely involved in some, often extremely intense spiritual state, such as ecstasy, love, sorrow, happiness or suffering. Likewise, due to the specifics of the human mind, the things that will yield results can often be the direct opposite to anything one would recognize as scientific. For instance, a state of elation produced by listening to music or reading literature will almost certainly produce some kind of spiritual experience, while cold analytics will rather suppress the latent spiritual potentials. The part of consciousness that is useful for analysis and interpretation of an experience, therefore, lies in direct opposition to the part of consciousness that is useful for actually attaining a spiritual experience. This apparent incongruence is the cause of a great divide between qualifications necessary for a mystical practice, and qualifications necessary for the correct intellectual formulation of the practice and its results. Consequently, the spiritual practitioners are often to be found among the intellectually incoherent persons, while the intellectually coherent ones are hindered in attaining spiritual experiences by their very coherent and disciplined mental structure, and are therefore limited to having an opinion about the spiritual experiences of others. I would say that I am a huge exception in this regard, perhaps due to my specific approach to mind, which I treat as a tool or an instrument of a sort, that needs to be maintained in order to be useful for correct formulation and expression of ideas, but I don’t actually use it as an instrument of cognition, in a way similar to that in which a military radar installation doesn’t use a computer for getting information about the size, position and direction of the aircrafts – for that, it uses the radar. The computer receives the information detected by the radar, and proceeds to analyze and display the information in a symbolic, coherent form.

It is exactly due to the frequent intellectual incoherence of the spiritual practitioners that we have to deal with the deluge of false-positives, where incoherent persons posture as spiritual practitioners, without any factual backing. I met my share of those, and I’m afraid it would serve no useful purpose to indulge in lengthy analyses that would aim to discern them from the authentic phenomena. I use my “nose” for discernments of that kind – if it stinks, don’t eat it. If a person emanates a “stench” of spiritual rot and decay, all the while rambling about his high spiritual achievements, run the other way. The criterion of fruits, as established by Jesus, is quite applicable: if a tree produces acorns, it is definitely not a fig tree, or, as the Romans would nicely put it, “Sed nemo potuit tangere: merda fuit”[1]. However, with a similar analogy, I tend to avoid eating blackberries from a bush that is placed at just the right height for a passing dog to piss on – or, in other words, I avoid the good spiritual fruits that have been intellectually processed in such a way that the overall result is inedible. The example of this are the authentic mystics who have moulded their experiences in the context of their own religion, which by itself is more of a spiritual pitfall than a path, and it is better to take the entire thing with a grain of salt, rather than to risk accepting it all without reservations and ending up in some pathological following.

One will ask how is it possible for deranged and clinically stupid people to have authentic spiritual experiences. I would say that one of the possible causes lies in the instability of their minds, which makes it rather malleable and prone to all kinds of influences, ranging from authentic spiritual experiences to various mental disorders. This doesn’t make the experience itself less valid, but it can be mixed together with other phenomena, often so problematic that the overall result is rendered useless. Likewise, mental rigidity can be a powerful inhibitor of spiritual experience, which requires a great deal of spiritual flexibility, or deviation from the mental paths most commonly traveled. If one’s inhibitions reman active at all times, they will correct all deviations and thus effectively roast all possible seeds of spiritual experience. On the other hand, if such inhibitions are completely absent, the mind can simply disintegrate into madness due to the enormous number and strength of various deviations. In my opinion, the useful approach is to keep the mind active and useful when necessary, but to allow it to get out of the way of the spiritual states that are incompatible with its very nature. It’s like sex: you need the mind in order not to end up in bed with the wrong person, but when you are in bed with the right person, you can safely turn it off and enjoy the experience. The question is therefore not whether you need the mind or not, but where do you need it and in what way, and when you don’t need it, it is to be set aside. It is similar to the way in which a soldier wishes to have the best possible rifle, one that will always accurately hit and kill the enemy, that will never jam and for which ammunition is abundant, but he doesn’t carry it around with him all the time, but only when necessary.

[1] Martial 3.17: “But none could touch it: it was shit”.

About cults, and what makes them bad

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I’ve been thinking about what differentiates cults from religions. So, let me get the obvious concepts out of the way.

It’s not size. Every religion starts small. Buddhism started with Buddha giving a sermon in Sarnath, near Varanasi. Christianity started with Jesus and his dozen disciples. Islam started with Mohammad seeing a demon in a cave, who scared him to the point of wanting to kill himself, and his wife telling him he’s not crazy, he’s a prophet (true story).

So, the fact that something at one point has billions of followers doesn’t mean it didn’t start with a lunatic having a psychotic episode in a cave.

The other thing to get out of the way is the etymology. In some languages, “cult” is negatively charged while “sect” is neutrally charged, in others it’s the other way around. For instance, the Croatian translation for “cult” is “sekta”. So, when the Croats try to make some big thing about false etymology, trying to prove that “sect” derives from “secare, sectum”, “to cut”, not only they are wrong (it derives from sequi, sectum, “to follow”), but their etymology would be meaningless to the English audience to which “sect” is a neutral word. So, the word itself has no sinister connotations.

If I had to make a very simple definition, sticking to English language, I would say that “cult” is a “sect” you happen not to like. It’s like the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists. Freedom fighters are the terrorists you happen to like, or they work for you.

There’s no significant formal difference in appearance or organization between the craziest and most vicious cults and the best, noblest spiritual movements mankind has ever produced. They all start with some guy with an idea, he attracts followers, and it either grows from there or dies out. So, the cult-like form doesn’t really tell you anything valuable or informative. So, saying that something is a “cult” because it consists of a spiritual teacher and his followers is a completely non-sequitur argument. It doesn’t tell us anything important about spiritual, ethical or intellectual merits of the entire thing. It’s like saying a car is red. OK, it’s red, but what brand is it, what engine does it have, how fast does it go? To say that something is a “cult” is essentially saying it’s a following of some kind. But whom are they following, why, how, and to what end?

The interesting thing is, there are other very similar social structures, but they are not called cults. A gang, for instance, is a cult in all ways but one: it has no spiritual pretensions. But to turn it around, how many cults are so bad that you can say they are gangs with spiritual pretensions? I can make a good case that Islam was exactly that. It was a gang that robbed caravans around Medina, and later spread throughout the world using primarily violence and deception. If anything, it is more a gang than a spiritual teaching in its social structure, even now. But in case of Buddhism or Christianity, that doesn’t hold. There some Buddhist sects that behave like gangs – Aum Shinrikyo, for instance, and I could make a case for Nichiren. In Christianity, I don’t think I can remember of any notable sects that acted like gangs. In Hinduism, there are unfortunately several examples, for instance the Thugee, a sect of Kali worshipers who made a ritual out of strangling and robbing passengers on roads. So, what does that mean, that within religions you can have sects that are cults? Yes, but what does that tell us about cults? First of all, if you describe such a religious gang as a cult, any sane person will agree on the definition. The problem is when detractors use the term to denote any religious group that they wish to slander, pointing out superficial similarities with known evil cults, in hope that they will avoid having to point out what exactly is wrong with the group they wish to malign.

So, let me give my definition of a cult. A cult is something that has the formal qualities of a religious group, behaves like a gang, and has no deep and authentic spiritual guidance.

What does that mean? It means that the only difference between early Christians and early Muslims is that Jesus didn’t instruct his disciples to go out and rob the caravans of “infidels”, and that unlike Mohammad he actually had an authentic spiritual connection with God. You can’t judge them on superficial similarities, because the crux of the matter is whether they are good or evil and whether they are from God or not. People today try to present it as if the bad thing about a cult is that it follows a spiritual leader. It’s not. If you followed Jesus or Buddha, how is that a bad thing? It is only a bad thing when the spiritual leader of the group is false. But that’s the difficult part – how will you know whether the leader is authentic? It’s easier to just claim they are all false and then what remains for you is to see whether a group matches a simplified description. That’s what atheists do. I advise against it.

There’s another interesting phenomenon – heretical sects within an evil religion, that are authentic spiritual followings; an example of this are the Sufis in Islam. They had an interpretation of Islam that was more Vedanta than Islam, they were thought of as heretics by the Muslim main stream, but if anything, they were on the path of sainthood. So, the fact that something is a heretical off-shoot of some religion doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. Being main-stream isn’t necessarily a good thing.

There’s another thing – trying to define moderation as good, and radicalism as bad. If you want to say someone is good, call him a moderate, and if you want to say someone is bad, call him a radical. That actually works only if you’re talking about a philosophy that is inherently evil, and so if someone follows it consistently he becomes an evil person, and if someone doesn’t really take it seriously, he can be a good person. This is the case with Islam. The more consistently you follow it, the more evil you get to be. That’s why you can equate “Islamic radicals” with “evil Muslims”. However, it doesn’t work with other religions. For instance, what’s a radical Jain or Buddhist or Christian? What’s a radical Yogi? Does someone become more evil if he practices pranayama with kumbhaka of over a minute? Does he become evil if he walks around in soft slippers and a mask so that he doesn’t kill bugs and microbes because violence is the ultimate evil? Does he become evil if he does japa of 32 rounds a day? Does a Christian become super-evil because he’s so radical he enters a convent where he does nothing but pray, fast and commune with others like him? Such people are not the summit of social productivity, and they frequently exclude themselves from society at large, but even the most anti-religious advocates couldn’t describe them as “evil”. Weirdos, maybe. But not evil.

Evil, that’s what you become if you have your daughter’s clitoris cut off because of your religion, or if you kill other people while shouting how great your God is. Yes, you can become evil by taking religion seriously, but it does matter which religion you take seriously. They are not all the same. If you take some of them seriously you are more likely to become a saint than a thug. However, if you take a thug religion seriously, you become a thug. So, there’s another definition of a cult: it’s a gang of thugs who take an evil religion seriously.

So, basically, if you don’t like some religiously-flavored group that takes its teaching seriously, it’s a cult and the members are referred to as brainwashed zombies or Borg drones. If you like it, it’s referred to as a convent of monks. If you like a rebel group, they are partisans or guerrilla fighters. If you don’t like them, they are bandits or terrorists.

About turning the other cheek

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There’s an important issue related to the previous article, where I talked about separating your inputs from your outputs, so that you don’t become a reactionary automaton. It’s the issue of “turning the other cheek”, as Jesus would put it. If we look into it more deeply, we find two underlying issues: self-defense and justice.

The issue of self-defense is essentially the issue of standing your ground, both spiritually and materially. Spiritually, it means defending what you believe in and what you stand for. Materially, it means protecting your life and property, as well as persons and things entrusted to you.

The problem with standing your ground is that everybody and their dog assume they are on the “right side of the Force”. Everybody assumes they are worth defending. But are you, really? Is defense of your person really the defense of God in this world? Is it the defense of what is true, righteous and good? Or are you merely a dog barking at the people on the street just because you’re on the “right” side of the fence, and you’re simply defending your territory like any other animal? Those are important questions, because if you ask people, they will all tell you they are trying to do the right thing, and they are trying to do good. The result of all that is the sum of all evils in the world. All evil people think they are perfectly justified in all their actions. If you find a person who is full of self-doubt and thinks of himself as inherently evil, you’re probably dealing with a saint. Evil not only assumes the right to defend itself, it assumes the right to assert itself. So, although the issue of self-defense initially seemed straightforward and clear, it is everything but. When someone slaps you in the face, the instinctive reaction is to assume you’re right, to assume the right to defend yourself. But what if you are in the wrong? What if that other person has the right to slap you in the face? What if the right and proper response is to feel shame and remorse, to accept rebuke and to repent? So, the solution would be to be situationally aware. You need to know your place in the wider world. You need to know where it is proper to stand your ground and defend your position, and when to re-examine your stance, retreat, perhaps even change sides. One possible lesson of “turn the other cheek”, therefore, might be that you should not assume your righteousness with full certainty. Maybe you got slapped because you’re an asshole. To turn the other cheek might be to accept blame and rebuke, and to offer apology. If so, that is a valid lesson.

Implicit in this is the judgment of right and wrong. If you are wrong, retreat, accept punishment and offer apology. Attempt to redress the wrongs. Repent. However, if you are right, and you are attacked, what then? Turn the other cheek no matter what? This is the place where people instinctively disagree with Jesus, they rebel against his teaching, and I’m not really sure it’s justified, because as we could see above, there are other legitimate interpretations of his statement – don’t assume you’re right and automatically reflect the input. We don’t know if he had a moderate or an extremist attitude towards this. I, however, can tell you what I think. I think you need to defend what you know to be true, and what you know to be just. You need to stand your ground. You don’t necessarily retaliate in kind, but you make your position known, you declare yourself and you work toward the greatest good. Sometime this means to attenuate a volatile situation. Sometimes you will remove yourself from the situation. Sometimes, however, you will respond with deadly force. There are legitimate situations where I would do so, and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash about it. If you had an active shooter scenario where some Muslim yelled “Allahu Akbar” while shooting people, and I was armed, I would shoot him twice in the chest and once in the head to make sure he’s dead. I think the response with deadly force would be so automatic I wouldn’t have time to even think about it, it’s like catching a glass you dropped, a reflex. So yeah, I wouldn’t turn the other cheek, I wouldn’t try to talk, or dismantle the situation. Every second of fucking around can mean another innocent person dead. You need to act, and you need to apply violence. You need to do it quickly, and effectively. Yes, those who live by the sword can die by the sword, but the trick is, you don’t even have to know what a sword is, to die by it. But that’s not the only possible scenario. It’s not always “allow someone to bitch slap you” or “shoot to kill”. Sometimes, you negotiate the exchange of five hostages for yourself, knowing you’ll be killed. You make the assessment, and if you see it’s worth it, you save their lives by offering yours. That, too, is a way to stand your ground – “if you need to kill someone, kill me”. So, as you can see, it’s a complicated matter, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s all an application of Augustine’s principle of just war, or, in a generalized case, just application of violence. Today people think violence is evil and there can be no excuse or no tolerance for it, but that’s a wrong approach. The right approach is, how can we minimize violence? How can we fight evil, how can we act in order to reduce evil? If you have a situation where 50 people die if you do nothing, and 1 person dies if you shoot the armed terrorist, how is refusing to kill a terrorist a good thing? And how is killing him bad, even though it is violence? You need to have your priorities straight. The Hindus have an excellent system for this; they have a list of priorities. First priority is moksa, liberation. Second priority is dharma, righteousness. Third priority is artha, usefulness. Fourth priority is kama, sensual pleasure. Basically, you see if something is conducive to liberation or not. Of things that are conducive to liberation, favor those that are righteous and just. Of things that are righteous and just, prefer to do those that are useful to you and others. Of things that are useful to you and others, choose to do those that are pleasurable.

So, it’s not always a choice between righteousness and a painful death. It sometimes is, if it can’t be avoided, but sometimes it’s a subtle choice, between polite silence and polite expression of your attitude. Sometimes to testify for God means to have an orgasm with the right person. Sometimes to testify for God is to offer your life in exchange for another person’s. Sometimes it’s to kill someone, quickly and efficiently, so that he wouldn’t kill the innocent. It’s a subtle thing, and it annoys me when people oversimplify things to the point of making nonviolence or kindness an absolute. Yes, kindness is good, but only if it’s helpful and useful. Sometimes kicking someone’s ass is better than kindness, and produces a greater good. It is wrong to justify evil actions with this, but nevertheless, it is my opinion that violence solved more problems than any other approach. The Nazis in the second world war weren’t defeated by lovingkindness, they were defeated by brutal violence. Sometimes you need to blow someone’s brains out in order to do good, and there’s no other way around it. If you’re facing an army of murderers, the right thing to do is take up arms and oppose them with deadly force. Sometimes, the only truly consistent choice for the greater good is to reject the concept of absolute nonviolence, and instead treat evil as a problem, and moderate violence as a possible solution. But it functions like this: if one uses words to do evil, you oppose him with words to spread truth and reason, and do good. If one uses a gun to kill good people, you take a gun and put a bullet in his brain. It’s that simple. Respond moderately, adopt a moderate, almost passive approach, but be ready for decisive and very violent action if it’s the right thing to do. Oppose evil by doing good, oppose lies by spreading the truth, but oppose an armed terrorist with a 9mm, two in the chest and one in the head if he still moves. Then turn the other cheek to check how the victims are doing and how you can help them.