Where is the Line?

Where is the line between the garden and the barren wasteland?

With the recent events over Iran's election, nuclear threats from North Korea, violence in Pakistan, endless war in the Middle East, and conflict in countless other places and times, my mind goes to a question.

Where is "the line"?

You know, that intangible ephemeral line between states like:

• Cooperation and competition
• Equanimity and prejudice
• Friend and enemy
• Kindness and cruelty
  
• Transparency and secrecy
• Liberation and domination
  
• Safety and fear
• Civility and violence
• Order and chaos
• Peace and war
• Love and hate
• Trust and terror
• Hope and despair
• The will to live, a death wish
  

Have you crossed any of these lines in your life? How did you go from one state to the other? What circumstances helped to manifest the shift? Have you directly experienced being in a society that crossed a line collectively? Did you ever go back to "how things were" before the fall?

And it IS a fall. Not just conceptually, in the land of intangible ideas. But physiologically, in the subtle chemical states that underly our emotional states and predispose us to certain actions, and reactions. And also in the real world, as we manifest our ideas into actions, that have consequences and feedbacks, that often come back to bite us. And so, in more ways than one, to go from any state on the left in the above list to a state on the right is a steep and rocky road. We are not really well trained in our schools about the sign posts along the way, nor of the skills necessary to try and prevent stumbling down the slippery slope towards the pit, or how to set up safety nets so we don't slide down too far. And the states along the right of the list ARE like pits, because once you enter them, they are exceedingly hard to escape from in so many ways.

Once you have entered into the world of lies, it is hard to trust. Once you have heard or experienced a significant threat upon you, it is very hard to feel safe. Once you are keyed up for battle, it is very, very hard to unarm. Once you have summoned death, it is very, very, very hard to embrace life.

And, once you have entered into the terror and chaos of the battlefield, even when it is supposedly done, you often bring it home and reenact it upon your family....

Victory obtained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
- Mahatma Ghandi

And then, it's really not just about you any more.

The very children you fought to protect end up being born into the pit too. How do you get them out? Or, how do they get themselves out, when you are gone, and have taken the memories of how you slipped into the pit to begin with? And, as with most wars, the very land you fought to control becomes a battlefield, an ugly, contaminated, barren wasteland. And the people you've beaten will grow to hate you, want to rise up to seek justice, most likely in the form of revenge, and the cycle of abuse will inevitably continue, as it has and it does, again and again.

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients fo a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Now I'm not saying that there is no good cause to cross the line. But, I'm curious, where is the line for you? The place where you would, willingly, cross to the other side?


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