SOUL/SELF CARE: RESPONSES TO MORAL INJURY 4/1/2020

By John Stoner

Soul/self care: Responses to Moral Injury Post  4/1/20

Responses to yesterdays post about a US military suicide in Iraq war were varied. 

One person said, inventing a probably useful verb, “to me there remains no violencing that is essential, in any way, shape or form.  If I were given to fear, our societal assumptions would scare me.” 

Indeed, what is essential?  This led me to wonder whether one in a hundred, or thousand, Americans asked themselves whether war production was essential. 

Another response, “do these two paragraphs (taken from the 3/28/2020 “What a Plague Reveals” article at https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/62098-focus-what-a-plague-reveals) feed into the discussion of “nationalism” that you’ve initiated?”

 

“. . . overall, the pandemic has revealed in particularly stark terms that the extreme economic inequalities unmasked by the 2008 economic collapse remain unaddressed. There’s a titanic dynamic playing out now in real time. Celebrities and the wealthy are first in line for the lifeboats of coronavirus tests. Rupert Murdoch and his familyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/business/media/fox-news-coronavirus-rupert-murdoch.html while profiting from a news empire that downplayed and outright disputed the threat of the coronavirus. The permanent residents of resort towns on the Eastern seaboard are being shoved aside https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/nyregion/coronavirus-leaving-nyc-vacation-homes.html who are stripping shelves of food and flooding the limited local health facilities.


Another said:  I haven’t thought specifically of less arms production and the reason is probably that the arms industry is kept out of sight, spread around the country, out of mind. Actually, that doesn’t seem like a good answer. We could watch the stocks of the arms producers.


And this question came:  I support you and your efforts but …


I have said  earlier that I think violence, torture , war etc are like scabs  in the infection of “FEAR” . Unless we address Fear we will only deal with the superficial  symptoms of the Fears that we all deal with . This fear of “survival” in the broadest sense  is not some excuse I offer but the cause of these terrible “Fight reactions” . Why is this not  included in your concepts. What am I missing??  To begin the relationship with “Mutual fears” rather than You are evil for your violence and I am good because I am for peace will make a difference in  resolution efforts. Such efforts requires greater effort to “understand”  the person or nation  etc  and work to deepen resolution than just stopping the violence. 

But what am I missing. ? I deeply applaud your writing and conversation  stimulus.”


I hope I may be forgiven for trying to help us avoid national suicide by letting our fears of one thing blind us to the deadly plague of another thing. 

John K. Stoner

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This and earlier Soul Care reflections can be seen on the website of https://1040forpeace.org, in the right column blog.  To respond, use the “contact” function, top right.

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