Due to the outcome of our Civil War, the preservation of our nation, we are each subject to a greater society- that of The United States of America, and the government of such has grown to include ideological territory far beyond the original intent of “protection and defense against all enemies foreign and domestic.”
We are each subject to a larger community of feeling, thought, and behavior- in short, subject to one another, and therefore affected by one another, and feeling some degree of ownership of one another’s corporate possessions and territories. We can not flee the inconveniences of the union and yet embrace its benefits. The advantages and disadvantages of the union are part and parcel.
The statue belongs first to Charlottesville and then to Albemarie county (where sits the University of Virginia, the campus having been designed by likely the states most famous resident, multi-slave owner, Thomas Jefferson), next it belongs to Virginia, and then to the United States of America; and the ripple effect of decisions concerning said statue will be felt in varying degree from sea to shining sea. This should be no surprise. An absolute division of one citizen from another is logistically impossible.
And may I respectfully submit to you that this would be the case no matter the outcome of our own civil war? The truth of our interrelatedness by virtue of our existence has been screaming in the heads of humanity’s empaths throughout the ages. Many of these are our poets, our priests, our philosophers and our theologians, our artists of various type and persuasion.
Many empaths are themselves writer’s and there have been those others fascinated by the empath’s words and expressions who have labored to preserve them. Their work is overflowing with the passionate plea to recognize our genuine connectedness and our inability to escape it, and the need to therefore bend with it when all but sin will allow, as in honoring and respecting one another we honor and respect ourselves.
Now it appears that some felt that my earlier remarks on this subject indicated a callous disregard for the feelings of those who are opposed to the statue’s position in the town park, maybe even to those injured during the eruption of evil occurring there on Saturday. I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. It should go without saying that hate and violence are not only mean, but are a recipe for disaster as to mistreat and despise one’s fellow human is as detrimental to one as is wounding and abhorring oneself. I am most of all opposed to such things.
I simply hope to encourage our depth of thought surrounding our activities- a search for patterns and predictable precedents that we may make the best use of our resources, and in conclusion, ask that we thoroughly consider, as we can not completely separate from one another nor from our collective past, in this case as well as in every situation like it, what may best serve all.
Copyright 2017. L.L. Shelton.