FORCE AND RESISTANCE (AND A MESSAGE FOR EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS)

The guiding thread through this week's Goat Rope is a series of reflections on the ancient Chinese classic the Tao Te Ching. If this is your first visit, please click on the earlier entries.

A major theme of the Tao Te Ching is the critique of force and its unskillful use. For example, if you push people, they usually push back--harder. If you try to pull people towards you, literally or otherwise, they tend to pull away. If you hit a nail, it usually goes in deeper.

Heated arguments with people seldom convince. When muscles are treated with resistance, they grow stronger. Strident and self-righteous groups often alienate others.

When new antibiotics are developed, micro-organisms tend to evolve defenses. Some insects develop immunities to poisons. And, uhhh, arrogant and aggressive foreign policies and unnecessary wards don't usually work out very well either.

The common tendency to apply force against that which we dislike often has the unintended consequence of strengthening it. As Holmes Welch put it in his book Taoism: The Parting of the Way,

Interfere with existence and it resists, as a stone resists crushing. If it is a living creature it resists actively, as a wasp being crushed will sting. But the kind of resistance offered by living creatures is unique: it grows stronger as interference grows stronger up to the point where the creature’s capacity for resistance is destroyed. Evolution might be thought of as a march towards ever more highly articulated and effective capacity for resistance. Humans and human societies are thus highly responsive to challenge. So when anyone, ruler or subject, tries to act upon humans individually or collectively, the ultimate result is the opposite of what he is aiming at. He has invoked what we might call “the Law of Aggression."

While the Tao Te Ching recognizes that some coercion may be necessary for defensive purposes, it advises that the wise person or leader should use force of any kind only when absolutely necessary and use it to the least degree possible and then stop. Excess and aggression lead to disaster:

Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao,
Counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe.
For this would only cause resistance.
Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.
Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.
Just do what needs to be done.
Never take advantage of power.

Achieve results,
But never glory in them.
Achieve results,
But never boast.
Achieve results,
But never be proud.
Achieve results,
Because this is the natural way.
Achieve results,
But not through violence.

Force is followed by loss of strength.
This is not the way of Tao.
That which goes against the Tao
comes to an early end. 30

MINIMUM WAGE CALL IN DAYS MAY 9-11. The Let Justice Roll Living Wage Campaign is urging people to call Congress between now and May 11th and urge that they get moving on the minimum wage. Two different bills have passed the House and Senate and await reconciliation. Click here for more info, complete with a toll free number provided by the American Friends Service Committee.

THE LATEST ON SAGO. This is from Ken Ward in today's Charleston Gazette.

GUARDING KANSAS. The war in Iraq has limited the ability of the Kansas Guard to respond to disasters like that in Greensburg.

NOTE TO EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS. It has come to my attention that some people who get Goat Rope via email haven't been receiving it. It should be working now. Sorry for any inconvenience.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

FIGHTING FIRE

There is an expression out there that irks El Cabrero. It is often said by well intentioned people who mean that we should be more proactive rather than reactive, which in itself is fine most of the time.

The offending expression is "We're always fighting fires" as if that's a bad thing.

I beg to differ for two reasons. First, if you really do have a fire in a place where there isn't supposed to be one, that should be pretty important. Maybe even top priority.

Second, I can say on the basis of my short and inglorious career in my hometown volunteer fire department that fighting fires is cool. As every little kid knows. And that will be the guiding thread of this week's Goat Rope.

The idea of trying to join the local fire department came from the Spousal Unit, otherwise known as La Cabra. In retrospect, I wish I'd have done it a long time ago. Actually, my old man had been a member years before and I might have done it sooner had I realized they’d actually let me in. It wasn’t a totally strange experience. I grew up beside the station and was so used to the fire alarm I barely noticed when it went off. All that changed when I was actually in it.

Since I know that stereotypes abound about volunteer fire fighters, I want to set the record straight, or a little less crooked anyway.

One of these is that we are basically boys with toys who like to ride fire trucks and play with our gear. OK, so that one may be right, with the understanding that we aren’t all boys anymore and that some of our toys come in pretty handy in emergencies.

Women, who have traditionally been the backbone of support for volunteer departments, are now very active as fire fighters, first responders, and emergency medical service providers. One encouraging sign of this change is the presence of many women and girls attending various training sessions throughout the rural areas of El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

Another stereotype pictures volunteers as a bunch of untrained clods. Some of us may in fact be clods, but nobody is untrained. There are pretty strict state standards of training that must be met before a volunteer is able to run calls. In my area, required courses include first aid/CPR, hazardous materials basic concepts, automobile extrication, and level one fire fighting. Most classes include hands on as well as textbook elements. And this is only the beginning—an endless array of more advanced trainings are continually offered in addition to regular local drills.

About which more next time.

WHAT HE SAID. Speaking of putting out fires, here's to Pope Benedict XVI. As an Episcopalian of the laid back variety, I'm not always on the same theological page, but I appreciate his "Urbi et Orbi" sermon on Easter Sunday, where he spoke of how political and religious conflicts are adding to the suffering caused by natural causes:

"Natural calamities and human tragedies that cause innumerable victims and enormous material destruction are not lacking.” the Pope said.

“(But) I am thinking of ... terrorism and kidnapping of people, of the thousand faces of violence which some people attempt to justify in the name of religion, of contempt for life, of the violation of human rights and the exploitation of persons.”

“Afghanistan is marked by growing unrest and instability,” Benedict said. “In the Middle East, besides some signs of hope in the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, unfortunately, nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees.”

SPEAKING OF IRAQ AND OTHER DISASTERS, an item that appeared last week in Gannett papers spoke of the effect of the war on the National Guard:

The nation's Army Guard units have roughly half or less of the equipment they need to deal with disasters, terrorist attacks and other domestic threats such as the rapidly approaching hurricane season, senior Guard officials said.

The war in Iraq as well as Guard deployments in Afghanistan have drained state units of people as well as equipment.

Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum was quoted as saying "Nobody has more than 65 percent of the equipment they need. I think that condition is unacceptable...If we don't have the equipment we need, the reaction time is slow, and time equals lives lost. Those lives are American lives."

The Guard can come in pretty handy when disasters are too big for firefighters and other emergency responders to handle, such as the floods that devastated southern West Virginia in 2001.

THE BUDDHA WAS A FIREFIGHTER. In keeping with the firefighting motif, let's not forget that one of the Buddha's early discourses was the Fire Sermon, where he said that "all is aflame" with the fires of ignorance, greed, and hatred. The word Nirvana, the state of liberation from suffering (not the rock group) war literally meant something like coolness, as in a fire that has gone out. Buddhist teachings are intended to help people stop feeding the flames that cause suffering to self and others.

TO CONCLUDE, the problem is not that "we're always putting out fires." The problem is that we're not doing enough of it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED