WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #107, JANUARY 4, 2023
Sandra Richter. Stewards of Eden.
Empathy. Lubna and the Pebble, The Expanding Circle, The Price of Empire
Sandra Richter, Stewards of Eden.
SCOT MCKNIGHT. “War
and the Environment.” JULY 7, 2020.
“The Bible speaks directly about war and the environment.
If
you besiege a town for a long time, making war against it in order to take it,
you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may
take food from them, you must not cut them down. Are trees in the field human
beings that they should come under siege from you?
Think about the wisdom of this, and
then think about the utter environmental terrorism (her words) of how we have
treated war zones. We are looking at a short chapter in the wonderful book by Sandra Richter, Stewards
of Eden.
The words of that scripture emerge from a worldview about divine
creation, humans as stewards of creation, and our requirement to protect the
earth’s sustainability.
EMPATHY
What kind of individual--an expression of what kind of
education and culture?-- is shielded from savagery, destruction of the land,
genocide of all species? Ryan
Billingsley owns the children’s book stall at Evelyn Hills, where I bought the splendid
refugee story about learning empathy, Lubna and the Pebble by Wendy Meddour, shelved
in the Empathy section. Peter
Singer in The Expanding Circle
discusses “The Rise of Empathy and the Regard for Human Life,” and contrasts
narrow sentimentality with the need for a much larger circle of empathy. We
accomplish such an enlargement with others by experiencing them and reading
about them, about indifference and cruelty, about widening compassion, about becoming
stewards, and moral, social, and political change. Arkansas’ former Senator J. William Fulbright wrote often about empathy, a
foundation of his Educational Exchange Program.
For example, empathy is discussed throughout The Price of Empire, particularly in chapter seven, “Seeing
the World as Others See it.” Had the two
main US Parties (the War Party) listened to Fulbright the US would have
accepted the 1954 Geneva Accords, negotiated with Ho, and avoided the racist
slaughter of three million Vietnam innocents.
(A flawed leader, Fulbright at home was a racist. See Randall Woods’
biography of Fulbright.) We know how to
build a peaceful world, but will we have evolutionary time?
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