Responsibility, division of labor
"Officers from the CO19 firearms team were told they would be using "new and unusual tactics" and given special bullets to ensure death.
A firearms officer, code-named Ralph, had no doubt he or another officer "might have to shoot someone point blank in the head", said Clare Montgomery, QC, prosecuting." (from the Telegraph)
That “someone” was an innocent bystander, Could the officer in charge consider the meaning of his life, of the life of Menendez? Of course not: that problem was left to the “team”. It’s the division of labor, stupid, and without division of labor nothing works in this society. Probably the only “jobs” responsibility free are cleaning the streets, cultivating potatoes or salad in an orchard for your consumption. All the rest is contaminated by the division of labor, that is: you don’t know whom you work for, what really is your product (a chemical weapon perhaps?). How many people are employed in the military establishment? It’s all responsibility free, neutral from your point view. Sharpshooters, pilots of war aircraft, pilots who bring sex tourists to the brothels of Asia. The moral consequences of what you do are none of your business, It’s war, it’s the economy, it’s obedience in a chain of command.
The "growth" which obsesses all modern society is the growth of irresponsibility.
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Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
--Samuel Beckett
No, we can't. We shouldn't plunge in the delirium of saving humanity, like so many did: Lenin, Freud, Marx, Robespierre and so many "saviors", who only traveled all their life on ego-trips.
I don't want to preach religion, I am not not religious in any conventional way. But I feel that we belong to life, and life asks to be loved, with no dramatic gesture, but sought after in the interstices. Not even this may be easy. Perhaps in the Taoist texts there is some wisdom, but I wouldn't go further. As for myself I do not possess any wisdom. I only feel revulsion for Tippit, the deliverer of the A bomb, and for Eric Prince the owner and head of Blackwater. And I would like to caress my little dog, who is not even mine properly.