by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
Feb. 20, 2012
Love, the deepest human commitment, the force that defies empirical examination and yet is the defining and most glorious element in human life, the love between two people, between children and parents, between friends, between partners, reminds us of why we have been created for our brief sojourns on the planet. Those who cannot love—and I have seen these deformed human beings in the wars and conflicts I covered—are spiritually and emotionally dead. They affirm themselves through destruction, first of others and then, finally, of themselves. Those incapable of love never live.
“Hell,” Dostoevsky wrote, “is the inability to love.”
[…]
via Truthdig
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Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.
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2.20.12 – re: Hedges
Bennett: The Truth Seeker did not need to believe in the human conceived idol of a jealous god, he was a high minded, free thinker and he reached for higher spheres of Thought, Action, and Understanding. Goethe was a great thinker and wrote Come, rise to higher spheres, Hedges needs to do this: Also, Hedges could not understand Christopher Hitchens. I am not one to follow Hedges limited thinking. I recommend that Hedges watch D.M. Bennett: The Truth Seeker at Top Documentary Films To see the video just click: Watch now… This is a one-hour documentary – awarded the Grand Prize for Best Feature Length Film at the 2011 Portland Humanist Film Festival – chronicles the life of publisher D.M. Bennett (1818-1882). D.M. Bennett was nineteenth-century America’s most controversial and unjustly imprisoned editor of the blasphemous New York City free thought periodical.
the human conceived idol of a jealous god
There are many views in the Bible and one of them is this:
Love is strong as Death
But jealousy is cruel as the grave.
You have to think on this to see the Truth in it.
Thanks, Ray.
Georgianne — Goethe’s Faust just like his friend and contemporary Beethoven’s 5th symphony should be taken seriously , but not the freethinking movement of that period that has cause decline in the real free thought that was exercised in the golden age of the Medieval Renaissance in Cordova Spain when the Jews , Muslims , and Catholics re-translated Aristotle under the tutalage of Archbishop Raymond. This was a period of such fusion of such high faith and reason , that Jung said that every thing after that was downhill in its dividing up clarity of thought by splitting faith and reason into categories . the culmination of that period was Aquinas masterpiece , the Summa theologica.
When Hedges was at Harvard he studied that along with the monastic movements of the 12th century of St. Francis ,st. Hildegaard, the Trappists , etc. his breath of scope and also being a reporter for the Times in genocidal situations in the Balkans , gives him the understanding and right to write about love.
was Bennet more controversial in his time than Ingersoll ? or for that matter H.L.Menckan ? i think not . and neither of them were as controversial in the truest as the saints and martyrs who because of their love for Christ and others suffered beyond our comprehension . that not only is truly free thought , but freedom of the deepest self .
Thank you for this re-posting this wonderful commentary.
These words of Mother Teresa are words to live by. She saw the face of Christ in societies´ rejects and ministered to him.
Thanks, Ray, however, I just posted it, so it’s not re-posted. Chris Hedges is one of my writers.
I love your site and appreciate all the effort you put into maintaining it. I’ve posted links to articles in your site in The Washington Post and other Blogs I frequent.
I was pleased to see the words of Mother Teresa personalized to describe the way Whitney Housten lived her life at her Funeral. Considering the last line, it is personal in any case.
ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE – MOTHER TERESA & PRINCESS DIANA
June 12, 2011
http://ray032.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/all-you-need-is-love/
Thanks so much, Ray. Appreciate you sharing links to the posts on other sites.