Advice for the Mighty

I was watching Noam Chomsky's "Distorted Morality" lecture on DVD the other night and I liked what he had to say about hypocracy. The main thrust of his argument is that the U.S. has been conducting terrorist acts throughout the world for quite some time now, the likes of which have not been perpetrated by any other organisation or rogue state in the entire world, yet the U.S. rhetoric is that terrorism is conducted by its enemies. He goes on to say that this truth is available to anyone educated enough to read the newspapers, yet we carry on as if it wasn't happening. Outside of sporadic protests in different places against the military action of the U.S., the western world carries on as if everything was ok, which makes us all hypocrites.

We are all mothers, fathers, sister or brothers, but we feel little or no compassion for the families being slaughtered in the Middle East. Movies are being made, which highlight the blatant lies being told by the U.S. govt to the world and many people have access to this kind of media, but it seems that after absorbing the information, people go on about their lives as normal.

We are due for an even bigger reality check than Sep 11, unless we can show that we do care about families other than our own, and unite to stop the madness of the U.S. govt.

I found this wisdom in the Tao Te Ching. It is good advice for the mighty, whether they be individual or national.

"When a country obtains great power,
it becomes like the sea:
all streams run downward into it.
The more powerful it grows,
the greater the need for humility.
Humility means trusting the Tao,
thus never needing to be defensive.

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those that point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy
as the shadow that he himself casts.

If a nation is centered in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to all nations of the world."

We are all capable of being mighty, in our own way, in our own lives. This wisdom applies to each of us. When we are parents, teachers, leaders of some kind, it is important to remember humility, to recognize our mistakes, admit to them and correct ourselves or the mistake.