
Originally Posted by
rodsky
We wouldn't be living the world we live in today, if Paul Revere didn't have the passion to ride his horse during his historic "midnight run". We wouldn't be living the world we live in today, if Maximilien Robespierre didn't have the passion to move the French people towards revolution. Heck, you wouldn't even see Cebu as you see it now, if a lowly carpenter who hails from Nazareth didn't have the passion to spread his teachings, of what he believed in, in what he felt ought to have been right, during his oppressive generation of Roman conquest (now...stop and think for a minute...can you imagine Cebu without Christian Churches? Can you imagine Cebu without Catholism or Christianity? What could it be like? And think...think...this is all the doing of ONE passionate person).
During the period when people like Paul and Timothy were roaming around in Greco-Judean world, spreading what they believed in, with passion, the Romans who kept arresting them said "This Christianity you're spreading around will change the world you say? What a delusion." Yet look what has happened to what they thought was a mere "delusion"?
I can cite many more examples but they'll probably be just empty words to the point I'm trying to make, and that point is this--one generation's seemingly bloodthirsty terrorist may be another generation's hero--that man from Nazareth was considered a "terrorist" during his lifetime, and that is why he was punished, he was crucified, a punishment given to criminals--terrorism is a crime (wouldn't you consider someone who preached "a new kingdom will come, and destroy this old one" at the mall as a lunatic and possible terrorist?)
Every one's "world view" of what is right and wrong, is temporary--it is a need that arises because human beings always feel the need for order and civility. But you are mistaken if you feel that your "ideal" or "world order" is permanent. No...your so-called societal norms and morals are fleeting--the universe that we inhabit is a very big place, and we don't even know if we are equipped with the ability and capacity to know everything, yet we constantly try to appease ourselves and delight in the fact that with the knowledge that we have, we seem to be in control, because of all these norms we have put out before us.
Your current definition of societal norms might be acceptable for now, and will be acceptable for some time, but it will eventually be replaced by another, and this new norm will be far less comfy than what you feel ought to be comfy. And hidden within the folds of such dramatic changes, lies the passion and yearning of the individuals who yearn to see that such changes be fulfilled. Such is the nature of nature--the only permanent thing are the fires of change, and passion is what feeds that fire.
-RODION
-Your guilty of historical hindsight. It would be unfair to make value judgements in history from the point of perspective of the present.
- INUS. Insufficient Necessity, Unnecessary Sufficiency. Robespierre, who was later became a victim of Mdm. Guillotine too, is not a sufficient necessity to cause the discovery of Cebu. and your other attempts to connect historical causes in a linear fashion has an insufficient logical connection.
- Can i imagine Cebu without Christian Churches? now being a hypothetical question, demands a hypothetical answer- yes! i can imagine.
-one passionate person. An attempt to compare the Christ with the negros incident is in my opinion quite blasphemous. But that does not matter. Using your own argument, allow me then to say that it is history is that great judiciary that decides. Christ now is considered to be the Christ the messiah of a billion people around the world, compare that to the negros incident. Was it not also the passionate people of upper echelons, perhaps those in Utrecht who ordered the Kampanyan Ahos? Passion. Passion.
-Passion for Truth is different from Passion of some seeming truth.
-Societal norms indeed. But there is such thing as a Truth that transcends society, history and culture. Unless of course your passion is that which reflects a Universal truth, you end up as a stigma in human history.
- Christ's was a Universal Truth, Marx's is a truth. 2000 years after Christ, his teaching is still embraced in academic circles. 100 years after Marx's truth, even his academic disciples are moving away from him. Such thing as Neomarxism and the Critical Theory are examples of this, they have changed marx so much, and yet they remain to be the closest school of thought that continues to embrace some vestiges of marx.
-passion and fires of change committed by deluded individuals, are mere pawns to the great scheme of things. they are not the catalysts as you want to believe, it is those who sent them to the pyres that becomes the catalysts for change, whether for the good or the bad. The causalties of a Cause, the rank and file of the frontline, are nothing but the lower creatures that are expendable. mere pawns. Such is why, i do not believe in such sacrifices, because i value the individual more than the institutions that drives them towards the road to perdition.
- there are fleeting things. but by saying that there is no such thing as permanent moral or ideal is in itself trying to brush itself from the crowd of "truth" to become the TRUTH that governs some of the truths you considered fleeting. Your logic become contradictory in the end.