The hypocritical meaning for the word terrorist

When you are fighting for your freedom you are a guerilla, a freedom fighter, a militiaman, a patriot, a minuteman, or whatever. Every nation has known people fighting for a just cause. By just, I refer to the greater good.

If during your insurrection, you bomb innocent civilians then that act, not against an oppressive government, is straight terrorism. You are labeled a killer or a murderer because that act takes you outside the protection of action against a government. It's straight evil, accidental or not, to kill innocents at any time for any reason.  Some can then call you a terrorist with justification.

Timothy McVeigh may have had some rationale, but his bombing was terrorism.




But now consider a proxy war.  Allies outside of your country deem you a freedom fighter and supply you with arms and ammunition. You are fighting a struggle for freedom with sympathetic justification.

Of course other nations align with opposite factions.

Your allies call your opponents "terrorists".  Your opponents' allies call your faction "terrorists". Neither claim may be true. But that doesn't matter.

Labelling you a terrorist now justifies attacking your bases. It's not dependent in the proxy war context on whether or not you commit murder outside justification. It's a convenient label to justify involvement.

In fact, outside nations that attack rival factions in a local conflict are the terrorists. They are murdering women and children and blaming it on local opponents. It gets swept away in the justification that the terrorists are local.

This is the hypocrisy of the meaning of terrorist. It's relative morality cynically applied.

Meaningless objects amount to meaningless gestures...

They are so proud of their flag....

they are holding it upside down...so they are willing to kill and die for a flag that they don't understand...

The value of meaning of words

Ideas express atomic thought-expressions.  Words represent ideas. People assign meaning to ideas. Meanings are not attached to ideas nor words, they are assumed by people to be causally-linked. Herein lies the problem.

From that attached meaning derives purpose. Purpose derives action. Action changes the world. This is the value of meaning.

People will live and die by what they think something means.  People live by single meanings for what could be a myriad of equal interpretations. People get emotional when their expectations regarding these meanings do not match.

If one could get people to act with purpose from meaning but not expect there is only one meaning then peace can be attained. If one could get people to derive purpose without meaning then one could steer the people around harmful meaning yet retain a purpose and action.

Guiding people to purpose without meaning is a noble effort.

Expectations and Life

I'm going to share what I've learned from Buddhism about expectations and life.
This was prompted by my father's misunderstanding of life. He gets upset at things that disappoint him or not. So let me impart some wisdom.

I was raised in the traditional North American way, belief that having things and doing things makes your worth.  Win at sports, get a high priced job, be a winner.  I suffered the highs and lows of it all.  I got sucked into the belief system. Now, I am wiser.

Here is the truth: nothing has meaning.  There is no inherent meaning in being a doctor, owning a Maserati, getting a Christmas card or not, or traveling the Serengeti.  Nothing has any meaning except what we put into it. 

It doesn't matter if you are wealthy, or if you are poor, or if you are the most popular person on earth.  It doesn't matter if people think you don't matter.  They don't matter either.  There's a lot to be said for being anonymous.

From the President of the United States to a leper on the streets of Calcutta, or where-ever, we all will go to the grave and become no more. We don't matter.

An asteroid hurtling towards the dinosaurs has no feelings of regret as it decimates life on Earth. The sun would still burn if our planet was wiped out by a cosmic filament.

Getting a Christmas card does not make you happy. Not getting a Christmas card does not make you sad.  You make yourself happy or sad based on your EXPECTATIONS on what that Christmas card means!  That is the truth.

Life would be a lot easier if you didn't have any expectations. Expectations are the cause of human misery.  Owning a Maserati, or not.  Being a doctor, or not.

It's that simple;  you expect good things and they come your way then you are happy.  You expect good things and they don't come your way and then you are unhappy.

No one has any guarantees, no one gets a free ride. Nothing is certain and you cannot pin your life on expectations. 

Try this instead.  Don't expect things and you won't be gloriously ecstatic or sorrowful and inconsolable.

Investing your emotions into expectations means that you are willing yourself to go on feeling all the highs and lows, all the emotions of being attached to things that don't exist and don't matter.  The more you throw your feelings into things, the more that each and every encounter in life will buffet you back and forth, up and down. Life will hurl things at you like a roller coaster course. Unexpected, unanticipated, unprepared. Life is in a constant state of change as is the universe. There is another way.

 It is all avoidable, well let's be realistic it can be reduced if you see it from another perspective. 

If you read this post and thought dark thoughts, then you didn't understand it.
You are still putting MEANING into everything. Take the meaning out, and you will rejoice at the burden lifted. Your expectations are the burden. 

This is what happens when you let expectations govern your emotional state.