RETRO ACTION
One enduring trait which seems to linger among men and women over the years of growth is that reaction to wrong which demands that we ”get even” with someone over a real or entirely imaginary slight or injustice done many years before.
We seldom realize that each of us has a few remnants of that sort of thing in our background which can pop up in curious and significant times. A major problem is that we don't admit we have such a tendency. Often we ascribe such childish actions as that of seeking revenge' of “"getting" even with” our foes, to semi-real characters such as “hillbilly” or ”mountaineer” people who are crafted to act as scapegoats upon whom we can pile our burdens to be lost in the wilderness.
As scapegoats to carry our burdens into the wilderness. We laugh at such childish actions and seem to see how silly it all can be. The very same people, however,if they are of Scottish decent, seem to overlook the fact their forebears lived with such a rule in their constant clan warfare .Other closely woven ancestral threads will show the same flaw.
How about you and I today? Right now, when we are in the process of electing a president for our nation, may well be one of those “significant times” in which we need to examine our attitude concerning the of attempting to “get even” for real or imaginary wrongs of the political past.
Far too many of the radio/TV sound bite being set forth - even this early in the campaign are flawed int two notable ways. On he one side every statement is issued in a glittering cloud of Florida “chads”,and the others are in some sort of a “gate”. Morality standards are touched upon repeatedly. Identical statistics concerning business statistics are voiced in two opposite ways. The primary stances are illusion and/or allusion. One seeks to make anything, either, fractionally factual or to show it doesn't exist at all. There are legal ways, of course, to “win” a victory, but properties held jointly commonly become troublesome.
Way back in the 1500's George Herbert (1593-1633) said “The worst of law is that one suit breeds twenty.” That is certainly true concerning any folk-law ideas about “getting even”, “taking revenge” or “repayment in kind”, or “eye-for-an-eye” tactic.
The use of one creates, at least, twenty or more.
A.L.M. October 24, 2003 [c429wds]
