I didn't really want to write about Dzhokhar Tasarnaev, the only one of the two men accused of being the Boston Bombers still alive. His story is already being told elsewhere, by a wide variety of conflicting and contradictory sources. I didn't want to write about him mainly because I have already published my thoughts on the Boston Marathon and the bombing.
Earlier, I wrote about turning things upside down. The same principle can be applied here. Dzhokhar is the man who did the Boston Bombings. Now upside down: the Boston Bombings were done by Dzhokhar, the man. Immediately the focus shifts from Dzhokhar-the-perpetrator to Dzkokhar-the-man. This provides two different frameworks within which Dzhokhar and the Bombings can be discussed.
So I guess I won't write about Dzhokhar, but instead I will write about Jahar, as he is known to his friends and supporters. Let me make one thing clear at this point: I do not support Jahar in the sense that I condone what he is accused of, nor do I think he is entirely innocent. However, I support Jahar's rights as a human being in the same way that I support the rights of every other being on this planet. That includes the right to live.
Jahar violated that right for at least three people (four if we include his brother, Tamerlan, whom he allegedly ran over in a desperate bid to escape capture; and five if we include the MIT campus police officer, who he may or may not have shot). Whether this is simply the result of two angry young men or whether it was part of a larger operation involving the US government or other forces remains to be determined. It seems fairly clear at this point, from the crowd-sourced pictures in the public domain combined with the media narrative, that Jahar did – at least – position at least one bomb.
We condemn Jahar for his lack of compassion: how could he do such a thing? But should we not then turn the other cheek and show him compassion where he showed none? Should we not educate him in the ways of the world? Ways that – one would hope – are not just based on the philosophy of an eye for an eye?
Jesus himself forgave a mass-murderer, Saul of Tarsus, who was responsible for persecuting hundreds of Christians and who, around the age of 25, had an epiphany and converted himself to become Paul the Apostle.
Without that act of forgiveness we would be down an Apostle; and the course of our collective history would be forever changed.
I recently had a confrontation with my younger cousin on Facebook. He was trying to make the point that rejoicing in any death is wrong (in reference to the recently deceased Margaret Thatcher). He chose to do so by posting a satirical statement rejoicing in the deaths of those killed in the attack at the Boston Marathon. I had to point out that when trying to make a point about discrediting a certain behaviour (like rejoicing in someone's demise, or killing people, for example), it's usually best to avoid using exactly the thing you are trying to discredit in your argument.
I read today that "a large majority of Americans support the death penalty for the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing should he be convicted in federal court." From this, we can assume one of two things: either a large majority of Americans are being foolish, like my cousin, or they are simply out for cold-blooded revenge. Foolishness can be forgiven; after all, to err is human. But cold-blooded revenge?
In Jahar we have a person with a mere nineteen years of experience in this world who is at odds with much of the rest of it. So at odds, in fact, that he found it acceptable – no, imperative – to kill innocent people.
The question, as ever, is why?
In order to answer it, we must examine what turned this young man to be so askew. We must ask the difficult questions that might lead to uncomfortable truths. We must be brave, and we must be balanced.
Already, there are disturbing accusations that, if true, show Jahar's rights as a US citizen and human being have been gravely violated. There has already been some public debate over whether Jahar should have been advised of his Miranda rights or whether the "public safety exception" justified delaying it. In fact, Tsarnaev wasn't Mirandised because the Department Of Justice decided that he should be.
"Instead, that happened only because a federal magistrate, on her own, scheduled a hospital-room hearing, interrupted the FBI's interrogation which had been proceeding at that point for a full 16 hours, and advised him of his right to remain silent and appointed him a lawyer. Since then, Tsarnaev ceased answering the FBI's questions."
I didn't really want to write about Jahar because I am more disturbed by the events that unfolded around him as a consequence of his actions than the bombing itself, and because the bombing itself disturbed me deeply.
That someone could commit such an act does not concern me so much as how we could allow someone to become so lost as to commit such an act.
There is a Bantu word that encapsulates an African philosophy:
Ubuntu: "I am what I am because of who we all are."
Read more about ubuntu
What Jahar did to those people hurt us – as a collective – deeply, yet it is a reflection of what we have done to him. If we kill him for his crimes, how will that reflect back on us?
Even if the lethal injection is as painless as it is supposed to be, he will feel pain: the pain of waiting to die, knowing the exact time and place, of counting the minutes with his loved ones, of saying goodbye to a future he will never know, letting go of his talents, his knowledge, his thoughts, his connections to this world and to others. How will we feel that pain if we condemn him to this? How will we respond to his suffering?
Emotions have a similar quality to energy: they can be released, stored, transmitted and transmuted. When those bombs exploded, the Tsarnaev brothers did not simply unleash a hail of metallic shrapnel: the emotional fallout was much greater than any physical damage. The broiling firestorm of emotional energy that surrounds the story is chaotic and contradictory. So how will it respond when events take their course?
I didn't want to write about Jahar because I think that what I have to say about him will be very difficult for many people to understand. I have no answers for these questions but I do believe that what affects one of us affects us all. I can't say that any death, in an of itself, contributes any joy to the world.
Life is complicated, complex, inestimable and ineffable. It seems so extraordinarily unlikely, and even if it's not, the chances of you being exactly as you are, are so unfathomably impossible that you may as well marvel at the uniqueness of you. And of course, the same thing is true for everyone and everything else. So we must marvel at Jahar's uniqueness, and try to understand what tarnished its beauty and why.
Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it.
If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water.
If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now, water can flow or it can crash.
Be water, my friend.”
― Bruce Lee
Be water, my friend.
Yes, water can flow and it can crash.
But it can become much more than a teapot or a bottle or a cup.
Water can become a knife, gouging great valleys into the face of the Earth.
Water can also be a builder, each drop carefully depositing a microscopic layer of calcium carbonate upon another, creating stalactites and stalagmites over millennia.
Water sustains all life and life as we know it could not be without water.
"The basic idea is that there's this vast fabric of humanity stretching endlessly into the distance. I'm connected to you, and you to others on out endlessly…
Your actions can influence the actions and feelings of others around you, which in turn can spread to still others, and then to still others…
If you tell someone they don't influence anybody, they're not going to do anything.
But if you tell them they influence a thousand people, they'll change their lives.
And that's why I think it's so critical for us to understand – first and foremost – how and why we are connected.
Thinking people, they can see opportunities in this, so we have to do this collectively.
We have to do this collectively through dialogues – first between two people, through relationships between two people – and then generalising it to a whole family, to the entire community, to bigger communities, to the country, to the entire world.
It takes a society to recognise that we cannot do this by ourselves. We cannot do this alone.
The lack of connection between people causes all the sadness in the world. No question about it.
We are at a crossroads – and it's not going to be decided by fate; it's not a destiny.
We are at a point where the future of humanity is going to be dictated by how people think about it today, and how they behave.
Awareness.
Awakening.
These are the key terms.
We have a chance to change.
One thing we have to recognise is that to change is no longer a question of whether or not.
Change is coming.
The only question is whether it's coming unexpectedly and abruptly on us so that we can't do much about it, we become victims of it; or whether we can anticipate it, create those majorchanges that will bring about a betterfuture.
And that is the unprecedented task of the generation now living."
Watch Crossroads: Exploring the depths of the current human condition >>
"Exploring the depths of the current human condition and the emergence of a worldview that is recreating our world from the inside out.
Weaving together insights and findings from biology, psychology, network science, systems science, business, culture and media, the film reveals the inner workings of the human experience in the 21st century, urging viewers to step out of the box and challenge their own assumptions about who we really are, and why we do what we do."
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