Revenge Vs. Justice

What is revenge, and why is it best-served cold?  Is justice just organized revenge invented by the human mind?  The similarities and differences are topics I have been pondering recently.  There are many views about justice systems in the world and many varying views on the concept of revenge.

Revenge, by definition, is “The action of inflicting hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands.” I interpret this to mean that someone else is trying to exert their suffering onto you to try and lessen the pain upon themselves. Now that we know the dictionary definition of revenge, we can explore the topic more deeply. If someone belittles us with their little words in an attempt to bring us down, why does it feel so good to fire back with a snarky comet to put them in their place? Doing so brings us temporary satisfaction, but in the long run, it brings us no closer to true happiness, the very thing every living creature truly desires. If we look at a more physical example, say someone publicly embarrasses us. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the person in question disclosed a secret we entrusted to them. We may feel a range of emotions, including sadness, wrath, and possibly resentment. It would be natural to assume that an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth would be the right thing to do. Would that be considered justice? I think not!

The justice system I am most familiar with is that of the United States, as to convey my thoughts clearly, I will be referring to this throughout this half of my argument. The Oxford English dictionary defines justice as “Just behavior or treatment.” in the U.S., someone can rob a drug store and be sentenced to a couple of months to a few years in a correctional institution.  I would not consider this to be revenge because the store owner is not committing an action to “get back” at the criminal.  However, if the robber were to rob the store and murder the clerk and then be sentenced to death, this could be considered revenge from the hammurabic stance.  From my point of view, this is a cruel act; as mentioned in posts that predate this one, I have said that I do not believe humans have the authority to determine who lives and dies.

Nevertheless, the clerk’s family would most likely consider this a win for society and gain some sort of sick satisfaction out of the ordeal. Still, on the other hand, if the murder was somehow acquitted of all charges, the victim’s family may take the situation into their own hands and kill him.  Now would this be considered justice or personal revenge?

My personal opinion on the matter is that justice is yet another failed invention of the human mind and a fancy way of making revenge seem less inhumane. 

Waiting for your judgment,

-Jackson Jamesblood

Advertisement

Helplessness

The human condition is a rare one. We have one of the most complex brains out of all of the land mammals on this blue planet, but yet we continue to let children die not only in the streets but in our public schools due to the stubbornness of those who seem to lack even an ounce of compassion. WHEN WILL ENOUGH BE ENOUGH!? When will true justice be served? When will we stop acting out of greed? When will those who want what is worse for humanity be punished?

“And Jesus wept…”

In my current state, the state many others are in, we can only educate ourselves and wear the armor of knowledge and slew the evil-doers with the mace of right action. I feel like I am in a state of helplessness because I cannot help those who can’t help themselves, but we must find a way. We must find a way to help fix the planet of the atrocities we created if it’s the last thing we do. A revolution between good and evil is in its infancy, the drums of war are just beginning to beat after a long time coming. NOW IS THE TIME TO CHOOSE which side of history you want to be on, I have made my decision, and I pray to the universe that you have made the right decision and saw past the river of delusion and crossed the bridge of true wisdom.

If we give in to the wrong ethics our own morals will become almost non-existent and we will feel nothing but ill inspired emotions disguised as truth until the weight of reality suddenly hits us like the weight of the world on the shoulders of Atlas.

My advice from myself, Jackson Jamesblood, can only take you so far. I recommend practicing basic human decency which sadly eludes the minds of most modern humans. If we start with this basic foundation we will begin to try and reverse the effects of crossing the point of no return which we are well past. To do this task I would recommend losing the battle to win the war. By this I mean do not waste your breath on the small misfortunes of everyday life and truly speak out against the issues that matter and passionately preach kindness from your heart.

Secondly, I would recommend smiling more and going out of your way to bring a physical or metaphorical smile to someone. Once we begin to develop this ritual we will start building personal merit and evolve our spiritual nature into a higher and more clear state.

Lastly, I would like to persuade you to continue on your lifelong quest for true happiness, a goal all sentient beings desire deep down.

May we find hope, and may you forever be in fates favor,

Waiting for your judgment,

-Jackson Jamesblood

My Plea to Humanity

To my dear readers,

I write to you on this night, not as a blogger, not as an amateur philosopher, and not even as a Buddhist! I write to you as a fellow human, as a resident of this planet. At this very second we are at the point of no return. We abuse the Earth’s plentiful resources, we cut down trees and level beautiful hills to build subdivisions and roads to drive high polluting vehicles on. With these vehicles we burn fuel in a couple hours than what was crafted over many 100,000 millennia. Plastic of our creation gets poured by the ton into our wondrous oceans while our garbage gets scattered over our immaculate mountains. We have already acknowledged the error of our ways, but yet we take full advantage of our stubbornness and do nothing to fix our world which is crumbling before our very eyes.

`Starvation and disease spread like wildfire throughout the continents, and we would rather watch this happen than spare a couple of 6.14″ x 2.6″ green rectangular peaces of paper that our government tells us has value to end this all. A more than vast majority of us are too selfish to spare a couple of minutes each week improving the well being of a fellow human, and frankly it is disgusting. We all forget that we are only two chromosomes away from being a potato, we think to highly about ourselves and every thought that strikes us turns into “us” vs. “them”. This way of thinking makes us constantly criticize each-other. It is through these wrong views that make us so wasteful and non-compassionate to those around us. It is as if peace will never occur.

My message is a call to non violent arms. Stop thinking in an us versus them manor and start thinking about where the tracks we are on end. Kindness and compassion will be our only saving grace in our final hours. Understanding where we come from and where we are now makes all the difference in an attempt to lose our arrogance we have consciously and subconsciously. Anyone who does not heed the warning that has been given to us for years and sound the trumpets of the end of the human era will forever be a fool in my eyes. now in what may be the final eleventh hour, I beg of you to be less wasteful, I beg of you to be pure in your actions, and most of all, I beg of you to spread compassion to even the most undeserving life forms now, and for the rest of eternity (which may be sooner than expected!)

Waiting for your judgment,

– Jackson Jamesblood

Life is Wondrous

“Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.”

– Lao-Tzu

Why is there evil in the world? Humans have been asking this question for what feels like eons, and people seem to turn to theology and sacred texts for answers. If we take a look at the biblical story of evil we would read about Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit and reaching a state of clarity. Christians believe that this was the moment all disobedience, misfortunes, and anarchy broke loose, but yet even cast out of the garden of eden they both started a farm and a family and made the most out of each day.

On a less biblical note, I personally believe that everyone has kindness inside them somewhere, but over the years we bury it and make up absurd falsities that you can’t make it in life unless you face it head on with brute force and in the words of Dolly Parton with “A mean streak a half a mile wide”. I will preach this until the day I die, compassion is the only way! No matter how badly someone treats or aggravates you, they deserve equal or more respect than the Dalai Lama or Aretha Franklin.

I hope this short message inspires you all,

Waiting for your judgement,

Jackson Jamesblood

Our Reverence to Each Other

A very wise human once said something along the lines of do not let others wrong actions take away your peace of mind. I had never thought of the world in such a way until it was put like this. My interpretation of this statement is that even if people who commit harmful acts to belittle or harm others should never affect our ability to be level headed and continuing to treat all beings with compassion.

We as sentient creatures, have free will. With free will comes decisions. If we make the decision to be kind, we will gain merit and make others happy. When we make others happy, we give them hope. Hope is a very funny thing, I personally hope world peace will be achieved in my lifetime. I chant (my equivalent to prayer) for peace, this helps, but just barely. To make this dream a reality, we must take action by taking every opportunity to make the lives of others better, no matter how small or insignificant the act may seem. I am not afraid to admit that during my time on this planet I have been a hypocrite to what I preach. I have made mistakes, but if I didn’t make them I wouldn’t have learned from those experiences. For example, a coworker that had become almost like family told me that when I say “good enough” on a task or job, I only create or leave more work for someone else. It was not until these words were said to me that I realized the error of how my laziness impacted the lives of others. From these mistakes I encourage everyone I meet to dedicate their lives to service to others to improve our crumbling planet.

A life of service sounds tiring, and to be frank, it can be. In order to get past our own challenges I believe it is wise to lead others on the glorious path of compassion and to learn from it for our benefit and for the benefit of all sentient beings.

Waiting for your judgement,

-Jackson Jamesblood

False Prophets and early 2021’s political climate

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing. but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” – Matthew 7:15

It has been almost a year since I started this blog, and I am very happy with how it is going as of now. In other news I was more than happy to be able to say so long and farewell to 45, oh what a victory it was for humanity only a few short months ago. Former president Trump has truly made history being the only president to be impeached twice, and the only president to command his hate group of supporters to invade our Capitol building.

The two things I found most interesting while watching the news on that day were the parallels to a Nazi rally and the gallows set up for Mike Pence. It was filmed and reported that a member of the Trump cult tried to replace the American flag with a Trump 2020 flag. Before this took place I thought to myself that the only way this could be anymore Nazi-ish is if they replaced the American flag with a Trump flag, and if they started burning books. I can honestly say that during the moment the Trump cult tried to replace the flag, my level of faith in humanity and common decency dropped to an all-time low. Another thing that shocked me were the gallows set up outside of the Capitol. From my understanding from watching the “completely accurate” fox news channel, I learned that Pence was a traitor to the Trump regime and needed to pay for following what the constitution says and not making an entirely B.S. claim that there were more votes for the Donald. I believe that these actions were meant to hurt people so the Trump dynasty would turn into a long lasting dictatorship.

On a lighter note President Joe Biden’s inauguration went beautifully, even with the safer limited attendance. Amanda Gorman’s poetry reading was amazing and most inspiring. “For there is always light” indeed. On day one our most recent political leader rejoined the Paris Climate agreement. This action brings hope back, Donny’s mess is on the way to being cleaned up. Even though the international relationships he wrecked will take to heal; our country will grow stronger with every moment our lawmakers attempt to make the standard of living for all Americans increase.

CPAC was interesting to watch. I do not fully understand the purpose of the golden Trump statue, but I do believe that it is being used as a symbol of power in the Trump cult. The CPAC stage is something that really caught my eye. The stage resembles the rune in the Elder Futhark known as “Othala” the meaning of the rune is home land and Ancestry, I believe that this may be a sign of white extremism and silently signalling to all of those people Trumps 45 club dislikes. Another concerning thing about the stage is that the symbol it made had wings branching off of it which is a symbol that was and still is used by Nazi’s and Neo-Nazi’s. That symbol is one of pure hatred and no compassion towards there fellow man.

As the Buddha once said “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.” If there was some way to show republicans how to show love and not greed, maybe we would be living in a more peaceful and forward moving world. It is foolish to wish, good consequences only come from right action. It is well beyond the time to take action and fix our humanly cultures issues.

Waiting for your judgement,

Jackson Jamesblood

4: Religion

We as humans are not born filled with hatred towards fellow man, it is a trait in which we are taught.  When we come into this world kicking and screaming we have no influence right at that moment to hate blacks or Jews, but over time people pound into our heads that if one black person robs a bank and used the money to buy drugs, that all black people are thieves that do drugs.  Religion was used to be a tool that made the unexplainable explainable. Think back to the 790s for instance. When there was thunder the only possible solution to explain the unexplainable was that there was a divine being who through a temper tantrum and made sparks fall from the clouds.  Now there aren’t too many Thor worshipers due to modern-day science and technology. Today religion is used to tell people what to and what not to do, and sometimes it is used to tell people that a certain way of living will send you to a deep, dark, fiery place where you will burn and suffer forever.  Today’s Christians are taught that Islam is bad when according to the bible they should be dictated to love their neighbor.

Image result for christians and muslims

In my opinion, religion is outdated, and we need to have faith in the law officials that protect us, the doctors who save lives, and most of all our selves to be able to freely think without being spoon-fed a heaping plate of racism hatred.

Please before you leave try thinking for your self instead of “What Would Jesus Do” think “What Would I Do” 

Waiting for your judgment,

Dr. Jamesblood