It has become so commonplace that one comes to expect each morning to greet you with news of another mass killing. And while it is true that occasionally these macabre events arise elsewhere on the globe, despairingly they seem most often to be homegrown acts of lunacy here in the United States. It is the sad realization that these murders appear to arise from the notion that when considering mindless mayhem we tend to think locally that prompts me to provide a clarifying edit to the worldview I call Distilled Harmony.
This is not a casual edit. As you know if you have been reading The Wall for it’s last couple decades, Distilled Harmony provides, in its four basic tenets, the philosophical underpinnings of my perceptions of the proper way to conduct oneself as we seek to live a compassionate, loving, honorable life. I have condensed Distilled Harmony into a single hierarchical sentence of four tenets. It originally appeared thusly:
Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, enable beauty, distill complexity and oppose harm.
I am loathe to change that sentence. It was years in the making and I have written, here on The Wall, at significant length about each tenet. Yet as I read of the ways in which various insane killers justify their actions as “purifying manifestations” of some twisted worldview, I am prompted to provide the following edit to hopefully assure that Distilled Harmony is never hijacked by such nefarious minds. So currently:
Distilled Harmony: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, and Distill Complexity in order to Oppose Harm.
To clarify, it is by living harmoniously according to the first three tenets that one opposes harm. Not by resorting to violence to oppose those who view life differently, and then calling such violence harmonious.
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