I just get wiped out so easily and I'm still dealing with the set back on my legs/back too, in addition to the chest congestion issue too (I have lowered immune system response because of being on a rheumatoid arthritis medication that has that as a side effect.)
And I had all these projects I was just starting when these health things caved in, so that's not that great either. It's nice having the steps up to the bath/shower and the bar installed. So that was timely, at least.
This next article is:
Smith, Wilford E. (1977, Summer). Church and state in America in the twenty-first century A.D. Military Chaplaincy Review, 28-40.
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Wilford quotes Milton Konvitz at some length including this passage:
The Nuremberg trials establish the principle in international law that the defense of having acted pursuant to orders of the government or a superior does not absolve a defendant from responsibility.... (p. 31)In introducing the second batch of Konvitz quotes, Smith says: "He goes on to argue that modern enlightenment is opening the way for man to question old ways and to stand boldly on his own feet." (p. 31)
The thing is that it this is a chaplain saying that this is how it should be in the military and these are things that chaplains need to bear in mind in their serving and ministering in the military. So ultimately, if something horrible is done they have to have the guts to stand up to their superiors and say no they won't take part in it because it is wrong.
There are several things going on here. First of all, they have to be able to think for themselves, right? Then they have to have values, which is not necessarily the same as just thinking. So they have personal ideas as to what right and wrong are. Then they can't be timit fearful beings, scared to stand up for what they believe in. And there has to be some sort of opportunity, however large or small, for them to be able to act according to their conscience.
It's wonderful that this chaplain even brought it up, because my experience at the Vienna mission was such that I was scared to death to speak my conscience. I avoided the most egregious to me conscience offenders, like what it would have taken to help socialize a new person.
In the Vienna mission, as far as I could tell it seemed to me that groupthink was paramount. Individuals had personalities, for sure, and that came out, but the group was always central and security was central and number one.
And I always have to come back to my own experience, because that's what I knew best, and all I knew was that anything that I did on my own seemed to increase my stress levels vis a vis my relationship with the mission. And I never got the impression that the individual was ever supposed to think of him/herself seperate enough from the group to think in terms of this kind of responsibility as is described in this sentence about the Nurenberg trials.
So in the end, just before I left Vienna, I was symbolicly accused of doing this by making me out to be the little boy who "was standing up on the inside" (when he finally sat down after the teacher's repeated instructions to do so). I had thought of myself as too separate from the group, which was my mortal sin. I was able to think for myself and decide right and wrong for myself and I would have even been able to stand up against an authority with my beliefs if I thought they were wrong (and I did altogether too often).
But they didn't know that I disagreed with them in all these various areas. All they knew was that I dared to be separate. And that wasn't allowed. It's allowed in the military, it seems, however. At least enough so that this passage was put here.
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The rest of the article doesn't really have anything I want to comment on right now. He talks about some church and state issues, but mainly speculating about what might happen, and it's not something I want to go into right now.