Commenter Scott Gray left a detailed comment on a recent post, which I thought deserved to be highlighted in a post of its own. The original post asked whether it is appropriate to โdo violence toโ violent texts. Scott explored some of the different types of โpeaceโ and โwarfareโ that one might engage in with respect to texts:
a few thoughts on textual violence:
โhot peaceโ baseline: interactive collaboration; mutual prosperity; no mistrust or suspicion; absence of violence or intimidation: โhonor thy father and mother, and their heritage and traditions, especially their sacred texts.โ
โcold peaceโ baseline: mutual indifference; no mistrust or suspicion; no violence or intimidation: โignore thy father and mother, and their heritage and traditions, especially their sacred texts.โ
โcold warโ baseline: antagonism without open conflict; armed truce; mutual intimidation prevents violent engagement; mistrust and suspicion on both sides; feeling of immanent violence if conditions change and one party sees the possibility of an advantage; no covert violence: โbe wary of thy father and mother, and their heritage and traditions, especially their sacred texts. and be ready to pounce when conditions are favorable. p.s: parodies and other forms of ridicule are ok.โ
โhot warโ baseline: violent warfare; the destruction or violent suppression of oneโs opponent: โkill and burn thy father and mother, and their heritage and traditions, especially their sacred texts.โ
itโs difficult, actually, to engage in โhot warโ with the texts, unless they are suppressed, or the object of a book burning, or banned, or the authors have jihad placed on them.
so the best we can do for โviolenceโ is cold war. parodies. cartoons about the characters. political responses, filled with fallacies and emotionally charged rhetoric.
oddly enough, the โhonorersโ of the sacred texts view โcold peaceโ as violence. in fact, they seem to view anything less than โhonorโ for the text as โhot war.โ when these texts are not available for worship, evangelization, or other forms of โhonor,โ in public school, say, it is viewed as suppression or book banning.
actually, the dismissal of these texts in school is โcold peace.โ the texts are ignored. or the texts are given the same degree of โhonorโ as any other textโsomething to be studied.
What do you think? Is the analogy between war/violence and the ways we treat and interact with texts a helpful one?