Re: Cambodian utopia is an endless quest for explanation in a no "final solution" to the "problem of evil", according to Freudian psychology

Cambodia 's problem is
the Vietnamese contolled group in Phnom Penh .


On May 23, 8:16 am, Chim <Chi...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Perpetual peace an utopian myth?
VITHAL C NADKARNI

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2007 02:02:30 AM]

At Ankor Wat, King Suryavarman II stands forever in a sandstone panel
overlooking a gallery. Halfway along that bas relief he's shown again,
riding a war elephant with 15 parasols, surrounded by armed columns.
Weapons bristle against the flower-printed coats and stylised
coiffures of the soldiers. Pointing to the swords and halberds on the
wall, the guide draws your attention to the role of weapons in
Cambodia's tragic history. "Remember, the anti-personnel mines and
mortars that you saw at the War Museum on the way to the temple in the
morning?," he asks. "They are all blood-brothers of the swords and
spears used by the Khmer in ancient times."

The crippled war veteran sporting jungle green fatigues at the museum
was more taciturn. He said he lost his arm while fighting the
murderous Khmer Rouge and his entire family perished in the great wave
of terror that Comrade Pol Pot unleashed on this gentle land. He said
all this without expression, as though he'd lost all feeling. Upon
further probing, he talked softly about his nightmares; about never
being able to reach his children in time; about finding them lying
bloody and still in a lush green paddy field. What about his fellow
citizens who'd had a hand in murdering more than a quarter of
Cambodia's population? Had he met any one of them?

For a long time he did not answer. As you waited for him to speak, you
could feel the sunshine on your back as grasshoppers leapt among the
weeds growing around the rusting relics of war. Then he started
speaking about great bewilderment, about an even greater sorrow for
being born on this earth and the few questions that he had for the
killers: "Why? What had his kids done to deserve such a fate?" No
answer could possibly wipe out his anguish. But he would never stop
searching.

The Cambodian veteran's endless quest for explanations reminded you of
something attributed to Freud: that there could be no 'final solution'
to the 'problem of evil'. Freud believed that human life was such that
evil impulses "may be temporarily held in check, suppressed or
repressed, but never permanently eliminated". He recognised that good
maxims would not make moral dilemmas go away. In such a scheme, the
possibility of perpetual peace was a utopian myth, for human life was
marked by nothing so much as the transience of beauty and good and
evil as well. The mystery, as the Gita says, lay in the passage.


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