Hazing is all about the "haze".
There has been a lot of public controversy about hazing. Most of it is well founded.
This matter mostly concerns our youth.
Because most of those who speak out against hazing are grieving parents who have lost a son or a daughter to it - respected fathers and beloved mothers in the Nation.
For many are the names heard who perished from the ineptitude and utter recklessness of those who haze who understanding nothing about the "haze". And it is always one life too many, and it is always one of our hopeful and aspiring, spirited, young starshines.
Those who themselves did not conquer the haze now use their blindness to mindlessly destroy young lives and young dreams. They do not haze, they simply abuse. Some of them so wantonly and so recklessly that perhaps they have come to feel they have a special license to secretly propagate their violence in the minds and hearts of our children in the Nation.
They have no such right.
Those traditions who transmit violence for violence's own sake are evil and empty and also blind. It mires the spirit of our youth permanently in a state of inward confusion and afflicts them in their formative ages until they themselves resolve to regard violence as a point of clarity and resolution. Until they themselves become inwardly drawn to violence as a mode and an answer to interior conflicts.
It is a betrayal.
Those who did not physically perish - have themselves perished - from the thought - that lived within the formative longing in them - for those self-same spirit ideals of civic trust and human solidarity integral to the formation of a crucial sense of a uniquely personal sense of identity - distinctive - yet identifiable with and within a greater, common belonging - a civic identity, a citizenship.
- selah -
The issue at hand as regards the controversy on hazing, I am convinced, is not really about hazing but about those who have corrupted its spirit and living tradition. It is really about criminal abuse, spiritual corruption, and the betrayal of the common trust of our generations.
Hazing is an act of passing on. One does not endure it or merely survive it, one must conquer it and from it prevail in passing from a past life into another one.
It afflicts in an inductee, a deliberate sense of confusion and this state is - the haze.
How this is done may be physical or mental or both. And though it shall and - it must - always involve a level of pain, it must never be done to excess. Because it is intended to be a spiritual rigor. Those who pass it on must be careful in passing it on - because the act itself always contains something...
One emerges from the haze, into the fullness of the clarity of its intended evolution. It is always part of a program of initiation and indoctrination. And it is always an act of spiritual connection, sacred as well as intimate. It proves trust and blesses it. A paradox to those who do not experience it from within.
The haze is what it produces. Because a lie is a lie is a lie - but - it is not self-deception unless one believes that a lie is not a lie - inasmuch as to knowingly tell a lie and to knowingly impugn the Truth is not the same action.
It has something to do with character building - and - it has everything to do with leadership formation in a peerage Institution.
Because self-deception is the enemy of every Code that institutionalize leadership professionally in the formal and in the national, civil as well as military. And it shows no prejudice to rank just as much as the Code shows no yield to the equality of its application.
Because ultimately, it is only a question of one or the other.
The Code answers to a question, and it is a question of honor, and it is a question too - that no man nor woman may know the answer to - unless he or she becomes - and is made answerable to - the question itself.
And is not a question of violence - or how violent.
Life itself will haze us, you know. Individuals and Nations too. And in the world outside, if one loses sight of one's own true self - or what is true - it will be permanent, and it will be for real.
Fear only what is certain.
Then KCCO.
This matter mostly concerns our youth.
Because most of those who speak out against hazing are grieving parents who have lost a son or a daughter to it - respected fathers and beloved mothers in the Nation.
For many are the names heard who perished from the ineptitude and utter recklessness of those who haze who understanding nothing about the "haze". And it is always one life too many, and it is always one of our hopeful and aspiring, spirited, young starshines.
Those who themselves did not conquer the haze now use their blindness to mindlessly destroy young lives and young dreams. They do not haze, they simply abuse. Some of them so wantonly and so recklessly that perhaps they have come to feel they have a special license to secretly propagate their violence in the minds and hearts of our children in the Nation.
They have no such right.
Those traditions who transmit violence for violence's own sake are evil and empty and also blind. It mires the spirit of our youth permanently in a state of inward confusion and afflicts them in their formative ages until they themselves resolve to regard violence as a point of clarity and resolution. Until they themselves become inwardly drawn to violence as a mode and an answer to interior conflicts.
It is a betrayal.
Those who did not physically perish - have themselves perished - from the thought - that lived within the formative longing in them - for those self-same spirit ideals of civic trust and human solidarity integral to the formation of a crucial sense of a uniquely personal sense of identity - distinctive - yet identifiable with and within a greater, common belonging - a civic identity, a citizenship.
- selah -
The issue at hand as regards the controversy on hazing, I am convinced, is not really about hazing but about those who have corrupted its spirit and living tradition. It is really about criminal abuse, spiritual corruption, and the betrayal of the common trust of our generations.
Hazing is an act of passing on. One does not endure it or merely survive it, one must conquer it and from it prevail in passing from a past life into another one.
It afflicts in an inductee, a deliberate sense of confusion and this state is - the haze.
How this is done may be physical or mental or both. And though it shall and - it must - always involve a level of pain, it must never be done to excess. Because it is intended to be a spiritual rigor. Those who pass it on must be careful in passing it on - because the act itself always contains something...
One emerges from the haze, into the fullness of the clarity of its intended evolution. It is always part of a program of initiation and indoctrination. And it is always an act of spiritual connection, sacred as well as intimate. It proves trust and blesses it. A paradox to those who do not experience it from within.
The haze is what it produces. Because a lie is a lie is a lie - but - it is not self-deception unless one believes that a lie is not a lie - inasmuch as to knowingly tell a lie and to knowingly impugn the Truth is not the same action.
It has something to do with character building - and - it has everything to do with leadership formation in a peerage Institution.
Because self-deception is the enemy of every Code that institutionalize leadership professionally in the formal and in the national, civil as well as military. And it shows no prejudice to rank just as much as the Code shows no yield to the equality of its application.
Because ultimately, it is only a question of one or the other.
The Code answers to a question, and it is a question of honor, and it is a question too - that no man nor woman may know the answer to - unless he or she becomes - and is made answerable to - the question itself.
And is not a question of violence - or how violent.
The haze is what it produces: It makes for a vigilant spirit and an upright heart. It produces focus and clarity of intention. And it is always an integral part of a greater spirit of a living tradition of leadership formation and academic excellence. It prepares leaders to serve among leaders.
But if it only passes on an empty spirit and a dead tradition - in this controversy on hazing, we may also see - the blind can never lead the blind.
---<--@
But if it only passes on an empty spirit and a dead tradition - in this controversy on hazing, we may also see - the blind can never lead the blind.
---<--@
Fear only what is certain.
Then KCCO.
