Mondays post (here), led with this: “I have always liked the oft-repeated story about the “wolves” within each of us: The Two Wolves. Which Wolf Do You Feed?“. I had intended it as lead on another topic, but the Presidents visit to Cuba “bumped” the other.
Now a new terrorist tragedy in Brussels, Belgium bumps my initial topic once again, thus “deux” (You’ll see “trois” later).
Mostly what I’d like to say is well covered by today’s Just Above Sunset, my favorite blogger.
Terror terrorizes, that is all. Responding in kind is not helpful. 94% of us thought retribution was the appropriate, even essential, response to 9-11-01…. Afghanistan Oct 7 2001001.
In my opinion, our response worked against us after 9-11-01. We’ve paid, and paid, and paid some more, and will continue to pay, by attacking violence then with even more violence.
We empowered the enemy then.
Open that link about the Two Wolves and read the text carefully: it’s very short. (I’ve seen many versions of this story, and of course, one can question the “parentage” or “truth” of anything these days. Nonetheless, the words do resonate:)
Negative (disabling):
fear
anger
envy
sorrow
regret
greed
arrogance
hatefulness
lies
Positive (enabling):
joy
peace
love
hope
humbleness
kindness
friendship
generosity
faith
truth
[POSTNOTE Mar 24: Chuck (see comment at end of this post) correctly points out that “Justice” should be one of the words in the list above. I chose to stick with precisely the words used by the author in the originating source. For many years, I have included the following quotation, made by some anonymous person, at another website of mine: “With sharing there can be justice; with justice there can be peace; only with peace can there be a future.”
Eleven years ago I was involved in an interesting exercise around the words, Justice, Peace, Mercy and Truth. I had occasion to recall that workshop recently. The link is here: Mercy002]

Will there be future terrorist attacks? Certainly. Especially if they achieve the objective to terrorize us. That’s their purpose, after all.
The sign noted in Brussels after the attack (noted in the Just Above Sunset linked above) basically says it all:
“Faites des frites, pas la guerre”
“Make French fries, not war!”
Unfortunately, the strong temptation will be to succumb to the negative.
I hope the positive prevails.
COMMENTS:
from Chuck: Regarding your last entry regarding Brussels bombing and the foolishness about fighting terror with more violence… I couldn’t agree more. But in your positive enabling list you had no mention of ‘Justice’…which for me is at the heart of the problem…and origin of almost all violence. [see my postnote in the body of the blog, above]
Positive (enabling): joy peace love hope humbleness kindness friendship generosity faith truth
Have you told your Member of Congress yet about the Commission on Global Security Justice and Governance?
If you think as highly of it as I do please bring it to the attention of your policy makers and urge them to read it too.
Anyone can access the report and its 8 page Executive Summary here.
from Christine, writing from Paris: Your blog is very right. The funny thing is that you call French fries (you in the the English speaking world), what is actually, a Belgium specialty…. that is why they use those words…. It is a symbol of Belgium!!!
I don’t know if you knew that…
Belgium was French at some point and part of it (the French part) still claims to be part of France in spite of its belonging to the kingdom of Belgium…. European History is dense and complicated…. Still nowadays….
from Fred: Liked your post. Your sentiments align with mine, a fact which might concern you, but fear not. Choose the better of your two wolves and accept the praise.