The Separation between State and Religion

In time we will realize that Democracy is the entitlement of individuals to every right that was in its times alloted to kings. The right to speak and decide, to be treated with decency, to serve and be served by people in a State of “love” that is, to serve with one’s work for the development of ‘life’. To belong to the Kingdom of Human Beings without racial, national, social or academic separations. To love and be loved. To die at the service of the whole and be honored in one’s death, for one’s life and work was legitimately valued. To be graceful and grateful. To have the pride and the humility of being One with the Universe, One with every realm of Existence, One with every living and deceased soul. To treat with dignity and be treated with dignity for One is dignified together with All others and Life itself. To walk the path of compassion, not in the sorrow of guilt but in the pride of being. To take responsability for one’s mistakes and sufferings and stand up again and again like a hero and a heroine and face the struggle that is put at one’s feet and in one’s hands. Millions of people, millions and millions of people might take many generations to realize the consciousness of our humaneness but there is no other dignified path for the human being.

The “work” as I conceive it is psychological and political. Psychology is the connection between the different dimensions within one’s self and Politics is the actualization of that consciousness in our practical lives. Religion is the ceremony that binds the connectedness between the individual and the Universe. The separation between religion, politics and science, the arts and sports is, in the sphere of the social, the reflection of the schizophrenia within the individual and the masses. The dialogue between individuality and the "human" belongs to consciousness. The tendency to develop cults resides in the shortcomings we’are finding in life as it is structured today. “Life” has become the private property of a few priviledged who cannot profit from it because as soon as it is appropriated it stops to be “life” or “life-giving”.

We are all the victims of our own invention and each one is called upon to find solutions. The only problem is believing our selves incapable of finding them. We are now free to use all Systems of knowledge objectively, sharing them without imposing our will on each other. To become objective about our lives means to understand that the institutions that govern its experience are critically important. That we are one with the governments, one with the religious activities that mark its pace, that the arena’s in which we move our bodies and the laboratories in which we explore our possibilities are ALL part and parcel of our own personal responsibility. That WE ARE ONE WITH EACH OTHER AND EVERYTHING AROUND US and acknowledge for ourselves a bond of love in conscious responsibility. That we human beings know ourselves part of each other and are willing and able to act on our behalf for the benefit of each and every individual. That we no longer allow governments, industries, universities or any other institution to run along unchecked by the objective principles of humaneness. That we do not allow gurus to abuse their power or governors to steal the taxes and use them to their personal advantage in detriment of the whole. That we do not allow abuse from anyone anywhere because life is too beautiful to do so and that we are willing to stop the rampant crime with the necessary compassion Conscious knowledge is every individual's right. Conscious action is every individual's duty.

Monday 8 September 2014

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Monday 18 August 2014

Suicide or murder in Japan?


Japan’s suicide statistics don’t tell the real story

BY JAKE ADELSTEIN
According to the National Police Agency (NPA), Japan’s annual total of suicides dipped below 30,000 people for the first time in 15 years in 2012 — to 27,766. While the fall is great news, part of me wonders: Has there really been a drop in suicides or should we look at it as a drop in homicides?
According to the government’s 2012 “White Paper on Suicide,” in 2011 there were 30,651 cases recorded of people taking their own lives. The motives listed were in the following descending order of problems related to health; daily life; family; and work.
But here’s an odd thing: The reasons for the suicide were only determined in 73 percent of cases — in more than 25 percent of cases they were for reasons unknown. Many of those cases perhaps presented no reason because they weren’t suicides at all.
According to the NPA, since 1998 there have been 45 cases of murder initially ruled by police to have been due to natural causes or suicide. Among those, one was a man from Nagano Prefecture whose murder in 1980 was treated as a suicide until the killer confessed in 2000 — after the statute of limitations had passed.
The NPA has admitted that in Japan only 10 percent of suspicious deaths result in an autopsy. However, when a death initially appears to be due to suicide, only 5 percent are autopsied. The lack of a comprehensive use of autopsies was only brought to the public’s attention after several cases of “missed murders” came to light. The 45 known cases may just be “the edge of the graveyard” as some cops have put it.
The most sensational case in this respect is that of Kanae Kijima, who has been convicted of killing three men after swindling them out of their money. She might have been arrested earlier if police had only seen to it that an autopsy was carried out on her first victim, in 2009; he was at first thought to have committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning.
Sometimes suicides are only found to be murders after a criminal confesses past crimes, or they come to light after an arrest for different charges. Of the 45 overlooked murders since 1998 the NPA has admitted to, 16 were committed to gain life-insurance money. Although the NPA would not give specific numbers, it said several of those were originally considered to be suicides.
In Japan, suicide pays out — if you wait long enough. That’s because in 2005 most life-insurance companies set the time period for the suicide exemption clause at three years after the taking out of a policy, though some set shorter periods. Hence if you kill yourself past the exemption period, the firm has to pay out.
The Supreme Court of Japan ruled in March 2004: “Even if the reason for suicide was to collect insurance money, if it falls past the exemption period, the company cannot refuse to pay.”
In a bizarre case in 2009, the Sendai Lower Court ordered a ¥50 million payout for an attempted suicide where the insured died from injuries sustained during the act. The result is an incentive for people to kill themselves — and also an incentive to kill people and stage it as a suicide.
In August 2000, a member of the Ground Self-Defense Force was strangled to death and the case was treated as suicide by hanging, based on the false testimony of his wife and the failure of the Miyagi Police to distinguish between the marks of hanging versus strangulation. The life-insurance payout was more than $1 million.
A 52-year-old office worker killed in 2009 in the city of Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, was made to write his own “suicide note” before being hanged. When police arrived at the scene, they found the note, which explained that the deceased was “upset about his debts.” The case was treated as a suicide and the beneficiary of his life-insurance policy later collected a ¥20 million payout.
Why didn’t these cases arouse suspicion?
A homicide detective noted to this writer that until recently life-insurance companies have not been at all enthusiastic about cooperating with murder investigations. “If you put in a request for information about the deceased, it took them days or weeks to respond. By the time you find out something irregular about the insurance, often the body has been cremated — evidence gone. Highly likely there was no autopsy. We don’t have the staff or budget to do more.”
According to the Sankei Shinbun newspaper, it was only in June 2012 that The Life Insurance Association of Japan finally agreed to fully cooperate with police requests for information on the insurance status of the deceased in cases of suspicious deaths. It is a step forward in preventing insurance-driven murders.
As a result, police checks are expected to quadruple to nearly 27,000 a year. However, the new measures won’t be implemented until April this year at the earliest, when a unified data system goes online.
In a recent conversation, an employee of a major life-insurance company explained — in blunt terms — why the sector hadn’t been giving full cooperation to the police before: “Suicide and natural death are cheap, murder is expensive.
“If it’s ruled a suicide, we may be able to avoid paying at all. Plus, in many cases, the insured may have a large-sum accidental-death benefit. Guess what? Being killed counts as accidental death.”
The insurance man said even if the new system takes off, it may not detect all the murders disguised as suicides. “We’ve agreed to cooperate fully with the police. However, it’s pretty much, ‘If you ask, we’ll tell.’ If the police don’t ask, that’s it.
“It makes good business sense, but morally it’s pretty awful. Yet what do you expect from a business that bets on life and death.”
Another man in the business of life and death, a medical examiner with a police department in the Kanto region, has his own pet theory about the apparent decline in suicides. “People who want to leave the life insurance for their family are better at killing themselves and making it look natural. You can buy a manual or go online and learn how. They know if their deaths are labeled suicide their families get nothing.”
He says that families often ask police not to report a death as a suicide, and the police tend to comply. “Here’s the reality of the situation, if it looks like a natural death — that’s how it gets treated. If it superficially looks like a suicide, you take a lot of flack if you suggest it’s something else. Even if we do an autopsy, unless there’s some glaring irregularity, we sign it out as ‘heart failure.’ In our business, that means ‘we don’t know the cause of death.’
“And then we’re on to the next body.”
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Thursday 29 August 2013

Auctoritas


Auctoritas


Ancient Rome

This article is part of the series:
Politics and government of
Ancient Rome
Periods
Roman Kingdom
753 BC – 509 BC
Roman Constitution
Ordinary Magistrates
Extraordinary Magistrates
Titles and Honours
Emperor
Precedent and Law
Roman Law
senatus consultum
(senatus
consultum
ultimum)
Auctoritas is a Latin word and is the origin of English "authority." While historically its use in English was restricted to discussions of the political
history of Rome, the beginning of phenomenological philosophy in the twentieth century expanded the use of the word.
In ancient Rome, Auctoritas referred to the general level of prestige a person had in Roman society, and, as a consequence, his clout, influence, and ability to rally support around his will. Auctoritas was not merely political, however; it had a numinous content and symbolized the mysterious "power of command" of heroic Roman figures.

Contents

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[edit]Etymology and origin

According to French linguist Emile Benveniste, auctor (which also gives us English "author") is derived from Latin augeō ("to augment"). The auctor is "is qui auget", the one who augments the act or the juridical situation of another.[1]
Auctor in the sense of "author", comes from auctor as founder or, one might say, "planter-cultivator". Similarly, auctoritas refers to rightfulownership, based on one's having "produced" or homesteaded the article of property in question - more in the sense of "sponsored" or "acquired" than "manufactured". This auctoritas would, for example, persist through an usucapio of ill-gotten or abandoned property.

[edit]Political meaning in Ancient Rome


Representation of a sitting of the Roman Senate: Ciceroattacks Catilina, from a 19th century fresco
Politically, auctoritas was connected to the Roman Senate's authority (auctoritas patrum), not to be confused with potestas or imperium(power) , which were held by the magistrates or the people. In this context, Auctoritas could be defined as the juridical power to authorize some other act.
The 19th-century classicist Theodor Mommsen describes the "force" of auctoritas as "more than advice and less than command, an advice which one may not safely ignore." Cicero says of power and authority, "Cum potestas in populo auctoritas in senatu sit." ("While power resides in the people, authority rests with the Senate.")
(A popular modern definition of such "authority" in the English language is, "the ability to make people do what you want, just by being who you are.")
In the private domain, those under tutelage (guardianship), such as women and minors, were similarly obliged to seek the sanction of theirtutors ("protectors") for certain actions. Thus, auctoritas characterizes the auctor: The pater familias authorizes - that is, validates and legitimates - his son's wedding in prostate. In this way, auctoritas might function as a kind of "passive counsel", much as, for example, a scholarly authority.

[edit]Auctoritas principis

After the fall of the Republic, during the days of the Roman Empire, the Emperor had the title of princeps ("first citizen" of Rome) and held the auctoritas principis — the supreme moral authority — in conjunction with the imperium and potestas — the military, judiciary and administrative powers.

[edit]Middle Ages

The notion of auctoritas was often invoked by the papacy during the Middle Ages, in order to secure the temporal power of the Pope.Innocent III most famously invoked auctoritas in order to depose kings and emperors and to try to establish a papal theocracy.

[edit]Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt considers auctoritas a reference to founding acts as the source of political authority in Ancient Rome. She takes foundation to include (as augeō suggests), the continuous conservation and increase of principles handed down from "the beginning" (see also pietas). According to Arendt, this source of authority was rediscovered in the course of the 18th-century American Revolution (see "United States of America" under Founding Fathers), as an alternative to an intervening Western tradition of absolutism, claiming absolute authority, as from God (see Divine Right of Kings), and later from Nature, Reason, History, and even, as in the French Revolution,Revolution itself (see La Terreur). Arendt views a crisis of authority as common to both the American and French Revolutions, and the response to that crisis a key factor in the relative success of the former and failure of the latter.[citation needed]
Arendt further considers the sense of auctor and auctoritas in various Latin idioms, and the fact that auctor was used in contradistinction to - and (at least by Pliny) held in higher esteem than - artifices, the artisans to whom it might fall to "merely" build up or implement the author-founder's vision and design.[citation needed]

[edit]Giorgio Agamben

See also: Giorgio Agamben#State of Exception (2005)
Philosopher Giorgio Agamben suggests a relationship between the Roman auctoritas, Max Weber's "charismatic power", andCarl Schmitt's theoretical/ideological basis for the Nazi Führertum doctrine. Agamben compares auctoritas to the Führer (who embodies nomos empsuchon or "living law") in their relationship to the observance of gramma (written law).

[edit]See also

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[edit]Notes

  1. ^ J. B. Greenough disputes this etymology of auctor - but not the sense of foundation and augmentation - in "Latin Etymologies", Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 4, 1893.

[edit]References

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