Future Blogs

I started this blog to serve as outline for a monograph thesis -- on the theme of vengeance, violence and nonviolence -- that I planned to write at a later date; but now, it seems to me that I would rather write it in essay form and avoid the usual constraints of a formal academic thesis. In short, I am not anymore going to bother to include footnotes and/or bibliographies, because I am not writing this book to prove anything. I am writing this book based on what I have learned and experienced, from my immediate environment and from other people's experience -- and these are just my interpretation of these diverse elements that have shaped and that is still shaping my life.

In the coming entries, I will try to elaborate more on the concept -- that "violence is never personal", the concept of "free interpretation", and I am adding a new element to this blog, the notion that a "profound religious experience" does not necessarily go towards the good and the benefit of mankind.

This new element was suggested by a new found old friend, whom I had the privileged of meeting the other week in the city of Caucaia in Brazil. We had a very nice conversation about this study on violence and vengeance, and he posed a question about how, even a profound religious experience could actually be used as basis for committing violence on others.