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What is the root cause of crime?

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Materialists believe that freedom means the ability and opportunity to consume, but those with even a little genuine spiritual realization of the self know that it actually means freedom from the need to consume!

 

Attachment to the spiritual automatically releases us from material attachments of all kinds simultaneously. As higher truths are revealed through His Divine Grace, a `higher taste` develops quite naturally. Admitting our hopelessly helpless situation here, we cry out in desperation until our prayers are answered. Depending on our own abilities, as if there ever were such a thing, always results eventually in so-called `falldowns`.

 

The very first step in the 12 Step Program, followed by alcoholics and other addictive personalities, is to depend on their personal higher power. We who understand that actually our `addiction` is to material consciousness must also learn to do so.

 

valaya

 

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Radhe Radhe always Radhe!

HARIBOL! HARIBOL! HARIBOL!

amanpeter@hotmail.com

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What is the root cause of crime?

 

This week’s television program with Srila Siddhasvarupananda is focused on the question of ‘What is the root cause of crime?’

 

Why does a child steal a candy bar from a store? The answer is rather simple – because the child likes the sweetness of the candy. This example illustrates the cause of all crime.

 

It’s the same reason why a heroin addict holds up a corner grocery store. The same reason that an investment banker embezzles money and runs off to the Bahamas with his secretary. The same reason that a person rapes and brutalizes women.

 

The root cause of crime is lust associated with the desire to attain material goods to satisfy the body. When there is a crime of passion, and a man sees his wife in bed with another man, he thinks “Those are my breasts…. What are you doing with them?” [Audience laughs] He then goes out, gets a gun, and kills the people.

 

Property crime, rich crime, poor crime, big, small, blue collar, white collar, a crime of passion, or indifference…. All crimes have this fundamental principle behind them. The idea that I am my body, and if I make my body happy then I’ll be happy. The goal of life is sense enjoyment.

 

But can we really blame these people? Certainly they are at fault. But the entire society pushes through advertising this notion that to be happy you need as many things as possible to satisfy the body. Poor people are subject to the same ads as rich people. But poverty is not the source of crime. If that were true then we would only have poor criminals. The fact is, as many rich people commit crimes as poor people, but they just don’t get caught. Or if they get caught they can hire lots of lawyers to get them off the hook.

 

And after all what is poverty? Al Capone wasn’t poor, but he never quit. If you are a millionaire, you are poor compared to a billionaire. People always want more. In such a case, right and wrong is not based on a higher authority, but rather a cost/benefit analysis. What is the cost if I get caught vs. What is the benefit and odds that I don’t get caught.

 

The same argument goes for the crime of rape. There are those today who are saying that rape is not based on sex, it is based on anger and violence. But it is through contemplation of the objects that lust comes. From lust comes anger, and from anger comes delusion to cloud a person’s intelligence. Sex, lust, and anger are intimately connected. Those who don’t see this connection are fooling themselves.

 

So the cause of crime is either directly or indirectly associated with a misidentification of the body for the self. Our whole culture is based on this materialism. But we do not teach people self-control. We tell them to run out and get as much as they can as quickly as they can. We want a human society made up of animals. And when the animals get out of control, then we crack down with police force. Civil libertarians don’t like this because they want everyone to be free to do what they like. But people who truly want liberty must understand that hedonism and democracy don’t go well together.

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I have always liked listening to James Q. Wilson. He is a sociologist, who to me makes a lot of sense. His most famous theory on how to prevent crime is called the broken window theory (something like that). Essentially his view is that when a window of a building is broken, it quickly gives the ok for others to break the rest of the windows, and vandalize the place. His view is that in order to stop crime, you must catch it early on. If a window is broken, it must be immediately fixed. If graffiti is sprayed, it must be painted over quickly. This goes well with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's "defining deviancy downwards". That is, if you don't catch such social deviancy and stop it quickly, very soon it spirals out of control, and leads to great social costs.

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Grime? Carnivores? Omnivores?

Slaughterhouse Subsidies? Human minds in deep freeze?

Muscle Munchers? Goulash Gulpers? Gristle Gougers?

Cow Cutthroats? Meat-eating Mediators? Godless Gladiators?

Silence of the Lambs? Lamb Chops? Chop Suey? Choppers? Chumps?

Bloodthirsty Bhuktas? Flesh Foragers? Rightwing RAxasas?

 

 

[This message has been edited by Tarun (edited 02-13-2002).]

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