And protecting what others love

We grew up in Oregon, our brothers and cousins and me. And getting raised here, getting schooled here, meant learning about forest fires. Their causes and their costs. Every summer, flames tall as downtown Portland bank buildings consumed thousands and thousands of square miles of precious life.

"Only you ..." said a stern brown bear under a stiff ranger hat, "can prevent forest fires." Smokey the Bear.

I thought about that a lot — I mean about that big bear, because we had them back home too, little Asian sun bears. But none of them spoke English or carried long-handled shovels.

Our older brothers and more serious cousins thought about it and talked about it too, as we all lay in our Sears, Roebuck and Company sleeping bags inside our American uncle’s Coleman cabin tent, next to deep and dark Detroit Reservoir.

Though I drifted in and out of mimpi manis during our older boys’ discussions, their conclusions left in me a lasting impression. Three kinds of firestarters are out there, they agreed. There are innocent guys, like that guapo whose red-hot muffler accidentally lit up roadside grass near Mill City. There are careless people who don’t completely kill their campfires before they leave the woods. And finally, there’s the truly bad. Guys who purposely light crispy ponderosa pine needles, step back, and watch them rise to a hungry roar. Ferocious as hari’mau. Great Sumatra tiger.

That’s how Old Worlders think and talk. That’s what traditional elders and ancestors of duty-based cultures teach about attributing intent and allocating blame. They’re the norms their children stick to, no matter where hard times or turgid seas send us.

True then and now

Forty fire seasons since those summer campouts, Oregon forests still burn. Fast forward 40 years and I’m an American lawyer, still insisting on our elders’ old-school jurisprudence, right here on our chaotic new continent. Especially since national dividing lines no longer separate Old Worlders from New Worlders. Especially given our proximity in jumbo jet miles, in CNN newscasts, in determined keyboard strokes. Hungry fires rage across borders. And likewise, distances don’t slow ravenous viruses or ugly ideas.

Last month, a California filmmaker’s vile opinions got played and played again by dark actors in many of our packed little planet’s most explosive places. From opposite places in our wobbly world, these guys lit and stoked a furious fire that spread from nascent North African and Middle Eastern nations to South and Southeast Asian communities most vulnerable to their kind of ugliness.

Those flames took the precious lives of U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens; of Oregon City father Tyrone Woods; of San Diego dad Sean Smith; and of Woburn, Massachusetts’ son Glen Doherty.

Portland readers will likely never know the names of the Tunisian and Sudanese, Afghani and Pakistani, loved ones also lost to that awful fire as it circumnavigated our earth. That’s the power of pyromania.

This is not a proposition to legally limit a movie producer’s right to speak freely. About that the U.S. Constitution has already spoken. I can say whatever I’m thinking, except of course when it’s intended to evoke immediate violence or certain public harm. Calling someone the N-word or yelling FIRE at Lloyd Center cinema are not legally protected speech.

Duty to preserve harmony

In the months of intense investigation of the murderous riot set off by The Innocence of Muslims, we’ll surely also hear months of debate over the rights of filmmakers, the rights of web content carriers and consumers, the rights of regular guys expressing unpopular opinions. The right to speak our minds.

But maybe just as important might be some quiet reflection on what that stern brown bear and our firm Old World elders — Irish as well Indonesian, Norwegian and Nigerian, Bavarian and Bengali — have told and told and told us. We share a tinderbox neighborhood. Only you can prevent sorrow.

Again, analogizing to our older cousins’ camp-tent conclusions: In these tense times, it may be dumb to say (as we do) that River City is a Mecca for microbrews, or that a bucolic East County bed-and-breakfast is Nirvana, illustrating it with a smiling and levitating buddha. But it may be okay to give our most knuckle-headed a pass. Or two.

Likewise: In our culturally complex classrooms and office breakrooms, even carelessness can be forgiven. Neighbors claiming that scary clerics want to replace American family law with Shari’a law, or friends saying that Mormons keep multiple wives and keep them pregnant, may all just need to be schooled.

But intentional arsonists, in our lush Cascades or among our precious families, must be called out and called to account. Determinedly.

Forty years after that late-night teenager talk, America’s big place in a much smaller world has changed. A lot. Other opportunistic players are now near, happy to use my stupidity, your carelessness, or a cruel person’s conduct for their own purposes. Restraint is necessary. Just as there’s a shared social responsibility not to yell FIRE in a crowded Saturday afternoon movie, we have a duty not to talk ugly about what others love.

Trash talking any of our great religious traditions’ revered prophets will result in the same swift response as cursing a neighbor’s grandpa or insulting a co-worker’s daughter. Every time. In every American, Arab, African, or Asian community. Because we love them.

Better than us earnestly arguing about my right to speak or your need to get thicker skinned and smaller hearted, is quietly assessing who and what each of us loves.

Why do I love this woman or that man? Why do you love this Douglas fir forest or that Persian night sky? Once filled with an answer, an answer swollen with simplicity and mystery, it’s easy to get why the faithful get so sad and so mad. So certainly.

Packed as closely as we are — on our raucous little planet, spinning through all that inky silent space — it’s really time to take to heart our duty to protect each other. To preserve harmony. Like Smokey the Bear pointed out with his stubby finger. Like our grand elders did under their disapproving brows. Only you can prevent forest fires.

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The Asian Reporter’s Expanding American Lexicon

Buddha (Sanskrit): Enlightened One, referring to the historical figure, Prince Siddhartha Guatama, who eventually became enlightened then articulated the physical, intellectual, and spiritual practice for the alleviation of human suffering. Also refers to any person who has reached this enlightened state of freedom from suffering.

Mecca (Arabic): birth place of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him) and compilation place of the Holy Qur’an. Holiest City for Muslim pilgrimage. Modernly in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

mimpi manis (Bahasa Indonesia): sweet dreams.

Nirvana (Sanskrit): Vedic concept underlying both the Hindu and Buddha religious traditions. The profound union and peace of mind and body, the consequent freedom from all human suffering, that is the ultimate goal of physical and spiritual practice. The word literally means "blown out" (as in a candle) and refers, in the Buddhist context, to the imperturbable stillness of mind after the fires of desire, aversion, and delusion have been finally extinguished.

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Notas:

I sincerely apologize in advance to learned men and women in the Teachings of the

Great Religious Traditions for my incomplete and inaccurate abbreviations of complex and subtle concepts and vocabulary. I also acknowledge the unscholarly shortcuts I’ve taken in citing the

United States Constitution and the careful court rulings that’ve delivered its blessings to us.

Terima kasih (I offer our love) to Pazzo Ristorante’s Laurie, Greg, and Kevin for their

right-on tech assists in completing this column.

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