xt7f1v5bgk83 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7f1v5bgk83/data/mets.xml  Thomas Merton 1967-06-18 This letter is from collection 75m28 Thomas Merton papers. archival material 75m28 English  Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Thomas Merton correspondence Letter from Thomas Merton to Ted [?], June 18, 1967 text Letter from Thomas Merton to Ted [?], June 18, 1967 1967 1967-06-18 2023 true xt7f1v5bgk83 section xt7f1v5bgk83 June 18 1967
Dear Ted:

Thanks for your very interesting letter. I'm replying while I can,
because my ability to get letters out is pretty much hit and miss these
days-- so feel free to write any time and don't think that if I don't
reply to each one, something has gone wrong. I will if and when I can.

The point you raise about cowardice is a good one, and of course very
deep indeed. I am perhaps going to do some joint work on the subject
with an analyst friend of mine who has dealt with war criminals and juve-
nile delinquents etc and is very good on the whole ambivalent business of
wowardice, n violence, suppressed violence, and all that. I am afraid that
a lot of the pacifism around is utterly worthless, as you suggest.lt is
only the obverse of the murderousness that is structured into our society.
That is to say that the supposedly non—violent believer may well just be
secretly pursuing his own compulsive hate in a way he thinks legitimate
and sanctimonious: in other words, he wants everything to be destroyed,
and he wants to egg the violent villains into doing it by goading them
through self-righteous demonstrations and all. He wants the human race to
go ahead and get it all over with, meanwhile pretending to love life when he
fears it.And of course he is full not of love but of hate, but he has every-
thing invested in the false belief that he really loves, while in fact his
love is the mask of weakness, incapacity to love, hate.

My only possible contribution to this immense problem -- the great
problem of our time is this violence against which we are all more or less
helpless-- is that we have to cultivate a clear realization of the nature
and extent of the problem. Symbolic and magic reactions, whether nasty
(warlike) or nice! loving, artistic, hippie) are just useless. I admit that
the loving ones are nicer and perhaps more helpful. But in the end what we
need is a fuller and more creative breakthrough of our human intelligence
along with a growth of a really revolutionary humility—— the capacity to
accept the fact of massive contamination, and to try to deal with it.

I won't go into the celibacy issue: it is both too symbolic and too
complex. And too fraught with ambiguities right now.

You are right, it seems to me, in your intuition that creative and
fletting acts are the places where we see the real forces of preservation
breaking through. “eanwhile I would suggest that you be more aware of the
things in the society around you which arouse in you unrealistic expectation:
of fulilment, love, creativity, perfection, finding nut the answers and all
that. Continual frustration by this kind of conflict and the attempt to pro-
tect yourself from being overwhelmed by impossible ex ectations, buildsup
a lot of useless tension which you probably handle with great difficulty.
Then comes the danger of a fraudulent solution of some sort, or a short -
circuit, or an explosion, or despair, God knows what. You don't have to
go through whatever the syndrome is. But you have to perhaps be more
aware of where it starts. Since I don't know you, this.may be framed in
terms that are useless: but I think they have some general validity.

All my best, and all blessings. in Christ

Could

I have a few caries of Chrrent¢