Indonesia / Bali - The National Self Refuses Service to the Other Based on Collective Guilt

Event Baseline: A gym owner in Bali, Indonesia, refused service to three Israeli tourists, citing their links to the Israel Defense Forces.

The gym owner did not see three humans. He saw three symbols of a state he hates. His mind attached them to the collective actions of a military. That attachment is thought. It is the same disease that allows any group to punish individuals for the sins of their tribe. The self of the owner asserted its moral purity by refusing service. But that self is equally trapped in identity. It is the same primitive software that says 'my identity is righteous, yours is guilty'. That is not perception. That is belief.

The refusal of service is a tiny act of exclusion. But it is built on the same structure that justifies mass killing. It divides the world into the accepted and the rejected. It is the illusion that one can be clean by expelling the dirty other. The owner cannot see that his action mirrors the exclusion he condemns. The system of thought is identical on both sides. Neither is free. Both are slaves to a phantom border drawn in the mind.