I think this is my fourth day in bed with flu, it’s all a bit of a haze of codeine and coughs. That and the regular peels of church bells, I don’t know just what they’re signalling but I like them. They’re calming, regular. At 1645 Saturday they went on for ages.
I think there was a thunderstorm at one stage. I made sure I’m wearing pj’s for the forensic pathologist, and I staggered out to feed the cat so he wouldn’t eat my corpse. Have managed to shower a couple of times. I’ve had some stupid fevered dreams, but nothing as stupid as the news pages seem to tell me has been happening out there in the ‘real’ – WTF? A coup attempt in Turkey, now hundreds of soldiers are arrested after the leaders flee. More Police shot in the US. Australians march in solidarity with US Black lives matter movement and I wonder if they also think to protest that black Australian lives matter, or to do anything tangible about it. Another “honour” killing of a woman in South Asia. More people are traumatised after Nice, more people implicated, blamed, shamed… Oh and people everywhere are escaping reality chasing Pokemon Go? Really??
Stop the world, we all need to get off, and take a long hard look before we get back on, because this is stupid. Mutually Assured Destruction only “worked” as a deterrent in the 1960-80s because nobody wanted to be destroyed themselves. We need a new model: guns, and threats, and calls to “be grown up democrats like us”, clearly are not arguments that are working. Take a look in the mirror, we don’t even believe it ourselves Brexit, Trump et al. We think that educating youth about the benefits of western democracy will de-radicalise when they can look out their windows, look online and see what a mess we are ourselves? Let’s face it the so-called civilised democracies of the west aren’t really pin up poster role models for liberty, equality and fraternity.
Somebody has a construction project underway out in one of the backyards, gotta love electric power tools. The current neighbourhood musical offering is an 80s mix, Toto’s Africa being replaced by The Final Countdown. Maybe it’s the codeine. I wonder what ever happened to Sting’s “I hope the Russian’s love their children too”… do we wonder if these terrifying terrorist Others love their children? I miss the church bells.
You could argue that fear has served evolution well – survival of the fittest, the smartest who learned to avoid dangerous things, the fastest who could escape. Those who saw, feared, learned and lived to tell the tale. A healthy wariness of the unknown, the other. But then fear was also used as a tool of social control – nice girls don’t do that, don’t do that or you’ll go to hell. And of course fear was mobilised for profit – buy protection from Y2K, pay more for anti-terror measures, buy clean bottled water, buy low wattage globes (that kill the workers who make them and pollute the groundwater near waste dumps, but no matter you paid for your fear of CO2 to go away… briefly).
Humans are hard wired for fear, and it is easy to despair that our fear of the other will kill us all. But humans are also hard wired to cooperate, to form groups, to work together, to trust. To care for each other. It was not fear that helped our ancestors to collaborate and build civilisations.
We have everything in common at a genetic level – there is no such thing as race. We are all human. What we have is magnificent cultural diversity of imagination and inspiration, creativity and potential. And yet still we fear the other, the unknown, and we let that fear divide us.
I dimly remember that psychologists say that the opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is fear. Love conquers fear: love that respects and allows difference. That is moved by compassion. That allows the other to be, with integrity, with humanity, with common decency and human rights.
But we are so much of money, power, greed and fear, conquest, we cannot allow the other, for in the eyes of the other we might see things of ourselves that we don’t like. We resist and resent possible challenges to our vain ideas of truth. And we are afraid.
There is pain on every side of this intractable divide. Pain that seems to be escalating and imploding. What do we need to change in ourselves to react in love and respect, rather than hitting out in intolerance and fear? Is it so impossible a task, to change the human fear reflex? No leader can apply a bandaid to “fix” the human soul, they’ve shown a singular lack of inspiration. Instead, I expect this is a change that is so huge it will take all 7.4 billion of us. And maybe that’s why I still believe there’s hope.
It is only a week ago that I said I am an optimist, I believe in the tenacity of the human spirit, the resilience, the hope. It is a week that has strained that faith. On a global scale it is too big, on an individual human scale, can we all be unnecessarily kind to just one person every day?
You know I’m no Christian, but in every place there is some wisdom. We have much more in common than that which divides us – love, faith, hope, the greatest of these is love.
My older Asian neighbour & his wife have just knocked on my door. They’ve heard me coughing. Apparently I sound very sick. They offered to take me to a Dr or bring me medicine from the pharmacy. That’s all it takes you know. A little awareness. A little compassion and small acts of unnecessary kindness. We can defeat the hate and anger and intolerance. Some may call that simplistic. Will you be some total stranger’s neighbour today? Everyday? I refuse not to believe.
Wendy's Out of Station 