This and that

The mother hen is feral, unleashing chaos on the world, and the floundering chicks are left with no choice but to look to each other for support and even make friends with the fox, who, it can be argued, has been considered a fox only because the mother hen said so. It is dawning on the chicks that none of their enemies is as bad as the mother hen makes out. Really, if anyone these days deserves the most unflattering titles it is the mother hen.

A friend said that the big stage of world events is a larger version of the small stage of individual lives. I agree. The politics of grievance is spreading like a virulent epidemic in affluent societies. What exactly is the grievance? In my view it is opposition to fair-mindedness, opposition to sharing wealth, opposition to reducing inequality in the world, opposition to empowering marginalised minorities, even opposition to the empowerment of women. The politics of grievance is inward looking, steeped in greed, bigotry and entitlement. It is sprouting unscrupulous, populist leaders, intent only on personal aggrandisement and enrichment. It has taken over the USA, is tipped to take over Britain and is raising its head higher than ever before in Australia. It is now up to us as individuals to turn human decency and fair-mindedness into powerhouses that seize back the agenda.

How does one take out a country of ninety million people in a day? With a bunch of nuclear weapons, that’s how. An unhinged threat, many said. Others opined the unhingement is contrived to maximise fear. At the start he said he was paving the way for the great people of Iran to rise up and throw out the theocratic regime. Now he threatens to wipe them all out. For the people of Iran, like the people of all countries, there is the best of things, the worst of things and everything in-between. The west highlights the worst of Iranian things, which admittedly are very bad. Every country has its own worst of things. They may not be as bad as the worst of things in Iran, but the favourable comparison doesn’t mean they don’t need to be fixed.

Ben Roberts-Smith is a boy’s own white hero. Tall, ramrod straight, not naturally handsome but charismatic, a leader of men. He is a white supremacist’s pinup boy. I am sure many of the people who have brought him crashing down did so reluctantly. Something deep and archetypal inside them protested. Here is this larger-than-life white hero charged with being appallingly fallible, even repugnant, against a set of measures that benchmark basic human decency. It strikes at the heart of what white supremacy is all about; that there is a natural human hierarchy, based on race, with western white males at the top and an Afghani man much lower down. Racism is ugly. Racists are ugly people. Ugliness oozes out of them. Even if they are not naturally, physically ugly, a face that fronts bigotry is never pretty. Ben Roberts-Smith could be my hero if he was a decent human being. That’s all it takes for me, and it is non-negotiable. I’m not talking about selective decency. Even the worst psychopath is capable of that. It is unconditional, universal decency underpinning every engagement with another human being.

What does Ben Roberts-Smith’s cheer squad have in common? Contempt for people they regard as lesser in some way, their wellbeing less important, their lives cheaper and more expendable. People who subscribe to these types of human hierarchies are unenlightened. They persist with old, discredited views. Some say bigotry props up self-esteem. I am sure white supremacy groups attract such types. Ultimately it is a choice of individuals. Make no mistake, you choose to be a bigot. You can choose to not be a bigot.

Is there such as thing as a person’s true self? Yes, but not many engage their true selves with the world. Circumstances, missed opportunities, mistakes, bad luck all result in the world seeing compromised or diluted versions of ourselves.

For over a thousand years religions have been battling genuine knowledge. The battle is now an existential one. Many people have, like me, completely unshackled themselves from religious dogma and placed all their trust in genuine knowledge. I accept that not everything is known, there are still glaring gaps, but the supernatural is not a good gap filler.

Have a conversation without pre-empting or conceptualising outcomes. A conversation conducted in good faith, with goodwill, with mutual respect, and without prejudice, has the power of producing outcomes hitherto unthought of. I have found a book that expands and deepens my naïve, instinctive, and compelling outlook, that what I share with other human beings outnumbers and outweighs my differences. It informs and influences my first thoughts when I pass a stranger in the street. It doesn’t compel me to engage them, but I accord them, and want for them, everything I accord myself and want for myself. I don’t judge a stranger as having lesser worth, based on who they might appear to be. In Sri Lanka, that disposition often came up against socioeconomic inequalities and injustices. I wished I could find friends in all corners of Sri Lankan life, but I guess I didn’t have the courage to put those wishes into practice.

Back to the book, A Common Humanity by Raimond Gaita. I have only just started it. My dilemma, such as it is, is whether to buy the ebook or a hardcopy. I found one compelling reason for sticking with the ebook when I looked up sui generis (in a class of its own, unique, peculiar) instantly and easily, something I would take longer to do with a hardcopy. The other advantage of an ebook is that it is a weightless and spaceless travel companion. So, ebook it is. It can go with me wherever I go, wherever my smart phone goes. Which is everywhere. So, I now have another weighty book to add to my backlog of weighty books. Three in all, the other two are The Blind Watchmaker and the Genetic book of the Dead. I am about a hundred pages into Gone with the wind. I am reading it because it occupies a place in the pantheon of ‘must reads’. It vividly captures an appalling era. Appalling because prejudice was the lifeblood of the community. Everyone ‘kissed upstairs and kicked downstairs’. Even the slaves.

I have a vague sense of dreaming that I died or was close to death. But without details, or a story, or even a single image, I can go no further with it. I don’t dwell on my death, even though death is emblazoned in the news. A hundred a few days ago, ninety the day after, the Israeli government’s almost triumphant tally as it refuses to stop bombarding southern Lebanon. The numbers are shocking, but beyond shock is the realisation that every single one of the victims was an individual, loved by family and friends, and whose death will possibly cause lifelong grief, and whose absence will possibly create a massive void in the lives of their loved ones. Everybody has loved ones. Quarrels, estrangement, isolation, only puts love on hold. It is not possible to know this for sure, but love is a good place aspired to by every human, consciously or not.