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Do you still listen to or watch the news or have you given up in despair? Do you often have a real sense of foreboding and unease? Do you find yourself staring off into space wondering what our world is becoming? If you do, you’re not alone.
Whether it’s the story of another kid having their face ripped off by a neighbour’s attack dog or perhaps another story of a religious group’s employees sexually abusing those under their care or maybe its the news of the deaths of another 100 anonymous people in a far away land, you’ve reached your limit of exposure to the needless pain, suffering and hopelessness of others.
After all, you like me have important issues to deal with everyday. Will I be the next victim of our industrial relations system? Will I be able to meet the mortgage this month? Will I be able to afford to put petrol in the car to drive to work to earn the money to pay the mortgage? Will that little lump I found last week develop into some form of painful, if not terminal, cancer? What to do?
I guess this state of affairs is, in one sense, normal. In an interconnected global village the speed of light is the time it takes for signals to bounce around the stratosphere and from base station to satellite and back to earth. We are, no longer, separated from the immediacy of the events we cannot control and from which we cannot escape.
However, in the current political, economic and social climate we live in, this tension between what we want to change or perhaps just empathise with and what we need to do in order to survive, is brought into sharper relief.
We hear, read or watch the suffering of innocent civilians caught up in somebody else’s war and identify with them. We cheer on the aid workers and medical and relief teams as they do their work in trying to alleviate the suffering. At the same time we watch, read or hear about the importation of more weapons at another port that will, in a few short hours, be used to inflict more carnage in the innocents. All this is information is thrown at us and in some way we try and cope.
While waking up to the news of a child who will forever wear the scars of her ripped face due to some bullshit masculinity which deems keeping animals bred to kill in your backyard as a rational thing to do, you overhear the waking whimper of your own children and wonder if its luck, genetics or just good timing that separates you from parent of the other child.
While enjoying the evening meal you look up as the anchor says “the following story contains graphic images” just in time to see another anonymous man carrying the bloodied body of his child out of the wreckage and you turn to catch your own child blowing bubbles with their sauce covered mouth.
While sitting in the doctors awaiting the announcement on the biopsy on that lump you found you pick up a magazine and read that some Hollywood starlet is suing her cosmetic surgeon because her boob job didn’t turn out as she had expected just as the disabled lady sits down next to you.
While waiting at the handy bank you overhear the conversation of the couple behind you as she scolds him for buying extra beer as he argues with her that a new pair of boots was not really something she needed and you suddenly realise that it sounds just like you and yours.
What is happening to us? Have we lost all sense of engagement, proportion, empathy and hope? Have we, collectively been swallowed up by the Slough of Despond and retreated into some form of Protestant collective guilt? So proud of our ‘western achievements’ but achingly empty of purpose. Have we had removed from us the ability to resist and stand up to the injustice and inequity around us? So willing to judge but so hesitant to listen and understand.
What is it about us that we allow our leaders to lie to us and then, with a shrug of our shoulders, say, “what else would you expect?” Have we had our humanness removed and replaced with a complacency gene? I don’t think so.
The early fathers of propaganda, and yes they were all men, knew full well that it was easy to put ideas about. What was harder was to get people to agree with them. So rather than try and get people to agree with whatever it is you want to say, those with the power and means, decided that it was much easier to close down the borders of what was permissible to say. By limiting the boundaries of “acceptability” the ‘movers and shakers’ have been able to redefine what is or isn’t legitimate.
In “polite society” we don’t bring up issues for discussion that might make some in our presence feel uncomfortable. We don’t raise matters that might question the moral or ethical stance taken by our friends on that matter. Eventually, shrug our shoulders and say, “what else would you expect?” However, perhaps what we should be saying is, “what else should you expect?”
Quite a bit actually. Just like you are not alone in those feelings of foreboding and unease and wondering what our world is becoming, you are not alone in wanting to change they way things are. The artificial barriers of power and ‘politeness’ can be breached. Think back to the breaking of the slave trade – still not a completed project but much advanced. Think of the battles to win the eight hour day or the right for women to vote. Think of the battles to win rights for indigenous Australians and the blood split to protect our docks from scab labour.
All is not lost. The children do not have to be remembered as statistical data on some hospital admission list and the dead children should not be remembered solely as innocent victims of someone else’s war. They can be the lightening rods that galvanise us into action. To try and change the little things first but realising that together we can change the big things. There truly is nothing we cannot achieve if we want to.
How we begin the journey of collective change is, perhaps, the 64,000 dollar question. I guess a small start is the first to realise that you are not alone. You are not. The millions of others who, just like you and I, work and struggle and dream and hope are wanting basically the same things as you and I. Peace, security, a long life and happy family. Those who want to see your comfort sacrificed for theirs, have no such desires and therefore, no ultimate purpose.
The question for us both of us is, will we succumb to the sough of despond or join with others and rise up to challenge the systems that drive us to despair? After all it would seem we have far more to gain than we have to lose.