In a Galway pub on 11 September, 2001 , the
punters in the seats near the telly got up to let the Americans sit down. I’d been excused from work after the attacks
and so it was from a high stool that I watched the world change. As George Bush waxed imbecilic and Tony Blair
gave a well enunciated battle cry, I made what I knew was a useless prayer.
Dear
God, don’t let us go to war. Dear God,
please tell these assholes that killing’s not the answer. Dear God, don’t let them blast out the ghetto
to get the drug dealer.
Whether or not God listened isn’t the issue. What I hoped wouldn’t happen, had already
started.
I’m not going to debate the pros and
cons of war. I see both sides and am a
proponent for accepting reality. As long
as there are people who will take what isn’t theirs or will toss kittens into
walls for sport, we need a military.
What I’m thinking of is how we haven’t progressed much from the days of
the coliseum. A certain proportion of
our population still enjoys watching others get ripped to bits. Those of us who don’t, are told to take the
moral high ground lest we be ridiculed as wooses.
The MEP for Northwest England criticises
a gay couple for wanting the same rights as straights, then purportedly suggests
that activists ‘confront Muslims instead of picking on meek & forgiving
Christians.’ And he still has his
job. Two university students in Dublin sustain
a savage knife attack for stopping a woman from getting her head stomped into
the pavement and are advised by the gardaí not to press charges because their
attackers will retaliate on the victim’s families. After eighteen months of harassment by his
ex-wife, a man quits his job of 12 years, moves across the country and is still
forced by the court to pay expenses the ex unilaterally racks up in the name of
his children. A woman is murdered by her
ex-husband and the court awards custody of her children to his parents who keep
them away from their dead mother’s relatives.
We have religion and we have legislation
but both are ineffectual in changing the gladiator mentality. And so we respond in a currency of hate because
no one thinks that giving members of the Westboro Baptist Church a hug is going
to change things. We raise voices and
sometimes fists in outcry against MPs using taxpayers’ money to build duck
houses and ride in chauffeured cars. We
hack into Twitter accounts, carry placards, hurl epithets, teach our children
the standard exchange rate for bigotry, racism, sectarianism.
Hate begets hate. A newly qualified teacher recently told me
she was taught, when faced with a rowdy class, not to go for the ring leaders,
but to seek out the weakest member of the pack, get them under control and work
her way up the status chain until she got big dog. While that’s probably an effective way to get
things under control, that straggler in the pack is learning that the way to
survive is to align with the strongest bully in the environment, rather than
being taught that anti-social behaviour sucks.
A blog by Amanda Palmer is making the
Facebook rounds and causing a blogging sensation. (Go read it and her follow-up ‘plot
thickening’ blog entries!)
She asked victims of internet bullying to
tell her their stories and she’d write a subsequent entry with practical
solutions to help them survive. That’s a
helluva commitment from a complete stranger to the universe at large and I’m
not sure how many of us could sustain that.
BUT . . .
One hand reached out is more effective
and more REAL than all the legislation, riot gear and fists in the air can
be. Do something practical. Do it for one person outside your normal
sphere. The stressed parents down the
street. That dough-faced kid who doesn’t
make eye contact. The woman wearing sun
glasses who keeps walking into doors. Commit
to only what you can sustain. Do it for
real, not for show. Do it for the long
haul.
I’m a realist. We need legislation, military strength, bad
ass teachers and maybe even churches. Yet
every time you ask how someone is but don’t listen to the answer; every time
someone inconveniently seeks your help and you say you don’t want to be
involved; every time you hear about injustice and all you do is raise your
voice but not lift a hand, you’re complicit.
I’m complicit. Nothing changes.
Do it.
Do it now.
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