Bringing us back down to earth

I was just replying to somebody else when I remembered something. Twenty odd years ago I was working with the ILO in Geneva. The group of us working together generally got on. Except the one from the USA who imagined he was some kind of automatic boss being the American. I used to bait him and start some strange discussions, usually to lead him into a blind alley. However, one occasion sticks in my mind particularly. We were talking about political ideologies as a basis on which one constructs how countries function, thus how laws and so on fall into place. I began to talk about how that can be taken to the extreme, using Hitler and Stalin as two obvious examples of dictatorships taking societies down as low as they can be dragged. We somehow moved on to different kinds of political movement. So it meant I was on solid ground because I am a very political animal who has very carefully learned. Anyway, we got round to talking about my socialist beliefs which he said are simply wrong because all evidence proves it, but with no actual proof he could describe. I told him where my own political beliefs come from and got to the point where I included Thomas Paine. Thomas Paine of Thetford arrived in the America Colonies just in time for the American Revolution. More or less every rebel read or would have had read to him/her his powerful pamphlet Common Sense that he wrote in 1776. It is proportionally the best selling written work, even ahead of the Bible, ever in the USA. It is the book that preceded his later pamphlet Agrarian Justice in 1797 that discussed the origins of property and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. Whilst Common Sense is said to have been the catalyst for the revolution, Agrarian Justice was one of the most influential components with his Rights of Man and The American Crisis in forming what was the founding principles and later a large part of the basis of the Declaration of Independence and bore great influence on the Constitution.

The American looked at me and said that Paine was a great American, a visionary who believed in freedom and probably the father of American democracy. I had no argument with that. Then he said that the USA has no and needs no ideology because it is a democracy and every American understands freedom and democracy more than any other country's citizens which is why the USA needs to teach the rest of the world how they should be. One of our colleagues was Indian. He said that if that is how the USA sees itself then the rest of the world needs protection from them.

OK, it is a long time ago but it is one of those memorable events I remember in detail. However, it raises a question in my mind. Is that country the same, better or worse than it was then in the late 1980s or does hypocrisy become clearer in one's mind with age and time?

Peter, you certainly needed to overcome reluctancy to write this post here. As an agnostic person, for me reading these attempts to involve God, its, at least for me, not really the way to come back on earth... I believe you where most upset with the tragedy of the young father. This is sad. I don't believe God has anything to do with it. But much less God has to do with the refugee tragedy. I think even that it does not matter for God... Not for nothing it is called in English "men-made-disaster". Isn't it an empirical knowledge that to live free you need to admit your mistakes? Well, I haven't heard any of those war criminals since 2003 to admit a failure, let alone an error! But then, who is responsible for inflaming the entire Middle East? God? And this is why I think it will be a long way to come back on the realities on earth. Only for the hopeful. Hope dies generally known last. I'm more sure we will go on to cling to policies that have manifestly failed. Maybe this is men kinds destiny...

Now why? I got a brain block, put on YouTube and found some Dick Gaughan, picked out Both Sides the Tweed with Emmylou Harris and then the tears flowed. Perhaps this post, perhaps something else. I knew Dick when he lived down in London for a while, but knew his sister who married a friend who lived there. She became very ill and died, not so many years earlier his daughter was hit by a car whilst he was on tour. She was badly hurt. To look at the man, a few months older than myself and a hard Glaswegian type, you would never credit the man can weep like a bairn. I heard a few words, nostalgia kicked in and perhaps reading this thread today put a touch to the fuse. However, why and whatever, the effect is so cleansing. Now I have that sore throat feeling but my mind is free again, my spirits raised and I am better than before. There is much to cry for in this world, sometimes it just needs a catalyst but I pity those who cannot do it.

I'm heartened by this discussion. These sad events are partly just life and not a great deal to be done when a brain tumour emerges.

But also to read about how similar people's humanity is and that we are all striving for solutions (here on this forum). I'm glad that we can discuss this openly. I think this is especially important for men who's fathers (and themselves) have been badly affected by combat. Wars are not caused by soldiers but fought by them. Talking freely is one of the key solutions to building better lives

I say this a lot because it is so very true " we unravel ourselves as we speak" Hildegard Peplau - the Florence Nightingale of the modern mental health services

re:religion, I'm not a theist. I believe in evidence based science, not heresay. I think it is very dangerous to assume something that can't be proven. It has lead to all sorts of vile wyas to control,subjugate and lie to other people, for as much comfort as religion brings to some, I feel there is far more harm done by the denial of facts and the persecution of others in the name of dogma

Not really religious, but I do believe in fate. Sometimes families have the most incredible bad luck while others lead a charmed existence. Is life fair? No it jolly well isn’t.

Sounds horrible Brian.

My father was in the Norfolks and was captured at Tobruk and spend the rest of the war in camps all over eastern Europe so was he one of the 'lucky ones' ? Lucky to have been caught thus spared the trauma of warfare and lucky to have come out of the conflict relatively unscathed both physically and mentally ?

That's true enough Barbara.

I fail to see how anyone can not be moved when they hear of such a tragedy. I likened it to the gas chambers and stick by that.

I recall the film Schindlers List. Countless thousands had already been gassed and the last group Schindler was trying to save were waiting in the chamber for what they thought would be a hot shower and, Speilberg in all his magical glory confounded everyone by producinhg hot water and not the deadly gas...That gave hope to us onlookers all of whom had been expecting the very worst....

My father lived his full years I guess but after WW2 he stayed in for 10 years. Once he left he joined one of the groups of veterans against war. I never got on well with him but heard about how on the Mulberry Harbour installation that people like himself put there, that other non-combat soldiers around him were killed and wounded, he was badly hurt by a mine blast when he actually arrived on the beach. He was also part of liberating POWs in Singapore. He never said a bad word about the German and Japanese former enemies but always spoke in terms of those who led them into war. For the present day what he said and what I believe endorses your words. They have a terrible amount of guilt on their account but do they care? I think not, but who pays the price for their short-sightedness?

You are right Brian and the US is sitting on the sidelines, having created the appalling situation, and doing nothing. Now they are interfering in the Ukraine. I really believe that the US is the most hypocritical political influence in the World today.

Never had a faith to lose Peter, Lost my father [suicide] when I was five; have never been inclined to follow the herd where religion is concerned. Dad fought in Libya, a desert rat. I like to think fifteen years after the war,1960, PTSD kicked in, then unheard of, what he saw in that theatre, I don't want to imagine. I have a couple photographs of him, on the back of one, written in pencil, his words of mans inhumanity to man.

I've never followed the "macho" herd either, it's this machismo that causes just about all of humanities suffering, I despise it.

The vast majority of the current refugee situation can be laid at the feet of Blair, Bush, Cheney, and their imbecilic short sightedness.

Nothing to be ashamed of....crying...

Natural and the first expression when greeting the world.

With you entirely Doreen. I have learned that outside from essentially Northern European cultures men show emotions the same way as women and for many, many years have felt much better for not having a 'stiff upper lip' or whatever the appropriate line is. I have cried for over 24 hours for a cat, let alone for a loved one of human variety and allow myself generous tears when I read about things like the 71 suffocated migrants in the truck... Anybody and everybody can do it and I think it is never too late to learn.

Yes Brian we are all going to go.

What a toxic world we live in where the virus of greed, ignorance and hate

breeds so openly.

I am thankful to be here in the countryside.

Unable to help...sadly.

Add the couple of hundred of the coast of Libya

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/28/libyans-protest-people-smugglers-up-to-200-drown

and it all gets rather sickening. There we are with a bunch of politicians and media winding up the public in the UK and killing compassion along with human victims.

We are all going to go, but thus far we are lucky when we consider what has made news recently.

I also am So sorry to read of the news about both yours and Doreen’s friends, Peter.



And think the migrants in the lorry, was the worst of all the migrant deaths to date, in the manner of it, although all needless deaths are appalling. How that Driver could just walk away and leave them there, is beyond appalling



I know we were all taught God gave Man free will, which leaves us with

Mans’ Inhumanity to Man! So I can’t and don’t blame God. His son was one of the Good Samaritans.



Where are today’s Good Samaritans vis-a-vis Governments with the Will to look after and provide for their own, first and foremost in current situation to keep them safe and protected so their people don’t feel forced to migrate?



I am ashamed of the British Government’s refusal to openly accept and freely admit them as other European countries are, the UK spends millions putting up wire fencing? money that could be spent housing and feeding some migrants, but there is no political will to do so despite the tragedies.

Me too, i'm afraid I lost my faith a couple of years back.

The additional problem is his father, in France since 1991 is now quite ill also and I can see this finishing him off too ! Hs mum wants to go back to the UK to be with the rest of the family and especially now but the father wants 'to die in France' !

Talk about being a stubborn old man !

I suppose dying from suffocation in the back of a lorry along with 70 others is no worse than being drowned in the Med but it just seemed so much more cruel to me...a bit like being in a Nazi gas chamber maybe ?

So very sad Peter.

A friend of mine who is in her fourties has a brain tumour too.

Probably will never see her again.

I have trouble in believing in G.

Yet, Peter, people still believe in a god? Don't get it?