Well, that was a weird one. Putin starts behaving like Hitler while accusing his victims of being Nazis. Italy elects a government of one-time fascists. The US has a political party that is full-on deranged, has started unravelling fundamental rights via a blatantly politicized Supreme Court, and has a probable presidential candidate who threatens his rivals like a mob boss. Meanwhile Britain is collapsing as a developed society while the hardliners who are responsible for it squawk that it's everyone else's fault for not having enough faith in their crazed isolationist project. And the icing on the cake for me was getting some comments last year accusing me of harbouring secret Nazi beliefs.
Those who are interested in my actual beliefs (none of which I'd call beliefs myself; it's too dogmatic) will find them expressed in previous New Year's Day messages. Eg here, here and here. This year I'll just wish you good luck getting through to another one unscathed. Around the world there are stupid people convinced they are right and ready to scream at anyone who doesn't unconditionally agree with them on every topic. Bonkers, yes, but half the population have an IQ of less than 100.
We're neotenic apes and we might be the best this galaxy has got. I know, it doesn't even bear thinking about, does it? Better just help who you can and show charity to the people you come in contact with, try to think well of others, respect everyone's personal life choices if they aren't hurting anyone else, talk things through rather than shout opponents down, and always allow for the possibility that you're wrong and you need to change your mind. Then you'll know that you've done your bit to make the world slightly better.
I'll close with some food for thought from Margaret Kennedy's novel The Feast:
“If there wasn’t something a little wrong with all of us we could deal with any one pernicious group. But we can’t because nobody is grateful enough. Ingratitude. That’s what is the matter with everybody. And isn’t that because every man, any man, has a completely false idea of what he really is? He will regard himself as an independent and self-sufficient unit—a sovereign state. And in his dealing with the rest of us he imagines he is negotiating with other sovereign states. No wonder the negotiations break down. For by himself he is nothing. Nothing at all. All that he is, everything that he possesses, he owes to the rest of us. He has nothing that is really his own.”
“He has an immortal soul,” stated the Canon.
“Which he didn’t make himself. He is simply a creature presuming to negotiate on equal terms with his Creator. If he could ever fully realize what he owes to the rest of us he would be so flooded, so overwhelmed, with humility and gratitude that he would only be anxious to pay his debts, not claim his rights. He’d be the easiest fellow in the world to play ball with.”
“I do not think,” observed Mr. Paley, “that I owe anything to anybody. What I am, what I have, are the result of my own efforts.”
“You didn’t conceive yourself or give birth to yourself. You didn’t invent the language you use, and in which the wisdom of other generations has been communicated to you by other people. You couldn’t even do a noble deed without some help from us; it was we who first gave you a notion of nobility and anyway you’d need somebody else to do it to. You didn’t weave the cloth you wear or grow the bread you eat.”
“I pay for what I have.”
“Do you pay enough? Does anybody pay enough? Has any man repaid a millionth part of all that he has received? Where would you be without the rest of us?”
There it is in a nutshell. Where would any of us be without the rest of us? Take care of yourself in 2023, and I hope we'll be having some robust discussions here in the year ahead.
No comments:
New comments are not allowed.