Never hate your enemies- it affects your judgement
Thank you Don Corleone :)
Anyway, i was speaking to circee yesterday and it got me thinking.
First a little story;
Almost 10 months after I was born, Patrick Magee blew up the hotel in Brighton, where the Tory party conference was being held. Luckily he only killed 5 and injured 35, unluckily Maggie Thatcher escaped, off to fuck up the country for another 8 years. But thats another rant. A lot of my earliest memories are being in bomb scares, they were just taken as normal. You went to London, bomb scare, you had to work out where the next boots the chemist was to paraphrase the Izzard. If you drove your car into London you would expect it to get searched. But this is just to put it in context, dont worry, this is (hopefully) going to go somewhere.
Many many many many years ago I had a parent who worked for the Minstry of defense in their buildings in London. In short not a good place to hang out in if you want to avoid being exploded, and everytime I heard about an explosion in London I was terrified that he was involved. As I grew up and reached my mid/late childhood (around 7) I began to realise that this shouldn't be happening. So I began to hate the IRA for what they were doing and making me feel scared. My dad realised this, so one day he sat me down and told me. He didn't tell me there was no reason to feel scared or that we'd be ok, he told me exactly what the IRA were doing. What their problem was. He didn't just grudingly conceed they had a point. He took me back right back to Henrey VIII and told me the many various ways he the protestants had been fucking over the catholics all these years. He told me about Lloyd George and the partioning of Ireland and the massacres that had taken place before it. He told me of recent events, how the military and police had been complete bastards to Catholic civilians and then gloated about it to him when he was forced to socialise with them.
And then like magic I didn't hate anymore. I understood, and wanted peace. I still felt scared (sadly thats a natural thing that everyone has to feel no matter what their age )but Yoda is wrong, fear doesn't necessarily lead to hate, I didn't want to crush them for the sake of it. I think feeling is necessary, on the Good Friday agreement, and ones similar, I didn't feel hatred when the terrorists were released. I felt sad for the families, wondered if it would actually help the peace talks, doubted that it would, but I never felt the hatred that other people seemed to.
And this brings me onto the main focus of todays rant...
As a culture I don't think we try to understand our enemies enough. Say the Palestianians have a point, like Cherie Blair did a month ago, and you'll be strung up. But if this mentality continues we'll never have peace. The Palestinians are refugees in their own country, they have a point. Just like the Isrealis. We'll never get anywhere if we refuse to admit that people are exploding themselves for a reason. If we just hate them we'll never negotiate fairly and never find a solution, we will just dismiss them. Maybe the suicide bombers on 11/9 had a point that wasn't derived from plain fanatasism... we'll probably never know. But at the moment most of us are content not to know. We just hate them and want to crush them whatever the cost.
And I think thats damaging to all parties. I would like to believe that if we invade Iraq, it is done with a heavy heart. I would like to believe that it was done for more than politicans ulterior motives which was allowed by the mass hatred and fear that we as a population felt. I would like to believe that if we do go to war, it will be because bush/blair/whoever weighed up the probabilities and dangers and decided that it really would be dangerous not to, that it would be for the best in the long run. I would like to believe that we (and I am including myself when I use this word) would weep for the thousands innocent casualities that will be inevitable and the hatred from that quarter that would be likely to follow.
wheee, ok. thats all I have to say on the matter. It was good to get that off my chest :) So... anyone up for some tennis?
Anyway, i was speaking to circee yesterday and it got me thinking.
First a little story;
Almost 10 months after I was born, Patrick Magee blew up the hotel in Brighton, where the Tory party conference was being held. Luckily he only killed 5 and injured 35, unluckily Maggie Thatcher escaped, off to fuck up the country for another 8 years. But thats another rant. A lot of my earliest memories are being in bomb scares, they were just taken as normal. You went to London, bomb scare, you had to work out where the next boots the chemist was to paraphrase the Izzard. If you drove your car into London you would expect it to get searched. But this is just to put it in context, dont worry, this is (hopefully) going to go somewhere.
Many many many many years ago I had a parent who worked for the Minstry of defense in their buildings in London. In short not a good place to hang out in if you want to avoid being exploded, and everytime I heard about an explosion in London I was terrified that he was involved. As I grew up and reached my mid/late childhood (around 7) I began to realise that this shouldn't be happening. So I began to hate the IRA for what they were doing and making me feel scared. My dad realised this, so one day he sat me down and told me. He didn't tell me there was no reason to feel scared or that we'd be ok, he told me exactly what the IRA were doing. What their problem was. He didn't just grudingly conceed they had a point. He took me back right back to Henrey VIII and told me the many various ways he the protestants had been fucking over the catholics all these years. He told me about Lloyd George and the partioning of Ireland and the massacres that had taken place before it. He told me of recent events, how the military and police had been complete bastards to Catholic civilians and then gloated about it to him when he was forced to socialise with them.
And then like magic I didn't hate anymore. I understood, and wanted peace. I still felt scared (sadly thats a natural thing that everyone has to feel no matter what their age )but Yoda is wrong, fear doesn't necessarily lead to hate, I didn't want to crush them for the sake of it. I think feeling is necessary, on the Good Friday agreement, and ones similar, I didn't feel hatred when the terrorists were released. I felt sad for the families, wondered if it would actually help the peace talks, doubted that it would, but I never felt the hatred that other people seemed to.
And this brings me onto the main focus of todays rant...
As a culture I don't think we try to understand our enemies enough. Say the Palestianians have a point, like Cherie Blair did a month ago, and you'll be strung up. But if this mentality continues we'll never have peace. The Palestinians are refugees in their own country, they have a point. Just like the Isrealis. We'll never get anywhere if we refuse to admit that people are exploding themselves for a reason. If we just hate them we'll never negotiate fairly and never find a solution, we will just dismiss them. Maybe the suicide bombers on 11/9 had a point that wasn't derived from plain fanatasism... we'll probably never know. But at the moment most of us are content not to know. We just hate them and want to crush them whatever the cost.
And I think thats damaging to all parties. I would like to believe that if we invade Iraq, it is done with a heavy heart. I would like to believe that it was done for more than politicans ulterior motives which was allowed by the mass hatred and fear that we as a population felt. I would like to believe that if we do go to war, it will be because bush/blair/whoever weighed up the probabilities and dangers and decided that it really would be dangerous not to, that it would be for the best in the long run. I would like to believe that we (and I am including myself when I use this word) would weep for the thousands innocent casualities that will be inevitable and the hatred from that quarter that would be likely to follow.
wheee, ok. thats all I have to say on the matter. It was good to get that off my chest :) So... anyone up for some tennis?