In the Rising Tide of the Right Hope Springs Eternal

Watching Jeremy Corbyn being announced as the new Labour leader I said to my Mum that she would remember this day in the future. That she would remember being in London the day Corbyn took his first step to becoming Priminister in 2020.

I look back to May and the day the Tory's won the election. I also broke my arm that day but this event was totally eclipsed by the more far-reaching event which promised 5 more years of  the rising tide of the rich, cutting the poor off from opportunities, flooding already deprived areas more poor, leaving some people stranded without a paddle and some just drowning in debt. The rising tide does not lift all.

I remember talking with former colleagues about the changes we hoped to see in Labour. In some ways I was relieved that the Labour of May 8th didn't win. I wanted a Labour left to be in power not a middle-right. Back then Corbyn wasn't even in the picture. And in less than four months my hopes have been realised.

So, when people say he hasn't a 'hope' of being elected in 2020, I remember in May that he wasn't even in the race which he won today. If that can happen in four months, imagine what can happen in five years...

Doing the Right Thing

'It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you.'

(Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre)

Or to paraphrase the Bible:

Turn the other cheek.

However in the Bible it is providing an alternative tack to take to 'An eye for and eye, and a tooth for a tooth' . So rather than seeking revenge in equal measure to the crime committed, the advice appears to be to provide instead an opportunity of equal measure for the offence to be repeated. This time not out of anger or perhaps in the cold light of day. Is it providing an opportunity for the person to do the right thing? Is it to give them a second change?

Otherwise we are saying that people who suffer domestic violence should just put up with it. Or is it saying that it is as equally ridiculous to use the mantra 'An eye for an eye and an tooth for a tooth' as it is to say that if some one hits you on one cheek that you should give them the other to hit too. Or perhaps it is expanding on the idea that revenge is self-perpetuating and will eventually come back to bite you.

So what is the 'right thing'?

• I've heard parents tell their kids to hit the bully back.
• I've heard the tit-for-tat goings on of messy divorces.
• I've heard the neighbourhood ASBO threatening battles.
• I've heard the sentences prisoners judges and juries have doled out for crimes.

What is the difference between punishment and revenge? Does it matter? Do either make the world a better place?

I remember a 7 year old saying to me how 'horrible' someone was all the time, that the boy just didn't know how to 'behave'  and everybody said he was 'naughty' so nobody liked him or wanted to play with him and he got into 'trouble' a lot.

We talked about how 'sad' it was that he should make people feel like that but we also discussed how sad it was that he had no friends and how that must feel. But out of the conversation, the most important question was:

'How can someone know how to behave if they are not shown?'

 

If every time someone behaves in the manner in which they have been brought up or are accustomed to,  they are punished or experience some other form or reinforcement of negative behaviours how will they ever know what appropriate behaviour looks or feels like or have the positive association of reinforcement?

Its trust. How can we expect people to do the right thing if we don't do it ourselves? What will they learn from us?

• If he hits me and I hit him back. I am saying it is ok to hit. 
• If he attacks my home and I bomb his back. I'm saying its ok to bomb.
• If he kills someone and he is given the death penalty. I am saying its ok to kill.

It's not ok to hit, bomb or kill, whatever my justification...whether by tradition, law or military force. We must overcome our baser, immature and reactionary natures. Evolution can't come fast enough. 

Turn the other cheek. If only to give yourself time to think of what to do next, time to develop a plan, a way of dealing with the issues at the root of the problem. To prevent recurrences of the same problem for the same reasons.

Like Gandhi said:

 'An eye for and eye only makes the whole world blind.'

And as Martin Luther King Jnr said:

'Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert.'

 (King, 1958, p.213)

52 Quotes on War & Peace  and  some thoughts on Hope

 

King, M, L. (1958) 'Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story', Harper & Row, New York

Acceptance kills hope

Would we bother doing anything if we just accepted our lot? What would be the point? Nothing to be gained. We'd probably be happier. With realistic to no expectations. No need to dream. No need for fiction. No need for an imagination. Or the future. Just the here and now. No coulds or woulds, or the impossible, or improbable or odd or strange.

Listening to a friend's questioning of why people don't accept their lot I became aware of why I didn't. Mainly because otherwise I might not leave the sofa. With everything that was either hard or scary, if I didn't think there was some chance that things would get better why would I bother? I said to him, something along the lines of  'acceptance kills hope'. He agreed whoelheartedly and delightedly recounted a scene in the play Separate Tables by Terence Rattigan, where Major Pollack ask Miss Cooper about her lost love. 'Any hope?' he asks. She replies, cheerfully, 'No, none at all.' He asks why she's so cheerful about it and she tells him that there no point in being any other way. She says, 'I've settled for the situation you see, and its surprising how cheerful one can be when one give up hope.'

Could I be happier if I stopped hoping? My friend reminded me of the proverb 'What can't be cured must be endured.' But I amended it in my head to the less pithy: 'What can't be cured for now must be endured until....'  Or otherwise we would continue to live with polio, small pox and cancer. At one time none of these could be cured and if simply endured would not be eradicated as they have been and are being.

Marching in today's demonstration in the rain, in flip flops, with my rainbow PEACE flag over one shoulder and umbrella over the other, through Parliament Square to Downing Street, there was plenty of time to think. There was a background wash and sound-track of anti-war banners, Peace banners, placards saying 'Welfare not Warfare', chanting:

One, two, three, four - we don't want another war

Five, six, seven, eight - stop the killing, stop the hate

A French news camera appears in my face and I am asked by the cameraman, why I'm marching. I point to my flag. For Peace, I tell him. Peace as a process that doesn't just happen over night or can be brought about by bombs. He asks me what I thought of the death of Alan Henning. I said that it was shocking, as every death is shocking, and that nothing is solved by bombs. Peace is a process. A long one. 

And we need hope.

So I don't accept that we fight fire with fire so we're all end up burnt. And it can't be an eye for an eye until we're all blind. We just can't teach peace through war.

So.

I hope for better. I march for better. I try to do better.

And hope.

'Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.'

Martin Luther

52 Quotes on War and Peace

Luther, M. (1848) Table Talk or Familiar Discourse of Martin Luther (translated by W. Hazlitt), David Bogue, London