Respect

All of us would like to be respected and need to be respected. To be respected as a human being; to be acknowledged for what we are. Respect has to be earned, but first of all we must respect ourselves, if we don’t how can we expect others to show us respect? Someone in a high position may be entitled to respect – the Office of President of the US, for example, certainly deserves respect, but has the incumbent earned it? A company CEO may be entitled to respect, the position indicates that this should be so, but is this so, has he (or she) earned it?

So how does one earn respect? In fact what is respect? Respect is the deference, honour or esteem felt or shown towards a person. It is a quality that is difficult to define because of its subtlety. We all have different ideas about this and may respect someone that others do not. All animals defer to the dominant, or Alpha male in a herd, troop or group of animals or flight of birds. This is a natural and useful attribute to maintain the strength of the gene pool and for the general safety of the group. The Alpha male has the attributes which the others accept as the ‘best', in that it may be the biggest, strongest, fastest or it display some other factor which gives it the ability to rise to the top of the ‘pecking order’. 

Human beings are much more complicated than this. Many in positions of influence or power – dictators in their own way - are feared and force their followers or subjects to ‘show respect’ by abasing themselves when in their presence. All dictators demand this subservience and abasement, i.e. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and many others, some even in the corporate field. To be truly respected, however, a human being needs to have many attributes, some of them very subtle. This ‘respected’ person must have human qualities of the highest order. These qualities are ones we have all met before – the qualities of Honesty, Justice, Courage, Temperance, Compassion, Kindness, Humility and Love for one’s fellow beings - in other words all the old fashioned virtues! Someone who has these qualities is trusted to keep their word; can be relied on to do the job to the best of their ability; can be called on for help in a dire situation. Anyone who has these qualities to a high degree is revered – think Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa and those with long memories may remember Dr. Albert Schweitzer. 

These qualities are the essence of good relationships with all Life’s forms; they are the essence of ethics, of virtue and of morality. People with these qualities lift the human spirit; by their actions they lead us to greater understanding of what it is to be Human; that Humanity has a grandeur and a nobility that in our wiser moments we may come to acknowledge; that we are all capable of greatness in our own way, given our circumstances; that we must respect ourselves for what we truly are; that we all are better than we believe or think ourselves to be.

This is respect. This is what all people honour. This is what we all hope to aspire to.

Is “Civil"-"isation” in jeopardy?

At this time of year when we wish for “Peace on Earth and goodwill to all”, I ask the question, “Is civilization as we know it in jeopardy?”

Today, December 23, 2018, trust is “missing in action”. Trust has been absent without leave – AWOL - for quite a while and trust is desperately needed. Right now. And trust is such a subjective, fragile thing. It cannot be bought or sold. It has to be earned.

Trust in governments; government trust in the electorate; trust in parliaments; trust in politicians; trust in financial organisations; trust in big business; trust in religious institutions; trust in all these, so vital for the smooth running of societies is no longer there. In consequence no one is considered trustworthy.

Trust evaporates when secrecy prevails, with closed meetings, and when cameras are banned from recording; trust evaporates when money takes precedent over humanity; trust evaporates when greed takes precedent over compassion; trust evaporates when veniality is condoned or simply ignored; trust evaporates when those in positions of power tell lies; trust evaporates when meaningless words -“spin”- take the place of policy action; trust evaporates when there is an attempt to indoctrinate with lifeless words.

People – the populous – citizens (the “civitas”) are not stupid. For any leader to consider them as such is a massive mistake. For any leader, anywhere to ignore the will of the people is to do so at their peril. The old saying, “even the worm turns” is very true.

The answer, in my view, is very simple – just treat people, others, the way you would like to be treated. It is an ethical thing.  That is what a “civil” society is based on. That is what “civilisation” is based on. Being “civil” to each other. No matter what colour or creed the “other” may be. All are Human Beings.  That is why it's called the "Golden Rule". 

Is that so difficult?

Oh! And Merry Christmas.

Love

This word – love – is used nowadays somewhat indiscriminately to express general pleasure (I “loved” the movie); to express a desire (I’d “love” a cup of coffee); to also indicate sexual pleasure (they made “love”); to indicate a favourite (I  just “love” that painting) and there are many other associations with the word “love” that are in my Thesaurus.

Possibly we lack the vocabulary to express exactly what we mean.

To me, however, the word means a great deal more than a quick throw away expression. To me the word “love” has a deeper meaning that encompasses companionship, trust, empathy, compassion, kindness, understanding, justice, mutual respect and an instinctive “knowledge” that humanity is part of something that is, possibly, beyond our powers of understanding. Something wonderful.

We are, and all living things, are linked, and no matter anyone’s religious ideology or beliefs, we are all linked in many unexpected ways. As an example we humans share half our genes with the banana. And of course it is well known that we share about 98% of our genes with chimpanzees.

Now I am not asking anyone to “love” a chimpanzee but in a deeper more Platonic way we should love all things. This was wonderfully, if poetically, expressed in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, wherein he wrote the famous lines:

            “He prayeth well, who loveth well

            Both man and bird and beast.

            He prayeth best, who loveth best

            All things both great and small;

            For the dear God who loveth us,

            He made and loveth all.”

To me this is what the word Love means – something that is both personal and yet all encompassing. It was my privilege and my joy to have loved a woman and to have been loved by her for over thirty-six years. This will be with me always.

23/08/2016. I'm adding a short piece by the American - Max Ehrmann. A piece called "Love some one", which is very appropriate:-

"Love some one - in God's name love some one - for this is the bread of the inner life, without which a part of you will starve and die; and though you feel you must be stern, even hard, in your life of affairs, make for yourself at least a little corner, somewhere in the great world, where you may unbosom and be kind."

Uncompromised Love.

Love has always been the driving force of life. And by “love” I do not just mean passion though that obviously plays a part. I am talking about the love between friends; between husband and wife (or the equivalent partners) that develops after many years of life together; between parents and their children and love for Humanity. That kind of love – which IS uncompromised.

The power of love is recognized in poetry, in song, in novels and literature, in art and in opera - it is the power that drives us all. This cannot be just “chemicals in the brain” or hormonal juices, there is much more to it than that!

Now I loved my wife in a manner that I find difficult to portray in a meaningful way to others. Tenderness – yes; closeness – yes; deep understanding – yes; ability to communicate without necessarily speaking – yes; trust – yes; talking about problems – yes; sharing – yes; respect – yes, all this and more that I do not have the words to explain.

While neither of us was in anyway saintly, there was a fulfillment that seemed to make the two of us stronger in our own way. Magucha was an amazingly strong person, not physically strong (she was very small in stature) but emotionally and mentally she was spring steel. Her resilience, which defied all that the world could throw at her, astonished everyone with whom she came in contact.

This strength – which I, for one, found quite inspiring – is epitomized by the following poem by Alfred Noyes, and this is for her:

The Anvil

Stand like a beaten anvil, when thy dream

            Is laid upon thee, golden from the fire.

Flinch not, though heavily through that furnace-gleam

            The black forge-hammers fall on thy desire.

Demoniac giants round thee seem to loom.

‘Tis but the world-smiths heaving to and fro.

Stand like a beaten anvil. Take the doom 

            Their ponderous weapons deal thee, blow on blow.

Needful to truth as dew-fall to the flower

            Is this wild wrath and this implacable scorn.

For every pang, new beauty, and new power,

            Burning blood-red shall on thy heart be born.

Stand like a beaten anvil. Let earth’s wrong

Beat on that iron and ring back in song.

Boat people (illegals) - we treat animals better than this.

Animals on the farm; animals in zoos; animal at home – all are considered with care for their welfare and well-being. The various Animal Welfare organizations see to this and have the force of law behind them. But humans who we consider as “inferior” we treat with no respect, no compassion and with no dignity. Why?

When someone is so diminished that they are no longer considered human what happens? Slaves know that they have some value (they were either purchased by or work for someone who gives them some idea of what they are worth because they produce something of value) – judicial prisoners know that they have recourse to a legal system and generally there is limit to their incarceration; refugees - “boat people” (illegals) - in the Australian context, have nothing.

These people are desperate. To have it indicated to them, in no uncertain fashion by the Australian Government, that they may as well give up hope of  any help, assistance or compassionate regard would be devastating. To be so diminished as to be considered only as counters on a game board to be pushed about from country to country is similar to an annihilation of any ideas they may hold of their worth as human beings.

Again, in the Australian context refugees, “boat people” (illegals) are neither criminals nor are they deemed to have a value – they appear to be “non-people” and the Government wants nothing to do with them.  They are moved “off shore” to desperately poor or to micro-countries that Australia can pay off to accept this Australian “detritus”. They are a nuisance to the Government and should just go away.

This is an abrogation of what is decent; an abrogation of what is right and is neither ethical nor moral and is doing the image of Australia much harm. It is a fact – almost a “Law” that for every cause there is an effect. This cannot be codified, it cannot be quantified or qualified and there is no measure to gauge what the effect may be. But of a certainty there will be an effect and it may not be what anyone expects.

Always – repeat ALWAYS – treat people the way you would like to be treated. There is no other viable option. To act or behave in any other manner is to diminish oneself and a belief in the humanity we are all party to.

Lost Symbols – the cause of many problems.

We all need and use symbols. Symbols refer to something that represents an unknowable. God, or Love, Goodness or Evil, or Infinity, or Wisdom, or Death, or Beauty, all commonly used words but we cannot “know” what they are. These are words that we use every day but are impossible to define, yet we all have some idea about the meaning (to us) of the concepts expressed by the words even though we can never have a full understanding of their meaning. When we are presented with something “Godlike” or experience something that cannot be known such as “Love”, or touched, such as “beauty”, we may have some ideas about what we are experiencing without being able to explain or define it. Hence there is a need for a symbol; something which expresses what we mean, or our understanding of the meaning.

Today there seems to be confusion over the meanings of the words Symbol and Idol.  A Symbol is something that represents a concept, an idea, something which is unknown, even unknowable; something which is imprecise. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. A good example of a symbol is the mathematical image: ∞, representing the concept of infinity – this useful symbol has crept into common usage. We need this symbol because we cannot “see” infinity; we cannot “touch” infinity; we know that (presumably) infinity exists but we cannot explain the concept of infinity – it just is.

On the other hand an idol is an image or other physical object accepted as representing a deity and to which religious worship is directed. This thing (even occasionally a person) is often regarded with blind admiration, adoration, or devotion. A religious idol is often called an icon.

In this modern day and age, however, we have been so conditioned by the allure of the exactitude provided by “science”, and our apparent never satisfied desire to categorise, to analyse everything, that we no longer believe in things we cannot see. We cannot “see” God therefore God doesn’t exist. There is nothing, therefore, above and beyond human existence and human beings  are just an agglomeration of matter –  just ‘mechanisms’– that the human body is just a watertight skin bag filled with blood, flesh and bones. When we “die” that is the end, there can be nothing else because “science” says so.

This leads us to the troubling idea that if something cannot be ‘proved’, cannot be measured, cannot dissected, cannot be ‘examined’ in a scientific manner (in a laboratory or under a microscope) it cannot exist or it cannot be true. All this may be very interesting but if we destroy or diminish the importance of symbols what are we left with? We, as human beings have been reduced to believing in pure materialism. A stark “black” or “white” – it either exists or it doesn’t. This extreme materialism has devalued symbols and with this there has been a corresponding loss of values.  The wondrous nature of “Life” in all its millions of forms is diminished and reduced to the random activities of atoms and molecules.  

We cannot see “Life” yet life exists. Anyone who has been present at the moment of death when an animal or a person dies will recognise that something that was there is no longer there; something has withdrawn and death is the result. Similarly with “Love”; this most transformative of emotions is reduced, by many people to be just a pleasurable, sensory activity; we derive pleasure without a conscience. We cannot see “goodness” so it is often transmogrified into something we can see – money. If we are feeling down we may decide to apply some “retail therapy” and spend money – thus (supposedly) making us feel “good”. If someone has a great deal of money they, personally, believe they must be good and many others certainly admire and respect them. We no longer have an understanding of what it is to be human.

The wonderful – but unseen – experiences or emotions and their symbols are now so diminished in our consciousness that we demean and cheapen Life (in whatever form) to the point that we exploit all forms of Life for monetary benefit (benefiting and in effect glorifying our “goodness”). Thus there human trafficking; there is slavery (often child slavery in “sweat shops”); there is sexual exploitation – all this when money and profits are considered more important than human beings. Money and no appreciation of “Life” lead to the exploitation of animals – cruelty in farm situations (“industrial” farms with animals confined in shed or cages) and in abattoirs. This is commerce without morality; this is a desire (which, unfortunately, we all seem share) for wealth without having to work for it.

There are many symbols that we used in the past that gave comfort and a link with what is difficult to understand and possibly unknowable. For instance we understand an image of the “grim reaper” (a dark hooded figure holding a scythe) as a symbol of death. We, possibly, might use the image of a tree as a symbol of “Life”, rooted in the earth with branches reaching heavenward – spanning, birth, life and the here-after; or possibly use the image of a seed with its ability to germinate and with its unknown potential. 

The number of symbols is almost endless.

We have now lost our belief in symbols – symbols of something greater than ourselves. We are the poorer for this loss. A new “God” has arisen symbolised by the images $ or €. 

All this is not to say that slavery and exploitation did not exist in olden times – of course they did. But then people had a choice and they were aware of the consequences of their activities (either heaven or hell). Today there is apparently no choice (it is either science or nothing) and people engaged in these questionable activities seem to be unaware of the consequences – almost as if the only crime is to be caught.

We have lost our symbols and now have science without humanity.

Tall Poppy Syndrome

We never seem to learn do we – "we" as in the human race I mean. Something like 2500 years ago Herodotus, the Greek historian (born c 484 BC and who died sometime between 421 and 415 BC) stated in his famous “The Histories” that:

“It is always great buildings and the tall trees which are struck by lightning. It is God’s way to bring the lofty low.... For God tolerates pride in none but Himself.”

He was referring to humans and how we try to gain some, often unfair, advantage over our fellow being. This is of course usually in the context of money (what’s new?). Herodotus also recorded that the Greeks had astutely observed the fact that:

“Human prosperity never abides long in the same place.”

To my way of thinking all human life has one purpose and one only – the well being of humanity. And I wonder whether all the technological advances we have made, and continue to make, on an exponential growth pattern, actually do HELP humanity. Money is very useful in this regard if used to assist those in need – to purchase their requirements. But do we need huge arsenals of weapons; do we need to spend countless billions on developing new or more ‘refined’ ways of killing each other? Wouldn’t it be much better to spend this money trying to right some of the wrongs and injustices of the past, to the extent that those who may have felt they had been treated unjustly or in some other way wronged, feel compensated and have no need to take further action?

The three basic requirements of humanity seem to be slipping further out of the reach of many – adequate food, adequate shelter and personal security. These still seem to elude the one billion people (according to the World Health Organization) currently at the point of starvation, who often live in the most hazardous regions – particularly South America, Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia. So what are the wealthy doing about it?

As I said before the purpose of human life is to help humanity. Why aren’t we doing it? There is enough food thrown away in the developed countries to feed all those in need. Are we those “great buildings and the tall trees” to be laid low by God because He “tolerates pride in none but Himself?” To consider oneself ‘above’ or ‘better’ than others, who are starving with lack of shelter and without any personal security, is surely ‘pride’; is surely ‘hubris’.

This, surely, is pride asking for a fall?

Also consider the observation that “Human prosperity never abides long in the same place.” It would seem that not many in Wall Street read Herodotus or if they did they didn’t think it would apply to them – they cared for no one but themselves and the money they were ‘making’ through their obscene commissions (vide the 2008 Global Financial Crisis). Certainly, I would guess, the Australian banks and insurance companies thought they were above all this ‘nonsense’ – how wrong they were (they also obviously never read Herodotus).

If you follow my thinking that as humans our main purpose in life is to help our fellow beings you will understand my continual reference to the "Law" of Cause and Effect (or if you prefer, You Reap What you Sow), and to the importance of ethics in our relationships. It is needful to be always fair, honest, kind, compassionate, empathetic, moderate and just in all our dealing. To be anything else is to invite the Gods to cut you down to size and to ‘bring the lofty low’.

In colloquial English - call this the ‘tall poppy’ syndrome – and in Australia at least we seem to take a perverse pleasure in seeing the ‘self promoted mighty’ laid low and cut down to the size of normal human beings.

Israel's staggering presumption

So now Israel has agreed to a cease fire, of sorts and we are told that it has ‘exceeded its objectives’ in Gaza. Big deal. Over 1200 dead and many thousands injured. What for? If the Israelis think that bombs, rockets and assassinations will destroy a dream, will destroy the emotional fervour of the Palestinians (however disunited their various factions are) then they have learned nothing from their own history. Have the many and various anti-Jewish activities that have happened over the centuries ever sapped the Jewish dreams; ever broken their morale? Of course not! So what makes them think that doing what they have done, during the last 22 days of their offensive will bring ‘peace’ any closer.

The Israeli have destroyed the infrastructure of Gaza (for sure they will not pay for the repairs!); they killed, injured and maimed thousands of people after 22 days of brutal activity to arrive back at the point they started from! As I say what was all the death and destruction for?

They may kill thousands and destroy houses and buildings but they will never kill the Human Spirit. They should know that. So what makes them think that they are so special that what never had any affect on them will affect Palestinians any differently? We are all human beings on this world together. For whatever reason we are all here, now, with our differences in skin colour, beliefs and creeds, daily practises of living, our loves, our dreams, our hopes and aspirations – we are all in this together. So for one group of people (the Israelis) to try to subjugate another group (the Palestinians); to attempt to control how they should think and act towards the first (dominant? group) shows breathtaking arrogance, unbelievable hubris and staggering presumption.

The presumption is that Israel knows best. Do they? Have they addressed the root of the problem – a landless, disenfranchised population? That they are an occupying nation that was ‘given’ Palestine in 1946 because the world wanted to give the traumatised survivors of the Nazi death camps some place for them to recover and call home? What about the Palestinians? Without so much as a by your leave they were made landless and moved.

As the English poet and sermonist John Dunne wrote in the 1600s, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

The Israelis have been diminished by their actions – therefore they have lost. They may have ‘exceeded their objectives’ in Gaza but as I said, in the long run they have lost.

This is a defining moment in Israel’s short history. As a people the Jews in Israel are morally bankrupt. Their only recourse is to arms, to fight. That is not the way civilised people act. Whatever the shortcomings of Hamas and other hard line Palestinians, and there are many, by lowering themselves to ‘Hamas levels’ of activity the Israeli have diminished themselves – and they know it.

Why can’t the Israelis show moral leadership and lift the whole region to a new level of consciousness? Isn’t this what Jewishness; the Kabbalah and their spiritual practices are supposed to bring about? They should not just talk about it. They should walk the walk, not just talk the talk!!