The recent incident in Woolwich that resulted in the death of one young man has stirred the base level reactions of many of the public and politicians alike.
When you take a moment and remove yourself from the situation and initial emotion, you give yourself a chance to see a different picture.
It of course goes without saying that this act is abhorrent, as is any killing in what ever way it is done.
It is also a given that empathy is with the young man's family. These are just there from one human being to another. What about the two men that carried out this attack?
'Death' occurred there too. I saw the picture of the man wielding the knife he had just used to kill. The first time I saw it, it was without sound and I didn't hear his rhetoric, at this point I wasn't completely aware of the story, having just returned home.
At this stage he could have been someone who had gone to the rescue and got covered in blood and holding the weapon that he had removed from the attacker. Looking at it in that moment, he looked like a desperate man, upset, arms spread open, weapon held in a dropped hand - non threatening but almost pleading for people to come and help him.
As my son appeared and started speaking about it, I was just going to watch the news on the 'catch up' on my I-player. It was at this point that I managed to get sound and vision and this time obviously heard the attacker speak.
Many take a view of what they would do if it was their child that had been killed. The problem is that revenge or hate will not resolve the problem. Revenge and hate have been the reason for the crime to start with.
I am lucky that no one I love has ever been killed and in reality none of us know how we would react, but I am a strong believer that hating the attacker is not the way to resolve the grief. It will obviously not change what has happened, nor will it allow healing.
When we live in a society that has good levels of freedom and tolerance, we have to accept that you cannot protect and stop such attacks. These are rare and we have to be careful that we don't buy into sudden changes in our laws that might erode our basic rights of freedom of movement and access to information, group gathering, speech etc.
We are shocked by what has happened because it s rare. That is not because laws prevent it, it is because people in the main work from love.
When a crisis hits, you see the best of people helping one another.
It is very easy to lead public emotion and stir up unhelpful bigoted thoughts through the press and media. Politicians utilise this and want to say what they think the public want to hear - tough talk!
The press were pinning this on Islam and extremist view etc etc and that it has attacked our way of life....Well not really.
My way of life hasn't changed and neither has that of everyone else. The relatives and friends of the dead man and those of the 2 attackers will all have changed.
So rhetoric that stirs aggression towards religion or race is not helpful. Politicians that take this as an opportunity to score points or curry favour are despicable and the public should be careful that their views are not being media or politically lead.
Righteous condemnation is a basic reaction to the obvious but it is not coming from reason and in reason we find a way forward that will move back to love and away from hate.
We only need to look back at the amazing work of Mo Mowlam in brokering the Good Friday agreement with two sides that were horn locked, years of hatred and death and destruction on both sides supporting each sides polarised view. You have to be the 'bigger person' to bring about peace and find the common ground.
We need a 'Mo Mowlam' right now. The world needs many of them.
But this incident was an attack by 2 men who had not the ability to think through their actions. They acted out of love, but a love that was destructive in its application and lead to the evil outcome.
A love for their desire and believes only.
We must be careful not to respond with the same kind of love, but one that is acted out through wisdom.
We perhaps need to educate children to think through the consequences of actions, a life skill indeed.
It is easy to become marginalised and disenchanted and frustrated with life but we need to make sure that people feel heard and that instead of leaving them vulnerable to influences of extremists, we need to give them the skills to be discerning.
Maybe we all need those skills more. We can all be prone to being influenced and maybe governments prefer it that way. They like us to be malleable and open to their influences. The media like us to be open to theirs and corporations like us to be open to theirs too.
The consequences of having a malleable society is that it makes people open to all views and easily influenced.
Right/Wrong - who knows?
But perhaps we all need to learn to stop and think before leaping to a view and where that stance might lead us.
If those 2 men had stopped and thought their actions through....where might they have thought they would end up after?
We all need to be mindful of being manipulated by those I have mentioned before and try and act from reason and not reaction.
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