Man
needs drama.
Conflict.
Which in the breath it takes to say those three words sweeps up the
whole of humanity, yet also separates, so that you may also take my
meaning as male in sex or identity. It's my attempt to be more
politically correct and not cause offence or alienate anybody, though
there's no guarantee I won't do that further on. I come from a
different school, a different pool to my peers.
I
can't, I won't apologise for that. I have my experiences, you have
yours, and those I hear about, read about, I form my own views on,
which you may or may not share, based upon my understanding of the
world. The world I inhabit, the world I've learned about through
taught and self-taught education or first-hand accounts (my own as
well as others'). The world of differences and intolerances as well
as shared behaviours. And yet still I say man needs drama.
Of
some kind. In one shape or another. There will never be a global
peace. Peace amongst all men, amongst all kind. Because if we're not
warring with other nations, we're fighting amongst ourselves (and
even against our own self) or in a battle with nature, causing all
sorts of damage and leaving all sorts of scars. Peoples divided, dead
or scattered; forests chopped down; seas polluted. Species
extinguished, by knives or guns, or poisoned, bodily with chemical
warfare or in thought with propaganda.
Last
year while reading a H. E. Bates novel, set in Burma as it was known
then (and still by some now) about the exodus of people as the
Japanese drew closer, I came across a misprint: When
Paterson pulled the ear from the road...which
tickled (and irked) me because I knew what it should say (and the
rest of the sentence made that clear) and as it seemed such a
careless mistake, but if someone had randomly opened to that page and
skim-read they might have thought something very different, taken it
as literal. Pulled an ear? Ugh! Had it been cut off? Got glued to or
embedded in the road due to the heat or the trampling of wheels and
feet over it? And who had it belonged to; where were they now?
That's
how things start. It's as simple as that.
Not
everyone checks the information they've given, however it's told or
reached them. And whatever the truth people will always believe what
they want to believe, and proceed as necessary. Respond calmly or
aggressively. Take sides. Stay and stock-pile or make preparations to
leave. Families may even disagree and split.
Not
everyone spots the unintentional or deliberate mistake at first
glance, especially not in this era of information overload where it's
more difficult to recognise what is fake and what is real. The two
get confused, and so create distrustful nations, suspicious of each
other and of organised systems.
You
can argue the causes: it's engineered by the government, by social
media, by military forces in a position of power, by the West, by the
East, by trade and consumerism, by bodies that have an invested
interest. Yet for all that: it's us.
Conflict
is human-made (and driven) however and wherever it comes about.
Perhaps brought about by the single action of a single individual. It
takes very little to raise an army or an angry mob, to start a
campaign, a war of words – strong but civilised or threat-like and
provocative - and for peoples to join that wave of demonstration and
protest, of rumour.
You
can't please everybody, and not everyone wants to be pleased. Or
appeased or indoctrinated. They want to be enraged. By something, by
anything. Individually and collectively - be a lone voice or one of
many, either separated or unified in an attitude of condemnation, and
to pick sides, to prove they're not one of them, they're not one of
the other.
The
motivations and passions that move people are related to (or are
sometimes the same as) those that divide; and that, for as long as
Man exists, will raise tricky issues.
Picture credit: Final Battle of the Siege of Troy, 1625, Adam van Noort (source: WikiArt.org)
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
