Mirrors and Curtains

It's been two weeks since that last post, and in that time I've continued to think quite a lot about the Israel/Palestine situation. I've reached the point where I think it's probably best that I just stay out of it and watch on from afar. I can't get a handle on things, and it's impossible to take any sort of side from such a point of ignorance. The media (on all sides and in all countries) have cried wolf far too many times over recent years and decades. To the point that words mean nothing. So I find myself in a situation where I feel sad for deaths I haven't seen, yet also guilt for doubting such deaths. It's not good, but I think it's at least a step up from supporting actions that may lead to death, based on nothing concrete.

In the wider context I get the feeling Cold War II is very much still in full swing. The curtain that cut across Ukraine now sweeping through the Middle East, before finally swishing round to close off Tartary and China. I just hope it's more theatre than bloodshed.

I'm currently reading a book about the Kennedy family. Earlier today I read a chapter that noted how JFK didn't sleep for two days with worry during the Bay of Pigs incident. You wonder what it must be like for people making the real decisions. You also wonder if all the people making them fret so much about human life. Just visiting social media you can see how easy it is for people to become blasé about deaths they only witness through a screen. You push a button or give an order and someone dies a thousand miles away. It takes effort and imagination to conjure the empathy. It's not hard to imagine that often it'll be missing in people.

At the same time though the phone or TV screen can whip people up into emotion about people they've never met, as they step over the homeless person on their own street with equal thoughtlessness.

The temptation is to say that people should focus on problems closer to home, in their own reality. That would mean turning yourself off to dying children in far away places though. So that can't be right either.

Plus, everything is interconnected, so eventually the far away will find your own shores.

I'm wandering now.

Anyway, I've been listening to Kula Shaker as I've been writing this, and this song's just popped up in the playlist, and it feels strangely fitting. So I'll leave you with it.

Gimme Some Truth