In your circling and cycling of riots and memories and sadness, that old word “discernment” comes to mind, drifting up from a few years past. Then it was about discerning whether or not a late vocation was the course to take. Yes, it seemed to be, but no it wasn’t. So now the word comes to mind in relation to riots and good governance.
Discernment is rather like peering into the smoky globe of the fortune-teller and whilst discernment often possesses a questioning of possible futures it is also trying to see into current events and the metaphors of events. In the “event” of the riots there is a mirror held up to whichever government is in power and the question of, where is the destructiveness of their policies. Not only in the violence visited upon foreign peoples in actual war but the effects of domestic policies when policy makers are seized and trapped within ideological perspectives which have drastic consequences for the rest of us.
The trappings of appearance may be different: hoodies as against impeccably expensive suiting – but, of course, governments may “legally” visit violence on all sorts of people with a confident self-righteousness (picture Tony Blair) and will rarely be held to account.
And surprise, surprise, you remember the eighties and yes indeed, another Tory government and riots . . . how the times change – driven as usual by anxiety and greed and the curious blindness that we actually inhabit though we always pretend to be seeing quite clearly.
On Wednesday evening of this week I went to a presentation by Combatants for Peace, a Palestinian/Israeli group intent on bridging the chasms between the alienated communities of Palestine/Israel: Jew and Arab. There was a short film of their activities – demonstrations, community work – followed by an example of how they use theatre/psychodrama to explore and work with (and through) the conflicts of perception/emotion. This in turn was followed by three of the group sharing a fairly brief account of their lives and how they came to Combatants for Peace.
I noticed in myself an initial reaction of wanting to sympathise with one side rather than the other but then found, as I listened on, to discover the broader sympathies of our common humanity. Yet another example of the need to refuse the temptation of paranoid ways of thinking.
On we trudge – can we go a bit slower – speed may be another temptation to be refused; a refusal to rush into action. Except when it is a clear emergency. In this regard, Pankaj Mishra wrote a timely piece for the Guardian (3.09.11) Review: an overview of this decade since 9/11 – the appalling consequences of American (and British) blinkered action.