Postscript to We Are All Strangers
It's been on my mind about how we treat people of other nations and the inherent hypocrisy which invades our thinking despite our best intentions and how much we need to focus on shared humanity to try to combat that. To put ourselves in the other person's (foreign, immigrant) shoes.
Seems to me we protect ourselves by shying away from that at times. Again, it's a natural coping response in some ways, when that other person's metaphorical shoes are treading on unexploded mines, over rubble and debris from war or natural disaster, worn out by walking miles for water, or for safety, confined to unjust imprisonment or slavery of various kinds, stained with blood from torture or violence, or just missing (perhaps along with the foot which wore them). Sublimating much of that might send you into a depression or even madness, as it is very hard to imagine those situations and those sufferers NOT being emotionally and mentally damaged accordingly.
The balance between emotional detachment which retains the caring but blocks the desensitisation and a complete inability to feel anything even pity is the problem. And I don't have any answers except that we must constantly re-evaluate our own reactions and consciences to strike that balance between self protection and an appropriate level of valuable action.
Aye, there's the rub. Every day the media brings fresh stories and photographic (often graphic as well) evidence of the plight of people whose lives are worth no less than ours, whose geographical accident of birth has determined their fate in ways which are too awful for us to contemplate - there but for the grace of God go all of us, indeed.
Last night I watched a video taken by a drone over Aleppo. The day before I watched kids being pulled out of the rubble, two alive, one dead. Like any decent human being, I feel for them, I cry and I rage, but what can I do? I've signed every petition I see asking the people with power to wield it wisely and to every aid agency to help, I share posts with impotent rage or pity or both, this is from where a Syrian refugee has fled, this is what they have left and from both sides they are being bombed out of existence by opposing forces neither of whom give a proverbial fig about their homes, schools, jobs and very lives in their struggle for power. Over what? a desolate landscape of ruins and debris and a dispirited and alienated population, or those who remain.
What also struck me was that when WW2 reduced so much of the UK to rubble, neighbours and communities pulled together and took in those without homes, and shared what little they had. Evacuation was a varied experience of kindness and neglect but intended to help those at risk, but now we can watch at a safe distance while victims of war have their lives and homes destroyed around them with no prospects of timely help let alone to rebuild their homes and lives in that same place once the fighting is over, if it ever is. This is a call to action but I have no idea what action that can be except to acknowledge our global citizenship, our common humanity and do our best to somehow imprint it on our own actions, our own governments and societies, change from the bottom up.
I don't have any answers or any power other than to care and to try to encourage people to look to the fact that we all bleed the same colour - and some of us a lot more than others right now.
I want to make the people who don't care watch that video of a city destroyed by men and weapons, and ask again "And what have we done about any of this except moan about all the refugees......would you want to live there?"