Past, Present and Future.

Most cultures have their own way of remembering the past. For some it is through genealogies, for others through myths and stories. The memory of our past is what gives us our identity in the community in which we live.

Of course, we always remember the past from our own perspective. We can see ourselves as the victim of the victor, we can see ourselves as advocates of freedom while other may see us as rebellious.

It is this metanarrative of who we are, where we have come from and how we got to where we are, that gives us our sense of where we might be going in the future. Are we still struggling for freedom from oppression? Are we seeking to maintain our dominance in the world? Do we want to be more powerful that we are?

It’s hard to imagine a society that does not recall a past, nor have any aspirations for the future. But in his book Don’t sleep, there are snakes Daniel Everett recounts his many years living with a tribe in the Amazon region which does not maintain a sense of history, nor do they have aspirations for the future, apart from keeping things the way they are. They live completely in the present and seem to be quite content in doing so. They have no interest in learning anything new nor do they have any curiostiy as to why they are the way they are, or where they are, or what the lives of others who visit them are like.

The passing of time is not marked and so the whole idea of New Year’s Resolutions would make no sense to them and yet the marking of time passing is so important in many cultures, and many traditions signify certain times and seasons.

Living in the present would certainly prevent concern over things in the past and worry over things in the future – so maybe we have something to learn from the Amazonian tribe.

Voting privilege

I couldn’t help but feel emotional as I made my way to the voting station just around the corner from where I live.  What I was about to do was to take part in a process that would affect the country in which I lived. I was a part of that process and what I did could make a difference. As I reflected on the number of people around the world who do not have such an opportunity it made me realise how privileged we are in our place in history and geography. Why was it I was born in such a time and place while others were not?

I encouraged my children (aged 20 and 22) to vote also, reminding them that while they may not understand all the implications of what they are voting for, it is through the act of participating in the vote and then seeing and living with the consequences of that which enables us to develop evaluation and decision making capabilities for the future.

As a woman I am also conscious of the many women who, just 100 years ago, campaigned for women to have the right to vote. Many of them suffered pesonal loss and injury to ensure that voting rights were extended to all women in Britain. To fail to vote would seem like an insult to their memory.

Even as we now face a hung parliament in Britain I am not dismayed. The confrontational style of British politics has bothered me for a long time. Why does every issue have to come down to a them and us, a right and wrong, an either/or situation? I believe that maturity comes from acknowledging our own views but also recognising that our own views might need modified by interaction with others, taking into consideration their views, understanding the consequences of each decision and being willing to work together, rather than in opposition, to make our country a better place for all to thrive and flourish.

Slavery outlawed

The Ministry of Justice are bringing into effect new laws against slavery. Slavery continues today around the world and we tend to think that it is only in other countries where this takes place. But unfortunately the human ability to dehumanise and treat people as objects for personal and commercial gain is still alive and well even in modern Britain. Although slavery is outlawed internationally, Anti-Slavery International point out that the laws are not enforced and so vulnerable people are still transported from one place to another and enslaved in a position from which they have little chance of escaping from. (http://www.antislavery.org/english/)

Justice Minister Claire Ward pointed out that ‘the victims are often migrant workers who may speak little English, be unaware of their employment rights, or not know how to report what is happening to them.’

Here we see our human tendency to catergorise people into ‘them’ and ‘us’ which we then feel gives us the liberty to treat others in a way in which we would not treat one of our own. How important it is for us then to recongise the humanity of others in spite of the differences between us.

What do you see?

‘We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.’

Anis Nin (1903-1977)

French/American writer and lecturer.

It’s all in your head!

Last month it was distressing for me, as someone who comes from Belfast, to see and hear the reports of the Roma families being harrassed and attacked in Belfast to the extent that they almost all left N. Ireland.

Although there was an outcry and a public demonstration that the majority of people disapproved of such treatment, Belfast itself still remains a divided city with physical walls of division still in existence and even increasing in number despite the political ‘peace’ that now prevails.

In an article by Phil Scraton, Professor of Criminology in the School of Law at Queen’s University in Belfast, which was published on the IRR (Institute of Race Relations) website he tells of his own personal experience in Liverpool. In it he includes the following story:

I stood with Jimmy Loveridge amid the rubble, mud and squalor of the Everton Brow site [a Roma stopping point which had been destroyed by the local council]. That day he’d gone to the local pub and ordered a pint of beer. No one responded: ‘The fella just looked straight through me.’ Naively I asked, ‘Did he have a “No Gypsies” sign on the door?’ Jimmy smiled wryly and responded, ‘No, it wouldn’t be lawful.’ There was a pause. Then he added, ‘He’s got the sign in his head’.

What other signs do we have in our heads that we carry around with us from day to day? A sobering thought.

‘isms’ and ideologies.

I’ve just been listening to a recording of a lecture given by an old college professor of mine.  He is a man of much learning and possibly the wisest person I know and has influenced me in so many ways.

In talking about the contemporary era in the western world he spoke of the ‘parade of isms’ that have been evident in the last few hundred years. “‘The trouble with an ‘ism’” he said ” is that it absolutises one way of thinking, one way of evaluating as having supremacy over all other ways of thinking.”

Most of us hold our own views on things because we believe them to be right. That’s ok as long as all the people around us believe the same thing. But we soon find out that there are others who are just as convinced that their view is the right view. So who is right?

Maybe the ‘who is right?’ question is not the best place to start. Maybe we need to begin by asking a why question first. Why do we hold that view? Why do others hold their views?

If we do that, then at the very least we can get past the stalemate of ‘I’m right, you’re wrong’ and begin to share views rather than insisting on them.