TREADING ON TEARS*

after: Horror…Terror…Madness…Evil

COMMEMORATION photo: Robert Golden

BITTER MEMORIES
One day, years ago,
I was on a phone call about 100 meters away from my wife
who was waiting for our baggage
in an airport terminal.

I saw a large stranger walk up to her from behind,
strongly grasp her by her shoulders and spin her towards himself.
Immediately I read fear on her face.
Without a thought, I dropped the phone, flew over suitcases,
around waiting passengers, grasped him by a shoulder and his neck
and spun him to face me, forcing him to lose his grip on my wife.
I grabbed him by his throat as I shouted in his face,
demanding to know what he was doing.
The man was bigger than me
but was clearly terrified by my white faced rage.
He gasped that he thought she was an old friend.
I pushed him away and told him to f**k off. 

Later I thought that I as a human,
against all my beliefs in humanity, non-violence and kindness,
was capable of violence in the cause of a loved one.
I was confused and disappointed in myself and my reaction.
I knew that at that moment I had dropped my moral compass.
Could I forgive myself?
Could he forgive me?

What now can we think of the young Palestinians who have been so barbaric?
What can we think of the Israelis who are seeking revenge? 
There are no excuses, only inadequate explanations.
What we all know is that all of this violence
and the next stage of this violence must stop now...
but alas, we are led by unimaginative, closed minded donkeys.

How can we,
with our 21^st century sensibilities and knowledge of the last century’s inhumanity,
cope with what we continue to witness in Israel and Gaza?

WE ARE HISTORY
We are living within huge political and economic changes
in international capitalist, communist and democratic institutions.
Part of the fallout from these shifts
are the social stresses we are witnessing in the horrors of Israel/Gaza,
in the broader Middle East,
in Ukraine,
in countries across sub-Sahara Africa,
in the US and the UK
and (again) threateningly in Serbia against Kosovo.

Although each of these crises are based in specific tensions,
there are similar underlying tendencies in motion.
In the US and the UK, as in Italy and France,
loose affiliations have formed between racists,
intolerant fundamental religious groupings,
thuggish rabble-rousing proto-fascist wannabe leaders,
media owners and other corporate CEOs
and a core of extremely wealthy individuals,
all of whom want to either destroy democracy
in the name of free will and free markets (rampant capitalism)**
or destroy state capitalist communism/totalitarian regimes
in favour of an imagined democracy.

THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY
There are two underlying dynamics for much of this.
The first is the undemocratic imposition of neoliberal ideology
which is based on the following:
•impoverishing state owned assets through budget restraints,
•reducing the size and then irradicating the welfare state,
•meanwhile closing and selling off the reduced-in-value assets
to politician’s wealthy sponsors,
(as the NHS in the UK, libraries, youth centres etc.),
•reducing wages as they reduce taxes and oversite on corporations and the ultra-rich, •and crushing the unions.

These ideological beliefs turned into political policy
have disappointed and alienated many working people
who then fall prey to unemployment and poverty,
followed with being misled by distorted media facts and analysis.
This leads to a new, irrational and deeply dangerous populism.
This populism seems never to be adequately confronted by the left
who all too often seem blind to the needs of normal people.

The second destructive force has been the imposition of globalisation
of markets and finance, largely in American hands.
Meanwhile the economies of these opposing political systems grow closer together. Each side is reeling from climate change’s threats and costs,
from the huge growth of Chinese capitalism,
from the needs of both sides to exploit the same raw materials,
from the exponential growth of populations,
from confronting forced emigrations,
from resolving the evolving technical possibilities
but social and economic dislocations of Ai,
and from finding ways to dispel the unsheathed desire by ruling elites,
no matter their incompetence,
no matter constitutional laws,
to maintain a chokehold on power and wealth.

Underlying all of this is greed and more greed,
smatterings of religious and distorted Darwinian justifications,
and, I believe,
a deep-seated psychopathology
based in jealousy, emotional injury and unresolved resentments. 

CIVILISATION HAS NOW CHANGED
For the moment,
with the acute suffering in Israel and Palestinian Gaza and the West Bank,
cool analysis will mean little.
Perhaps it will also mean little to those who are also suffering traumatic responses
to the initial and ongoing barbarism,
while many refuse to admit to the decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people
I believe this horror has caused many of us to have our world views,
our sense of security and well-being for ourselves and our children de-stabilized,
because of the depth of depravity from both sides.
We know in our hearts that two rules of the Geneva Conventions on war,
that civilians must not be harmed,
and that responses must be proportionate, are being disregarded.

Perhaps artists, philosophers and intellectuals
will find suitable humane egalitarian ways
to reveal deeper truths
which could help us to recognise that the planet is too small
or us to imagine that we who are momentarily safe
will not be so for much longer
unless we come to value other’s lives as we value our own children’s lives.

It is perhaps no different than shortly after the end of the Second World War,when the world came to understand
that the same people who had been at the centre
of the then highest level of contemporary Western avantgarde culture
were also the ones who practiced multiple sadistic horrors
on their own and other peoples***.

Out of that came a culture of disassembly
for those who could no longer engage in traditional realist art,
as Jackson Pollock’s spatter paintings,
as Josephs Beuys’ concept of disassembly to build a new social system,
as the uncertainty of modernist novels,
often with morally inconclusive endings, as in Malraux****.

Out of that also emerged the Theatre of the Absurd
in which life has little meaning and often ends in silence,
as Beckett’s Waiting for Godot,
and out of philosophy came Albert Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus
in which he uses the word "absurdity" to describe the human situation:
"In a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light,
man feels a stranger.
This divorce between man and his life…
truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity."

HEART ACHES
Following are a three quotes from people’s response to my last essay.
I am sharing these to reveal how achingly sad,
confused and emptied people feel about the events in Israel and Gaza,
and how we need voices to speak aloud and clearly
on the side of kindness, peace, fairness, equality, understanding, acceptance
and in what it means to be human.

We need leaders, not donkeys.

“Your piece is heart-rending and spoken from a place of true compassion and searchlight honesty. It speaks for so many of us, of whatever nationality, race or creed, who cannot begin to understand what is happening before us. You say it for us.”  Rosie Mathisen

“All I can imagine is that these perpetrators of such appalling crimes (on both sides) must hate themselves deep down more than the innocents they massacre. Thank you for speaking out. Your observations of struggle and hypocrisy that lie in all places and in all of us are compassionate and I believe, a wise place to bring attention to; us, as a species, will we choose to lose the magnificent potential of our hearts and imaginations - will we survive as another kind of creature? My feeling is that there will always be all of it and that is our burden; to have to make sense of this- and strive to continue with hope and with deep love.” Helen Garrett

“Humanity could be so much better. Trauma, weapons, division, vengefulness …As you say so well, kindness is what is needed. Kindness and calm. So sorry for the innocents on both sides.” Peta Lily

I hope all the above help to clarify aspects of our unfolding predicament
as they encourage artists to find ways to express our deepest common humanity
and to also provide balms for our mourning.  

---

NOTES

*words borrowed from the artist Ricky Romain when he said,
"at the moment my foundation is shaken and I feel I am treading on tears.”

** The same unrestricted free market capitalism that led to the bank failures of 2008.

*** See the wonderful film, Never Look Away by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

****”An agnostic, but an intensely spiritual man, Malraux maintained that what was needed was an "aesthetic spirituality" in which love of 'Art' and 'Civilization' would allow one to appreciate le sacré in life, a sensibility that was both tragic and awe-inspiring as one surveyed all of the cultural treasures of the world, a mystical sense of humanity's place in a universe that was as astonishingly beautiful as it was mysterious. Malraux argued that as death is inevitable and in a world devoid of meaning, which thus was "absurd", only art could offer meaning in an "absurd" world. Malraux argued that art transcended time as art allowed one to connect with the past, and the very act of appreciating art was itself an act of art as the love of art was part of a continuation of endless artistic metamorphosis that constantly created something new.^”      Wikipedia