H is for Hello

It's all changed again.  Those of you following my blog will notice that I've basically gone the entire month of February without posting anything new.

I immersed myself in news and global affairs and was appalled by what I read.  I've actually been through a spell of emotional depression as a result - similar to when I read "Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda".

So now I'm choosing another route.

Human rights begins HERE.

How often do we say hello?  A few dozen times a day maybe?

But how often do we say hello to someone new?  Would you say hello to a total stranger if they were in tears?  Do you say hello to your bus driver or the postman if you see him?

This isn't even about human rights, it's about being human by treating as human those that cross our paths.

And this is most especially important, I think, when...

H is for Help.

Human beings need help.  And often that help comes in a form that we didn't even know we were looking for.  Sometimes it's as simple as a brief conversation with someone, even a total stranger.  I know this because I've spent most of the last month working in a small office doing data entry, only rarely seeing or speaking to any of the people I work with.

H is for Human.

We are human.  And so is the man that removes the rubbish, the woman who drives the bus.

Smile and say hello.  You might just make their day.

G is for Greed

Unlike the last few posts, this one is just going to be an idea with very little explanation (where before I've taken a few 'disparate' strands and woven them together to form something like a cohesive whole.

First thing's first: if you haven't seen the film 'Instinct' with Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr, go watch it.  NOW!

Alright, alright, the main reason I've said do that is because of one word that Hopkins' character, Ethan Powell, uses: TAKERS.

Just after watching a few clips of 'Instinct', for the first time in years, I had this sudden revelation.

That's what we are, all of us.  Us in our comfy, coseted, western civilisation.  We represent an entire race of people that don't build, or give anything.  WE ONLY TAKE.

I've been continuing to read 'Rhodesia: Last Outpost of the British Empire' and in reading about the days of that part of Africa that is now Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), I hit upon this little piece of truth.

NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

In the days of the 'glorious' empire, we sent men of enterprise and thousands of soldiers to distant parts of the world where we were neither needed, nor wanted, nor welcome and simply TOOK whatever we could.

If you go back far enough, you'll see this same 'pattern' as far back as the Vikings, possibly further.

And what are we doing today?  Exactly the same thing.  Only now we call the men of enterprise 'multinational corporations' and we call the soldiers 'UN peacekeepers'.

And here's the miserable, tragic irony of it: WE ARE NOT TAKING ANYTHING WE NEED.

We have everything we need right here.

But in sending 'men of enterprise' to other parts of the world, they have created businesses based on the minerals they found there, and have used their financial power to weave these luxuries into the fabric of society to such an extent that they are now considered necessities.

And so the cycle is perpetuated: TAKING HAS BECOME A WAY OF LIFE.

G is also for grief.  I grieve over humanity: those that take, and those that are taken from.