Cleaning up our act

Monday 14th June 2010

We are modern and untouched by old fashioned ways of dealing with problems. We laugh at the stupidity of using war to settle differences. But we still use the same principle, force, to get what we want today. We still quarrel and deny respect. We still grab what we can and become destructive. It doesn’t seem like real war, there’s no blood spilt (none that we can see anyway) but much harm still done in the hardening of our approach to solving problems and dealing with others. Whatever we do that uses force and violence is at least as stupid as war.
We need to see those situations where humanity could work, how the gentle touch can overcome difficulties and where the aggro element can be dropped. Our intention to clean up our act might need to start very close to home, with routine matters (in the way we speak to each other, in the boycotting of violent foods) and moves on towards what might seem an ‘impossibly clean’ attitude. If we avoid all temptation to go hard, to ignore the background brutality in what we do, life becomes incredibly simple and before we know it we’ve cleaned up our act.