ipolli.com

My God wasn’t always the god I have now, the god I wrote about in my last post.

Reality.  Reality is my God now.

What I mean by that is that my God is now Real.

And my God wasn’t always Real.  Or wasn’t always ‘Reality’.

I don’t know where my God came from.  Nature or Nurture. I don’t know.

I remember reading the Family Bible.  ‘Family Bible’ is a noun.  Special kind of Bible they used to have. Wonderful books. You don’t see them now. Outside of museums.

Great big thing.  Would be 100mm thick.  Four inches thick.  400mm wide. 500mm long.

Section in the front – or the back, I don’t remember – for details of the family.  Who  begat who and so on.  Birthdays. Weddings. Funerals.

Ornate script.  Copperplate writing. You don’t see that any more.

You don’t see anything anymore.

The traditional 66 books of the King James Bible.

Illustrated.

Full page engravings.

No one has ever seen an engraving anymore.  No one knows what I’m talking about.

It is too late.

Anzac day tomorrow here in Australia.

That’s the day when we remember our soldiers and most particularly those who fought in a place called Gallipolli in Turkey in the First World War.

It’ll be covered for Australia Radio National by an Australian lady journalist of Turkish heritage I believe.

Highlighting the fact that we’re the best of friends now, Turks and Australians.

Nothing surprising about that is there?  Germans and English. Japanese and Americans.  We’re all the best of friends.

Until the next time.

When our leaders tell us it’s time to pick up our guns and go on the warpath to maim and kill our ‘best of friends’.

Turn the clock back and we were the best of friends then, too, if only we’d known it.  If only we’d been able to know it.

Like blind cattle we mill around in our staging camps and home garrisons waiting to be sent forth to the slaughter. Either to slaughter or be slaughtered.

For we know not what.  For ‘our country’, for our leaders…. for nothing but to follow like sheep, for nothing but to avoid shame before our peers….

The tragedy of the world is how we prey upon ourselves.

I think war memorials are a time to reflect upon that tragedy just as much as to reflect upon the bravery and the agony.

We owe it to their bravery and their agony to reflect upon the broader picture.

Here’s what one teacher has to say – a Principal, no less, said it to me (or showed me the text) :

” I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom.

My personal approach creates a climate. My daily mood makes the weather.

As a teacher I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt of heal.

In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and the child humanised or dehumanised. ”

I think this is a totally excellent understanding.

Those words are from Haim Ginott author of the celebrated book ‘Between Parent and Child’.

Here is part of his Wikipedia entry:

Haim G. Ginott (originally Ginzburg) (1922–1973) was a school teacher, a child psychologist and psychotherapist and a parent educator. He pioneered techniques for conversing with children that are still taught today. His book, Between Parent and Child, stayed on the best seller list for over a year and is still popular today. This book sets out to give “specific advice derived from basic communication principles that will guide parents in living with children in mutual respect and dignity.”

Brought to my attention by the Principal of Murray Bridge Primary School: Mr Graham Alder, and I’m grateful for that.

It seems to me to be of such tremendous importance because I feel it applies to all of us in all our interactions – not simply to the teacher/child interaction.

It is a kind of fundamental human truth that we all should be schooled in from the earliest years.

Though it is presented as material for the consideration of teachers it’s just much material for all of us.  And not only that, but it is just as much material for the growing child, of course.

It should not be at all a startling or illuminating concept. It should be a ‘taken for granted’ concept, a knowledge within which we all live.

🙂

Bit Awful (with a capital ‘A’) that last post, wasn’t it?

Doomy. Gloomy.  Sad. Depressing.

But the facts are even worse than that.

It talked about the facts of the history of the human race, all the bloodshed, the shocking violence, the awful calamities, whatever…

But it is worse than that.  Because it is all happening right now. Today.

I was thinking this the other day. And today. And a few days ago. Recurring for a few weeks now.

It goes like this:  Think of the most awful thing you can. The most awful agony. The most terrible, painful, horrible way to die.

Imagine you are an author making a living by writing horror stories, or dramas or something – with the fertile imagination of such an author…  given that it is fiction just let your head run wild…

Think of anything you like. In the most graphic detail. Sort  of like watching an execution in slow motion, or going over the details of a witch burning with great precision, leaving nothing out, measuring the effect of every increase in heat, every wound inflicted…

Something like that.

Dwell on pain and horror for a while. Build a picture. Get the whole terrible fictional thing built.

And then think: somewhere in the world it is happening now.

No matter how terrible it is, how awful, how  horrible, the chances are it is happening right now either accidentally or by design.

The accidents of fate easily bring about the most terrible lingering deaths – imagine crushed to death in an earthquake… caught by a limb, alive but trapped, moving only centimetres of wriggling room.. slowly dying of thirst, hunger… pain throughout….

Easily imagined in earthquake building collapse.

And the consider what people deliberately do to each other when in conflict….

And consider what they accidentally do to each other when in conflict ( ‘collateral damage’ )….

Yes. Don’t consider it. It is too awful to think about.

It’s all  happening now.  Right now.

Wonder what’s on t.v.

Maybe a nice cooking show.  Wonder if I can find a recipe for cream cake with chocolate and icing….

I am still here. Haven’t died or gone away or anything. Still here. But struck dumb. Can’t think of anything to say. Everything is just so  bad and there’s so many people saying it (that’s how come I know it) that adding my voice to the chorus seems pointless.

Long time since I wrote anything.  Nothing new to say.

For a long time now I’ve been learning almost on a daily basis of faults, nastinesses, bad things, terrible things in our world, our civilization….

It has been a rude awakening for me because I’ve never been in the habit of looking at anything beyond myself.

I was quite shocked. Startled. Amazed. Affronted.

Leapt into print to tell the world about it….

But finally tired of it…  because I learn there’s thousands of people concerned about these things… they are really well known…

I am not needed to tell the world about these things. There’s enough folks doing that.

What is needed is someone to tell of the answers to all this.

And I can’t do that. I don’t have the answers.

So what to do? Fall silent? Disappear from the web? Fall back into the sea….

So that’s what I’ve been meditating on, trying to figure out…

I haven’t got very far.

As far as deciding that’s what’s needed is a whole new idea, a new paradigm, a new concept of how humans should live together on the world….

Something new.

How about this bit of news from Radio National’s pm page on the web ( radio national PM )  :

18:44:00 21/06/2011

Thousands of British Library texts to be digitised

The British Library has announced an historic deal with internet giant Google to digitize 250,000 works from its
collection spanning the period 1700 to 1870. They will be available for free and every word of the texts will become
searchable.

How about that? Isn’t that one of the most wonderful gifts that human race has ever received?

And how much notice does it get in the media? How much does the world care about it?

Peals before swine, mate.

Google is doing what amounts to incredible things for us. Incredible technologically. Incredible sociologically.

They are making the world.

And what does the world care about it?

Look at the list of ‘news’ items Yahoo puts on its Yahoo Mail login screen and you’ll see what is probably a fair representation of the obsessions, the concerns, the values, the current interests, of ‘the world’, our world at least.

They’re always there.  A list of five and  if you want more another five which is an earlier five, the list constantly having new items added to it.

Here’s the current top five:

1. Cop guilty of child sex crimes

2. Virgin passengers sent foul message

3. Surgeon hangs himself over botched surgery

4. When does a woman become a man?

5. Are pippa and harry an item?

There you go. That’s our world.

Presented with riches, prefer…. the dross…