Finding peace within ourselves

 

Subject: Finding peace within ourselves.

How do we understand these days, the legitimacy of government to govern. Back in 1950s the society largely accepted Governments primacy and its ability to lay down the law and even issued instructions which had no legal surety behind them but which we simply obeyed. Our fall back or bottom line was that governments know best.

Of course what we knew about government then was what we read about them in newspapers, there was no television or internet to dissuade us of the official line, no video shot from an amateur in the street revealing another aspect of what went on. The police were not feared, they were on our side and kept us safe, schoolteachers were admired for their learning and trusted with what we hoped would be a good education for our children, even town councils officials generally were given the benefit  of the doubt.

The thing which changed of course was the fallibility we now saw in virtually everything as contending views and opinions became current in our daily life and our certitude is replaced with confusion. Today the concern is that what we see and read is either true or propaganda and we have the daily  problem of disentangling one from the other.

For many it doesn’t matter, the only things which matter are the things which touch us and even then, because so many people are made of straw, theres no resilience to find out what is true and what is false. Depending on our economic and emotional stability we might have time to ponder and reflect but if our world is made up of worry and only the worries which are immediate and personal have a connection then is it any wonder the motto's, liberte, egalite, and fraternite, motto's  created in a different time, bear little relevance to the people of today.

On all sides there are winners and losers, each winner joyous, each loser despondent each conscious of their own truths and hesitant to accept the truths of others. In a winner takes all mentality there is no place for losers even the ones you care for. It's this fragile assumption that there's only one right and the rest are wrong that prevents healthy discourse between people. It's only when we recognise the other persons right to hold another opinion will we begin to find peace, especially peace within ourselves.