Ideals

 

Subject: Ideals

'Hold tight, try not to fall' is a description we should all recognise in life. A life of challengers and miscomprehension, a life of hope and failure, of happiness and sadness.
The totem of our life has been largely out of reach not because we reached too far but rather in having no clear idea of what to reach for. The confusion of our lives is governed by ideals which were often based on another persons agenda, or ideals so far removed from our own that we shelved our own for the sake of a cup of tea and a nice piece of convenience cake.
This is a far cry from the ideal of having a position on something and being resolute in holding it in the face of mounting criticism. The idealism of an ideological belief which withstands the ware and tear or the buffeting of changing mores which in them self seem to turn us inside out from the stand point of what we started with.
We are awash in a sea of constant critical analysis deflating or reflating our beliefs, beliefs formed in much more simplistic times. It wasn’t that people were very different in those days it was that society was less ‘overtly’ complex, less binary and much less judgemental. The judgements thrown at us via commentary on todays media platforms are often just bile generated by confused minds from people who are hurting for lack of recognition and respect. Self respect of course should be enough but if our values are constantly challenged, especially our source material, where we got it, the BBC rather than You Tube for instance makes a tremendous difference to our overall set of  opinions. These opinions have to be nurtured since they must confirm with our general tenant regarding right and wrong.

Listening to a senior Israeli army officer denying that civilians were bearing the brunt of harm in the bombing in Gaza or the hate of a young Hamas fighter who sees nothing but a need to drive the Israeli nation into the sea. It makes one wonder where did our sense of compassion go. It was this lack of any sensitive  compassion towards the Jews in Germany which led to the Holocaust, they were seen as ‘less than human’ and now the Jews in Israel are in danger of casting the Palestinians into the same mould. You would have thought history would have taught the Jew that lesson, if no other and it’s the right wing ‘governmental image’ we carry around with us, not that of the compassionate Jew who cry’s for more balance in their dealings with the totality of the Palestinian peoples suffering. There appears to be no attempt at bridge building with the moderate Palestinian only the hysterical fear of the jihadi led ideology of Hamas. The scramble for a middle road has been lost, if it was ever attempted and like neighbours who spend years throwing insults at each other when the source of their contempt could be reconciled by talking, seeing that neighbour as but another manifestation of yourself.