Wars of the World of Words

- another rambling Sunday morning lurch

It's easy to have an opinion; we all do. We probably can't avoid having an opinion on any topic from a preference for eating kale to favoured political party. We don't always share those opinions, especially when doing so will upset other people. Sometimes however, upsetting those "other people" is what we really should do. We may not change their opinions, but at least we'll advertise our position and tell them that there is another point of view on an issue.

I keep coming back to the parade analogy and I often need to remind myself to follow my own advice. We can cheer from the sidewalk as the pride parade or the earth-day parade of the Santa Claus parade goes by. Or we can be on the street in costume and make-up or as just bare-faced visible "us" and advertise our belief in whatever the parade cause is. It's an ontological shift, and if you're suspicious of catchwords like "ontological", it's us saying to the world that we're on this side of an issue, we support this cause, we're it. And it doesn't matter too much if no one we know is aware of our presence – make-up, costume, parade in different  city even – because it's a first step. Next come the demonstrations, and pretty soon we're marching on city hall or the administration building and the cops have been called.

Then there's the nuance.

Nuance is all of the factors like bricks supporting an opinion and some are stronger than others. For instance, kale is an icky green colour, like algae. Green is also a nice minty colour. Kale tastes like cardboard. Kale has nutritional value. The store packages kale in plastic clamshells and that supports a petro-chemical industry that is polluting our world. And away we go.If it's dinnertime conversation, at some point you get to the parent position - "because I said so!" But you have to admit that there are different sides to some issues, and arguments could be put forward that make alternate conclusions (alternate to yours) seem reasonable. The nuances of position and example and history all come into play.

You have lots of examples of your own, so we don't need to get too philosophical here. Right now the world has enough real examples to keep us up at night and to kill a lot of innocent people. I didn't go to military college to study strategies of war and I have never debated global issues at international conferences, but some people have and even they have contradictory opinions. Solutions for wars in Sudan, Gaza, and Ukraine come to mind.

I think Russia should withdraw all troops from Ukraine and pay for rebuilding the country they invaded and Russian valuables confiscated by other countries should be used to help in the reconstruction. I don't know about nuances of Russian history and I don't care if it's real or exists only in the mind of Putin. It's wrong and it could have been stopped two years ago. That is the perspective of a military man who said that a NATO declaration of Ukrainian skies as a no-fly zone, enforced my NATO air power would have stopped all Russian aggression. However, Putin said that such an act would constitute an "act of war' and he might have to consider "nuclear options" and so it never happened. The military man said it was a bluff; no one in authority was willing to call the bluff and be the agent who unleashed Armageddon. The war goes on.

I believe the government of Sudan should get no money from any nation through charity or investment until they stop killing their own people and ask the UN to supervise free elections to give the country a stable government.

I believe Israel should stop all military action in Gaza and the West Bank and use its IDF (Israel Defence Force) for exactly that – defence. This is an issue that has occupied a lot of air time and newsprint for the past ten months and it has brought out some sharp divisions in opinion from us onlookers. Any nuances have been inflated to perspectives of moral certainty and the results are killing so many innocent people and maiming so many more.

The Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on Oct 7th really was a terrible event. The land in Gaza and in the West Bank have been home to terrorist groups wanting to kill Jews and destroy the state of Israel. Over the past few years we have read of bloody attacks on journalists in Paris and in Denmark and on the World Trade Centre in New York by Moslem extremists who used violent means to silence critics or punish those they deemed enemies of their worldview.

Israel was created in 1947 and no one asked the people living in Palestine if they would like a say in the matter. Since then, Israel has courageously and successfully fought off attempts by neighbouring states and a Palestinian population to reassert control over the land in this new nation and, by some of those groups, to annihilate the inhabitants of Israel. I'm not an expert in international law, but I believe the historical context as well as the modern situation show that Israel has made good use of the land with irrigation projects and settlement farms, but that they have also brutally evicted Palestinian landowners to create those farms and imprisoned any who opposed them. And my saying that last part does not make me anti-semitic.

Also, while I'm on a roll, I personally think that many practices of some sects of the Moslem world in Asia and the mid-east are abhorrent. They include the practice of child brides, female genital mutilation, capital punishment of gender divergent individuals, forced wearing of burkhas and denial of equal rights to the 50% of a population who are female. Many western journalists and advocats have also detailed abuses of power by Moslem authorities at much greater  length.

The schism between Shia and Shiite muslims is as bloody as the early wars between Catholic and Protestant factions in the Christian world, and I don't think they just need the same amount of time to reconcile. We now have nuclear weapons instead of fire and sword. I must also acknowledge the history of child abuse that seems endemic in a Catholic celibate clergy. Where power imbalances hold sway, there will be abuses in that dynamic.

All of us can cite examples of sacrifice and of terror enacted by different groups, but the resolution must be toward justice and generosity rather than retributiuon. The holocaust was definitely a terrible event. Three hundred years of burning women as witches was just as terrible. I like to think that as a teenager in Berlin in the 1930s I would have resisted the rising political forces that used persecution of Jews (and others) as justification for atrocities. I like to think! I want to believe that I would have defended, even to some noble death, the strange old woman or young girl pregnant by some member of the local gentry who was being burned as a witch. I want to believe. But, age dissolves many fantasies and I have too many memories of personal weakness to maintain heroic self-images of my moral superiority.

If  we focus only on the evils perpetrated by theocratic regimes, we will overlook the values they might offer and to which I would be blinded by my position as an outsider. For every murderous cleric I am sure there can be found a Mother Theresa or a St. Francis of Assissi, a Rumi or a Kahil Gibran. Context and nuance will always inform our judgements.

 I once read a remarkable article by an adult white male who asked, or challenged, a black female friend to say just why she felt he was privileged. His honest confronting of the items in her answer was a wake-up call for me as I hope it was for other readers. Look 'em up; there's lots. Or ask the question yourself.

I have a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to shield me from the kinds of prejudices that have citizens of other countries imprisoned, tortured and killed. No one  permitted a zealot to amputate part of my penis so that I would get no pleasure from sex; I can't be denied employment because I'm too white or too male or even too old.

But, I was shown by a student, the anger that even casual prejudice-disguised-as-kindness can arouse. I had mentioned my annoyance that people sometimes treated my hearing impairment as a mental challenge, and asked for further examples. The young man in the wheelchair at the back of the class could scarcely restrain himself from shouting about being treated like an infant by sales clerks. Charters of Rights and protections in constitution and law don't always extend to citizens.

OK, Robert Burns, you have the last word in "To A Louse".

"O wad some Powr the giftie gie us

 To see oursels as ithers see us!

 It wad frae mony a blunder free us.

An' foolish notion:

 What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,

An' ev'n devotion!"