Daring to Hope

​daring to hope.

repulsed by the actions of men – almost always men – whose testosterone fuelled descent into callous violence and blinding hate twists the stake driven deep into humanity’s heart ever so mercilessly.

the orgy of for-profit wars, the savagery of indiscriminate terror, the brutality of the ‘other’ – gender, race, religion – eats away at the flimsy facade of who we all are, and what we all can become, if we do not consciously repel the barrage of hate-speech of cowards in their many disguises, seeking to sow discord for their pernicious narrow ends. 

the cowardice of man, on naked display, should at the very least shock us into peering inwards, revealing the malevolence we bear with such wretched pride.

the slaughter of innocents by the hands of men, should make us shudder – to recoil in horror – and to look hard at our blood-soaked hands, hands meant for kneading dough for bread, hands meant for strumming guitars, hands meant not to be cleansed of blood, but to be linked by acceptance, and not some wishy-washy tolerance, which in itself promotes othering by implying that fellow humans need to be tolerated and not loved, to be kept at arms length and not to be embraced, to be taught to keep fingers on triggers and detonators and drone joysticks, not be held gently in love, and for the love of peace.

i am revolted by my gender. my being a man. my taking what i want, when i want to, my building ICBM’s and IED’s, of wearing either kevlar or a C4 vest, my gender’s twisted thoughts, of being a part of the act of conception, yet shamelessly moulding the young into assassins – of all stripes and of all shades and of all kinds – for king or for creed or for rapacious insatiable greed.

i am mortified by the endless cycle of war – also always ignited by men – against our very selves, sending the young to kill the young and to die, camouflaged in twisted religion, shrouded by geopolitical ambitions, wrapped up in the mechanical soul-lessness of flags and of scripture, of land and of sand, of oil and of water, of us versus them, of us versus us.

i feel broken, in a world of excess, in societies of obscene inequality, of caviar and of dry bread, of bubbly champagne and of sewage tainted water, of silk and of rags, duvets and of newspaper sheets.

are we so lost in our shared inebriated charade, that we sew our eyes shut, headphones plugged into our ears, eyes glazed and dazed, hearts and souls inured to everything but the self, rendering us all blind, deaf, mute and unfeeling.

the wounds of colonialism have not healed, even as fresh wounds of neo-colonialism are inflicted. the hegemony of hetero-patriachy is on repugnant display as forces of misogyny are elected to the highest offices, as women struggle to be regarded as individual human beings and not the chattel of men – once again always the men of the species.

we gleefully continue to plunder the resources of our shared home, this sphere we call earth. our myopic impairment keeps us slaves to the status quo, while not sparing a thought for the generations yet to be born. 

i ask myself, how can i even dare to hope? in this maelstrom of selfish coveting, in the grinder of self-aggrandising drunken unknowingness.

how can i even dare to hope?

and yet i do.

and i hope against hope, that you hope too.

for if we surrender it all, we shall be truly lost in the thicket of greed, not need*.

               __________

* – paraphrasing Gandhi – the world is big enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.