Submitted by antarchi on June 17, 2007 - 00:48.
Enjoying life is easy enough for those of us lucky not to be the victims - as long as you keep your eyes shut.
The difficulty, if you open them, is not to be dragged down by the anger, pessimism, despair that are the obvious - inevitable - outcome of seeing what is really happening. After all: is what we are living through now - Iraq, Gaza, Chechnya, Darfur - so very different from other 'holocausts' in history? In 50 years time won't we look back and ask how on earth we could have allowed these tragedies to happen? How on earth we could have continued to offer even our passive support to governments which, at the very best, permit these things to go ahead unchallenged; and at the very worst, actively facilitate them.
I always try to remember Zinn and the 'blithe, slightly sappy whistler':
'An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.'
(from The Optimism of Uncertainty)
The trick is to avoid the nagging feeling, always there, that maybe you could have done more.
