Cui bono?
Truly, I don’t know where we can begin.
It seems there is a basic flaw in the human response. We seem (in general) unable to take in, in any adequate way, what is far away or out of view. Even when the suffering of others presses upon us, is right there, and we are tangled up in it by our actions, and by the threads of our social nets, still we seem unable to look the sufferer in the eye.
Of course, there is an immense industry which takes in its hands the instruments of social power, using them to throw star-dust in our eyes. How well, how cunningly, the veil is cast!
But I do not think this is the whole of it.
Something is missing. And yes! Europeans! How active we have been! How inventive! How imaginative! How brutal! How hungry! But especially - how complacent!
A priest in Guatemala (not so long ago) explains : “It is fine to use the army, for the peasants are possessed by demons. We do not use the army against the peasants, but against the demons”.
And on the other hand, how curious, how empathic we are! After all, it was a European, Jeremy Bentham, who said (of animals), “The question is not, do they have souls. The question is: do they feel pain?”
It was a European, Fosco Maraini, who described a cave-dwelling hermit as “a great and supreme lord of the white oceans of silence…Lama Tendar emanates peace and benevolence almost as if they were physical realities; he radiates an inner light” .
The story is intricate.
I was looking again at Aldo Leopold’s wonderful little book, “A Sand Country Almanac”, where he writes:
“…we have learned (I hope) that the conqueror role is eventually self-defeating. Why? Because it is implicit in such a role that the conqueror knows…just what and who is valuable, and what and who is worthless, in community life. It always turns out that he knows neither, and this is why his conquests eventually defeat themselves.”
Bronowski goes still deeper, I think - perhaps it is just that I love him. He sketches a story of Organised Theft, Splendidly Glamorised.
So perhaps it is as well to ask simply, cui bono?
Love to all,
Rob