The Human Condition

There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.

...Not that this, of course, is any surprise to you. Every day the news pours out their tales of mass destruction upon an apathetic western world that turns its face away and does nothing. Or, worse, does the wrong thing. It is all too easy to forget that there is a story for everyone of those homeless, lifeless masses that flood across the TV screen, easy to forget them in the immediacy of daily life or to try to justify their tragedies from some utilitarian perspective. Which is all very well, but makes it easy to forget that they are real people as well as figures, and that their lives are easily worth every bit as much as our own. Because, otherwise, it could break our hearts.

...No, I'm not referring to anything in particular. The world's stage is too big for that. Africa, Iraq, Burma... the list stretches on across human memory. And I fall into my own hypocritical trap there because there is simply no way to imagine the extent of the suffering on Every Single One Of Those Lives. Which isn't okay either.

I watched The Constant Gardener for the first time yesterday and, being in a somewhat susceptible state, spent several hours crying on my mother, Hugger Steward and the House Philosopher. According to him, the amount you can do has to work outwards in a wave affect, beginning with friends and family, then the immediate area, then the country, then the continent before, finally, you can tackle the world. And, while I can see where he is coming from, the argument seems to be a bit of a cop out, if only because it is exactly what everyone else in this self-obsessed country seems to do most of the time. I recognise that on one level there is no point in expanding all my energy to give someone in Africa a few years grace when I could be having the same affect on three people around me, but on another it is infinitely easier to get help here than it is elsewhere. Added to which, of course, I have been innocently defying this system since I was about fourteen via the wonders of t'internets.

But what then do I do?

The friends I am most used to helping seem to need/want my attention less than they once did and, aside from the ones I already have, of whom I am extremely fond and who this insert is No Reflection Upon, Miss L Liar, I find that I am almost bored of the teenage angst scene. Now, at least, I do not feel like going out and finding new angst-muffins to adopt. If they need me, they will find me.

There is volunteering to be done aplenty in my city, and my new year's membership to people and planet which I might actually do something with this semester. There is a hunger strike in support of the Burmese monks today, from twelve to twelve, although there seem to be no demonstrations planned for my city. More, there is Frank Water to be got into the union, which so far is my own personal crusade and... from the depths of my dreams two nights ago... a new story to be written.

A straight children's book this time, age range c.10+, telling the story of Uday whose father is taken and who is forced, with his mother, to seek asylum from the Iraq war in Britain. Running from the continued abuse of his new countrymen he discovers a strange island that no one else knows of, a land that seems untouched by the hot anger that surges through Iraq and Britain. But all is not as it seems and Uday soon discovers that some nightmares can never be fully outrun.

...Or something like that, anyhow. I know the story, its imprinted on my mind, but there are parts of it I still need to learn from experiences. There are some things that cannot be written until they are fully known.


And that, at the moment, is the extent of my answers. I have ideas aplenty, mostly fixed upon the concept of storytelling as therapy, for which the drama society here might help to prepare me a little more, but nothing solid. No definition, no certainties, and no idea as to whether I can actually do anything to improve the world or whether, compared to the faceless hundreds that have died in the twenty minutes it took me to write this post, I am merely another dog howling at the moon.