What is it good for?

I was dreaming that I was in the midst of war. I could hear a blend of English and another language being spoken. I was being tormented by someone pointing a gun to my head. I kept my eyes closed, silently begging them to shoot me and get it over with. I felt pure fear wondering how long I would feel the pain of my brains being exploded through the other side of my skull. I tried to transcend this feeling, by going to some other place but I could hear the screams of the people I loved around me and I could not distance myself from their pain.

I sat bolt upright in bed. I had fallen asleep with the television on and a documentary on the Bosnian Serb war was playing. I recalled hearing about this during the nineties and that finally after many years it ended after finally the West intervened to stop the genocide of the Muslim population there.

I sat and watched and learned how the Serbian leader had divided the city of Sarajevo up into Serb/Muslim lines. The Muslim population lived primarily in a valley surrounded by all sides by a Serbian force that constantly shelled them for many years. There were snipers and modern canons picking people off one at a time, through the windows of their high rise homes, or whilst they ran to the market for food. When the conflict spread, they exterminated much of the male population, burying many of them alive. They raped the women as a form of revenge; so that they would bear children that no-one would want. The leader manipulated his population to use ethnic cleansing as a way of grabbing more land to extend the Serbian borders.

"The future of civilization depends on our overcoming the meaninglessness and hopelessness that characterizes the thoughts of men today."
Albert Schweitzer

Since I was a child, I have had re-occurring dreams of war and the end of the world. I always survive in those dreams. I don’t know if I would have the strength to bear the reality of war.

I could not get back to sleep. I stay awake and read the news on the internet, which is echoed by US news shown on Australian early morning television, the Today show. President Bush is in Indonesia, the most densely populated Islamic population in the world and one of Australia’s nearest neighbors. He is there for six hours, dodging street marches, where the population is using satirical images of Bush to protest.  A vox pop interview, the subject says, we love America and Americans, we just object to Bush, his foreign policy and political agenda.

Even Tony Blair appears to see the writing on the wall by distancing himself from Bush by acknowledging a journalist’s comments on Al-Jazeer, that the Iraq war has been "disastrous". Bush has just left Vietnam where he met with his Australian equivalent, the Prime Minister, John Howard. Howard appears to be one of the last of his unflagging allies. The irony was not lost on the Australian public regarding the comparisons of the unwinnable nature of the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts.

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction".
E. F. Schumacher

After growing up within a peaceful, mostly secular society, one that in the main values the social, cultural and religious diversity, it is hard for me to comprehend the point of war. I remember meeting an Israeli girl when traveling in the US. I asked her about her experiences having been in the Israeli army and growing up within the Israeli / Palestinian tensions.

Intellectually, she was able to see that peace and acceptance was the only solution. To experience forgiveness for strangers despite everything that has passed. However, she acknowledged that despite her middle class liberal values, she still had deeply held resentment, anger, fear towards "the other side" that she clearly had not resolved as I probed her further. That scared me. I wondered, how do people who don’t have the opportunity for an education, break free from this cycle of violence and retribution. This intelligent girl, who had received an education, had taught her to think for herself, to question how she had developed her beliefs and values, or what she had been sold by the media. I tried to tell myself that perhaps if I had lived even for one day in a society that had experienced many generations of fear and war that I would find it difficult to let go of long held beliefs. 

We all feel, we all fear, we all bleed, we all suffer, I just don’t understand how we just don’t seem to be able to make that connection. That politician’s lust for power flourishes over their people’s desire for peace.

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought."
Buddha

The remarkable thing is that I think there is still a place for heroes. Al Gore has just toured Australia, promoting his film, An Inconvenient Truth. For the first time in my living memory, polls are showing that the environment is one of the major concerns for Australians. Our Prime Minister did not take up a meeting with Gore. The Prime Minister, John Howard, has advocated nuclear power as cleaner fuel in the fight against global warming. He also has the Indian and Chinese governments expressing interest in our Uranium resources. Frightening.

I think the fact that Gore had closed his film with a message that it isn’t too late to do something about global warming has given people some hope, and a voice. I never thought green issues would be mainstream issues. However, after the longest drought on record in <st

1:place w:st=”on”>Australia (years), even farmers realise that climate will have a direct impact on their ability to provide food to even their domestic markets.

Whilst the G20 conference was being held and the question of trade vs. aid to solve third world poverty was a mere footnote, Bono and Pearl Jam played to crowds across Australia, using their music as a vehicle to raise awareness.

The Federal Finance Minister (and aspiring Prime Minister), Peter Costello, attended the G20 conference on behalf of Australia. He was one-upped on each media opportunity by his brother Tim Costello. Tim is a former lawyer, a Baptist minister and head of Australian’s largest charity, World Vision and the champion for Make Poverty History in Australia. He had synchronised his own press conferences and media releases to be timed hour by hour to be held at the same time as his brothers, attempting to increase the pressure for Australia to increase its $3 billion in aid.

He advised that, "The UN benchmark, which everyone else in the world knows except Australians, is that we’re almost the wooden spoon winners. We’re 19th out of 22 countries in terms of government generosity".

Our Prime Minister also declined a meeting with Bono.

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
Albert Einstein

This year, my family and I have decided that we are not giving the adults Christmas presents. I mean, how many “things” do we really need? We are going to buy gifts from the World Vision smiles catalogue. I am going to focus my thoughts during Christmas to  making it joyful for my younger sisters who are coming to terms with their parent’s separation.

Lifting out of my depression is taking me outside my own experience and opening my eyes to what is happening around me. I still feel despair sometimes but my focus has moved from my own inner workings to those or my environment. 

I hope that we can all make a small stand to make the injustice that people around the world experience begin to diminish. I hope that in our life time we do see our communities do begin to change. That we begin to experience a vision for how to live with compassion; and the restoration of dignity and peace for not only our own communities but for those who need our defence and protection.  

 "There is only one-way in which one can endure man’s inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one’s own life, to exemplify man’s humanity to man."
Alan Paton