In many ways the world today is a
reiteration of those tentative decades from 1960 to 1990. Children
and young people of that era had the cold war, ever threatening its
heat, we have the age of terror. The age when people seem positively
heinous, indiscriminate in their acts of power and brutality on both
sides. This propagates and is amplified through the media and the
tried and true campaign of fear is under way, to breed and build on
itself, as is it's natural course.
But this post is not another piece to
be added to the already overwhelming canon of literature of how they
hate us and our freedom. Nor is it intended to add to the collection
of 'media as a necessary evil' take down pieces. It is, quite simply,
intended to contrast with those sentiments. It is a piece on the
goodness in your fellow humans.
Last night directly in front of our
place, a car hit a motorcycle knocking the un-helmeted passenger to
the asphalt. It was a moment of sheer chaos. Immediately on emerging
from the door I suspected, or feared, the man was dead. His leg was
clearly broken, that much was certain. I told my brother to phone for
an ambulance, but one was already phoned for. A woman (whom I later
found out was a nurse, but I suspect not a very good one) audibly
called for his removal from the road, which anyone who understands
the spine will know is the worst thing you can do. He wasn't moved
and slowly things became organised; an old man waved cars by as two
or three people attended to him as people stopped to indulge the
human compulsion toward catastrophe. Eventually paramedics arrived
and I could hear the man scream. Periodically I looked on, partly to
satisfy my own compulsion toward catastrophe, but also with the
conscious objective of ensuring the man would walk again some day.
But the fact is this; between hearing
the tyres squeal and emerging on the scene 20 seconds later, aid had
arrived, an ambulance was on its way and traffic had been diverted.
This is a supreme testament to the goodness of humans. Though it
might be said that no-one would leave a man to die in the street, the
urban mentality breeds a certain disregard for others.
Nevermind, there are less dramatic
examples of this concept in practice. Earlier this year I fell down a
flight of stairs. Not in any kind of significant way, just tripped on
the first one and slid across the following seven. I was not much
worse for the wear at the bottom, though certainly a little
embarrassed. At the spot of my landing were three hands to help me to
my feet and behind me a woman asking if I was OK. When it would have
been perfectly acceptable for them to pass by with their headphones
in, eyes on mobile screens, concerns a million miles away. Yet their
hands reached out in a literal, and to me, profound sense.
It is becoming easier to discredit
most of the people you run around with as shitty to the core. In the
age of king-hits, terrorism and hacking a picture of human ugliness
is painted. No-one is without shittiness, for all I know a hand
reaching out to help me out of my fall might well have been that of a
violent drunk or a terrorist sympathiser or a violating hacker, but
those hands had a basic goodness. A care for their fellow human, that
was devoid of outer perception. With the news the way it is, it is
nice to see.
NP.
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