Pistis wonders how to live in such a state (weekending March 26th 2022)

 

‽istis wonders how to live in such a state (weekending March 26th 2022)

In a week when:

‽ relationships with family and old friends are rekindled by lovely visits – while across Ukraine, in Yemen, in Ethiopia (1), in Afghanistan, in Syria and on and on, relationships are severed (2);

‽ a Royal Tour is sorrowful about the enslaving past (3) – while a book is read (Insurgent Empire. Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent by Priyamvada Gopal) and another arrives (Legacy of Violence. A History of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins) (4)

‽istis walks and chats, sees familiar sights through the eyes of first-time visitors, cooks and eats and drinks in comfort and annual leave leisure, plays board games with optional familiar banter, goes to the theatre…

…and for a moment forgets, when so many simply cannot.

And ‽istis wonders at the nature of the world where these experiences sit side-by-side, at the same moment in time and oh so close in space. ‽istis ponders fate and fortune; ‘accident of birth’; responsibility and culpability; fairness, justice and equity…

Conclusions prove elusive this week, but ‽istis wonders whether there is a single word that perhaps, possibly, maybe captures something of simultaneous thoughts and feelings: gratitude, guilt, embarrassment and relief‽

And then, ‽istis wonders how to live in such a state‽

© Pistis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog

entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. ‘Follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...  

 

1) References found include information about the weaponization of sex through rape: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/08/ethiopia-troops-and-militia-rape-abduct-women-and-girls-in-tigray-conflict-new-report/

2) References found include the website of the Council on Foreign Relations:  https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/?category=us

3) References found include: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/galleries/article-10648563/William-Kates-royal-tour-poignant-echoes-Majestys-1953-visit-Jamaica.html 'I strongly agree with my father, The Prince of Wales, who said in Barbados last year that the appalling atrocity of slavery forever stains our history. I want to express my profound sorrow. Slavery was abhorrent. And it should never have happened.' Yet apologies in word and, perhaps more importantly in reparative, restorative deed are apparently absent…

4) On the reading lists of royals and government ministers?

Pistis ponders peace and power (weekending March 19th 2022)

 

‽istis reclaims peace and ponders power (weekending March 19th 2022)

This week ‽istis remembers watching the news as ‘on this day’ (19.3.2003) Baghdad and the world was shocked but perhaps not awed, and many themes for this week’s pondering and wondering swirl around:

‽ What might a more effective response to war look like? What primary prevention measures could perhaps lay foundations for a more peaceful world? What secondary prevention measures could resolve emerging differences and disputes that possibly lead to violence? What reactive measures may yet be necessary when violence, murder and destruction are threatened and planned for and initiated?  

‽ What might a pacifist response to the Russian ‘special military operation’/invasion be and could it save more lives and livelihoods, homes and schools and hospitals, shops and offices, civic and cultural buildings, vital infrastructure, life as it was just a few short weeks’ ago? (1)

‽ Could the United Nations do more now and, if not, what reforms might allow it to be more effective: a revision of the UN Security Council permanent membership and the veto powers that come with it? A greater ability not just to resolve but to fulfil? (2) Should the United Nations do more, now? (3) 

‽ is ‘nationality’ worth dying for? (4)

‽ Europe’s problems, World War III, what if the rest of the world does not wish to be sucked in to a conflagration, yet again?

Mighty issues and themes have indeed maelstromed around!

But at the end of the week, with negotiations and terms for peace unresolved and war both near and far (5), ‽istis retunes the radio from soothing classics to the news, turns on the television, powers up the laptop, opens the newspaper for another day - and is mostly left pondering and wondering:

Such power

So much potential to do good

Yet this…

© Pistis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog

entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. ‘Follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome... 

 

1. References found include: https://www.afsc.org/newsroom/invasion-ukraine-must-be-stopped-us-military-aid-not-answer "It is very important for us to convey that Ukrainians are peace-loving people and very kind. In the last two months, when we got together and started our meetings, we agreed that there is no one among us who would see war as the answer, or believe that violence is the way out. We categorically condemn any aggression, expansion, and pressure." (cited in the article/on the web page referenced)

2. References found include: https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ga12288.doc.htm including considerations of the veto power

3. …and how might we decide on such a moral imperative‽

4. See interview with a young Ukrainian student BBC Breakfast 13.3.2022, last week a student, this week: armed and ready to defend: “No-one wants to die, even if it for your country.” See also: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60724560 

5. At least at the time of typing: 17.3.2022

Pistis ponders uncertainty, war fog, tragedy, failure (weekending March 12th 2022)

‽istis ponders uncertainty, truth, facts, war fog, tragedy, failure… (weekending March 12th 2022)

This week ‽istis tries to imagine:

• life when the air raid sirens wail;
• life packed densely into a train with carry-only belongings on complicated journeys to hoped-for safety - fathers left behind;
• life in a freezing, mud-stuck, fuel-less tank;
• life on watch at a checkpoint on the edge of a city being surrounded - holding a gun for only the second or third week;
• life hurrying to a remaining shop past a body of a neighbour in the street;
• life in a bunker in a metro station - no natural light, patchy electricity supply - keeping things charged including the atmosphere, still just-about-enough water and food, makeshift schooling and a creche full of frightened and traumatised children cared for by frightened and traumatised adults, songs despite, speculative chat, grief and overwhelming stress and uncertainty as to what it is like and will be like outside;
• life imagined from underground, a sort of 'Schrödinger space', an Easter liminal place between the now and the not yet, where anything is possible and all is uncertain in principle, in theory and in practice - where both peace and destruction, ceasefire and gun shot, retreat and advance co-exist somewhere, possibly right now above and outside, as the Pandora Box of warfare continues to open up...

Perhaps, possibly, maybe such a foundation of uncertainty is a rock upon which shared meanings and agreement about 'truth' and 'fact' flounder - still a first casualty in the fog‽

• Liberation - oppression

• Invasion - special military operation

• Patriot - Nazi

• Children’s hospital - makeshift army base 

• Soldiers embedded with civilians - volunteers protecting their homes and families 

• This couldn’t happen in a civilised state - Europe the epicentre of modern world conflicts for centuries

• Democracy - autocracy

• National flag - false flag

• Offence - defence

So, who and what can we trust? 

And that denial of a working common basis for meaning, for dialogue, for hope

• alongside and never forgetting the death and the overwhelming grief…
• alongside and never forgetting the pain and injury…
• alongside and never forgetting the loss of families, homes and livelihoods and the ties that weave a rich and magnificent social tapestry of ‘we, not of ‘us’ and ‘them’, where we are more than the sum of our parts, where we are connected, where we are interdependent, where we are more alike than different

perhaps, possibly may be that is also something of the awful, awful tragedy and the utter, utter pathetic failure that is war. 

© Pistis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. ‘Follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...  

‽istis ponders, again, just a little of what life is like somewhere, many-where… (weekending March 5th 2022)

‽istis ponders, again, just a little of what life, death and the world is like and what we allow - somewhere, many-where in the everyday and always-there places…  (weekending March 5th 2022)

Very nearly two years’ ago, on the cusp of the ‘first lockdown’ in the UK and as the virus spread and responses to the Covid-19 threat began to form and embed, ‽istis realised perhaps, possibly maybe a little, just a little of what life has been, and is like - for so many (https://pistisrec.blogspot.com/2020/03/) 

As a taste of the uncertainty, the threat, the fear, the health, social and financial insecurity, the un-treatable acute illness and death of loved ones, the chronic illness and disability that many across the world experience day-in, day-out became the experience of so many more of us, ‽istis wondered then whether this could herald (or force) the start of something fundamental and radical: 

• a rebalancing; 

• more communitarian than individual; 

• more collaborative than competitive; 

• more ‘world first’ than ‘insert nation state name first’; 

• more all than some; 

• something more necessarily reparative, restorative, progressively redistributive, just, equitable, humanitarian, universal…? 

Just imagine...

But perhaps we could not, enough... 

For here we are with apparent incredulity at war on the Eastern edge of Europe weeping in and saturating the media; with disbelief that, reasonably close to home, neighbours with so much in common (people apparently rather like me not ‘others elsewhere') - could: 

• bomb 

• shoot 

• kill

• allow and perpetrate all the other things that surely go with war and a breakdown of law and order: 

• the denial of rights; 

• death; 

• violence; 

• rape; 

• the abuse of vulnerable children, young people and adults; 

• the loss of homes and livelihoods; 

• the stress and trauma for those who are vulnerable and ill; 

• the disruption of care and treatment, of education and of all those social, community, cultural and artistic events that can nurture and elevate us; 

• the destruction, the wanton destruction;

•  the terrible fear and the loss of hope and faith;

• and on and on...

Perhaps, possibly some of us, again in the words of the blog from two years’ ago, especially:

• the more usually powerful, 

• the more usually exempt, 

• the more usually protected, 

• the more usually comfortable, 

• the more usually safe, 

• the more usually well 

- are forced to experience (directly in real life; indirectly one or more steps removed, but still close enough) and maybe realise afresh a little of what life has been, and is like for so many somewhere, many-where, in the everyday and always-there places: conflict; the denial of rights; death; violence, rape; the abuse of vulnerable children, young people and adults; the loss or absence of homes and livelihoods; the stress and trauma for those who are vulnerable and ill; the disruption of care and treatment, of education and of all those social, community, cultural and artistic events that can nurture and elevate us; the destruction, the wanton destruction; the terrible fear and the loss of hope and faith; and on and on...

So perhaps, possibly, maybe this is what a little, or a lot of the world is just like?

Perhaps, possibly, maybe this is a little, or a lot of what we are like? 

Yes perhaps even the ‘us’ of Europe? Indeed, possibly especially the ‘us’ of a majority/majoritised white, Christian Europe where, maybe, the veneer of civilisation has been worn utterly away by rapacious, ravaging and exploitational hegemonic imperialisms, by conflict and by wars (perhaps we can actually claim to be, literally, world-beating and world-gassing, and world-bombing, and world subjugating, and world exploiting), by what we have allowed or even by what we have wrought in perhaps at least the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries - and now, too, in the 21st century?

Shame on us that we, together even with the divine inspiration that many have claimed or at least paid lip-service to, have not imagined and re-imagined better and found a better way...

 © Pistis                                                                                                                    

NB: further reflections and comments linked to this week’s theme and past blog

entries to be found on Twitter: replies, retweets (which don’t necessarily indicate approval, sometimes the very opposite!) and ‘likes’: @Pistis_wonders. ‘Follows’ and respectful comment and dialogue welcome...