In 1970, age seventeen, I went vegan. True to form, I did it quickly and in extreme fashion. Overnight, I changed from sausage, bacon and eggs for breakfast to muesli and a molasses drink. Not only did I change the content of my diet, I began to carefully ration it out. While spending a long time organising and preparing my meals, the end result was simple and sparse. When you are seventeen and active, and a bit on the skinny side to start with, this is not really a good idea. I became bone-thin, and started to exhibit signs of being undernourished. My ankles swelled up. No matter - I was certain I was doing the right thing. Blind to reality. One evening, my father came up to my bedroom. "Your mother is downstairs crying. She's so distressed with the way you've become so thin. She thinks you're going to die." With this, the spell was thankfully broken. A few days later, eating vegetarian but amply once more, I felt a spring in my step again.
My idealism knew no bounds; but it became entwined with some sort of emotional complex - one that, to this day, gives me some insight into one form of anorexic tendency. Looking around me, I saw myself surrounded by a world of greed, selfishness, war, viciousness, and general unbridled negativity. I tried to compensate. I wished to embody the polar opposite. I felt the urge to counter the darkness in the world with my own purity, which would be purer than pure. I would have none of the unwarranted horror of the world around me. Balance would be restored through my own life. It didn't work.....
I was reminded of this salutary episode in my life when, a few days ago, I received an email link to an online petition urging the UK misgovernment to take in more asylum refugees, as they are being called this week. It is, I was informed, our moral obligation. The email was sent by someone who knows me, but clearly doesn't know me that well.....
Taking away the sins of the world seems still in fashion, in some parts of Europe at least. I shall die, so that others may live; Europe as saviour. I thought the notion of Europe as cow of plenty, or much good at all, had disappeared, but it clearly returns to haunt us when convenient. There is a psychological attitude - a collective complex (of guilt, maybe?) - in many Europeans that can be tapped into if required. Dying for the sake of others - the ultimate sacrifice of self - was the grand experiment of Jesus Christ, of course. Two thousand years of power struggles, needless violence, killings on a massive scale, tortures of unbelievers and burning of witches, corruption and accumulations of vast wealth by churches, cardinals, and the rest, all demonstrate what a miserable failure the experiment has turned out to be.
A few days ago a photo was splashed across the front pages and television screens, in the UK at least, of the dead young son of a would-be migrant from Syria being held on the waterside. 'Even Europe couldn't save him' was the headline in at least one paper that I saw. That such a poignant and emotional - and highly manipulative - image was presented to the globe in the very week that the flood of migrants into Calais, on the borders of Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, wherever, was saturating mainstream news outlets, and reaching an unprecedented crisis level was pure coincidence. Wasn't it? Surely? Funny, that.
Come on, Europe. Time to make your sacrifice. Put on your coat of horse-hair, take up your cross. You're a bunch of bastards anyway, not like the rest of the world. Feel the guilt. Do your moral bit. And this is only the beginning.
This is the other thing that my petition link reminded me of: how ignorant many generally decent, sensitive people remain about the reality, or warped reality, that constitutes mainstream 'news'. I'm amazed that people still fall for the stuff spewed out of Sky, the BBC, the Telegraph, the Guardian. It's not nonsense or lies 100% of the time, let's get that clear. But its prime aim is to create a reality for the viewer and reader. "This is what's really happening, folks. This is what's important; and if we stuff it down your throat frequently enough, you're gonna end up believing us."
In this day and age there is, frankly, no excuse to be taken in by what passes as 'news' in the mainstream media. For long I have myself resisted, but it now becomes clear that, with this topic of migrants, refugees, there is some kind of agenda at work.
Is it ignorance, forgetfulness, or fear of the truth, that prevents people from even looking for a moment outside what the BBC and the Guardian tell them? To extend their vision just a teensie weensie bit? I am no expert, and spend a very limited amount of time and energy on these matters. But it doesn't take long to at least get another perspective. And just check out a few questions about some of the vital elements in the current situation. The Arab Spring, that supposed upsurge of native feeling, bringing freedom, democracy, all those great things, to the enslaved nations of north Africa. Who were the 'rebels' really? Who was supporting them? Funding them? And what the hell's happened to it all now? Then there's ISIS, ISIL, god knows who else. Who are they? Where did they come from? How did they manage to get hold of all those weapons in the first place, and be in a position to apparently hold the western world to ransom? And what about Libya? Gaddafi. Seems like a lot of these unfortunates turning up in Sicily and Greece in boats, or ending up at the bottom of the Med, come from Libya. What's the story here? Who really took out Gaddafi? And how come the country's just been left to wallow in post-Gaddafi ruin? And Syria. This is the big bogey place of the moment. What about this Assad guy? Why's everybody got it in for him? Not a very nice guy, for sure, but no worse than a bunch of other nasty dudes littered around presidential palaces across the globe.
The funny thing is this. Scratch below the surface - just a little bit, you don't need to do an MA in it - and something a bit weird emerges. All these warring elements seem rather more interconnected than we have been led to believe. The CIA, US government, ISIS, UK and other western governments, Arab 'rebels' - they're kind of all the same! So many permutations normally presented as enemies turn out to be interchangeable, and mutually supporting if it suits them. It's not a game of right and wrong - of good guys and bad guys. This is just a gloss put on things to make it acceptable to the masses out there. It's a matter of cui bono - who benefits.
One night recently, in a crazy flight of fancy, I almost entertained the possibility that it's all a bit planned and pre-programmed, and that there are people out there who actually want to destabilise the entire region for their own good. Surely not! Perish the thought! But the reality isn't the slightest the one presented in the headlines. Not the slightest. Something else is going on, and it ain't pretty......
