In the darkness, we must learn to find the light

It is a lovely day for late November. Still a warm sun and blue skies. Malta is a good place to chill these days. You do have to wear a mask when outdoors so I’m finding walks less enjoyable. There is a strange suffocating feeling that despite three weeks of practice has yet to shift. But if you sit at an outdoor café with a drink you can take your mask off and breathe in the sun and the sea. This particular café is right on the shore overlooking the sea. Quiet and well away from the busy road. The staff are what they call in Northern Ireland dour but okay. There is zero customer service apart from the wiping of tables between visitors to attempt to make the zone Covid-free. For that I am grateful! But my request for a decaf cappuccino at the counter, no waiter service here, is met with a shoulder shrug that is faintly dismissive. My uncle once described his accommodation on the island as baa – sick (basic) and somehow the pronunciation in a thick Northern Irish accent makes it sound even more rudimentary than just the word on its own. Sometimes changing the order of words can be even more effective than an accent in accentuating the power of a well-used phrase. When I was at school my friend Caroline never used the label ‘litterbug’ to describe those who dropped any litter in her presence. Instead, she would scream at the offender “bugger litter!” This was much more effective and generated a bigger response from the target of her venom.  

Mind you I’ve been conscious of how venomous so many exchanges seem to be these days when insulting language has become routine.  Watching online content even from news outlets has become unexpectedly abrasive. It seems the world has embraced extremes and whether it is politics, religious or social etiquette there’s been a coarsening that irritates. 

Even the mainstream news has invective targeting world leaders, insults traded between opposing political sides, details of sordid sins of the powerful or the perverted or those who manage to be both with equal relish. Major events worthy of a headline are relegated even if that happens to be genocide or famine. 

It is as if the media, in general, has become a grotesque Punch and Judy puppet show with sticks being brandished and insults shouted in piercing tones “Oh, no he didn’t! Oh, yes he did!” All the while in the background human suffering around the globe goes unnoticed. Centre stage are these characters that neither inspire nor uplift but leave you feeling vaguely unable to look away and strangely satisfied that you have not sunk to their low-level. When, the show stops, and the puppets are all packed away we are forced to contemplate our own endeavours and feelings. Exactly what value have we accomplished in this day? What are the relationships we have with those around us? Have we, like the puppets, become all show and tell? Fixated on the superficial and befuddled as to priorities? 

Some say there is nothing like a pandemic to focus the mind on the real priorities in life. But history tells us that just is not the case. Most major pandemics and plagues were accompanied by tidal waves of ignorant prejudice that meant minorities were targeted as scapegoats. This sickness of “othering” allows anger and despair an easy way to vent. Like the husband angry with his wife who goes outside to kick his dog in frustration. Such inappropriate responses can feel like a maelstrom that carries societies into dangerous waters.

Fortunately, there have always been heroes who held their footing in dangerous tides. They sensed the undisciplined dictates of a frenzied mass and choose a different path. 

Some paid for it with their lives like the woman mathematician Hypatia born in the 4th Century AD who was a philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, living in Alexandria, Egypt, a part of the Eastern Roman Empire.  She was a great teacher and a wise counsellor much loved by pagans and Christians alike in the city.  Hypatia taught students from all over the Mediterranean at the Alexandrian school which was famous at the time for its philosophy and she lectured on the writings of Plato and Aristotle.  Two of the greatest philosophers of the age. Aristotle was Plato’s student and colleague for 20 years at the Academy in Athens.  The words of these wise stoics echo down through the centuries and still inspire respect today.  What a privilege and illumination it must have been to be educated by someone as brilliant and erudite as Hypatia on their writings.

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”

Aristotle

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” 

Plato

She excelled in mathematics and was also an extraordinarily talented astronomer. Early writers recorded that Hypatia was "exceedingly beautiful and fair of form".  Unfortunately, in those dark days, there were many who were afraid of the light that Hypatia brought. A mob of religious fanatics attacked Hypatia's carriage as she was travelling home and dragged her into a church where they stripped her naked and murdered her using roof tiles, cutting out her eyeballs before dismembering her.  What an incredible loss to society at a time when her abundant skills both intellectual and compassionate were so needed. Fortunately, it is Hypatia who is remembered and appreciated by history, not the mindless zealots that took her life.

People like Hypatia remind us that behind the Punch and Judy show, with which we are all mesmerised, lie many such examples of nobility that resonate within us. They tell of human fortitude and steadfastness in difficulties. I find myself hugging the memory of such people close. They feel a safer lifeline to hold to in dark days. Most of all, because they awaken in us, our desire to accomplish something today and to reach out to those around us with more compassion and awareness. We are all here for a reason not for show. So, before we like the puppets, are put away in a box at the end of the show let’s do and say something worth remembering. In the darkness, we must learn to find the light.

“step out of the darkness into the light and onto this far-extended Path of Truth.

The Báb

 b   

My father was upset about the library being burned

My father was upset about the library being burned.  He tried to be stoic but I could tell he loathed the destruction of knowledge it represented.  I was at primary school and fancied myself as an amateur detective.  My main suspect was William McCartney, a boy in my class.  The evidence was circumstantial but clear.  I had discovered him defacing a library book at school.  He had drawn two huge breasts on the cover of a book on Cookery.  Instead of a prim, apron clad April Summers displaying cakes in each hand, William had constructed huge breasts incorporating the cherries on top of the cakes as nipples.  I was convinced such vandalism spoke of his disrespect for the written word.  

In our household books were everything and everywhere.  We devoured them like bread and water and whether it was by Henry Miller, the collected plays of Shaw, or Steinbeck we consumed them and then hunted for new fodder.  No folding down corners or scuffing the cover and no underlining of texts or notes in the margins.  Books had to be respected like people.  Even the crappy ones.  So Ms Summers added breasts offended my sensibilities.  William’s violent tendencies were shown clearly when he brought to school a black bin liner full of dead birds he had shot with his own air rifle.  When the American Constitution stipulates the right to carry arms, they must never have had classmates like mine.  I could honestly say I wouldn’t have trusted any of them with a firearm.  So there you have it.  William was violent (bag of birds – exhibit one) and he took pleasure from the defacement of literature (cookery book – exhibit two).  That made him in my mind a strong candidate for the burning of the library.  For a whole year I seethed with resentment towards William and blamed him for the book, the birds, the library and for bringing sadness to my father’s heart.

It came as something of a shock to discover later that my father was referring to the burning of the Great Library in Alexandria which happened around two thousand years ago.  A crime William, however vile, could not have committed.  Through the following years my father continued to mourn the loss of this great library and filled in the details of this catastrophe. 

When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC his kingdom was divided up into three pieces: Antigonids ruled Greece, Seleucids ruled Asia Minor, Syria and Mesoptamia while Ptolemis ruled Egypt.  Wanting to gain supremacy and legitimacy Ptolemy stole Alexander’s body and took it first to Memphis and then to Alexandria.  This was a blatant attempt to create a political and dynastic link with Alexander the Great.  Creating a museum “Temple of the Muses” was also a part of this goal.  After all, Aristotle who had taught Alexander, had a wonderful library and so Ptolemy and his line created the greatest library of the ancient world.  It was their intention to collect all the books in the world and works from India, Persia, Babylonia, Georgia, Armenia and far a field were gathered.  The works of poets, philosophers, historians etc were carefully obtained and kept in the library.  

There was a copy of Epidemics belonging to the physician Mnemon of Side, ancient scrolls and books from all over found their way to the library at Alexandria.  Even when a ship entered the port it was searched and if books or scrolls were found these were seized and copied.  The copies were returned but the originals were stored in the library.  The greatest fruits of human endeavour flowed to Alexandria and were collected and collated.   The arts and sciences were represented and so many were not only original but unique and priceless.  The fame of the Great Library of Alexandria spread far and wide.  It was an incredible search for knowledge all carefully gathered from the four corner of the earth. 

So what happened?  Well, as one has probably suspected by now, some idiot burned the library down.  After centuries of careful collection and cataloguing the works of great minds it took small minds a few days to dispose of the Great Library.  The disaster was of epic proportions.  We don’t know, even now, the scale of the loss.  But there are hints.  Callimachus, a poet and scholar, had created a catalogue/biography of the contents of the library called Pinakes.  We only have a tiny portion of this Pinakes (table of contents) left but there is enough to make you howl in despair at what went up in flames.  

Now, I understood why my father took the burning of the Great Library in Alexandria so personally.  So should we all!  But on further reflection I didn’t feel so bad about blaming William McCartney for the crime.  It turns out blaming those we dislike for despicable crimes they have not done is a theme common in history. For example,  Caliph Umar was blamed for the burning of the library and there is even a nice little tale told to explain why. , "If these writing of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed". It was, the story continues, thereupon, decided that the books were contrary to the Quran and the whole library was burned down without even opening the books.  Totally rubbish of course, the Great Library was lost much earlier probably in 47/48 AD perhaps by Julius Caesar who was burning ships around that time in the harbour.  Mohammad and the Quran did not appear for another five centuries and so Caliph Umar is in the clear.  There was another library in Alexandria called the Serapeum (daughter library) but this was burned down in 391 AD under the decree of Archbishop Theophilus.  Edward Gibbon (writer of the  The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) described Archbishop Theophilus as "...the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue, a bold, bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood." Not a great way to be remembered in the history books.  

But some people really do say and do such stupid things that they need to be remembered for posterity.  Like Pope Gregory’s famous line "Ignorance is the mother of piety." Following this principle to the letter, Gregory burned the precious Palestine Library founded by Emperor Augustus, destroyed the greater part of the writings of Livy and forbade the study of the classics. The Crusaders destroyed the splendid library of Tripoli and reduced to ashes many of the glorious centres of Saracenic art and culture. Ferdinand and Isabella put to flames all the Muslim and Jewish works they could find in Spain. 

Library burning has not gone out of fashion.  The library of Leuven, Belgium was burned in 1914 and then after being rebuilt was burned to the ground once more in May in 1940 by the Nazis.  In case you think this fetish for library burning has run out of steam one need only look at the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 when the National Library of Baghdad was burned and priceless ancient antiquities and manuscripts were lost. 

Knowledge is like a light that illuminates humanity and ignorance is the opposite, darkness.  The burning of libraries serves to show the bigoted, the fanatic and the stupid at work.  Such a shame to destroy what is really the birthright of the human race.  We should all sorrow over the loss of the Great Library at Alexandria.  It reminds us that ignorance is too dangerous to be permitted and the search for knowledge and truth is the only way ahead.

Humanity seems really weary for want of a better pattern of life to which to aspire.

My father was headmaster of a school in a small village in Northern Ireland high in the Sperrin mountains.  You learn a lot from your parents, not so much from what they say but more from what they do.  From my father, I learned tolerance and a search for knowledge.  In that small polarised community, Catholics on one side and Protestants  on the other, two communities existed side by side.  As one village wit sarcastically pointed out to my father, “You try and stay on the fence between the two communities and there isn’t room on that f__king fence!”  In a place, where some parents would stone the visiting psychologist’s car, in fear of them labelling their child as having special needs, it was tough at times.  Ignorance is scary, not funny.  Those who shout loudest are not necessarily the people we should listen to.  Volume rarely equates with insight.  Those who stir up hatred and prejudice do not appeal to our intellectual side but to our more animal instincts.  The few that try to speak to grander principles, such as the independent investigation of truth, will never be given the populist platform bigots possess.  Perhaps, it is easier to speak to the worst side of human nature rather than engender thoughts of the nobility of mankind.

I had a colleague who ran a business in the town nearby, a good man, married with two children.   For decades he was a pillar of society and then he lost his footing.  He had financial problems and he used client’s money to make up the shortfall.  Of course it was discovered, only the hardened criminal with expertise or the very lucky escape such deeds.  The local paper was frank but surprisingly fair, highlighting in an article the financial mistakes and criminal charges but also speaking to his forty years of service to the community.  The national tabloid newspapers were not so balanced.  They ran lurid headlines that assassinated that quiet man.  He was found in a fume filled garage dead, the tabloid newspaper open beside him.  When did these newspapers get the green light to degrade, humiliate, eviscerate, hound the famous, plague the bereft and expose only the very worst of our civilisation?  We have cultivated that taste for excess and the perverse in all of us and it sells newspapers very well but at what cost to all of us?

Is that the only way individuals can feel good about themselves, by constantly observing and gloating at the degradation of others?  To me it is akin to a short man digging a trench around himself so that he can appear taller.  The sad news is there seems no end to the depth of this trench.  Just when you think the press has reached an all time low they discover a whole deeper darker level.  Reporters should enquire into situations as much as possible and ascertain the facts, then set them down in writing.  Such news is a mirror of the world and it is a potent instrument that should be used with justice and equity, not to torture the subject and degrade the reader.  They have a  mighty responsibility.  They are not meant to manipulate for material gain, malign for malicious intent or magnify the misdemeanours of our society. Humanity seems  genuinely really weary for want of a better pattern of life to which to aspire.

It is surely in finding a better of pattern of life real hope lies.  My mother taught me kindness not with words but deeds.  A neighbour’s cat died after giving birth to five kittens near our home and I remember being awed as my mother set herself the task of hand rearing these five small bundles of fur.  We had big thick brick storage heaters, which were great for sitting on, and she used one of these for the kittens, placing their bed just above the heater.  She used an eyedropper to feed them regularly and had names for them all including the best feeder Big Boy who was impossible to fill.  I watched as she fought to save them all even the runt a tiny still shape under the feet of the rest.  They all survived and I watched engrossed at how much work and dedication it took to keep these tiny fragile animals alive.  It seemed to require incredible act of determination and will power.  When they were fully weaned she found owners for all of them.  The local postman took two of them.  Within weeks, he and his family suddenly decided to immigrate to Australia.  Unbelievably to me, as a child, he had the two cats, one of whom was Big Boy, euthanized.  I was devastated by how much work it takes to keep something alive and how little it takes to end a life.  It suddenly seemed when it comes to ending life, thoughtlessness is an advantage.  

Now, as an adult I look back and wonder at my Mum’s thoughtfulness and kindness.  She worked, had three children, nursed my invalid grandfather fighting gangrene and yet found it within her to lavish such kindness on five vulnerable kittens.  I suspect that, is what good people do, they instil in themselves the habits of kindness, every hour and every day.  Steeling themselves to do good in this world.  It is not easy, it is backbreaking and it is hard finding that extra energy to see to the needs of others.  But there are so many like her around us, looking after our young, our elderly, the disabled, the ill every day and night.  Pushing themselves past limits of human endurance and we will never read about them in newspapers.  It is a shame really, because these are the people at whose feet we should be learning what it is to be a real human being.   They, by their deeds, foster families and communities whose ways give real hope to the world. 

           

 

Love of humanity not love of nationality

It is disheartening to see the rise of racism across Europe.  The tide of illegal immigrants flocking to its shores, combined with an economic downturn have prompted the rise of a growing nationalism and a swing to the political right.  I lived in Rhodes for almost a decade and was devastated by the common occurrence of boats filled with refugees sinking as they made their way across into Europe from Turkey.  Searching for a new life and fleeing impossible conditions these hopefuls were instead washed ashore on holiday islands, their dead bodies bloated and distorted. 

Now, I am living on Malta the fleeing refugees keep coming, this time from Africa and again holiday islands are the first piece of Europe encountered by the fleeing masses.   You used to read in history about when a civilisation fell it was customary for its men to be slaughtered and its women and children sold into slavery.  It seemed barbaric and inhuman that this was so common an occurrence in our history.  But living in Rhodes, during the fall of the Soviet Union, I was to learn a new lesson in modern forms of the same.  Russian women worked on the island as cleaners and sent their money home to their families in Russia.  Often these women were qualified workers in Russia but had not been paid and so had fled to find income to support their children.  They work so hard these women and they don’t complain.  Whatever disaster unfolds they just buckle down and try a little harder.  Hardship strengthens you, they say.   It felt horrific to see a kind of modern slavery of sorts and to sense their vulnerability. 

Here, on Malta the economy is good and yet already a weariness of this tide of refugees is in evidence.  In Greece, where the economy is far from healthy, the rise of the right wing extremist party has brought violence onto the street against foreigners.  It is not just the newly arrived that are targeted.  A friend of mine, who has lived in Greece for many decades, as an eye doctor was targeted by racist thugs in the town where he lives.  I remember using his services when one of my young sons had something painful in his eye at a summer school, we were both attending in northern Greece.  The doctor delicately rolled back the eyelid and blew, the obstruction was cleared and my son’s relief was immediate.  To think that this decent man was beaten so badly that he is on crutches defies belief.  When I saw his photograph after the attack I wept.  Both at the pain and suffering he endured and at the stupidity of those who do such things to other human beings. 

Most people would not attack foreigners in their midst but many will come out with racist comments that fuel the actions of the ignorant in our society.  When a tide of racism is on the increase one hopes that those who believe in a better society stand firm in their principles.  We so often look back to Nazi actions and celebrate those who protected the Jews and went against the tide of public opinion around them.  Perhaps, people will look back at these days we live in now and speak of those who knew how to keep grounded in their love of humanity, despite the challenges and confusion.