The Human Condition, (A Prediction For 2012)?

As we move into the second decade of the twenty first century those of us who choose to defy the predictions of various soothsayers and survive beyond 2012 may then have to face extreme moral demands.

There have been others who have faced such challenges in the past. There is an, inaccurate, tale that when Hitler’s troops entered Denmark in April 1940 and were intent on murdering the 7500, or so, members of the Jewish population King Christian X took to wearing a yellow Star of David as an example to all Danes in order to confuse the enemy and save his Jewish subjects.

The story is a complete invention created to avert American criticism of Denmark, and Americans of Danish origin, because America, paranoid as ever, believed Denmark to be pro-Nazi. The yellow star wasn’t ever introduced into Denmark. But what happened there is perhaps even more remarkable.

In 1943 the Danish people discovered that all Danish Jews would be cattle trucked to German concentration camps where few would survive. But the Germans had reckoned without the will of the Danes who  spontaneously risked their own lives and quickly rallied round to save their fellow citizens. As a result, and at great personal risk to the non-Jewish populace, almost all of the country’s Jews were able to find refuge in neutral Sweden.

We could call these Danes heroes, or bastions of common sense. Perhaps we might think of them as descendants of Nordic warriors who were under the protection of long abandoned gods. The truth is that they were simply ordinary decent people like you and me.

And so we move into our own sorry time. In the Middle East we have seen a modest revival of Islamic devotion. This worries the west who with an eye for oil and mineral wealth would prefer to treat with Sheiks than democracies tainted with religious fervour. Of course there are extremists in the Region too.

On the other hand in America we learn that Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry who are front runners for the Republican presidential nomination aren’t just devout Christians but have ties to a fringe fundamentalist movement known as Dominionism, which says Christians must rule the world.

This is a very dangerous scenario and one in which ordinary people, Christian and Muslim alike,  may expect to find themselves subject to the ‘if you ain’t for us then ur agin us mentality’.

It is, of course, easy from a padded chair facing a computer screen, with an ‘Aromatic Duck Sandwich’ from Marks & Spencer near the mouse and a mug of ‘Quick Brew’ at hand, to dismiss this as someone else’s problem, after all we live in democracies and are protected by the law. But is life really that tidy?

Since 9/11 the liberty that people took for granted in the twentieth century has slowly been eroded. The photographer Helmut Newton writing in his autobiography of life in 1930s Berlin explains that when it comes to restricting freedom changes happen slowly and steadily. Not only do they have practical implications, which may be worthwhile, such as the installation of CCTV, or monitoring people’s movements via their Oyster Card and Biometric Passport, but they also subtly affect the media and what we’re ‘allowed’ to believe.

And here is the rub, for since the mid ’80s the whole idea of public service has been broken through the suggestion that public employees, such as teachers, doctors, nurses, even social workers are motivated solely by self interest and as such must justify their existence via a barrage of performance indicators. These have largely destroyed any concept of professional vocation and created exactly the kinds of duplicity rooted in self-concern that they were designed to avert.

Confidence in government has collapsed on both sides of the pond. Just as a few looters may whip up a riot amongst the young, so disaffected decent folk may easily fall prey to the rhetoric of charismatic leaders who offer plausible alternatives to the current failed experiment. Recent experience in England has proven that civilization can break down very quickly given suitable impetus.

And that’s where you come in . . . when the line is painted on the road where will you stand? Are you with the barmy extremists, who may well lead a guileless majority down the garden path to murder and mayhem, or will you risk your life and livelihood to stand for sanity within the besieged intelligent moderate minority?

Stephen

Stephen Bray writes in a stream of consciousness, but sometimes is a good read . . .