Quote of the week

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both”

This is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, though as with many famous quotes it may not be his. I first heard it while playing Sid Meier’s Civilization 4, where it is spoken by Leonard Nimoy, and someone else was using it on TV last night. Whoever first said it, I think it is very true.

It is very disturbing to see the way in which xenophobia is being whipped up in our society at present. Not just from the usual suspects such as the far right and the tabloids; but also throughout the media and elsewhere.

Some of this is very obvious, but some of it is more subtle. Consider the number of films which deal with some sort of external threat from marauding invaders. For example, the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, a film dealing with the Spanish Armada. Is this going to consist of very unsubtle imagery of plucky England beating of a bunch of religious fanatics or will the filmmakers try to be a bit more thoughtful in their portrayal of a complex historical event. I will be going to watch it next week so I’ll let you know what I think.

When I look at the media at present it does remind me of the ‘Red Menace’ of the 1950s, only with fewer of those excellent Sci-Fi B-movies they made back then

The world is rarely as simple as ‘us good, them bad’, whether ‘us and them’ is Catholics and Protestants or ‘the West’ and the Islamic world. To speak in such generalities is rarely helpful. Is there even such a thing as the Islamic world as a single monolithic entity, I doubt it. In fact is there such a thing as ‘the West’ as a single monolithic entity, again I think not.

People are people, we are all the same and yet all unique, and we are all equally flawed. When I hear some of my work colleagues speak of other religions and races or even of the recent influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, I do sometimes despair of humanity that we have come so far, and yet learned so little.

Then again if Nelson Mandela can congratulate the Springboks after they win the Rugby World Cup and if Ian Paisley & Gerry Adams can sit down together (however uneasily) in government – maybe there is hope for us yet.