Our World, Plato and Mandela

I feel sure, dear readers, that you must have the same thoughts I have - the world is a violent mess. People seem to gave forgotten how to live in peace, showing tolerance and love for their neighbors, their fellow countrymen and the wider world. Perhaps it was never quite as peaceful as we remember, but there were fewer violent confrontations surely. But I do not place blame on entirely either on people or on governments. More than two thousand years ago Plato said : "Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments." He could be describing 2013. For today, we are witnesses to a great chasm between governed and governors, between conservatives and socialists, between Christians and Moslems, between rich and poor, between young and old, between democrats and tyrants. Plato also observed that "The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness… This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs, when he first appears he is a protector." This is perhaps the common thread in all of the opposing forces of the 21st century. Every society, every popular cause, every nation and every religion raises someone to icon status - this is not new but it is exaggerated today because of the instant communication in our Internet world. I cannot imagine that we are being led by men and women who are seriously inferior to those of ancient Rome, or who are more violent than the rulers of the Middle Ages or Renaissance. Our leaders are, for the most part, less violent and more toletant of oppositions. But they age fast because they are constantly in the eye of the media and dissected on the Internet. Again Plato -- "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find way around the laws." And are we not also subject daily to the evil deeds of bad people because of the same media and Internet? Our reaction as 'normal' citizens is to demand absolute perfection in our leaders and to turn violently on those whose violence we detest. This can only make matters worse because perfection does not exist in human beings - so every leader will fail - and violence begets violence - until everyone is mired in the same sub-human mud and the formerly non-violent no longer recognize themselves. But through it all, we clamor for liberty, for complete freedpm of action and for government to become our nanny at the same time that we demand that it disappear from our daily lives. Not an easy puzzle to solve, is it? Two hundred years ago, Edmund Burke addressed these issues : "Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed. The degree of restraint it is impossible in any case to settle precisely. But it ought to be the constant aim of every wise public council to find out by cautious experiments, and rational cool endeavours, with how little, not how much, of this restraint the community can subsist; for liberty is a good to be improved, and not an evil to be lessened. It is not only a private blessing of the first order, but the vital spring and energy of the state itself, which has just so much life and vigour as there is liberty in it. But whether liberty be advantageous or not (for I know it is a fashion to decry the very principle), none will dispute that peace is a blessing; and peace must, in the course of human affairs, be frequently bought by some indulgence and toleration at least to liberty for as the sabbath (though of divine institution) was made for man, not man for the sabbath, government, which can claim no higher origin or authority, in its exercise at least, ought to conform to the exigencies of the time, and the temper and character of the people with whom it is concerned, and not always to attempt violently to bend the people to their theories of subjection. The bulk of mankind on their part, are not excessively curious concerning any theories whilst they are really happy; and one sure symptom of an ill-conducted state is the propensity of the people to resort to them." Burke wrote this in a letter to British sheriffs. ~~~~~ Dear readers, these thoughts come to me from two very different fronts -- there is the uproar over the US government's Internet sweeps that certainly violate personal liberty, but at least in part as a response to the demand of its citizens to be protected from terrorists. And there is Nelson Mandela, struggling to hold on to life in a battle every bit as fierce as the battle he waged on Robben Island against fear and maltreatment and despair. He is in a sense the embodiment of our own struggles against violence and dehumanization at the hands of evil. We will lose Madiba one day. But we should hold fast to his spirit of love for his fellow human beings, to his sense that reconciliatipn is the only way to overcome violent opposing forces, to his belief that talking to your enemy is the only way forward. In this he echoes Lincoln, who tried always to persuade Americans North and South to be friends and brothers and not to be enemies. As Plato said, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."