Almost everyone is baffled by the strangeness of the world today. Not children, of course. They take as they find for adaptation is what they do. On the way to adulthood we choose either to swim with the tide, taking advantage of the way things are, or finding some token way to set ourselves against the prevailing culture: perhaps in personal ways, like becoming vegetarian. Before the exposure of Stalin as a mass murderer, communism as a way to channel idealism appealed to millions and terrified America.
Between the “outing” of Stalin and the collapse of the USSR, intellectuals could still toy with Marxism. These days rebellion often involves ecological awareness and humanitarian concerns, possibly with some New Age spirituality thrown in. Today I doubt if there are pockets of humanity in any remote jungle where adolescents are not caught up in some ferment of questioning their parents’ values.
In the town where I live, and especially this part with its mixture of small factories and Victorian workers’ cottages, there’s a high proportion of Muslims from Pakistan and Kashmir. The first generation, attracted by factory work in the late Fifties, are now elderly and pious, many with patriarchal beards and dressed in white every day as if for the mosque. Many of the womenfolk, one suspects, have never learned much English. It’s as if a tribe of the Amish were living in our streets, adhering to ancient observances and not caught up in the worst of modernity. Their children and grandchildren have been born here and educated in local schools along with their white English peers. My landlord is one such, a young man who recently took six weeks off to get married in Pakistan to a girl he’d not previously met.
I’ve remarked before what a peaceful town this is, though it’s been exposed as a nest of terrorists*. There are those who find it unfriendly, compared with Glasgow for example, and I won’t say they are wrong, but as my 17-year-old-daughter said, who cares? She doesn’t expect to pick up new friends on the street.
For a young Muslim born in this town, I’d say there are three ways to go. You might follow in your parents’ footsteps, wherever they might lead. You might rebel against your cultural and religious heritage in favour of local customs, especially in relation to diet, alcohol, dress, the opposite sex.
The third option when growing up as a Muslim in an English setting is to deplore the trend towards lax Western ways; to resent the low respect that is given to your people; perhaps to deplore your own parents’ failure to be more proactive and proud of their traditions. As a young British Muslim, for whom can you fight and die? When the invasion of Iraq was taking place, I saw a poster in town urging young men to go and join in – against the British and American troops. It wasn’t strange, even though it was technically treason. It is in the genetic inheritance of young men to be ready to fight and if necessary to die for a cause they hold dear: a fact which rulers throughout history have exploited to recruit armies for their devious and ignoble ends.
“Ah, but they were fighting just wars, by legitimate means! They were not terrorists.”
It’s easy to be blind to the “other side’s” point of view. The Second World War was just, in the sense of defending against tyranny. But it set precedents for the mass killing of innocents. Recent wars, in their launching, their conduct and their treatment of captives, have lacked legitimacy. Every injustice, illegal act or biased policy by the strong against the weak is a toxin to poison the minds of the young and humiliated, who might be tempted to plan future vengeance.
Every child is an idealist. Some want to go on and be heroes. Flag and bugle, marching and learning how to kill, the same old training is used as when a power could afford to have enemies, and expect to defeat them in battle. Two powerful men, whose names begin with B, have not realised that times have changed. When they’re gone, I wonder if their successors will have learned to unite the ever-idealistic, ever-heroic youth of the world in causes more noble than those which divide us today.
* In today’s local paper a police chief announces that the search for terrorist weapons and evidence in woodlands around our town, involving 100 police officers, will continue for at least four more weeks. It has been going already since August 11th. They don’t give out details about what they have found or what they are still looking for.
See this article in the same paper: LIQUID BOMB PLOT: 10 years on from terror raids that rocked town
a wayfarer’s notes 
Vincent, I have really enjoyed reading your blog. You are a gifted writer. Enjoyed reading some of the blogs of your loyal comment posters as well. Seems like a wonderful group of people.
Excuse my ignorance but can you tell me in your own words what this quote means“. . . the answers and the reasons are anyone's guess. Try not to seek after the true. Only cease to cherish opinions.” —Hui-Neng
I like the sound of it but am not sure I am following the part about not seeking after the true. Thanks for all your words, drawings and photography.
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Hi John, nice to meet you here. I just got back from a long weekend away.
There are two quotes involved in the strapline, if that's what it's called. The first reads, “As in life, the answers and the reasons are anyone's guess.” It's a quote from something I wrote somewhere myself.
The rest, beginning “Try not to seek after the true. Only cease to cherish opinions” comes from a Sutra by a Zen Patriarch Hui-Neng. I encountered it in 1962. Forty-four years later, I think I am able to understand and practise it.
I did indeed seek after the true, but that is not necessary because the true is all around, both in me and outside me. However it is mixed up with the false, in the form of my opinions.
I would actually prefer the word “beliefs” to “opinions” but I can't mess with what the translator wrote especially as I don't know what the original text was.
I feel enormously privileged to received your visits and comments, John, & will return the compliment soon!
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Part of “ceasing to cherish opinions” is ceasing to bother about the beliefs of others. Some people claim to have quite extraordinary beliefs & it's easy to get caught up in that. George W. Bush may believe that in politics he is doing God's work. I bother about that of course. but in general I don't hold beliefs against anyone. The Rastafarians believe that the late Emperor Haile Selassie was an incarnation of God, and also believe that the weed ganja is useful for religious purposes. I set that to one side and appreciate the bits of their way of life that seem admirable to me.
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it must seem very strange to have the police still poking about after all of this time. Have they offered no concrete explanation at all?
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In the local paper the top cop in charge made his press conference (or press release more likely) on the front page, and it filled two pages inside as well, but it did not say very much, if you see what I mean. He was talking about the logistics and the history of the search. I suppose from their point of view it is mainly to pick up clues from which to make their arrests, so that they can help Tony Blair help George W Bush by somehow sweeping out all these bad boys (& girls, who knows?) from the earth, so that we can all sleep safely in our beds forever more.
It is so enormously expensive of scarce police resources that it's obvious that it has been authorised from the very top, and the purpose of the police press release is to answer a few questions, e.g. the woods are safe for dog walkers and there is nothing sinister going on. In other words good old fashioned public relations.
The thing to understand about the UK is that – after being blitzed by the Germans in two world wars – people take a pride in “business as normal”, intuitively play down disasters and security threats and are extremely resistant to paranoia. The “gutter press” – by which I include all the British newspapers, I suppose – find that the only thing which creates paranoia is threats of increased taxes or new laws which infringe their civil liberties. For example despite Tony Blair's desire to control everything, his attempts to introduce ID cards have been thwarted. On the other hand the “right to bear arms” has never been enshrined in our non-existent constitution. Actually we have a constitution, but it's dated 1215 AD and hasn't been updated. I refer to Magna Carta.
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Vincent,
nice analysis. but, can you really term stalin a murderer. he was a politician right? and a dictator, with the D in capital.
what stalin did was probably right for russia that time. he lifted the nation! and may be destroyed it too.
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Yes, you can call Stalin a mass murderer. Perhaps this was not well known in his lifetime, but I am sure you can check all the incontestable facts through the Internet.
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Thank you for your visit to my site and for leaving a very thoughtful comment there, and I couldn't agree with you more, by the way, on the words you wrote there.
I come here and find I have been very negligent in clicking through from blogs where I have seen comments from you. A visit that has been long overdue I can see.
You are a fine writer to be sure.
And I guess as I read this post, what I can't help but have float through my mind is an image of boxes. We start out as children with this wonderful adaptability, going in and out with the tides, idealism, hope, and we quickly learn about boxes, fitting into boxes. We turn adaptability and idealism into something so twisted. My box has no room for you in it because you are different from me, and so not only do I shut you out of my box, but I also decide that your box is all wrong and needs to look like mine. So I will do anything, including killing you, if you don't decide to adapt to mine.
So then there are the rebels who so desperately wish to break down the walls of those boxes, who so often are persecuted, tortured and killed for swimming against the tide of intolerance and hatred. And in the U.S. the numbing truth is that more people are shutting themselves off in their boxes, locked away in numbness as they watch more television, eat more junk food, and hope to make it through another day in quiet complacency because it all feels too big and too overwhelming to contemplate the painful reality of the strangeness of the world as you say.
So I imagine I've strayed pretty off course from your post and your intention with it, but I am grateful for the thought it has inspired in myself today, and even more grateful that you clicked through so that I would click through back to you.
Joyful blessings of peace be with you.
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Thank you so much, S., for your comments which have enhanced the topic not strayed from it. Possibly the reason you did not follow up from where you saw my other comments was this: commenting on others' posts I am usually challenging, rather than serenely appreciative, especially when it comes to spiritual beliefs!
And I had not till now followed through to your blog from your comments because you were so serenely and consistently appreciative of others, and I misinterpreted that!
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Vincent,
And so in our diversity I find that your challenges enrich and enhance my blogging experience, and thus my life experience, and so I offer my gratitude that you clicked through and I clicked through, and found that in our differences we have discovered something we never would have known had we both only taken each other at face value for what those comments represented.
Peace be with you, and thank you for clicking through.
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