Is it not time the world realise there are not ‘hard lines’ to draw?

I came to this conclusion and realisation several years ago, well before the particular incident that I have used to illustrate this realisation, but an incident that do indeed aptly portray the reality of what we must accept, whether or not we like to.
The incident: it was a few years ago that I was attending a home football match as I did every other Saturday morning. A chap sat in front of me (of South East Asian origin) received a barrage of very crude, racist abuse from a couple sat to his right. This was in the mid 90s, when few flinched at such occurrences. But our section of the stadium was usually filled by seasons ticket-holders and most of us had known each other for years. About 6 of us leapt from our seats and told the abusive couple to shut up! We called the stewards over, explained what they said and they were promptly escorted out of the stadium. The chap who was abused thanked us and enjoyed the rest of the game. Right after the match, we all trooped off to the local pub and as we always did, stopped by a kebab cafe to grab a quick takeaway to munch. As we entered the cafe, we could hear loud yelling and a male voice repeatedly yelling racist abuse at the server (a lady of African descent) and calling her a b***k slut and the manager had just come out from behind the counter to intervene. The abuser turned around and lo & behold, it was the chap we had defended when he himself was being racially abused less than an hour earlier, at the match! We were shocked. He was embarrassed and apologised profusely, but really, how can one begin to understand that??!

But indeed, that is the reality of what the world has always been and will always be.

There are no ‘hard lines’ to be drawn as we try to: good and bad, lies and truths, right and wrong. If we can each just try to be decent, it probably is as good as it gets. Of course there are states of mental health or dysfunction that could cause people to knowingly do really awful things, but saying those are “pure evil” is just words: can evil be pure? and what is impure evil? Decency used to be easier for most to grasp, but that’s all history now..

Instead, we try to seek equivalences!

We try to condemn

Yes, slavery was an awful, awful thing. Cruel beyond words or understanding. But there were churches at the time, with people singing praise to God etc., even as their workers bought & sold humans. Well, read the bible and you may be surprised to find that there were eras in there where it was the right thing to conquer your enemies, make slaves of their wives & kids etc. There is even guidance on what you can do with your slaves e.g a man whose wife can’t bear children is ok to grab one of her slaves, have a baby that way and hand it over to his wife. I am not religious but have read most holy books, to see what it is, that gets people so fired up!!? And how someone can follow a Donald Trump while saying they are Christians. Well, go and read the bible and you will see exactly why. They simply have to convince themselves that he is an instrument of God. Front that point on, it matters little, what he says or does, they will continue to support him. It is all about points of view.

The world is completely messed up. It always has been. The only difference today, is that majority of the good only controls e.g. religion, the constitution… standards that many used to adhere to, are being ridiculed and set aside by a supposed new generation who want law & order but intend to secure it via violent rioting. People form organisations that set out to do good, but then the stories of embezzlement stat to filter out. I watched a BBC clip on Haiti yesterday, in which a gang leader who looked like he hadn’t had a chance to take a bath in weeks (perhaps out of fear one of his own cutthroats will murder him in the bath) lives in a mansion (your guess as to how he got it) with golden coffee tables, while the rest of the country looks like a dung hill! But he says he is fighting corrupt politicians…

We are all complicit. All of us. The world is as it is, because that’s exactly how we have made it. We have created a monetary system that is so skewed. Is it geniuses who become billionaires?
You see politicians who claim to champion the poor, end up rich and hold the poor in contempt. You suddenly hear the same politicians speak of a lazy population who are apparently poor due to their lack of application!
Half the world is in abject poverty.

But I do not have any answers, no practical solutions! But what I do, is to try not to be perfect. What I am, is what I am: bits of it is good, bits of it is awful. I get on with life. I only have a single motto: do not set out to deliberately make others unhappy.

There are no hard lines to draw! It is and likely to always be, a messy world!