Last Saturday the condo in which we live had its water supply cut off. No water was coming into the apartment water tanks. In the twenty-four years we have lived here nothing like it has happened before. The usual thoughts ran through my mind. How will the very old and the disabled manage? Is this a result of nearby building works or something inherent in the nearly 40 year old building? WIll we be able to get plumbers out at the weekend? Will everyone be obliged to evacuate the building?
Twelve hours is a long time to be without water. Time enough for those TV pictures of Libyans, Palestinians and others jostling to get water from a recently arrived truck to become vivid. They are not without water for just twelve hours but for weeks, sometimes months. They have old and sick people and young, dehydrated children to cope with. Desperation rather than inconvenience. They do not worry about comfort but about survival. Heat isn’t a topic of gossip but a punishment for uncommitted crimes. They don’t steal, they forage.
“Don’t watch the news” someone said to me the other day, “it’s too depressing”. They were talking about the impact of seeing others’ suffering and they were right. It is depressing. But less than 1% of the amount of depressing it must be to live in it.
This isn’t an appeal for money. If you are reading it you will probably already have done something helpful within your means. But it is an appeal for something much more difficult. We need every human on the planet to think about how the future should be shaped. About what our relationships with other people anywhere should be if the human race is to survive. We need to think about how our ingenious mechanical developments can be used to make life better for everyone. Our thoughts should not be rants of hate for people we don’t like. Such rants are cheap and self-demeaning.
At some point we may be asked to vote for a person to represent us in a parliament. We want the people who do so to be competent, thoughtful people of stature not derivatives of a rabble. We need them because they have, on balance, a view of the world that enhances human dignity and behaviour and does not demean it. And if we do not have the system of vote we want to be clear of the limits of control we will support. Everyone who thinks has a right.
Everyone who has a right to life also has an obligation to think. Not wholly selflessly but in a balanced ‘self-others’ view that is mutually helpful. We all know – or know of – decent people who improve the benefits they have been given in order to hand them on. Our purpose in life is to taste the water in such a way that others may taste it too.
We may buy our way to luxury. We must think our way to decency.
Good morning
John Bittleston
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