Barely has a new year - and 'post-Apocalyptic era' at that - opened upon humanity than we are once more confronted with how great an oxymoron that word - 'humanity', supposedly representing qualities of empathy, compassion, kindness, understanding and 'fellow feeling' - is. For surely a very real, eminently reasonable and patently indisputable case could well be made that the constantly extolled and repeated - to ad nauseum and far beyond - politically correct to a fault, diatribe force-fed modern 'man' through all manner of mass media, i.e. that homo sapiens is gradually, if ever so imperceptibly, progressing, evolving into ever better and greater things, 'from the goo via the zoo to you' as one wag has put it, is rendered pure mockery every single day - and night - one happens to turn on the TV or radio news. For quite the contrary to this fictitious view of humankind rising ever higher upon the moral scale of worth, we see him, and her, diving ever deeper and more and more inexorably into new, previously unfathomed depths and sewers of depravity, viciousness and sheer evil.
And here I am strictly confining myself to the realm of senseless, heartless, ruthless, merciless violence, brought into clear focus internationally once more by the United States of America - even prior to 2013 or Christmas-time 2012 - in the Sandy Mount, Connecticut primary school massacre. To the point where this morning BBC News disclosed the very real possibility that 'special body armour', i.e. bullet-proof vests, presently being manufactured in Bogota, Columbia, may well soon be made available to American school children. But not alone in the U.S., nor only amidst the dark, daily horrors of Bashar al-Assad's blood-thirsty Syrian regime, nor just among the sporadic but continual suicide bombings and other acts of barbarism witnessed everyday throughout the eastern Middle East is such violence all too evident. Whether against groups of aid workers or courageous fellow citizens including 'minors' or helter-skelter against any and all civilians who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - in addition to the never-ending insurgencies against anyone and everyone suspected of having any links whatsoever to their mortal enemies or religious rivals - in such nations as Pakistan and Iraq we constantly are shown the ugly outbursts of a more than inhuman rage and wrath and seemingly unceasing brutality and callousness and diabolical cruelty. No, even now here in 'God's Own' itself we see - yeah, I accept, on a much lesser scale, but nevertheless - equally barbaric instances of humanity at its worst and most vicious.
Almost simultaneously, though with widely different outcomes, we heard, at the peak of New Year's 'festivities' nationwide, of two 60-some-year-olds, one a community gardener giving back, in a solo fashion, to her fellow Nelsonites at the top of New Zealand's South Island, the other an 'ex-pat' on holiday leave from Australia visiting the North Island's Waihi, merely attempting to blend into the celebratory mode of things, as he naturally assumed, there. Both met, admittedly, much more than their 'match' physically, though infinitely lesser beings on all scales of moral and spiritual worth. Sadly for kith and kin, the 62-year-old woman in Nelson may survive - by the veritable scruff of her neck, apparently - but will doubtless suffer ongoing trauma from her vicious attacker's cowardly assault. However the 64-year-old visitor from Aussie quickly departed this mortal life shortly after the random but all too successful act of ultimate unkindness of his own callous knife-wielding assailant; though his wife managed to fly over to offer some small mercies for his final few hours. As his family noted, Murray Wilkinson was "a selfless, helpless and humble man" -someone who doubtless wouldn't have hurt a fly.
Reminding me once more of someone only too aptly named Lois Dear - who for that reason alone, but also on many other levels, could've actually been my own dear Mum (whose middle name is Louise): a lady who was viciously slain in cold blood in bright middaylight a half dozen years ago. Returning to her classroom out of work hours - as no doubt was her wont - that particular weekend, she was accosted and overcome and brutally mutilated and murdered, senselessly and purposelessly having her earthly existence savagely terminated by a nasty piece of goods - to give him his full due. But oh, yes, I forgot, he was 'high on drugs'. No, he'd lowered himself by that means to the level of a brute, and even supposedly vicious 'beasts' will only act in that manner for dear life's sake, purely in self-defence, never in acts of gratuitous, meaningless brutality.
And yet in light of those tragic facts I should have trouble looking myself in the mirror, let alone snatching nightly shut-eye, for upon hearing of that 'case' I then, and staunchly, resolved to - finally - get off my chuff and actually 'do something about it'. Though long opposed to the very notion of capital punishment, I'm honest enough to increasingly accept and admit that its proponents - in a large number of instances, leaving aside the unavoidable and obviously deeply concerning one of innocent people thus being killed, which 'matter' is in many ways an incontrovertible argument against it, were there no others - are less and less impugnable as the years 'progress'. (But that for another day.) The salient point I'm getting to is that I then determined to take an action every single kiwi has open to us - though the efficacy of such is certainly open to debate: the initiating of a citizen's initiated referendum, upon receipt of the required number of signatures on which the government-of-the-day is legally bound to hold a referendum. (As just alluded to, whether many politicians frankly listen to such is another matter altogether.) But obviously, and despite standing as a candidate for Parliament in the 2008 general election, I've simply never gotten around to following through upon that resolution, much to my self-confessed shame. And despite no doubt having a ready backer in that well known kiwi patriot Norm Withers of Christchurch - whose own dear mum likewise once suffered a brutal if non-fatal attack by a thug.
Ah, the best intentions of mice and men, as they say, though like NZ's own Bret McKenzie of recent Muppet song fame, one ever wishes to see oneself as a man not a muppet. Though as they likewise say, 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating', or as that other great NZ patriot John Tamihere might have put it, we need a whole lot "more do-ey and [a whole lot] less hui". And as America's beloved J.F.K. memorably declared, among many memorable utterances: "the only thing needed for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." Nuff said - already.
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