Nothing is ever as easy as it looks, everything takes - a whole lot - longer than you expect, and the one unerring rule of life - and any really useful commentary thereupon - is that life is difficult. Fullstop. As the famed and noted psychoanalyst H Scott Peck, among many others - such as Murphy of Murphy's Law (and its many subsequent addendums) - has expressed matters, this is the reality folks. End of this story, and every other.
Surely a rather flippant way to conclude my previous piece upon violent, heinous thuggery and senseless, gratuitous violence in present-day New Zealand? Indeed. But perhaps that's the very point I'm seeking, however circuitously (i.e. in a roundabout manner) and even unconsciously, intuitively, to make. The sheer inanity, or, as the noted Jewish author and attendee at Adolf Eichmann's infamous trial in Israel, Hannah Arendt, put it, 'banality of evil'. For, as one other noted commentator, the much-written Ellen Gould White, herself stated: 'It is impossible to explain the origin of sin so as to give a [satisfactory] reason for its existence.'
In other words, to find some actual explanation for evil is to essentially excuse and thus justify it. To provide extenuating reasons for its initial and continued existence in this world; and moreover, in the hearts and lives of each and every one of us. For, as the noted radio host Jim Mora asked as it were rhetorically when discussing the matter of evil - as if in how to isolate it, as in a test tube, and define it - in conversation a number of years ago with the noted investigative journalist John Pilger, is there not a 'line' of good and evil running through the heart of every person?
Sadly Mr Pilger took umbrage and sought to speedily end the discussion, or at least his own part therein, perhaps suggesting Mr Mora had touched on a sore point and was driving the actual truth home a little bit closer than Pilger was comfortable with. For it seemed only all too evident that the latter much preferred - as ideologically-driven political partisans are ever wont to do, no disrespect for or devaluation of John Pilger's noted contribution to the political debate over the decades intended - thereby to split, as his bete noire George W Bush was himself at that very moment being accused by Mr Pilger of doing, the entire world into a comic book style goodies versus baddies paradigm. Which admittedly ever makes more exciting, 'sexy' and sensational copy, and moreover serves to justify ourselves in taking up the cudgels to fight the good fight for a new world order based upon our own idiosyncratic values. Yet in its basic infidelity to the true human condition and our own at times somewhat inglorious parts in the particular worlds we inhabit, it is as glibly superficial as it is essentially false.
However upon the recent story of Arun Kumar in particular not all left-wing commentators are equal. And so I take my metaphorical hat off and make a due inward curtsy to long-time 'from the Left' spokesman Chris Trotter, who upon yet another of the celebrated National Radio Panel discussions yesterday gave the best overall appraisal of the situation I have yet to hear. Making not an iota of excuse or justification for the appalling event which transpired in Auckland last week, Mr Trotter laid any and all blame home with the offender/s, though he, like many of us, felt the police were themselves found missing in inaction. Citing the former well-known New York City Mayor (and one-time Republican Presidential hopeful) Rudolph Guilliani, Trotter mentioned how, in Guilliani's approach of getting tough upon minor crime and/or signs of decay and disrepair in inner-city neighbourhoods in particular, before these eventually and inevitably mushroomed, spiralling out of control and skyrocketing into worse and even more worsening manifestations, such heinous acts were well and truly nipped in the bud. (And though Trotter didn't mention this specifically, the rapid and steep 'down surge' in especially violent crime ever since that approach was adopted has been a sheer marvel to behold. And clearly a proof if one were needed of its unmitigated, unimpeachable success.)
As Mr Trotter pointed out, petty crime must have consequences just as night follows day, but if it doesn't, what people expect to get away with will only go from bad to worse, and understandably so. As other, more regular commentators on tough love and the like have well said, bad behaviour must be treated as such and given due repercussions, or the situation will only go from bad to worse to downright awful; in no time flat. Shades of the repeal of Section 59 of the Crimes Act - i.e. the anti-smacking legislation - anyone? Duh.
So it was indeed refreshing to see a man of deep and well-earned left-wing credentials, who many, such as myself, consider unequivocally and incontrovertibly and uncontestably Aotearoa-New Zealand's most incisive socialist thinker, saying exactly the kind of stuff 'the rest of us believe'. Not as so many politicians of the left might do, simply to gain political traction when they belatedly realize they're well and truly on a political hiding to nothing and have nothing left to lose, but, wonder of wonders, because he simply sees sense and has an understanding of human nature and how it actually works. A pity that folk like himself, and, on the other side of the ideological 'equation', the likes of the notable and equally unrivalled talkback host Leighton Smith, aren't the ones leading our political parties and democracy. For then we'd no doubt have not only a healthier political debate, but perhaps occasionally achieve some useful things in the political sphere. But no, I won't lie asleep waiting.
To be concluded - following some needed shut-eye...the conclusion that really will be the conclusion!
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