I try to be positive about life. I really do. But death just keeps getting in the way. Two mornings ago, at about 7am, a lovely little fledgling blackbird flew into the kitchen as soon as I opened the door. She and her father have been coming to feed from the bird table every day so I assume she was waiting and eager for her breakfast. I opened the window for her to escape and watched her fly into the undergrowth, presumably to wait for her dad to come and get her. She was born in the garden hedge and must have felt quite safe in her own territory.
Knowing she was at ground level I went out with the dogs to make sure they didn't go near her, then I herded them back to the house. All three were at my feet when I got to the back door but by the time I got into the kitchen, only one had followed me in. I rushed back out but I was too late. Dad was looking for her and knew I had to leave her still warm little body for him to find. He soon did. His tail was flicking with distress.
Two days later and I am still filled with grief and guilt. I knew what the dogs were capable of but I took my concentration off them before it was totally safe.
That's the grief and guilt bit. Now for the despair.
Yesterday I read about a girl who had been abducted when she was 11 and held for 18 years in a compound in her abductors back yard, all with the cooperation of his wife. I wonder how many girls and women are at this very moment being held in captivity in the so-called civilised West (let alone legitimately in the rest of the world). How many have already been murdered when their captors lost interest? When they have another in their sights? I am reminded of the book THE COLLECTOR written in the 60s. Life imitates art. Did John Fowles get the idea from a real event or did he put an idea into the ether, the collective Mind, to spread like a virus?
It gets worse. An 8 year old boy asked a stranger for directions. Two days later police found his feet in a freezer and other body parts in a suitcase. The poor little guy was just four blocks away from his parents who were waiting for him. Just how many truly evil people are there in the world? I try to think better of human beings. I try to believe in the goodness of humanity. I would have liked to have thought that that little boy could have asked 100,000 strangers who would have got him safety to his parents. But he only asked one. Poor, poor little love. As beautiful and as fragile and as utterly vulnerable as that little blackbird.
But I used the word "evil". Why is that stranger any more "evil" than my Rosie? She was as happy as happy can be when she trotted round that corner with a dead bird in her mouth. Her tail was wagging, her eyes were bright and her whole body emanated pride and joy. She knows no guilt. Pure fulfilled instinct. Why, when a human being fulfils that animal instinct do we call it "evil"? If we are just another animal then to kill the vulnerable is natural.
Some individuals have another element to them - empathy, which leads to compassion. The majority don't have it. While their instincts are held in check by sociey just as a trained dog holds its instincts in check, unleashed by its master and given the signal they will torture, mutilate and kill with alacrity. Governments don't like empathy. Empathetic people don't wage war. Corporations don't like empathy. Empathetic people don't exploit. Can empathy be taught? Is it even desirable? Is empathy a sign of an evolved being or is it an aberration, a mutation that cannot survive? If empathy IS desirable, and it CAN be learned, it won't be through slasher films and the like. And if empathy can be taught, then so too can its opposite. We are whatever we let into our minds, both individually and collectively.
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