The search for sanity

Can we remain sane and purposeful in our troubled world?

The devastation of the First World War was so great that H G Wells hoped it was “the war to end all wars”. Instead it was the prelude to the Second World War, and conflict has continued ever since. Although exact figures are extremely difficult to calculate, there have been thousands of armed conflicts and hundreds of distinct wars. More than 117 million people are displaced and the numbers continue to rise.

Meanwhile, the global arms trade continues to generate huge profits, and President Donald Trump is planning to go ahead with a space-based missile defence system, his Golden Dome, at a projected cost of $1.2 trillion over two decades, which is more than the entire US Defence Department spent last year. 

Politics and government in the UK are in complete disarray. Our freedoms are being eroded and judges are laying down the law in court, some are prohibiting defendants in environmental or anti-arms trade cases from explaining the motivations behind their actions, and juries are being instructed not to follow their conscience. For the first time in legal history a barrister, Rajiv Menon, recently faced prosecution over a closing speech in a criminal trial, the Filton trial.

Violence against women continues all over the country. On average, one woman is killed by an abusive partner or ex partner every five days in England and Wales. Racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric is increasing. The police, however, are squandering their time and resources arresting people of all ages for sitting peacefully with cardboard signs opposing genocide, actions now treated as potential acts of terrorism.

The environment continues to deteriorate. Our rivers are being poisoned by sewage and agricultural run-off, and offenders carry on relatively unscathed. Plastic waste continues to choke oceans and threatens human life and wild life. We are breathing air that is so heavily polluted it is leading to serious respiratory tract illnesses and in some cases deaths. Yet the government fears offending motorists by trying to restrict car use. There are no restrictions on flying; airlines still pay no fuel duty, and airline tickets are zero-rated for VAT. Politicians, corporations, rich business people and celebrities continue to fly all over the world in private jets. At any time, there are generally between 1,500 and 3,000 private jets airborne across the globe.

Governments all over the world are failing to meet the targets set by the 2016 Paris Agreement and many UK voters are turning to a party which is committed to expanding fossil fuel extraction and abandoning net zero goals. It transpired recently that many Reform voters do not appear to be aware of their chosen party’s execrable policies.

Some people, especially the wealthy, are living longer but often with chronic illness. 673 million people (about 8.2% of the world’s population) are currently suffering or are at risk from chronic hunger or undernourishment. Yet one of the major causes of ill health in the affluent west is obesity. And many shops are overflowing with food, a horrifying quantity of which is wasted.

The World Inequality Database reports that the top 1% of the population holds nearly a quarter of the UK’s total wealth, as cited by the Resolution Foundation two years ago. A year ago, 4.5 million children, nearly one in three, in the UK were living in poverty, a majority of these being from working families. Year after year these figures have risen. And our public services are chronically underfunded. 

But, despite all of this, still we hope and believe that a different society is possible. And so, for our sanity, we turn to some of the relatively smaller or unreported campaigns and projects which show how successfully people can work together in communities to bring about change and hope.

Many of us have been encouraged and inspired over the years by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded in 1999 by Argentine-Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim and Palestinian-American academic Edward Said. They saw the urgent need for an alternative approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Said believed: “Separation between peoples is not a solution for any of the problems that divide peoples”.

Another source of hope with broadly similar ideas is Na’amod, a movement of Jewish people in the UK which is committed to ending apartheid and occupation. It was founded in 2018 and is a strong voice which unites Jewish people with its message of opposition to occupation. The name means “We will stand”. This diverse group is committed to standing alongside Palestinians without abandoning their own beliefs and teachings and strives to mobilise Jewish people in the struggle for dignity, freedom and democracy for all Palestinians and Israelis.  

“We are all inspired by our longstanding Jewish tradition of championing the rights of oppressed people, everywhere.” Na’amod explains that the history of Jewish people fighting oppression has led to their strength in fighting for the rights of other people who are oppressed – joining the Spanish Civil war, picketing the South African apartheid embassy, campaigning for refugees in the UK, and organising to end the Israeli occupation. “The dehumanisation of Palestinians and the justification of their oppression by people who claim to represent British Jewry is an affront to everything we were raised to believe through our Jewish education.”

Quite often people who live comfortable lives turn away from injustice. People are often busy and are dealing with work and families and all the challenges that life brings us. And of course many people are exhausted and overwhelmed by struggling to make ends meet. But I believe that whenever possible we should do what we can to fight for a better world. Even if we are only able to take small steps, even if we are only able to spread the word now and then, we are not standing by and accepting greed, corruption, inequality, cruelty and war. Every conversation, every act of solidarity matters. As Na’amod says: “We cannot stay silent as Israel dispossesses Palestinians of their land, strips them of their dignity, freedom and rights, and violently suppresses all efforts to challenge an unjust status quo”.

Groups like Na’amod give us hope that there is good humanity, even though greed, corruption, injustice, inequality, hunger, poverty, violence, and war seem to dominate the planet. Friendship, neighbourliness, compassion, understanding, tolerance, social justice, peace and respect for the environment and all forms of life still exist and help us to remain sane and purposeful in our troubled world.