By Charlotte K. Jarmy
Reflections
All around us there is chaos. An entire issue of a newspaper tears apart the warring passions of the Middle East. The talking heads on TV and radio try to deal with the incomprehensible: the young people blowing themselves up and taking multitudes with them.
Looking around our small bit of heaven, I see nature’s beauty, that exciting spring spurt toward life that turns our gardens and even highways into a gorgeous display.
Can we pull down the curtains of our minds and just see what we cherish so much? It’s our land, our village, our country. Yet would you consider blowing your body to bits in a show of hatred and fanaticism?
My son Ron said of a recent suicide bomber, “Mom, she was only a teenager. She gave up a whole lifetime!” He was describing a fanatic, and the modern world is full of them.
To quote from a recent article, Elie Wiesel, renowned author, philosopher and Nobel prize winner, said, “The fanatic’s only interest is domination by fear and terror. Violence is his favorite language.”
The majority of Americans do not speak that language, but there is a growing part of our society that is attracted to roiling hatred, screaming and thoughtless intolerance.
The picture of a Berkeley street separated into two shouting crowds holding flags of Palestine and Israel made it clear that the battle cannot be isolated like Arafat. It has jumped the pond.
Wiesel says we must fight indifference. But how? He claims memory is the remedy to take ourselves out of the present and return to even very old events that keep us from being imprisoned by our own passions. “To live through a catastrophe is bad; to forget it is worse.”
Most of us do not have the horrors of the Holocaust as Wiesel has to use the remedy of memory. No one really has an answer to the hatred that feeds off present cruelties and mob violence. I worry about our children both as a parent and as an educator. Do we have the time to educate the young, to help them see the mistakes the fanatics are making? Can we help them to pity the innocents on both sides? Can compassion be neutral?
President Bush uses old language to put forth his message. But do today’s kids understand the meaning of “the axis of evil?” There are so many ideas for intense discussion in the classroom. The complexity of daily events demands open and careful dialogue.
Is my grandson frightened by what he sees and hears? Let’s talk. Let’s write. Let’s turn to understanding to diminish the chaos.
Jarmy’s column is published the third week of the month. Send comments and suggestions to her c/o editor Bruce Barton at bruceb@latc.com.
