Third Age
August 2013
A Couple of Middle Aged White Men Saying Pick Me
Let’s call them Peter and Paul. It doesn’t matter; they are interchangeable. Both are Christians. It’s funny that they follow the teachings of a Middle-Eastern man who claimed to be the son of God, but also merciful, loving and kind. I say funny, because both these men see no contradiction in packing (mostly) Middle-Eastern homeless people, including their little children, off to tropical islands the like of which they have never seen, with no hope of escape and in certain danger of sickness and suicide. These children, refugees or not, have done nothing to deserve this. Does it take an old atheist like me to say: No. This shall not be done in my name? This pair of Christ-lovers, Peter and Paul, are not saying it.
Have Peter and Paul ever thought it possible that their own descendants – white, middle class, educated – could become refugees in the future as global warming and rising sea levels do strange things to habitats once thought safe as houses? White boat people… forced to leave their homes, desperate enough to pay for rotten boats, to flee if not from climate change, then from a bolt from the blue that physicist Brian Cox says is entirely possible and may be the greatest danger to humankind? Many circumstances make refugees. Some of those circumstances could one day be those of someone you love. Ahhh, the planet! When Peter and Paul mention the welfare of the planet they tend to have an attack of something like the begats, rabbiting on about the need to change some of our dirty habits for the sake of their children and their children’s children and their… a rigmarole that usefully (for them) takes up time otherwise expected to be filled by some unpalatable plan for forestalling ecological disasters.
They also personalise other thorny questions; bring into their answers grandparents in nursing homes, gay relations or even daughters for just being daughters. Daughters have copped many things in the past but being made responsible for a father’s credibility is a somewhat new development.
Peter and Paul are devoted to jobs for our economy to fl ourish. But jobs are about pay. How can it be fi ne to talk about jobs – but not to mention that half the adult population may never aspire to reach the pay levels of the other half? These two white middle-aged men did not mention the gender pay gap. But what affects the job aspirations and pay of half the population is surely signifi cant to the economy.
Education: Peter and Paul are both keen to have more of it. Lots ‘n lots of university ‘places’. But do they speak of the impoverishment of university campuses compared with those they attended, when campus life was teeming with ideas and groups of all kinds, for students to try and test for themselves at just the right time of their lives? No. Education is now about jobs. You get it by working at underpaid casual jobs outside the university until you are too exhausted to have an idea, let alone join a society of undergraduates.
Peter and Paul would say they are men of conviction. Conviction once stopped them from countenancing gay marriage, from locking up refugees, even from believing women had the same aspirations and right to power as men. But they’ve each changed their convictions. How are we to tell Peter from Paul?
Whether we believe we came from Adam and Eve or just from a handful of stardust, we haven’t really justifi ed our privileged position in the universe by intellectual consistency, by getting beyond immediate self-interest, beyond nationalism and prejudice, have we? To judge from Peter and Paul we like follow-the-pack leaders, who adjust their convictions as they might adjust their trousers, who don’t let the suffering of humanity, or beasts, for that matter, get in the way of pop policies. We are obsessed by appearances, voices, class and gender, unable to think ahead about the welfare of people of our generation, let alone the children’s children’s children and all that jazz
We are insular, spoilt, narrow-minded, sexist, poll-driven, opportunist and evasive. Peter and Paul are us. This is the way we live and think now. These are the leaders we deserve, but the planet and the little displaced children do not deserve. Are we doing our best to see that humanity survives well on our fragile planet, that everyone has fair shares? If our democracy has become a choice between Peter and Paul, it is in need of revision. I fear for us.
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