Month: Jul 2020

Who Wins?

The best player wins.

The team with the best players wins.

The rules of life are the same.

The most basic rule of life is the human and animal instinct to survive. By whatever means.

Survival includes procreation which often means competition, usually between males.

The best player wins.

Compassion isn’t a factor in life’s considerations until one, or both, of two things occur.

The birth of young. In animals, compassion – if it occurs – is mostly maternal, instinctive and doesn’t usually last beyond weaning and independence.

Thought. Humans have a greater capacity to feel compassion because they are capable of thought.

And because of their ability to think they long ago recognised that living in groups offers a better chance of survival, the larger the group, the better its chances of survival in the competition for resources.

But the bigger the group the bigger the chance of not all the players being the best and of some individuals needing more support than they can contribute.

Compassion is not normally an ingredient of a winning philosophy.

The burden of compassion, with all that ensues from the desire to protect others from pain might severely constrain, even overwhelm the groups’ ability to compete. Especially when the group has grown too big for the available resources.

What do we do then?

Every day people ask me to support what, on-the-face-of-it appear to be really worthwhile causes: Children in need, Greenpeace, The Homeless, etc, all of which, assuming they’re genuine, are worthwhile and worthy of everyone’s support. I’m willing to add my voice to the causes, and I so wish that it wasn’t needed. But I do not wish to foist my specific recommendations on my friends and relations, so I don’t want to be asked to share anything or put stickers in my front window. And I don’t want to be ‘morally blackmailed’ into ‘chipping in’ to use the current, comfortable-sounding request for money.

Ida and I have standing orders to three charities that we think are worthwhile. Perhaps we could afford to give more but we also have and have had unexpected and unforecastable expenses for which we deem it wise to maintain some reserves.

So what’s all that about then?

Well, I believe that easily accessible havens and medical support should exist for all abused, sick, drug and alcohol addicted people and homeless, adults and children, and animals, worldwide.

So why are elected governments not eliminating the need for human and animal needs charities?

Try and Catch the Wind

He had shaggy blond hair, the colour of ripened corn stalks, and deep blue eyes like a cloudless sky on an August afternoon. I’d never seen eyes that shade before (though years later I married a man whose eyes were the same). He wore a dark blue corduroy jacket and a floppy hat down over his floppy fringe when he rode his (push) bike to school, and he played the guitar, but he didn’t sing, though he liked Dylan, Donovan, Simon and Garfunkel and the Beatles.

He was my best friend’s boyfriend.

One night I dreamt about him, and when I woke up I realised: this must be what being in love feels like.

Months later, after he’d stopped going out with my friend, but we were all three round at her house, he put his arm round me and kissed me – my first time. It was the week before my seventeenth birthday.

We never ‘went out’ anywhere together, but he came round to my house a couple of times, and we would play records and kiss and cuddle – very chastely (as I realised later). The last time, he brought me a box of chocolates for my birthday, but didn’t even try to kiss me. Altogether, I guess it lasted about three weeks.

And afterwards, I thought: this is what being in love feels like.