In a contemplative mood about evil and humanity in The View from the Terrace

I am in a bit of a contemplative mood today, thinking about the world we live in and the human race in general.

The events in Las Vegas on Sunday were horrific. I have a friend who lives there, she is OK but her friend’s son was at the festival. He didn’t get hurt but he saw 2 of his friends get shot, I can’t imagine what that must be like. My friend is helping the victims. She is lovely person whom I met during a visit to California in 2000 and have kept in touch with ever since.

Meanwhile, here in the UK we are shocked by the news of a homeless man who broke into the home of a family that had helped him and stabbed the 3 family members. The mother and 13 year old boy died, the father survived. He and his 19 year old daughter, who was not home at the time, were speaking of how they had taken this man into their home and helped him to find accommodation, then when he had to leave there he came back and took it out on the family that had cared for him.

It is hard to understand why people do these things. I can only think it must be some sort of illness or disorder. When watching the news yesterday one thing came to my mind and that is thank goodness we have tight gun laws here in the UK. I don’t want the right to bear arms if it puts me at such a risk. If that sick homeless man had been able to buy a gun he might have shot dozens of people. That, perhaps is little comfort to the family who lost their loved ones though.

Last night I watched the TV programme Who do you Think you are? As everyone knows I am very much into family history and it is one of my favourite programmes. Last night the subject of the programme was Ruby Wax. She knew only that her Jewish parents has gone to the USA in 1938 from Vienna to escape the Nazis. After her parents death she had found a small suitcase of family photos and some letters. She didn’t know who the people in the photos were and the letters were in German. It turned out that the letters were from her mother’s aunt and uncle who had been left behind in Austria and who were relying on her parents to get them entry to the USA. For various reasons, mainly down to the reluctance of the USA to take any more refugees, they didn’t make it and were both eventually murdered by the Nazis. The letters when translated were heartbreaking, things like ‘We are waiting to hear from you. Don’t leave us behind. It will mean our deaths.’

I couldn’t help but see the parallel to the current situation in the UK where people don’t want any more refugees. It was one of the main reasons that people voted to leave the European Community. I was sitting there with tears in my eyes and I expect some of those who would say no to refugees now were also, possibly without making the connection. I said as much to Hubby and he replied that it is difficult as we haven’t got the room for these people. I didn’t say any more as we watched what happened to Ruby’s great aunt and uncle in a ghetto.

I read a book once about different primitive cultures in the world today. It was called Millennium, there was a TV series too. There are actually primitive cultures where people who have more than they need while their neighbours are suffering would feel great shame and a need to share. If they kept it to themselves, even if they had worked hard for it, they would be looked down on by society. We call these primitive societies less civilised. It makes you think.

Yet the family who helped the homeless man did share and were rewarded by having their family torn apart. I suppose whatever you do there will always be sick people, or people who have been so damaged that they have become sick.

The Ruby Wax programme posed the interesting question about mental illness. Ruby said that her mother suffered mental illness. When she discovered the things that had happened to her mother in the war she thought perhaps those had caused it, but then she went on to find how, before the war, her mother’s other aunt and grandmother had spent years in insane asylums because they were mentally ill. So were her mother’s problems inherited rather than caused by trauma? I am inclined to think it would have been a mixture of both.

Ruby had suffered a great deal from the way her parents had been, partly because the war had damaged them. This also happened to Hubby. His father served in the war and came back a changed man according to my mother-in-law. Hubby told me he was quite abusive. This has, of course damaged Hubby, and that, combined with his Asperger’s which is partly genetic, made him in turn a difficult father to our children, not so much abusive, more emotionally distant and that has affected our children. Wars have a lot to answer for. They don’t just affect the generation of the time but many generations to come.

I suppose all we can do in this life is to try to do what we think is right and to enjoy the good things and deal with the bad ones when they happen. One thing that struck me about the terrible events in Las Vegas was the wonderful respose of so many people afterwards to try to help the victims. I heard someone say about another disaster, I can’t now remember which, ‘Where was God when this happend?’, and the reply was ‘God was in the response’. I always remember that when these things happen. You don’t have to call it God, it could be humanity or compassion or love, but it’s there always to combat evil.