As someone who lives & breathes ethics, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. In any given week there are innumerable ethical transgressions reported in the press (not to mention those that I witness in my work/life). Choosing which one to write about, or rather, to omit, is an ethical minefield in itself. The guilt of an Irish (ex catholic) should never be underestimated.
Sometime during middle childhood, when most children's super-ego (a Freudism), or consciences to you & me, are developing, Irish children are rounded up & taken to an undisclosed destination. Whilst heavily sedated (Guinness, Poitin, or in my case, home brew) an incendiary device is implanted in their heads. Said thingymajig is programmed to detonate at the mere thought of breaking any of the 10-150 commandments (my parents added a few, such as “thou shalt not forget your mother's birthday or wear skirts above the knee, especially whilst donning a pair of patent shoes - they reflect your knickers). Thinking about kissing someone of the opposite, or worse, same sex, before the age of 21 has been known to result in spontaneous detonation.
I’m riven, daily, by an irrational fear that I will self destruct if I press the wrong ethical button. In the same week that Nelson Mandela died, other stories were vying for my attention. It was International Violence against Women Week, Amazon was accused of potentially exploitative employee practices & the BBC’s Panorama exposed the Military Reaction Force (MRF), alleged to be an unofficial wing of the British army which operated in Northern Ireland at the height of “the troubles”. The BBC reported that the MRF gunned down unarmed, innocent catholic civilians. Shooting & killing with impunity.
Inevitably, I choose one story and wait for the hook for the others to re-emerge. The guilt I often experience for neglecting the others can be all consuming.
The editor of the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington, a woman who knows all about tough choices, has announced she’s unplugging for christmas. She’s urging others to join her. For one week she won’t be accessing email or social networking sites or using her mobile phone. That’s brave for a journalist, let alone the editor a respected international, online news outlet.
Yet, if we never extricate ourselves from the constant noise that pollutes our lives with internet connection, there’s a danger our minds & souls will become scrambled & full of spam. There’s a thin line between technology being an enabler & a catatonia inducing disabler. An energy vampire sucking the life blood out of us. Distracting us from the things that really matter. Family, friends, having time to stand & stare. To think, to breathe & to be present in the moment.
I started this blog in April as an outlet to publish some of my work that the malestream media considers too “controversial” to print. I didn’t think anyone would actually read it, though obviously I hoped they would. I’ve been overwhelmed by the reaction, which was pretty much instant. I have followers all over the world & am often inundated with responses to issues I tackle on the blog.
Whilst I’m humbled by the response this blog has generated, it brings with it a certain pressure. To generate regular content that is topical & insightful & to be constantly available.
In order to do my family, friends, you (my readers) & myself justice, I need to recharge my batteries from time to time &, to do that, I need an internet detox (otherwise I'm a gadget free gal). I’m going to accept Arianna Huffington’s challenge by unplugging today until January 8th. As I write I’m racked by guilt. The unfolding events in South Sudan serve to undermine my resolve. Just one more story before I press the off button. But the reality is, I’ve said it all before. The piece I wrote on South Sudan last year predicted the descent into anarchy if the UN continued to neglect its International human rights obligations (see press section of my website www.tessfinchlees.com) for the piece I wrote in The Independent, “South Sudan Needs Our Help, Not our Silence”.
From today, I’m going to trade my computer in for snakes and ladders, charades, baking biscuits (something I did for the first time yesterday!), foraging and taking “midnight” walks (anytime after dark) with my 6 year old, whereupon we will rendezvous, as per, with Mr Badger in the woods. I’ll be swapping Newsnight & The Moral Maze for repeats of The Wizard of Oz, The Snowman & The Railway Children. I’m going to unashamedly bask in the warmth & laughter of the people in my life that inspire me & make me want to be a better person.
Whether or not you join the burgeoning band of unpluggers, wherever you are in the world, I wish you a gadget, internet & guilt free christmas. Peace & joy will surely follow…
Monday 23 December 2013
Friday 13 December 2013
Nelson Mandela's Death Leaves a Vacuum of Moral Leadership
A edited version of this posting was published in the Huffington Post.
Margaret Thatcher’s steadfast dismissal of Nelson Mandela as a terrorist exposed one of her (many) great shortcomings. Her failure to engage with the psychology of oppression. Be it the ANC, the IRA or the PLO, they had to be beaten. Mandela, on the other hand, understood that, when generational injustice prevails and in the absence of hope, otherwise peaceable people will fight back.
As world leaders queue up to pay tribute to Mandela, the absence of successors of his caliber is plain. We have lost the only world leader that was driven by principle, not privilege, morality, not political expedience and compassion for the oppressed, not deference for the oppressors. There is a situation vacant for visionary, ethical leadership but no obvious candidates in the wings.
Tony Blair started off with such potential. His role brokering peace in Northern Ireland is irrefutable, though the real (unsung) hero of the day was Mo Mowlam. But his achievements in Northern Ireland were soon to be overshadowed by his failings in Iraq and Palestine. His empathy for the historical injustices visited upon Catholics in Northern Ireland did not extend to oppressed Muslims throughout the world.
The ongoing trial of the Woolwich killings should serve to shine a spotlight on the psychology of oppression and the legacy it bequeaths. My heart goes out to the family of Lee Rigby who was brutally murdered in May and my thoughts are with them as they’re forced to relive his last moments.
When the story first broke it was hijacked by Islamaphobic media coverage sparking revenge attacks on Mosques and Muslims throughout the country. The media’s propensity to conflate Islam with terrorism is not new. Shortly after 7/11 I was running a seminar when a participant arrived late. He had been jumped on by a gang of “skin heads” who shouted Islamaphobic obscenities while beating the crap out of him, ending with “Go home Paki”.
He was a cockney atheist but he was flaunting a deep tan at the time, which, under the circumstances (media whipping up hatred of any one “foreign looking”), was foolhardy. Tanning booths in Dale Winton’s neighbourhood were on the brink of bankruptcy for a fortnight.
Blair and Bush lost the plot, pursuing their deluded "war on terror" that effectively equated to an indefensible war on Muslims. They acted in defiance of public outrage and as a consequence, I believe, they systematically destabilised the world.
Foreign policy that sanctions torture abroad, such as Guantanamo, will always come back to bite. There is no greater recruiting sergeant for terrorism than torturing innocent civilians. We know from history that if we oppress and deny people their right to self determination, abuse them and deprive them recourse to justice, they will eventually retaliate.
Austerity measures (a euphemism for stealing from the poor to give to the rich) seems to escape media scrutiny in all this. Even before the recession, minority ethnic young men, such as the Woolwich defendants, were more likely to be excluded from school and be over represented in prison, social and psychiatric services, and twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts. A recent report showed that, although this has been known for decades, nothing has been done to stem the crisis.
A generation of young people are faced with the prospect of long term unemployment, alienation and anger. Inequality and injustice on this scale is a recipe for social unrest. Terrorists are filling a position made vacant in the minds of some of our most disaffected young men by a society that will bail out miscreants in suits but starve our youth of investment, care and any hope for the future. Nelson Mandela inherently knew what his contemporaries fail to grasp, if you have nothing, there’s nothing left to lose.
Margaret Thatcher’s steadfast dismissal of Nelson Mandela as a terrorist exposed one of her (many) great shortcomings. Her failure to engage with the psychology of oppression. Be it the ANC, the IRA or the PLO, they had to be beaten. Mandela, on the other hand, understood that, when generational injustice prevails and in the absence of hope, otherwise peaceable people will fight back.
As world leaders queue up to pay tribute to Mandela, the absence of successors of his caliber is plain. We have lost the only world leader that was driven by principle, not privilege, morality, not political expedience and compassion for the oppressed, not deference for the oppressors. There is a situation vacant for visionary, ethical leadership but no obvious candidates in the wings.
Tony Blair started off with such potential. His role brokering peace in Northern Ireland is irrefutable, though the real (unsung) hero of the day was Mo Mowlam. But his achievements in Northern Ireland were soon to be overshadowed by his failings in Iraq and Palestine. His empathy for the historical injustices visited upon Catholics in Northern Ireland did not extend to oppressed Muslims throughout the world.
The ongoing trial of the Woolwich killings should serve to shine a spotlight on the psychology of oppression and the legacy it bequeaths. My heart goes out to the family of Lee Rigby who was brutally murdered in May and my thoughts are with them as they’re forced to relive his last moments.
When the story first broke it was hijacked by Islamaphobic media coverage sparking revenge attacks on Mosques and Muslims throughout the country. The media’s propensity to conflate Islam with terrorism is not new. Shortly after 7/11 I was running a seminar when a participant arrived late. He had been jumped on by a gang of “skin heads” who shouted Islamaphobic obscenities while beating the crap out of him, ending with “Go home Paki”.
He was a cockney atheist but he was flaunting a deep tan at the time, which, under the circumstances (media whipping up hatred of any one “foreign looking”), was foolhardy. Tanning booths in Dale Winton’s neighbourhood were on the brink of bankruptcy for a fortnight.
Blair and Bush lost the plot, pursuing their deluded "war on terror" that effectively equated to an indefensible war on Muslims. They acted in defiance of public outrage and as a consequence, I believe, they systematically destabilised the world.
Foreign policy that sanctions torture abroad, such as Guantanamo, will always come back to bite. There is no greater recruiting sergeant for terrorism than torturing innocent civilians. We know from history that if we oppress and deny people their right to self determination, abuse them and deprive them recourse to justice, they will eventually retaliate.
Austerity measures (a euphemism for stealing from the poor to give to the rich) seems to escape media scrutiny in all this. Even before the recession, minority ethnic young men, such as the Woolwich defendants, were more likely to be excluded from school and be over represented in prison, social and psychiatric services, and twice as likely to be unemployed as their white counterparts. A recent report showed that, although this has been known for decades, nothing has been done to stem the crisis.
A generation of young people are faced with the prospect of long term unemployment, alienation and anger. Inequality and injustice on this scale is a recipe for social unrest. Terrorists are filling a position made vacant in the minds of some of our most disaffected young men by a society that will bail out miscreants in suits but starve our youth of investment, care and any hope for the future. Nelson Mandela inherently knew what his contemporaries fail to grasp, if you have nothing, there’s nothing left to lose.
Wednesday 4 December 2013
Temporarily Out of Action
No-one is born better or worse than any-one else. What makes us better is not status, wealth, power or titles. It's how we treat other people. That's what I told the doctor earlier this week who berated me for dragging her into hospital (she was on-call) to examine me.
The fact that my GP had dispatched me there immediately on grounds of having a potentially dangerous eye infection ("& one doesn't mess with the eyes Tess", he said when I moaned "Can't you just hit me with some heavy duty narcotics & send me home in a taxi?") & that she was merely being asked to do her job (as opposed to contravene the Geneva Convention) failed to stem her flow of righteous indignance.
I have bigger fish to fry & I held my own (even though I was in excrutiating pain) so I wouldn't have taken it any further. Unfortunately for the doctor there were 2 nurses just outside the consult room who heard her rant. One was a senior manager & both are lodging a complaint. I protested that although they couldn't hear me I had dealt with it. They pointed out, quite rightly that, if a nurse spoke like that to a patient they would be sacked on the spot. The doctor deserves feedback but not a complaint. I hope my argument prevails.
Because this doctor is young, there's time for her to take stock of what her role involves. Treating patients (who have a habit of becoming very ill at the most inconvenient times) with dignity & respect should be paramount. I can hold my own, even when poorly, but as my kindly Mary Seacole (the black Florence nightingale that history forgot) said, "you shouldn't have to". A doctor patient relationship is based on trust. Being told off before you even begin doesn't inspire confidence & crucial information can be lost because you just don't want to engage with this scary, angry ogre.
This doctor was in a position of power & she abused it. The incident didn't traumatise me (though it wasn't pleasant), for others her actions could have had devastating emotional, psychological anf physical consequences. On behalf of other vulnerable patients with more serious illnesses, I will offer some constructive feedback. We all have bad days but there's a line that must never be crossed, whatever your profession, but never moreso when vulnerable people put their lives in your hands.
Forgive any typos or ramblings. I've got blurred vision & am heavily medicated. I've been banned from using the computer, driving heavy machinery or handling delicate/valuable objects for the next week at least. Until then my friends.
Tess
The fact that my GP had dispatched me there immediately on grounds of having a potentially dangerous eye infection ("& one doesn't mess with the eyes Tess", he said when I moaned "Can't you just hit me with some heavy duty narcotics & send me home in a taxi?") & that she was merely being asked to do her job (as opposed to contravene the Geneva Convention) failed to stem her flow of righteous indignance.
I have bigger fish to fry & I held my own (even though I was in excrutiating pain) so I wouldn't have taken it any further. Unfortunately for the doctor there were 2 nurses just outside the consult room who heard her rant. One was a senior manager & both are lodging a complaint. I protested that although they couldn't hear me I had dealt with it. They pointed out, quite rightly that, if a nurse spoke like that to a patient they would be sacked on the spot. The doctor deserves feedback but not a complaint. I hope my argument prevails.
Because this doctor is young, there's time for her to take stock of what her role involves. Treating patients (who have a habit of becoming very ill at the most inconvenient times) with dignity & respect should be paramount. I can hold my own, even when poorly, but as my kindly Mary Seacole (the black Florence nightingale that history forgot) said, "you shouldn't have to". A doctor patient relationship is based on trust. Being told off before you even begin doesn't inspire confidence & crucial information can be lost because you just don't want to engage with this scary, angry ogre.
This doctor was in a position of power & she abused it. The incident didn't traumatise me (though it wasn't pleasant), for others her actions could have had devastating emotional, psychological anf physical consequences. On behalf of other vulnerable patients with more serious illnesses, I will offer some constructive feedback. We all have bad days but there's a line that must never be crossed, whatever your profession, but never moreso when vulnerable people put their lives in your hands.
Forgive any typos or ramblings. I've got blurred vision & am heavily medicated. I've been banned from using the computer, driving heavy machinery or handling delicate/valuable objects for the next week at least. Until then my friends.
Tess
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