Tag: human fallibility

Short Story Telling

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The Open University are celebrating National Novel Writing Month or #NaNoWriMo as is peoples want. They are running a daily flash fiction competition for the next eight days. Well seven as they started yesterday. You are provided with a photograph of something lockdown or Covid related and given a maximum of fifty words to write a story. It turns out to be quite challenging but that is as much down to the word limit as the fact writing stories are in general.

That is yesterdays photo and story. The photo at the top is todays so they’re going with some atmospheric and powerful black and white thing clearly. This is my entry for today. I think the end is a bit weak but I get lazy staring at something for too long and decided just to go with it. It’s all just practise anyway. Maybe not all of it but a large enough amount for it to be a thing.

“We call this one The Six Ages of Lockdown. You can see the evolution from oblivious to acceptance, and all the mischievous boredom in between”

“They look so lifelike, you’ve really captured something authentic”

“Yes, we’re very pleased with this installation”

“It’s as if the sculptor actually lived it.”

Having posted it in the comments section I’m now aware, and it’s been fifteen minutes now, that nobody has liked it. Every other has at least one, some several and there’s even the odd laughing emoji. Nobody likes to admit to these kinds of insecurities but it is enjoyable observing them in myself. We’re all human after all and we all just want a little confirmation that we’re doing something right or well. Arenas like Facebook simply feed this. Can it be seen as being part of the fallible human ideal I like to believe in I wonder. Potentially but perhaps it’s our response to our insecurities which can be looked on as the fallible part. Surely our insecurities are just some animal survival mechanism checking we did the right thing and aren’t about to get eaten. I doubt I’m going to get eaten. It’s the pit of hissing critical snakes, or even worse, the silent version which says nothing at all I’m more worried about.

The link in the hashtag at the top takes you to the actual celebration of writing month but you can enter on the Open Universities Facebook page if you too want to attempt being a short short short story teller too. I’ll see you there tomorrow, likes or no likes.

Life & Death

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The refugee crisis never really went away, it just calmed down a little and was forgotten about. People are still dying on a daily basis. Children are still drowning and we’re continuing to let it happen because of ideological beliefs, ignorance and our own self-serving desires. With the names, ages and photographs of the dead Kurdish-Iranian family being realised there is finally a human face being put on those desperate enough to risk their lives because what they leave behind is worse. Not since Alan Kurdi washed up on that Turkish beach over five years ago have refugees been treated like human beings. It is such a rarity, it stands out as novel. And here we are; Rasoul Iran-Nejad, 35, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, 35, Anita, 9, Armin, 6 and Artin, 15 months. Victims.

It would be easy to blame the current Government, they make it easy. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings, the man with the advice. They’re responsible. The leader of the opposition Keir Starmer, he’s responsible. They are culpable but to turn this into a piece going on about particular politicians or leaders doesn’t do a dead family any honour. If anything they just get used so a point can be made. It doesn’t respect them it just makes them pawns and objects in this continued war for power. They have power, we don’t like how they use it, we think we could do better, we use a dead family as a stick and next week we find something else. We just use them. We use them in the same way the other side would use the highjacking of the oil tanker by Nigerians seeking refuge earlier this week. Desperate people getting used in desperate moments.

How then can we create legitimate discussions about the deaths of these people and find a culpable party or argue about how and whether people should be able to move freely on this planet, without using examples of those who died as a consequence of a series of decision based upon those arguments. We must be able to discuss it. Is it blame? Do discussions fail the moment we allow blame and guilt in? People make errors and there will always be repercussions but it feels like both sides of the argument, the accuser and the accused, don’t want to find a resolution, or at least a resolution that doesn’t perpetuate the cycle of suffering.

In that case we, us, me, I am just as responsible as those previously mentioned leaders. Their job is to be the face of guilt and when that guilt becomes too much they’ll be replaced by a fresh face and so on. We continue to perpetuate this by deluding ourselves into believing the next fresh face will be the good one yet we don’t even know what that means because we ourselves don’t behave or exist in any morally virtuous way. But then we’re human and we’re fallible. We need to forgive ourselves for this too and accept these ideas of good and bad are simply ideas, nothing more. In the meantime a young family have died and while young families have always died and young families will always die let’s not make their death pointless. Life is never worthless and death will always be it’s equal.

The Wrong Herd

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

There are times we must question whether we are right. Nobody is ever one hundred percent right of course but let’s say more right than wrong. Someone who goes through life always believing themselves to be right in everything may not end up with many friends but could likely have successes in other respects. If someone goes through life always believing themselves wrong, would it be the opposite outcome? Probably unlikely. It must be important to be aware that we may just be wrong though. Is that humility? Maybe self-awareness?

I was thinking of discussing something in the news. One of those fallback pieces in which I decide to deride some politicians for their ineptitude, or an evolution in something on a geopolitical level that arouses some dissatisfaction within me. Usually a complaint of some sort. We’re less likely to be drawn to stories that have a positive and happy narrative remember. Maybe there’s something in that we could learn from. We’re drawn to stories of misery while living lives of misery. Like creates like as they say. Perhaps I should do a new ten day challenge and only write about happy positive things. I’ll probably pass on that one.

Usually the political stories I’m drawn to involve ones bashing the current government in the UK or the US, and commonly the opposition to both governments too. As you can imagine I’m not full of much belief in the political legitimacies of these two countries. Other people though must be. I say must be because not only did enough people vote in the two buffoons holding power but it also appears enough people want to vote in the establishment representatives who will most likely replace them at the next opportunity. When we see a large group of other people doing things we’re inclined to believe they may just be right and we may just be wrong. Herd mentally amongst many other names. It is easy to dismiss these people voting for these two sides as adherents of such a mental state but it’s likely I’m just swayed by another herd that I want to be part of. It’s likely a much smaller herd and one that feeds certain things in my fearful sense of survival but it’s a herd none the less.

With all this then we must all admit we’re being played one way or another. This huge game of power is rattling away as different groups battle it out for moral superiority and likely financial gain one way or another. Money corrupts, power corrupts, everything seems to corrupt, especially morality. Perhaps we’re just a corrupt species and we need to accept it. Or maybe we just need to stop worrying about whatever wrongs are happening in the world and focus on life as it unfolds before us. One extreme to the other yet again. It’s just exhausting that these arseholes continually manage to win power. More so when they’re clearly morally bankrupt and doing a bad job. It’s even possible to imagine things like this could finally defeat me and I stop giving a shit about the world. Maybe just give a shit in a different way. A detached way perhaps, or one that doesn’t get caught up in the hyperbolic nature of power. Or even my own perceived role within all this power. There’s got to be an answer somewhere. I’m sure we’ll see it too when we can finally figure out what it is that has been in front of our eyes all this time.