Reconciliation

1 . Introduction

It would have been standard practice to start an essay on Reconciliation with the of a massacre or a recently perpetrated barbarity

In a world situation where violence and social divisions have taken up such bizarre and horrific dimensions that people are reluctant to go out of their houses , and newss refer to citizens travelling by tube or bus to work as men and women of undaunted and exceptional courage nothing could be more trite or insensitive

If we must refer to massacres and acts of barbarism which incident do

we refer to

What will draw the attention of the reader

We could use the images of men jumping out of the top stories of the Twin Towers , or the photographs of an American female soldier , Lindsay England , leading naked and defeated enemy soldiers at the end of a dog 's leash , only because they belonged to the same religion as the men who flew the jets into the towers on September 11 , 2001

Possibly , the world is going through the worst of times

The survivors of the Second World War believe otherwise and some have stated to the writer that it was worse in those days , the six years from 1939 to 1945

Maybe they are right . Possibly the events that are underway today are better than having to see a raving madman gassing six million people in an attempt to wipe out a complete race , or in having the President of the most powerful country on earth , a free democracy with hundreds of top class universities and thousands of distinguished thought leaders asking his air force to go and nuke cities full of civilians , knowing that his decision would kill hundreds of thousands of infants , men women and children and then having the courage to look the world in the eye

There is nothing more pointless than discussing whether our times are better or worse than the days of Hitler and Churchill except to know understand and realise that we , as citizens of the world have learned nothing at all from history and remain just the same deeply divided prejudiced and violent to the extent of being murderous

The issue vexing every aware person today is a concern about the future and the chances of this generation , or possibly two more , being able to survive the current dangers to humanity , not just from climate change but from the spiral of divisiveness , polarisation and hatred that appears to have engulfed the planet . Cataclysm has never looked more likely

The one possible solution to the threat that is not just looming , but upon us , is from reconciliation , from being willing to be able to listen to the other side and from being able to give and take

Reconciliation however seems to be far away , a distant pipedream in a situation where a thousand conflicts are underway , in practically every country of the globe and where the leaders of the two major warring peoples , the flinty eyed President...