Tell me, why do we sing imagine?
maandag 23 november 2015 om 16:13
Last week I learned that empathy is more controversial than hatred :-( We sing imagine, but ...can we put ourselves in other's shoes?
Most of us can imagine the horror of a happy night at a restaurant, a concert-hall, an airplane or a soccer-stadium, ending in massive bloodshed. Massive and meaningless loss of innocent lives.
We can imagine the tremendous sadness and anger of the families of the victims.
We can imagine the horror of living in a City where schools, shops, subways and offices are closed, where armoured vehicles roll through the streets and shots are fired.
We can even imagine the Utopian World of John Lennon.
If we can imagine all that, how come we cannot imagine what it is like to flee from a warzone?
Or, how come we can't imagine what it would be like, if it were your son or brother that the army is after? How come we cannot put ourselves in the shoes of, for example, Salah Abdeslam's Mother?
Imagine, what it would be like, to see Newspaper-photographs, with a human spine, human jaw-bone and black haired skull-parts in the streets of Saint Denis. (The Irish-Mirror.co.uk was one of the few Media that had mosaic-filtered the skull-parts.)
Imagine what it would be like to wonder if it is your son or daughter. Not just dead, but also an assassin: leaving you to be the mother of a killer, for the remainder of your days.
Let's not pretend we can imagine.
We can't.
We are incapable of putting ourselves in anyone's shoes.
If we could, we —none of us, of whatever religion we are— would not accept any invitation to jihad :-(
More on Paris/Brussels/Molenbeek:
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