The madness of the human condition

Burma 1988, protests began due to the government cancelling a bunch of currency notes and instantly wiping out people's savings.

London 1988, I was temping for a music company after being made redundant from a job working for a band's management office. I decided then that I wanted to travel. I had redundancy money and started to save from my temping jobs which back then in the booming 80's were rife.

I started to plan where I wanted to go. Australia of course was on the list as my brother lives there. Two places more than anywhere stood out for me as places I wanted to visit. Vietnam was one, and Burma the other.

The borders closed and somewhere in the region of 3,000 deaths were reported. Hundreds more protesters were driven away in trucks never to be seen again.

Needless to say, I never got to Burma or Vietnam.

Now here we are almost 20 years later, the price of fuel has been raised massively in Burma which has sparked peaceful protest.

Today, the news reports at least 1 monk is dead. Looking at the blog of ko-htike it would appear that the one person that is definitely confirmed dead is not a monk at all, but a civilian sitting in a coffee shop where the police drove by and shot at them indiscriminately.

Reading this reminded me of stories my old Irish relatives would tell me about the Black and Tans sent to keep rule in Ireland who would kill indiscriminately. Clearly the comparison is nothing to what is going on in Burma.

I am appalled at the human condition that allows for this kind of thing to happen. I have talked of this before when talking of the Abu Ghraib atrocity.

I saw something on the TV the other night. Anthony Sher was reading Primo Levi - it was fascinating and interesting. One line stood out more than any other. "I no longer believe in Humanity having seen the Holocaust"

I did not see the holocaust first hand, I have read of it and seen the pictures, we all have, but I have also seen atrocities since then reported in the news that beggar belief; that make you wonder how can the people committing these acts even be human.

I hear people say they don't believe in any god but that they are "Humanists." I am agnostic, but I was born a catholic and raised in the catholic faith. There are people who argue with me about that, and claim themselves to be Humanists; they are fully paid up members of "the Humane Society." I can't help but smart or even raise a wry smile when I hear that - when I have seen what humans can, and do, do to other humans. I could never be a "humanist."

Today, Burma, I feel for you and I feel for your people. My thoughts are with you and my heart goes out to you. I hope that you succeed in diminishing the military Junta that is ruling you.