I don't want to write about myself, but ...
I don't normally write about myself on here, but this seems important
I don’t often write about aspects of my own life on here because I feel like it’s healthy to keep a separation between my work and my personal life.
Regular readers may have gleaned a few things about me over they years, especially if they’ve been following since the early days, but I have tried to keep my own personal circumstances out of my reportage and analysis as much as possible.
I’ve been having a hard time recently. I won’t share any of the details because I must protect the privacy of the people around me, but I’ve been dealing with a few difficult things.
Something that really exacerbates my own personal travails is the fact the there’s been a live-streamed genocide going on for almost two years, and now the depraved genocidier-in-chief seems to be trying to trigger World War III.
We’ve all seen the horrifying photos and videos. We’ve all seen the unimaginable suffering of innocent people; the blatant war crimes; the violence and depravity; the bombed hospitals and murdered medics; the mutilated and dismembered bodies; the starving children; and Israelis gleefully looting; blockading aid; mocking their victims; and happily revelling in their atrocities.
What makes it so much worse is that our political leaders (and almost all of the professional media class) are complicit in all of it. It’s not just that they outright refuse to condemn or intervene; to discourage the constant escalations; or to put economic sanctions on the perpetrators, they’re still actively selling them weapons and providing them logistical support and diplomatic cover.
As children we wondered how ordinary people allowed atrocities like the Holocaust to happen, yet we’ve been witnessing a genocide in gory graphic detail for all of this time, and many people have become so desensitised to it by now that they just seem to think "oh dear" and not much more (let’s not talk about those who actively support it).
The most that those who really care can do is get active; go on protests; engage in direct action; boycott companies that are complicit; put pressure on our politicians to end our nation’s complicity; support the victims; show solidarity with those the genocide supporters keep trying to "cancel" for speaking out; and keep raising our own voices about how wrong it is.
As individuals we’re powerless to stop it, and the people with the actual power to do something to stop it are wilfully complicit.
It’s so difficult to have personal problems with these atrocities going on, because whatever you or I may be going through, it pales into insignificance compared to what the poor suffering Palestinians have been enduring.
I’m not saying any of this to elicit sympathy.
I just know that there must be many other people out there enduring their own difficult circumstances too, while suffering the mental anguish of seeing one of the great injustices of our lifetimes play out in real time, every day, on our phones and devices.
I’m not saying this because I have some grand solution either. The powerlessness is overwhelming.
All I can do is seek support from friends and family, people who care for me, and resolve to do more to oppose the genocide too, because it’s a moral responsibility to oppose evil when we see it.
I just want to say that if you’re suffering too, and you’re also feeling this anguish, powerlessness, and dread, you’re not alone.
It would be difficult to feel mentally healthy having seen what we’ve seen under the best of circumstances, but few of us have such perfect lives, right?
I’m just putting this out here because it’s something I’ve discussed with friends, and I haven’t really seen anyone saying in print or online (someone almost certainly has, and probably much more eloquently than this, but I must have missed it).
Do you feel the same?
Do you have anything to add?
Please do
Absolutely get where you are coming from! Add to that, as an environmental professional I deal daily with our rush to make humans extinct. Never has my mantra been more appropriate 'it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness'. But these days I'm struggling to find the matches . . . 😢
I understand entirely. I teach Politics, which means I have to engage with the news constantly and it definitely wrecks my mental health. Not just the horrors of what's happening, but being perpetually gaslit and lied to. As such, I've tuned out of the latest round of atrocities in Gaza for self-preservation, and I think it's helped my mental wellbeing. As self-help guru Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." Modern politics is designed to break people who care, It's OK to step back once in a while.