Opposites don't attract

I've been thinking about opposites a lot the past few days, you know, war and peace, good and evil, love and hate. Last night a young lad, 18 years old, has (allegedly) run amok and (allegedly) stabbed some policemen and wound up on a mortuary slab as a consequence. Very sadly, things like this happen from time to time; far too often, but there it is. But this is not how this unfortunate incident is being reported. The media headlines are all about a 'known terror suspect' being neutralised by heroic coppers, just doing their jobs, protecting 'all of us' from 'extremism'. Vast swathes of the populace are now expected to be locking their doors and quaking in their boots lest balaclava-clad 'terrorists' come and try to decapitate them in their beds.

Maybe it's Grand Final season, but people seem to have formed up faster than usual into two opposing camps, talking about the 'East' and the 'West' and the 'left' and the 'right', 'good' and 'evil' as if these terms had any meaning, except to widen the gap between understanding and compassion. Facebook and Twitter have been alight with slanging matches between those for and against getting involved in Gulf War III. The debate, quite heated and rather sweary in many instances, is mostly conducted by people who have very little knowledge of the history and politics of the region, or the vital (but little discussed) importance of a steady supply of oil to the US military industrial complex. People are accused of being 'traitors' if they question the wisdom of Australia getting involved in a civil war on the other side of the world when we (allegedly) can't afford to fund education or health. People are accused of being 'morons' or 'trolls' if they are in favour of it. There is much ill-informed debate about the tenets of Islam, the wearing of burqas and why 'they hate us'. In fact, 'they' have many good reasons to hate us, and our plasma TVs are nothing to do with it.

It seems pretty obvious to me, that the government is trying to tell us that black is white, up is down, war is peace and 'baddies' can be made into 'goodies' by killing as many of them as possible, torturing them, kicking them off their land and confiscating their stuff. If they have the nerve to rebel violently against this treatment, it's because they want to invade us, because they 'hate our way of life', and because, well, violence is just part of their nature (yeah right, unlike 'us', eh?). We're also told that in order to protect 'our freedoms', we citizens should submit meekly to more surveillance and new laws restricting our movements.

Of course, as Dr Martin Luther King once famously said 'darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that'. But, as usual, the knee jerk reaction is to do the exact opposite. When will we learn to engage with others and seek out areas of agreement before it comes to blows? When will we learn that in order to end conflicts, we need to understand what the root cause is and attend to it? When will we learn that if we don't learn to share the Earth's resources equitably, and treat everyone with dignity and respect, we will never, ever have peace? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that shouting propaganda at each other won't help with any of this.