Yesterday the Labour MP Jo Cox was shot dead while campaigning to keep Britain in the European Union. A sad day. It is horrid to see politics degenerating into violence.
A friend passed on this message from a friend of hers...
"Nothing, recently , has shocked me more than yesterday’s senseless , horrible murder of Jo Cox , a young British MP , mother of two and only just 41 years old ... Why ? “ Morte pour l’Europe “ said the front page of our local newspaper .. but I’m am asking : “ what has happened to Britain, a country that for many decades after WW2 , one could admire for its democratic values, its achievements, its Culture ? Why so much hatred for Europe? Because it is obvious that many of those who are going to vote against Brexit , will only do it for their personal and financial interests – they’ll vote for “une Europe à la Carte “. How sad !
I was raised and educated on the border between France and Germany , born in the mid 1930s , I know how much hatred, grief and destruction the two World Wars brought to my homeland, but I then grew up feeling, not only French but also profoundly and happily European ! My husband is British and our children live in two different European countries... I want nothing more than for Europe to survive , even though we all know that it has to get better and stronger. But today, my thoughts go back to Stefan Zweig’s masterpiece : “ Die Welt von Gestern” ( the World of Yesterday ),"
I have rather similar feelings.
There are two issues here, that may be related. One is the murder and the other is the referendum. The second issue, of course, has several dimensions.
Regarding the murder, it is appalling both because any murder is so and because one has deep sympathy for the bereaved family. What a terrible shock to come home from school and find that Mummy has been murdered in the street. As a Buddhist one also has some compassion for the poor fool who stupidly pulled the trigger who must have been tormented by a hundred devils. More generally, it appalls because perhaps the greatest virtue of democracy is that it permits political issues to be settled without violence and that is a huge step toward civilisation which it would be terrible to lose.
One says "senseless" meaning that whatever reason there was would be insufficient to justify such an act, but strictly speaking, violence is rarely if ever without some kind of sense and the puzzle now is to ascertain what the motive actually was. Perhaps this murder was politically motivated, in which case, it was anti-European and probably pro-extreme right. Perhaps the man was mentally ill, but even if he was there will still have been some motive. Perhaps the whole thing had nothing to do with the referendum, but that seems unlikely in the circumstances.
Regarding the referendum, the debate has been dominated by two issues - economics and immigration. There has been hardly a mention of international peace and friendship or the advance of culture. It seems to have resolved into the question how can we keep foreigners out while making as much money as possible and since the two halves of this proposition point in diametrically opposite directions the opinion polls have hovered around a 50-50 split of the vote, though the Leave camp seems to have drawn slightly ahead in recent days, perhaps due to the recent event in America that highlights the Middle East problem and so swings attention toward immigration and away from economics.
it does seem extremely sad that so many people seem willing even to over-ride their national economic interest so as to be able to avoid helping foreigners fleeing from war and chaos, while, as the commentator says, many others will only be voting for Europe on the basis of a monetary consideration. It seems ignoble and does leave one, as a British citizen, feeling rather ashamed.
I was born soon after the Second World War and was brought up with a sense that Britain stood for certain values - fairness, humanity, helping the underdog, doing things for love rather than money, political freedom, and so on. We differentiated ourselves from autocracy and communism. Among these values was a sense of welcome to those fleeing from persecution. Wasn't that part of what we had fought the war for? Whether one supported right, left or centre politically, those kinds of values were a taken for granted baseline.
Of course, some things that were lacking then have improved; gender equality has progressed, homosexuality is no longer persecuted, we have made some progress, but we also seem to have slipped backwards in some fundamental areas and that is sad. If, as is quite possible, it results in a vote to leave the EU next week, one wonders what lies over the edge.
Thinking of poor Jo Cox and her family one sees the whole business - macro and micro - in its most horrible aspect and can feel a shiver when one realises how close to chaos even the most civilised seeming country can be. The thing that brought me into Buddhism was the Buddha's words "impassioned for peace." I hope that this terrible loss will bring people together and not drive the wedge deeper.
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