It was a Sunday just like any other so my mate and I were making our way down into the city to do our weekly food shopping. We were chatting away about the usual, catching up on personal events of the past week and discussing what was in the news.
Of course there's only one thing in the news at the moment and that's the almighty shitstorm brewing in the Middle East. Now at one point I was outlining to my good friend some multifaceted criticism of, what I consider to be, the quite obscene behaviour of the Israeli government.
Round about this stage in the conversation a young guy overtook us on the pavement before abruptly stopping and wheeling round to face us. I suddenly found myself stood in the sunny streets of Leeds being vigorously harangued by this guy.
His wide and angry eyes blazed at me while he shouted about how the Israelis had been in Israel over six thousand years ago and that that lands was theirs and they had every right to defend themselves etc etc. Eventually he paused to draw breath at which point I, very calmly I thought, offered my response.
"That's fine mate," I said, (or something similar,) "I just think it'd be a good idea for everyone to stop killing one another." With real venom still in his eyes, the guy just scoffed and stormed away. Now at the time I was caught completely off guard and the whole thing happened so quickly that it didn't really sink in until later, at which point I was really quite annoyed.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for talking to strangers, (among consenting adults anyway,) and I think there should be a lot more of it. I'm always happy to enter into a conversation, or even a debate with anyone and one of the things I already miss dearly about my beloved Elephant Books are the random conversations with random people.
In retrospect there were three things that really got on my tits about that guy however. I also feel that these three things are symptomatic of the whole Middle East crisis and the various other stages across the globe on which the exact same problems are being played out day after day.
Firstly, the guy made sweeping assumptions regarding my position on the matter, clearly deciding that I was an anti-Jewish(1) terrorist sympathiser. The argument I was actually making was that Israel's response to the situation was counter productive for all involved and morally wrong.
The argument he was challenging with his dogmatic outburst was that Israel had no right to exist. Had he stuck around long enough I would have asked him just who he thought he was arguing with given that I didn't particularly disagree with anything he was saying.
Now I've written much in the past about our horrifically dangerous tendency towards polarisation and this is a case in point. As far as a lot of people are concerned you're either a pro-Zionist, pro-US, Arab hating fascist or pro-terror, pro-Iran, Jew hating communist.
Clearly, trying to split the world into two neat halves of opinion is utter nonsense. As far as I'm concerned Judaism and Islam are forms of mental illness just like all other religions and, given that I don't believe in skin colour or race, all I'm left with from my perspective are humans killing humans. This, in my book, is always wrong and never useful.
In the interests of honesty and balance however, I must concede my conformity to one particular stereotype. I make it my business not to hate anyone and while there are plenty of practical and philosophical justifications for such a practice I'll be honest and admit that it's sheer laziness.
Hatred takes a huge amount of effort to sustain and I am, in the words of self styled cock-rock god Dave Wyndorf, a "lame, dope smoking, slacking little sucker." Can't be bothered with it, especially as it really isn't worth the effort.
Secondly, I wasn't particularly impressed with the point the guy tried to make. For a start it sounded suspiciously like he was simply repeating things he had heard on TV. Also, at no point did I get the impression that he could qualify or explain in detail anything he was saying, these were words being used as a club rather than to share ideas.
The idea that Israeli's have a claim to a particular piece of land because their ancestors 'owned' it thousands of years ago has also always struck me as a very weak argument. Surely for this to be valid it has to applicable to other situations as well, after all there's is nothing special or different about those people or that bit of land.
So should we be giving most of Europe to Italy? The Roman Empire 'owned' most of it a few thousand years ago after all. Or is it just a case of who was there first? In a way I that is the idea, because if it is it's even less feasible. The people that were anywhere first are dead and I'm afraid there's just been too much travelling and too much shagging in the intervening time for anyone to claim that they are the same.
Technology can be a wonderful thing and the advances we've made in communications technology can certainly have society changing benefits for us all. These same advances however have also made it easier for dogmatic propaganda to not only reach, but through context convince, huge numbers of people.
Consequently we find ourselves in the situation where people mistake parroting impressive sounding words for voicing a considered opinion. This has a tendency to deadlock debates and stall progress and so is possibly worse than having no opinion at all.
Finally, and by far the most annoying thing about this whole incident, the guy was just not interested in actually listening to anything I had to say. As far as he was concerned he knew the 'truth', so what was the point of listening? There was nothing else to know.
Now I make pretty firm statements of belief on here all the time. Once I arrive at an opinion I'll voice it, explain it and defend it to the best of my ability. I accepted a long time ago however that we never, ever reach final viewpoints on anything. I am always willing to be corrected and, most importantly, to learn.
As outlined in the 'quantising experience' part of my last post, we're all subject to change all the time. A single experience, observation, line in a book or song can turn our thinking upside down in an instant at any time.
What really got on my tits was how practically useless this guys attitude was. Surely the one thing everyone(2) can agree on is that the current situation is not the best possible and that therefore change is desirable. Yet how is anything ever going to change without discussion, without debate?
So there you have it, the guy didn't know who he was talking to, what he was talking about and wasn't interested in finding out. Those were the words on the street and they don't sound any better in retrospect than they did on the day.
Hang on tight guys, this shit is going to get worse before it gets better.
footnotes
(1) I passionately dislike the phrase anti-semitic as it is invariably used inaccurately. As I understand it a Semite is someone who comes, or is descended from someone who comes, from a certain area of the Middle East. These people, as a Jordanian friend of mine explained to me, are not exclusively Jewish.
(2) everyone except those making huge financial profits from such conflicts, such as arms manufacturers, and those politicians whose own agendas are well served by continued carnage and suffering,
