When the other speaks…

When the other speaks, and you hear, the shock is visceral. Your world grows and changes for the better. For me it happened at a Virginia Woolf conference in Rhode Island back in 1982. In preparation I had read many of Woolf’s novels as part of the early 20th Century effort to build identity within language by fighting with and challenging form, grammar and narrative. But at the conference there were distinct readings I had not heard.

I read William Faulkner’s ‘The Sound and The Fury’ two years later. It comfortably sat in that view of narrative progression, until our professor read aloud the opening passage. He had a strong southern accent and suddenly the voice sprang heard from the page and I could understand, could listen.

I studied Keat’s ‘Ode on Melancholy’ at 16 and when our teacher read it aloud and began to cry as he read it, I knew I was missing something. Why would he cry?

I recently began Gandhi’s ‘Experiments in Truth’. He tells his story. It’s quite unique. He tells his story, not anyone else’s. He does not ask that you do as he did. He explains that it is his story and that all others are equally valid as they are their stories. It’s quite disarming as he is very enamoured of religions and I read them as myth and fable. But he reads them too and attempt to understand, try on, and blend them into a life of truth — that ephemeral Socratic meme. In that it is so ever changing the only challenge one can take is to live an ever changing life that seeks occasional concurrence. One’s response is living.

Now to return, as I have so often, to that moment in Rhode Island so long ago. The voice I heard momentarily was Woman. I identify it as such — I do not pretend that it was real, it was what I could hear with the help of my family, friends and peers. For they helped me as I fell. They caught me with humour, long conversations and support in reading more. My misunderstanding was that women spoke and had access to a different language. That like French you could learn its grammar and vocabulary. That all this time women all had an innate access to this language and that the patriarchy, like the English suppressed Welsh, were fighting to silence it.

I am not qualified, by experience or education, to say that this is so or not. Needless to say I felt alienated. Was I, a slice of wonder bread, part of this mindless attempt to silence women? Was I participating in a living, whose unintended consequence was to silence Women’s voices and harm others. Wonder Bread, a slice of white, male, middle class, Anglo-Saxon privilege — mass produced, barely nutritious, anaemic, puffed in hot air and squish-able — much better toasted with peanut butter and jelly. The answer surely is yes. But the visceral response was the pain of the unintended.

I see that pain in others. They realise that just by living a quiet life they cause injustice, cruelty and abuse. And their response is often more violence in defence of their somnambulant life.

I have been lucky to live in a time where the United States have moved more of the Declaration of Independence into their Constitution — that all men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Men now encompasses women, people of all races, genders and creeds. And that all can be said, protected by law, except that which will cause harm. Sadly, though all can speak, not all will listen.

A neighbour of mine told me of the shock and disgust she felt at seeing an openly trans person walking down the high street. She said it should not be allowed. I replied that we should celebrate, for in our society today we embrace such diversity and allow more happiness in the world. I asked if she would rather we chemically castrate that individual and put them in prison? She said of course not. But that was the world we were both born into.

The world is not best, but better — there is indeed more happiness, but still great suffering and sorrow. The more we hear and intend the better it will get. Our lives are not innocent. We are many and we have a collective effect that distorts our individual intentions.

So has anyone actually heard Trump, or the Brexiteers? Have they ever empathised with either? Is globalisation, a billionaire class and climate catastrophy really what we intended? Are we responding? Changing? Like the poor frog boiled to death we may try to escape after it is too late. The water is warm — let us not unintentionally boil it. How would Gandhi have responded to our world?

He liked the British Empire, until he saw its abuses of power. He liked the Common Law — a law whom before all were equal. A law that grew by experience, interpretation, appeal and repeal. But he believed civil disobedience was the only tool to fight injustice. Collective action. He knew the costs were high to restore justice.

The Supreme Court will be correct to overthrow Roe vs. Wade. Give them a Constitution that enshrines the rights they choose not to interpret in the Constitution you have now.

Boris Johnson is correct. Throw out the European Bill of Rights from British Law. Let us adopt a Bill of Rights we choose to live by, but let it be more inclusive, afford better protection and seek out our unintended consequences, that he might be bound by these constraints more so than the european rights he would forego.

We have the tools to do this. We live in democracies. If not, there is civil disobedience and we must suffer, but for a just cause.

Tread lightly and read — hear those voices — and where your intention is not honoured, change.