Friday night philosophy

This Friday night finds me a little unsettled. I suppose it's normal after six weeks overseas, where every day is an adventure, to find it difficult to settle back into the humdrum life we "have" to live. As I sit here, drink in hand, listening to Chopin try to soothe my troubled soul, my mind is distilling all the experiences we've had. I remember certain snapshots of certain moments; flying over the open spaces of the Northern Territory and wondering at the geological processes that formed some of the mountain ranges there; wondering at the thoughts of those men at Fort Canning who made the fateful decision to surrender to the Japanese; admiring the peaceful and ordered society in Singapore, and yet, in the knowledge that a young Australian had recently been hanged there. I wondered at his thoughts as he pondered his fate in Changi jail, just as so many other young Australian Prisoners of War had done a half century before in the same jail.

In a different country on the other side of the world I was to wonder, when I visited the War Cabinet Rooms, at different things. I was to wonder at the resilience and resourcefulness of the people from whom I am descended.  I was to wonder at the Mother of all Parliaments, and the gift those men and women who fought so hard for it gave to the world. I was to wonder, at the tombs of Newton and Darwin, just what a huge debt the world owed these men  And I was to contemplate the horror of the Holocaust when I visited the display at the Imperial War Museum. Just as my spirits soared at the genius of man, so did they plunge when I was reminded of his inhumanity to man.

So, I must admit to being a bit unsettled about the human condition. On the one hand I pay homage to those who have taken mankind so far, and yet, as I contemplate this world we live in, I despair of those who would take us back to the jungle, and to the ignorance that our ancestors have struggled so heroically to overcome. Maybe Chopin has the answers. With some help from JW, of course.