If you want answers, look elsewhere...............

Modern communications and social media mean that we are better informed than ever about what's going on in the world. And, depressingly, we seem to know more than ever what a terrible world it can be for so many of us, what a horrible species we can be and what horrors we can inflict on each other and on ourselves. But, in amongst all this, most of us retain our basic humanity and our basic decency. Most of us still believe in goodness, in justice and the fact that right can and must win. Most of us feel that "something must be done" about so many issues.

But there is a problem with thinking that something must be done because it is not always clear what that something is. Something is hard. Something is complicated. Something has consequences and we know from bitter experiences that sometimes the something we do is the wrong thing. So do we freeze? Petrified into inaction? Or do we charge ahead? Gung ho, thinking that our something, indeed anything, is better than nothing?

I don’t know the answers to any of the current big international problems facing us. Lest you think otherwise, this is not a blog with answers. It strikes me that every other column I read by every other writer I admire, has answers. How I envy them. I look at the horrors of war and I want to act. I want to march in front of the guns. I want to stand between the messianic maniacs with machetes and their victims. I want to rip the rockets from the hands of those bombing schools and killing children. But I’m not going to. I am a coward. I am too comfortable in my life. I do not have the right stuff. My morality is that of an armchair general, an armchair tactician and, perish the thought, an armchair politician.

I'm glad that I don't have to take these life and death decisions. And knowing this of myself, I can’t come to an easy position that always believes in British intervention. I can’t have that as my first option every time something happens that is hideous and brutish elsewhere. But I can’t always rule it out either. I can’t rule out sending into danger the younger and braver people of this country who volunteer to protect us and to police our world. I don’t have a singular rule that says we should always or never take action. In some ways, I think that those who do are possibly more comfortable than me. Their certainty is their comfort blanket. But perhaps that is me passing off my responsibilities again, passing off my own guilts for the results of the positions I do and don’t support. This is not a blog with answers. How I wish I did have answers.

So no, I don’t have answers. But maybe, just maybe it’s OK to admit that. To say – as someone privileged enough to have some sort of public platform – that I don’t know what to say. To admit that I am winging it. Because we all are. Many with better information than me. Many with better understanding than me. But we are human. And as we face the worst of what that means, we need to allow ourselves to be as open and human with each other about how we reach consensus on what must be done. Because let’s face it: Something must be done.

And to lighten the gloom, why not listen to this excellent version of 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' by the Hawaiian singer/ukulele player Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwoʻole? Am I the only person who finds an optimistic undertone in the lyrics?