WHO'S WORLD OF FANTASY WILL YOU DIVE INTO NEXT?

Allow me a slight…departure from what you would expect me to write to tackling a currently burning issue. Well, it’s been on for the last six months, and I admit that had it not been for my tuning into BBC news today, it had slipped to the back of my mind.

I recently read a book published in the year 2000 (I was a year old?) by J. C. Willke “Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: Past and Present”. A really good read. An interesting thing he writes at one point is that indifference really is what fuels inhumane acts. Of course in the book he speaks of euthanasia and its history, but one would find that even all these years later, his words ring true.

6 months ago, Ukraine was attacked by Russia. And I’m sorry to say that I had…forgotten. With the war being so far from home and effects being rising prices of fuel, it’s rather difficult to empathise with something like that, especially when it stops making the headlines in your nation/country.

In today’s (Saturday, 27th August 2022) BBC News, there was a 25-30mins exclusive featuring a few Ukrainian refugees, their children and stories of their experiences and loved ones; and 2 Russians towards the end. Listening to their accounts, first hand, really brought into focus to what’s really happening out there.

What really grabbed my attention, and is still lodged in my memory, is what one of the Russians said. He confirmed that not all Russians are supporting the war against Ukraine, but they really cannot do much about it because at the end of the day, they could suffer sanctions (and jail) by their government.

An analogy I would like to use as an intermission to the previous paragraph is: supposing there are 2 teams in a match, yeah? And you, as a spectator, support the opposing team because you know that perhaps your team has cheated in a subtle way. Maybe they are all doped? But then the opponents’ supporters are against you regardless because at the end of the day, you belong to “them”. And so you end up not really belonging anywhere.

Frustrated at being, uh, ” labelled” by the opposing side, you end up supporting your home team since, warts and all, they are your legitimate people.

Linking this with the main article, both Russians mentioned that they and others like them don’t support the war. At the same time, they do not think that the sanctions imposed on them as “Russians” will help solve anything. In fact, it would fuel the war because they’ve also been “labelled” as “one of them”.

But is it really just the sanctions that are contributing to the war that has “no near end in sight”?

Going back to J. C. Willke’s words on ‘indifference’, you and I who are currently “too busy” or “preoccupied with other matters” to care about what’s happening in Ukraine could as well be guilty of adding to the attacks on Ukraine.

I mean, how many times in a week does the Russia-Ukraine conflict feature in your newspaper 6 months down the line? How many times have you (even randomly) searched about the latest news on the war?

Would it be simpler to say that we just “don’t care for as long as it doesn’t affect us”? I, for one, had lost sight of the happenings, but I am willing to use this space and my social media accounts to call an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

And I think you can too. With social media and the internet, we can have billions of people talking about the war and calling an end to it. And we in our generation have witnessed just how powerful social media can be.

It’s not about taking up arms (most of us, including me, haha do not know how to fight), but speaking with one voice.

Remember the film “Horton hears a Who”? Sure, all the Whos in Whoville made noise, but it was the one more yelp that really broke the noise barrier. Perhaps your voice could be the yelp. But we’ll never know until we try.

So how about using a #Russia-Ukraine, or #Endthewar, or even simply #Ukraine? Even if you don’t really mean it (because there are those of us who are also rather feeling-less, hehe), putting it out there makes all the difference.

Let’s talk about Russia-Ukraine. Let’s have those persons in mind. Otherwise, we’ll be ‘indifferent’ and thus ‘unknowingly’ and ‘unintentionally’ contributing to the never ending war.

See you out there 🙂

(This is a fully opined article, please feel free to agree or disagree in the comments below)