a not-so helpless world...

So it's been a while since I've actually dared to write about anything serious. But (thinking you might be a bit fed up with accounts of my mundane life), I thought it was probably time.

The world is a bit shit. When opening a newspaper, it is easy to be overwhelmed by all the terrible things happening. Civilians are slaughtered in wars they can neither understand nor support, young men are sent to the gallows for falling in love with one another, HIV tears communities apart. The world reeks of unjust death and there are so many causes we feel we should support. Palestine, Nigeria, Burma. It will never be possible to protest against every tyrant, every mass killing, every dose of oppression. So how do we choose the ones we take interest in and those we let slip by? Obviously the press has almost unlimited power when it comes to bringing selective suffering to our attention; while the death of every British man killed in Afghanistan is reported (and not unjustly), if every civilian death from the same war was mourned in such a way, there would never be time for any other news items. To the media, local lives lost are worth far more than their faceless counterparts.

And even when we take an interest in this seemingly unstoppable suffering, if we wish to continue our middle class, comfortable existence, we are really powerless to stop it. Is it worse to know these horrible things are going on and do nothing about it, or be ignorant to it? Ignorance is bliss, but surely an indifference to the plight of mankind is one step away from condoning it? I just hate this helpless feeling.

Just so I don't explode with the injustice of it all, I tend to take interest in just a couple of these causes at once. Recently, I've been reading a lot about the situation in Iran. I won't turn this into another of my feminist rants, although it would be so easy. Let's just say that women are caught up in a system steeped in oppression and regressive laws. It's easy to say that this nation is too far gone to be helped; to help itself. When I watched this film however; the film the Iranian authorities tried to conceal from its people, I couldn't help but feel that Iran is far from doomed.

There is a somewhat stifled revolution taking place; a challenge to a corrupt government, a yearning for peace. Unfortunately, this uprising has been greeted with shocking violence. The striking image of the beautiful Neda Agha-Soltan's blood streaked face as she died at the hands of the Iranian regime was the reason I, and millions of others began to understand the severity of the problem. The film is brilliant, and I urge you to watch it (not least for the amazing voice of Shohreh Aghdashloo who narrates and who also starred in a recent episode of The Simpsons).

For me, the important thing is that in the face of violent militarism, the people of Iran are beginning to revolt. It's not like these things can be resolved in a couple of years, but I firmly believe that Iran will come out of the darkness in time. If only the years in between could be more peaceful than those preceding them.