The real world crisis . . .

In 2000 I watched television reports about Robert Mugabe and the tyranny and abuse that he called government. Many others watched too. And in the years that have followed watching is still as much as we do. Now there’s cholera as well as hunger and fear – and still there’s no action.

This year, again, little NZ kids have been killed by their family members. We’ve listened to excuses such as ‘it’s our culture’ and ‘it’s our family’s tradition’.

We watched when Rwandans killed each other too. Some people tried to help but most didn’t. Most watched and said ‘that’s terrible, change the channel’.

The Africans in Darfur are being systematically abused and killed by their Arab country-folk. It’s not a complicated situation. The Sudanese government is committing genocide.
The North Koreans are staring at another winter of food shortages, and substandard unheated housing. And we do… nothing.

Carbon emissions continue to rise and so we can expect the globe’s climate to continue to mess up. This will mean people in Bangladesh will lose farmland and houses.

Some years ago I was in Moscow, on the metro, and saw a woman berating her son. She spat evil hate at him and he was cowering in visible trembling fear. It was a horrible scene. Another woman, a stranger, approached the mother and spoke with her, calmly and patiently and the situation eased.

A little while later I saw a would-be pickpocket making a move on a sleeping train passenger. Another passenger approached the would-be thief and actively intervened – kicked the ratbag off the train and then woke the sleeping passenger and gave him a telling off for being irresponsible.

When some teenagers who were waiting at a bus stop were making too much noise a grandmother told them to calm down because they were scaring the small children. The teenagers apologised and quietened down.

This is what is to be done. There are no innocent bystanders in the world’s crises. To stand idly by is not to be innocent, it is to be guilty of neglect.

We must take more action against our own government when it doesn’t take sufficient action. We must e-mail or call our MPs and then call them again and again and demand that our country be managed responsibly.

We must personally take greater care of our environment – by not buying harmful products, by writing to irresponsible businesses and telling them why we refuse their products. And we must have the courage to stand up to bullies and thieves and neighbourhood ratbags.

It’s not the interest rate, it’s the level of interest we show in other people that matters. That’s the real world crisis.

— Peter Giddens