In the middle of the night.

In the middle of the night.

This has been an interesting week: the US has legalised gay marriage, New Zealanders are being incited to get bible in schools out of schools, New Zealand was named the 4^th safest country in the world with the USA coming at 93^rd, and when a man is shot in the face in Auckland, the headline reads Sour Grapes in Sydney.

So here I sit in the middle of the night thinking, writing and watching some of the best TV of all time – M*A*S*H.

It is a confusing time we live in. My friends have differing opinions and all of them seem very sure and yet they cannot be. Facebook is alive with colour and complaint. People are choosing sides and making their very loud opinions known. I must ask – to what end all these diatribes? Why the divisiveness and strife? What does anyone benefit?

People on both sides are wrong and have been wronged, and we are starting to hear words that may usher in a new era. Words like hate speech are becoming prevalent and people are arguing between rights and rules. People seem to forget that both rules and rights deny others things. For example, if I have a right to water it means that that water must come from somewhere and someone else cannot have it; but if there is a rule that says only tall people can have water, then my wife would miss out.

And so with all our rights and rules, what have we got ourselves other that arguments and disagreements? Now, it may be that I’m getting old and it may be that I’m old fashioned. But I think that things really were better even just 20 years ago. Granted, there was still war, bad politics and corrupt officials, but the schools tended to turn out students at the end, kindergartens didn’t have graduation ceremonies, and while TV was in 4 by 3, Braveheart and Jumanji were in theatres - certainly much better than some of the stuff turned out in the last year.

What has brought us to this point? Morals, depending on who you are talking to, are rising or falling, house prices, depending on where you are, are great or awful, education is the best or the worst it’s been in some time. The government is doing great or needs to be kicked out as soon as possible. Even the rugby is splitting the nation.

But it occurs to me that while things were better 20 years ago, things were much simpler longer ago than that. We suffered a power problem earlier in the week, and needed to turn all the power off in the house. When we turned all off the power and I had checked my facebook on my cellphone, it struck me that without the heatpump, or the computer, the tv going or the oven hood sucking, there was something that I had almost forgotten. It had been so long that I hardly recognised it: silence had pervaded the house. The electric light was gone and the candles were flickering.

And in the science I thought not about anything in particular, but I was just there in the quiet. And I reflect on the silence now as I write about the talking, the ranting and the separation caused by the things that were meant to bring us together.

I think that the time has come upon us for a great re-think. We need to re-examine what pulls us together and what drives us apart. Is anything worth the position many of us now find ourselves in, that of not knowing our own neighbours and polarising our friends on any given issue of the day. Is something that happened in another countery, something that will have no effect on the way that we conduct our lives in this one, worth losing a friend over? Why is it that while being connected 24/7 to the great world wide web, people are feeling more and more alone?

Suicides are up, teen pregnancies are up, the road toll is up; it seems as though the only things going down are test scores. When it would take me less than a day to download all the information in the library of congress, why is it that people seem so uninformed?

So I wonder, If what this world needs is more time to ourselves, to reconnect with our neighbours, to learn something about a subject before proclaiming our views to the world, to ‘like’ less and engage more, to simply hear the silence.

That’s what I’m going to do, for now at least.

Goodnight