Heroes Not Zombies

I detest the xenophobic politics sprouting up everywhere these days.

Nature thrives on diversity and all areas of society do too.

If you work in a team you don’t want everyone to think the same way. Well you don’t if you want to promote creativity, innovation and resilience. You do if you want to impose conformity and control.

If you want an institution, whether a school, university, health service or company, diversity is essential for adaptation and survival.

Discrimination against people on the basis of where they were born, or where their parents or grandparents were born is simply wrong – morally and rationally.

Immigration is not a problem – integration is. We should be putting our energies and resources into integration – building mutually beneficial relationships between well differentiated parts – between people who are different from each other, between people and the rest of Nature.

This story – https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckkkgvl59x3o.amp – is a good example – a PhD student from Romania studying at Imperial College in London and working with the University of Edinburgh and Cancer Research Horizons to develop a home test which could replace uncomfortable, unpleasant smear tests. If successful this could make a big contribution to reducing the numbers of women who will die from cervical cancer.

It’s really not hard to find other great examples of integrated diversity.

Shame on those politicians who promote hatred and fear of “the other”.

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We need more love in this world.

Love is a word we can use too easily (“I love chocolate”) and/or not enough (how often do you tell your loved ones that you love them?)

But I reckon it’s at the foundation and the core of a good life, of a good society, of a good relationship.

I’m thinking of the love we feel and give without any expectation of return. I don’t mean desire. Desire might be coloured by love, but it might not. I mean the love that directs and maintains our attention. The love that enables us to notice, to care. The love that doesn’t judge, the love that opens our heart to “the other”, not to possess, or own, or control, or to make them the same as we are. But the love that stirs curiosity, makes us want to know the other better, more deeply, more fully.

Is my action loving? Are my words loving? Am I thinking loving thoughts?

I wish we could all put love at the heart, at the core, in the foundations of all we do, say and think…..as much as we possibly can.

In a world riven with divisions, hatred and fear, the answer, surely, is love.

Here’s my challenge, to myself, and to you….this week, just notice each day every time you feel love in your heart. (and maybe note it down somewhere, in a journal, a notebook, on your phone). Then let’s reflect in a week’s time, and set an intention to love a little bit more.

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