PERHAPS it's something to do with summer that makes us imagine ourselves back to the days of our childhood with fond memory. Or perhaps it's something to do with disowning the present.
There is a poster near where two small children were brutally abused and then starved to death in Belgium. Who can forget the shock and numbness felt upon reading it, and learning of the story behind it? Who would say that its effects are not still felt? Who will say that it is all over? That poster carried the words: "The world is a dangerous place, not because of evil but because of those who see evil and let it happen." It reminded me of a saying from my own childhood about three monkeys who stood stock still with ears closed, mouths shut and eyes covered, doing nothing.
Yet who would admit to being guilty of doing nothing now? Are we not the children of our generation? Have we not learned from the lessons of our forebears who bore witness to the terrible waste of one world war and then the terrible crimes of another? Did we not say in some pledge of universal conscience that evil would not seduce our souls again? And yet how many times have we reneged on this, our most basic of promises?
Recent events cause even the most optimistic among us to despair for the future of the human race. We always said we would make of this place a better world, even if only for the children. But for all our indignation, and righteous anger, have we improved things? And who among us is blameless for this debacle? Which one of us could not do more good, in the confines of the societies, of the families, in which we find ourselves? The technicolour images of horror which find their way into our homes on a daily basis bear testimony to this failure. There is a world of fact that makes the video nasties of fiction pale in comparison.
But are we the better for knowing such facts? Has our knowledge of the evil of which humankind is capable made us more affirmed in our crusade against it, or is it arguable that the more facts we know the more inured we become to their reality? Have we simply become "news junkies" whose view of the world depends on the paper we read or the channel we're tuned in to? Or when we open our minds and our hearts to such images, is it in an effort to better understand the very nature of what we are and what we are capable of?
Sometimes after news of a particularly harrowing nature has broken I am forced to wonder. There is no one to protect us from what we see; no one to reassure us that the moral edge will not be lost; no one to explain where honour and charity, honesty and goodness have gone. No one to remind us of our true selves, despite ourselves.
A wise man once said that people are innately good but the circumstances of their existence makes them choose evil. Perhaps he was being overly optimistic. Yet I would consider myself a realist and hold to a similar perspective. Of course, I have been fortunate over a lifetime's work to have experienced the dignity that is the human spirit. But over that same lifetime's work to have also witnessed society's attempts to break it.
I know now that slavery and child trafficking is not confined to sub Saharan Africa and south Asia. I remember Veronica Guerin and realise that I am only learning about the politics of crime. I have witnessed poverty as the world's biggest killer and greatest cause of suffering and bad health. I have read that eccentricity in the Dublin area is now a "problem" to be quantified, and have learned that the number of suicides in Ireland last year matched the number of road traffic accidents.
I try to understand that the assets of the world's 358 billionaires exceed the combined annual incomes of almost half of the world's people, and have been told that 95 per cent of the travelling population in Ireland will die by the age of 50 due to the poor conditions in which they find themselves. I am informed that the number of women murdered in this State already this year exceeds the total for 1995. I laughed and then cried when I read that designers in Italy will not tender for the job of designing workwear for Rome's garbage collectors, despite having done so for the country's airline staff and Olympic and football teams. And I learn that, although similar in shape and form, humanity and humanism are religions apart.
For I have, through the miracle of technology, stood with a mother in front of her young daughter's coffin. I have attended at the world's gravesides and borne witness to the tears of grief. My eyes, too, have panned with the cameras the roadways on which lie spilled red pools of blood, and I am reminded of the fragile life it once sustained.
And to those who would argue against the image, I would argue that it's the memory of it we need. Without it, where will be our spur for action? And without action, when we are called to account, will it be as human beings or as monkeys?
