'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

The Lines of Tribes

‘The Lines of Tribes will soon dissolve……’ Barack Obama speaking in Chicago.

 I remember long ago in Morocco a nomad on a camel holding a small, short wave radio to his ear, and also lying on a beach in what was Yugoslavia with The Beatles whose music was banned, playing on someone’s radio tuned into an Italian Station. As much as those who control Nation States try to keep the outside world, out, it is a losing battle.

In London, when I walk down the road I am more likely to hear a foreign language than our native tongue. This worries some people, but unlike say, in Los Angeles where that other language is almost certain to be Spanish and therefore more of a threat to the dominant culture, in London it could be any one of ten or twenty other tongues. It has already been demonstrated that by the third generation, Jamaican, Iranian, Pakistani, or Polish immigrants will essentially be as British as the rest of us, and ‘Britishness’ in its turn will have subtly changed to accommodate their inclusion.

And the British themselves? Well, today we are more Continental in our habits than before, and at the same time more American. And the Continentals? So far, although they would hate to admit it, they are more American. And the Americans? Let us just say that they came out of a melting pot in the first place, and given the insularity of their continent, and the success of their nation, there has been less need for them to adapt than the rest of us.

But those days of insularity are disappearing and slowly but surely we are merging into one loose, homogenous group, while hopefully retaining strong links with the cultures from which we sprang.

When you have knowledge of all the Buddhists, Muslims and Shinto’s in the world, how can you say that they are all wrong and you, a Jew or a Christian, are right? Isn’t it more reasonable to conclude that perhaps you are all wrong or that you are like the spokes of a wheel, aimed at the hub but approaching it from different directions?

Baring an Apocalypse, sense will eventually win out and Barack’s prophesy will be proved right, but the times are such that the process could use some help. The danger is that as more and more of those of Barack’s persuasion come into power, we relax and expect the job to be done for us. This is a crucial time when those tribal leaders most keen to barricade their societies against this process and impose their will on their unfortunate subjects must be uprooted. This will only happen peacefully with the strident support of the free people of the world; otherwise it will come down to another round of violence and killing. Emerging countries can maintain a nuclear agenda and ‘their sovereignty’ in the face of the most powerful nations in the world, but they cannot in the face of the free people of the world. The sooner we the people, stop bleating about globalisation, capitalism or corporate corruption and start going global in our condemnation of Al Qaeda, The Taliban, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Tibet, North Korea, and Iran’s nuclear programme, the better.

As Barack himself has shown us, we don’t even need to take to the streets, not that it is a bad idea if the scale is big enough. Radio has also largely played its part and now mobile phones and the Internet are the new medium. I almost said ‘the new weapons’, but that would be wrong, they are not weapons. They are instruments of love. The protest must be one of love. If we show a little love, then the Lines of Tribes will dissolve in the space of a lifetime.

 

Post Your