WE NEED TO STOP THIS NOW

"The Black Dawg come a-callin', the Black Dawg come a-callin'…"

I first heard him yapping on Saturday morning when I got up to read that most dreadful of news about the latest hostage being executed. This, as you can imagine, did not help to start the day on a positive note, and merely served to fail utterly to restore my faith in basic humanity.

Or rather underline what I am starting to come to believe is the horrific nature of what basic humanity might turn out to be.

Luckily, the world still has upon it people who believe that humanity is capable of so much better, which is what led this man to try and help, and is ultimately what the cruel, heartless creatures who took his life might never understand.

That they choose to believe that this is all the fault of the governments and their choice to continue with their air strikes, and to try to shift the blame upon them is, of course, another basic human trait when we know that we're doing something utterly wrong. Shift the personal responsibility elsewhere when we know that, when it comes down to it, the person holding the blade, or the gun, is the one who makes the choice, and they are the only ones to blame.

And yet…

When so many people had stood up and pleaded for a happier outcome, the horror itself seemed unnecessarily cruel, when we had all begun to believe that this time, this time, somebody might actually listen and something approaching a humane resolution might be found. But a good man paid for his faith in humanity with his life, and along with him, an awful lot of hope was snuffed out, too.

After all, when you kill hope, what is left?

The young men and young women so eager to join in with this carnage seem not to understand this basic need for decency in order for us all to survive. They seem more convinced that the world will be better if we make it their way… but how can their way possibly be a better way, when all it brings is fear, death, and heartbreak?

Of course, the easiest people to indoctrinate are always those with the least to lose.  Those who look about them and see that everyone else seems to have something, whilst they think they've got nothing themselves. This is, almost by definition, the young, who will never realise what it is that they have got until it's gone. But when you believe that you're immortal and invincible, none of that seems to matter all that much when you believe that you can just take what you want and taking a life, taking everything a person has, is nothing.

We need to stop this now, we really do…. not least because I really don't think that we - I -can cope with this much more.

Still, after all that, I tried, I really tried, to find a shred of optimism, and found a way to put across the simple belief that we still have to trust in people, but then the Black Dog really started to bark, however, at the cynical response to a message of peace I tried to put back into the world.

You see that is why they're starting to defeat us, because we are beginning to feel defeated by the simple sense of powerlessness in the face of this threat, and powerlessness makes us fearful, and fear makes us lash out, and lashing out is basically losing.

Having staggered through that gloomiest of Saturdays, I thought that I'd get up and "Write Angry" on Sunday morning. That furious, raging prose would pour out of me as I tried to manage the Black Dog's barking.

Instead I just didn't get up and write at all.

Perhaps I'm finally far too broken by humanity to be bothered by it any more, or perhaps I am just beyond caring, or beyond hope.

Or perhaps I care far too much, and words no longer seem adequate or capable of working.

I've always hoped & believed that love is stronger than hate, yet I can't help but feel that hate seems to have the upper hand at the moment.

The Black Dog is barking, and the world has gone mad again…

And, as is the way of these things, I did my retail therapy, and listened to some music… because Bach just reminds us all that humanity is capable of greatness from time-to-time, and Beethoven wrote, well, "Ode to Joy" (which says it all, really) and I ultimately decided that perhaps the best thing to do was to lock you all up in the asylum (if you understand the Adams reference) and throw away the key.