A reflection on Bondi

Source: www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au

Given the wall-to-wall coverage of the Bondi attack, its horror, and the feelings and thoughts that have swirled from the eye of that storm, I feel the need to express an idea I've had for some time. 

What is it that fosters a terrible action like this by a father and his son? 

And yet again, the perpetrators who displayed their hate, in this case, of Jews, by violent means, are men.

While I applaud every effort to minimise / eradicate antisemitism, I believe it is a symptom of a much deeper division in our society, one based on the belief that one race is "superior" to all others. Or that one race is "inferior" to all others. It doesn't matter the race. 

To make matters worse, and deeply entwined with this, is religious arrogance and chauvinism. "My religion is right and yours is wrong."

The sooner we disentangle centuries and millennia of myth-telling, closed-minded beliefs, the deliberate creation of victim mentalities, the false beliefs that "god" gives us the right, the inhumane belief that revenge is acceptable, the sooner we will stop killing each other.

We ourselves will be the cause of our own disintegration, if not extinction. Only our species has that power. Only our species is utterly stupid and arrogant enough to let it happen.

Two men holding guns. Aiming. Killing. Aiming again. Killing again. 

Whether as an individual, a political leader or faction, a nation, a cult, it doesn't matter. The principal is the same.

I believe that these actions are born of fear: a deep fear of death. 

If I (that is, me the individual, beliefs, possessions, culture, clan, traditions, power) am to live, another "I" has to die.

I suspect that this mentality will shift only when each of us is willing to accept that the loss of letting go (like a "death") will lead, inevitably, to the beginning of an embrace.