Ahmed al Ahmed, the Hero of Bondi

 

Today's post is about heroes. In particular, one hero. I'm sure everyone who's not actually dead will recognise Ahmed al Ahmed, who pounced on an active shooter and disarmed him at Bondi the other day. Many people are alive now who would not have been, had it not been for his heroic and selfless act, and he is now in hospital, undergoing apparently a number of surgeries after being shot half a dozen times in the course of his noble and courageous deed.

Mr Al Ahmed is an ordinary enough man. A first generation immigrant from Syria, he is a small businessman (he's been described by various news ouutlets as both a fruiterer and a tobacconist, and I do not know which is correct, but really it hardly matters.) He is middle-aged, fat, and balding. In short, a typical Australian. You would pass him in the street without a second glance. And yet. When the chips were down, this ever-so-ordinary man reached into himself and found a well of courage and unselfishness that might well be the envy of princes.

This is my point today. Enough has been said about how shocking and dreadful the massacre was, how nasty antisemitism is, how Mr Netanyahu should STFU, and how ASIO were their usual incompetent selves. We know all these things. But what I want to talk about is the role model.

We are always presenting role models to our children. If we don't explicitly do it, the television does it for us. I'm not sure who it is the media are pushing this week, but no doubt it is some pop singer or other. It is rarely anyone with real substance. And yet, here we see the perfect role model for any child. Because Mr Al Ahmed wasn't special. He isn't especially handsome, or buff, or rich. Just an ordinary man with an ordinary life, a shopkeeper. And yet he has shown himself to be cut from the very finest cloth. Because of his actions.

I'm not saying everyone should start shoving Mr Al Ahmed down the throats of their young. That's not the way, shoving things down people's throats. All it ever does is to give the victim a distaste for the thing being shoved. I think, myself, that's the main reason our churches are so empty today. What I am saying is that we should all take a good hard look at what we ourselves admire and praise. Because that is likely to be what will influence our children. Kids don't listen much to what we tell them. But they are like sponges with what they see us actually doing.

Epstein, Motherhood, Rape Culture and the shit we need to fix.

Paedophilia is the topic of the day in America, with every celebritty with even the remotest claim to respectability frantically virtue signalling about how shocked and disgusted they are. And that's all very natural, of course. Epstein and his pervert mystery island are disgusting, worse than disgusting, they were evil, and our sympathy goes out to the many victims of this horrible business.

But before you get too well away with the pearl-clutching, I'd like to ask you if you have ever done any of the following:

• Picked up a child without warning, because you were ready to leave
• Showered kisses on a child who was squirming to get away
• Patted a little girl on the bottom 
• blown raspberries on a child's skin while he begged you not to do it
• tickled a child while she begged you to stop
• Coerced a child to sit on someone's lap when she didn't want to
• Tricked out a little girl with makeup and tiny high heeled shoes

It starts in infancy, you see. The grooming. By the time we are three, we have learned that our bodies are not our own. That we aren't allowed to say no, or if we are, that it will be disregarded. Often, we also learn that we will be punished if we don't pretend to like it. And this is not what happens on some arch-pervert's island of horrors. No, it's what happens in nice, normal families.

Alongside this, girls also learn that it's not cool to make a fuss, that we should be 'nice' at all times, that we mustn't be rude no matter what. And of course, there's a lot in that. Children in the raw state are like wild beasts, and have to be taught civilised behaviour. But I think myself that there starts to be a problem when we differentiate what we are teaching them on gender lines. 

There's no logical reason that it has to be so. Little girls and little boys are virtually identical until they're taught to be different. And yet, by the time they start kindergarten, many of them have already been selected into gender-based cultural subsets. Yes, even today. There is of course the infamous 'pink aisle' in chain stores. But it's not just that. How many little girls under, say, 7, have you seen lately, out and about wearing big frilly tutu affairs over their clothes? Probably about half of them, right? Now, how many little boys have you seen wearing one of those things? 

Even if we don't treat tiny boys differently from tiny girls, though, there is still a massive indifference in our society to the notion of consent, as applied to children. And yet, it is here, in early childhood, that the personality is formed, and the basic understanding of 'how life works' first starts to be acquired. And we need to be facilitating the development of healthy boundaries, not crippling it.

So here's my challenge for today. Yes, there's a challenge. The next time you feel a great rush of affection for some small child, and feel prompted to snatch it up and shower it with kisses or whatever, give that child a gift instead. Teach him or her THIS SONG. It's short and simple enough for even a very young child to learn by heart, and little kids love to chant this sort of thing endlessly. This one time, let them be using that very annoying habit in the service of good.

    

The Lies we Tell Ourselves (and each other)

Today I want to talk about things we commonly say that are untrue. Well, not strictly speaking untrue as such, but so mindlessly tautological that they qualify as bullshit all the same.

Now, I'm not talling about actual lies. The things I'm going to discuss here are things that are often said even by people who are Models of Rectitude and would never, ever even tell you your bum didn't look big in that. Most of these are  true, but just plain stupid, but the moast egregious is necessarily false.

Let's start with the former category. 

True, but Utterly Pointless

It's Always Darkest Before The Dawn.

Well yes, of course it is. It is hardly going to be darker AFTER the dawn, is it? That's the nature of dawn, it GETS LIGHT. You plonker. This saying, intended to be comforting, is just about the most mindless thing in the English language. 

There is No Smoke Without Fire.

True enough; that's what smoke is, after all: the output of fire. However, this saying, true on its face, is mostly used to justify the spreading of unsubstantiated gossip, and these days, to try accused persons in the media, thereby removing or severely damaging their ability to receive a fair trial, a thing considered in civilisd societies to be a basic human right. It's a saying that anyone with a conscience really ought to banish from his lexicon. 

Nothing Succeeds Like Success.

This saying (American, of course) is so meaningless as to be offensive. Success is, in fact, succeeding. It is like saying that water is wet. 

It Is What It Is.

This one is the ultimate tautology. I shouldn't knock it as I can myself be caught saying it whenever I want to virtue signal my extreme, and fictional, stoicism. Nevertheless, it is mindless and very bad.

Necessarily Untrue

It'll Brush Off When It's Dry.

This saying always causes me to howl with outrage, although because of the intention behind it, it's usually a silent, internal howl. Nothing ever really does. The idea is that something wet, or semi-wet, has defiled something, if you wait until whatever it is dries, you can just brush it off with no harm done. This is nearly always untrue, because of the nature of wetness. Wetness causes things to soak in. It is , of course, possible that a wet substance such as mud, or vomitus, or the blood of your enemies, has landed on some impermeable substance, such as leather, or plastic. Then it would indeed brush off harmlessly when dry. But in such a case, you can just bloody well wipe it off while it's still wet, can't you? If the offending matter is wet, and has landed on anything porous, or woven, or whatever, it is going to soak in, a feature of the physical propreties of water. It has to do, I believe, with molecular bonds or something. Not a physicist, but you can probably get any high school science teacher to explain it. And once it has soaked in, it isn't going to just come off with brushing, because it is in there, in the pores, between the weave, whatever.

I was going to have a lot more of these, but I can't keep on. I have to watch my blood pressure these days, or apparently my brain will squirt out of my ears or something.

Following up to my Death Cleaning post - I've started. Nothing spectacular yet, but at least one item has gone out every day, either to the rubbish or to the Blessing Box.

Finally, a word about my colleague's new book:

"Do not look at Borrogg with the Fiery Eye!" 

Too late; they looked. The resulting quest begins here.

Get TOND, BOOK ONE: THE SONS OF TLAEN RAS-ERKÉLTIS by Steven E. Scribner today! 

https://www.amazon.com/Tond-Book-One-Tlaen-Ras-Erk%C3%A9ltis/dp/1520157576