A bit of armchair philosophy on vengeance, love and truth.

Brung up, as I was, a good (though often puzzled and resentful) Roman Catholic, and having since eschewed religion as being rather silly really (though a great comfort to many believers), there are one or two things I was taught which still seem to make sense in the real world.

1. Vengeance is mine said the lord. To start with, this has a splendid ring about it and is therefore easy to remember. And though I don’t believe in the lord, I’m quite certain vengeance isn’t mine. In fact I don’t hold with it at all. I think vengeance leads to feuds and star-crossed lovers and broken friendships and destroyed families. Sad confused children. Bitter, lonely, old people. And of course war. So it’s a bad thing. An eye for an eye sounds nice and simple but seems to lead inevitably to the loss of more eyes than the human race can stand to lose, and to very little gain.

2. Love thy neighbour as thyself. Since myself is a creature I sometimes quite like and sometime loathe and despise this is easy.
Obviously this means something along the lines of providing tea, lifts and a friendly ear as required as well as Aid, helicopters and refuge. But also it seems to me to mean exercise tolerance, root out bigotry and stamp on prejudice….no no no, not theirs - mine, yours, ours. Something about digging out the mote in your own eye first.
3. Truth. (I can’t remember any suitably ringing biblical quotes on this one but it’s a good, strong, word anyway)
I don’t say we should always tell it but I think we should always know if we are telling it or whether we are in fact embroidering a bit. Whether we missed a bit out. Whether we coloured it to show a slightly different picture than we really saw. Should try and know what we are trying to do with it.
We should be really careful of saying this is how it really was because frankly, people aren’t very good at remembering how it really was. They aren’t good at counting the number of people they saw or recognising the faces they saw. They get colours wrong and if they see two things moving in opposite directions they don’t always know which one was going faster so they choose on the basis of what they think will fit and any optical illusions that happen to have been in the way at the time.
We are not accurate.
Which is fine as long as we don’t say he hit her I saw it all!!!! When in fact she hit him but we didn’t think that could be right. Or, the big one threw the little one down and beat him up, when in fact the little one nutted the big one in the balls and then the big one fell over on top of the little one, squashing him flat. Or (in my case), Mummy, Daddy, it was an enormous spider with a hundred legs (scream) when in fact it was a tiny mouse with four legs (and a tail which I missed completely).

Truth is an absolute requirement for digging motes out of prejudiced eyes and once motes have been dug out, vengeance may look less appealing. Of course it all could work in reverse if you dig randomly at motes without being truthful. Or, if the truth is so awful that it leads to instant undying prejudice and a burning desire for vengeance.

I can’t for the life of me remember why I started on this one but I’ve enjoyed it. It has some of the best qualities of a really satisfying horoscope, being quite non-specific but applicable to all kinds of situations and at the same time having bits which people can pick out and say Oh yes or Oh no and provide interesting specific reasons why they think that.