wherever we turn, there we will be...

in this small country where we pay 40 per cent of our earnings in tax, where my grandmother gets to choose between two different dishes for supper at the hospital these days, where you get fined for crossing the road when the light is red, where anyone who conforms to the rules - both written and unwritten are the good guys and anyone who doesn't are so incredibly bad, where drunken youth make it their mission to have fun at someone else's expense; in this small country, i am reduced to tears by frustration...

yesterday, i listened to an enraged woman, a theatre director who ranted about danish society and the way suffering is made insignificant. i was enraged by her. i don't do that, the recognition of suffering is part of why i do what i do. someone else told me that when we try to understand other people's prejudices, we make ourselves guilty of the same dichotomy between 'us' and 'them', the good and the bad. we point fingers and forget that even the people with other views than 'us' are humans with reasons for thinking like they do. we forget.

so what is the issue, really? we should be enraged by ourselves, how we take this 'welfare society' for granted. at the meeting yesterday, there were mostly people a good deal older than me, people that as i see it represent 'old-school social democrats' with the war, the 70s and their children behind them. people who have created the society we have today.

when the enraged woman talked vividly about wars, about guts hanging out and eyes closed in excruciating death, these people cringe and whisper "she's a bit much, isn't she?" why? if she hadn't been directing her ammunition at 'them', the ignorant politicians and self-righteous upper-class, she would have made a brilliant point.

wherever we turn, there we will be...