Viral peace...

Man: “woman, I apologise that you have to see this violent death”

Woman: “I know”

Man: “so, what do you want?”

Woman: “I only want to comfort your victim but also, I wanted to tell you that I love your humanity which doesn’t fade even in the shade of your barbaric and horrendous act”

This imaginary dialogue between a murderer and a passer-by in the streets of London could also be thought of as a dialogue between a Serbian soldier and a Bosnian woman. Or between an allied soldier and an Iraqi woman after an air raid that has obliterated her village.

The Woolwich murderers say they have acted in name of their God, the God of Islam and anyone who lives in the UK knows that their acts have nothing to do with the Muslim community, culture or religion. They are nothing less than a community of hard working, peaceful people who make up a fundamental part of the British social fabric.

The events in Woolwich have been defined a game changer. No longer organised action from terrorist cells co-ordinated, albeit loosely, from a central architecture. But rather spontaneous action based on a message that is partly religious and partly political. From people who were born among us, as British as it gets. This is the viral version of terror that spreads through the social networks that once again have provided fastest information with fairly reasonable accuracy regarding the bloody events of last Wednesday.

It is difficult to see a way out from within. Like is difficult for a fish to understand water. And yet, every now and then, a tiny bubble rises, perhaps from the carcass of decomposing stuff on the sea bed. And it leaves us perplexed while the experience of what envelopes us, changes.

It’s true. The visibility of what happens on the planet grows and unfortunately there are those who decide to use it to take the barbaric route. So, should we try to limit the free circulation of information on the net? It would be a missed opportunity. Because the growth of our aware consciousness is the seed of the only counter-terrorism that can dissolve what we recently saw in Woolwich.

That is the counter-terrorism demonstrated by few women on the crime scene. With no fear to comfort a young man violently brutalised, looking straight into his eyes while he fades away and grasping the last glimpses of his human greatness. With no fear to speak with one of the murderers, giving him attention, finding another human being who, behind the intoxication of a sick ego, still holds the same vital substance of his victim.

The third woman is the one who took the first shot. I like to think that she tried not to kill while taking resolute action in the face of a dangerous circumstance. I like to think so because in the name of parity we have spent half a century pushing women to become the same as men. Parity is right but it should be us men who’d need to approach the ways of the other sex.

There is only one cure: love and kindness towards human life which can’t be touched in the name of a personal God. May we call him Allah or oil, Brahman or money, Jehovah or science or even “protection of our way of life”. Everyone can take this decision within oneself when things are easy as well as in the face of adversity. World peace will not be achieved through the actions and resolve of a part (a self proclaimed “good”) against another (the presumed “evil”). World peace will be an emerging property of the planet, an evolutionary leap of our consciousness. It will be a viral peace. Ghandi said it “be the change you want to see in the world”. RIP Drummer Lee Rigby.