By Slanted Light

A loyal friend, bravely defending someone from attack? Sounds great. But what if that someone was a known murderer? Still okay perhaps - surely attack is wrong no matter who its against. Except that's not true either, it depends on the motives. Its the police attacking, to try and arrest a murderer, and the friend is also a murderer..? They might do it again? So is the loyalty, the bravery, still commendable? Well, actually perhaps it is, we just might see it as misplaced. I suppose maybe that's what I meant by "higher" ideals. So now we have murk and levels! Yes, your example - Bush being loyal to Bolton: no problem on a personal level, but if it were at the expense of other people, the world, then no longer a good thing. I suppose everything has to be placed in context to make any sense of it at all... and then its only our own sense it'll ever make.

****Yeah, it’s all so bloody difficult though isn’t it? That’s why governing is almost an impossible task: whose interests? Whose rights? Blah Blah. Blah.

You made me think tho' (well, clearly after all this!) when you described those as Bodie's ideals - they're actually things that I place very highly too, well certainly loyalty and friendship, but I've never consciously thought of them as ideals. I suppose I thought they were too basic somehow for that.

***Yes I suppose these things shouldn’t have to be something that you consciously strive for because they’re automatic, they just *are*, like getting up in the morning, not killing your parents, not kicking the dog. So ingrained that you don’t *have* to consider them. (And, I know, that in itself is a value-loaded statement). But more and more, listening to the news, radio talk-ins, etc. I’m discovering people for whom these ideals are not ingrained, not an automatic part of their existence, not even present in their lives.. In short, I suppose we don’t all share common values. Like the right to life: for some people this isn’t the most important of goals to strive for but is subordinated to something else (not always sure what though). And then there are governments for whom peace is an ideal, at whatever cost, and I’m thinking of somewhere like Sweden where warfare just isn’t part of their political culture or vocabulary.. And what a different landscape they have compared to somewhere like the UK where, in warfare, historically and repeatedly human life has been sacrificed for the cause of something ‘higher’.

Except that they could be lost on more than a personal level too - a totalitarian government that forces a choice between loyalty to friends and a person's own life, for example. When people live in fear of having friends for the choices they would have to make. Perhaps this is exactly what Bodie fights for..

****Yes. I’d like to think that Bodie was a better person than someone like Winston Smith and wouldn’t have capitulated. It’s funny how the concept of loyalty to the state/nation sounds more chilling (to me) than loyalty to one’s queen and country.

***So if you weren’t thinking of things like loyalty and friendship as ideals what would you consider to be an ideal I wonder? And do you mean at a personal or more collective level? (And I’m sure you’ve sussed the fact that I’m just thinking aloud here, don’t really know what I mean, but writing things down really does help to concentrate the mind).