Growing pains – McSherry’s Musings

Last week I was talking about records, vinyl that is, but one I didn’t mention was the Neil Sedaka hit ‘Breaking up is hard to do’. It sure is and so is growing up. From infancy on-wards we all experience growing pains. Have you ever noticed how most two year olds are determined little ego maniacs? King Baby. They always want their own way and to be in control. Do something that pleases them, like making a quirky noise or a funny face, and they’ll say “Do it again, do it again…” until you wish you hadn’t started doing it in the first place.

Usually, any growth in understanding cannot happen without the pain of disappointment and many tears. A responsible parent cannot say ‘yes’ to every request a child makes. Limits have to be set, often in the interest of a child’s safety. The enforcing of such limits might be hard for children to accept at first but in time they will understand that boundaries are a necessary part of caring. They will also continually try to push against them.

Lord knows, in the years after infancy, there is more pain to come – the angst of adolescence, together with romance, falling in and out of love, heartbreak… But as the old philosopher said, “What does not destroy us makes us stronger.” Hmm, good to know…

However, it is not just individuals who have to grow up to maturity. The same is true of whole societies over many centuries. If we look back at the 19th century, we can see behaviours that seem outrageous to us now, but at the time they hardly caused people a second thought. I’m thinking of issues like slavery, child labour, women’s rights and capital punishment. Mind you, there were always a few visionaries who were willing to speak out against the status quo. They would challenge those in power to be more just and honest and often they won over large numbers of converts to their cause.

In my own lifetime I have seen how a growing concern for public health has made smoking, for example, become more or less unacceptable. Back in the 1970s so many people smoked in all kinds of places; in shops, on planes, trains and automobiles, at the cinema. Even some footballers going off at half-time would light up for a quick drag before the match restarted.

Of course, the problem with the growth of progressive ideas in society around public health, citizens’ right, employment legislation, gender equality is that not all societies agree with these largely western notions of progress. Recently I read that there is a law in Russia that allows a man to physically beat his wife if he believes she has misbehaved. It is difficult to imagine how a civilised person, man or woman, could be in favour of such a law.

Very often it is journalists who see it as part of their calling to speak the truth to power which can be a hazardous occupation. In his film ‘The Post’, Steven Spielberg tells the true story of how in June 1971 the reporter Neil Sheehan published classified information from the Pentagon Papers within the pages of the New York Times. These secret government documents showed how successive administrations had blatantly lied to the American people about the Vietnam War.

An enraged President Nixon took out an injunction against the paper to stop any further material being published. However, the Washington Post then started to publish material from the same classified source in solidarity with the New York Times. The case of the Nixon administration against these two newspapers was decided by the Supreme Court in favour of freedom of the press.

In other countries it is even more difficult for journalists. In Russia since the turn of the century, 21 journalists have been killed. One of them was Anna Politkovskaya who was shot dead in the lift of her Moscow apartment building on October 7, 2006. She was a human rights activist and a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin. The date, October 7, happened to be Putin’s birthday.

Another courageous journalist was the Saudi national, Jamal Khashoggi. Politically he was a progressive and had been forced to leave his native land in 2017. He was based in America and wrote a column for the Washington Post. He was frequently critical of the Saudi rulers and also opposed the war in Yemen.

On October 2, 2018 he visited the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to collect some documents he needed for his forthcoming marriage but he never came out again.

He was murdered there by agents of the Saudi government. The CIA believes the order was given by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. At the time there was an international outcry, but it soon died down.

Recently Boris Johnson visited Saudi Arabia in an attempt to secure a deal for more oil that would leave Britain free of its dependence on Russian oil. Days before the visit came the shocking news of a mass execution of 81 men by the Saudi government. Johnson said he intended to speak to them about human rights. Good luck with that one…