Hollowed Out

The Unbearable Lightness Of All Being

I'm still reeling from the Martin Place siege. I didn't write about it yesterday, but I am specifically distraught about one of the victims Katrina Dawson. Sydney is a small enough that there are people around me whose lives intersected with hers and her family. It's like 2 degrees of separation, sometimes 3. Above all, her life and career to date reads like an exemplary human being we would all want to spire to or at least have our kids grow into. I'm sure she had her foibles but it's rare you find a life that reads like a perfect record.

She was by all accounts a remarkable human being. Topped her school, topped her state in graduating; topped the law faculty at Sydney University; got a masters at UNSW; topped the class in her bar entrance exam; a loving, admired mother of three; by all accounts she was the best of the best - and her life came to an abrupt end at the hands of a malicious jerk. To tell you the truth I'm aghast at this turn of events for her and her young family.

I'm doubly aghast because her death seems to open up a void, a nihilistic space of nothingness that stares back, absent of meaning. The religious sermon delivered does not fill it; philosophy can only abstract it, but it cannot fill it; it just feels like if you wanted conclusive proof that nothing in this life has any profound meaning, you could point to this siege and her death. The violence that befell her didn't come looking for her specifically - she had not made an enemy of this man. There really was no rhyme nor reason to the violence that felled both Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson. The allegedly political stance taken by Monis was hardly credible, legitimate, or real - it was just some bullshit he came up with in order to try and give some meaning to his senseless stupid life. But if there's one thing that's certain, his life was devoid of any serious meaning. He sure made sure of that one by ending on a note of gratuitous violence.

Our own liberalism offers very little help in all of this mess. Officials from Iran claimed that they asked to extradite this Monis back to Iran and they said our government refused. Our government presumably refused because having issued political asylum to this man it must have assumed that a return to Iran would be giving him up for political reasons and therefore against our sense of freedom (or whatever liberal principle we might have had). After all what could possibly happen to the man? Probably torture, so they said 'no'. Our government probably didn't look too deeply into the possibility that the Iranians genuinely/legitimately wanted this man for fraud.

So we held on to him in Australia because giving him up to Iranian authorities would mean we were giving up on our liberal principles. He wrote disgusting letters to the family of dead servicemen. He was convicted of harassment but his sentence was only 300hours of community service. Rather than just do the community service, he fought the sentence al the way to the high court (and lost). He had his wife killed and set alight. He pretended to be a healer and sexually assaulted women. Each time he found himself in front a of a judge he got the benefit of the doubt and got bail. At each and every turn where this man might have been taken off the streets, our very liberal principles put him back onto the street.

Hence you'll have to forgive me if I feel a little shirty about my own small-'l-liberalism just for this week. We effectively fight for the rights of the very people who would kill us senselessly. It sure makes you want to embrace fascism and looser gun laws, even if only temporarily. There is no meaning to any of this. Nothing bloody well matters.

I don't envy the task of her widower husband who must explain mummy's death to three kids. I can't possibly imagine how he's going to frame it with any kind of meaning when he explains what happened. In my humble opinion, there is not a sensible conversation to be had there. If it is just tears and embraces, that would make more sense than any words that can be uttered. There's nothing but the meaningless void.

We should all be nice to each other a lot more. Life's really short.