personal Ms Harriet Sherwood please

To: international@guardian.co.uk
Thu, 7 Sep 2006 13:09:59 +0100

Ms Sherwood, Harriet,

I write to you because you are the foreign editor of The Guardian - a paper I read even though I despair of it - but I write to you as an individual human being, a fellow human being , before, do-existent with, and after your professional life. You live in a world that most ordinary people I meet - such as a young and lively vet who came to administer a lethal dose to an old and sick dog of ours yesterday evening , but stayed to talk wonderfully openly - or such as the unassuming family of natives on the coast of County Clare I had the good fortune to live among for a couple of days late in July - take it for granted that our species is fucked , out of control, led by insane blind power-happy individuals who could be us, futile to some extent trying to mend what is broken , only invariably to worsen the whole. Meanwhile we soldier on, our families and friends dysfunctional , pitted one against the other and group aganst group in a lust for power, wealth, sex, entertainment and the devil's work of material gain at the expense of sanity and, soon, of life itself. Fear the Chinese , and work harder and more cunningly ! Invest in the Chinese , and screw your mates ! And , if you're controller of The Guardian, publish clever articles on every aspect of all this as it happens, meanwhile participating knowingly - that's hypocrisy, you know , Ms Harriet - by simultaneously deploring the evils of and whore-like earning your keep by selling global tourism. In your own interests you cheat, like everyone else. Amd you denounce such cheating, and justify doing it because it allows you to earn a good material life-style printing virtuous words - and you believe it your duty to keep the paper going with even more disreputable material year on year (like the others)...that's the devil's price for mammon-worship....degradation and death....it's logic, you know

"Religion" is the alternative, but in a world of mammon-worship, it is not understood as alternative, but as adjunct - and as adjunct (even of tribal identity) it is a ghastly thing, a parody of itself. In itself it is characterised by selflessness (not self-interest, individual or group), absolute equality , freedom to think, feel , speak and do anything that does not violate another's identical freedom, cooperation in good and abhorrence of evil, perfect willingness to die at any moment rather than compromise such principles for personal or group death is nothing to the religious person, for she or he values not self but the wonder of it all when so loved - "it all" as reported by the senses and interpreted by the perfect mirror of the mind , a mind entranced by the meaning of everything separately and together, and ignorant of anxiety.

Ms Sherwood, for 29 years later this month, I have been investigating the meaning and practicality of this alternative to our present way of life, and living it as far as consistent with surviving to tell the tale. This last 29th year I have been registering thoughts that occurred to me - in my 29th year of such study - on a blog set up for me by my eldest daughter in Singapore (married to a man you, as foreign editor of the Guardian either already know or shortly will, a research fellow of the southeastasian institute of the University of Singapore, ooi kee beng by name, whose new book is expected to make quite a stir in the Malayan archipelago and beyond), but virtually no one on earth has shown interest in my thoughts. After all, they are quite other, and the thinker is known to be quite mad. ( Imagines he must be the predicted second appearance of "christ", since his ideas would complete the story if adopted...think of it!)


My daughter and family will spend the next three weeks at my home here in Ireland....you could scoop a story on kee beng...but my other five children will be here too, and 4 grand-children, and one of my two elder sisters, and later a mixed-race young cousin from Birmingham, a video-film maker who this time comes with camera....you see I am quite mad....all those who actually check me out know it....'fwd a recent email from a hiker confirming it,,,(malicieux = mischievous pardon my french ) if I remember and am not distracted...family life in these circs is almost insupportable...no secretary, constant threat of on-the-spot car-theft or personal arrest by friendly but mercenary police...etc etc. So you could with other journalists scoop the world and help change it once and for all infinitely for the better....but, I was forgetting, you are a mercenary too, committed to belief in mammon, in liberal democracy where any surplus should be used to increase same, not distributed to those in deficiency out of common cause, common decency ... the clear teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, and the clear logic of your present emailer's position.

with all good wishes - for all on earth and the rest of life of which we understand ourselves to be but a surprisingly intelligent and appreciative part - in obolworld. Hugh Sacker, Knockandarragh, Donard, Co.Wicklow 00000000000000000+353 (0)45 404049