MY OWN WALKING - Second September Journal 2025

The last few days I have found very challenging to maintain any degree of  equilibrium. Fascists marching in their hundreds of thousands in Central London. And the assassination of Charlie Kirk in the US and its still unfolding consequences. Have raised quite a potent and very turbulent response within me. I'm frustrated, angry even, but mainly quite fearful for where our country might be headed, and what that may mean for anyone whose rights and freedom of speech can be easily marginalised.

At the same time the online Commit To Sit programme I've been engaging with over the last ninety days is within days of coming to an end. And we have reached the concluding quality of the 8 Qualities of a Good Person -To not engage in useless or spurious argument. And its meaning and purpose is quite specific, useless or spurious argument is anything not focused upon clarifying or is in alignment with, the true nature of reality. So this is rather highlighting, particularly today, how much my thoughts and feelings, my mental preoccupations, are being completely taken over by current events Lets just say I've been doing quite a lot of very bumpy Metta Bhavana and Just Sitting practice.

I'd not been aware of Charlie Kirk until this week. I had no idea he was a such big influencer and supporter of Trump.  And when you hear his self satisfied views on women, trans issues, black people, and anyone whose views might be called woke or progressive, those opinions are so darkly perverted ones that they are truly horrendous to hear coming out of another human being. How he could even think himself a Christian beggars belief. Then I heard he was a free speech advocate who was happy to enter into debate. So I thought well at least he got that right, he was prepared to engage. But positioning himself under a gazebo that says Prove Me Wrong, says a lot about him and the whole confrontational set up. Watching these college debates is a bit like seeing fluffy kittens ritually fed to an apex predator and being publicly eviscerated. Its not pretty, nor a respectful form of debate. Its quite an ugly spectacle.

But then there are plenty of people with horrendous opinions in this world, none of them deserve to be killed because of them. I've found myself parroting that line, because as a supporter of free speech and democracy you are expected to say this sort of thing. And I certainly do not wish to engage in further inflaming an already dangerously polarised situation. My actual feelings, beneath that veneer of democratic principle, are a good deal more conflicted and morally muddy than that. There is some empathy for his young loss of life and the consequent suffering of his wife and children, but it feels more muted than I'd expect of myself. It's seems more like a performative exercise in empathy, ambivalent in tone, not fully heartfelt. And I wondered why that was.

I've come to the conclusion my responses are somewhat compromised by hearing the sort of divisive and provocatively offensive speech he engaged in. He was a very significant contributor in creating the sort of incendiary situation where he, or anyone else some individual doesn't agree with, could now be killed, and another tear in the fabric of social cohesion is formed. He didn't deserve to die, but he was instrumental in making a politically inspired assassination, whether on the left or right, more likely to happen. That even murder is now an acceptable response. He was a provocateur, and once you descend down that route you cannot fully predict what wild and uncontrollable consequences you might poke into life in some 'random' vigilante. I mean he said there were situations when gun violence and loss of life was acceptable. Anyone who so casually stokes the fire, may experience blow back that burns them too.Sad to say.

None of this is remotely useful in moving myself towards understanding the true nature of reality. Is it useful or spurious argument according to its limited parameters? Well I've found it helpful.  I felt the need to lay out all the constituent parts in my response and be as honest as I can be about what I'm actually feeling and thinking, as opposed to what a good Buddhist or citizen is expected to say. Because leaving all the tangled moral mess of it inside my head, was not remotely doing any good for my mental states. As in all spiritual practice, you start from knowing exactly where you currently are, and attempt to move forward from there.