This the concluding (?) part of my essay 'Heat'. I wonder if such an essay ever really 'concludes'... There is something horrendously, frighteningly bestial about a city when it ceases to be a dwelling place and a place of refuge, and turns into a monster, and a god-like one which never slumbers. There is an insane paradox in man building increasingly complex structures to serve him, to which he finally, almost inevitably, becomes a slave. In the end he becomes like a rat on a treadmill that never stops; always, frantically, running, scampering, scuttling. This would be someone's theory, a philosophy, to be discussed at ease over beers, or coffee, until we suddenly, wrenchingly, wake up in the midst of its reality. In the chaos of heat and lust, disease and filth, lawlessness and violent death, when almost everyday someone is brutally raped, or murdered, or reduced to abject poverty by humiliating laws; when there is a seething undercurrent of fear and greed, and people are convulsed in paranoid activity like a vast army of Salvador Dali ants in a confused mass under the red light of a dying sun, one feels vaguely, but with a growing certainty, like the rise of bile in the mouth, something hideously gone wrong with human existence. Where is this more apparent in its remorseless reality than in the sight of a pot-bellied beggar child on stick legs rummaging for something to eat in the gutter outside a glass-fronted mall? It is a delusion, and one most shocking, when a nation, stinking, with its own refuse sticking in lumps to its clothes and feet, can call itself regal and the seat of ancient learning. I am ashamed of unjust laws and blatant corruption, ashamed of extraordinary hypocrisy and mealy-mouthed platitudes, and ashamed of the death sentence stamped on shadow-eyed brothers and sisters even before they're born. I am tired of the simpering small-talk, tired of glittering trappings that fade even as one looks at them, and I am weary of the never-ending, empty boastings that rise like soap bubbles only to be burst in full view of all by reality. Someone sang, "My city of ruins...", and I look at a nation that is ruining itself even as it has risen over the last half-century. If it were a war-blasted land, with its rags sticking to its burnt and tattered flesh, I could cry out for my people, and say, like the words of the song, "My nation's in ruins!", but how does one cry for a growing ruin that comes from a rot that is setting in deeper and deeper, like a nightmarish gangrene that is spreading across hundreds of miles? With what sort of pain does one cry? What is the sound of tears that fall from such a weeping? If in a land of poor people, policies are made that favour the affluent and promote an increasingly hedonistic lifestyle, then an increasing slide into consumer driven amorality is inevitable, where there are no standards of right and wrong, and one's concerns centre increasingly only around oneself. It is the perfect cauldron for civil unrest and anarchy to ferment as the lines between 'lesser' and 'greater' people are more clearly defined. No amount of political platitudes will cure the cancers that grow in the vast fissure between the two. Either the poor will sell their very souls to acquire, what to them is the answer to all problems: these gaudy pretensions of real living, resulting in an increasingly chaotic society that may seem to be outwardly 'progressing', but which is, in fact, decaying; or there will be, when 'critical mass' is reached, bloody rebellion and upheaval. I weep hot tears as I see my nation heading inexorably towards the former, baking hard in the heat of its desires, like a famine struck land burning under a pitiless sky. It seems to me that the answer for us is not economic upliftment and free-trade policies, it's not even equal opportunities and education. We've become adept at finding convincing sociological, economic and political reasons for the chaos in this cauldron that we fondly imagine to be development. Our responses to the anguish in our land are knee-jerk ones that lack long-term sustainability, and good results of efforts do not last long because of low accountability and the impunity with which the law can be broken. For years, as a school-teacher I taught eleven different reasons for the lack of development in my nation, and was plagued by the nagging feeling that something was missing. The moment of truth came one year, in the middle of teaching these points. I stopped short with the growing realisation that the root of all the reasons lies in our very natures. There is something in our hearts that is so hard, that we can never see ourselves at fault in anything, and we have virtually no humility to admit our mistakes. No nation on this earth will ever admit that the nature of its people and the puffed-up pride of its administration hinder progress. The people blame the administration, and the administration blames either the people, or another nation, or some socio-economic-political factor. Our heart is the real source of our law-making, more than our intellect, and the lifestyle of a nation reveals its heart, and proves its ideals to be either pipe-dreams or measurable realities. Nearly ten years after that insight in my classroom, I am even more convinced of this. In the melting pots, which most nations are rapidly becoming, it's when justice kisses mercy, when grace marries truth, and when we, first as individuals, than as nations, then as collective humanity, break up the hard ground of our hearts that our sun-scorched faces will feel the coolness of rain and there will be life in abundance for all. Only then, will our cities be places of grace and refuge, places of opportunity and shelter, not horrible, lifeless deities on whose altars men, women and children are sacrificed. Although I've written this from the point of view of being a citizen in my own nation, there are principles that I see apply to all of humanity. This is, in no way, intended to be a dig at any particular nation including my own. My experiences have led me to intentionally look closely at the problem of human suffering in different forms, and be challenged to reach out with life rather than withdraw into a cynical, bitter shell. One little result of this has been that when I've responded with compassion, I've received compassion from unexpected people in unexpected places. How wonderful if we could do this as nations... Thank you for reading this far; I much appreciate it, and your comments are always helpful. Best wishes, hanevi.