Actually, on second thoughts, I can’t be arsed criticising any more of this “thing”… it’s simply too easy. There is, however, one aspect of the “manifesto” that ties in with another line of thinking that’s been troubling me… the intolerance of tyranny abroad. I’m the first to agree that there are many, many, dreadful things happening in the world at the moment. The natural reaction of most people is to want to end this suffering… but are we right to? There are two problems with this – first off, we’re assuming that our way of living and our moral standards are “correct”. How do we know this? Well, because we’ve suffered these things as a society. That is, each of the “advanced” societies have come through the most dreadful atrocities. Civil wars, international wars, genocide. Within living memory us Europeans were butchering each other by the million. After centuries of this conflict, we’ve, hopefully, realised that it’s futile and we live in peace with protected human rights. Are we right to deny other societies this learning process?

Just a few thoughts. I’m not convinced that, as a species, we’re really that far from the hunters that we were for thousands of years. Our grip on peace is, at best, tenuous – I’m not sure it’s something we’re yet capable of teaching to others. Unlike these fucking Euston Manifesto people – smug, self-important… I could go on. Actually, I have a pressing urge to use the word “cunt”.

Just for the record, I’m not saying that I want to see suffering and I’m not denying that it’s dreadful, I’m just questioning whether it’s avoidable.