In Kennington Road, walking distance from here, is the Imperial War Museum. It contains exhibits that far from glorifying war serve as a chilling reminder of the dangers which lie in human nature. It’s housed in a fine building that was originally erected to rehouse a hospital – the Bethlehem or Bethlem Hospital. It came to be called ‘Bedlam’. It was for patients who, it was considered, had incurable mental illnesses.   

In the eighteenth century one of the things people did for entertainment was to go to Bedlam to look at the lunatics.  If you paid a penny you could look into an individual cell. Many did.   It seems incredible that people would do that but they did. 

Then in the nineteenth century people went to visit Joseph Merrick, the so called Elephant Man at the Royal London Hospital. He had been rescued from a circus where he had been on display. The people who came to see him at the hospital treated him as being human, which was not how he had been treated before. However he was still a curiosity, a medical curiosity. People came to look.   

I find it uncomfortable to admit that in the early 1950’s at the Christchurch A & P Show I paid my money, sixpence I think or it may have been a shilling, to go in to see the fat lady. The banner read ‘The Fat Lady’ and the man outside the tent called out for custom “Come in, come in and see the fat lady, when she walks she wobbles”. Why did I want to go and look? I don’t know. And I think it’s extraordinary that in my lifetime in New Zealand , a normal part of the side shows at an Agricultural and Pastoral show was indeed a tent, a sideshow, where people paid to see a fat lady. 

Thank goodness we’ve come a long way since then.  But have we? 

For some time we have had  ‘reality’ television programmes where people ‘bare all’.  We watch. The participants are voluntary, paid I imagine, and I can turn off the television if I don’t like it. No one forced people to go to Bedlam to see the lunatics. It was entertainment.

Much of the media coverage of the recent tragic babies’ murder case makes me very uneasy. I am in favour of a free and responsible press. However the argument that what we are given is justified because it is ‘what people want’ doesn’t ring true. Even the argument that it is in the public interest must, I think, be open to question. Too much of the coverage of this case seemed voyeristic. 

The passage of time may separate the viewers of those Bedlam patients, Joseph Merrick the ‘Elephant Man’, the Christchurch ‘Fat Lady’, and our contemporary media reporting but I am far from convinced that we, presenters and viewers, have really changed so very much.  

It was pointed out to me recently that because I am old white and male I have a privileged, restricted and distorted view on many subjects – colonialism and gender identification being just two of them. It was said in the nicest possible way of course and I may have got the message slightly wrong but that was the gist of it.

The answer seemed to be for me to read more widely, presumably the same books that my younger friend is reading, so that, presumably, I come to the same conclusions that my friend has come to. There was no point in my trying to see things from someone else’s point of view, I was told, because I can’t – I am old, white and male.

On reflection it reminded me of a time when I told an older, respected friend of a doctrinal view I had come to, a view very different from his. He responded by saying, “Oh Simon, and I had always thought you were intelligent.”

However I did tell my younger friend of an incident at the swimming pool that very morning. It was Thursday, Silver Swim, for the over sixties. We’ve come to know each other a little and we are quite a mixed bunch.

Into the swimming pool came two young Asian women clearly under sixty, maybe twenty something. There was a little discussion among us. Nothing aggressive or unpleasant just whether or not to say anything to draw the pool attendant’s attention to the situation.

One of our number had the confidence to take matters into his own hands and attracted the attention of the pool attendant who spoke nicely to the young women who apologised pleasantly for their mistake and on we went. The man who spoke to the attendant was black.  

I related this incident to point out that none of the old white men in the pool had the confidence to speak up. My friend responded that a comment wasn’t possible without being there but that I must not make a case from a single incident. I was simply making an observation.

I do realise that there are times and situations in which the voices of young black women are not heard.

“William Gladstone has not one redeeming defect.” Disraeli

Generally the last person to accept that a painting is a fake, despite all the evidence that this is the case, is the person who bought the painting. At least part of the reason for this is having to admit a failure of judgement. The buyer thinks it diminishes his standing in the eyes of those who know their paintings. So the buyer clings defiantly to the possibility that the evidence is faulty or in some way rigged. 

In the world of objects and artefacts having an ‘eye’ for the true is very important – or an eye for the fake. My father said once that the most useful person on a committee was the one who was invariably wrong. Once they had spoken he knew which way to go – the other way.

Never being wrong seems increasingly to be expected of those in many professions. In the Christian tradition there are high expectations with the recognition that making mistakes is part of the deal. It’s why forgiveness is so necessary. 

Perhaps those who do not believe that climate change is happening in the face of hard scientific evidence have invested their own self worth or self esteem in a view that is being proved wrong. It may be the admission of mistaken judgement that is difficult to make.

Many of us know what it is to have trusted someone and been let down. Part of that pain is not in the betrayal, however great or small, but in our own lack of judgement and misplaced trust.

Those who commit themselves to a political cause or more particularly to a political leader are caught in a terrible bind. The evidence against the politician may pile up but it is the personal commitment, the facing up to one’s own misjudgement in the face of the evidence that causes the problems.

When it comes to blind adherence to individual people rather than paintings, causes or policies I think the problem may be idolatry. 

It was in a letter in the morning free newspaper, ‘A text without a context is a pretext.’ I immediately thought in biblical terms. The letter was in response to a letter from someone who described himself as a ‘bible believing Christian’.  He had used a particular biblical text, out of context, to justify a general principle.

All too often a single biblical verse is used to support a view which is totally at odds with the spirit of the writing. I understand Islamic scholars face the same problem with their sacred texts.   

Being ‘misquoted’ is a common cry of public figures. Often it is not so much a ‘misquote’ as a quote out of context. If the context is a party a comment made then, with a smile, can be read quite differently in cold hard print the next day.

The interesting thought for me is when the text is used as a pretext for a whole argument.

‘My country right or wrong,’ was used to justify nationalism to a most extreme degree. People believed that you should stick to, and agree with, your country, whether it was right or wrong. The quote was often used as a justification for war, or other cruelties that countries inflict on other countries. 

We may not use the saying as often as in former times but I’m far from convinced that we don’t operate on that premise: ‘My country/class/political party/gender-theory/life-style/religion right or wrong.’

But the actual quote, said by German-American Carl Schurz in 1872, was, “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”

Of course I’m right on everything including what is right and wrong. But then I may be wrong.

Someone who understands about A I, Artificial Intelligence that is, came to lunch. I don’t understand A I. He explained. I understood a little. The one thing I did get was that he had an ‘App’ on this mobile phone with this A I on its and that you could ask the App questions  – any questions. 

Another guest went first and asked about the future of the war in Ukraine and we got nowhere with that. I had heard that this ‘intelligence’ could write poetry. I was told it could and that I might suggest style and mood.

I asked for a Shakespearean sonnet written in anger to a friend who had told me I was overweight. The sonnet came back in seconds. It began:

‘Thou tak’st offence at my most mortal frame, 

A body formed with flesh and blood entwined, 

Yet I, unfazed, thy cruel words disclaim,

For in my soul, true beauty lies enshrined.’

And so it continued more or less in my favour until the couplet:

‘I’ll not be swayed by thy unkind decree,

For self-love’s flame shall set my spirit free.’

‘Self-love’s flame’ touched a nerve even from A I. Is a strict diet is called for?

What if I had asked for a ‘Thought’ in the style of Simon Acland suitable for this website? I have no doubt it would have come up with something that sounded like me. However it would not be my thought. Would you have known?