A certain ratio of things

Still my preferred space for a new self-directed learning community for Norwich. Carrow House, 2024

Only cruelty in mind

A certain ratio of things, for example

kind things to unkind things;

virtuous things to wicked things.

Of thoughts, deeds and words, for example

those chosen carefully to those chosen in haste

or those intended to mend, heal and harness

rather than hurt, wheal and rent asunder, with only cruelty in mind.

But it’s here that we are

finding ourselves now asunder.

The astonishing idea

But back, for a minute, to that certain ratio of things. Let’s acknowledge that for every single unkind thing there are more kind things than we can ever count. Could you even imagine what that ratio would be? One to a trillion? Maybe more?

So if we are sick of the sickness, it behoves us, surely, to conjure a world where we choose to amplify the kind above the level to which we currently extol the unkind; chose to dedicate reams to the analysis of the nuances in a million acts of kindness, scrutinising them for clues to a beautiful route through. And to consciously stuff our airwaves with so many bits of kind data you can almost seem them passing by in physical form. We must choose to spend our time busting a gut working up scenarios that conjure the peaceful and the collegiate in an unconditional positive regard.

There is no doubt that great wickedness has a loud voice and our ears are ringing with its din so let’s get the microphones in to those little places of peace and invert the ratio, and let’s cut the vocal chords of those who choose (on their own pathetic and cowardly behalves) to denigrate, debase, defame and distort. and hear now what we want to hear, see what we want to see:

a certain ratio of things: kind things to unkind things; virtuous things to wicked things.

This is the astonishing idea.