World views collide in this latest spat over Brexit. There is "the moral case" (quoting a BBC report) whereby EU citizens resident in the UK should be given certainty over their future before the negotiations start. Doubt and fear are as corrosive to the soul as they are to long-term career prospects and family planning, and it's difficult to argue against that one. It's a human case: the various Lords who voted last week to amend the simple Brexit bill in favour of our EU-sourced workforce seem to have been, you might say, acting out of human feeling.
Yes, the UK economy does partly depend on the input of those EU workers, and there is a practical case as well. Those Polish plumbers who kept the water running maybe a decade ago have been replaced in the popular imagination by Polish doctors and nurses - similarly essential contribution; different plumbing. Maybe the UK adult-education system has been quietly adjusting the career expectations of kindly Poles who don't faint at the sight of blood and who work well with their hands. But if we get into the practical case, we get into a lot else besides - and have you noticed that those boring, practical, this-or-that debates have a way of never ending? Like, y'know, Leave/Remain?
There is also a case that isn't "the moral case" (I'm very carefully not describing it as amoral or immoral, please note) whereby the rights of EU citizens here should be negotiated with the rights of UK citizens there. We'll keep your lot if you keep our lot. If we unilaterally adopt "the moral case" and confirm the right of their lot to stay, they might either kick out our lot or use our lot's rights as a bargaining chip against something else - pay an "exit fee" to cover their health costs, and we'll let them stay. It's difficult to argue against this either, and past performance suggests that not all EU countries like playing host to outsiders. But again, we're on the edge of a bottomless argument.
This is just another basic human dilemma wrapped up in contemporary clothing. Do we trust each other, or don't we? And another: do we extend some basic human feeling - pity, perhaps - to those who can't or won't trust, or do we lose ourselves in a spate of mutual recrimination? The moral case and the other case make perfect sense - depending on who you are and what you weigh most heavily (and setting aside any digression into the changing of minds, conversion, redemption, et cetera). It's the kind of finely balanced human moral question that merits the input of a spiritual leader, you might think.
If you did, you'd be wrong. These are questions to be asked and answered in the heart. Not in the debating chamber, nor in the studio; not by logic, nor by argument. There are people who need reassurance. Beyond that, they need (want?) certainty. If we reach out to them, we lose any power we might have (imagined we) had to help our own people in need of both reassurance and certainty. It's a tougher call than may be apparent from either side. But it's in the nature of life's real questions that the answers don't come from outside.
And anyway, our spiritual "leaders" face questions of their own, this week.
Yes, the UK economy does partly depend on the input of those EU workers, and there is a practical case as well. Those Polish plumbers who kept the water running maybe a decade ago have been replaced in the popular imagination by Polish doctors and nurses - similarly essential contribution; different plumbing. Maybe the UK adult-education system has been quietly adjusting the career expectations of kindly Poles who don't faint at the sight of blood and who work well with their hands. But if we get into the practical case, we get into a lot else besides - and have you noticed that those boring, practical, this-or-that debates have a way of never ending? Like, y'know, Leave/Remain?
There is also a case that isn't "the moral case" (I'm very carefully not describing it as amoral or immoral, please note) whereby the rights of EU citizens here should be negotiated with the rights of UK citizens there. We'll keep your lot if you keep our lot. If we unilaterally adopt "the moral case" and confirm the right of their lot to stay, they might either kick out our lot or use our lot's rights as a bargaining chip against something else - pay an "exit fee" to cover their health costs, and we'll let them stay. It's difficult to argue against this either, and past performance suggests that not all EU countries like playing host to outsiders. But again, we're on the edge of a bottomless argument.
This is just another basic human dilemma wrapped up in contemporary clothing. Do we trust each other, or don't we? And another: do we extend some basic human feeling - pity, perhaps - to those who can't or won't trust, or do we lose ourselves in a spate of mutual recrimination? The moral case and the other case make perfect sense - depending on who you are and what you weigh most heavily (and setting aside any digression into the changing of minds, conversion, redemption, et cetera). It's the kind of finely balanced human moral question that merits the input of a spiritual leader, you might think.
If you did, you'd be wrong. These are questions to be asked and answered in the heart. Not in the debating chamber, nor in the studio; not by logic, nor by argument. There are people who need reassurance. Beyond that, they need (want?) certainty. If we reach out to them, we lose any power we might have (imagined we) had to help our own people in need of both reassurance and certainty. It's a tougher call than may be apparent from either side. But it's in the nature of life's real questions that the answers don't come from outside.
And anyway, our spiritual "leaders" face questions of their own, this week.
RSS Feed
