{"id":10421,"date":"2024-09-17T18:23:54","date_gmt":"2024-09-17T18:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=10421"},"modified":"2024-09-17T18:23:55","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T18:23:55","slug":"what-would-they-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=10421","title":{"rendered":"What Would They Do?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u2018What would Jesus do?\u2019 has been a question that the devout have asked themselves down the ages, using scripture to provide the answers and guide their ethics and behaviour. But you can\u2019t help noticing that some professing themselves to be Christians don\u2019t take this approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Head honcho of the Spanish Inquisition Torquemada, for one, cannot have posed himself this question, or he would surely have spotted that Jesus was not in the habit of executing His enemies. Far from it, He urged us to love them. (Some 2,000 \u2018heretics\u2019 were burned at the stake during Torquemada\u2019s reign of terror.)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our own time, that great defender of the faith Donald Trump is similarly impervious to the example of Christ. Where in the New Testament is it writ that thou mayest grope and disrespect women?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But who can stand as an example for the staunchly secular? Red Molotov, purveyor of politically-themed merchandise, know \u2013 hence their \u2018What would Clement do?\u2019 mugs and T-shirts, bearing the portrait of Clement Attlee. Yes, the Clement Attlee who in the teeth of postwar austerity created the NHS, nationalised the railways, and gave us registered childminders and national parks, among many other things. Just saying, Reeves and co.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To this towering duo I\u2019ve added a third man, even though he is fictitious: the eponymous hero of Susannah Clarke\u2019s novel Piranesi<\/em>. Here is someone who inexplicably finds himself alone (apart from intermittent visits from a patronising suit) in the most inhospitable circumstances, with no knowledge of how he came there. Yet he exists in a state of grace: every day is filled with joy, despite his struggle for survival. The austere beauty of his environment delights him; close attention to his surroundings enables him to fish and build a relationship with the birds that populate his world. Out of his own imagination he creates an ancestor cult that sustains him spiritually. The positive and generous fruits of his naivety give hope for a better version of ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It won\u2019t have escaped your notice that these are all blokes \u2013 perhaps I should have called this blog Good Guys VI. Is the problem that there are simply too many women to point to, or, conversely, that we lack rounded information about so many of them? Thanks to their detractors, many high-profile women find their shortcomings aired to a far greater degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the political arena, though she may lack Attlee\u2019s high profile, look no further than trade unionist, peace campaigner and sometime mayor of Bermondsey Ada Salter<\/a>, pioneer of ethical socialism. A world in which we asked ourselves \u2018What would Ada do?\u2019 would be a far better place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is another obvious candidate for a name to go in this question  \u2013 but lacking public office of any sort this woman is nameless. She is the woman who fosters dozens of children over the years yet always has time to listen over a cup of tea, whose house is always open, who cares not a fig for her appearance, whose generosity knows no bounds. If we can have monuments of unknown soldiers, how about one for her?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where is it writ that thou mayest grope women?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,69,58,55,65,62,307,54],"tags":[571,570],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10421"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10427,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10421\/revisions\/10427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}