Do you cry too?

Today I watched snatches of the 46664 concert. I find when the subject of my country's past comes up, as it does in song's like Peter Gabriel's "Biko", I am stirred to tears. Every time. Few things really make me cry. Like, proper crying. I cried when the riders of Rohan arrived to die on the plain outside The White City, I cried when Anakin struck out in anger and slaughtered the Tuskens... not serious crying. Mini-cries that went away as quickly as they came.

I really cry when good artists remind me how awesome my country is. It's sheer pride in my heritage. Everything about it, the evils of the past and the triumphs... they make our history here glorious, regardless of how you slice it. I can read about heroes in my distant, lingering past - heroes of my bloodstream (like Beowulf or Wolraade Woltemade) - but time does so much to shroud them, to obfuscate any humanity they might have had. But Biko... he died the same year Star Wars came out. That's not history yet. There are people alive today who met Biko. People who still feel a pang when his name comes up. Hell, the policemen who brutalised him, killed him... they are still alive. They have families, grandchildren even. What do they feel when someone mentions the name "Biko?"

People are wonderful but they are also terrible. Hideous, even. There is a little bit of Hitler in each of us. All of us are capable of killing what we fear - we have to be, that is a genetic gift handed down for eons. True courage is facing that fearful thing head on, trying to discover what its true nature is. What we choose to do after that (to destroy it, or leave it alone) is, eventually, just history.