The better angels of our nature

Yes, I know, there’ve been no blog updates for a day. I guess there were more pressing things to occupy our attention. For starters, we were informed yesterday morning that Greek air traffic controllers were going on strike for four days, starting Sunday. The Socialist in me says good-on them. Only problem is, we were due to fly out of Athens for Santorini on Monday and can no longer do this. The frustrated tourist in me says ‘what inconsiderate pricks’. After a very sleepless night deciding what to do, we managed to get two of the very last seats on a ferry instead. So, instead of a 45-minute flight, we now look forward to a 7 plus hour cruise; great in nice weather, not so great if the wind blows.

If that wasn’t a great start to yesterday, things took a turn for the worse shortly after. Getting on a metro train, I had my brand new phone stolen from my pocket. How foolish and stupid do I feel? A Greek man on the train (who saw it all unfold but did nothing to stop it) told me they were a gang of professional Russian thieves, who work the trains looking for dumb looking tourists like me. I may as well have been wearing my, ‘Hey, I’m a stupid, unsuspecting tourist’ T-shirt. It was all over in a few short seconds and clearly well-rehearsed and re-enacted hundreds of times over. A tap on the shoulder as you’re about to get on, followed by the suggestion you’re actually on the wrong train, then confusion as to where you should be, then the reassurance all is okay, all this while the doors are closing, you on the train moving off, thief on the platform knowing there is nothing you can now do. Of course, all you do for the next several hours, despite knowing it was probably unavoidable, is play games of ‘what if’. In the end, it was only a phone, purchased specifically to be our main camera, and as the Greek man on the train said to me, we were very lucky they only got the phone.

This is our second overseas trip and our second bad experience at the hands of thieves. Perhaps it is because we tend to explore places a little off the main tourist haunts, or perhaps we just look like fairly easy targets. I fully concede, in retrospect I could have done more to guard against this happening, but in the end, we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. A different carriage, a different train, even a different station and this probably would not have happened – or at least not then.

Although we are now over the theft, what lingers much longer is the disappointment. It is far too easy to lapse into romantic notions of injustice and a lack of fair play. The reality is immensely more stark; these guys are professional thieves and they care little, if at all, for the suffering they cause. My phone could well have contained the treasured photos of a grandson’s birth, a daughter’s wedding, or any other life changing event, worth in sentimental terms far more than its dollar value could ever reflect. These men, and others like them, have no stake in a civilized society beyond that which has as its most fundamental creed, ‘do unto others before they do it to you’. 

I have lived in Australia all my life; I seldom lock my car or my house, and I’ve never had anything stolen from me where ever I am. Our country is by no means perfect, but what I see every day back home, and we do not see in many countries through which we have traveled, is a genuine sense of compassion for the plight of others. I could not imagine having a theft occur on a Sydney train and no witnesses to it being prepared to intervene. Perhaps I’m naïve, but this is the way I’d prefer to think it is. My greatest hero, Abe Lincoln, once talked of the better angels of our nature; sometimes it is really difficult to believe in angels at all.