Many words have been written this week on the ongoing saga of asylum seekers travelling to Australia by boat and our nation’s response to them. Write Me Up has noticed a few we would like to highlight.
Deakin University philosophy lecturer Patrick Stokes wrote about ‘misericordia’, a Latin word, in The Conversation.
Stokes says misericordia is usually translated as “mercy” or “pity” and is described by some as “the virtue of the Good Samaritan … the way we would rush to help a child who has fallen down a well, not through hope of reward, but simply through concern for the child – any child”.
Stokes says Australians are fortunate in our wealth and way of life through luck, not effort, and that we are misguided to believe we have the right to decide who gets to share in this luck and who doesn’t.
And he says when it comes to boat people, the moral demand to respond with misericordia hasn’t gone away.
Next Write Me Up would like to note cartoonist Michael Leunig and his articulation of the word ‘compassion’.
Thirdly we would like to note the use of ‘sovereign’.
As a noun, it means “a supreme ruler, especially a monarch”. As an adjective it means “possessing supreme or ultimate power”.
It was used by the federal opposition in the title of its new Operation Sovereign Borders, a policy headlined by military-led measures against asylum seekers travelling by boat.
Sovereign, misericordia and compassion are not mutually exclusive. It would be possible to mix them. Perhaps the government and the opposition could look at developing a policy called Operation Sovereign Misericordia, if they are really as concerned for the welfare of asylum seekers travelling by boat as they claim to be.
Write Me Up would offer to write and edit it for free.