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Hi from Switzerland!
I’m back in the tri-border town, and the first thing I see in the streets is the Basel Tattoo. My friend was planning to get some ink done during this annual convention.
That reminded me of those two girls traveling “to Nice” on a flight to Tunisia (TikTok video with 4 million likes). Another acquaintance bought a ticket for Riga (Latvia) and ended up in Rijeka (Croatia), a story I retell in the collection of destination mix-ups that happen more often than you’d think.
Basel Tattoo has nothing to do with tattooing. It’s a military music festival!
Now, I understand fetishes come in many forms. But to me, 130,000 people lining the streets (that’s more than what Eurovision‘s Turquoise Carpet in the same town attracted) to celebrate anything related to armed forces in today’s world is somewhat bizarre. On the other hand, it’s better to see men dressed in kilts armed with bagpipes instead of rifles.
Strangely, weaponry can be an uninvited guest on even the most innocent parades, such as, for instance, nude bike protests, which I recently wrote about. My experience of the London event was very positive. The crowd was cheerful, and despite the impression tabloids could distill from online comments, there was no expression of hostility from the onlookers.
That was not the case at the World Naked Bike Ride in Los Angeles, where a man in black (this one with a real tattoo on his face) opened fire at the participants.
At a similar charity event in Chelmsford, England, two men on an e-scooter kicked the cyclist mid-ride.
The naked bike ride in Buffalo, New York, had to be canceled this week after organizers received threats of being hit by cars, being thrown at with bricks, and other assaults. All in the guise of making America moral again.
Taking violence to the streets makes us no different than monkeys. Literally. In Lopburi, Thailand, home to the famous Monkey Buffet Festival and a town that has an actual macaque prison, a hundred of them escaped the enclosure earlier this month. They ran loose through the neighborhoods, damaging properties, and even breaking into the local police station, not for the first time.
There are violent outbreaks among primates at Basel Zoo, as well. Just days apart, Yeba, the 14-year-old silverback gorilla, has taken two young lives in his harem – first biting a younger male on the genitals, prompting euthanasia, and then accidentally biting the chest of his newborn. Nature conservation organizations started calling on the zoo to stop breeding gorillas in captivity.
Although we don’t live in a jungle ourselves, but freely roam our western civilized streets, we still breed violence whenever we feel others will endanger “our way of life”. Well, the way of life that resorts to violence whenever it feels threatened by other people sharing the same coordinates is not the least dangerous lifestyle choice, is it?
Living in today’s society, among folks with various sets of beliefs, perspectives, and life ideas, requires us to employ tolerance. Unlike gorillas or macaques, humans have evolved to control their primal instincts. So when provoked by different concepts in life, instead of emptying our arms, we should rather arm ourselves with empathy.
Have a non-violent weekend,
Ivan Kralj
Pipeaway.com
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