Opinion: The story about Bravo

by Lionel Wijesiri

A newspaper recently told a heart-warming story about a dog called Bravo who started his life badly, but finally turned out just fine. He was left behind when the family of an alcoholic and abusive man changed the residence to a flat that didn’t allow dogs.

Neighbours said Bravo was beaten often by this man, and left outside in all weather, but steadfastly refused to run away, and even came back to more abuse after the man told neighbours that he had taken the dog miles away and abandoned him.

What earned Bravo his name was his discovery, a month later, in a ditch ten miles away, by a caring couple who found him, battered and nearly dead. He was nursed back to health by the couple.

The reporter covering the story raised the issue of why Bravo kept coming back for more abuse from this man. He used the word ‘loyal’ to describe this behaviour. It obviously didn’t occur to him that Bravo came back for more abuse because that’s the only life he knew.

He couldn’t have survived in the wild, and couldn’t have known that another, better life could be had in just about any other house, as part of any other family.

We are all, in a real sense, like Bravo. Most of us, struggle every day, and put up with a huge amount of stress in our lives. Compared to our ancestors who lived long before the modern civilization, we work harder and longer to make a living, we face more physical and psychological violence (in our neighbourhoods, in our workplaces and sometimes even in our homes).

We live in crowded and polluted communities that would have driven our ancestors quite mad. Above all, we live in constant fear of not having enough,

Why do we put up with it? It is because it’s the only life we know. We are not told that, even with today’s massive human population, everything that would be needed to provide very comfortably for the basic needs of everyone could be produced by having everyone work just a few hours a day.

Instead, we live in a world of bottomless artificial scarcity, staggering inequality and waste resulting in ghastly poverty.

I can hear the choruses of objection: “But economies don’t work that way — we can never achieve anything close to perfect distribution of wealth”. “But that’s not human nature — if people weren’t motivated to work hard, they would become lazy, criminal, depressed”.

“But that speed and degree of change is impossible: the world’s too big and people are inherently selfish and change too slowly”.

For them, I have only one answer. Throughout history humans showed a remarkable ability to change very quickly when there is an obvious need to do so.

It’s really just the brainwashing we get in the education system, in the workplace, and through the media that has prevented us from realizing that ‘there is an obvious need to change’ now. And, that there is a better way to live.

So we have two options. We can go on being like Bravo, putting up with the agony and leave a legacy of much more of the same for our children and grandchildren. Or we can walk away, and insist on and help create a better life, a better world, a better way to live. If enough of us understand that we need to do something, and believe it is in our power to do it, we can do it.