A couple of months ago I went to a reading by the poet/writer Patrick Jones. After one particularly emotional poem, Patrick talked about why he wrote it and his need to use the poem as a means to bear witness. The poem was about something he could do very little, but what he could do was write his poem to bear witness. I’ve never considered this idea and this phrase in the depth I have since that reading.
I’ve spent most of my life fairly consumed by a feeling of impotence - impotence in my ability to push back against the existential fears that lurk in every corner, impotence to tangibly effect change on the injustices and inhumanity I see in the world. An impotence to do anything to change the bad stuff for the better. And Patrick’s statement and sentiment made me rethink this completely.
That feeling of impotence stems from an inability to effect a tangible impact on these huge things. But we can all bear witness. We can all write our poem, do our drawing, or make our voices heard digitally and face-to-face. We can all mark our distaste, our horror, our disappointment, our sadness, in these seemingly small ways, and bear witness.
We can acknowledge to the world that these things aren’t ok through these actions and, whilst they don’t immediately change anything, they bear witness.
To put this in a wider perspective, I’m no scientist but I accept that the conservation of energy is an absolute law. This means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it just changes form. This means that all the energy that will ever exist is already in existence. But what does this have to do with bearing witness? It’s maybe more philosophical than practical, but humour me.
You’re faced with a choice of feeling impotent and doing nothing, or doing a small something and bearing witness. In bearing witness you’re harnessing a small amount of universal energy and pushing back against this massive thing. If thousands or millions of people bear witness, that becomes a huge amount of energy being harnessed to push back against these seemingly insurmountable things.
Also, universal energy and cod-philosophy aside, you are an active participant in the history of the future, whether you like it or not. History can’t access the lost conscience of a billion dead souls. When you bear witness it can be taken into account and create a history of empathy and resistance, rather than apathy and, at worst, collusion.
Of course we can all do more than this. I’m not advocating we just engage in small acts of bearing witness, but when impotence is crippling, it’s somewhere we can all begin. So in this most basic form, I’ll start…
I bear witness to the horrors of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s sickening that in these developed times military conflict is ever used.
I bear witness to America’s Supreme Court ruling on abortion. How can we possibly still be faced with a small group of (mostly) men making decisions about the rights women have over their own bodies.
I bear witness to the wholesale shakedown of the UK by a government acting more like a mafia than a body elected to represent its people.
And I bear witness to the loss of love, respect and empathy for those less fortunate within our society, and those looking to enter our society, that seems to be sweeping the privileged West.
Of course, there’s so much more.
We must bear witness, because we can.