Our dark side

Last week a woman at a bus top told me she’d been called nasty names because of her ‘different’ appearance.

She got over it, she said, but only because she was able to get inside the minds of the three people who had subjected her to racist slurs. Their behaviour was so pathetic that she found it in her heart to pity them.

Not everyone can deal so effectively with such nastiness, and this dark side of humanity is never too far from the surface.

It’s so easy to be swept along on a tide of emotionalism and anger, or drawn into situations where we have an uneasy feeling but continue to go with the crowd.

The dark side of human nature can surface at any time. You can only hope that, when it does, enough people will recognise it for what it is and stand up for those who are wronged.

Never think: ‘It can’t happen here.’ It can happen anywhere.

John Fitzgerald, Callan, Co. Kilkenny.