For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has asked us to respond to this challenge by using the prompt word “understand” or going with the above picture.
I’m not a Depeche Mode fan, but my daughter is, and there is one song by that group that stands out to me because of the lyrics. It’s called “People are People.”
“People Are People” was written by band member Martin Gore. It was released in March 1984 as the lead single from their fourth studio album, Some Great Reward. Recorded at Hansa Mischraum in West Berlin, it was the band’s first top-20 single in the United States, peaking at number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. This song was Depeche Mode’s breakthrough hit in the United States after having had several chart hits in the UK to this point.
What resonated with me about the song was that it was is a call for people to put aside their differences and work toward unity. Gore asked the question, “I can’t understand what make a man hate another man. Help me understand.”
Some said the song was about race relations, others thought it was about war. However, it was an unusual song for Depeche Mode because the lyrics are so blatant and leave little to the imagination. For this reason, Gore doesn’t consider it one of his stronger songs and has not played it live since the ’80s. And Dave Gahan said he regretted recording the song, calling it “too nice, too commercial.”
Here are the lyrics to “People are People.”
People are people, so why should it be?
You and I should get along so awfully
People are people, so why should it be?
You and I should get along so awfully
So we're different colors, and we're different breeds
And different people, have different needs
It's obvious you hate me, though I've done nothing wrong
I've never even met you, so what could I have done?
I can't understand
What makes a man hate another man?
Help me understand
People are people, so why should it be?
You and I should get along so awfully
People are people, so why should it be?
You and I should get along so awfully
Help me understand, help me understand
Help me understand
Now you're punching, and you're kicking
And you're shouting at me
I'm relying on your common decency
So far it hasn't surfaced but I'm sure it exists
It just takes a while to travel from your head to your fist
I can't understand
What makes a man hate another man?
Help me understand
People are people, so why should it be?
You and I should get along so awfully
People are people, so why should it be?
You and I should get along so awfully
I can't understand what make a man hate another man
Help me understand
I can't understand what make a man hate another man
Help me understand
I can't understand what make a man hate another man
Help me understand
I can't understand what make a man hate another man
Help me understand
I can't understand what make a man hate another man
Help me understand
I can't understand what make a man hate another man
Help me understand
This, That, and the Other 
Gaza: is the ICJ ruling enough
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“If you believe in something, and that’s being ripped away
from you by the people who tell you to believe in it…”
{I’d say those people are powerful individuals who you trust.}
This seems to me to have layer after layer. Perhaps we first discover lies when a big brother says he will do something then doesn’t do it or, worse, tricks us. Or it might be when our parents (if one had such patents) can no longer pull off the illusion of Santa Claus (a commonly-used trauma). Maybe we find out later that the idea of a man with a sack fulfilling wishes isn’t really connected to Jesus… and later yet that an established religion we’ve been steeped in wasn’t really started by a Jesus either*. It’s possible most of us grab onto something else. Let’s be rational and look to legal establishments and credentialed figures. Why shouldn’t we trust them more? Or why should we? Is it only because they are more powerful still than our parents were? And, if so, is that all we’re looking for? Good enough?
{*Disclaimer: this is not to say anything about the person not existing.}
Meanwhile, I’ll share another perspective on the ICJ ruling
(while this presenter is not trained in international law):
She says “everyone is wrong” and ceasefire is in place.
Leaning this way or a different way isn’t the full story
of what the disillusioned man is observing – not just
whether or not the ruling was appropriately stated.
He’s observing reactions on it mattering, after all.
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It’s difficult to get these ideas across. I’m not at all saying I don’t value being rational, like the man trained in international law and the woman trained in other things are both rational. I very much find their sincerity… what. Valuable? I value their hopes greatly. Comforting? Yes, in a way that I’m struggling to make more of. Of worth? It’s of worth to the psychopaths and sociopaths in tremendously alternate ways. I’ve seen intelligent atheists who like humans — more than they like broken-trust-most-opportune — employ the wording “satanic” because of the inexplicability extant and on incessant display. I feel let down, way down, similarly to the man who thought we meant something by teaching against war crimes and so on. If I recall correctly, the man says he has sought truth in life, as have I. And I never fretted over Santa, a mind trip my parents didn’t impose on me. Nor have I focused on what I was getting other than a decent upbringing within an aspirational culture (by which I didn’t mean money or wealth or toys despite the fact that we acknowledge this reality and notice we will have to swim in an income). My life was always relatively serious. Plus — while I was exposed to the church my dad came up in but which I am not part of and don’t agree with and questioned early without it being a point of contention at the same time I took in other points of view as well — I was concurrently learning large scale and finer scale honesty, logic, information and processing in the human sense [not just punching into a calculator and so forth regardless that I learned that too but the human aspect counted] and a rules-based-order. I didn’t have to grasp for reason after childhood ways. But reason isn’t reaching back. There are different kinds of personhoods. Some love to stomp the neighbor.
Most of you at least have a clue what I’m talking about, what the man spoke of. Or you may have caught on to the utter corruption sooner than I, or we (while he’s saying he won’t let it happen and I wish him well and admit I’ll probably still try). I know not all care and instead go on as a primordial mess in euphemistically higher-tech versions of simple slime seeking dominance or only survival at someone’s expense. In my vicinity on the globe, the aspiration could’ve been called the American way… and I’m sure there are other versions even as a large volume of people seem to aim their futures toward America nevertheless or additionally but other streams don’t, yet aspire all the same. But too many inhabitants were catching on, recently, or too many cracks were showing and risking more seeing through the facade. The narrative was manageable, if we were looking. Time to scramble the tables, we now are implored by the continuing flash. Life and a better world, just some better than we’ve done before, is not valued. And then there’s the question: beat’m or join’m? The ‘m to join not being the disappointed ones. Rather those who are held in front of our faces as happening. Their decision matters, even if it is death. Rather than beating or joining, do we select something else? Is the disappointment, the waking from playing their fool, satisfactory as opposed to continuing to buy the lies? They’re putting on a show, a grand show that the earnest people won’t compare to. There is such thing as truth, but you have to hold it in esteem yourself because it won’t get you anything or put you on the map. Ruthless is their way. And I am aware this won’t make sense.
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Rabbi Manis Friedman end of January: fairly
early on, here, this guest is perplexed
that soldiers went into a building
to blow it up and died trying.
— I was stunned, some years ago,
to learn that fertility banks had been
set up in Israel without thinking ahead…
such that after-the-fact they were trying to
ascertain how to sort the fact of Issurei bi’ah.
Meanwhile, important to know, many orthodox rabbis
do not agree with the man in this video above per Zionism.
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I kinda don’t understand what is meant by Israel losing, other
than that they have done things like turn on their own people.
(The main other meaning is likely that Palestinians still exist.
Maybe another is that they haven’t pulled in our troops yet.
Or is it that that the U.S. hasn’t found an excuse thus far?)
This piece of the lyrics is especially outstanding:
… relying on your common decency
So far it hasn’t surfaced but I’m sure it exists
It just takes a while to travel from your head to your fist
Last week: Will the killing stop?
There’s a piece of recent history not included here (discovered by this journalist’s work and leading to his being harassed via flashier “news” outlets) that I would like to share (not as part of a two-hour kind of thing) and for which I haven’t found a presentation to share — that many October 7 Israeli victims were annihilated by the Israeli government itself; Hannibal. This attitude has extended to the time following; a stark difference from how hostages were treated and regarded by their own government in other modern times.
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Great message- great band too 🙂
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I think that I could get along with most Republicans if we could just get rid of the Orange Jesus. Nice music, Fandango and this world really has some problems.
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I think even if Trump disappeared, his MAGA minions, his disciples, have taken over the Republican party. I’d have a hard time getting along with anyone who hasn’t disavowed what the Republican Party has become.
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Good song choice, Fandango. I am not too familiar with much of there music but have always liked this song… funny they don’t.
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