Paris attacks give us pause for thought

That is not to suggest for a moment that terror attacks serve a useful purpose. They do not. But we must make of events, even the most tragic, what we can.

In the wake of an assault on our freedoms, there are almost inevitably calls for reviews of all sorts of big picture, political questions.

In this case, there will doubtless be calls for a rethink of the French military engagement in Syria, for example. Given, as seems likely, that a few of the Paris killers were home-grown, some people will also demand a revisiting of approaches to immigration, or at the very least integration.

Yes, some will do so opportunistically, but many more will do so reflectively and with a genuine desire to take something helpful from disaster.

Hopefully, however, what will emerge in most of us, on a very personal level, is a deeper resolve to uphold and treasure the freedoms that millions of men and women in two world wars died to preserve.

For some of us – and I include myself uppermost – this may mean recommitting ourselves to engagement with our world, wherever we can. I mean both the everyday world with its seemingly mundane problems and the wider, less attractive (or comprehensible) “political” world.

Perhaps we will take from this tragedy a refusal to cede, through apathy or distraction, control of our destinies to others, whose passion makes them more committed to a cause than we are.

Perhaps this tragedy will also lead us to reflect that whilst the people killed and injured in the Paris attacks were victims in the true sense of the word, most of us are not, no matter how badly we feel we’re treated at times.

We arguably live in a culture which increasingly celebrates a “victim mentality” on all sorts of issues. There are real victims in this world; some of those who call themselves victims are not.

In the end, the best responses to attacks like these might be renewed vigilance without terror, social tolerance without moral blindness, independence without irresponsibility and wariness  without paranoia.

On present indications, it seems that the good people of Paris, while dealing with various degrees of grief depending on their closeness to the aftermath of these attacks, are already determined to respond in this way.

We wish them well.