THE EYES HAVE IT

I like people who look me in the eye.

I'm not alone. There is a deeply held human trust in eye to eye contact, and a primal distrust of avoiding such contact. I'd go as far as to say, when someone won't look you in the eye, you can be reasonably sure that they are wishing to cloak a dishonesty, or a harm they wish to do you. Linguistically, this gets recorded in such words as hoodwinking, obfuscation and misleading. They and others derive from an essential in all trickery - the need to divert what is seen.

It is said that torturers do not look their victims in the eye. I can understand that, for the whole history of  violence is a history of distance. Killing someone with my bare hands is not just dangerous for me physically, it will haunt me psychologically for the rest of my days. Using a stick distances me just that small few inches, a spear a few feet, a bullet, to the point where I can perhaps pretend I didn't do it. At least, not looking you in the eye as I kill you, I can dehumanise you. You are no longer Gunther Weil, 23, of Hamburg Germany, fond of bicycling and with Esthe, your girlfriend, looking forward to a potentially happy life with children and a vegetable plot (just like me). You are the enemy. I'm not murdering Gunther Weil. I'm eliminating an enemy. When people in normal life take steps to dehumanise you, you can be certain they mean you harm.

The opposite is also true. When people meet eye to eye, simple use of the truth becomes almost inevitable. People see, and cannot help sharing their common humanity. I remember hearing from a former Royal Marine who had served in the Falklands War. As he described taking from the horribly contorted bodies of dead young Argentinians the family photos they had in their wallets, he found it impossible to continue without sobbing. "At that moment, and ever since," he said, "I've found it impossible to see them as my enemy."

In the trenches of the First World War, hostilities ceased on Christmas day, and, famously, opposing troops went into no man's land, played a game of football, shook hands and wished each other happy Christmas. What happened afterwards is telling. Orders were issued to all soldiers warning them that fraternising (meaning, of course behaving in a brotherly way) with the enemy would result in a Court Martial. If you are waging a war, you can't have people getting to know their enemy. If they do, enmity itself will fragment and die.

In less dramatic circumstances, I came across an example recently. About to catch a Ryanair flight, I had failed to check in online. Never mind, I thought. I'll just check in at the airport. Going to the normal baggage drop, the agent looked me up on the flight manifest and wrote me out a paper form. In the same time and with the same effort, he could have written me a boarding pass. But he didn't. At no point would he look me in the eye What he wrote was a form I needed to take to another desk. I did so and handed it to the young woman behind the counter, who also determinedly avoided any eye contact. "That will be 100 Euros," she said, staring at her computer. Now, having flown with Ryanair before, I realised there would be some charge or other, but this one floored me. I stayed calm, and asked the lady what she felt about that. She began to give me the official line - "if you look its in the terms and conditions......" I stopped her. "That's not what I asked you. I asked you how you felt about it." She went on by explaining "it  wasn't her fault but was Company policy." I persisted. "I'm not asking you about the policy. I'm not saying it's your fault, I'm just asking you as one human being to another how you feel about it." At this point, she did look at me. I was surprised to see her eyes moist with tears. "As a matter of fact, I feel awful about it every day," she said. I thanked her. We had met.

When we meet eye to eye, injustice is unlikely. Simple truth and fellow feeling will prevail. The dehumanising organisation, the twisting of the generous human spirit, the reduction of the other to enemy, appellant, respondent, offender, non compliant checker in in person, or any other form of anonymous objectification for the purposes of some form of violence - that will cease. Human shall meet human. Peaceful, kind human shall speak to peaceful kind human. In the eyes of the other I see myself. In my eyes, they see themselves. In a gaze, our common humanity is reflected and honoured.