Keep Your Eyes On The Road Ahead

We are collectively complicit in electing governments and sanctioning corporate behemoths that are assaulting Nature with such vehemence, such violence, such force, such wilfulness that whole ecosystems are suffering and even dying off. Rainforests, oceans, rivers, glaciers, minerals, soils, the air we breathe, the water we drink are being packaged, poisoned, and picked off, never to return to their pure, pristine, natural state or volume. We watch on as Nature is abused.

Now, under cover of COVID-19, as the people cower and keep apart compliantly in thrall to the daily infection toll, corporations race to harvest the pickings with impunity, pumping up the fossil fuels to float the boats, fly the planes, and drive the cars. They even have the gall to suck up the bail-out funds glad-handed by governments, deepening monetary and ecological debt and exarcerbating human misery by cheating the general public.

We close our eyes to the rape and pillage, distracted by our immediate precarity. We fear a virus that is, nonetheless, well on the wane in most countries. We have come a long way by flattening the curve and seeing deaths from the virus slow to a trickle, doing as mandated by our governments. Sensible stratified risk management responding to data and not outlandish modelling projections should be de rigueur, rather than the insatiable get-rich schemes foisted on us by merciless pharmaceutical leeches. They divide and conquer us with smoke-and-mirror obfuscation and demonization of common-sense rationales.

And so.... the wildfires burn, the hurricanes and cyclones intensify, the oceans heat up, the floods and droughts become more extreme, the temperatures become unbearable, unable to support life, the soils become sterile, poisoned with toxins, biodiversity crashes, and our bodies struggle to adapt to an unnatural diet of GMOs, glyphosate, synthetic additives, antibiotics, steroids, endocrine-disrupting substances. Paralysed, we fret and fluster over an orange monster and a novel virus and novel vaccine to counter with, fiddling as Rome burns, arguing back and forth and flip-flopping over appropriate measures. We mask our faces and look away as if we dare not look at the carnage as we keep our distance from our fellow human beings.

We must focus our undivided attention on a road ahead that must lead to full restoration and whole recovery of the patient; ourselves, family, friends, all humans, plants, the eco-systems that in their true essence sustain us. This is the only way to save the world we have inflicted so much damage upon, particularly in the last hundred years or so of accelerated overshoot when we had the tools to have known better. We have the knowledge and the technology. Where is the vision and courage to use them to build a future that sustains us all? 

Kudos to all those who are using every fibre of their being, sometimes to their last breath on this planet, to help bring it about. They are everywhere in small pockets dotted around the world, planting and saving seeds, nurturing soils, growing food, and helping others to eat, drink, play, sing, dance, create, write, vote, and get involved with acting on our innate intuition that our current political system is broken and needs fixing. May a new generation of fierce young doers rise up in a spirit of renaissance. And may fierce, bold women and wise elders continue to lead the way.

Shhhh!

Open your mind to what you don't know, instead of regurgitating what you think you know.

As Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Braiding Sweetgrass:

"Ignorance makes it all too easy to jump to conclusions about what we don't understand."

The Mark of a Civil Society

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man 

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 

own were; any man's death diminishes me, 

because I am involved in mankind. 

And therefore never send to know for whom 

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

(John Donne, 1624)

The mark of a civil society is how it responds to existential crisis. And there is no question that we find ourselves collectively challenged in an unprecedented way.

Here, in Canada, where I live, life as we know it has been transformed in recent days. And now, in most countries of the world, the same situation applies, with self-isolation, social distancing, closure of public spaces and private social venues the norm. How surreal this must be for most people, particularly urbanites and participants in large organizations. Our world is suddenly condensed within the walls of our abodes and shelters. Fresh air and provisioning are reserved for occasional forays to the outside world beyond our home and family compounds. Some of us are more fortunate than others with the level and quality of space and comfort we enjoy. How strange to witness the silencing of human-derived sound; how odd to see deserted meeting places. How long can we stand this enforced new reality without losing our marbles and coming into brute competition for food and sustenance, for very survival?

We have many long-latent measures in our toolkit to guide us in this. The main thing to realize and confirm every single day is the unambiguous truth that we are all in this together. In sticking together  in our resolve to get beyond the tunnel we find ourselves darkened by, and out into the bright fresh air of a new day bathed in sunshine, light, warmth that only we living ones can. With common resilience, most of us will get to complete this journey; some we will lose along the way, but we will fight tooth and nail to keep them alongside us for as long as possible. We will not abandon them, for this is the mark of a civil society.

Already, stresses are beginning to show. Most nations are stepping up to the plate in mutual solidarity by taking the long view. The priority is to help all levels of society, especially those less able and equipped to fend for themselves, like the elderly, the poor, the marginalized, the health-compromised, the virus-infected. Some nations have been negligent, unfocused, slow to adapt to the clear unfolding crisis, meaning the collective affliction will be greater and longer. Some nations are already seeing the light of day as their infection curve flattens and begins to drop off. They have done this precisely by coming together, working all-out together, in common cause. The nations that will suffer most are those that drift and veer away from the vision of the common good. Already, irresponsible libertarian, morally superior exceptionalism is rearing its ugly head as national leaders of an authoritarian, self-indulgent, narcissistic bent are beginning to play their sacrificial card. Already, the socially disadvantaged, age- and health-compromised are beginning to be thrown under the bus, judged to be expendable, sacrificable by a callous, negligent 'leadership'. This is absolutely not the mark of a civil society. Shame on these leaders, ministers and thinkers who cannot see beyond their own vanity to empathize with the crisis engulfing the citizens they claim to represent. 

What is imperative is that we all, personally and collectively, follow sensible guidelines to distance and, eventually, overcome this unleashed virus and help all those around us (both as extended family and community) every step of the way towards the light at the end of the tunnel. Our current physical isolation is a surreal temporary exception to the norm, to be endured in good heart. This has enabled us to connect more on spiritual and psychical levels. For no man is an island...

Dichotomy

There is a tragic human dichotomy now playing out at flashpoints of the climate emergency, one between those personally traumatized by the calamity playing out, and those far removed who continue to preach Business As Usual, as if actual events are hyped-up conspiracies, mere figments of radical imaginations. The former are experiencing a living hell, losing house, home, land, possessions both material and mental, pets, animals, livelihoods, and even lives; the latter shutter themselves in their privileged enclaves and make blithe pronouncements from their ivory towers.

Voices of the Zeitgeist

Painting of Bob Dylan, by Richard Day

"We were born before the wind

Also younger than the sun

Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic

Hark, now hear the sailors cry

Smell the sea and feel the sky

Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic"

Born before the wind, we sailed into the mystic. We were enchanted by the music that played its timeless sounds and rhythms, rocked by a raucous sea, and by the sparkling, jangling words of poetry and myth.

"And every one of them words rang true

And glowed like burning coal

Pouring off of every page

Like it was written in my soul

From me to you

Tangled up in blue"

"And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind

Down the foggy ruins of time

Far past the frozen leaves

The haunted, frightened trees

Out to the windy beach

Far from the twisted reach

Of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Silhouetted by the sea

Circled by the circus sands

With all memory and fate

Driven deep beneath the waves

Let me forget about today

Until tomorrow"

The poet musicians transported us to a place of solace, a haven of wonder, a sanctuary of peace, an oasis of deep love. And yet, they also haunted us with visions of terror, upheaval, dystopia, calamity and chaos. Before the deluge, all along the watchtower, a hard rain's a gonna fall. All these decades later, that same music and poetry still ring true. They stand testament to a time of youthful exuberance and primal innocence seeking an end to wars and civil strife. Our spirit is weathered and worn, remaining intact in pockets of resilience. Collectively, as a generation, we feel blessed by the awakening and traumatized by its evanescence as a zeitgeist, a political and very personal philosophy, a template for living. Not that it failed us, but that we failed it.

We are stardust

We are golden

And we've got to get ourselves

Back to the garden 

There was a fanfare blowing to the sun

That was floating on the breeze.

Look at Mother Nature on the run

In the nineteen seventies.

Woodstock was a music festival held August 15–18, 1969, which attracted an audience of more than 400,000. Billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music", it was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 43 miles southwest of Woodstock. Woodstock was a seminal happening now fifty years ago - half a century in historical terms. A heady mix of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Canned Heat, the Grateful Dead, Santana, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, The Who and, oh, so much more, the event now encapsulates that wild Zeitgeist. My generation. Won't get fooled again.

Years later, the generational shift morphed:

Some of them were dreamers

And some of them were fools

Who were making plans and thinking of the future

With the energy of the innocent

They were gathering the tools

They would need to make their journey back to nature...

All the people we used to know

They're an illusion to me now

Some are mathematicians

Some are carpenter's wives

Don't know how it all got started

I don't know what they do with their lives

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions 

Won't be nothing 

Nothing you can measure anymore 

The blizzard, the blizzard of the world 

has crossed the threshold 

and it has overturned 

the order of the soul

... I've seen the future, baby

It is murder

And what'll you do now?...

I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest

Where the people are many and their hands are all empty

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

And the executioner's face is always well hidden

Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten

Where black is the color, where none is the number

... And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard

It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Where are the present-day voices, the reflective and explosive words to rock us through the night, herald the dawn, and help us negotiate the breaking waves, the jagged and disintegrating reefs of our time? After all, we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

 

As a fresh young generation finds its voice:

... and you of tender years

Can't know the fears

That your elders grew by

And so please help

Them with your youth

They seek the truth

Before they can die

Teach your parents well

The children's hell

Will slowly go by

And feed them on your dreams

The one they pick

The one you'll know by

Don't you ever ask them why

If they told you, you would cry

So just look at them and sigh

And know they love you

The Strawberry Blond Clowns

So, with these clowns ruling over us, what could possibly go wrong?

We have three hideous narcissists who don't give a hoot for common folk that we, the people, have collectively chosen to lead and represent us. You couldn't get more buffoonish than President Donald Trump, newly party-endorsed-only Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Premier Doug Ford. They seem crude caricatures in an absurdist play of politically motivated megalomaniacs. Strawberry blond, chubby, and nutty as fruitcakes, none of them show a shred of empathy, besotted as they are with their own image and standing. Like spoiled brats throwing a tantrum in a private nursery, they are all ripping up the playbook, decimating social institutions, promoting the corporatocracy, ripping up the regulatory framework, defiling the ecosystem. They are out of control with those crooked appointees beholden to them abdicating all responsibility to keep them in check. Pence, Bolton and Pompeo are loose cannons themselves. The whole lot of them are allowing the military, law enforcement, financial, pharmaceutical, agriculture, extractive, food industries to ride roughshod over the health and safety of people and planet. With utter impunity, these vested elite interests line their pockets with obscene profits and income at the expense of the "other" 90 - 99 per cent. (Settle on the number meeting your measure of extreme inequality).

I assume we have got here - the democratic election of these autocratic posers - by having got suckered in. They have, after all, dealt us a hand based on a pack of lies, lies which they trot off freely and only meekly opposed with every word, tweet, and interview. Truth is a victim tossed out of the window, thrown under the bus, just as George Orwell predicted it would be all those years ago in "1984". Propaganda, doublethink, Big Brother rule.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.” 

In the autocrat's world, in his feeble little mind

“War is peace. 

Freedom is slavery. 

Ignorance is strength.” 

We were suckered in by a political system that rewards the wealthy and empowered, suckered in by base values of fear, insecurity, intolerance, prejudice, religiosity, ignorance. Misogyny, nationalism, racism, privilege all played their part and these leaders have certainly played on these foibles in their vicious scorched-earth, divide-and-conquer diatribes. They have rallied the troops of tyranny. The opposition is in disarray, fragmented, bewildered, and disenfranchised.

These leaders lord over us from on high. And yet, they will not prevail for ever. They will foist misery upon their fiefdoms only until the day the pendulum swings back from chaos and calamity towards sanity and awakening. History is replete with cycles and change. The time this process will take is hard to gauge but we have to be in it for the long haul. Otherwise they have us. "We won't get fooled again, no, no... "

The Mexican Fisherman

This joke is as old as the hills, but the truism behind it is truly timeless.

"The American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, "Only a little while." The American then asked, "Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish?" The Mexican said, "With this I have more than enough to support my family's needs." 

The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?" The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life." The American scoffed, "I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you will run your ever-expanding enterprise." 

The Mexican fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?" To which the American replied, "15 to 20 years." 

"But what then?" asked the Mexican. The American laughed and said that's the best part. "When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions." 

"Millions?...Then what?" The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."

Keep it simple. Take your time. Money doesn't necessarily buy happiness. Trade with your community. Look after your family. Love your life.