Handfuls Of Dust And Splinters Of Bone

Recently, closing out 2022, on his Substack, Charles Eisenstein published his long essay "Handfuls Of Dust And Splinters Of Bone" in a series of six Parts, a sober contemplation around a discussion of George Orwell's seminal, prophetic work, "1984".

By way of introduction he writes:

"I wrote the bulk of this essay in 2010, and returned to it sporadically over the years since. I have spent the last week shaping it into publishable form, but I have scrupulously avoided updating it with examples from the Covid era. Why? Because I want to make it clear that despite the Orwellian dimensions of the Covid response, the phenomenon I describe far transcends that issue. “Evil” did not start in 2019."

In Part 1, he begins bleakly:

"Looking at the state of the planet today, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that evil is running the world. Everywhere, it seems, vast impersonal forces conspire to destroy all that is good and beautiful. Green spaces and living soil are paved over, made into parking lots and strip malls. Rain forests are cut down, fisheries exhausted, soil washed into the sea, wetlands drained, lakes polluted, the atmosphere poisoned, all to feed a money machine that serves no authentic human happiness. People disappear into secret prisons, walls and fences go up everywhere, indigenous tribes are forced off their land, coups depose leaders who would return power to the people. Wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer hands, whole nations and peoples devote their productive lives to debt service. Every night a billion people go to bed hungry. And all of this happens through the actions of human beings. We cannot blame any agency external to ourselves."

By Part 5, he describes the search for truth and warns:

"When Orwell wrote 1984 in the late 1940s, the technology to alter records of the past was in its infancy: airbrushed photographs and so forth. Today, when nearly all records are electronic, this alteration can happen with a few keystrokes. Entire events can be rewritten or erased. We are entering an era of intensifying confusion as to what is real. Struggles for power are escalating into struggles to control reality itself, via the control of words and minds."

As I see it, the times we are living through are beset by risk and danger as powerful political systems attempt to exercise control over the personal and private spheres.

By the conclusion of Part 6, Charles's tone is positive, hopeful, transforming:

"...each human soul, eventually, will return to its divine nature: love. We hold open that possibility, naively if need be, for everyone. Even if it happens not in our lifetimes, not in ten thousand years, still we hold it open. We hold it open for each person and, therefore, hold it open for all people, foreseeing a future built on a new story of the human being. Only if we give up on it does that possibility vanish. Maybe indeed we will participate in such a future only as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. The timeline does not much matter; our work is the same.

Looking at the machinations of power today, it appears that we are very very far from the Revolution of Love I have described. Yet maybe we are closer than it seems. Awakenings are happening, invisible to us. The Inner Party is full of incipient defectors. A new and ancient consciousness is seeping up through the earth. Perhaps the long, lonely work of our ancestors, whose dust and bones became the earth, and whose tears watered it, is reaching fruition in our time."

The last three years have been hard, throwing up immense challenges on global, societal, community, and personal levels. As a society we have regressed into the patterning of fearful behaviours. My hope is that can move forward by pivoting on all these levels to a much more positive energy and vibration as we move from fear and deception to truth and love. 

Planting Peace

A vital, energizing message from Ronnie Cummins and the Organic Consumers Association:

"As we approach the end of 2022, OCA and our family of organizations want to thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for your loyalty and support. In this part of Minnesota, at the edge of Lake Superior and the Boundary Waters Wilderness, the traditional Finnish term for the state of mind you need in order to survive and thrive in hard times is Sisu. The internet says that "Sisu” means “determination and courage in the face of great adversity," but around here the old-timers will add that real Sisu requires “stubborn determination” and “wild optimism.”

OCA, and myself in particular, have often been dissed as “impractical,” “utopian,” and “overly optimistic.” Saying that we are going to make organic and regenerative food and farming, and natural herbs, supplements, and medicines the norm, rather than just the alternative, requires Sisu. It requires that we stubbornly nurture and strengthen the positive solutions emerging in our communities and regions, even as we expose and fight back against the evil deeds, addictive temptations, and daily threats of “business as usual.” Saying that we are not only going to mitigate, but actually reverse environmental destruction and global warming, demands that we seek out and magnify the Big Change best practices of regenerative agriculture, land use, renewable energy, and conservation, instead of just settling for small change, too little, too late.

Planting peace, regenerating health, reversing the global epidemic of diet and environmentally-caused chronic disease, abolishing nuclear weapons, eliminating poverty and forced migration, bringing genetically engineered food and the weaponizing of pathogens to a halt, stopping the next pandemic before it starts. All of this will require “stubborn determination” as well as “wild optimism.”

The last few years certainly meet the definition of “great adversity.” OCA and our closest allies, as well as myself personally, have come under vicious attack again in 2022, slandered, censored, and threatened. Despite intense pressure we have refused to back down on the muckraking and truth-telling in Organic Bytes, and have maintained our 300,000-strong network of loyal subscribers. We promise you we will continue to expose, and struggle against the corporados, mad scientists, war-mongers, and would-be dictators. But we will also do our best to publicize, support, and campaign for the organic and natural health practices that we know will someday be the norm.

If you can afford it, please send OCA an end of year tax-deductible donation. Several generous donors have agreed to match all donations that come in before January 31, 2023."

The Silence Is Deafening

Your silence is deafening

your blindness is illuminating

your amnesia is memorable

your dumbing down is instructive

your wilful ignorance speaks volumes.

We see you, we hear you, 

we remember you, we know you, 

we have learned what you have done to us.

Anthem For Doomed Youth

Anthem For Doomed Youth

by Wilfred Owen, 1917

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

      — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

      Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

      Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

      And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

      Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

      The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

... the clocks were striking thirteen.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.

The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours. It was part of the economy drive in preparation for HateWeek. The flat was seven flights up, and Winston, who was thirty-nine and had a varicose ulcer above his right ankle, went slowly, resting several times on the way. On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran...."

These are the chilling opening lines of George Orwell's 1984.

O Canada

Canada. Our Home and Native Land.

The True North, Strong and free.

Proud in Spirit, Strong of Heart.

Not divided in two, but United As One.

Bad Cat Bob

Cartoon detail by Bob Moran, www.bobmoran.co.uk

OK, so who is this bad cat Bob?

Ah, here we go, found him on my go-to Twitter, Wikipedia, Fact Checkers (Facebook), Full Fact, Guardian, BBC, CBC, CNN, Vaxopedia ...

Here he is, Bob Malone, Bob Moran, Bobby Kennedy; why are all these nutters named Bob? Just as I thought: nutbar, conspiracy theorist, anti-vaxxer, dissident, debunked, anti-science, extremist. And I thought Bob was a brilliant cartoonist, epidemiologist, author, speaker, orator, lawyer? More fool, me. Can't be bothered to dig any further; anyway, the evidence is clear. Coach Fauci was right all along. In classic American football style, he is our trusted blustering bully destroying the opposition. He has run up an almost unassailable half-time lead. Trademark defense, running interference, block tackles aplenty, warp speed offense, nullifying the pitiful counter. What a Playbook! Shock and awe! A blowout! He's running up the score, stacking the numbers.

(And yet the home fans never gave up hope. They resisted the onslaught and rallied their brow-beaten troops from meek surrender to valiant fightback, clawing back the deficit despite all the odds. The resilient crowd found its voice and was roused into raucous uplift. It ain't over until the Coach crumbles, his Playbook implodes, or the fat lady sings).

"Science is the belief in the fallibility of experts”, said the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman.