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.

Evolution

Over millions of years our bodies have evolved until very recently with foods exclusively from nature as nutrition. Why on earth, then, would we choose to feed them de-natured dross?

Hubris, continued

It is hubris that gives men belief that they are in control. It causes them to subjugate other men, other animals, and to lay claim to land and resources.

Hubris makes men invent religions that elevate them above other living beings. Their faith is misplaced.

In a very short time historically, hubris has enabled humanity to radically alter the Earth's climate and ecology with catastrophic effect on its own chances of survival as a species.

Hubris has caused humanity to commit ecocide on plants and animals, land and oceans, life-forms central to planetary health.

Only on recognizing this fatal flaw of hubris can humanity reverse the course towards calamity. Species diversity, ecosystem health, resource wealth must be protected from further deterioration.

Like the human body, the Earth is a living system, a complex web of inter-related organs, cells, networks, molecules, bacteria, flows, nodes, pressure-points. Like a cancerous disease, hubris has facilitated a sustained and terminal attack on the foundations of overall planetary health. Unless checked, it will continue to cause the depletion and shutdown of life support systems.

The State of Britain

Journalist Fintan O' Toole calls it the unravelling of an imagined community.

He writes in the Guardian:

"Brexit plays out a conflict between Them and Us, but it is surely obvious after this week that the problem is not with Them on the continent. It’s with the British Us, the unravelling of an imagined community. The visible collapse of the Westminster polity this week may be a result of Brexit, but Brexit itself is the result of the invisible subsidence of the political order over recent decades...

It may seem strange to call this slow collapse invisible since so much of it is obvious: the deep uncertainties about the union after the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and the establishment of the Scottish parliament the following year; the consequent rise of English nationalism; the profound regional inequalities within England itself; the generational divergence of values and aspirations; the undermining of the welfare state and its promise of shared citizenship; the contempt for the poor and vulnerable expressed through austerity; the rise of a sensationally self-indulgent and clownish ruling class. But the collective effects of these interrelated developments do seem to have been barely visible within the political mainstream until David Cameron accidentally took the lid off by calling a referendum and asking people to endorse the status quo...

It is time to move on from the pretence that the problem with British democracy is the EU and to recognise that it is with itself. After Brextinction there must be a whole new political ecosystem."

In England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, there has always been regional disparity and internecine sniping. Born of insular thinking, a ttribal culture has pitted the Church of England against Rome, Roundheads against Cavaliers, England against Scotland, Lancashire against Yorkshire, Manchester against Liverpool, North against South, Britain against Germany, and latterly UK against the invented bogeyman: Europe. All in good sport?

Tracing Britain's tortuous, tribal history back over seven hundred years:

1297 - William Wallace leads the Scotts in their defeat of the English. He is defeated a year later at the Battle of Falkirk.

1337 - The Hundred Years' War with France begins. It will last until 1453.

1455 - The War of the Roses begins between the families of the Plantagenets and the Lancastrians for the right to rule England.

1536 - England and Wales are joined by the Act of Union.

1588 - The English fleet led by Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada.

The English Reformation is a series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England breaks away from the authority of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church....

The break with Rome is effected by a series of acts of Parliament passed between 1532 and 1534, among them the 1534 Act of Supremacy, which declares that Henry is the "Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England".

1707 - England and Scotland are united as one country called Great Britain.

1776 - The American colonies declare their independence from Britain.

1801 - The British and Irish parliaments are joined by the Act of Union to create the United Kingdom.

1805 - The British fleet defeats Napoleon at the Battle of Trafalgar.

1854 - The Crimean War is fought against Russia.

At its peak in the 19th century, the British Empire covers over one-fourth of the surface of the earth.

1914 - 1918 World War I "The Great War". The United Kingdom fights with Allies against the Central Powers led by Germany.

1921 - Ireland is granted independence.

1939 - 1945 World War II. The United Kingdom joins the Allies to battle the Axis Powers. Under the leadership of Winston Churchill, the United Kingdom is the last western European nation to oppose Germany in World War II and plays a major role in defeating Hitler. 1940 - The United Kingdom is bombed by the Germans for months during the Battle of Britain but fends off land invasion.

1973 - "Brentry". The United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) joins the Common Market , or European Economic Community, with continued membership endorsed by a referendum in 1975. Upon the formation of the European Union in 1993, the EEC is incorporated and renamed as the European Community.

2016 - Brexit, a portmanteau of "British" and "exit", is the proposed withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU). It follows the referendum in which 51.9 per cent of those who vote support withdrawal. The years of full membership in the continent-wide union from Brentry to the presently-proposed Brexit mark a fraction (less than five percent ) of the time-frame in this potted history.

Britain claims to have once "ruled the waves." One would have thought that the diminishment brought by the end of Empire would have tempered the ambition to stand steadfast in isolation, or apart, from established allies. Yet, with such a convoluted history and radically-altered identity dynamic, fierce rivalries, disputes and deep-rooted concerns (local, regional, national, and transnational) persist and fester in this age of blocs, unions, alliances, pacts, and global competition. The country risks being left behind as a quaint anachronism, nostalgic for an evanescent glorious past.

Now we witness the petty shambles that is governance; the pathetic posturing and manouvering in Parliament; the fervid spouting of the myopic mainstream media; the squabbling amongst friends and neighbours; the growing exasperation of a collective shrug of stunned resignation. Direct confrontation usurps the politics of consensus. When you ask of a whole diverse populace this blunt question via referendum: "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?", you are opening a can of worms whose contents are unknown, contentious, and subject to fudging and fabricating.

On the London School of Economics and Political Science blog, Thomas Colignatus writes:

"The question assumes a binary choice — Remain or Leave the EU — while voting theory warns that allowing only two options can easily be a misleading representation of the real choice. When the true situation is more complex, and especially if it is one that arouses strong passions, then reducing the question to a binary one might suggest a political motivation. As a result of the present process, we actually don’t know how people would have voted when they had been offered the true options.... 

In the case of Brexit, the hidden complexity concerned:

— Leave, and adopt an EFTA or WTO framework?

— Leave, while the UK remains intact or while it splits up?

— Remain, in what manner?....

When there are only two options then everyone knows about the possibility of a stalemate. This means a collective indifference."

Now that grievances have been aired and issues discussed ad infinitum, perhaps a second Yes/No referendum presents the best and last chance to avoid the country being driven over the cliff. The question is bound to further expose deep splits in the fabric of national unity. What was then Prime Minister Cameron thinking in betting the nation? Parliament should never abdicate its responsibility to govern. Who will have the vision to heal the wide-open rifts and clear up this mess? I would bet on it taking time, with no easy fixes in sight. The leaders and a highly disenchanted electorate are apparently not up to the necessary task of reconciliation. History staggers on regardless.