WIN OR LOSE
What seems an age ago, before the Covid 19 eruption, I was already confused, frustrated and depressed by what seemed to me a devastating combination of climate change, the pollution and exhaustion of the only earth we've got, rampant inequality within and between peoples, abuse and neglect of constitutional and legal platforms, proliferation of reactionary regimes and the failure of supposed social democracies to live up to their name.
By early this year I realised two things, that no one mind or movement could embrace the enormity of events and prescribe a solution, but, at the same time, no piecemeal business-as-usual approach could turn things round in time to save our world and life as we know it.
Of course we have never had any total, inclusive vision of the world, its trajectory or the future of our species. An unforseen eruption or meteor-strike could have put an end to life as we know it at any time.
What's different now, and what we should have recognised much sooner, is that the main threat to our existence lies not in outer-space or geophysics but in our own behaviour. Such is our collective power on earth that we are not just the beneficiaries or victims of natural events but the main authors, engineers and executors of the animate earth. Enter the Athropocene, an age that may not last another million, ten thousand, one thousand or even 100 years before it and we run out of puff. The future now lies in our hands. The plot, the story and how it ends is up to us. And the most immediate source of salvation or extinction lies less in distant space-time or technical engineering than in the inner space of human minds and consciousness, What some might, with some reason, still call the soul....
The mind boggles. I know that I cannot properly understand what's going on in the current flux of things. But I also know that nobody else can either. No God or over-arching Science can grasp whole Truth and tell us what to do. Albert Einstein said “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.” It's a pity the biblical prophets graced their own fine words as Word of God and engraved them in stone for all of us. In the absence of any single master key the best we can do is see and hear and try and touch and think our way through some semblance of life within our reach. Each of us is unique, a small part of the whole but with a vantage point that no other body or mind can match or equal. Knowing that, and knowing that each of us is one countless billions, we may each then choose whatever stream, current or pathway seems to move in the right direction, reach out and join hands to others around who may share our many of our fears, hopes and perceptions of a way ahead.
As human beings, with the singular advantage of self-awareness, we may all represent and help reshape not only our own human history but the unfolding history of human civilisation and the future of a natural world we've shaped around us in ways we never intended but may now have cause to regret. To that extent at least - in all our diversity, equal or unequal, and like it or not - we ARE all in the same boat. Where the Biosphere is heading, and how long the Anthropocene will last is very much all our business. That's a terrible responsibility for so many billions of fragile little individuals to bear, and faced with that a lot of us may prefer to hide our eyes, believe the lies, and cling to the nonsense of business as usual. Others, of whatever age, may feel as I do that schoolgirl Greta Thurnberg got it right when she said 'You dont do something because you hope, you hope because you do something.'
So what can I usefully and cheerfully do, rising 84, with whatever wit and energy I have left, apart from cultivating my own garden, walking, talking or swimming in the sea if it's warm enough. I've no special talent or professional expertise, but some varied experience and a a knack with words I've picked up in trying to make sense of what I came across. Over 70 years or so, when I was 14 or 15 I found I could often wing my way across the bits of my mind left unencumbered by homework, required reading and close attention to classroom teacher - unless it was to play them up. It was what I had NOT learned to order that opened the way and forced me to improvise, think for myself and and put it down in a way that might amuse, impress or placate my teachers, examiners and peers (girls I fancied from a distance and bigger boys who had no time for goodies and teachers' pets.
Words may break no bones, but may serve to avert or deflect hard fists or side-swipes with unkinder words. In times of peace and war it may be words that direct our personal and collective hopes and fears. In words, the images and objectives they conjure up, we define the goals and obstacles in our way, identify friends and enemies, promote and direct the industries that serve, provide and arm our tribes and nations for better or worse.
Words are both lenses and projectors, and by Language I mean not only the words we speak or write but the whole array of signs, images, mathematical symbols and codes that clarify, represent and communicate what we sense and perceive as the real world. And that world as we see and sense it can never be the whole picture or the whole truth. Our senses, with the best science in the world, can only pick up those limited aspects and frequencies of a nature that remains profoundly mysterious. Our senses have shown us what we need to evolve as we have and survive as we are, not to comprehend the best or worst of all possible worlds, or what else the future may hold or with-hold. What we know as the natural world, including our own nature, is not the truth of life or death in itself, but merely life as we know it in the shared by limited experience of common humanity,
I could have headed this blog with the word Life in pole position, but that now seems too big-headed, over-used and even boring (I'd used it before myself, in a rather more practical look at Lifework). Now that everything seems so tangled, open-ended, dire and confused, I've settled instead on a handful of stubby old words Five familiar words that still ring more or less true in everyday talk. These are my fateful five: Labour, Love, Land, Language and Luck. In the absence of any more reliable compass in a world that spins in unimaginable space-time, I'll stick in my five words to form a pentagon, not as a higher mystical truth but as poles in a more humble tent, for myself and any fellow travellers who care to step in. As for the fabric of that tent, that's what I'll be weaving as I string my observations, guesses, approximations and partial truths between them.
One advantage of a five-pole plan over the traditional compass crucifix is that it doesnt lend itself so easily to binary divisons and confrontations. Leonardo lampooned learned scholars and churchmen who looked down on him with a mixture of pride and humility. For all their fine robes and learned presumption, all he could show were the rags and tatters of life as lived and the world as observed in passing... As for me, I have nothing to compare except my own little weave of the bits and pieces, loose threads I can pick up and join. No better or worse than yours or anyone elses, so welcome to any passer by or fellow travellor who can put in whatever patch. offcut or strand of that seems to fit. In Palestine people build tents by the roadside for weddings and funerals...but that's another story. For now, if you've time, we can put our heads together, share what comes up and make a bit more sense of things in friendly way.
Edit 11.09.2020
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