Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Climactic Change


I live voluntary simplicity. Grow my own veggies, recycle, plant trees on my neighbourhood verges, consume and produce carefully and thoughtfully, and align myself politically with not for profits and political movements that prioritise steady state economics, sanity, integration and sobriety, rather than the madness of spurious and disconnected consumption. I identify completely with those who want bio-diversity, unpolluted seas and skies, temperate weather, viable ecosystems and a habitable planet. (habital for whom? the dinasours... or for those of us here now?)
But, as someone very sensitised to language, and the thinking it expresses, it wearies me to see the hysteria, hyperbole, lack of self awareness and in group-out group dynamic that characterises those using climate change advocacy as the vehicle to drape their identity on. And Greta's fiery rhetoric, while enchanting, thrilling, and heart-warming, is also nonsense. The old do not have a monopoly on demagoguery and melodrama. ("You have stolen our childhood" etc. A starving Zimbabwean or Yemenite child has not had their childhood stolen by coal fired power stations...or at least no more so than by a hundred other factors. Causation is complex, and really everything causes everything. To selectively disentangle the complex web of causation is always to leave some of the story untold. Besides, I know lots of children whose childhood is intact, despite the terrible things that are always going on.)
"The end of the world as we know it." All statements about the future are "don't knows." The unexpected is bound to happen and always has. Who at Woodstock would have predicted Trumpfs America?
Death will come to our bodies and our children's bodies irrespective, as it always has, on time and in place. Who by fire and who by water. Managing climate change, which is just a subset of all change, which is relentless and ongoing, will not stop the creation and destruction of name and form. "Change is coming" said Greta. And of course it is - it never left.
Anything which facilitates the evasion of our own contradictions will not stand. When our deepest aspirations get muddled up with our shallowest judgements, they cancel each other out. The movement generated by the aspiration is blunted by the resistance generated by the blame and shame. Always it has been so: we have met the enemy and she is us.

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Friend vs Food

The same psychological mechanism which makes it possible for many people to seemingly effortlessly flip flop between the friend vs food paradigm in the way they relate or disassociate from animals, makes it possible for many men to flip flop effortlessly between the madonna vs whore paradigms in the way they relate to women. 

When someone can post a picture of a beloved pet animal, and then post a picture of a meal made with a slaughtered animal that has undergone various mutilations prior to death, without pain relief ( such as horn debudding, beak, tail and teeth amputation, castration - all routine practices on most factories) they have moved from the category of friend - humanised, related to, object of affection and recipient of kindness, to the category of food - a mere means to satisfy a need or want or desire. 

The same recategorisation makes it possible for men, in more patriarchal or traditional societies, to dote upon, venerate, rely upon, respect, and 'protect' a mother, sister, faithful wife - madonna, or to see a female merely as a means and tool for his own sexual/emotional gratification. In more modern societies the madonna may be replaced by a category of females as partners and allies and assets - in both personal intimate relationships, and in the world of survival, where they may show up as colleagues, bosses, professionals providing services, etc. But in the nether worlds of pornography, sex work, marketing, advertising and commodification etc the female is recategorised ...perhaps in an adjacent clump of neurons, so near and yet so far...as a mere means to the satisfaction of a need want or desire. 

And so it is with prejudice vs embrace, inclusion vs exclusion, dehumanisation vs humanising, indifference vs empathy, friend vs threat. It allows some animal rights advocates to be completely indifferent to human suffering. It allows pro life advocates to turn a blind eye to street children and homeless adults and the abandoned elderly - and so on and so forth. We all have the capacity to mercurially move between I -Thou and I -It simply by shifting our orientation, and most of us do this with some segment of our relational field, everyday.

Friday, September 13, 2019

The persistence of memory

Even 21 months after my wife (the person I had grown used to thinking of as "my wife") walked away from/ out of our 25 year long relationship,  I dream about her intermittently,  heavy opressive dreams in which I am found to be lacking,  and another is preferred over me.

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy

Paramedics are busy working on a man at the side of the road, who has been involved in a bad motor vehicle accident. The man is on a stretcher, with a neck brace, and an oxygen mask over his face. He has a bloody bandage on one leg, and appears to be barely conscious, only the occasional slight movement of his eyes indicating that he is drifting in and out of consciousness. A bearded tatoed paramedic with a bald pate straightens up, having stabilized the patient, and admires his handiwork, before launching:
" What were you thinking mate? You could have got yourself killed. You could have killed someone else too. People like you shouldn't be driving mate, its a priviledge, not a right. And I bet you've been drinking, hey mate. I guarantee you knocked back a couple of schooners tonight, hey buddy? I'm partial to a few myself, but that's why you have to have a plan B. You could have died mate, understand that? If we had got here 10 minutes later your leg would have bled out, mate, and you'd have been a gonner. Kicking up daisies mate. Chatting with your ancestors. I don't even think you had your seat belt on mate, judging by the broken ribs and head injuries. Never drive without a seatbelt. Now we've had to come out and sort out the mess, and that means we're unavailable for someone else. Bloody stupid of you mate, you should be ashamed of yourself."
The patients eyes have closed, although he is still breathing. A second female paramedic comes, and the two raise the wheeled stretcher up, and slide it into a waiting ambulance. As they close the doors we cut to:
Ambulance interior. The patient is lying there unconscious. The same paramedic sits next to him, holding up an infusion bag, and continuing his lecture to the unconscious man.
"Its dickheads like you what make our job difficult. You need to think about your family mate, about your mom and dad, your nan and pop, before you start playing silly buggers in our streets. I hope you've learnt your lesson buddy, I really do.
[ patient whimpers, possibly in pain]
I'll give you some more mate, but it serves you right. I've got no sympathy for your sort.
[adds ampule of analgesic to infusion]
Next time wear a helmet and walk home. I can even show you on the website what the terms and conditions are for P Platers. How fast were you going mate. 60? 70? 150? Just having a laugh with your mates eh? Well who's laughing now, mate?
I tell you what, you're luck you're so badly injured mate, else I'd be tempted to give you a piece of my mind."

Safety

When I ask myself what is important to me, the words "home" and "family" come up. And when I enquire as to what about these things are important to me, I come up with the word "safety" - both home and family represent some kind of safety, some kind of reliable constant in an ever shifting world over which I have little control.


As I ponder this further, I ask, "what wants to be kept safe? What imagines itself vulnerable and threatened, and so longs for refuge, for bedrock which will not crumble?" And I also ask "what might be already safe, unassailable, unthreatened, that sees itself not as a separate entity threatened by changing circumstances, but perhaps as those changing circumstance themselves, in all their uncontainable and undirectable such-ness."