Just as every plant, every molecule, every tree and animal has life written in its DNA, so do we humans. We’re made for life, yet we have to deal with war, greed and madness that seeks to end life.
Who among us makes wars or develops deadly viruses and pathogens which are a threat to life on earth? Who among us is depleting the earth’s resources on an industrial scale for profit? Who among us sets a minimum wage for the labour of our minds and bodies which is not even enough to live on? Who commits these outrages, atrocities and crimes against life?
It’s not ordinary people, you and me. We get to deal with the consequences, our children are expected to fight wars and suffer the consequences of things we have no part in creating or causing. As if, in some way, such things are inevitable and our patriotic duty.
Certainly, I can see the need for us to deal with a hostile invasion of the lands on which we live. Who else is there when madmen have pretensions of empire and set out to steal what isn’t theirs by force of arms? But it is not for patriotism that we must fight, it is to protect ourselves and our way of life from robbers. It’s not for Queen and country, it’s to keep the bastards out and protect our lives and way of life, even if we pay the ultimate price.
Yet the actual invaders are people, just like us, ordinary people who’ve been duped to sacrifice themselves for the aspirations of their national leaders who stay comfortably at home, safe from the consequences of their vile ambitions. People following orders, duped not to question the madness imposed upon them for which many will pay with their lives.
The problem is that we are better than this. We must be duped and shamed into unquestioning patriotic fervour to sacrifice ourselves and the lives of our children to serve the ambitions of those who will benefit from the spoils of war but share none of it with us.
It’s a seriously rotten system.
We are made for life, just as every part of nature is. We are not only made of the abundance of nature, we are ourselves abundant. We are each capable of producing more than we need to live on, were that not so there would be no such thing as profit, which is entirely the product of our innate abundance. Even the machines which ravage and rape the Earth are made from the Earth’s abundance. Oh the brutal irony!
The problems the Earth faces have not come about because of scarcity but a lack of restraint in taking too much, until the Earth is thus depleted into a scarcity caused by rampant greed for the mere excess wealth. That’s the catastrophe that we now face. Industrial scale scarcity caused by industry and the rapacious greed of those who choose wealth over life on Earth. It even has a name now – ecocide: destruction of the natural environment, especially when deliberate.
Is there a solution? Of course. It’s us. Firstly to stop being duped. To open our eyes to being both part the problem and the solution.
The real solution, or the most real solution, is, I think, in being truly present, to be here now, right here on the cutting edge where it all happens. If I/we could achieve that and spend far less time being distracted by both the stuff outside ourselves and the inner noise of our thoughts, and learn to be present and uncluttered we might be more effective in protecting life.
I guess I touch that best when I’m writing, where I do not know what’s coming, I have to be present for the ideas to come, to bubble up from some inner place seeking expression, when my inner voice is silenced. That’s certainly where I feel most alive and where my choices and decisions feel the most life full. Every word here is entirely unexpected and arrives from who knows where, demanding expression. Sometimes I can feel I’ve lost track and am forcing it and I’ll delete all or part of what I’ve written because it doesn’t feel right, it’s less than honest, less than truthful and I feel disappointed and need to get back on track. Being on track is about being authentic, sincere, honest, full of integrity and being congruent, where the reader can sense and feel that I mean what I say to the very best of my ability. The reader, hopefully, feels that I’ve done my absolute best.
The problem with people like Boris Johnson is that they lie and therefore cannot be authentic, sincere, honest, full of integrity or congruent, they are prevented by their own lies and deception. Authentic people do not lie and are repelled by insincerity. The habit of honesty is hard won because we have to learn to face and admit our own insincerity and lack of authenticity and that’s not easy and has to develop over time. It’s hard because it means facing stuff that is less than admirable, like cowardice in the face of confrontation when the desire to appease overrides our integrity and we, basically and dishonestly, sell out.
I used to be a champion appeaser and it’s a hard place to get out of because it means actually standing up for yourself and others and situations and risk being disliked for doing so. It’s a battle with our ego in which our ego always wants to win and sometimes we just have to tell it to fuck off and risk rejection because we’ve decided that standing up for something is more important. If we never learn to stand up for anything, we condone everything when there’s an awful lot of really bad stuff that really needs to be stood up to. It’s about learning to have lines and boundaries that we decide we will not cross or allow to be crossed.
The cutting edge of life is when we stand up for it and refuse to allow it to be betrayed. I’ve walked away from what is still laughingly called politics, because life itself needs standing up for in a world that is horrifically betraying it. They have abandoned serving the people for betraying the people and many thousands have died and are dying because of their betrayal. They are self serving thieves and robbers who act above the law and accountability. They are rotten to the core, pretenders to power that they are unfit to hold.
We are better than that.
Keith Lindsay-Cameron aka KOG. 27 September 2020.
Conspiracy of Kindness 