Endings
“Morning or night, Friday or Sunday, made no difference, everything was the same: the gnawing, excruciating, incessant pain; that awareness of life irrevocably passing but not yet gone; that dreadful, loathsome death, the only reality, relentlessly closing in on him; and that same endless lie. What did days, weeks, or hours matter?” ― Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych
“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
I will say it again – in case it’s not already obvious! – I’m not hopeful that we’ll escape the clutches of the Anthropocene, i.e. the 6th mass extinction. (If you want to look at the evidence that Roger Hallam tried to introduce in his trial here is the link. It’s 250 pages long and contains a lot of material that is worth reading but please try to do so with an open mind.)
But of course, this message doesn’t resonate with or find a home betwixt BAU and something very different – e.g. less of everything, including oneself.
When I say BAU, I also advert to the chorus of disapproval of those people who think you a gloom-sprayer by dint of not being able to see the ingeniousness of humankind – i.e. its rightful entitlement and ability to dig itself out the hole it has made for itself.
Another way of describing this is to say that there are a lot of hopeful people who believe we can arrest the damage we’ve done to this once glorious, pristine world be that in rewilding, legislating for earth-law rights (which I now think a tad solipsistic) or improving the habitats of many species, and wouldn’t countenance a word said against this saccharine-fuelled message.
The trouble is, I don’t see it.
What I see in my bailiwick is housebuilding that’s out of control, dead animals on our roads (I’ve lost count of the number of hedgehogs I’ve seen killed this year) and very few wild animals, e.g. deer, foxes, badgers or birds. Could this be an aberration or me not looking hard enough? I don’t think so. (Please remember that I live close to the countryside/Dartmoor and not in the middle of a large town or city.)
I realise that I keep harking back to the past but, for now, it’s my only point of reference. Apart from anything else, it’s what enables me to say with a degree of conviction and certainty that it hasn’t always been like this. I don’t just mean my locus, I also mean the way we live out our lives, dialled in as we are to the latest and greatest gadgets, a comfort-seeking modus vivendi and a no-holds-barred approach to maxing out on our potential. I can remember the days when quite a few families didn’t have a car, there were no out-of-town supermarkets (we walked to the shops) and having a colour TV was a luxury.
It wasn’t just that people had a lot less of everything, it was the fact that there was a humbling and humility so that no one or no one I knew was trying to outdo the next person. That’s code for saying that there was a esprit de corps that was much more community-minded. It wasn’t uncommon to borrow things from your neighbours or to help each other out in a profound and meaningful way without any sense of quid pro quo. And yes, I’m sure that that goes on to this day but we’ve definitely become more insular and our heredity hasn’t lasted or endured as it might have done.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all misty-eyed; there was poverty, deprivation and a distinct lack of equality. But if we’ve traded one thing for another, I’m not sure or I’m not sure I could be persuaded that now is better than then.
What is my point?
Do I have to have one?
…
If I’ve any message, it’s not going to be found in taking up the barricades and defending some inalienable position, but instead to posit a well-wrought question and to see if we still have the capacity to wonder about how it came to be like this. I’d weave into the mythos ‘rights’, hyper liberalism (see the book The New Leviathans by John Gray) and our obsession with growth of all stripes; and I’m quite certain I could find a way to derive not so much a new narrative but perhaps a lexicon that wasn’t so needs-orientated but more animistic in purview.
As I’ve remarked many times, I could have this all wrong and all I’m doing is adding to the chorus of disapproval to something that we all know about (I’d like to think we know what’s going on) but have no desire to change because it would mean we’d all have to change the way we see and live out our lives. If you think this means I’m adverting to some cave-dweller, backwater existence then I’m not but that doesn’t mean I’m about to give up on questioning the dominant cultural narrative.
Do I expect to ‘win friends and influence people’? I’ve not thought about it if I’m honest. It’s certainly not the reason why I write or speak about these issues. (I am beginning to sense that this is my soul work, however bleak it might appear.) I do so because I’ve no choice. I realise that that might appear untruthful, namely I could stop hitting these damn keys, but there’s a reason why I get up at 5 am every day and write, and it sure ain’t for the babes and the $$.
Take care dear readers.
Love,
Julian
Photo by Nicole Geri on Unsplash