“The only philosophy worth pursuing is the one that poses questions without answers. Anything less is hubris. But this can never be proved – by definition.” — Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation: on Pessimism
At what stage should we question the dominant cultural narrative?
Fifty-five seems a bit late.
Perhaps it would have been better if the anthropocentric genie hadn’t been let out the earth-wrecking bottle, but here we are, right?
Namely, we’re on the verge of another mass extinction.
Gone.
Forever.
Nothing left.
Nothing.
Truth is, I don’t know how any of us continue to operate less still exist or at the very least we’re not subsumed by a dark, grieving presence that overshadows our whole life.
Of course, in the world of hubris, positive thinking and hope — as if now wasn’t good enough — this message isn’t welcome and, if like me who can’t escape its clutches, you’re very likely to be labelled miserable, depressed and in need of serious help.
Not to be tendentious (…this would be my message to my accusers) but I think if your world is replete with the high octane of ‘I’m determined to make something of my life and live up to my potential’, i.e. be all I can be (at what cost to mother earth?), then we’ve got an even bigger problem than the climate scientists et al. would have us believe.
You know I’ve posited this question before — thank you Stephen Jenkinson — but will we, i.e. Generation X, be ancestors worth claiming?
I’m bound to ask, as is my lawyer way, will there be anyone left to ask the question or meditate on what it might have meant for their existentially infused lives if we’d have changed course apropos of our earth-devouring ways?
I can see it now.
A few of my children or theirs sat around a campfire in the wilderness — aka the back garden — asking the question:
Why didn’t our parents see the folly of their capitalist, materialistic ways?
If I was there or could leave a message, it would be to say:
I did. In spades. And it wasn’t that I was powerless to act but the problem was so massive, there was so much dark money in the scheme of arrangement and frankly it wasn’t bad enough — not by a country mile — for anyone to do anything or anything material.
How sad is that!
It’s got to get worse than another hurricane, earthquake, loss of habitat and species for us to wake up from our narcissistic torpor.
What is it they say?
The problem is the problem, and whilst I can see the attraction of trying to hammer on the walls of the neoliberal class and break asunder the flaccid and middle-centric pandering political parties (apparently we’re all anti-growth, whatever that means), I think we owe it to the kids to tell them, in clear and compelling terms, that they’ll have to change course now if they want to stand any chance of surviving the coming apocalypse.
That means talking to the educators, schools, parents, officials and employers and making it clear that the bargain of having compliant cogs is the last thing the world needs.
Then again, this all sounds so stupid, so preposterously stupid. I mean who the f*ck is going to listen to someone trying to upend at least one part of the problem — if not the major problem?
No one or no one I know.
Again, not to overquote Jenkinson, but if you listen to his track Fate, he talks about a conversation with an earth-rights guy (on one level, despite seeing the thread of what some lawyers are trying to do, I think it chortle-worthy that humans have to ‘grant’ nature inalienable rights) and telling it as it is to the kids. Said earth-rights guy pleads with Jenkinson not to do so for fear that they’ll medicate themselves to death. That might sound a bit OTT but there’s something in the exchange that strikes a chord with me.
Let’s look at things a different way.
When I talk about our ancestors, it might be more helpful to look at all our ancestors and not just the human ones. I mean after all absent everything that came before us, we wouldn’t be here unless that is you believe we arrived unbidden from a spiritual dimension beyond the ken of my understanding.
If only we could plug ourselves into their realm.
Imagine it.
Our essence, our connectedness, our presence was no different to all the sentient and non-sentient life.
It was Thomas Merton who said:
“A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]. It “consents,” so to speak, to [God's] creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree” ― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
If you replace the word God with something ineffable, something unknowing then personally speaking I’ve never read a more perfect description of how we should similarly think of ourselves, as one with everything and nothing.
I’m also reminded of the few pithy lines from the Heart Sutra:
Listen Sariputra,
this Body itself is Emptiness
and Emptiness itself is this Body.
This Body is not other than Emptiness
and Emptiness is not other than this Body.
The same is true of Feelings,
Perceptions, Mental Formations,
and Consciousness.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Let’s address the rubric.
Thrashing.
Such an evocative term.
But isn’t that what most of us spend our lives doing?
Or to put it another way, we seek out distraction (e.g. work, kids, money, sex, drink, holidays, gardening, more work, success, retreating…) as to do otherwise would leave us, well, I’m not sure but for so many people I know and have ever known they’d have nothing to live for — nothing.
Not to unleash my chagrin on the whole world, but I do wonder why we don’t aspire to live a nice quiet life? Something small, where we make the smallest dent possible across our little and insignificant universe.
The problem suffused in and around this entire post — apart from our Reptilian brain's aversion to fear — is money.
It drives everything, doesn’t it?
And yet, apart from talking about too much, too little or not enough, I never hear anyone talk about the meaning of money and how (and don’t laugh) we might live without money. (If you’ve not read the Moneyless Manifesto by Mark Boyle then you should or Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein.)
Right about now, you might be wondering why I’m not offering a 7-step plan or New Age programme to upend all these issues. But that’s not me. If nothing else, I’ve been around long enough to know that no amount of beatific, nature-infused thinking is going to save us in our darkest hour. We might rebel, become anarchists and bring the whole edifice down but I doubt if many people or not enough would be prepared to do so for fear of pulling the rug from under their own feet. And certainly in the UK we’re more apt to complain and shout expletives at the TV/computer than we are to take to the streets. That said, this coming winter will be the real test when people start to feel the effects of austerity, fuel poverty, rampant inflation and mortgage payments that are going North with every passing day.
In the end, like so many of my finger-wagging posts, I’m left feeling:
so what?
None of this matters.
Not the words, the import or my state of mind.
In fact, only last night when I attended a poetry reading and auction of promises for yet another failed opposition to the development of a housing estate on pristine land — there was both anger and resentment in the air — I decided, at least for now, that the world has heard enough of my misanthropic lament. That means this might be my last post for a long while.
What will I do with myself?
Read and write poetry more than likely.
It’s one of the few things that keeps me sane or at least keeps me away from the abyss of another episode of Black Dog.
Enjoy your Sunday.
Much love, Julian
No worries, see ya around Brother