Dichotomy

It's one of the strange things about the cultural baggage - or heritage - that the West has inherited, that we perceive the world as a duality. This is attributed to Rene Descartes, but of course he was only giving voice to an existing perception.
In philosophical terms, the most famous of the dichotomies is the mind/body split. I forget which of the old Greek dudes - Euclides perhaps? - who pondered on what actually occurs between the thought of moving your arm and the arm actually moving. The existentialists followed this up - Camus and Sartres both wondered about the gap.
But to me, the biggest dichotomy these days is the gap between perception and action. And it's not merely a philosophical fancy - it's actually crucial to the survival of the species!
Take it on a global level. We know our actions have fucked our climate. We know we are using finite resources with increasing speed. We know our lifestyle is not sustainable.
Yet our actions continue unrestrained.
We even talk about the world we shall leave to the next generations, as though they will do anything other than curse our name for the blinding mess we leave them.
On a personal level, this is perhaps easier to identify and understand. So I retain all the old anarchist understanding of the world - I'm still for a violent overthrow of the ruling class, and all the shit that that entails. But the reality in its day-to-day form is that I'm not even working class any more! Even by the standards of the West, I'm earning a decent wage as wage slaves go. By the standards of the rest of the world, I'm very rich. My children will be raised as middle class, even in this country which is one of the richest in the world.
And anybody who tells you that that doesn't matter are themselves middle class. Because if you think it doesn't matter, you're ignoring that you're one of the privileged few to have the means to access this webpage. And I can imagine myself in a few years' time explaining to my daughters all the deprivations that I've spared them by providing them with a fat income.
And this is the dichotomy at the heart of the crisis in our so-called civilisation. In order to live reasonably, certainly in a comparative and competitive society, you have to have certain abilities. Those abilities are not related to the intrinsic value of what you can do, but to the value they are assigned in this particular society. So being able to make a great and comfortable and beautiful chair, for example, is considered of minor value when compared to the ability to interpret bond movements and quarterly statements.
Yet most of us know which we consider to have the highest intrinsic value.
So I'm in the lucky position that I'm able to do some stuff. Most of my adult life I've been either broke, whacked out, or working in labouring jobs - on building sites, docks and the like. Because I was only looking after myself, so I didn't want to get in the rat-trap of work.
But now I provide for 3 other people too, and those people can't be in a dodgy old squat, but need a decent place to live, with certainty that their electricity bill is going to be paid, and that the kids can relate to their peers as equals.
And I am in the system. Bought and paid for it appears.
Still, I'm doing my best to make sure that I'm the one selling the illusion, and not that I've bought into the illusion. There is - at least - a plan. To get out of here, to make our lives different and elsewhere.
And of course that is the key to the dichotomy. Now, much of my effort, that isn't given over to working for the multinational devil, is dedicated to trying to get the best possible life for my wife and kids. And it's well thought out enough that I'm even trying to minimise the impact of climate change on my family, to offer us the best possible future, to maximise our survial chances. Pure evolution in action, in other words.
But that's evolution at a very base level. If there's one thing we should have learned by now, it's that as a species, we're strongest when we work together. Until we really learn that, and stop splitting up the world into 'us' and 'them', into black and white, into haves and have-nots, into - ridiculously - 1st worlds and 3rd worlds, until we stop doing that, then there is no future beyond survival at its very basest level.
So, just a simple thought. The people who are worst equipped to survive in a world that gets down to the most elemental survival, are precisely the people who are profiting most from the current situation. Because when money doesn't matter any more...




btw - picture comes from here in case you like it....

Apocalypse Now

In today's Independent, James Lovelock writes that it's already too late; that severe climate change is irrevocable; that we are entering a hundred thousand years of hot weather; that civilisation as we know it is at an end.
I'd tend to agree. Whether the climate is 5 degrees or 8 degrees hotter, whether the sea level rises 3 metres or 10 metres, the devastation is only a question of degree. The real issue is how will 'civilisation' as Lovelock calls it, react to the change. In this, he has a much different perspective than I do. His 'civilisation' is Western culture, which over the time that it's been destroying the planet through industrialisation, has also been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions in war, genocide, slavery and imperialism. The issue to me is not whether we can parachute Western civilisation to a safe landing, but how quickly we can replace it, adapt to a changing environment - a world where borders must be meaningless and resources shared - and where the challenge is not replacing power sources for consumption, but reducing consumption to conservable levels.

Four Hills

One more post today.
Most people don't care of course, but the Four Hills tournament had the most amazing climax. Janne Ahonen won the Bischofshofen jump, 2 points ahead of Jakub Janda. And Janda had been 2 points ahad of Janna going into the final hill, 3 points ahead even going into the final jump!
It was great stuff, if only for a limited audience!
So the end result was, that the two of them shared the tournament victory, the first time that had happened in the 54 years of the Vier Schanzen Tournee. And Janne Ahonen, the greatest jumper of his generation, has now equalled the great Jens Weissflog as sole 4 time winners of the 4 Hills.

Ponting

Ricky Ponting today became the only batsman ever to score two tons in his centenary match. Aside from the fact that Ponting having played 100 tests makes me suddenly feel old, there was something else. He was also the top scorer in both Tests and ODIs for 2005. Which is truly amazing really, when you think that he had a total arse of an Ashes.
So - great player that he is - sorry, Ricky, but statistics don't tell the whole story. And I guess the same is true of England losing 2-0 in Pakistan. A good reminder perhaps, but to be honest, I don't think the English players really cared enough about winning or losing that series. They were still coming down off beating the Aussies, and more importantly, they came straight out of visits to the scene of the disaster following the Kashmir earthquake. I'm not saying they threw the game, simply that their passion to win, to give the country a bit of good news, was less than the home team's.
BTW - in case you think the Pakistan earthquake was part of the par-for-the-course Asian disasters, then think again. To the best of my memory, there hasn't been a big quake in Pakistan in something like 60 years; and a 7.7 quake like this one - which isn't especially huge - hasn't happened in recorded memory. In other words, the surprising suddenness of it is similar to a big quake suddenly hitting England; the preparedness is simply not there.
Sorry, I can;t think of any respectable way of tying up these two subjects - that's just the way it is. Fun, sport and celebration exist alongside death, destruction and tragedy; and that's one of the few things that won't change.

Good riddance

The old war criminal fuck Sharon is almost dead. And tomorrow or the day after will be lots of weasel words about what a great man he was and what he did for the "peace process" in Israel/Palestine. Well, the truth is he was an evil fuck, who even the Israeli parliament found guilty of criminal acts verging on genocide.
For years he was the Israeli hard man, lined up against that other nasty wee shit Arafat. Well, within hours, they'll both be gone and maybe there will be a chance to make peace away from that twisted generation. And a good place to start would be to call the lie to the weasel words that are going to come out in the coming few days.
Here's the BBC on the massacres at Sabra-Shatila refugee camps. Obviously, the truth is out there.

Zeta!

Just for the record. I thought I'd check in on the National Hurricane Center today, to see if they'd issued an annual overview yet, and what do you know: TS Zeta formed on Dec 30th and is still out there mid-Atlantic.
Beyond weird this year.
ANyway, we got to SprookjesWonderland today. Now, a few beers this evening, a day of real rest tomorrow, and back to work on Wednesday. My mate from work is sick in hospital. Es' mother is uncontactable in Morocco. Fingers crossed everything is gonna be OK for the new year.
We're supposed to do alot this year. Buy a house. Get pregnant. Learn to drive. Finally have a holiday. And loads of work shit. So - we'll see.