As a matter of some urgency, journalists need to set up their own new and effective peer review system to eliminate fake news.
Absurdist Surkovian misdirection and cynical sensationalism have always been with us, but lately they have threatened to overwhelm us, and are implicated in the subversion of democracy currently underway.
Because we are witnessing a worldwide Surkovian assault on democracy which is being accomplished by propaganda, misinformation, the framing of narratives in ways that deny the reader any reliable perspective, and the devaluation of fact by its constant immersion in falsehood. We are witnessing the overthrow of democracy by the democratisation of propaganda itself.
Why? As far as I can see there are two main reasons:
Why is this happening now? Technology has created ideal conditions for this Surkovian subversion of democracy. For example, the World Wide Web is the perfect Petrie dish for its swirling vortex of lies and absurdity to thrive. Our brains now communicate with each other without any intermediate encounter with reality to allow error detection and correction in the contents of their communications. News is becoming a psychotic collective hallucination more severe than the wildest prognostications of McLuhan. Meanwhile established investigative procedures have been overtaken by more rapid and lucrative, if less thorough and accurate, news products not subject to traditional bargaining.
Why is this happening at all? Technology again. The establishment is under severe stress as the technologies on which their wealth is based are rendered obsolete. This takes place on two fronts. On the supply side, the extraction of abundant cheap fossil fuels to deliver the energy needed to manufacture and distribute the largely useless products that inundate and bury us alive in our shared capitalist present is no longer sustainable. Climate change requires its rejection. Entire classes of energy asset are becoming stranded. 80% of recoverable oil reserves must remain under the ground if we are to have a hope of achieving our targets with respect to global warming.
Meanwhile, on the demand side, IT and renewable energy present alternatives that undermine all capitalist mechanisms for adding and expropriating value. The cost of reproduction of a digital property is virtually zero, and renewable energy is basically free.
Traditionally, the cost of manufacturing in general is reducible to the cost of the fuel, the cost of raw materials, and the cost of the infrastructure that facilitates their extraction and exploitation. But the cost of that infrastructure and those raw materials is ultimately reducible to the cost of the energy required to operate or extract them. Eventually all costs are reducible to fuel costs. And renewable energy fuel costs are zero. A digital economy fuelled by renewable energy exists in a condition of post-scarcity in which the very idea of being held hostage by capitalists, and paying the ransom that constitutes the value they expropriate and accumulate, is increasingly absurd.
Traditional concepts of wealth are doomed, but the wealthy will let the world burn to preserve them.
So when I said there were two reasons, they turn out to be the same reason - technology. Indeed, as with all world-historic processes, the only thing that ever really distinguishes us from our ancestors with the passage of time are the tools available to us for the indulgence of our impulses or the realisation of our dreams. Our desires remain fundamentally the same, even if technology changes the language with which we express them. The gods that were born at the back of the cave, the gods we raised and placed among the stars, are the same gods we affront with petulant denial or kneel before in obedience today.
So we should realise that what we are witnessing today, and what is being reported in our media, is not an anti-establishment backlash.
If it was genuinely an anti-establishment backlash, it would would be manifested as an authentic democratic grass-roots response to long-standing injustices, not the popular abdication of power to celebrity billionaires and corporate lobbyists currently underway.
And we would not see the utter contempt for evidence and rationality exhibited by those now embracing prejudice as if it was a legitimate political response to the deliberately chaotic discourse that has now replaced our electoral process. This is the opposite of democracy. It doesn't matter what the majority choose, if it is motivated by hate it is called bullying, not democracy.
No, we are witnessing reaction, not revolution.
Surkovian tactics are not new. They have always existed in one form or another to maintain existing power structures. They are the contradictions that keep us chasing our tails, the darkness at noon where we tolerate any crime because we believe history will absolve us. What we see now is a difference in degree, not kind, with respect to the influence of Surkovian tactics, due to the two factors I outlined above.
We are lost in a Gramscian interregnum and so behold the monsters that emerge from our unfettered imaginations to inhabit that wilderness without horizon.
And so we need now, more than ever, a reliable litmus of truth. We need a journalism that is up to the task of reporting what is happening. Because this is all happening much more rapidly than I suspect anyone ever expected!
We need a simple peer review process in which responsible and qualified members of the journalist community cross-check each other's articles. This will help restore clarity. New media have eroded the old safe-guards and a new decentralised and uberised approach consistent with global digital dissemination and consumption of news is needed.
The production of quality journalism will be slower and reduced in volume. However, its value will be enhanced, attracting an audience interested in rational interpretations of verified and corroborated evidence to inform their own opinions. This will then support the necessary revenue streams.
Existing models are in place that can be emulated. The progress of academic papers from arXiv pre-print to formal publication is one. The clear guidelines for wikis regarding NPoV and reverting frivolous edits is another. What is required is something syncretic and similar, that can be accelerated to fit within the news cycle. A form of agile and distributed sub-editing of all contributions by all contributors? Perhaps a system where you check three items for every one you produce and submit, and where you prove yourself by the extent to which you improve the work of others as much as the by the quality of your own first draft.
A virtual, online, clearing house of truth?
Fundamentally, there is such a thing as truth, however partial and incomplete our understanding of it may be. We have a duty of diligence and rigour to that truth, and to each other.
Wednesday, 30 November 2016
Apopygmalion
And as you are
warm flesh, so am I clay,
and with cold
hands I ply my lust’s caress
upon your lovely shape,
and hard I press
myself into each
dark declivity.
I fill, surround,
besmirch, enclose, possess,
I smear and
spread and fill until no form
remains of you,
submerged without a trace,
nor any substance
left to make up me,
but only stifling
silence, confined space.
There is no you
or I as long as we
remain unhewn in this
cold embrace.
Stardust
The alien inside
me, who this face serves to disguise,
who sees this
world's outline through these dull dim human eyes
and watches all
our empires rise and riot, rot and fall,
feels homesick
for the sunbeams of the farthest stars of all,
for floating
cities stranded on unimaginable moons,
and aches with
curbed divinity, but patiently he waits:
although he must
sink with me when I merge into this soil
and rise once
more to crawl with each and every earth born child
he knows where we
have been is where we finally return,
to face the
furnace burning in the heart of every Sun,
the heat where
every atom moved by love is first begun,
where fine
Anthropic threads that bind us all within are spun.
Monday, 28 November 2016
The drum
The year is empty.
The season's turn has tipped the calendar
and drained its days onto the floor,
a disregarded derangement of arithmetic underfoot,
sliding over each other like greased acetates,
leaving an empty box for a child to play with,
its compartments waiting for new specimens,
and he drums loudly on the box with a stick
until everyone tires of the nuisance he is causing
in these bleak abandoned interstitial days of winter,
and he goes out into the woods
and collects the things
that will occupy him during the coming year,
and fills the box with all the joys to come.
Outside time passes. The Sun’s declination
recoils from the edge of eternal night:
apocalypse averted once again,
as the pulse and throb of time continues.
The ivy tightens on the oak, and stems stiffen
as the soil pumps the light of the new year
into limbs and leaves as Spring begins,
but there is a drum beneath the earth that sounds in
silence,
and on the stillest Summer days, insistently, imperceptibly,
its address summons us away from the heat and light.
Its beat iterates concealed and silent, hidden in cold clay.
It throbs like the palpitations of an eye in deep dreaming.
The midnight mirk sleeps sleeved in sunlight at noon
and its beat keeps time in the glistening of our trance.
Late July. The light sags, exhausted by months of heat.
More tardy echoes tell of a change in the air, and unseen,
alteration infiltrates the leaves, preparing to emerge
and fully commit itself in the chameleon days of Autumn,
breathing in the chilled, brittle air of suicide weather.
Chill changes coil secretly in sap, and Winter,
the sexton season of the year, sharpens his tools
makes their edges ready, stacks them in the fossor's yard,
then rests an elbow upon the handle of a spade,
waiting for his work to begin in earnest.
The Sun thrusts shafts of declining light through the window
onto a square of paint on the wall, blistered by time.
Caught by a draft, the paint flakes peel and fall,
drifting and diving through their elaborate aerial dance
before gently coming to rest on the floor.
In the calm shadows a red thread is tugged from a vein
pulsing through an outstretched wrist, unravelling
in the gradually cooling water of a slowly overflowing bath,
taps left half open,
and spirals out one last time as the red hot heart unwinds
diffuses, and settles into a darkening colloid cushion
on which the bather rests,
and through which he eventually sinks
into a dim and sunless place,
where the world is struck dumb,
like a planchet waiting for its impression,
before it is made to sing by the hammer,
or like a taut bone-beaten drum-hide
stiff and still, stretched upon a frame,
until drummed with vigour,
if not rhythm or accuracy,
a halting and sporadic beat,
struck by a beggar, deaf and blind,
who, although seeming so, is not mad,
and insists on playing in the corner
of some dark and doorless howff,
with no way in and no way out,
no windows, and the only light
a pale yellow tallow glimmer of uncertain source
in the sealed sepulchral gloom
and all echoes are swallowed whole by the damp air
leaving a bare sequence of thuds
unadorned by reverberation
as the beggar furiously waves about a bone
taken from some Sassenach’s shin,
brandishes it and beats it on the drum
until eventually, by chance,
it breaks upon the rim,
and silence or applause
both sound the same to him.
Dance as you may, dance if you can,
for in your grave you surely stand,
and some day that deaf blind beggar
will come and take your shin bone in his hand.
Then leave a hollow coffin for new roots to invade,
an empty box for another child to fill
with the spoils of the year to come
once your dance is done.
Sunday, 27 November 2016
The secret of my success
Once, when asked if socialism would ever succeed, Fidel Castro responded by asking to be shown the great, fabled success of capitalism.
And certainly, there is no human degradation beyond the powers of capitalism, and countries that score highly in indices of happiness generally achieve this by means of decidedly non-capitalist interventions in society and the maintenance of cultures and value systems antithetical to its core precepts.
But, for the sake of argument, let us assume for a moment it is a success, a great engine of wealth delivering material progress and personal fulfillment. What differentiates capitalism from other ways of organising society? What is the secret of its success?
It resides in this alone: only capitalism has succeeded in persuading its victims that they are to blame for the violence they suffer on its account. Poor? Hungry? Homeless? Get a job! Start a business! If you are disadvantaged it is because your behaviour has been insufficiently capitalist. Speculate! Exploit!
Capitalism does not succeed because it generates wealth. I have found more contentment among those lacking material surfeit than those who have accumulated many possessions. It succeeds because it generates complicity.
And certainly, there is no human degradation beyond the powers of capitalism, and countries that score highly in indices of happiness generally achieve this by means of decidedly non-capitalist interventions in society and the maintenance of cultures and value systems antithetical to its core precepts.
But, for the sake of argument, let us assume for a moment it is a success, a great engine of wealth delivering material progress and personal fulfillment. What differentiates capitalism from other ways of organising society? What is the secret of its success?
It resides in this alone: only capitalism has succeeded in persuading its victims that they are to blame for the violence they suffer on its account. Poor? Hungry? Homeless? Get a job! Start a business! If you are disadvantaged it is because your behaviour has been insufficiently capitalist. Speculate! Exploit!
Capitalism does not succeed because it generates wealth. I have found more contentment among those lacking material surfeit than those who have accumulated many possessions. It succeeds because it generates complicity.
Saturday, 26 November 2016
Cuba despite them
Hey! Senores Imperialistas!
No les tenemos absolutamente ningun miedo!
Fidel Castro is dead. He died today aged 90. R.I.P. Fidel.
I visited Cuba 20 years ago. It was just coming out of a very difficult period after losing the Soviet Union as a customer for its sugar cane exports following the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was able to talk to many people who were critical of the government and yes, the situation wasn't perfect.
But I have never been to a supposedly poor country with such happy, friendly, healthy, beautiful people, with such exemplary universal health care and education systems, with such acknowledgement and support for culture and the arts.
And the music! I cannot even begin ...
And every barman wants you to try a mojito just the way he makes it, because his is the best! And lessons in humility can be found in each of the chess clubs that fringe the plazas.
And despite everything, the people are *proud* of their revolution, and you can stand on a street corner sharing a beer and a barbeque around an oil drum brazier with that street's Committee for the Defence of the Revolution.
Our criticisms are utterly impertinent given what they have achieved under the circumstances they find themselves in.
Cuba despite them! No les tenemos ningun miedo, senores imperialistas! We're not afraid of you, imperialists!
Let us all take courage from their defiance.
Friday, 25 November 2016
The party's over
Brexit will not happen.
The figures revealed in relation to Philip Hammond's Autumn statement have surely killed it.
Philip Hammond may well be the next Prime Minister. On Wednesday he demonstrated a degree of political acumen that eludes lightweight Theresa May. The most secure ground a politician can make their stand on is ground where the figures speak for themselves, ground you can quietly and unassumingly occupy while people draw their own conclusions, ground that presents a bed of hot coals to all other rivals. Hammond is now on that ground. Everyone else is carrying the can.
And these figures indicate that Brexit is a fiscal apocalypse almost without precedent. The people of Britain are going to be hit badly where it hurts most, their pockets, and now they know it. Fox, Johnson and the other Brexiteers are nowhere to be found as this finally dawns on people. Indeed, Farage is leaving the country for pastures new in Trump's America, by all accounts.
Public opinion has to shift significantly to rule Brexit out. The Overton Window that describes the range of opinions considered acceptable shifts with the impulses it receives from its extremes, with the principles expressed at the extremes, but needs the rack and pinion of secure centre ground to move upon. Let me be clear, I am no centrist, but I understand that people are drawn from left to right and right to left across the compromises of the centre ground.
And for all that they are yesterday's men, the interventions of, for example, Blair and Major, in the Brexit debate, as the full weight of Hammond's Autumn statement sinks in, reinforce this central position in British politics after a period during which the political scaffold it provided had collapsed (at Westminster at least) and will lubricate the shift in public opinion away from Brexit in response to Hammond's statement. That will make Brexit impossible.
And when Brexit proves impossible, May's position will prove untenable. Hammond's is the safest pair of hands left on the tory front bench.
In standing by progressive values as if alone on the world stage after the onslaught of Brexit and Trump, Merkel has had her "finest hour," but now she will find she is joined by other voices. I predict that Le Pen, AfD, and the other crypto-fascist chimeras that have been emboldened by recent events will be routed in the round of elections coming up next year, as Brexit shimmers and fades like the mirage it always was, and the people of Britain emerge from the collective hallucination with which tory factions conjured in their struggles for power and position earlier this year.
What does this mean for Scottish Independence? It will come, but it will no longer be as a lifeboat that allows us to quit a sinking ship. And in many ways that is as it should be. Scots deserve more than a lifeboat as a ship of state, even though the effort of building it is greater, and Brexit has distracted us from this task. The time has come to revert to route one and persevere with the case for Independence on the basis of circumstances that have not materially changed since September 2014. We should never treat a disaster like Brexit, which would cause so much misery for so many, as though it was an opportunity.
And should I be proven wrong, and we still have to take to the lifeboats? The effort I advocate is still worth it for in the long term we will require an ark with room for everyone.
The figures revealed in relation to Philip Hammond's Autumn statement have surely killed it.
Philip Hammond may well be the next Prime Minister. On Wednesday he demonstrated a degree of political acumen that eludes lightweight Theresa May. The most secure ground a politician can make their stand on is ground where the figures speak for themselves, ground you can quietly and unassumingly occupy while people draw their own conclusions, ground that presents a bed of hot coals to all other rivals. Hammond is now on that ground. Everyone else is carrying the can.
And these figures indicate that Brexit is a fiscal apocalypse almost without precedent. The people of Britain are going to be hit badly where it hurts most, their pockets, and now they know it. Fox, Johnson and the other Brexiteers are nowhere to be found as this finally dawns on people. Indeed, Farage is leaving the country for pastures new in Trump's America, by all accounts.
Public opinion has to shift significantly to rule Brexit out. The Overton Window that describes the range of opinions considered acceptable shifts with the impulses it receives from its extremes, with the principles expressed at the extremes, but needs the rack and pinion of secure centre ground to move upon. Let me be clear, I am no centrist, but I understand that people are drawn from left to right and right to left across the compromises of the centre ground.
And for all that they are yesterday's men, the interventions of, for example, Blair and Major, in the Brexit debate, as the full weight of Hammond's Autumn statement sinks in, reinforce this central position in British politics after a period during which the political scaffold it provided had collapsed (at Westminster at least) and will lubricate the shift in public opinion away from Brexit in response to Hammond's statement. That will make Brexit impossible.
And when Brexit proves impossible, May's position will prove untenable. Hammond's is the safest pair of hands left on the tory front bench.
In standing by progressive values as if alone on the world stage after the onslaught of Brexit and Trump, Merkel has had her "finest hour," but now she will find she is joined by other voices. I predict that Le Pen, AfD, and the other crypto-fascist chimeras that have been emboldened by recent events will be routed in the round of elections coming up next year, as Brexit shimmers and fades like the mirage it always was, and the people of Britain emerge from the collective hallucination with which tory factions conjured in their struggles for power and position earlier this year.
What does this mean for Scottish Independence? It will come, but it will no longer be as a lifeboat that allows us to quit a sinking ship. And in many ways that is as it should be. Scots deserve more than a lifeboat as a ship of state, even though the effort of building it is greater, and Brexit has distracted us from this task. The time has come to revert to route one and persevere with the case for Independence on the basis of circumstances that have not materially changed since September 2014. We should never treat a disaster like Brexit, which would cause so much misery for so many, as though it was an opportunity.
And should I be proven wrong, and we still have to take to the lifeboats? The effort I advocate is still worth it for in the long term we will require an ark with room for everyone.
Thursday, 24 November 2016
The Daily Mail Online reports on the Jo Cox murder trial
Yesterday the neo-Nazi terrorist who murdered the elected MP Jo Cox last June was convicted and sentenced to life in gaol. This case has rightly been among the lead items in news bulletins and the headlines on the front pages of the press recently.
The police investigation indicates that, although he had taken an interest in far-right white supremacist groups in the '90s, he had not been particularly active until radicalised by the toxic discourse surrounding the Brexit debate this year. One of the main publications disseminating the language to which he responded is the Daily Mail.
Here is how the Daily Mail Online was reporting on this case today:
But that's the home page. Maybe it's reported more prominently on the News Section?
This time it is even further down the page. At least they've included more content though? Hold on a minute: "Did Neo-Nazi murder Jo over fear he'd lose council house he grew up in? Terrorist thought property could end up being occupied by an immigrant family."
So, wait a minute - it's really the fault of some hypothetical immigrants, and not the poor quiet unassuming Neo-Nazi terrorist after all?
No, wait: "Jo Cox's murderer sought help for mental health issues from therapist the day before he killed the MP." Ah, so it was the fault of the NHS and health care professionals.
Earlier this month the American white supremacist Richard Spencer, at a rally of some euphemistically named front organisation, in an electrifying speech that ticked off most of the items in Umberto Eco's inventory of 14 characteristics of fascism, used the Nazi-beloved term "lügenpresse" (lying press) to describe a mainstream media he felt misrepresented his interests. I don't think he needs to worry about the Daily Mail.
Tuesday, 22 November 2016
Camaguey
What I remember are the birds,
so many birds,
filling the
gull-blighted sky like a vortex
consuming the
city
in a single
continuous act of sky burial,
its atheist
ziggurats
monuments to
nothing but themselves,
stranded
somewhere
in the cane
fields between Havana and Santiago.
Blood moon over Boulder
I was baptised in
moon blood, or was it IPA,
as I drank with
God all through the night,
with the Devil
all through the day.
Sleep-deprived
and jet-lagged, over-caffeinated and drunk,
I got from Denver
to my motel and passed out on my bunk.
I was baptised in
moon blood, or was it IPA,
as I drank with
God all through the night,
with the Devil
all through the day.
I made my way to
Pearl Street, it wasn’t very far,
bought a book of
poems in a shop and settled in a bar.
I was baptised in
moon blood, or was it IPA,
as I drank with
God all through the night,
with the Devil
all through the day.
Today is the day
I discover the words of Andrea Gibson
the way that a
car stalled on the tracks discovers that train
in all the movies
that that ever happened in. Smash.
I find myself
weeping in a bar full of hockey fans:
"Ashes"
has that effect.
I was baptised in
moon blood, or was it IPA,
as I drank with
God all through the night,
with the Devil all
through the day.
I met God on
Pearl Street, playing a broken guitar,
hiding in an
alley in case someone gave him money.
You should have
heard the song he played me!
New material.
Well, new to me.
And it didn't
cost me a penny,
Only my pride.
Only my pride.
I was baptised in
moon blood, or was it IPA,
as I drank with
God all through the night,
with the Devil all
through the day.
The blood moon
set at dawn
but day brought a
deeper darkness
behind its broad
mask of light.
I see no purpose,
feel no appetite, make no effort,
and abandon
myself to the lazy, cowardly suicide
of indolence. Repulsed
by my own company -
charlatan at everything
I profess, inadequate -
but despising
easy, simple pleasures,
I haunt the empty
streets alone.
I was baptised in
moon blood, or was it IPA,
as I drank with
God all through the night,
with the Devil all
through the day.
Monday, 21 November 2016
Odium Triumphans
"Hate triumphant"
At the time of writing, nearly two weeks after Trump's election victory, reports have come in across America of an alarming increase in hate crime. Gay people have been beaten up. Property has been vandalised with racist graffiti. Black and hispanic people have been threatened. Muslims have been victimised.
Trump's victory was delivered on a tide of hateful rhetoric, and so this victory has granted permission for bigots to indulge their prejudices and act violently in much the same way as the Brexit vote did in the UK. Every bigoted impulse is endorsed by his victory.
I understand that people felt ignored and wanted to challenge established power structures. But why should it only be possible to motivate people to do this by provoking aggressive, prejudiced tendencies? Why must we legitimise and enhance their bigotry and hatred in order to have something to harness? Why can change only be achieved by goading the basest instincts and then hijacking them to form a battering ram with which to assault the city gates? Why, in a democracy, cannot corrupt power structures be challenged with evidence and argument? Why, in a democracy, can we not simply deliver a reasoned verdict? And if the answer is, we do not live in a democracy, why can our revolution not be a celebration of our humanity, rather than a rejection of the basic humanity of so many of our fellow humans?
Not all collective decision making is, by definition, democratic. Democracy is not an outcome. Democracy is a process. What we have witnessed recently is not democracy. Democracy relies on mutual respect, not hatred. Democracy relies on evidence, not lies. Democracy relies on logic, not prejudice. Irrespective of the outcome, irrespective of the majority in favour of it, if it is not delivered on this basis, it is not democratic. If we see a crowd of children in a school playground cheering on a bully as he beats up some kid unfortunate enough to be a bit different and therefore to be considered a suitable victim by his peer group, we do not call it democracy. Would we yield to the democractic legitimacy of a wolf pack's decision to eat us? Democracy is the triumph of reason over reflex. What we have witnessed recently is not democracy. We have witnessed the triumph of hate.
And power structures are not being challenged at all. Corporate lobbyists make up Trump's transition team. The only anti-establishment figures in it were excluded from the establishment for good reason, for example, like being white supremacists! Our energies are being dissipated in a struggle against each other to distract us from the abuse of power, as always. The people are not short of opportunities to challenge powerful interests, but they are only told about the most pointless and self-defeating ones by a media that serves those very same interests.
If you accept the idea that the only way to motivate and mobilise people to challenge corrupt power structures is to stimulate their hatred and then organise it into a battering ram, as so many Trump apologists seem to be doing of late, you are effectively accepting the justification for fascism given by Goering at Nuremburg. If we are going to ask people to have higher expectations of those in high office, we must teach them to have higher expectations of themselves. We must not encourage them to debase themselves with racism and misogyny and xenophobia. We must instill in them values and a desire to see these values articulated in public life and reflected in their own conduct. We must offer our admiration to our autodidacts and ragged-trousered philanthopists, not our celebrities and billionaires, as a way of raising our expectations of ourselves. The opposite of course is to elevate a hate-filled narcissist billionaire celebrity to the highest office in the land.
For decades now the concepts and vocabulary available to people to describe their problems and articulate responses to them have been systematically impoverished and degraded. Every option has been placed beyond the pale until all that has been left around which their rage can cohere is fascism. And all this has been deliberate. Everything that could form the basis of discussion, all language that could result in effective mobilisation in pursuit of common interests and the elevation of our ambitions beyond the meagre short-lived rewards of capitalism has been ridiculed with all the pejoratives used to dismiss left wing ideas until their credibility is eroded, not for want of sound argument, but lack of brute acceptability.
And the Left itself has failed miserably to prevent the ascent of Trump precisely because it has acquiesced in this impoverishment of concepts and language. It has consented to every diminution of people's capacity to articulate their interests, and to discuss and organise effectively in their pursuit, to cultivate instead some shallow popularity which they too have mistaken for democracy. It has abandoned all the armour with which it was invested by our grand-parents and great-grand-parents for grease-paint, to caper and cavort on the stage prepared for it by its enemies, and where it sought to entertain us, is simply lost our respect. And now it is reduced to closing the dressing room door on the chorus of boos and weeping over bad reviews.
But there is more to Trump's success than the cynical and irresponsible cultivation and manipulation of hatred, and the Left's historic abandonment of the dialectic of hope in its futile attempt to compete with the glamour of capitalism's false promises. Trump's fascism is a consequence of a kind of solipsism that is corrupting public discourse more profoundly, a solipsism that finds its seed in the self-gratification and hedonistic self-indulgence which capitalism has left us as the bereft lexicon of self-interest, and has germinated in the lurid online fantasy land we now navigate in our search for reality. We have seen many analyses of the filter bubbles and echo chambers in which people obtain most of their information and form most of their opinions these days. There is a more profound bubble engulfing the mind of late. The phrase "post-truth" is deployed as though it is a valid description of the terrain in which we now find ourselves. But how do you describe a post-truth world if you have dispensed with the possibility of fact? This is only possible in the solipsistic bubble where facts don't matter.
I get it, I really do. It is very tempting to subscribe to this solipsism. The country is run by an impenetrable clique of corrupt idiots who do not deserve to wield power. They don't notice you. They ignore you. They are pre-occupied with self-aggrandisement and mutual congratulation and back-slapping each other at cocktail parties. What better buttress is there for your slighted ego than being able to turn the tables, to say "the jokes on you," to believe you have access to a unique insight, that you haven't been fooled like everyone else, you know what's really going on. Every post-fact conspiracy theory is grist to the mill as you fabricate your new safe self, insulated from the world, ignoring the world that ignores you, thatching your coccoon with every delusion that lets you congratulate yourself to compensate for every time your real needs were ignored.
But solipsism destroys morality. If nothing in the world is real than every moral consideration about the world can be over-ruled. The permission granted by the series of victories won by Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism over the last few years, from the first Scottish Independence referendum, through the Brexit vote, to Trump's victory this month, is more problematic than simple permission to misbehave, to indulge every bigoted impulse without censure, indeed to contend this is somehow an act of empowerment. What has been permitted is the suspension of morality itself. We cannot reason with this solipsism. It does not disagree with us. It simply does not care. We have to talk to people who are interested to persuade them of our opinions. They are well past caring.
And once you subscribe to this solipsism, you must reject any intrusion reality makes into your experience. You must reject its pageant of diversity, because the only human condition that does not contradict your entire world view, that does not leave your cocoon in tatters, is one that it identical to your own. So you become angry and full of hate, and diversity poses an existential threat. And so you then pose an existential threat to diversity. And that is where we find ourselves now: pleading for our very existence with someone who does not recognise our right to have an opinion, while deprived of the legacy of words and concepts with which we would have articulated it. This is the moral and epistemological apocalypse of fascism.
But I would ask you to just consider one other point of view for me, to indulge for a moment one other, alternative fantasy. Instead of assuming only you exist and everything else is a lie, consider the possibility that you don't exist at all, other than as part of the Universe, and reality is invested in everything else. Imagine you have no separate, independent existence, and only exist by virtue of the connections you mediate between everything else, that your reality is the opposite of the solipsism I have described and that self-actualisation is only possible through altruism.
The "I" which you extend to a position of such prominence in your description of the world is then nothing more than a locus of points, a trajectory, from which the Universe may observe itself, along which the constellations retain their outlines. This locus of points, this trajectory, has no objective reality in itself, it exists only as perspective.
Let me elucidate my metaphor. Consider Orion's Belt for example, comprised of three stars that are apparently next to each other. This apparent proximity is a consequence of our line of sight. In fact, Alnitak and Mintaka are about 380 parsecs away, while Alnilam is nearly twice as distant at about 600 parsecs. If we moved a few hundred parsecs to the side, "Orion's Belt" would not exist. But what ceases to exist is the point of view from which we observed that structure, not the stars themselves. The object whose reality is contradicted by this second point of view is not "Orion's Belt," to the extent that this refer to the those three stars, it is the observation which we call "Orion's Belt."
The only structure we can perceive in reality is error. Have you ever found yourself speaking at cross-purposes with someone? While the cross-purpose persisted you both were absolutely certain you knew what the other was talking about. What if there are some cross-purposes that continue forever? What if the world, from the most distant quasar, to the minute quantum throb of the atoms of which you are comprised, were errors? What if physics is merely the rules that govern the persistence of error, the preservation of information without substrate?
The constellations of our perception are the cross-purposes that persist beyond the point of contradiction. All the patterns from which we infer our world view are inevitably false impressions, just as the stars in the constellations we observe do not sit next to each other in space in the way we imagine. This world is meaningless or miraculous only to the extent that we consider it bound together by love.
And so the final reality is love. Love triumphs. And though we die - though that trajectory we are on ultimately takes us past the point where the constellations buckle and dissolve in the heave and sway of parallax - the stars which briefly communed in our awareness will always shine, and that part of us will live forever, and hate can never prevail.
At the time of writing, nearly two weeks after Trump's election victory, reports have come in across America of an alarming increase in hate crime. Gay people have been beaten up. Property has been vandalised with racist graffiti. Black and hispanic people have been threatened. Muslims have been victimised.
Trump's victory was delivered on a tide of hateful rhetoric, and so this victory has granted permission for bigots to indulge their prejudices and act violently in much the same way as the Brexit vote did in the UK. Every bigoted impulse is endorsed by his victory.
I understand that people felt ignored and wanted to challenge established power structures. But why should it only be possible to motivate people to do this by provoking aggressive, prejudiced tendencies? Why must we legitimise and enhance their bigotry and hatred in order to have something to harness? Why can change only be achieved by goading the basest instincts and then hijacking them to form a battering ram with which to assault the city gates? Why, in a democracy, cannot corrupt power structures be challenged with evidence and argument? Why, in a democracy, can we not simply deliver a reasoned verdict? And if the answer is, we do not live in a democracy, why can our revolution not be a celebration of our humanity, rather than a rejection of the basic humanity of so many of our fellow humans?
Not all collective decision making is, by definition, democratic. Democracy is not an outcome. Democracy is a process. What we have witnessed recently is not democracy. Democracy relies on mutual respect, not hatred. Democracy relies on evidence, not lies. Democracy relies on logic, not prejudice. Irrespective of the outcome, irrespective of the majority in favour of it, if it is not delivered on this basis, it is not democratic. If we see a crowd of children in a school playground cheering on a bully as he beats up some kid unfortunate enough to be a bit different and therefore to be considered a suitable victim by his peer group, we do not call it democracy. Would we yield to the democractic legitimacy of a wolf pack's decision to eat us? Democracy is the triumph of reason over reflex. What we have witnessed recently is not democracy. We have witnessed the triumph of hate.
And power structures are not being challenged at all. Corporate lobbyists make up Trump's transition team. The only anti-establishment figures in it were excluded from the establishment for good reason, for example, like being white supremacists! Our energies are being dissipated in a struggle against each other to distract us from the abuse of power, as always. The people are not short of opportunities to challenge powerful interests, but they are only told about the most pointless and self-defeating ones by a media that serves those very same interests.
If you accept the idea that the only way to motivate and mobilise people to challenge corrupt power structures is to stimulate their hatred and then organise it into a battering ram, as so many Trump apologists seem to be doing of late, you are effectively accepting the justification for fascism given by Goering at Nuremburg. If we are going to ask people to have higher expectations of those in high office, we must teach them to have higher expectations of themselves. We must not encourage them to debase themselves with racism and misogyny and xenophobia. We must instill in them values and a desire to see these values articulated in public life and reflected in their own conduct. We must offer our admiration to our autodidacts and ragged-trousered philanthopists, not our celebrities and billionaires, as a way of raising our expectations of ourselves. The opposite of course is to elevate a hate-filled narcissist billionaire celebrity to the highest office in the land.
For decades now the concepts and vocabulary available to people to describe their problems and articulate responses to them have been systematically impoverished and degraded. Every option has been placed beyond the pale until all that has been left around which their rage can cohere is fascism. And all this has been deliberate. Everything that could form the basis of discussion, all language that could result in effective mobilisation in pursuit of common interests and the elevation of our ambitions beyond the meagre short-lived rewards of capitalism has been ridiculed with all the pejoratives used to dismiss left wing ideas until their credibility is eroded, not for want of sound argument, but lack of brute acceptability.
And the Left itself has failed miserably to prevent the ascent of Trump precisely because it has acquiesced in this impoverishment of concepts and language. It has consented to every diminution of people's capacity to articulate their interests, and to discuss and organise effectively in their pursuit, to cultivate instead some shallow popularity which they too have mistaken for democracy. It has abandoned all the armour with which it was invested by our grand-parents and great-grand-parents for grease-paint, to caper and cavort on the stage prepared for it by its enemies, and where it sought to entertain us, is simply lost our respect. And now it is reduced to closing the dressing room door on the chorus of boos and weeping over bad reviews.
But there is more to Trump's success than the cynical and irresponsible cultivation and manipulation of hatred, and the Left's historic abandonment of the dialectic of hope in its futile attempt to compete with the glamour of capitalism's false promises. Trump's fascism is a consequence of a kind of solipsism that is corrupting public discourse more profoundly, a solipsism that finds its seed in the self-gratification and hedonistic self-indulgence which capitalism has left us as the bereft lexicon of self-interest, and has germinated in the lurid online fantasy land we now navigate in our search for reality. We have seen many analyses of the filter bubbles and echo chambers in which people obtain most of their information and form most of their opinions these days. There is a more profound bubble engulfing the mind of late. The phrase "post-truth" is deployed as though it is a valid description of the terrain in which we now find ourselves. But how do you describe a post-truth world if you have dispensed with the possibility of fact? This is only possible in the solipsistic bubble where facts don't matter.
I get it, I really do. It is very tempting to subscribe to this solipsism. The country is run by an impenetrable clique of corrupt idiots who do not deserve to wield power. They don't notice you. They ignore you. They are pre-occupied with self-aggrandisement and mutual congratulation and back-slapping each other at cocktail parties. What better buttress is there for your slighted ego than being able to turn the tables, to say "the jokes on you," to believe you have access to a unique insight, that you haven't been fooled like everyone else, you know what's really going on. Every post-fact conspiracy theory is grist to the mill as you fabricate your new safe self, insulated from the world, ignoring the world that ignores you, thatching your coccoon with every delusion that lets you congratulate yourself to compensate for every time your real needs were ignored.
But solipsism destroys morality. If nothing in the world is real than every moral consideration about the world can be over-ruled. The permission granted by the series of victories won by Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism over the last few years, from the first Scottish Independence referendum, through the Brexit vote, to Trump's victory this month, is more problematic than simple permission to misbehave, to indulge every bigoted impulse without censure, indeed to contend this is somehow an act of empowerment. What has been permitted is the suspension of morality itself. We cannot reason with this solipsism. It does not disagree with us. It simply does not care. We have to talk to people who are interested to persuade them of our opinions. They are well past caring.
And once you subscribe to this solipsism, you must reject any intrusion reality makes into your experience. You must reject its pageant of diversity, because the only human condition that does not contradict your entire world view, that does not leave your cocoon in tatters, is one that it identical to your own. So you become angry and full of hate, and diversity poses an existential threat. And so you then pose an existential threat to diversity. And that is where we find ourselves now: pleading for our very existence with someone who does not recognise our right to have an opinion, while deprived of the legacy of words and concepts with which we would have articulated it. This is the moral and epistemological apocalypse of fascism.
But I would ask you to just consider one other point of view for me, to indulge for a moment one other, alternative fantasy. Instead of assuming only you exist and everything else is a lie, consider the possibility that you don't exist at all, other than as part of the Universe, and reality is invested in everything else. Imagine you have no separate, independent existence, and only exist by virtue of the connections you mediate between everything else, that your reality is the opposite of the solipsism I have described and that self-actualisation is only possible through altruism.
The "I" which you extend to a position of such prominence in your description of the world is then nothing more than a locus of points, a trajectory, from which the Universe may observe itself, along which the constellations retain their outlines. This locus of points, this trajectory, has no objective reality in itself, it exists only as perspective.
Let me elucidate my metaphor. Consider Orion's Belt for example, comprised of three stars that are apparently next to each other. This apparent proximity is a consequence of our line of sight. In fact, Alnitak and Mintaka are about 380 parsecs away, while Alnilam is nearly twice as distant at about 600 parsecs. If we moved a few hundred parsecs to the side, "Orion's Belt" would not exist. But what ceases to exist is the point of view from which we observed that structure, not the stars themselves. The object whose reality is contradicted by this second point of view is not "Orion's Belt," to the extent that this refer to the those three stars, it is the observation which we call "Orion's Belt."
The only structure we can perceive in reality is error. Have you ever found yourself speaking at cross-purposes with someone? While the cross-purpose persisted you both were absolutely certain you knew what the other was talking about. What if there are some cross-purposes that continue forever? What if the world, from the most distant quasar, to the minute quantum throb of the atoms of which you are comprised, were errors? What if physics is merely the rules that govern the persistence of error, the preservation of information without substrate?
The constellations of our perception are the cross-purposes that persist beyond the point of contradiction. All the patterns from which we infer our world view are inevitably false impressions, just as the stars in the constellations we observe do not sit next to each other in space in the way we imagine. This world is meaningless or miraculous only to the extent that we consider it bound together by love.
And so the final reality is love. Love triumphs. And though we die - though that trajectory we are on ultimately takes us past the point where the constellations buckle and dissolve in the heave and sway of parallax - the stars which briefly communed in our awareness will always shine, and that part of us will live forever, and hate can never prevail.
Friday, 18 November 2016
"Not all men"
One theme that emerges from many feminist statements about unacceptable male behaviour is that "not all men" are like this. That phrase, that hashtag, crops up over and over again. I worry about why it is deemed necessary to include this caveat. I would assert the positive, empowering statement we should make is "all men" should actively challenge this behaviour, in themselves and others.
I know there are positive exemplars out there. But sometimes I worry this observation is made just to avoid the risk of alienating men who might consider themselves not to be guilty of the behaviours in question. Sometimes the concept of "toxic masculinity" is offered as some sort of explanation. I have rejected that idea here. We are not passive victims of masculinity, we are active participants.
This article is not about what "not all men" do. It is about what "all men" can do. Men, as individuals, need to step up and take personal responsibility for any culture that informs male behaviour in general, as participants in and influencers of that culture.
When women use the phrase "not all men" we can assume there are (at least) two categories of men being described. On the basis of the context in which the phrase is used we can conclude that one category consists of men who behave unacceptably toward women. The men in the other category do not. When women talk about "not all men" it's clear they mean men in this second bit of the Venn diagram.
But all too often, when men talk about "not all men," they are not talking about the same thing. They are often, in effect, trying to excuse their own unacceptable behaviour. It is a case of men in the first category trying to insinuate themselves into the second. They are trying to excuse their own conduct by misrepresenting criticism of it as an invalid generalisation.
As men, they are not in fact qualified to make that assessment of their own behaviour. They have a conflict of interests. The appropriate male response to the female statement that "not all men" are responsible for the behaviour they are complaining about is not agreement. It is that "all men" are responsible for curtailing it.
This is a statement that men, rather than women, are qualified to make, indeed must make. It's not up to women to make this point. In the absence of this statement the "not all men" trope lets men of the hook. We need a strong clear statement of universal male responsibility to come from men.
I am not just bringing this up to examine relations between men and women, however. There is a more widely applicable pattern at play here.
Consider the response from some white people to the statement "black lives matter." Some people, clearly considering this to be some sort of reproach, respond "all lives matter," motivated by a desire to exculpate themselves from whatever guilt they feel accrues as a result of the statement "black lives matter." Essentially they are trying to say "don't blame me." As I point out above, it is often the case that precisely those who are most to blame are the ones who attempt to shirk responsibility like this.
Set to one side for the moment the point that the statement that "all lives matter" is both obviously true and entirely irrelevant to the issues that underlie the "black lives matter" movement. The appropriate response to the statement "black lives matter" (with its implication that black people are victims of racism) is not "not all white people are racists" (with its implication that the speaker in particular is not a racist) but that it falls to all people to challenge and eradicate racism in all its manifestations.
Just as we shouldn't respond "not all men [behave unacceptably]" but rather "all men [must challenge unacceptable male behaviour]" so we are less likely to say "not all white people are racists" instead of "all white people should challenge racism."
When we have a situation in which members of Group X are unfairly disadvantaged as a consequence of the behaviour of members of Group Y, the appropriate response from members of Group Y is not "I'm an exception. I'm not like them. Not all members of Group Y behave that way. It wisny me." The appropriate response is "it falls to all members of Group Y to stop this situation continuing."
This is not just an academic point. This has become all the more urgent now that we are seeing an uptick in hate crime following first the Brexit vote and now the Trump vote. Not just women, not just black people, but a wide variety of identifiable groups of people are now experiencing an increase in hate crime and prejudice.
Our response must not be simply to abdicate responsibility for challenging this by appealing to our own innocence. We must actively challenge prejudice, especially when we belong to the community whose members are guilty of the prejudice in question. One might say (with apologies to Pastor Martin Niemöller):
I know there are positive exemplars out there. But sometimes I worry this observation is made just to avoid the risk of alienating men who might consider themselves not to be guilty of the behaviours in question. Sometimes the concept of "toxic masculinity" is offered as some sort of explanation. I have rejected that idea here. We are not passive victims of masculinity, we are active participants.
This article is not about what "not all men" do. It is about what "all men" can do. Men, as individuals, need to step up and take personal responsibility for any culture that informs male behaviour in general, as participants in and influencers of that culture.
When women use the phrase "not all men" we can assume there are (at least) two categories of men being described. On the basis of the context in which the phrase is used we can conclude that one category consists of men who behave unacceptably toward women. The men in the other category do not. When women talk about "not all men" it's clear they mean men in this second bit of the Venn diagram.
But all too often, when men talk about "not all men," they are not talking about the same thing. They are often, in effect, trying to excuse their own unacceptable behaviour. It is a case of men in the first category trying to insinuate themselves into the second. They are trying to excuse their own conduct by misrepresenting criticism of it as an invalid generalisation.
As men, they are not in fact qualified to make that assessment of their own behaviour. They have a conflict of interests. The appropriate male response to the female statement that "not all men" are responsible for the behaviour they are complaining about is not agreement. It is that "all men" are responsible for curtailing it.
This is a statement that men, rather than women, are qualified to make, indeed must make. It's not up to women to make this point. In the absence of this statement the "not all men" trope lets men of the hook. We need a strong clear statement of universal male responsibility to come from men.
I am not just bringing this up to examine relations between men and women, however. There is a more widely applicable pattern at play here.
Consider the response from some white people to the statement "black lives matter." Some people, clearly considering this to be some sort of reproach, respond "all lives matter," motivated by a desire to exculpate themselves from whatever guilt they feel accrues as a result of the statement "black lives matter." Essentially they are trying to say "don't blame me." As I point out above, it is often the case that precisely those who are most to blame are the ones who attempt to shirk responsibility like this.
Set to one side for the moment the point that the statement that "all lives matter" is both obviously true and entirely irrelevant to the issues that underlie the "black lives matter" movement. The appropriate response to the statement "black lives matter" (with its implication that black people are victims of racism) is not "not all white people are racists" (with its implication that the speaker in particular is not a racist) but that it falls to all people to challenge and eradicate racism in all its manifestations.
Just as we shouldn't respond "not all men [behave unacceptably]" but rather "all men [must challenge unacceptable male behaviour]" so we are less likely to say "not all white people are racists" instead of "all white people should challenge racism."
When we have a situation in which members of Group X are unfairly disadvantaged as a consequence of the behaviour of members of Group Y, the appropriate response from members of Group Y is not "I'm an exception. I'm not like them. Not all members of Group Y behave that way. It wisny me." The appropriate response is "it falls to all members of Group Y to stop this situation continuing."
This is not just an academic point. This has become all the more urgent now that we are seeing an uptick in hate crime following first the Brexit vote and now the Trump vote. Not just women, not just black people, but a wide variety of identifiable groups of people are now experiencing an increase in hate crime and prejudice.
Our response must not be simply to abdicate responsibility for challenging this by appealing to our own innocence. We must actively challenge prejudice, especially when we belong to the community whose members are guilty of the prejudice in question. One might say (with apologies to Pastor Martin Niemöller):
First they disparaged the Muslims.
But I don't disparage Muslims, so I did nothing.
Then they maligned the Mexicans.
But I don't malign Mexicans, so I did nothing.
Then they debased Women.
But I don't debase Women, so I did nothing.
Then they persecuted Black People.
But I don't persecute Black People, so I did nothing.
Then they vilified Homosexuals.
But I don't vilify Homosexuals, so I did nothing.
Then they abused the Atheists.
But I don't abuse Atheists, so I did nothing.
Then they denigrated me.
And there was no-one left prepared to do anything about it.
Thursday, 17 November 2016
Sleight of hand
In the darkened theatre I feel you smile beside me
as on stage the illusionist produces a folding bouquet
from up a sleeve, and plucks the coin he palmed
from behind a volunteer's ear, and I am glad
your smile is safe from the spotlight
beside me in the dark.
I found a flower in Eden by blind chance,
before the strenuous debut of saints and serpents,
innocently enough, before I knew what I had found
blossoming in the cool night air before the first dawn,
with moonlight glistening in the first pristine dew,
and so, without realising it,
I was already familiar with the secret bouquet I offer you
before we even met. I give you this beautiful flower
that I have stolen from Eden in a forgotten dream
before God could tell that it had gone missing.
It seems I have unwittingly kept it safe beyond His
scrutiny,
His oversight felt only as an inexplicable sense of
omission,
making the entire world seem like an elaborate
misdirection,
one grand illusion, until you are revealed at last
as
I kiss your smiling lips in the dark.
Friday, 11 November 2016
The Trump Epigram
(With apologies to Osip Mandelstam)
The rug is pulled away from beneath our feet.
Words are whispers eavesdropped at a safe distance.
We pick them up like pine cones for the samovar,
and once we have gathered enough to cook up a conversation
it turns out to be about the great builder of skyscrapers and hotels.
He waves his tiny hands like scales in a hurricane
weighing up his big ideas with his repertoire of gestures,
while his corny harvest of hair competes with Boris'
to see whose is the most ungovernable. And his shoes are shiny.
Really, he has the shiniest shoes. Everyone says so.
He surrounds himself with a squalid cabinet of poultry,
a menagerie of half-men. One squawks, another mewls,
he alone tweets. Their supplications are paperweights,
their obsequies briefings. The bright meteor show of their arrival
merely heralds the asteroid impact of his own mighty deliberations.
His executive orders will be like mighty hammer blows
and the anvils on which he will make them are your groin,
your forehead, your temple, and your eye, and once you are blind,
he will turn to leave this oval forge, this lectern, this studio,
all the microphones where he performs his daily heroism,
and embrace old acquaintances waiting in the wings.
The rug is pulled away from beneath our feet.
Words are whispers eavesdropped at a safe distance.
We pick them up like pine cones for the samovar,
and once we have gathered enough to cook up a conversation
it turns out to be about the great builder of skyscrapers and hotels.
He waves his tiny hands like scales in a hurricane
weighing up his big ideas with his repertoire of gestures,
while his corny harvest of hair competes with Boris'
to see whose is the most ungovernable. And his shoes are shiny.
Really, he has the shiniest shoes. Everyone says so.
He surrounds himself with a squalid cabinet of poultry,
a menagerie of half-men. One squawks, another mewls,
he alone tweets. Their supplications are paperweights,
their obsequies briefings. The bright meteor show of their arrival
merely heralds the asteroid impact of his own mighty deliberations.
His executive orders will be like mighty hammer blows
and the anvils on which he will make them are your groin,
your forehead, your temple, and your eye, and once you are blind,
he will turn to leave this oval forge, this lectern, this studio,
all the microphones where he performs his daily heroism,
and embrace old acquaintances waiting in the wings.
Thursday, 10 November 2016
Poppy
Remember all the men who fell,
and women too,
and pin a bloom in your lapel,
of scarlet hue,
but do not celebrate their war,
presume to know what they died for,
and make this emblem of its gore
the next one's cue.
Don't let remembrance' solemn band
lure and recruit
those kids too young to understand
to make salute.
Don't wave the flag and beat the drum,
to rally all tomorrow's sons
and daughters to wars yet to come
to follow suit.
Sing mud and blood and shame and pride.
Sing want of sense.
Sing school friends gunned down side by the side,
for some pretence.
Appal with tales of hazards dire
in fields reduced to dub and mire
and decorated with barbed wire
your audience.
Evoke artillery's hellish choir
all out of tune
bombarding with anthems of fire
deafened dragoons,
machine guns beating out of time
where ragged ranks dance in a line
and in the barbed wire, arms entwined,
fall in a swoon.
(The photo is from the British Legion website, from which it has now been removed, showing children wearing 'Future Soldier' t-shirts. Contact them if you are concerned by this exploitation of remembrance and young people and the use of the poppy of remembrance as a recruitment tool)
Good morning, beautiful
The world is in one harmonious accord
that you are its most beautiful creature.
You shimmer and vibrate with beauty.
It is an active principle of your being,
not a passive condition of your existence.
But beauty isn't easy. I tell you this
in case you sometimes feel limited
by attention you did not ask for,
or like you are secretly hiding a volcano
and risk destroying yourself
if you let the beauty out,
or if for one of a million possible reasons
you are made to feel beauty is not you,
but something that happens to you,
is even a punishment for being ugly.
I tell you all this only in case
you need someone else to say it.
If not, ignore my words the same
as you would ignore the lies
against which I set them in opposition.
Let the sunrise show what night knows:
that you and your beauty are indivisible,
need no appreciation or acknowledgement,
occur on no-one else's behalf,
exist for no-one else's benefit,
belong to no-one else but you.
Wednesday, 9 November 2016
Trump, Junk Democracy and the Disneyfication of Politics.
How do I explain the election of a misogynist to my seven year old daughter?
You will change their lifestyle for the sake of your health. You'll get a good night's sleep. You'll eat more fruit. You'll take exercise.
So why, when it comes to your democracy, are you content with junk food? Why are you happy with opinion instead of fact, with conspiracy theory instead of evidence and understanding, with easy answers rather than the difficult questions we need to ask to achieve real change?
We want change but we're not prepared to read a book? We want a brighter future so tell us a fairy tale? Sell us a fairy tale? Don't ask me to participate in anything that requires any acual thought or effort to solve my problems. Take away that copy of Das Capital and pass me the Brothers Grimm instead.
But where's the choice, we say? Clinton or Trump. Coke or Pepsi. McDonald's or Burger King. They're all the same. Everything is equivalent. We are all victims and everything is a lie. Our world is fake so to live in it we have to be fake as well. We have no responsibilities. Being fake is easy. Take away the real democracy and pass me the junk.
Don't wait to be offered a choice. You make your own choice! Change is not on the menu. There is no option to supersize your revolution. There is no Democracy flavoured McFlurry. Read. Think. Talk. Help each other. Do not be afraid of difference. You will never be offered the change you need. You must make it yourselves. Make the effort to be real. The revolution will not be televised.
There used to be a reality to which we were aware of being connected. We perhaps represented this in highly stylised works of fiction, in movies and TV series. But we always used to know the difference. We always had a point of reference to preserve our perspective.
But at some point this fiction became our only vocabulary for conceptualising and describing and discussing reality. We lost sight of our reference points. We lost touch with the basis our fictions had in reality. The fictions themselves then became our reality.
Our horizons shrank and reality dissappeared beyond the world's edge. We were left with a movie adaptation of a novelisation of a mini-series of a novel loosely inspired by someone's real life experience, and at some point that concatenation of culture became so long it was truncated, it snapped under the sheer weight of its references, and we were left adrift with only a shimmering mirage of modern fairy tales, memes, tropes, a bizarre creepypasta counterfeit of reality in which all references are circular and meaningless.
Reality is still there though, sanctioning our benefits, starving our children, closing our workplaces and laying us off, bombing the people that have been selected by corporate interests to be our enemies for today, shaking the hands of the criminals chosen to be our allies, siphoning the world's wealth and concocting schemes to make us pay for it.
But we are now completely disconnected from this reality which is the source of our pain and frustration. We are insulated within coccoons of distraction while reality inexplicably torments us with its spikes and barbs from the outside. Our only remaining connection to each other is mediated by the fictions we now accept as reality, and our starved intellects become thin clients for the rumour of wars.
I was reading about the Mirai and Bashlight botnet DDoS attacks that took down whole networks and caused massive disruption recently. They do this by infecting the Internet of Things (IoT), turning toasters and refrigerators into armies of zombies pinging servers until they crash. It wasn't that widely reported, but you might have noticed some of the services you enjoy slowed down or were offline for a while. You don't need to hack anything to find the source code for Mirai. It was openly released on a forum by an individual calling herself anna-senpai. Google it.
Trump is a botnet that has taken down democracy. His fascist glamour has infected you with a false prospectus, with insinuations and grievances and rumours and gossip, pointed you in the wrong direction and got you vulnerable to every shred of clickbait, set you chasing every squirrel, got you pinging the ballot with a cross in his box, and this has taken down the Internet of People. He as described your pain and frustration in lurid, fictional terms to compensate you for the impoverishment of your own vocabulary. He does the waving, with his tiny hands, while you do the drowning.
No matter what your pains and frustrations are, Trump is not the answer. Trump is a weapon of mass distraction who now has access to weapons of mass destruction. And his second in line, Pence, is a religious fundamentalist, a creationist, waiting for the Rapture, who is now one heart beat away from holding his finger over the nuclear button. Florida's electoral college votes will become irrelevant when Florida itself is under water as a result of Trump's climate change denial and withdrawal from international agreements to prevent catastrophic climate change. Don't let Trump diagnose your problems. He's a snake oil salesman.
And don't think you can justify the prejudice, misogyny and ignorance you have just endorsed with increasingly pathetic sounds of "but Hillary!" Hillary is in the past now. You have bigger problems.
We are insects in the wreckage of Jericho.
You will change their lifestyle for the sake of your health. You'll get a good night's sleep. You'll eat more fruit. You'll take exercise.
So why, when it comes to your democracy, are you content with junk food? Why are you happy with opinion instead of fact, with conspiracy theory instead of evidence and understanding, with easy answers rather than the difficult questions we need to ask to achieve real change?
We want change but we're not prepared to read a book? We want a brighter future so tell us a fairy tale? Sell us a fairy tale? Don't ask me to participate in anything that requires any acual thought or effort to solve my problems. Take away that copy of Das Capital and pass me the Brothers Grimm instead.
But where's the choice, we say? Clinton or Trump. Coke or Pepsi. McDonald's or Burger King. They're all the same. Everything is equivalent. We are all victims and everything is a lie. Our world is fake so to live in it we have to be fake as well. We have no responsibilities. Being fake is easy. Take away the real democracy and pass me the junk.
Don't wait to be offered a choice. You make your own choice! Change is not on the menu. There is no option to supersize your revolution. There is no Democracy flavoured McFlurry. Read. Think. Talk. Help each other. Do not be afraid of difference. You will never be offered the change you need. You must make it yourselves. Make the effort to be real. The revolution will not be televised.
There used to be a reality to which we were aware of being connected. We perhaps represented this in highly stylised works of fiction, in movies and TV series. But we always used to know the difference. We always had a point of reference to preserve our perspective.
But at some point this fiction became our only vocabulary for conceptualising and describing and discussing reality. We lost sight of our reference points. We lost touch with the basis our fictions had in reality. The fictions themselves then became our reality.
Our horizons shrank and reality dissappeared beyond the world's edge. We were left with a movie adaptation of a novelisation of a mini-series of a novel loosely inspired by someone's real life experience, and at some point that concatenation of culture became so long it was truncated, it snapped under the sheer weight of its references, and we were left adrift with only a shimmering mirage of modern fairy tales, memes, tropes, a bizarre creepypasta counterfeit of reality in which all references are circular and meaningless.
Reality is still there though, sanctioning our benefits, starving our children, closing our workplaces and laying us off, bombing the people that have been selected by corporate interests to be our enemies for today, shaking the hands of the criminals chosen to be our allies, siphoning the world's wealth and concocting schemes to make us pay for it.
But we are now completely disconnected from this reality which is the source of our pain and frustration. We are insulated within coccoons of distraction while reality inexplicably torments us with its spikes and barbs from the outside. Our only remaining connection to each other is mediated by the fictions we now accept as reality, and our starved intellects become thin clients for the rumour of wars.
I was reading about the Mirai and Bashlight botnet DDoS attacks that took down whole networks and caused massive disruption recently. They do this by infecting the Internet of Things (IoT), turning toasters and refrigerators into armies of zombies pinging servers until they crash. It wasn't that widely reported, but you might have noticed some of the services you enjoy slowed down or were offline for a while. You don't need to hack anything to find the source code for Mirai. It was openly released on a forum by an individual calling herself anna-senpai. Google it.
Trump is a botnet that has taken down democracy. His fascist glamour has infected you with a false prospectus, with insinuations and grievances and rumours and gossip, pointed you in the wrong direction and got you vulnerable to every shred of clickbait, set you chasing every squirrel, got you pinging the ballot with a cross in his box, and this has taken down the Internet of People. He as described your pain and frustration in lurid, fictional terms to compensate you for the impoverishment of your own vocabulary. He does the waving, with his tiny hands, while you do the drowning.
No matter what your pains and frustrations are, Trump is not the answer. Trump is a weapon of mass distraction who now has access to weapons of mass destruction. And his second in line, Pence, is a religious fundamentalist, a creationist, waiting for the Rapture, who is now one heart beat away from holding his finger over the nuclear button. Florida's electoral college votes will become irrelevant when Florida itself is under water as a result of Trump's climate change denial and withdrawal from international agreements to prevent catastrophic climate change. Don't let Trump diagnose your problems. He's a snake oil salesman.
And don't think you can justify the prejudice, misogyny and ignorance you have just endorsed with increasingly pathetic sounds of "but Hillary!" Hillary is in the past now. You have bigger problems.
We are insects in the wreckage of Jericho.
Tuesday, 8 November 2016
The stolen vote
The way the US Presidential Election has been conducted means that it has already been lost. Irrespective of the outcome, the damage has been done. So much mud has been slung as to obscure all other considerations and deliberation on all substantive issues is suspended. All that remains is to prevent a fascist becoming president.
We require candidates for public office that respect common standards of civilised debate: the presentation of reliable evidence, its rational evaluation, the compassionate temperament of the conclusions we draw and the actions we take as a result. Donald Trump fails miserably in all regards.
And where the need to react to his histrionics takes precedence over the formulation and promotion of meaningful policy, it is in effect a form of censorship. I am highly critical of many aspects of Clinton's platform. But I won't go into that here. This is not the time or place. It should be, but events militate against it.
Nevertheless, Clinton does not reject the process whereby she can be challenged. However, Trump does. You can disagree with Clinton. Good luck trying to disagree with Trump. I find many of Clinton's policies and decisions problematic. But there is one problem bigger than all of those those, and he's called Trump.
Clinton submits herself to a democratic process. To Trump, that process is a mere instrument of his ego, an arena for his tantrums. Trump makes no effort whatsoever to persuade, and persuasion is the basis of democracy, while the unchallenged assertions of the strong man forms the basis of fascism.
So we can argue about what this election is about, citing any number of hot topics and special interests and long-standing concerns. What it has become about as a result of the conduct of the candidates transcends all the divisions these considerations reveal among us and all the decisions we can collectively make about them. It is now just about the prevention of fascism.
Think of your most pressing concern, the particular policy area that features most prominently in your estimation of the different candidates. This election is no longer about that. It is about your concerns no more than curing a plague or preventing an asteroid impact is about them. One concern over-rides all others. Whatever your problem is, Trump is not the answer, and must be stopped. The point of this election is no longer the issue that first troubled you. The point is preventing a fascist becoming president. And to that extent, he has already stolen this election.
I do not agree that the people have been denied a choice due to the poor quality of the candidates available. The Green Party's Jill Stein is on the ballot. She must stand as one of the great losers today, the votes that would have ensured future ballot access and campaign funding stolen by the over-riding imperative of stopping Trump. No, if we are to blame this situation on an impoverishment of democratic resources, the finger should point towards the decades of dumbing down and narrowing of intellectual horizons that delivers an electorate vulnerable to Trump's fascist glamour.
It is becoming impossible now to engage with the torrent of unsubstantiated hysterical assertion from Trump supporters, such is their sheer volume and insanity.
There is no need to re-iterate Trump's shortcomings here, his lies and xenophobia and bigotry and targeting of scapegoats. These are all abundantly evident at every turn. You don't need to hack his email to find out all the things that should disqualify him from office. He openly displays these on the podium at every rally. His supporters don't care, as long as his incoherent tirades spare them the pain and effort of articulating their own frustrations in a genuinely effective manner.
Democracy is not possible under these circumstances.
We require candidates for public office that respect common standards of civilised debate: the presentation of reliable evidence, its rational evaluation, the compassionate temperament of the conclusions we draw and the actions we take as a result. Donald Trump fails miserably in all regards.
And where the need to react to his histrionics takes precedence over the formulation and promotion of meaningful policy, it is in effect a form of censorship. I am highly critical of many aspects of Clinton's platform. But I won't go into that here. This is not the time or place. It should be, but events militate against it.
Nevertheless, Clinton does not reject the process whereby she can be challenged. However, Trump does. You can disagree with Clinton. Good luck trying to disagree with Trump. I find many of Clinton's policies and decisions problematic. But there is one problem bigger than all of those those, and he's called Trump.
Clinton submits herself to a democratic process. To Trump, that process is a mere instrument of his ego, an arena for his tantrums. Trump makes no effort whatsoever to persuade, and persuasion is the basis of democracy, while the unchallenged assertions of the strong man forms the basis of fascism.
So we can argue about what this election is about, citing any number of hot topics and special interests and long-standing concerns. What it has become about as a result of the conduct of the candidates transcends all the divisions these considerations reveal among us and all the decisions we can collectively make about them. It is now just about the prevention of fascism.
Think of your most pressing concern, the particular policy area that features most prominently in your estimation of the different candidates. This election is no longer about that. It is about your concerns no more than curing a plague or preventing an asteroid impact is about them. One concern over-rides all others. Whatever your problem is, Trump is not the answer, and must be stopped. The point of this election is no longer the issue that first troubled you. The point is preventing a fascist becoming president. And to that extent, he has already stolen this election.
I do not agree that the people have been denied a choice due to the poor quality of the candidates available. The Green Party's Jill Stein is on the ballot. She must stand as one of the great losers today, the votes that would have ensured future ballot access and campaign funding stolen by the over-riding imperative of stopping Trump. No, if we are to blame this situation on an impoverishment of democratic resources, the finger should point towards the decades of dumbing down and narrowing of intellectual horizons that delivers an electorate vulnerable to Trump's fascist glamour.
It is becoming impossible now to engage with the torrent of unsubstantiated hysterical assertion from Trump supporters, such is their sheer volume and insanity.
- Where you want a rational discussion, they want to perform an exorcism.
- Where you want to present evidence, they want to show you a prophecy written in hieroglyphics proclaiming that Hillary is a demon.
- Where you want to exercise democratic rights and duties, they want to portray themselves as victims of some elaborate conspiracy that allows them to abdicate all responsibility.
- Where you appeal to the authority of experts, they point to some click-bait concocted for profit.
- Where you want to find out the truth in relation to particular matters of interest, they want to dismiss everything as a lie.
There is no need to re-iterate Trump's shortcomings here, his lies and xenophobia and bigotry and targeting of scapegoats. These are all abundantly evident at every turn. You don't need to hack his email to find out all the things that should disqualify him from office. He openly displays these on the podium at every rally. His supporters don't care, as long as his incoherent tirades spare them the pain and effort of articulating their own frustrations in a genuinely effective manner.
Democracy is not possible under these circumstances.
Monday, 7 November 2016
I'm with Nicola
There are people who are critical of Nicola Sturgeon for issuing a statement in support of Hillary Clinton's candidacy for the US Presidency. I think she was right to say what she did.
These are not normal times. Were it not for the pressing need to stop Trump I would probably advocate voting for Jill Stein, the Green candidate, to the extent I expressed any opinion at all. But Trump represents a threat to democracy and common decency that must be stopped, and at the moment only Hillary Clinton is capable of that.
For all her shortcomings, Clinton represents a rational actor who operates within the constraints of a democratic system. She scores relatively well on fact-checking services. She seeks to persuade us with evidence and reasoning.
In contrast, almost everything Trump says is demonstrably a deliberate lie or, at best, an uninformed and irresponsible improvisation. He offers the mirage of a strong man with easy answers based on finding scapegoats among the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society. He has expressed contempt for the law and due process, which he seems to regard merely as instruments of his own ego. The exploits of which he has bragged reveal a deeply misogynistic and abusive character.
Most of the criticisms of Sturgeon's endorsement cite easily debunked myths about Clinton that are part and parcel of the febrile atmosphere of conspiracy theory cultivated by the Trump campaign. Clinton said she would start World War III? No, she made some bellicose noises in 2008 about Iran as part of a diplomatic process which has been superseded by a nuclear framework deal signed in 2015. She got a child rapist off and laughed about it afterwards? No, she reluctantly took a case appointed to her by the court which ended with a plea bargain.
Of course there are many of Clinton's policies and decisions which one might contest. But there is no way the election of a rambling incoherent demagogue drunk on his own notoriety addresses these issues. There is no way you can draw any equivalence between his fascist braggadocio and her fallibility.
I would have loved it if Clinton had established a commanding lead in the polls. Then there would have been a chance Jill Stein could secure the 5% needed for the Greens to benefit from federal funding in future campaigns. At the moment this is a luxury we cannot afford, and I have accepted that the Greens will be squeezed as the possibility of a Trump presidency is averted.
And, like Nicola, I think at times like these we have a duty to speak out.
These are not normal times. Were it not for the pressing need to stop Trump I would probably advocate voting for Jill Stein, the Green candidate, to the extent I expressed any opinion at all. But Trump represents a threat to democracy and common decency that must be stopped, and at the moment only Hillary Clinton is capable of that.
For all her shortcomings, Clinton represents a rational actor who operates within the constraints of a democratic system. She scores relatively well on fact-checking services. She seeks to persuade us with evidence and reasoning.
In contrast, almost everything Trump says is demonstrably a deliberate lie or, at best, an uninformed and irresponsible improvisation. He offers the mirage of a strong man with easy answers based on finding scapegoats among the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society. He has expressed contempt for the law and due process, which he seems to regard merely as instruments of his own ego. The exploits of which he has bragged reveal a deeply misogynistic and abusive character.
Most of the criticisms of Sturgeon's endorsement cite easily debunked myths about Clinton that are part and parcel of the febrile atmosphere of conspiracy theory cultivated by the Trump campaign. Clinton said she would start World War III? No, she made some bellicose noises in 2008 about Iran as part of a diplomatic process which has been superseded by a nuclear framework deal signed in 2015. She got a child rapist off and laughed about it afterwards? No, she reluctantly took a case appointed to her by the court which ended with a plea bargain.
Of course there are many of Clinton's policies and decisions which one might contest. But there is no way the election of a rambling incoherent demagogue drunk on his own notoriety addresses these issues. There is no way you can draw any equivalence between his fascist braggadocio and her fallibility.
I would have loved it if Clinton had established a commanding lead in the polls. Then there would have been a chance Jill Stein could secure the 5% needed for the Greens to benefit from federal funding in future campaigns. At the moment this is a luxury we cannot afford, and I have accepted that the Greens will be squeezed as the possibility of a Trump presidency is averted.
And, like Nicola, I think at times like these we have a duty to speak out.
The precipice
“I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er”
(Macbeth Act III Scene IV)
Our public discourse has been degraded recently to the extent that hate crimes find no censure and are committed with no shame, the government does not rise to the defence of the judiciary when they are impugned, and the prospect of a xenophobic misogynistic narcissist in the oval office assumes the tincture of reality.
These are not normal times. This is not business as usual.
But this has been a long time coming. We have endured the right wing media's bilious drip feed of racist insinuations for decades now. Its acid has corroded the rebar of our imagination, has poisoned the well-springs of our inspiration, has drawn in the horizons of our dreams, has filled our thoughts with fits and starts of terror, has limited our aspirations to securing a moment's safety from the monsters that have cavorted across their front pages from one day to the next.
And now we find ourselves at a tipping point. A point of no return. We are now stepped so far into the nightmare concocted for us that we must let it occupy us completely or reject it.
America, this week do not deliver a victory for unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, for prejudice, for spurious, cynical victim-hood. Do not deliver a victory that endorses misogyny and xenophobia, that green-lights hate and intolerance and rape.
Vote for the candidate that, for all her shortcomings, still consents to democratic scrutiny, still exerts herself to formulate and articulate policies, still subjects her ideas to rational debate, still submits her candidacy to the will of the people without histrionics and incredulity at the prospect of being rejected, still believes in the rule of law.
America, you stand at the edge of a precipice. Do not step over it. Do not turn this election into an enabling act.
Friday, 4 November 2016
Am fleistear / The fletcher
Caoran, mar fuil air goil, là n dùirn dearg
dòrtadh as na meuran craoibhe-chaorainn
'na aonar am measg an iùbhrach neo-bhà smhor,
is duilleagan umhach, donn, soilleir-bhuidhe sa coille eile,
is duilleagan eile clò-bhuailte le dath fala orra,
is eile coltach ri cléiteagan's iteagan aotrom is beaga:
tha fleistear ann an t-Fhoghar,
a' lorg a saighead anns an saoghal maoiseach seo,
an ite an earbaill ann gach duilleag a' tuiteam,
ceangailte air an smeòirn saighde leis.
Tha e a' stalcaireachd
is a' dèanamh cuimse air an Dà mhair,
is an guin béire a' curadh crioch air bliadhna
mar damh-féidh sa là nachd.
Hot clumps of berries, like boiling blood, red fistfuls
spilling from the branches of a rowan tree
alone amidst the immortal yew grove.
and elsewhere, brazen leaves, brown, bright yellow in the wood,
and others printed with the colour of blood on them,
and other leaves like light little flakes and feathers.
Autumn is a fletcher,
finding his arrow in this mosaic world,
a tail feather in each leaf that falls
fastened by him to the arrow's nock.
He is stalking and taking aim at October
and the point's sting puts and end to a year
like a rutting stag in its prime.
Tuesday, 1 November 2016
Coronach
My copperplate
caress moves and rests over your face,
pushing the
invisible ink of my love into your flesh,
plastic as cold
clay. My nail-nib impresses into it
a deranged
cuneiform. Meanings hide in your wrinkle-runes.
Gilgamesh found
no consolation other than knowledge
when he learned
the universality of Enkidu's fate. Metallic type
repeats the
formula here, and the circumlocutions
of the order of
service surround us. The constellated tears
evaporate and
leave ornamental memories like sand roses
retrieved from an
arid and unrelenting grief, but in the end
the stars
understand we are creatures of light:
these imperfect
instruments - hand, lips, gender -
co-mingled ashes
of a universal love. Back then
your kiss upon my
brow seeped through to plant
its meningeal
tattoo. Open up my forehead
and all you'll
see is you. Open up my mind
to find you
shining through. Some scars
never heal, but
give birth to something new,
to stir us from
our infantile solipsism.
Now this coffin
is a desert ditch,
and you are a
miracle of water that has settled there
and I will heave
my mighty draught of stars
from the desert
sky reflected in your stillness.
Excalibur
The Moon's flat
face slides full and calm
across the still
dark water as night turns
the polished
sleek obsidian world in its palm
and by a lakeside
a silent watcher waits.
A sword tip
splits the water's skin, rewards
his vigil, and a
blade ascends, bursts
the membrane
between two worlds,
apart but akin,
in eerie birth. The ripples
bend and twist
the Moon into a cloud of doves.
Child of ice and
lightning,
swift silent
thunder strike,
your gleaming
peal divests the night
of its dark veil,
and ushers into sight
the worthy youth
who wields the elements
and leads them in
the world's first dance,
as dawn's bright
shards scatter in flight
across the sky
and crown the day with light.
But who waits now
in the grim arithmetic
of days, and
watches now for your return?
Our fleshes flow
and sink in unsought union
with the
subsidence of age, the water-lilies
of our youth now
liver spots. We lie
beneath what
counts as stars in our sad sky,
and bury the
blunt promises of youth
beneath the dull
diurnal dump of time.
Schiehallion
Fulcrum on which Shasta and Kailash
are
yoked in teetering balance,
rocks
held, one in each hand,
to
weigh us down, like past and future,
preventing impromptu levitation,
spontaneous
peregrination
among
the timeless stars;
hinge from which the sky is swung;
centre;
pivot;
pirouette of stone
performed to a
tune
in geological time
accented by your summit;
hall without walls, in which constellations gather
and
turn towards their dance,
and
planets tip and tilt and dip and tuck back and forth
in
retrograde revels;
bosom in which mist-swaddled stars are gently rocked.
You summon us to your wind-lashed summit
and we
find our way
through
five stages of ascent,
through
each rigour of purification.
I do not believe
the
shattered scree and splintered stones
tell us
your ancient ramparts have fallen
and your
citadel of souls is scattered
by our
stumbling assault
on the few steps
immediately in front of us,
to be replaced
by nothing more than a cairn
of
casual commemoration
gathered by our idiotic reflex,
our
groping hands preserving
some
whimsical illusion
of
conquest and significance
among
the dumb debris
we
meaningless Munro-baggers
infiltrate,
navigating through
the dismal ruins
of the present
littered with souls of broken stone.
Your walls still stand, invisible.
Our
silent porter still responds
when
your gatekeeper calls “pa gur?”
Our
hearts recite their retinue of beats
and
within your stones remains
a song
for those who can hear it:
we can think past this time and place we seem to be in,
melt
our minds and let the stones soak them up
like
sponges, and all the opacity of this basalt,
this
cloud-ballast, finally becomes as crystal clear
as the
glass upon whose rim Polaris runs his fingertip
to emit the
sound
summoning us,
gathering us together,
from
everywhere and all time
in the
middle of the land
to show all our centrifugal
selves
we are each and every one of us gathered together
from
everywhere and all time,
comrades
in beauty.
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