Right on cue, our friend Su is in the heart of an endurance test the likes of which bring out the true character of the mortal undergoing this particular moment on Planet Earth. If you have ever been through anything similar to the wildfires raging in South Africa today, you would know how it feels. Its natural terror, raw, incontrovertible, heinous, you are forced to live up to all your claims or wuss out, or worse, take advantage, but the remarkable thing is how rare are the wusses and the deviants. Not until natural disaster takes hold of the community do we get to see how small and local is not only the answer, but in reality, all that matters.
I thought as I greeted this day that it held very different avenues for attention, but I can't get Su's predicament out of my mind. That's a good thing because she asked for our good intentions earlier this morning.
It is always deeply troubling when our buddies of the web undergo the test of disaster. There is so little we can do, our natural inclination is assistance, somehow, but the anonymity of the web required because we exist alongside sickos, spammers, trackers and gangsters makes it generally impossible to even do something small such as track a wildfire. South Africa is a big place. What can we really do when someone we care about is in danger? Yes, this is the care-less world provided by terror-fied corporate governance grown small while living large. Technology is no redemption for this problem. All we can do is wait and pray. We can send healing thoughts. We can post hope on blogs. But in reality it is not about us at all. That we take it upon ourselves to be concerned is usually the only role we'll get to play, which isn't saying much. Its the rare disaster victim who is able to communicate online or check their email during the unfolding of each moment therefore I don't expect to receive updates on Su's situation until she's safe and sound.
It is inevitable we experience a number of tests and trails during our journey in this life. I have absolutely no doubt Su will shine her way through, we know only this much, but that is a lot to know. In the interim, we revisit our own disasters, personal or public, and empathize. Look around, does Utopia exist anywhere anymore, did it ever? Utopia is in the moment wherever you are. Su has shown us many times she is Utopia-walking which is why she will come out of this improved, just when we thought she was excellent as she is. I so look forward to her tale, truly, I long to read the relief and myriad side stories of the Unschool, the villagers and the animals' foibles. May that day come soon, like instantly.
May it come for all of us in this march forward into full-stress apocalypse. You know what I mean, the collapse panorama stretching across the planet, the unexpected twists and turns so frequently it almost seems mundane, everyday there is a disaster going on somewhere, sometimes its your turn. The trick, if your want peace of mind, is to refrain from it wherever possible, but when its costumed as something other than what it is that can be difficult even to the most insightful souls. Worse than difficult is using disaster as a lifetime crutch for character deficiencies when you are intelligent enough to know better but make a conscious choice to ignore your behavior. You can build an entire existence out of falsehoods and come to believe in it all completely even as the results grow in ongoing catastrophe. I've seen enough of that to recognize it, even though I don't want to recognize it, there are enough similarities in the general progression of events that are undeniable. Perhaps this is how apocalypse works its magic? "The revealing" means we are paying attention (whether we want to or not) to the root causes behind exponential disaster and learning how to survive more effectively in spite of western junk food attention spans. It is no small detail that Su is on record saying she is a better person for having survived the total loss of material possessions in an earlier fire. When you use those words as a metaphor for civilization's progress, you are on a higher plane already.
UPDATE: Su is okay. One wonders what official routes and permission levels she must have gone through that she was able to post a very brief message on her blog? I'm impressed. Honored, actually.
16 comments:
Don't worry Nina, Su strikes me as a good survivor who knows when to get the hell out and move quickly too. We will surely be thinking of her and hers though.
You are right John, I've been concealing my worry (secretly bordering on panic) since I saw her blog this morning AND she IS an intelligent survivor. Since we both know that, she will come through this thing.
I don't doubt her at all, I am more concerned about all of those who will be leaning hard on her.
Thanks for this alert: I will pray and think of Su tonight.
Good Publius. Me too. We've heard nothing further all day so she was definitely evacuated.
That brings up all sorts of questions such as are animals allowed in an evacuation center in South Africa? And what a scene it must have been to load everyone and the animals up and be public transport too. The village must be not using any water saving it all for the firefighters, and maybe they have a power failure going on as well? Does the village have an evacuation center or did they have to find a city? Wild images come to mind - the unplanned safari.
There is a message at her blog - Su says "We are safe". WHEW, I can't wait for the details, must have been a muy interesting day.
"Worse than difficult is using disaster as a lifetime crutch for character deficiencies when you are intelligent enough to know better but make a conscious choice to ignore your behavior."
Amen. Been there, done that. You also commented the other day at another site that we can repeatedly undergo 'dissolution' into self destructive patterns if we don't recognize the initializing 'trigger' (my interp.) & take care of that. This sometimes may seem minor and not worth looking at -- but it is NOT minor! Spot on observation. I kept slipping into these depressions and the accompanying drinking/drugging until I dealt with this trigger -- turned out it was not minor and it was not an easy task, but now even staring at the apocalypse doesn't take me back (down) there again.
The bible says satan loves nothing more than despair and the feeling of hopelessness.
WV: AMORse (opposite of remorse?)
You are correct, it is not minor, it is the key to self-actualization. But everywhere there are the examples of tragic fantasy lives since such basic truth means one must live in a state of constant awareness of the results of our every interaction with others.
It is a human being's greatest failing to gloss over the heart of the matter and then attempt to workaround the glossing. We see it in the terror campaigns, we see it in bribes (called lobbying), we see it in the gargantuan falsehoods billboarded as altruistic gatherings of world leaders and the results are tragically an exacerbation of the previous state of gloss. But because we are just little people, we see it up close and personal too. If we cannot be honest with ourselves, we can't be honest about anything.
Why is it always a gamble to state the obvious? Because we are loathe to accept responsibility that would require a 100% about face to give up the crutch. Not until some disaster comes around caused by ignoring our responsibility will we consider how faux reality was encouraged to take over our entire lives, even then most won't see it, its just too painful, too much work to merely imagine how anything could or should ever be different. Easier to lapse into those old familiar patterns of behavior.
I also stated the issue is cultural. The fantasy is that it is some inborn biological weakness. It is western in its root, an example is what happened to the Native Americans and the African Americans after Christianity (a huge container of false justification) decided to make the rules. I'm sure you have already thought about that, I won't elaborate, but there is no coincidence in the amount of wasted lives now being lived on a global scale and the fabrications we're supposed to accept verbatim on a daily basis.
Its in our language, our consuming habits, our friendships, all subliminally promoted and magnificently exploited by huge profit enterprise.
The ironic thing about Christianity was that it was "meant" to be a religion that promoted peace and reconciliation... but all religions that are institutionalized become tools of the state.
However, there are always and everywhere outbreaks of the original intent: think MLK, Ghandi, Tolstoy... even the last pope or two have stood up for the weak and exploited (let's not get on the Catholic church, just pointing out that they have sometimes stood up for reason and justice).
The seeds of justice are always and everywhere targeted for destruction or perversion when the seedlings become visible to the PTB. John of Survival Acres claims, with justification, that ALL protest movement, green movements, peace movements, etc. will quickly become infested with FBI informers and provocateurs.
The Franciscans and other monks sometimes (I don't know the history well) were the only ones standing up for the indigenous peoples against the depredations of the conquistadors... It's a complex story, but the overall direction is clear.
What you are saying is true Publius, I feel the same way. This is why I was especially moved by Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart recently, it perfectly illustrated the invading Christians with an agenda. Have you read Michener's Hawaii? Same thing.
I finally found the link I wanted to put up for Tex earlier. Don't let me forget to put it in our never overdue library.
The Globalisation of Addiction
Mini-peek from the link, emphasis mine:
...Alexander's observations of addicts at the clinic where he worked in Vancouver suggested powerfully to him that the root cause of addiction was not so much the pharmacology of these particular drugs as the environmental stressors with which his addicts were trying to cope...
‘Reality is for people who can't handle drugs.’ —
‘Paranoia [will destroy yuh] is merely reality on a finer scale.’ ~ cough, cough ... arrcckk..em. Huck yuk .. puh k erck—hah
The exhaustion and pollution of the earth's resources is, above all, the result of a corruption in man's self-image, of a regression in his consciousness. Some would like to speak about a mutation of collective consciousness which leads to a conception of man as an organism dependent not on nature and individuals, but rather on institutions. This institutionalization of substantive values, this belief that a planned process of treatment ultimately gives results desired by the recipient, this consumer ethos, is at the heart of the Promethean fallacy.
Efforts to find a new balance in the global milieu depend on the deinstitutionalization of values.
The suspicion that something is structurally wrong with the vision of homo faber is common to a growing minority in capitalist, Communist, and "underdeveloped" countries alike. This suspicion is the shared characteristic of a new elite. To it belong people of all classes, incomes, faiths, and civilizations. They have 'become wary of the myths of the majority: of scientific utopias, of ideological diabolism, and of the expectation of the distribution of goods and services with some degree of equality. They share with the majority the sense of being trapped. They share with the majority the awareness that most new policies adopted by broad consensus consistently lead to results which are glaringly opposed to their stated aims. Yet whereas the Promethean majority of would-be spacemen still evades the structural issue, the emergent minority is critical of the scientific deus ex mach ina, the ideological panacea, and the hunt for devils and witches. This minority begins to formulate its suspicion that our const
Unbelievably prescient!! How's Su,by the way?
A tool can grow out of man’s control, first to become his master and finally to become his executioner. Tools can rule men sooner than they expect: the plow makes man the lord of a garden but also the refugee from a dust bowl. Nature’s revenge can produce children less fit for life than their fathers, and born into a world less fit for them. Homo faber can be turned into a sorcerer’s apprentice. Specialization can make his every day so complicated that it becomes estranged from his activity. Addiction to progress can enslave all men to a race in which none ever reaches the goal.
IRIS Seismic Monitor See Haiti. the news sites are saying 7.0, IRIS is still updating. Incredible disaster.
I'm sorry Publius, I did not see your post until after I put up the Haiti quake link.
Did you formulate the text following your "prescient" link or did Illich?
Illich formulated it. I'm not that full of well-reasoned thoughts at this time.
I just touched a computer for the first time since leaving work... and saw the news of the Haitian earthquake.
Of course, the fact that people there are forced to live in shantytowns will be disastrous, as will the lack of so many things we believe we have available to us (but see Katrina).
Another disaster to consider in our prayers tonight.
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