210309 Sea Change (Writings revisited, from 2006060 and 200911)

Mar. 9

Each small voice adds to the murmur of the river:

   It is almost a year since the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 epidemic a Pandemic. I want to revisit some thoughts from June and September, 2020. We have had our eyes open for almost a year now and so many things have not changed. Essential workers, our life-blood, are still working for inadequate wages, with inadequate protection from illness and danger. The wealthy are still making money hand over fist and living largely sheltered from the hardships of the pandemic. (I know that many wealthy and privileged people are giving back to the world in charity and research support.) Corporations are still putting their income, and government grants, in the wrong pockets. Women, children, minorities of colour and different abilities are still being oppressed and abused. 

Thank you to those who are speaking out for justice: each small voice adds to the murmur of the river. At some point all those voices will come together in a torrent of hope and change that will cascade like Niagara over the escarpment of human suffering.

The posts that follow reiterate an urgent demand for change - meta-change, a "sea change". Embrace responsibility, kindness, and generosity as the new "gold". In the final tally it is our common humanity and our ability to grow new, better and stronger that are our wealth. 

*****

Sea Change

Reposted from June 6, 2020 (200606)

June 6 [2020]

   In the days of covid 19 I have wondered if or when we would see riots and violence as fear and tension built up. In an april post, 200419 fear,I queried whether or not we might wake up to a new world of oppression and dictatorship following the pandemic. I did not expect to wake up to the reality that we already have oppression, which I, at least, have not been seeing clearly. It is the oppression of our countrymen and women who, because of the colour of their skin, or because they are women or because of some other difference, are denied choices, jobs, good wages and homes. (I also did not expect to see so soon the dangerous authoritarianism that our border-country's leader is spouting.)

  Because the pandemic has put our lives on hold and we have the time, or because the death of Mr. Floyd was the last straw, our world is awake at last. We are seeing protests of anger, not at the pandemic's impact but at another huge and destructive disease that people have been fighting for hundreds of years.

  Like those who say "You've come a long way, baby.", from the Virginia Slims ad, and in so doing, accept that we are on a continuum towards a future equality, we have been complacent about the continuum towards racial equality as well. (The slogan itself, "You've come a long way, baby.", generously marketing a cigarette especially for women, is heavy with the systemic misogyny that we are still combatting, baby.) 

  Let's demand an end to the slow and brutal struggle against racism, through teaching and training, by calling politicians, police, teachers and bankers on their racism, as individuals and as part of the system, every time we see an injustice. Put in place trained and unbiased judges and decision-makers who will fight every day to confront and stamp out prejudice.

  The pandemic has forced us to look at - to see, another problem we have known for decades: that residences for the elderly and long-term care are short-staffed and underfunded. I mention it here because the caregivers and support staff in residences and the senior care sector are mostly non-white and female. 

  It is time for big brave changes, to say out loud that we want to change the world. Let's put our money where our mouth is, decide that we can holiday close to home, we can skip getting a new car or even A car. We can wear last year's fashions for a couple more years and make sure every canadian has a warm coat and boots for the winter, and shelter, and food to eat. Decide that we want those taking care of our loved ones, both the elderly AND our children, to be paid a living wage and not have to work two jobs to make ends meet. We can demand that our taxes be spent equitably through-out our city and country, so that EVERY school, not just the wealthy neighbourhood academies, has money for sports, for enough teachers and full curriculums. we can use our resources, healthcare, and infrastructure wisely and sparingly, and spend the money where it's needed, not let it slip into the already well-lined pockets of the wealthy through tax loopholes and favoritism.

  Time to stop teaching children racist, sexist and exclusionary ideas, time for us to start modeling and speaking aloud equality of race, sex, and sexual orientation. When we are training our police force, when we are voting for government representatives, when we are deciding where to invest, with thoughtful choices, we can cut a path to a new world.

  We have spent the last three months expressing our belief in putting human life ahead of the economy. Let's stick to that. Life matters. Black lives, all lives, matter. Let this be the "sea change" that the world needs, to face the challenges of this pandemic, our climate crisis, and the inequalities in the lives of the all humans around the globe. 

*****

Covid-19 Six Months Sea Change 

Reposted from September 11, 2020 (200911)

September 11 [2020]

   It is six months since the Pandemic was declared. I remember that day like it was six months ago. Or a lifetime ago. B.C. : before covid-19. Our family has so far escaped infection. Many people have likewise escaped and this is driving the nonchalance one sees about. "See? it's safe. Relax." But that's a crap shoot. You don't know when your number is just an incubation period away. There is a new theory linking the disease to bradykinin's influence on the body's system.* The second fastest computer in the world took a week to process 2.5 billion genetic combinations, which highlighted the bradykinin involvement in covid-19. It explains many of the weirder symptoms of this virus. It is a breakthrough that might lead to better treatments. There are vaccines in the works worldwide but the development takes time and the trials take time. And then, the worldwide implementation of vaccination becomes the challenge. A nightmare of financial and logistical hurdles.

   What would happen to a world where the economy simply collapsed under the weight of the financial burden of a such a pandemic? After the Black Death, the European economic model underwent a fundamental change, when (incidentally) the essential workers were suddenly in demand and shook off  the shackles of serfdom and began to acquire independence.** Perhaps this will disarm the modern money-based economy and allow a human-based economy to arise: of worth based on human life, and local sustainability, merged with global trade models that support minimal transportation of goods and services. The value of such a model would be in reducing human suffering, in environmental benefits, with reduced pollution and climate damage. If the fall is complete enough it could wipe out the artificial standard of monetary wealth and debt, re-assign worth to human beings (and all our planet's life).

   The local village and it's meta-counterpart, the global village would care for its members as family, each person giving to the community the goods, services and kindnesses they can and each receiving the help and support of that community. Those who make the blue jeans will trade with those who grow the food so that both will eat and wear pants. Those who nurse the sick will be given food and blue jeans because they are caring for the sisters and brothers of the person who makes jeans and of the local baker. The traders and the CEOs will fare the same, because the CEO is nothing without the person who makes the jeans and grows the food and nurtures the health and happiness of everyone in the community. The "CEO" might be one of the contributors to the community, perhaps coordinating the transport of jeans and beans, finding helpers to build a house, or he might be a neighbour who sits in the sun and thinks, he still gets blue jeans and food, just like everyone else. But he only gets the Maserati when it's his turn to take it for a drive, and only if a group of people somewhere is interested in producing Maseratis. This model looks a lot like communism, but so far in the world communism has been accompanied by a hierarchy of domination and suppression between humans. But there is the possibility that we could embrace responsibility, kindness and generosity as our "gold" standards. 

[Note, March 9, 2021: I don't think we need to move to the moon and adopt Ursula Le Guin's Anarres anarchical society to accomplish a "Global Humanity".*** Much of our infrastructure is adequate and can be co-opted into a new economical model. We have connections beginning at the local and extending to the global. We cannot return to the tribe and village model of our ancestors, but we can accept our Global Humanity as our tribe and village and support it as we support our friends and family in our actual communities.]

   We will not achieve racial, gender or financial equality and an end to third-world slavery (so you "pay" them, but they must work in abominable conditions to afford one goat, a one-room house and many don't go to school or receive medical care.), and the pseudo-serfdom of the poor and marginalized in first-world countries. 

   I want to believe in the future. If those who hope and love, who already live with these ethics, would just all raise their hands at the same time, we might see that there are enough of us to bring about the "sea-change" that our world needs, not sometime in the future, but NOW. Human wealth, whether we know and embrace it or not, is in our health, our mutual care and support, our world and how we care for it, in the sunshine and the goldenrod and the oceans, forests and prairies that feed all things.

*****

To everyone who is working for change, thank you. 

Thanks for listening. Keep safe.

Mumma Yaga

Children and nature are our wealth. The food of the earth is our wealth. Our poverty is in inequality between people and the suffering and death of numberless humans world-wide.

* https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63

** https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-bright-side-of-the-black-death

*** Ursula K. Le Guin, The  Dispossessed, 1974.