220521 a terrible revolution

 May 20

It is time. It is going to be a terrible revolution. The people are going to rise up, because the climate is driving them from their homes and farm lands. They are going to rise up, too, against the mega-monopoly consumer chains that transport goods around the world and back again. Against the mega-monsters who control the governments through lobbying and financial support (blackmail). Against the government infrastructures that fracture the support they are designed to provide. Against the vicious poverty that enslaves most of the people on the planet. Or perhaps it will all come crashing down.

Village - we must return, wherever possible, to the village model: the people of a local community providing the needs of that community, healthcare, and a grocer who arranges with some nearby farmers, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick... I KNOW that we now live in big cities and that the farmers are far away. That is why there is going to be a terrible revolution. Because we cannot sustain what we are doing now. Again, it is not we, the little, poor,  but essential (haha) people; it is the monster structures managing thousands of miles of commerce, and at each stage, someone skims off a slice of the retail price for themselves. It may be that one day Canadians (in the year 2525, if Canada is still alive...) will not eat oranges or bananas unless they have learned to grow them here, or the climate has changed that much. *

This is a plan not only for Canada. We must see to it that wherever people are living, they have a community of support. We must balance out the money. Sorry about that, but we must. Or, we can continue to let each other suffer and die. Even in our wealthiest cities in our most "modern" countries, we let the poor suffer and die.

We cannot measure success and failure by monetary value, nor can we afford, morally, to have such an imbalance of money. Every person brings something to the community, regardless of  their "ability" to "make money". It is as much luck as it is "ability", or learned technique, to be able to get a "job". Ask any artist. But the artist brings so much of importance and value to the table. Three-year-old children, as helpless and needful they are, and bringing only "expenses", bring value - they give joy to friend and stranger alike. Don't forget parents whose work doesn't end with the subway ride home, and the daycare workers who cannot afford their own essentials. But we do not take care of them; we (we, the current world order) take care of the rich person, make sure they have their income and their cars. We must take care of all of us; we must care about each other. There is enough money to share around the planet all the food and essentials we need. And, if everyone traded within smaller geographical areas instead of our wearing China-made clothes, and the Chinese using our fossil fuels (let's say: just as an example.) But that sort of crazy unnecessary transport of goods and the destructive poverty of the tailor and the miner, whose contributions should be acknowledged and rewarded, are immoral and unsustainable. It is going to blow up. Climate change or human revolution, it is going to be a "Sea Change" most fundamental. It may not even look like one, perhaps only a small land-space at a time will change, but it is going to have to cross the planet. 

We are losing the bees and if they go, we are gone.

We are losing the sea, if it goes, we are gone. 

It has been said before. You can google a thousand books, and the newspapers are full of excellent editorials about climate change, corruption in government, the folly of war and hate. I do not know how to fix it and that makes me angry and afraid. So I do some things that I can do. I try and buy local, or at least Canadian, food and goods. I also buy almost all goods and clothes second-hand. I recycle plastics and bags: it has now been 18 months since I bought plastic food wrap, tin foil, or for that matter paper towels. I use rags for most things, but I do buy kitchen sponges which are probably not made anywhere near Quebec! 

There is kindness, too. Kindness builds community - even at the global level, if we could be kind to all the peoples of the world, that would be nice. Actually, community itself builds kindness, too. When you get to know your neighbours, you begin to care about them. We are so quick to isolate ourselves from others, find fault instead of seeing the human being that is there. But if we reach out to the person on the street, the cashier at the store, with a smile (through our masks!), with kind acceptance instead of criticism, it makes both our day and their day better. That connection is good for us, we are included, we are social creatures. I think that most of us are caring and good, but we are powerless against the giants that run the world. Our voices are not loud enough to bring about the changes that we need.

It seems as if everything is coming together, like some perfect storm - climate change, war, hatred and fear of those who are different from us, consumerism consuming us, seeming to roll over us out of control, and a pandemic, perhaps only the first of many. It cannot hold: it will have to break, piece by piece or in one terrible unravelling.

Today there was a storm, rain and hail.

Mumma Yaga

* paraphrase from In the Year 2525, Zager and Evans

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