Lies Will Set Us Free?!

Sherkin Island and Baltimore Beacon, put there to make sure seafarers found the right gap in the cliffs!

Happy Christmas and a Joyful and Prosperous New Year to all my readers!

Maybe it was just as well that I have been horrendously busy, with Fiona incapacitated and a lot of work to the house to be finished in time for Christmas, so I have not had much time for thinking about the Rt Dishonourable Johnson and the horrendous election result in Blighty. Meanwhile, season of goodwill and all that, I have to reflect on why I am so out of tune with all those voters. Not that I accept that the election represents, as the RDJ avers, 'a powerful people's mandate' for his lousy deal - that's another addition to his long list of lies. 
     
     In fact a majority (52.6%) of votes were cast for parties that either opposed Brexit or, in the case of Labour, called for a second referendum on the final deal with the option of remain, as opposed to 47.33% who voted for Brexit parties. Meanwhile all opinion polls still indicate that there is 'a consistent and clear majority for “Remain.”'* So much for the British 'beacon of democracy'.

     I do however understand how many voters are convinced, in good faith, that the EU is too remote and cumbersome, and have come to identify it with globalising tendencies that they do not like. As G.K.Chesterton put it:- 'Democracy is never quite democratic except when it is quite direct; and it is never quite direct except when it is quite small.' Yet for all its size, the continental set up is not doing so badly. Great Britain and its post imperial, first-past-the-post system barely qualifies as democracy in comparison. 

     Where was the intelligent and respectful debate in that election? Are elections just a matter of who has the best slogans and can shout loudest? Those little knitty problems, especially the Irish ones, were simply ignored by the Tories, as of course were the even knittier big ones like turning the massive investments in war, weapons and fossil fuels over to peace and sustainability. The Brexiteers have been promising a great future with all sorts of new trading opportunities, above all a great new trade deal with the USA. That it would come at the cost of what little progress is being made in tackling climate change bothers them not at all. I do not think the moment of reckoning will be long delayed.

     Chatting to an islander home for Christmas but living in Philadelphia for years, I commented how shameless the Republicans were in simply repeating the Ducky's line about the 'scam' of the impeachment hearings, rather than engaging with the facts as established, while lamenting that the same approach appears to be prevailing nearer home. "Well, at least Johnson is reasonably intelligent and knows he's lying", says he,"Trump is too thick for that!"

     In another recent conversation, about climate change, I was quite confounded. My man admitted that the planet was heating up dangerously, and that CO2 etc were building up in the atmosphere - "but the scientists cannot prove a connection between the two!" What can one say? Millions and much expertise have been expended demonstrating this connection with hugely sophisticated computer models, yet I suppose it is true to say this does not constitute 'proof'. To me this constitutes a good demonstration of the whole fallacy about 'proof', that we have heard so often in the mouths of clever fellows who 'don't believe anything that can't be proved by science'. Actually none of the really important things can be, such as the fact that I love Fiona or even the beautiful island that we live on - or any connection there may be between these two facts!

     Perhaps we should be glad of the fact that it has become quite impossible to continue to pretend that our 'democracies' are rational affairs, and electorates make their decisions on the basis of reasoned arguments. The very conviction of the potential primacy of reason is in fact ultimately a matter of religious faith. Getting there is a journey, to be undertaken at many different levels. Clearly the EU represents considerable strides on this journey on some levels, but we Europeans can admit too that the heady ideals need to be more effectively rooted in people's experience. The degree and success of subsidiarity is critical, and the ability to embrace these ideals at a personal and practical level.

     Meanwhile British Europeans may recall that it was a lot worse for catholics when His Narcissitic Majesty Henry VIII was on the job. Today's catholics, those who have universal solidarity and sustainability at heart, can only keep on trying to take hold of truth wherever they find it, build on it and trust that in the end it will prevail. We can also be profoundly grateful for the positively miraculous fact that, for all the many failings of her children, the Catholic Church remains basically on track, and thank God for Pope Francis!

     Unfortunately, when people are confronted with horrors like having to rein in the destructive habits that are so dear to them, like driving whenever they like in the biggest car they can afford and flying to beat the band, they are inclined to react against those who would try to persuade them to do so. We can only try to find another way to live, and show perhaps what fun it can be. But, if nothing short of a flood through the Palace of Westminster will persuade the English to change their political set-up, so be it! One may hope and pray for wise and honest leaders, but they are a rarity, and we should not be downcast or confounded in their absence. We just have to keep on trying to hold the ones we are stuck with to account, refusing to give in to their false narratives and speaking the truth as we see it....

Photos by our Cristiona, whom we are so lucky to have home from London for Christmas.

 *see https://fedtrust.co.uk/brexit-the-end-of-the-beginning/     

WhyTell the Truth When a Lie Will Do?

It was one of those quirky sayings that I picked up about Glencolmcille. "Why tell the truth when a lie will do?" I can hear it now on the lips of Old Johnnie, in his sweet Donegal brogue, with the merest hint of a smile glinting in his dark eyes. "Bah," he commented one evening - "Joe doesn't tell any lies!" While there may have been some smidgeon of respect behind the comment, it was not exactly a compliment. After all, seeing how successfully one could pull the wool over some people's eyes was a time-honoured sport, honed over generations who had to deal with bossy and over-bearing landlords.

     He tried it on Fiona pretty quickly when we landed in Braide, fresh from English middle-class life. She went over to  his house with some ticks that she had extracted from the children, on a saucer, to ask what they were and find out if they were harmful. "Ah, them's very good to eat!" said old Johnnie. 

    In that square head beneath the grizzly grey hair, set on the squat, powerful body, the questions must have played endlessly as his solitary toil went on - 'was Connie Dan lying about the big money he got for that beast? What is going on between Moira and Sean? Is the world coming to an End?' What after all would one be doing with a mind unless it were to play with such questions? And what kind of a man does not sometimes come against the final culmination of them - 'What is Truth, anyway?'

     How many people in England today would even recognise this query, from when it was most famously employed? By Pontius Pilate questioning Jesus, I suppose that I had better add! For surely the contemporary 'crisis of truth' has not a little to do with the fact that only a minority now have a basic acquaintance with Holy Scripture. I am not even commenting that the world would be so much better and happier if everyone believed the Gospel. What I am saying is that it is unlikely that our civilisation can last much longer when people have no knowledge of or acquaintance with the Man who claimed to be the Truth, and not the least opportunity to put to themselves the questions, 'could his word be true?' Or even, 'if there were such a thing as truth, is that really what it might it look like?'

     One aspect of the matter should be obvious - the Truth can get one crucified. It is simply incompatible with narcissicism. To perceive it requires training and discipline, and a  civilisation requires foundational stories that commend it to succeeding generations. Any profession is built upon the recognition of certain truths, which sometimes may well be inconvenient. A professional person is someone who one can rely on spot and express the truth of a given set of conditions, whatever they may be, 'in season and out of season'.

     Regular readers of this blog will know that I value the sea

particularly as a teacher of truth. It sometimes seems these  days that my career as a professional sailor came to an end when I recognised an inconvenient truth - as we were sailing along on a beautiful day with everything going well, except that the bilge pump was working overtime, in spite of my having done my best to fix the leaks, and we were heading north, homeward bound for Ireland, on the Portuguese coast. I chose to put the Anna M on the concrete at Nazaré, despite the facts that there were plenty of fathoms beneath us, we had a brand new liferaft, a fine long sandy beach under our lee, and she was insured for €60,000.... But there you go, that course of action would have involved some whoppers! Who would want to have ended their career that way?

     We are all confronted with a rather larger 'inconvient truth'! Our spaceship Earth is in serious trouble. We need to fix it, fast. It will not suit a lot of people to recognise this fact, and cost a lot of money. But truth is a habit and a skill that we seem to be losing. Even old Johnnie Andy would have admitted that it is well to avoid lying to oneself with that dangerous little phrase - 'oh, it will be fine!'

     Time was when Englishmen prided themselves on speaking truth and standing up for it, at whatever cost to themselves. When I confounded my Dad with the information that we were heading to live in Ireland, one of his parting shots was 'Never trust an Irish lawyer!' I doubt if he was even aware that even in those days some of the unfortunate lesser breeds of the world harboured a very different kind of stereotype - that of the deceitful, devious and downright untrustworthy Englishman. 

     I wish I could shout it across the land of my birth - please, please do not elect one of them as your Prime Minister! 

     

It's SNAPP for 2020.

The feast of Christ the King today marks the end of the Church year, and we start to think in terms of the coming new one. For myself 2020 will be make or break with what I am now calling SNAPP - the Sherkin-Nazaré Alternative Power Project. I have modified the name in this way to give it a more explicit Sherkin dimension, for various reasons but above all because, besides being my home, this is such a splendid microcosm in which to set about applying the technologies we envisage.

However my mind was concentrated on the matter by the visit to Sherkin yesterday of our Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Simon Coveney, as well as the Minister for the Gaeltacht and the Islands, Seán Kyne. I also met our new MEP for Ireland South, Billy Kelleher, a couple of nights ago in Cork. It is one of the beauties of living in a small country that one has a better chance of effective access to senior politicians. The rest of this blog was written as an outline of SNAPP, with a view to sounding out what effective political advice and support may be forthcoming....

The day-to-day problems of island living have very much to do with transport on both land and sea. While access for mainland-based vehicles, vans etc, is difficult and expensive, it is rarely practical for an individual person to run an expensive vehicle on an island, and neither would it be doing much good taking up space in the car park by the sea on the mainland. Fiona and I have been happily living without a car for six years now, but this is much easier with the children grown up and a pensioner’s free travel pass.

Bangers' End

What happens in practice is that old bangers are drawn out to islands to die; visitors are treated to lungfuls of foul exhaust as they walk up the hill from the pier, which is usually congested with them, and when they finally conk out they are inclined to litter our beautiful landscape. Meanwhile we are dependent on an unreliable old island bus, while we do not know how it is to be replaced when it finally conks out.

     Undoubtedly in general electric power will eventually replace internal combustion engines, but not necessarily in the extremely expensive and flashy vehicles offered by big industry, and preferably without lithium-ion batteries. We need very basic and rugged electric vehicles that can be maintained here on island - preferably a fleet of them owned and operated by a coop. They would be available for its members to drive, while overseen by someone charged with monitoring their use and location.

With regard to lithium-ion batteries, which are expensive, messy to produce, of quite limited durability and difficult to recycle, I would bet on hydrogen fuel cells for powering the future. While there is at this stage a wealth of scientific research and knowledge on all alternatives to oil, practical applications are falling very short. There is something that could be done to ameliorate the situation quickly, radically and relatively cheaply, which is to fit every diesel engine with a hydrogen generator, which would reduce their consumption of diesel oil by up to 30% and radically clean up their emissions. It is with the development and production of such units that SNAPP will most probably set to work.

     Many of the same considerations that apply to vehicles also do so to boats, though of course there are whole new dimensions involved. With regard to electric power in a sailing boat, there is the advantage that batteries can be recharged (or hydrogen produced) by the power of the sails transmitted through the propellor and electric motor functioning as a generator. It hardly needs to be said how attractive the idea of quiet, pollution and smell free electric power is for boats.

In the case of both my associate in Portugal, Alec Lammas, and myself, our boats are the prime focus of our interest in electric drives. Alec owns a small steel trading schooner that he built himself, and I have a 50 year-old Illingworth schooner, the Anna M, that I am renovating with new laminated ribs. Both vessels are fairly ideal for the reach between West Cork and Galicia. Having cruised extensively between Scotland, the south of Spain, Rome, Venezuela and the Caribbean, my main interest now would be to use the Anna M as a test bed for various forms of alternative power and to demonstrate their utility. While Alec is very busy in the boatyard at Nazaré, he has a fine workshop in which he has been experimenting with hydrogen and electric motors. Here on Sherkin a similar workshop could also function as a place to experiment with and try out different techniques, while also training technicians to service them.

     The critical considerations for electric power are always going to be where and how is all this electricity going to be generated, and how will the power be stored and distributed? Our islands have multiple potential sources of renewable energy available, and surely there is massive potential for ‘cottage industry’ hydrogen production. Maybe farmers in the future will produce it much as they do milk today. Techniques might also be developed that would also provide massive opportunities for sunnier countries using desert land for solar power, and enable their populations to thrive in their own places rather than considering desperate means to migrate to Europe.

     The concepts referred to above give some little idea of the many areas ripe for the research, development and application of the kind of techniques that are urgently required everywhere if we are to manage to build the new sustainable society. The challenge is so huge that the more widely the response is connected, the better. SNAPP envisages a strong connection with Portugal, which has very many advantages to offer in terms of, for example, lower production costs and access to Africa and Latin America, not to mention the Iberian markets.

It happens that sailors have been trading between West Cork and Portugal, mostly under sail, since time immemorial, while at this point in history it seems a good idea for Ireland to renew such ancient links. I am seeking sponsors who would be interested in nailing their colours to this project, while first of all am seeking political advice and support, in the hope of effective corporate and state collaboration.

Good Morning Galicia.

A Year of Paralysis

A year ago, I was full of enthusiasm for The Nazaré Project. What seems to have ensued mainly is paralysis. Indeed, as 2019 begins to slip away from us, we might have to call it 'the Year of Paralysis', so widespread has been this experience, brilliantly exemplified of course in our part of the world by the B saga. It is a dead weight weighing down not just on Brits trying to do things and go places on the Continent, like our Alec, but on the whole of Western Europe.

     I am just back home on Sherkin after another fortnight in Nazaré, where I did little besides getting the Anna M lined up for another year there, which involves moving her off the concrete apron to the cheaper part of the yard. I am sufficiently worn down to enjoy my visits there regardless of 'progress'; it is a very pleasant place to be! While I was there, we went from late summer to a very mild early winter:-

One thing about going away now and again is that it is very lovely to come home again, especially with Fiona being here. Meanwhile I do hope that, deep down, things are happening. Certainly our thoughts about what we want to do, both technically and in general, are maturing. And for all the lack of actual progress and political movement, surely there is a much more widespread understanding that the environmental crisis simply has to be addressed; the question is, how?

     The General Election in Britain promises only more and indeed worse paralysis, as far as I can make out. Of the two men who are apparently contenders for the top job, enough has been said about the present incumbent. If he were to win a viable majority (which I hope is most unlikely), the likes of me would have to write the UK off for the duration. But I shall also make just one little observation about the other fellow.

     "My whole strategy has been to try and keep the party, the movement and the country together", says Mr Jeremy Corbyn. He has a brilliant way of doing so - simply deny the split! So as far as he is concerned, as he informed his Shadow Cabinet, "The debate (about Brexit) is over." It's all crystal clear - his government will negociate a new agreement with the EU (though most of his party say they do not want it and it is very hard to expect the EU to take such negociations seriously) and then 'put it to the People to decide if they want it'!

     How a devastating dereliction may be dressed up as responsibility! The pretence of unity where it does not exist, canonized in the name of 'the People's decision', is actually a recipe for tyranny, and especially so if it happens to wangle some sort of 'democratic majority'. In the same breath as the above quotation, gleaned from the Guardian*, we find Mr Corbyn apparently proud of the fact that he took the decision to go for a General Election entirely on his own. “I put it to them (the Shadow Cabinet) quite clearly: I said, our objections are now gone. We are now supporting a general election – and everybody gulped. I didn’t alert anybody in advance – it was my decision. On my own. I made that decision. And they gulped, and said, Yes Jeremy.” This is the same guy who says he 'would share power out to everyone who helped build the Labour movement'.

     If Mr Corbyn cannot build consensus in his own party, what hope for doing so in the whole country? In the circumstances, one must hope for another hung parliament, who would put a stop to the wild imaginings of either of the Great Leaders on offer. Yet, one can only tolerate so much paralysis, and reluctant as the EU may be to cutting the mooring ropes and letting the good ship Britannia drift away, in the end Europe is likely to be wound up into insisting on one of the dreaded 'binary decisions' that the fashionable anglophone chatterati profess to disdain- Yes or No, Oui ou Non. 

     Those who disdain 'binary' politics seem generally to assume that any of life's many polarities necessarily entail adversarial behaviour, even as in the relationships between men and women. This is a counsel of despair. I insist that actually the correct application of polarities is the basis of all creativity (based on the most fundamental of them all, the relationship of the Father with the Son, from which the Holy Spirit springs). But one does not get there, to creativity, by denying the polarities.

    Is there then any chance of leaving the sorry adversarial politics behind? What would an holistic politics look like anyway? Is it not struggling to take shape in Europe? Instead of claiming the EU is falling apart, would it not be so much better to participate wholeheartedly in this immensely exciting project? But in Blighty, having reformed the voting system, one would need to furthermore turn the Palace of Westminster into a museum, and build a purpose-built, round parliament in, say, Brum, wherein the seats might be allocated to the constituencies in alphabetical order!

     Meanwhile, the best most of us can do is to build away at an holistic world in our own little ways. It is pressure from below that will bring about change, not just some great political project!

 *https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/03/obey-brexit-jeremy-corbyn-warns-cabinet-dissenters

War in Heaven

Johnnie Andy who was our neighbour in Glencolmcille would not let water into his house - as another old man put it, 'aren't we all our lives trying to keep it out!, meaning out of their old thatched cottages. However, much more rashly I would have thought, he did let in 'the jigger', which was his name for the television. Now one day I came up with some bright-but-trite anti-war comment, as we absorbed yet another bit of footage of people trying to blow each other up, but I was stopped in my tracks by old Johnnie's comment - 'Ah well now war's allowed. Sure wasn't there war in Heaven?'

     Let us hope that, if war there must be, it should not be a matter of trying to blow each other up; because I'm afraid the forthcoming general election in the UK does have to be a matter of war. It will be a generational battle to determine the nature of the outfit for years - a battle, one might say, for the soul of the nation.

Another frontier.

     Who am I to say such things, or care as I swan around the Gannetsway? It should be obvious to all by now that, not for the first time, this battle is liable to be largely fought out in or over Ireland. It was in 1969, in the wake of British troops, that I first went there in earnest, trying to figure out what was going on, as opposed to sailing about the place or visiting a friend. It was above all the British attitude to Ireland that made me baulk at the idea of spending my life banging my head off those old brick walls.

       One little illustration of what I mean will suffice, that an Irish seaman forwarded to me from his FB page:-

In disbelief that people could still think like this, I asked was this someone just trying to take the mickey or stir, but was assured that this is the way that a lot of the Brits he works with really do think, they now think that their wretched xenophobia carries endorsement on high, and moreover there's much worse stuff going around in the dark recesses of Facebook. It is one of the more nauseating habits that the Brexiteers have, invoking ww2; mostly by people whose actual idea of it was derived from those dreadful whizz bang take that Jerry AAAch Himmel actung the English svinehunds! comics of the '50s. People like my father who actually fought in the war were much more inclined to value the European movement and regard it as a degree of consolation for all the misery that brought it about.

     For my part, I find myself irreversibly Europeanised, and I suppose there are not a few people like me in that. It is simply unthinkable that we should revert to an English nationalist mindset. Cosmopolitan elite be damned - we just know where we came from, where we like to go, and cherish peace. The same can be said from an Irish perspective. It should be obvious by now that the fragile equilibrium which has been built in Ulster is very much dependent on the EU. If this stupid deal of Johnson's goes through, it is going to cost lives in Ireland.

     There is another side to all this, intimately bound up with it. It is no coincidence that Brexiteers are inclined to deny the climate crisis. I saw a nice lady representing the People's March talking to Mr Farrage the other day on LBC. Having gone through the usual rubbish, trying to cast doubt on the science, he said 'anyway, we only represent 2% of the problem; what can we do about it?' The lady really missed a trick when she didn't respond with - 'that's one big reason why we need the EU'!

     So how can this battle be fought, with such fragmented forces? Mr Corbyn, bless him, is not the man to lead the fight, and at the moment there does not appear to be anyone else who can either. There is no time to go trying to found a new political party, even if it were desirable. The basic issue however is  simple, and of such importance that it must come before any party loyalty or ideology. My name for what is needed is the European Solidarity and Environmental Movement - ESEM or even just SM. I hasten to add that I do not mean 'solidarity' in any exclusive sense. 

     Coupled with environmental degradation is a rising tide of human misery in the world. The challenge is to address both. ESEM should work in tandem with Mrs Gina Miller and RemainUnited*, but go further and find a leader with the potential to form a Government on the twin essentials of ESEM. After all the rest is largely hot air, especially so if the country insists on impoverishing itself (and the air keeps getting hotter!).

     

     Increasingly as old age creeps up on me, I sometimes feel saddened at the prospect of my old country going down the tubes, and even regret that I did not find a way to 'fight the good fight' back in the day. I'll see if I can do a bit for it now by pushing this idea. Will you, dear reader, if you like it, please do the same; send it on and let us see where it goes! Tell them about it, post a comment below if you would support it, and let's see if there is a catch to be made!

Bringing Home the Catch.

*https://www.remainunited.org

Anyone up for some 'technical adaptations'?

Sometimes it seems that the only viable attitude to the world is... silence - at least as far as any meaningful response to what passes for politics these days. We can be grateful to the Brits for spelling it out. All that pomp and circumstance attached to the Queen's speech, setting out the program of a zombie government that everyone knows is on its last legs!

     That Government clings desperately on to whatever little credibility it retains by dangling the prospect of 'getting Brexit done'. It is astonishing how we all tend to get sucked into the farce. Even if this famous deal is cobbled together, by means of a classic piece of the Sulk's favourite food - cake kept and eaten - a border down the Irish Sea such as the Maybot claimed 'no British prime minister could accept', it is obvious that the Brexit saga will in fact only be beginning. So far we have only been in the preface, exactly as happens to be the case with the climate crisis.

     Insofar as the Sulk has a policy in both cases, his priority appears to be to find any way at all of enabling his electorate to get their heads back in the sand. How on Earth can any serious progress be made by any one country on its own? How can we plausibly make progress unless it be in cooperation with our neighbours? The challenges of building international and environmental responsibility, of enabling the requisite global responses to our global problems, are all essentially one and the same, and the European project is but a step on the way to such a global ambition. 

     Logically, the Brexiteers would rather leave the planet; the Sulk may well tout his British space project! Here is another instance of the Brexit delusion, that it could be better than playing a full part in the European one! Is it so very hard to see that the individual nations thrive by playing in the game? At the same time, an effective global response is one that would empower individuals and local communities. But what's logic got to do with it anyway, you say? Very well, wait till you see! Meanwhile, I shall mainly hold my silence on our peaceful little island, though beavering away in my own little way on the practical level.

Doggie Heaven

     It's taken years, but our little extension is nearing completion at last, and with no loan attached to it - just buying a few materials here and there as we go along, and with the support of friends. When that's done, I intend to concentrate on the sea-faring end of things, and getting the Anna M going again in a carbon-neutral mode. I will head for Portugal again next week, saying byebye to some lovely autumn weather here on Sherkin, but I hope to return two weeks later with a little hydrogen generator to test out.

     Kevin Davis, a lecturer at the Cork Institute of Technology, has pointed me in the direction of an excellent resource for accessing research papers - www.sciencedirect.com - with regard to using a diesel/hydrogen mixture in an internal combustion engine. One can find there, for example, 'A review on the technical adaptations for internal combustion engines to operate with gas/hydrogen mixtures', 'Hydrogen combustion in a compression ignition diesel engine', and 'A review on the technical adaptations for internal combustion engines to operate with gas/hydrogen mixtures.'  This research is encouraging, but there remains a chasm between such work and actually rolling out practical applications. 

     Given all the hype about the 'Extinction Rebellion' and so on, one might have expected that it would be easy to garner support for any such effort. Such is not my experience. Even more than our politics, our financial structures are out of kilter with the real challenges, so much so that according to Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, existing global investment carries the implication of global warming 'probably north of 4C'.*  Something is going to have to give! 

     If anyone out there is interested in participating in a little effort to power a boat without contributing to this catastrophe, and helping in some little way to build an alternative future instead, please get in touch - email gannetsway(at)gmail.com
*see https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/15/bank-of-england-boss-warns-global-finance-it-is-funding-climate-crisis

'Escape to the Mountains'? On Staying Sane When the World Is Mad.

The impulse to escape to the hills is as old as humanity, but received a particular edge through Jesus' warnings of the end times. As he says in the 24th Chapter of St Matthew's Gospel, 'when you see the disastrous abomination..., then those in Judaea must escape to the mountains.' 'In Noah's day before the Flood people were eating, drinking, taking wives, right up to the day Noah went into the ark, and they suspected nothing till the Flood came and swept them all away.' Yet 'as for that day, nobody knows it, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, no one but the Father only.' Jesus' conclusion? - 'So stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming.' St Luke adds - 'praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen, and to stand with confidence before the Son of Man.'

     The advice to 'stay awake and survive' at least is encouraging. All through history, there have been times that felt like The End, as famine, plague, persecution, war or natural disasters swept the land and evil seemed to triumph. In my young days, it was widely expected the human race would finally blow itself up entirely, a threat that has by no means gone away though we are on the whole looking another way. Anyway, here we still are, with a new wave of apocalyptic foreboding sweeping humanity. What constitutes a sane response - an alternative to going mad ourselves?

     We need to begin by recognising that such is in fact the human condition. The Earth is but a passing home, yet this is by no means a reason to disown it. Referencing simple, practical things like giving someone a glass of water, Jesus goes on to urge us in the strongest language to care for those who are already actually suffering the breakdown of human society - the hungry, the thirsty and the homeless - they are the very ones with whom the Son of Man identifies - 'whatever you do to them, you do to me'. The challenge of the 'End Times' is the very challenge to live fully human lives. Jesus characterised the terrifying events as 'the beginning of the birthpangs'. Yet their coming is associated with that of 'many false prophets'.

     How do we recognise false prophets? By their fruits of course, but these can take a while to come in! Possibly it will do to reject anyone who claims to have The Answer, to offer salvation, short of the Son of Man, who when he does come will probably catch us by surprise, and yet be the unmistakable culmination of the human project. We Christians accept that the end will come, even look forward to it, albeit rather hoping not to be there when it happens, as Spike Milligan said about death. But let there be no doubt - in the meantime, we are committed to living life to the full.

     So how did leaving all the 'fleshpots' of London behind, and going to live in the hills of Donegal in 1973, work out for Fiona and myself? Well you can read about it if you delve into this blog, especially the From the Fractal Frontier reports - but in a word, for all its difficulties, very well. It is fair to say that we have lived through the disintegration of the cultural set-up we were born into, even if we now look out cosily from our kitchen window on Sherkin with an old hurricane rattling away at it. It's definitely a good idea to be behind glass this morning, rather than out there on the sea, the mountains or King Lear's heath!

     The truth is that, culturally speaking, we find ourselves back in many ways to where we came from, but nothing like as dismayed as we were when we started out. I am sure that some people encountering us would consider us way behind the times. I'm inclined to the conceit that we are way ahead of them. Anyway our lives have been very good, though of course full of difficulties to be overcome and so by strange, unforeseeable ways to help us on our way. 

     This is the first storm in a long time when no drops of water have been getting into our house somewhere, in which respect we have just had some great help from a young American from Virginia, one of those wonderful Americans who combines intelligence with practical ability - a wonderful antidote to the Ducky's antics. Sadly, one needs to keep reminding oneself that the current President does not represent the USA, any more than the Sulk represents the UK*. Meanwhile we can make a start in

overcoming the madness of the world by concentrating on the basics - food, shelter, power - and taking as much of their production as possible into our own hands, which in turn provides a good basis for the essential business of enjoying life and good company!


  *If you don't know who The Sulk is, see John Crace's articles in The Guardian.   

           
     

        

So the Bill Is Coming In!

What an autumn we are facing! Especially here in Ireland, as we find ourselves once more in severe danger of being the cockpit of Europe. All the good political progress of the last thirty years is in danger of being undone. With excessive complacency, we assumed things would only get better. Now Brexit is bringing to light multiple fractures in the culture that I grew up in, which transcend Brexit itself. 

     It has long been commonplace to regard England as a particularly class-ridden society, albeit one that is adept in putting a respectable face on the now drastically aggravated chasm between rich and poor. Less noticed are related fissures between, for instance, the immediate physical facts of life and those who live their lives largely concerned with them on one hand, and the abstract world that the well-to-do mainly inhabit on the other, which is dominated by wealth rather than mere money.

      While feeling oppressed as I grew up by the class divisions that infest England, I was threatened with complete paralysis or breakdown as a young man by the fractures in my own personality, notably between that abstract world in which I was largely educated and the physical one which both enchanted and exasperated  me. Sailing the sea, both as a yachtsman and a fisherman, greatly helped me to establish some kind of sane balance between them. So it is that I only allowed this blog somewhat reluctantly to be drawn into the Brexit maelstrom, and then have tried to always relate my comments to the physical circumstances of my life. I hope my views are not unduly influenced by the fact that my boat and sailing days are under severe threat!

     The maelstrom is certainly real enough, and it is about a

lot more than Brexit. It is as real as the autumn gales here in Sherkin, sweeping destructively over this garden with which Fiona and I try to make a little prayer together each year, and likely to bring a similar wave of destruction to this country of Ireland.  It is true that the declines of our plants go hand in hand with their fruition, and we may enjoy the fruits for the rest of winter before the cycle starts again; yet the decline remains painful and to be combatted, like old age.  

     It is likely that Ireland would be even more grievously affected by a 'no deal' Brexit than England. Aside from the estimated 8% reduction in GDP, amidst all the disruption of so many vital supply chains, the border is a political and cultural fault line with unparalled potential for nasty eruptions. Anyway it is an outstanding reality of the modern world that no one 'people' can shape their course without impact on their neighbours, any more than a skipper can sail on his way without paying attention to other sea-farers.

     To most Brexiteers no doubt this image does not stand. For the wealthy minority that fancy themselves as world-treading buccaneers, evidently it would depend what you mean by 'paying attention'; no doubt a predator pays attention to its prey. But one suspects that the greater majority of Brexiteers would prefer the image of retreating into their island fortress and pulling up the drawbridge. If they get their way, it will be interesting to see how the tension between them plays out; amazing as is the ability of the present British Prime Minister to pull the wool over people's eyes, I find it very hard to believe he and his spurious invocations of 'the people' can prosper for long.

     Unlike Clement Attlee, father of the NHS, the buccaneers of this world do not of course really respect their crews; they regard them as so dim that they can find a way to manipulate them. They count on their ability to play on their susceptibilities, fears and passions. Such truths are becoming clearer by the day. A healthy ship's company will indeed have good empathy between the officers and crew, with commonly accepted goals, and moreover it will be accepted that the officers are necessary because while the crew actually mans the ship, someone has to be guiding it. This calls for a kind of effort distinct from actually doing the hard work. All sorts of information has to be gathered from far and wide before important decisions are made. It would of course be madness to expect the crew to make those decisions. 

     This is all the more true with the ship of state, and is why the likes of Clement Attlee was so emphatically opposed to the 'use of a device so alien to all our traditions and so beloved of fascist dictators'. It needs to be recognised that referenda have no place in a parliamentary democracy. We may furthermore ring our hands at the failure of our democratic officers to bear their responsibilities, but there are other fashionable notions that will have to be firmly renounced if things are to change for the better.

       Good leaders need to be somehow schooled in an holistic way. The posh schools may have largely failed to educate people beyond their personal and class egoism, but the alternatives are mainly geared to the labour market, as are the so-called universities. Specialization may be good for the honing of particular skills, but if a person's horizon is limited to one field of vision, they cannot make good officers; and yes, some kind of an officer class is necessary in the real world, where people have to fight battles and vile weather, while it should of course be open to recruitment from the lower deck. It will be dangerous if the officers lose touch with the crew, where anyway some individuals are likely to be much wider awake than the officers. I consider that the Catholic Church has been noticeably successful in this respect, as one would hope since the Most High founded her in the flesh of a humble man, and in spite of her many abuses of power. There are very many examples of humble men achieving the highest offices, including that of Pope.

     A common sense of purpose is essential in overcoming the alienation of the crew. Here we come to perhaps the most important unfashionable realisation:- religion is not a voluntary extra. It is indeed the ground of humanity's most spectacular successes and failures alike, rather like gardens, but if you try to write it out of the picture, it will only pop up in another form. Surely it is the void left by the decline of the languages of meaning with which people grew up that drives contemporary mayhem and madness. However, spilt religion is no substitute for the real thing. The sad fact is that the British officer class have not succeeded in realising, let alone communicating, a common sense of purpose, to replace the British Empire and inspire commitment to the European Project, along with, let us say, the transition to a just and sustainable society. Why, according to the Tory goddess Mrs Thatcher, 'there is no such thing as society'!

     You can only sustain such illusions when things are going reasonably well. They tried to fall back on a mere promise of greater individual wealth and security to motivate the crew, but clearly this does not stand up when it comes to addressing our present predicaments. Mr Nigel Farage has it that 'the father of Brexit' was King Henry VIII. I maintain that to really find a good way forward, the English need to start by recognising that the two related events, of King Hal's Reformation and the Referendum to leave the EU, were frankly mistaken; and even if you say there was something inevitable about them and all that happened in between, meaning in particular the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution, these projects were severely and radically flawed too.  Does it really take the Irish to point this out? The bill is coming in now! 

     

     

The Middle Way

There is a little strip of gravelly sand between rocks down on the shore in front of our cottage. It faces south and when the tide is out provides a glorious suntrap, on the very rare occasions when I get to take advantage of it. But even then I am conscious of Spain across that sea to the south; I also find myself frequently conscious of St Michael's Way, the mysterious line that originates on Mount Carmel where the prophet Elijah called down the fire of Yahweh, flies to the Northwest by Delphi in Greece, and on by way of various special sites associated with St Michael, up through Italy and France to Mont St Michel, Mount St Michael in Cornwall and finally by Sherkin to Skellig Michael in Kerry.

     Paris and London, Rome and Jerusalem, probably most great cities are inclined sometimes at least to think of themselves as the Centre of the World. Since I conceive of the world in dynamic rather than static terms, I consider an arrow to be a more appropriate image than a point, if one is to seriously envisage this Centre; and a Centre of some kind there needs to be, if we are to conceive of some kind of united humanity. However the transition from a static concept of 'The Central' to a dynamic one is perhaps the essence of our contemporary crisis, because such 'Central' images that we have inherited tend to be stuck in a 'static' mind-set. In this context, and it may be nothing but my fanciful conceit, I have found myself conceiving of this St Michael's Line as a powerful physical emanation of the flaming central arrow of human consciousness, from the Holy Land by way of Greece and Rome and on to where the summer sun sets on old Europe.

     I say that the old business of a Centre that can 'hold', and which our Irish poet Yeats averred not to be holding, has tended to assume a somewhat anaemic complexion too much of the time because our understanding of it is still moored in the static concepts of the past. 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity'. With English politics stubbornly installed at the forefront of our minds these days, it seems more critical than ever that the political Centre pulls itself together and finally finds its voice. There has to be more to it than the ususal 'bread and butter' stuff, but here is a voice that dare not speak its name, for fear of being called arrogant, imperialistic etc. It is however the one and only voice that can genuinely rise to the challenges, for instance, of climate change, of keeping the world safe from nuclear weapons, of developing the stable economic and social conditions necessary for humanity to flourish, of motivating us to overcome our differences and do the great deeds that we are at last being forced to recognise as essential to humanity's very survival.

     Even as I lie on that strip of sand, feet to the South, I am vaguely aware of America over to my right, and China away to my left. America may be fixated on the individual, and China on the collective, while of course in fact neither can do without the other and so they more or less cancel each other out and neither of them provide a satisfactory narrative of what human life is about. We may wonder at them and their great achievements, but I for one cannot admire either of them as a polis or wish us in Europe to emulate their societies. The question is, how can our tired old Europe hold the balance; and so we come back to this business of the Centre. I will no doubt stand accused of a blinkered arrogance, but  I do believe that it's as true nowadays as when Teilhard de Chardin said it that Europe cannot escape the responsibility of bearing the spearhead of human consciousness; the question is, how do we recover the strength and dynamism necessary to do so?

     Most of the time the wisest of us are only very faintly aware of all that is involved in sustaining our individual existance. We delude ourselves if we think politicians or anyone else is really capable of being in control; this perhaps is the reason why intelligent and balanced people have a tendency not to take politics seriously and to consider politicians most likely to be dodgy chancers with delusions of grandeur. Meanwhile we can find ourselves assuming that 'the Centre' is a boring place where everyone is trying to see everyone else's point of view and getting nothing done; full of intellectual, wishy-washy types, 'losers' as the Ducky would call them. So it is exciting to see in London politicians of the Centre showing real conviction lately and doing bold things. For myself, I cannot even vote for them, but they are making a difference even for us here in Sherkin; I would like to send them my good wishes and my prayers.

A Sea of Troubles.

What with looking after Fiona, with her broken collar-bone, doing the work that she usually does as well as trying to keep my own projects going, I have been working harder than I have done for a long time. Like so many people, according to what one hears, I am sick of following the twists and turns of British politics - it takes too much time and intellectual effort. Most of us would like to live our lives 'above politics', like the Queen. The royal example however is not good, and a Head of State that cannot call conflicting parties back to dialogue is of no use. The fact of the matter is that politics have a profound effect on the lives of everyone, and it's worse it's going to get; they are an essential dimension of our lives, and while most spirituality directs our minds beyond them, the Lord's prayer kicks off with what is surely a political statement - 'thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth....', even if at the same time that Kingdom is 'not of this world'.

     The trouble starts where politics descends into a mere power struggle, as it always tends to do on account of the prevalent narcissism of the human race. Why should we be bothered with that? Well, do we want to be slaves? The life-blood of real democracy is the sharing of both power and responsibility, and resolving conflict through dialogue and rational argument; it begins and ends with the sincere quest for truth and justice. What then can one say to power when it becomes the mere expression of will to dominate and manipulate? Which is about where the present British Government evidently stands - and this the first occasion I have had to say this in my lifetime. 

     No longer even truly rooted in the political tradition from which it sprang, or even in the collective mind of its boot-licking members, it is being driven by a shadowy and ruthless unelected individual and clique, who even have the previously bumbling and ineffective Prime Minister in hand - not that he has been elected to that office either. They really seem to believe that redemption can only come by way of disruption and indeed chaos. Whatever happened to 'the party of business'? One day it will all make a good film - not yet though, for it is actually happening now, though one has to pinch oneself to realise it.

     Yet such a will-to-power cannot get anywhere unless it taps in to some deep and widespread condition in the minds of its victims. In the backgoround of the present drama is deep and widespread anxiety about the way the world is going, and this is an intolerable and paralysing condition. It is so much easier to take refuge in the past than to set out against the 'sea of troubles' that confront us now. How nice the 1950s of their childhood appear to so many old voters now. England was full to the brim with complacent self-satisfaction, and a rosy future beckoned with all the goodies of technology. Pull up the drawbridge; let us get back to the good old days! The odd gent with a posh accent, a plausible way of talking, a smattering of learning and preferably a double-breasted suit is all to the good. 

     But what's in it for the men with deep pockets behind it all? Oh for the days when one could be a real capitalist, with none of your damn social and environmental responsibility! The world will go to Hell if it must - but in the meantime let those of us enjoy it who are smart enough to do so! And if swathes of industry is destroyed, along with the livelihoods that depend on it, well the little people can just get on their bikes. Not, however, to saner parts of Europe! But the real rich of this world have better ways of making money than actual production, and they don't even know what real patriotism is, in the sense of putting one's country before one's own interests.

     Clearly all this must be combatted, but what can we poor powerless people do about it? Well, we can start by listening to people who know what they are talking about and recognising the facts of a world so very much more inter-connected than it was even in the 1950s. We can insist that politicians are called back from mere power struggling to facts and to real dialogue about them. No grand and specious merely national aspirations can possibly deliver the goodies we all desire in the line of the quality of life. 

     The way ahead lies not in less inter-connectedness, but in much more of it, deeper and richer. We must not give way to anxiety, paralysis and laziness, along with the preference not to think or talk about how we can possibly get there! Discussion, meetings, strikes, demos, online efforts, they all have their place, but we must not forget to listen to those with whom we disagree and must insist on non-violence; non-communication is always the prelude to violence, so when people will not genuinely talk to to each other, watch out! There is plenty that can be done, - get out there, you young people, and do it - it's your future that is at stake!