Turning the Titanic

      Fishing methods that destroy fishing, 'husbandry' that leaves the land dead, food that does not sustain, 'defence' that would make the Earth uninhabitable, 'comms' that have people locked into their own silos and unable to communicate outside them, 'sport' that leaves participants physically wrecked, 'health-care' that leaves people with all kinds of pathologies, transport that chokes both itself and the people using it... - they frequently go under the name of Progress and their  enthusiasts will proudly state that 'they believe in Science'.

     Before you ask,- no, I am not a Luddite, merely a lookout peering into the fog! In a kind of a way I believe in Science and Progress myself - radar would have been handy on the Titanic - but as is generally the way when some ideology achieves the primacy, it promptly becomes a kind of parody of itself. What is wrong with us that we have such a talent for turning our triumphs into defeat? We may say, in shorthand, it is that apple we ate and the fatal tendency engendered by Original Sin to worship the work of our own hands; this however is rather 'old hat' stuff, and the fact is that the massive hubris attached to our pride in Progress has escalated exponentially with the power that science and technology have brought to us in recent years. When people are sailing along on the wings of power and prestige, we can surmise that idolatry has taken over; conversely, there ultimately remains only the one key to putting us right,- the worship of God through Jesus Christ. 

     Meanwhile, what little signs, what ignored warnings, should we be looking out for? The thing is, there are always disadvantages and snags attached to technological progress,- icebergs and rocks presenting dangers to navigation; we cannot know them all ourselves. The trick is to only listen to people who one has reason to believe really know what they are talking about, who realise the risks, lay them out and give reason to believe that they can be overcome. As the yachtsman said to the old salt in Baltimore, 'I hear you know all the rocks and can take me safely to Schull.' 'You would be right in the first point and wrong in the second.' 'Well how can that be?' 'I know where the rocks ain't'. Technology has put us in the way of making the world uninhabitable, so I suppose that it will have to come into play big time if we are to find our way forward, but how are we to get it back in its box - to be a good servant rather than a bad master?

     There is a clue in the question. Let us make sure it is a servant rather than a master in the first place. When we see, for example, vaccines touted on all sides, at the top of every newspaper, while intelligent discussion of their dangers is forced underground, alarm bells should be ringing. When we see the likes of the British Prime Minister riding vaccinations to glory and using them to vindicate Brexit, we are likely to be correct in smelling a rat. He's a classic Captain Titanic!  Poor people, who cannot afford a vaccine, may turn out to be the lucky ones!

     It is all very well for me, you will say, living away happily on my bitteen of island land,- and I will reply, well, difficult it may be, but there is nothing to stop many more people opting for such a way of life, while whole swathes of the Western seaboard of Europe continue to suffer massive depopulation. The biggest obstacles would be in their own heads, their education, attitudes, skill-sets and aptitudes. Perhaps the principle challenge in my life has lain in trying to realise a culture that is capable of overcoming such obstacles. Thanks to this pandemic, we have taken massive strides in recognising the power of the internet to enable us to do so.

     Then again, as regards the pandemic, I have no reason to doubt my homeopath when he says that he has been treating Covid successfully, with no serious problems and none of his patients having to go to hospital. This is no reason not to be sensible about avoiding it,- and homeopaths were to the fore in promoting hygiene in the 19th century- but I do object to the massive command and control effort to dragoon us into doing so. We will have to live with this disease around in the end, like all the others, and we will;  but it is not hard to foresee that there will be no lack of occasions for taking that authoritarian approach  to things, as we get deeper into these coming times. Can we envisage an alternative? What might it look like?

     I worked over this kind of ground in my 2005

novel, Wavedancing*. (I found few takers at the time,- the Celtic Tiger was roaring away. Remember that? Fortunately for us, I foresaw that it would go belly up, but try telling that to the world!) Getting there by a different route to what is happening now, I imagined at a critical juncture 'thousands of people ambling around rather like empty puppets, vacant and staring, unable or unwilling to do anything to help themselves, let alone others. They were suffering from a collapse of the very will to live.' (p.276).

     I would suggest this is already happening on a widespread scale, to people near you, and is likely to only get worse as the vaccines roll out. One thing one would like to avoid is for such opinions becoming the preserve of Trumpistas, so I shall conclude with a quote from p.386 of Barack Obama's book (A Promised Land) with reference to the 1976 swine flu epidemic,- 'President Ford (Republican)... had fast-tracked mandatory vaccinations... with the result that more Americans developed a neurological disorder connected to the vaccine than died from the flu'. There may be some circumstances in which the balance of risk falls in favour of being vaccinated, but if one would like to avoid those famous 'complications', and a command and control future to boot, I would recommend that by and large one should eschew the vaccines!                                                                                                                                                                                                

Cape Clear from Cow Strand.

   *If you would like a copy, send 20euro or pounds or whatever to me at Horseshoe Cottage, Sherkin Island, Co Cork, Ireland, and I will post it to you.                                                                                                                                              ps, if you would like to be notified by Signal, email or Twitter whenever I post a new blog, please email me - gannetsway (at) gmail.com