A Third Way?

    Anyone following this blog will have seen how I have consistently done my bit to call out the lies of Mr Johnson and his cronies, not to mention Donald Trump, without however labouring the point too much, since I set out neither particularly concerned with British nor American politics.  Remorselessly, principally via Brexit and then covid, I have been sucked into being so.

     President Trump revealed himself most starkly, I have said, in three monstrous lies:- that climate change is an empty myth, that covid is 'a hoax', and that in fact he won that election. Yet as it happens I also believe the monumental assault on the very idea of truth that we are suffering has deeper roots than right-wing politics.

     Consider two core beliefs of the other, 'progressive' crowd, with regard to abortion and homosexual 'marriage'; in common with previous generations and all major religious traditions, I consider it undeniable that the former is the willful destruction of a vulnerable human life and as such cannot be termed a 'right', and also that it is a lie to characterise a relationship between two persons of the same sex as 'marriage'.  The impact of the dramatic and sudden reclassification of these fundamental human functions, in spite of all previous conceptions, was bound to be immensely destabilising, and indeed destructive of the very idea of truth. Nowadays, apparently, there is only to be 'your truth' and 'my truth'.

     Until he failed so dismally to stand up against the Brexit bandwagon, I entertained some hope that Sir Keir Starmer might manage to bring about a change of direction across the water. One phrase of his in a tweet today completes the disillusion. He refers to 'Holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers and people harmful to public interest'. Wow! I hadn't realised that things were that bad, as I lead my somewhat sheltered island life.

It's not however as sheltered as it might have been lately. This last week I have been to hospital in Cork every day for radiotherapy. I am taken by a wonderful voluntary outfit, Cancer Connect, sometimes by car and sometimes by minibus. So far so good, but one of the drivers, on learning that I am not vaccinated, said 'oh, you're one of them!', meaning evidently one of the anti-social types refusing vaccination. 'Somebody has to do it!' was my reply. Again, I have set out my reasoning in recent blogs. What I want to discuss in this one is the possibility of a third way emerging, beyond left and right. It turns out that this irremediably politicised pandemic provides a pretty good lens through which to do so.

The fact that, albeit eventually and reluctantly, I have accepted radiotherapy for this prostate cancer, demonstrates that I have an open mind about medical science, and am very ready to agree that there are many caring professionals out there whose experience, together with the knowledge behind it, have to be respected even if not always agreed with; I also think that they are subject to massive commercial influences which they may not even recognise themselves, and what's more that their whole training and mindset is conditioned by the Cartesian split, which pits reason and science against spiritual reality. It was how the western world chose to proceed into the modern age, by hiving reason and faith off into separate compartments (and frequently then binning faith).

I do not categorically reject the use of vaccination, anymore than I dismiss scientific knowledge, vitiated though it may be by the aforesaid Cartesian split. As the saying goes, science is a good servant, but a bad master. In urgent and particular circumstances, vaccination may be very useful. However, it is a mistake to think it desirable for everyone, or even that it constitutes an ultimately viable escape route from the pandemic, and I vehemently object to anyone who thinks so being labelled anti-social and equivalent to a holocaust denier.

It is very curious how, for those of us able to recall the 1960s, 'individual freedom' used to be sacred to the young and lefty, while 'social order' was the cry of the old and right-wing; but now it seems to be the other way round. Be that as it may, I would suggest that those who think they are promoting social thinking in their support for vaccination are short-sighted and in fact too individualistic in their outlook. I suspect that dependence on vaccination to end the pandemic will only prolong the agony, and anyway it will vitiate the necessary development of each individual's immune system.

How each one can foster his immune system is something that each will have to work out for himself. However, I shall throw out a few 'straws in the wind'. Governments can't be expected to help very much, but nonetheless, we are not alone and cannot do it alone. We need to be more socialised at the inter-personal, as opposed to the mass level. We need to reduce our dependence on cities and mass everything, including health, entertainment, sport etc. A football game actually participated in is worth any amount of mass hype. We should not allow our lives to be 'all in the head', but should participate in the physical labour of existence. We need to be careful of what we eat; locally produced, organic food is to be preferred to the produce of agri-business.

The list goes on, you can add to it in your own way. Let it be repeated; the epidemic is a cry for attention from a wounded planet. There is indeed no going back to 'normal life'. A new world is struggling to be born; we must welcome it with joy! Joy and the sense of being loved and of life having meaning are the prerequisites for healthy immune systems, as is the ability to cope with seemingly endless set-backs, disappointments and death itself. The integration of mind and spirit, reason and faith are conditions for this too.

We must not be dismayed, or allow ourselves to be overtaken by despondency! 'The whole of creation groans in one great act of giving birth!' We shall be amazed where the answers come from; certainly they will not come from 'getting back to normal' and the same old same old!

Migraturus Habita