When the 12 year-old Jesus went awol, and Mary and Joseph eventually tracked him down in the Temple 'sitting among the doctors, listening to them and asking them questions', he responded to his mother's reproaches by saying 'Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father's affairs?' (Luke 2:41-50) He hardly felt so driven out of a mere academic interest. 'The Father's Business' was surely about vital concerns such as how to reveal truth and empower justice, with due respect for the freedom and integrity of wayward and stubborn humanity, in a world overcome with lies and injustice; about how we poor creatures may find life while all too often we find ourselves in that state of 'quiet desperation' that I call 'appalldom'; about how to make sense of it all, to construct a narrative that works and may reconcile mankind with God.
The seriousness with which such concerns engage some teenage minds should never be underestimated. Much so-called education tends to steamroll over them, crushing them into the ground. Then again adults in the midst of their care have little time for those concerns; and indeed how can one live life when there are so many appalling things going on, if one stops to think about them all the time? The young and the old however may find some common ground in finding that they can't help but do just this. It should be the concern of educators to support them in doing so, while encouraging and indeed challenging youngsters to think for themselves, to critically evaluate all the stuff coming at them, to value and seek out coherence and consistancy; teaching them about the age-old struggle of humanity to realise truth and justice. To do so, one has to share one's own problems. We all have to wrestle with problems about what we may and may not say, for a start. We do possess a mysterious inbuilt sense of truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, but following that 'steep and narrow' path is not easy for any of us. That the rich and powerful rarely do so should be no surprise, considering that they inevitably see the world through the lens of their own wealth and power.
It is a very old story. Now however it has acquired a universal aspect, with a very small plutocracy equipped with the technology and wealth to potentially dominate the whole world. That this threat is very real, immediate and personal, has been brought home to many of us by the treatment meted out to us in the recent pandemic. It is a new experience for most of us who are fortunate enough to live in Western democracies to realise that our governments and much of the media continue to lie to us, for instance about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines; that they have clearly been following some alien agenda. As it increasingly takes on the aspect of deliberate and calculated attempt to 'put one over on us', causing many of us to find ourselves appalled at the immediate prospect of digital control over every aspect of our lives, we are only too justified in being wary of similar techniques of instigating panic and scape-goating dissidents to enable drastic authoritarian methods of control.
Some are inclined to throw the war in Ukraine and the climate problems into the same basket. This is probably simplistic. We would all like to have a tidy narrative, arranging truth and falsehood, good and bad in accordance with the notions of our own tribe, which spares us the pain and difficulty of thinking for ourselves, and enables us to find shelter from the relentless bombardment of stuff which frequently seems to be sweeping away the whole structure of life as we have known it. But the tendency to throw global warming and the war in Ukraine into the same box as the pandemic, only alarms me further, even while I recognise for instance the clear linkage between the military-industrial complex and its pharmaceutical cousin.
In the case of the war, the trouble is that the history of American wars since Vietnam makes it difficult to credit the more venerable narrative of the Land of the Free standing up to bullies. Years ago, discussions of such matters with my Dad always came back to his saying, 'Well we were very glad of them in 1941', to which I really had no answer; but it seemed to me that the wheels came off that narrative finally when President Kennedy was assassinated. I am tentatively hoping that this Robert Kennedy Jnr may be going to get America somewhere near back on track, but when I hear him say that, for instance, 'he would settle the Ukraine war on day one', I can only say 'I wish'. My opinion is that the only people who can really settle it are the Russians, by having another revolution, though one wonders whether it may really turn out to be more benign than the Bolshevik one! Meanwhile the whole world should facilitate it by supporting the Ukrainians.
To hear intellectuals and pundits whom one respects spouting Russian propaganda is painful enough, but they too have to be heard. Unfortunately, the art of good lying is to keep a good footing in truth, while none of us are in full possession of the latter. To sort it out, the first necessity is to listen to all, so long as there is a reasonable chance the differing views are being advanced in good faith. The moment when you introduce censorship, whether you are a Putin or the 'liberal' media, you have lost it. At least spotting the lies is good sport, and training youngsters to do so needs to be foremost in the mind of educators, even including through physical sports.
One excellent way of doing so is to take them sailing, and going to sea is a mighty antidote to lies and soft thinking. I'm still hoping to be able to do so before the year is out, but am struggling with finance. Sailing north in July is out. I'm now hoping to sail for the Guadiana for the coming winter, and with a functioning electric drive. I have come to the point where I see the ability to do so, to sail the sea freely and without the necessity of paying for diesel oil, as a little act of defiance in the face of the advancing digital totalitarianism the likes of the WEF, the WHO and even the EU are preparing for us all, - while at the same time affirming my faith in the transition from fossil fuels. Let's hope for a host of sailors happy to find their fun in such a way!
Meanwhile, the dogs are calling me for a walk. It's a tough life here in West Clare, while work goes ahead slowly on the 'Anna M', thanks particularly to my Russian friend Tole. I am getting down to work with him about ten days a month. Those flights from Shannon to Porto however get expensive in July and August, while we have lots of people to look after at home. Big effort coming up in the autumn, and volunteers welcome!
photos by Anna and John.
