At a time when we are all oppressed by the appalling wars and threats of greater wars that dominate the world's attention, we are confronted with a choice between trying to reconcile such realities with our own peace and sanity, or simply attempting to block them out. After all, who are we to imagine that we can get any kind of sound understanding of all the terrible things that are happening, let alone do anything about them?
After all, experts are people who specialise, and there clearly is no speciality that can cover the issues raised. Furthermore, experts of any kind necessarily have their own hobby-horses, vested interests, and the first necessity here is to free our minds of such interests. How come, we may well ask, do ordinary people frequently have better insights and instincts than the experts?
Such are my excuses for writing about matters about which I merely have the benefit of what might be called a lifetime of intellectual browsing, in the context of a good deal of salt water and some prayer. I am far from claiming to be always right, but I can at least claim to be detached and as honest as possible. My being virtually without power or influence I take to be an advantage, which enables me to offer my thoughts merely as a challenge to my readers to figure out what they think. If we all did this, we might find that 'we the people' all have a lot more common ground, and hence perhaps more power to turn things round, than we realise. We may also realise that for all the complexity, the basic issues are actually quite simple, while the human race has not been wrestling with them for thousands of years to no effect. Of course, there will also be those who will do their very best to prevent any such realisations occuring!
Three apparently separate matters have devilishly preoccupied me lately, and I suppose many other people too,- covid, Israel/Palestine and Ukraine. The 'pandemic' aptly set the stage for the other two, in being an extreme case of governmental and corporate overreach, which finally convinced me that the world, democratic or not, was in the grip of powers which do not have ordinary people, their welfare and their rights at heart. This reality is also playing out of course in the above mentioned wars.
So what is wrong? For a start, governments on all sides are in a very bad place, with in most cases national debt completely out of control and chronically escalating, and with a frequently sick, declining and discontented population. What better way to get the people to fall in behind them, to knuckle down and forget about all those impossible problems like balancing budgets and addressing climate change, so we can carry on with old faithfuls like printing money and polluting the planet regardless? We 'the people' have to insist on addressing the basic problems rather than allowing ourselves to be distracted from them. Giving Varadkar and his mates an emphatic thumbs down in the recent Irish referenda was a good start!
However, there is the very ideology of the nation state to be addressed, which is so widely taken for granted that most people do not even realise that it is an ideology. Some people claim that the concept is as old as the will of communities to survive, but I think not, at least, not in the sense of these modern states that envelop the individual from the cradle to the grave and determine what he or she can and cannot do and even say, in a mode quite beyond inter-personal mediation. The Judeo-Christian tradition, on the other hand, places our destiny, on the personal as well as the communal level, within the transcendent revelation of the one and only ground of Being. 'My country, right or wrong' erects the state into a false god. Collapsing the tension introduced by an independent and universal church facilitated this.
It was indeed unfortunate that this process managed to identify itself with a necessary process of emancipation, both for individuals and so that 'the scientific world-view' could develop. It was appropriated by the Protestant Reformation and subsequent Enlightenment thinkers. Then people started asking foolish questions like 'Does God exist?' Faith was reduced to theism, with the French philosopher Pascal proposing his famous wager (that we may as well bet on God's existence for obvious reasons) and Voltaire declaiming 'Si Dieu n’éxistait pas, il faudrait l’inventer'.
Even in France (fille ainée de l'Eglise) the remnant of the Church was largely subsumed into the state. English nationalism took a giant step down this road from 'Good King Harry' onwards, and much the same impulse seems to have driven on into Amerca, even as they all considered themselves 'chosen races'. The Catholic Church, on the surface of things, languished in the fight between these assertive nation states, each considering itself a kind of church. European civilization fractured as faith was separated from reason, spirit from matter. But nationalism and indeed science fed on war. Now that same science has rendered war impossibly destructive, with our societies disintegrating for all kinds of reasons but fundamentally because they thought that they could do without God, so we simply have to put our civilisation and culture together again by rediscovering Him!
A good place to start is to recognise that there is no sense to asking 'Does God exist?' One necessarily finds oneself discussing someone else's idea of God, and they are all very inadequate. But somehow we have to get our feet on the ground of existence. Some philosophers went on to question whether life itself exists. A slap of salt water should be enough to settle that. Then one can go on to discover that good and evil, true and false etc really do exist; they are not mere social constructs. On the other hand, nothing ever gets created unless someone starts with some kind of an idea,- I am scratching my head even in order to construct a bit of a greenhouse!
What does it take to construct the Universe? But we do have a bit of a problem in acknowledging an intelligence so far beyond our own. It is tempting to avoid doing so, confining our attention to the more manageable 'power fields', such as a rugby field or a company or even the family or the nation state. Forget God and the Church, let's just concentrate on our parts on whatever little stages we can act, where we have some hope of exercising our will to power!
The problem is that life becomes so fragmented that it no longer works when the ineffable is shut out; each little part becomes absurd if it has no basis in the whole, and people keep trying to force it into little boxes which they think they can manage. Nationalism is the ultimate embodiment of this will to power, and genuine community is something else, which crushes noone. Perhaps the best we can do is to think in terms of direction of travel, but we must start on the road. This is part of the reason why I opted for Irish rather than British nationality.
Nowadays however Ireland is facing a choice between following Sweden and Finland into Nato, or holding out for an alternative. Supposing a Russian fleet sailed up the Shannon to seize County Clare with Shannon airport? Unlikely, maybe, but we would look a trifle silly trying to dig out some of the old cannons for the 18th century batteries! But how about a massive cyber attack? So what might Israel's alternative be, to attempting to root out and destroy Hammas in Gaza, not to mention chasing Arabs from the land? And what is Ukraine's alternative, to fighting on against Russia?
One thing is certain, warring nation states are going nowhere but towards mutual destruction. 'Victory' is not possible any longer, in the sense that nation states understand it. So I think in the case of where I live in Ireland, we must hang tough outside NATO, indeed be more assertive about this and advocate its dissolution, on the grounds that it is rooted in the Anglo-American will to power. Maybe we will actually get a new American President who concentrates on getting his own house in order, which I would count a good thing, while hoping it will be Kennedy rather than Trump,- it is too questionable whether the latter is capable of concentrating on anything except himself. I'm hoping the American electorate will spring a surprise on us, just as the Irish just did,- noone foresaw that referendum result coming!
As for Israel and Ukraine, in both cases, they could start by imagining a future state of affairs where the different ethnicities have their own cantons, free of outside interference, albeit with appropriate cooperation,- just as indeed the whole world needs to, especially Europe, while throwing off its dependence on the USA.. It is difficult, there will be plenty of set-backs, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility, and the alternatives are truly dreadful. Considering the technologies of control that are being developed, modern nation states of all hues are threatening to become hideous tyrannies, as they try to hold atomised, fragmented populations together.
We all need to rebuild community from the bottom up, while developing 'energy fields' that do not depend on national governments in both directions, big and small. I am working at it particularly on the level of our mini community here in Rahona, and on the level of the Gannetsway,- and I am after giving the 'Anna M' a new colour scheme, replacing blue with golden yellow. I would like it to reflect a change in my state of mind, from despondency at the way the world is going, to hope in a new beginning! There's a big effort coming up to get her back in the water.
