The Chinese Hat

 

Photo by Fiona

Here am I, trying out my new Chinese hat, supplied by Williams' hardware store in Kilkee. It is designed to make sure the wearer does not share his thoughts, let alone indulge in kissing and hugging.  It is just the ticket for a population living in fear of a virus that can indeed be nasty and dangerous, but when properly and promptly treated, is not a disease that a healthy immune system cannot deal with fairly easily. It is ideal for reminding them not to think dangerous thoughts against the party line, and in particular, not to put two and two together when the roll-out of vaccines is promptly followed by a huge surge in cases of the infection that they were supposed to prevent, and even to accept the notion that the solution is yet more of the same vaccines!

     The earliest political discussion that I can recall, when a very small boy, was between my father and grandfather (my mother's father), on the question of whether communist China should be allowed into the UN. My father reckoned that it was better to have China inside the tent pissing out than the other way round. My grandfather reckoned the CDC was irredeemably evil, and Chairman Mao, responsible for even more death and evil than Hitler and Stalin put together, would eventually have to be confronted.

     Well, we have a new Mao in charge in China now, with vastly more power at his disposal than Chairman Mao ever had, very well established inside the international tent, but who is finding it just about impossible to live with those silly effete notions about human rights, belief in God, freedom of thought, democracy and personal responsibility. Whether, as seems highly probable, this covid was engineered in a laboratory in Wuhan, or whether it simply cropped up and offered an irresistable opportunity to exert destructive mind control to undermine those effete notions on the global scale, it certainly did present exactly this! The leadership of the West, more fragmented and much less self-confident that it was in the early 1950s, has been panicked into digging themselves into a hole from which they will find it exceedingly difficult to extricate themselves. What politician will be able to stand up and admit they have been hoodwinked on such a ginormous scale, and misled their people so disastrously?

     I am still struggling to understand how it is that myself, aged 75, following cancer treatment and with a heart condition, am supposed on account of being unvaccinated to represent a threat to those who are double vaccinated. They evidently havn't much confidence in their vaccines, and they are quite right there, but do they not see how they are standing logic on its head? I suppose one shouldn't be surprised really, especially if one has paid a bit of attention to literature and the history of the last century and a half. 

     Two books by Eric Fromm, who was one of the writers who inspired me in the 1970s, come to mind; 'The Fear of Freedom' and ''The Sane Society'. Obviously he reckoned his American society was on the insane side back then. God knows what he would make of it now. Things often actually seem to move slower than expected, but half a century is not a long time really, and things are certainly hotting up all the time. My books are still in boxes from the move, and among many jobs there are bookshelves to be made, but I shall look up those books, and I reckon we may be getting closer to what Fromm was advocating, if only people wake up!

     It's when the sea gets up that one notices the resilience of the rocks that guard our seemingly tenuous bit of land sticking out into the ocean. How do they withstand the relentless pounding, day after day, year after year, century after century? The people too here encourage me, with their sense of community, especially like the lady of 90 who lives near here, who refuses to be vaccinated but puts her trust in God, and has just recovered splendidly from covid, rather to the chagrin, I cannot however help suspecting, of a certain type of person who was rather expecting it to finish her off!

Home from Home.

Rahona

Fiona and I are as it were just about getting our heads safely above the flood of chaos and disruption involved in our move back 'home' to West Clare, and beginning to enjoy life in the townland of Rahona, despite the onset of winter and its storms. The three houses in the photo above are our own and our two eldest sons, and we are surrounded by their land; you really couldn't make it up. Pure gift, I call it, in spite of the fact that I have been banging on about the necessity of reinventing community for about half a century, and celebrating for instance the beautiful clachan social structure that we encountered first in Glencolmcille. Anyway, it's wonderful to be seeing so much of 'children' (now in their fifties) and grandchildren. 

Brandon beckons!

     I have not had much time for reading or thinking about covid for a while, but insofar as I am getting my head around it again, I am more appalled than ever by what I can only describe as evil. In the case of the mainsteam media, it takes little effort to get the message of the incessant propaganda. That it is mostly mere propaganda is easy to spot also, since the 'opposition' is so thoroughly marginalised and suppressed, in spite of the fact that anyone who would rather think and investigate for themselves can find this out, contrary to the narrative that such opposition is a matter of ignorance. Still the evidence is piling up that the theory of vaccines being the way out of the pandemic is nonsense, and it will be very interesting to see what happens as the testimony of many highly qualified people, who are frequently acting to their own financial detriment, becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. People will eventually see the collaborators for what they are.

     Unfortunately 'collaborators' is a word one might use not only for those also who are making money out of the pandemic, but who endorse 'vaxit' - the idea that vaccines are the way out - frequently more for reasons of convenience or conformity than anything else. Not that I do not sympathise with them, nor underestimate the very considerable pressure that they are coming under, yet even if one rejects the view that the whole vaccine effort is counterproductive and is making the situation generally worse, it should still be possible to recognise that such pressure is outrageous. For a start, whatever happens to Habeas Corpus - the principle at the basis of our legal rights that our bodies belong to ourselves alone?

     However talk of collaborators begs the question, who are the principals? One might start trying to answer this question by looking at the millionaires busy becoming billionaires on the back of it, but it doesn't simply seem to be a matter of money. Here is fertile ground for speculation and conspiracy theories. I doubt if these are helpful, but all the talk from people who claim to be environmentalists along the lines that 'there are just too many people in the world' gives justifiable ground for suspicion and indeed alarm.

     What kind of scizophrenia results if one imagines one can love life but hate human beings? George Monbiot concludes a rousing call to save the planet thus:- 'We will endure only if we cease to consent. The 19th-century democracy campaigners knew this, the suffragettes knew it, Gandhi knew it, Martin Luther King knew it. The environmental protesters who demand systemic change have also grasped this fundamental truth.... What they understand is history’s most important lesson. Our survival depends on disobedience.' It is curious how he completely fails to so much as countenance the application of this lesson to Vaxit.

     Maybe however we would fundamentally agree that the pandemic and the environmental crisis call jointly for us to rapidly adopt a more organic way of life, and to turn away from excessive individualism. The fact that the official, sanctioned response to covid heavily reinforces precisely this individualism, and the anxiety that goes with it, tells its own story,- one with Brexit and Vaxit in there together again! You might think also, especially from perusing the Guardian, that a dose of climate anxiety is what we all need, but I do not think that people act sensibly or reasonably under the influence of anxiety, but rather are prone to all kinds of foolishness.

     Anxiety will not get us out of the pandemic nor solve the environmental crisis, and neither will it enable us to envision and build the exciting future that beckons if we can only find our way to it. We will not do so by way of the politics or powers that be, though they might help or hinder a little, but supremely by building solidarity on the interpersonal level. It will catch on in its own time, but cannot be achieved by mere human design or will, certainly not unless we are willing to abandon the little fortresses where we imagine we find refuge. It involves an exodus. 

     Bridge or boat, one can choose one's own favourite image, but they both involve a figurative crossing of the water, - at least, I rather prefer them to the idea of the sea parting! Boats are my favourite, and I particularly enjoy the sense of comradeship involved in both their making and their manning. I spend Saturday mornings at present doing a boat-building course by way of building a St Ayle's skiff with Steve Morris and a handful of other stalwarts, including one Tony Whelan, in Kilrush. In the strong hope of getting the Anna M back on the water next year, without any leaks, I'm enjoying getting to work with the famous epoxy resin.... Maybe Tony will be back aboard yet, filming whales and dolphins or what not else, as he was in the Cape Verde Islands making the film The Return of the Humpback Whale nearly 2o years ago! He too has found his way to settling in West Clare.

Bridge of Ross

        

     

On Moving Back to West Clare.

A place for everything and everything in its place certainly makes life much easier in a boat, and indeed anywhere else. Its value only comes home to us when everything gets thrown around in a storm, and the simplest of tasks become so much more difficult. Such is the case also when one moves house, as Fiona and I are in the process of doing. It was but a very small taste of what life must be like as a homeless migrant, to whom I feel that I owe this little acknowledgement, as we move to another comfortable house. If any such read this, know that you are often in my thoughts, and I am ashamed of our collective response to your plight!

Our new home.

     We who are accustomed to the luxury of a house of our own can have little idea what it is to be really homeless. A home means not alone a house but a context of meaning and security. Indeed one might have a house, but if it lacks that context, it will not be much of a home. This side of the equation receives scant critical attention on the whole. The most popular form it has taken in recent times is the nation state; people even came to the point of laying down their lives for 'their country, right or wrong'. But having failed to, or perhaps rather been prevented from, examining such vital notions to understand what they really stand for, whole populations find themselves ambushed by the result.

     The English found themselves consistently embroiled in stupid and inhumane actions across their Empire, though it was supposed to be spreading democracy, enlightenment and the rule of law around the globe, and especially on their door-step in Ireland. They passed the baton across the Atlantic to the Exemplary Nation, and what do we find but another story of frightful wars waged in the same grand cause. Like tidal waves, huge lies roll in from the deep; they lift the surfers up at first, only to dash them down on the rocks later.

     Some guys seem to reckon that the main thing in life is to watch for the coming wave and to surf on it to glory. They actually don't care very much about the grand causes they proclaim, or providing anyone with an enduring context for their lives; a temporary hit is enough for them, such as the Nazis must have felt as they drove into Paris. Those who were desperately trying to get away had a very different experience. We can take it as a general rule that whoever they are, the ones trying to escape are closer to truth and goodness than the invaders; they are the only ones who truly have God on their side, but please note that the approach to goodness depends on the truth. By their fruits shall ye know them,  and there really is no other way.

     Now I'm sorry to bring up Mr Johnson the Trolley again, but I have stayed off the subject for a good while now, and his act has withstood gravity for longer than I expected, I must admit. However he does provide a good illustration of what I have been driving at, and I am feeling pretty queasy after reading coverage of his recent Conservative Party Conference. He bases his shtick on what to me are two massive waves of pure delusion, but what to many other of my fellow humans are apparently wonderful. What is particularly intriguing for me is that it is very often quite distinct and diverse characters who buy them, and they may buy into both or just one of them. 

      I refer of course to Brexit and Vaxit, by which I mean the lie that vaccines are the way to get us out of the covid pandemic. As but a casual observer, I have watched the way, in country after country, the roll-out of vaccines has been tracked by a surge in infection. I see how the first to be vaccinated, the Israelis, are still struggling and embarking on their fourth round of shots, yet they seem to be more committed to Vaxit than anyone. Funny that, because they perhaps embody the most committed of the 'nation states', and thereby provide whatever much of the ideology of Brexit that may lay claim to some intellectual and spiritual seriousness. At the same time, the epidemic has provided great cover for the havoc wraught by the said Brexit.     

     Here we are straying into the realm of religion, which of course, unexamined, also provides a rich haul of absurdities. Doing self examination for our super ego is perhaps even harder than doing it for our ego, and most of us would rather stick close to our own notions than expose them to the critical or even hostile attention of others. Our sense of self must have a secure foundation for us to be able to do so. We must first meet the primordial, desperate need to establish our own independence and autonomy somehow. It is Jesus alone who might even enable me to accept the loss of such goods, and thereby contemplate the collapse of the barriers that separate me even, perhaps especially, from those closest to me, - in other words 'to free me from my sins'.

     Once we accept His yoke, the Cross, He restores our autonomy in spades, but now it is founded on the will of the One who made us to be part of the very body of Christ. I sketch out these fundamentals of what makes a real home by way of a declaration of intent as Fiona and I are about to move into the fifth house we have owned. This time we will be in close proximity to our eldest two sons and their wives, now turned fifty, and surrounded by land which they own. One might call it a new experiment in community living. Our next move, presumably, will be the Biggy!

     I have preached the value of community, the necessity of reimagining and reconstructing it, since the 1970s, when we went to live in Glencolmcille, Co Donegal largely on account of the ancient community spirit there and the cooperative effort of Fr McDyer to breath new life into it. Perhaps our life has been more about seeking community that achieving it, but I am far from satisfied with our efforts to do so thus far,- not that I ever took them too seriously, for it appeared to me early in the game that the first thing those who desire community must realise is that it is a gift of God. 

     If we have the temerity to think that it can be realised simply as a act of our own will, we will necessarily seek to impose this will on others, and this is the very thing that destroys true community. To counteract this tendency, our efforts to build community go in tandem with what might seem a contrary tendency, to value solitude. The two impulses depend on one another as much as breathing in and out, and herein lies the revelation which shows how misguided are those who choose to oppose, say, national sovereignty to international solidarity, protestantism to catholicism and so on. It is as silly as setting up our individual freedom and identity in opposition to community, or our family to our community, or our community to our country.  

     In fact authentic engagement at any level leads to better engagement at others; we thereby learn to be responsible. Those who shout loudest at any one level of life are generally the kind of hypocrite who evidently thrives in the upper echelons of English society, hollering about national sovereignty and how they are going to lead their country into a great new era, while actually investing their dosh in overseas tax havens. There is only one way of creating a 'high wage economy', Mr Johnson. First of all people have to invest in it. To do so, they need funny things you don't seem to understand like a good trading environment. They also need a good balance between local commitment and outward looking vision.  

     One of the principal things we shall miss about West Cork is the lovely balance there between the natives and the cosmopolitans. Funny how both terms have acquired pejoritive overtones here and there. Since Mrs May's famous contribution about 'citizens of nowhere', I am proud to call myself a rootless cosmopolitan. I like the Jewish quip, when being subjected to some Fascist or Bolshevik accusation of being such, that 'trees have roots; Jews have legs'. How some people came to see Jews and Catholics at opposite poles on this beats me. We Catholics read and pray the Jewish scriptures every day, and surely seek much the same balance for example between individual person, community and state. Little Ireland has a long way to go, but is better at this game than most, which is partly why this rootless cosmopolitan has come to love this country so. But then there is the light, especially anywhere up this wonderful west coast from Sherkin to Malin Head. I do hope that I shall get to sail it again, in the Anna M, and in some measure, take you with me!

West Clare sky, by Bernie.

On 'Mastering Chaotic Nature'.

 ‘Vaccinations are the high point of human reason. Devised under clinical conditions by scientists interested only in what works, they represent the mastery of the rational world over chaotic nature; and also, of course, they save lives.’ 

     Thus the Guardian columnist, Ms Zoe Williams, launches a hymn to vaccinations (o2/09). Was she being ironical? Alas, no, despite a spot of mixed messaging later on in the same piece, when she writes of a Cornish festival'- ‘The festival organisers already had a Covid-status check in place, with every ticketholder aged over 11 required to show either a recent negative test result or a vaccination status. It must have been a disappointment to everyone concerned, that those two failsafes – the open air, and the vaccine – did, in 4,700 cases, fail.’  It appears to have escaped her attention that in all probability the coronvirus was produced in the first place by scientists in a laboratory. What works there is determined less by the personal disposition of the scientists than by whoever is funding them. 

      On another page in the same revered Guardian, one may read:- ‘Even as evidence of a crisis grew and doctors witnessing the devastation sounded warnings, the din of corporate money drowned them out. The quarter of a billion dollars a year the drug industry spends on lobbying bought the complicity of politicians, influenced regulators, weakened investigations by the justice department and stalled action by the Drug Enforcement Administration.’ - Chris McGreal, 05/09. He happened to be writing about the opioid crisis. How can anyone possibly be sure that we will not be reading similar words about the vaccines in five or ten years’ time?

  

       Evidently it is a mistake to look for much coherence about this particular ‘high point of human reason’, despite the many proclamations along the lines of that of Dr Philip Hyland, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Psychology at Maynooth University, (RTE 04/09); lamenting the ‘faith-based belief system’ of anti-vaxxers,  he proclaims that they 'hold a rigid belief and engage in motivated reasoning to dismiss all evidence or reason contrary to their belief,...but  focus selectively on information that supports their belief, and distort information so that it fits with their belief'.  ‘Despite constant public service announcements and messages about the benefits of being inoculated there are still people who are vaccine hesitant if not completely vaccine resistant.’  All one can say is, to an ordinary observer it seems strange that deaths seem to be rising everywhere with the roll-out of vaccines!

From Edwin Hayward @uk_domain_names

  

      This is from the UK, but it is a similar story in all highly vaccinated countries. Liberal Ireland is supposed to be proud of being ‘one of the most vaccinated nations in the world with close to 90% of the adult population now having got at least one jab against the coronavirus.’ (Prof Hyland again). The likes of myself are left scratching our heads, while ‘In its latest report, the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) found Ireland has the highest incidence of Covid-19 in the European Union.’ How we respond to such information is indeed bound to depend on our 'belief system', and one might ask, upon what does one base a 'belief system' unless it be some kind of faith? 

      One must assume that Dr Hyland is convinced that whereas his beliefs are based strictly upon reason, others are irrational, and really only professors of psychology should be allowed such lofty notions. Indeed I have found that it is those who have taken the vaccinations who are the hardest to engage in rational conversation about them. Mostly, when scratched, they will admit that they took it more for practical reasons like ease of travel rather than on account of any hard conviction, and often feel dubious about it. Never have I met anyone who has seriously engaged with the many reservations that I have spelt out in this blog. Beyond the blatant and repetitive propaganda,  belief in vaccines functions on just the one level of argument, namely that the risks of getting the disease outweigh those of the vaccine.

      

     To dress such a contention up in the language of 'objective' scientific statistics is nonsense. For one thing, the long-term damage that the vaccines will inflict has to be a completely unknown quantity at present. For another, actual individuals obviously vary enormously both in the risks they run of dying from covid and from the vaccine itself. Here we are in messy, problematic territory, not understood properly, as unamenable to statistical quantification as it is to sloganeering politics; however, it is clear that persons who mind themselves properly and have the good fortune to live in a healthy environment are much less at risk than those who do not, and that’s before we consider the possibilities of genuine ‘faith-based' defences, from homeopathy to prayer and belief in God, whose faithfulness is buckler and shield (Ps 91). Pace Professor Hyland and his ilk, such defences have their own inconvenient way of sometimes actually working!

     Unfortunately we do not have to be in a communist country to be subject to  manipulation and horrendous propaganda. Liberals are inclined to be the worst when it comes to being completely unaware when they engage in it. Conservatives of course are expected to, so the famous Zoe could go out of her way to acknowledge the honesty of Dominic Raab, the British foreign secretary, in being clear on the point that ‘vaccine certificates were aimed more at human behaviour than viral load, to "coax and cajole” young people into getting jabbed’. She did not, however, appear to have any problem with that! The trouble with liberals is that they are inclined to be more self-righteous and less self-aware than propagandists on the political right or left, though whether it is better to be merely cynical is a moot point! Meanwhile we ‘anti-vaxxers’ are being lined up for being the fall-guys, the scape-goats to blame when the narrative that vaccinations constitute the way out eventually falls to bits.  

      The apparent alternative is a system of global apartheid, in which the rich, multiply vaccinated world is hermetically sealed off from those poor, largely ill-nourished populations with scant health-care!  On behalf of Anti-vaxxers United, I propose an alternative deal, here and now. Suppose we were to allow the possibility that in some places vaccinations may be the lesser evil? We know that the poor are most at risk. Instead of dishing out the second, third and fourth shots in rich countries, should these not be sent off to those most in need, while those of us who are willing to take our chances without them should be encouraged to do so?

 

     However the global apartheid set-up appears more and more probable. Does it not provide a good template for our response to climate change? The battle lines are being drawn up!  Meanwhile we are all going to be subject to a great deal of coaxing and cajoling, at the behest no doubt of more scientists ‘only interested in what works,’ who like to think that they merely ‘represent the mastery of the rational world over chaotic nature’.  It is but a small step onwards to the mastery of certain inferior populations! When it comes down to what works, could these not do with being thinned out anyway? We urgently need the scientists and everyone else to learn to respect Nature, putting an end to mankind’s pretentious and arrogant campaign to master and plunder it, while also sharpening their sense of justice!

From the 12th C Liber Floridus.

      Here we may be getting near the heart of our problem. We are dealing with an aberration and an abuse of science, which however have become deeply entrenched in the dominant Western and now global culture of the last few centuries. Perhaps it is yet more primordial, being a distortion of something good, like all evil things. Deprived of the headship of Christ, our wonderful technological civilisation is resembling some horrendous Leviathan more and more, flailing around with everything it does bringing it nearer to its own destruction! We Catholic Christians do indeed believe in the mastery of Christ, but it is a kindly mastery. We judge things strictly by their fruits! But we do not deny the value of science itself. 

      A scientist should not think of his work as mastering chaotic nature! I would like to think of him or her that the more he learns, the more he stands in awe at the complexity, the beauty and mysterious coherence of which he is uncovering a small corner, and realising  how far beyond our understanding nature - our mother, our whole support system, our home and our health - remains. Until and unless we learn such humility and the sense of justice that goes with it, we haven’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of learning to live in harmony with our amazing world!

      Let those 'masterers of nature' only go to sea in a small sailing boat, says I, ideally without any electronic navigation aids, and they may begin to get things right! Hopefully they may also realise that the wise navigator will not depend on the data from one bit of technology, however wonderful it may or may not be. He should watch out and listen every which way he can, and listen especially to those poor voices with a different take on things to himself, who rely primarily on their own perceptions rather than any technology, and do not allow themselves to be coaxed and cajoled  by anyone!

We'll get there again!

Beware of Greeks....

"How sweet 'tis to roam by the sunny Suir stream,
And hear the dove's coo 'neath the morning's sunbeam.
Where the thrush and the robin their sweet notes combine
On the banks of the Suir that flows down by Mooncoin.

Flow on, lovely river, flow gently along.
By your waters so sweet sounds the lark's merry song.
On your green banks I'll wander where first I did join
With you, lovely Molly, the Rose of Mooncoin.

Here I am at Mooncoin, Co Kilkenny, where we have the use of a more convenient place for Fiona to recover from her hip operation. No gannets, but still the tide flows not far away in the beautiful river Suir. We have had some perfect evenings for wandering on its banks, though I fear a contemporary swoon with lovely Molly is hardly on the cards; the sweet notes of the thrush and the robin, the lark's merry song  are being drowned out by the ghastly roar of jet skis and speed boats zooming around in circles, which one can hear a mile away. I wonder if there are any larks left nowadays anyhow. I vividly recall how the sky would sometimes ring with them in my boyhood, and I would peer up, enchanted, trying to spot those blythe spirits, but now for years I have heard none.

      Yet there is still much beauty in the world. Our Luke and David are taking a spin to old haunts in Co Donegal, and send back photos full of memories for me, such as this one of Malin Beg Uig. It is very peaceful here, but the Uig is wide open to the south; still, sometimes in fine weather I would leave my fishing boat there, to save the steam down from Teelin when salmon fishing. One day, with engine trouble, I just managed to get into the Uig, where I managed to find a mechanic to fix it. We were moored a little to seaward of where the punt is in Luke's photo, and a breeze got up from the south to send a jopple in. The mechanic, very delighted to get his feet back on concrete, leaped ashore with alacrity which combined with a wave to tip myself into the sea. John and Jerry, the crew, were on the slip. John was afraid I would drown and rushed to help me out. Jerry laughed and said 'Do ye think we'll get rid of the fecker that easily?' This English public school-educated (albeit by catholic monks, which makes quite a difference) bloke was evidently a bit of a 'Greek' to him!

    Our favourite berths for a drift were off Malin Mor or Glen Heads, but of course you had to compete to get to the good spots. I started off with the second-hand traditional half-decker Cnoc Mor, double-ended, clinker built; a Viking boat with a diesel engine plonked in it. It was the lively evenings with a fresh breeze that were good for fishing with those old 15mesh deep nets, which the fish could see and easily dodge beneath in calm weather, and besides it was illegal to fish in daylight. On this basis, the fishery had been the mainstay of many a livelihood for years, with a nice country home and a biteen of land!
 

     After clattering down past Carrigeen Head and Slieve League a few times, the water could be seen squirting up between the boards under the cuddy floor as the Cnoc Mor bounced off the waves. The question was, when I came back aboard to her in the afternoon on the mooring in Teelin, whether the water would have got into the reduction gear, and I would have to change the oil in it as well as pump all that water out. It took a while to get around to such a sophistication as an automatic electric pump, and even then, it didn't always work!

    Eventually I managed to finance a new, semi-displacement Ocean Tramp, built of GRP, the Screig n'Iolar. She let no water in, and could batter down to Malin Mor Head in half the time. These were boom times, in the '70s. Too bad there were 65' trawlers, financed by BIM, coming out of Burtonport and shooting up to 20 miles of nets. Enlightenment also meant that, instead of being rewarded with a bounty, fishermen were now to be breaking the law if they were to cull the seals. The upshot of it all was that before long we were feeding more fish to the seals than we were landing. 

     Technology 'came to the rescue', with nets becoming available which were much harder for the fish to see, and deeper too; they worked in daylight, but were illegal. Some fishermen took to hoods and slash hooks to fight off the Navy's ribs, and there were shots fired at fishermen; but now the game was up. Between such travails, pollution in rivers and whatever was happening on the high seas beyond our ken, the coastal salmon fishery was destroyed. If you want to eat salmon now, you will have to settle for a pale shadow of the real thing, reared in a polluting fish concentration camp.

    'Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes'’ - Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts - was Virgil's take on The Iliad and those clever Greeks. The problem is as old as European civilisation. Even the Greeks themselves, as the story of Prometheus shows, were aware of the problematic nature of mankind's technological aspirations; however, St Paul tells us how the cross of Jesus was mere folly to them. From Galilee, that other great source of our civilisation, we hear Jesus saying, according to St John, 'It is the Spirit that giveth life, the flesh availeth nothing!' However he also said 'Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you,' affirming humanity's quests, only insisting that they be grounded in the Spirit. Europe and the Catholic Church have been struggling to get the right balance ever since.

    In the last couple of centuries, the tension has been building. Our civilisation now generally thinks with the Greeks, that the Cross is mere folly. We glory above all in our technological prowess. We pride ourselves on asserting 'the flesh'. We complain that the Church of Christ is life-denying, even while paying lip-service to wisdom. Meanwhile, while we tend to put our faith in sanitizer rather than holy water and our churches stand empty, our city is busy destroying itself. But unlike Zeus, our God is not bent on punishing us, and perhaps even science itself might come to our help?

    I am thinking of the new physics, and the revelation that while Newtonian or Greek physics, or however one describes viewing the world as made of fixed and static particles, has a certain utility, things are not actually like that. We are now told that the world is an interplay of infinite energies, a dance of waves that may have its rhythms but is not constricted by time or place; at least, such is my very limited understanding of quantum physics. So yes, even science might come to realise that the spirit alone availeth, and we might even find believers again who can cast out devils and heal the sick!

    We will find no new hope unless we repent of foolish ways of thinking. We have to start by debunking the idols and learning to love our enemies. Considering what a dreadful wreck we have been making of the world, especially for those on the wrong end of our extravagant fantasies, we might even learn to understand where the likes of the Taliban are coming from. We might at last learn a bit of humility. We do need leaders with a sense of context, not 'meritocratic' experts who make it by fiercely swotting, concentrating on their limited sphere of expertise, proud of their 'scientific objectivity' while it has a curious habit of aligning with certain financial and commercial interests.

    We might even learn to listen to the likes of those 'backward, uneducated, conservative, deplorable' people who ask, while they watch the surge in Covid infection following hard on the roll-out of vaccines, does it not appear that there must be a connection? How can the great and good be so sure that the vaccines are not pushing the variants? Are they not rather something in the line of a Trojan Horse? Well, no doubt it will take 20 years or so to be sure, one way or the other. Meanwhile, it's looking to me like another case of the 'war on terror'. It has taken 20 years or so for the realisation to dawn that it has only succeeded in pushing terrorism deeper and wider; but many still refuse to recognise this even now. Give us a break!

The 'Anna M' entering Teelin Bay, by Nutan