6.Overview: a sketch for now

I was going to reflect on my mother, and why she might not have cared whether we lived or died, and my father who - if she's to be believed - so easily refocussed his life on other women. Like me perhaps? I'll come back to that. For now, here below are some more general thoughts prompted by... What? Oilspills? Figures and predictions on population and climate change, underlined by irregular weather. Volcanic ash, or my mother's, wherever that may be. Taliban successes, soldiers killed. My own irregular heartbeats, piles... Intimation of mortality, indignity and the light-hearted care I get, from Ada, but also, every now and then, from the NHS, people who may or may not just be doing their jobs. Between them they, and you who pay for the pills, restore my faith. Here goes:

June 2010 - some theoretical notes

No such thing as raw materials, no finished product – every raw material itself a product and every product material for new processes.

Same goes for us and other animals who live and die, eat, excrete, breath in and out. Whatever our personal, social or technical impact, that’s a fact of life. Our bodies feed from and back into our natural environment.

Not a reductive observation, but the essential, irreducible basis of more specifically human development.

Danger now that our cultural/technical ‘superstructure’ destroys the base on which it, our species and many others depend.

Go forth and multiply, the world is in yours for the taking – until over-population, overkill and unintended consequence destroy the material base (Resource depletion, air and sea pollution, climate change.)

Did WE do this? Who is this WE? Since history began – was pre-history different? – the many have been at the disposal of the few: warlords, landowners, bosses and their priests. Much of the damage is not new, but until now, the rich have always had somewhere else to go, something left unspoiled to save for themselves.

Now technology, global organisation and population increase have used up the spare, and the damage done is so pervasive that nobody can quite escape: there is no other unspoiled air or all-forgiving ocean, pristine promised land. And, as if by coincidence, no fresh new relatively undemanding labour force to do our dirty work for beans.

The global reach of information, organisation and technology cannot always be one way. In the past century, too disconcerted govern themselves, were concerted enough to make themselves ungovernable. Now that empire is largely privatised again, with multinationals where the East India Companies used to be, terrorism is only one way for small, dissident minorities – confused but not unrepresentative - to ‘punch above their weight’.

Global exploitation of the natural world becomes a zero sum game as even the winners stand to lose. Nowhere is safe, and burgeoning ‘bye products’ – unintended consequences like the CO2 we burn and exhale – do more damage than the intended products of our misdirected industries do good. Or can cure..

OUR labour? Yes, we’re all involved, as masters and servants play their unequal parts. Mutually exploitive and mutually destructive, though its only now that the masters – owners, shareholders and those who manage in their – are forced to realise the harm they do themselves.

Domination, exploitation, has never been good for the souls of masters or slaves. For the slaves the damage to body and soul has been undeniable. For the masters, safely removed in a world apart, the damage has been buried. Material flesh and blood, the basic life we share, was reduced, disguised by manners and disdained by a spirit deemed separate from, superior to material reality. Until now, as the spiritual bubble deflates anbd subjective damage is objectivised, made manifest, material and inescapable.

Exhausted nature and outraged humanity combine to bring us back to ourselves, each other and the only world we’ve got.