Some words before the feast
I’m always one for gestures. Even if one has no real hope of promoting positive change one can still express one’s anguish. My heroes were the Native North Americans who rode bareback up to their lethally armed enemies with a short coup stick to tap them on the head. Of course, they were cynically massacred. Nobody understood.
The world is in a mess. I sometimes wonder if it has really become so much worse during the seventy-five years of my life-time. In many ways I think it has. Though, perhaps, it is just that I now know a lot more about what is going on.
I guess some things have become better and some things worse.
Back at college in the sixties we studied the terrible impact of humans on our environment. I remember studying the dreadful toll of hunting on the populations of many species and the effect of expanding human populations on habitats. We studied the data and were appalled. At the time it was whales, gorillas, bonobos and chimps that were the real focus of my fury. Then there were the pesticides, deforestation and pollution to infuriate me. Since then things have gone from bad to disaster. Deforestation, global warming, species extinctions, population crashes and habitat destruction all loom large. We have one planet and a biosphere that has taken billions of years to evolve; we are dismantling it in mere decades.
Back in the sixties I had hopes that we could end war, racism, intolerance, poverty and throw off this strangle-hold of control by this greedy elite. We were building a new world with better values. Unfortunately the same old robber barons took over the revolution, bought off the movers and shakers or ousted them, and proceeded to monetarise revolution. They tighten their grip on the media and now run the propaganda machine. We are all brainwashed. The whole world runs on propaganda. The markets are controlled. Revolution for profit. Everything is fake news. Conspiracy is contrived. The cyber war has been lost. We are all helpless victims.
Everything is run on greed. We are all pawns.
The irony is that it is the greediest who have risen to the top on the promise of ridding us of greed. The likes of Trump, Modi, Johnson, Farage, Bolsonaro, Erdogan, Oban, Netanyahu, Wilders, Le Penne, Meloni and Orpo – a bunch of ultra-right populist opportunists – have beguiled populations with their lies, silly promises, religious extremism and xenophobic/racist solutions.
Politicians use race, immigration and religion as weapons.
‘Drain the swamp’ is the cry from the most corrupt. ‘Lock her up’ is the cry from the man who should be locked up. It’s sheer irony.
We live in the world of George Orwell’s double-think. War is now peace. Hate is mandatory. Division rules.
Instead of pulling together to find solutions to poverty, climate change, war and racism, we are split apart into factions, blaming immigrants, muslims and jews.
The world has gone nuts.
Meanwhile Xi, Putin and Jong Un, vi with the USA for control of the universe, threatening to plunge us into a nuclear holocaust.
The third world still languishes in poverty created by exploitation, greed and inequality. Huge swathes of land are becoming uninhabitable due to raging temperatures, drought and famine. We are beset with wars, terrorism and armed insurgency. Religion ferments hatred and division all the way from the US evangelical nutcases intent on world domination, through the muslim extremism of ISIS and the Taliban, the jewish/ muslim extremism of the orthodox jews, Netanyahu and the evil hatred of Hamas. Iran hovers fermenting trouble. Religious hatred and power –lust propels us to the edge.
The world burns. Resources are wasted. A tiny elite cream off all the wealth and misuse it. The world is run by the likes of Musk, Murdock, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Gates. People think it is OK to earn billions while two thirds of the world starves.
We have AI wars, cyber terrorism, security and control.
We have a society descending into the decadence of shallowness, uninvolvement, ignorance, alcohol, drugs, sex and a complete lack of understand. They don’t care. Hedonism is total. Awareness nil.
Education is a myth. The religious indoctrinate. The political control. The robber barons are firmly in control.
The world is run for the profit of the few.
So I piss into the wind and write my pathetic poetry for a non-existent audience.
This is it: just words. Hopeless, ineffective, pathetic and futile.
My poetry may be crap but it is my coup stick. It’s all I have.
These are my gestures.
Mind you – I do believe in zeitgeists!
Opher – 21.7.2024
