Find the Others
This is not mine .. I put the video together a few years ago from a comic I saw on Zen Pencils and liked very much. Someone reminded me of it today. All the credits are in the short video.
England’s Z-Score
Z-scores are used to compare mortality pattern between different populations or between different time periods. The higher the Z- score the greater the difference between the expected number of deaths in a given period and the total number of deaths actually recorded.
The graphic shows that the UK as a whole has a higher number of excess deaths than any other European country and that England has a higher number of excess deaths than other nations in the UK.
How does this square with the relaxation of the lockdown in England?
I’m not saying that the lockdown shouldn’t be lifted – of course it should be lifted but Johnson said that he is going to be ‘led by the science’ and my criticism is that he doesn’t seem to be led by that. A science led response would question the particularities of conditions and responses that have caused England to be more strongly impacted than elsewhere. Decisions should be based on the answers to those questions and they should be implemented in a graduated way consistent with restarting the economy in a rational manner.
Johnson said that all workers who were unable to work from home should go back to work. This is impossible because it is quite obvious that people in sectors of the economy, such as hospitality, that are locked down will not be able to return. Perhaps Johnson meant construction and manufacturing, perhaps he meant other sectors too but what he said was ‘all workers who cannot work at home’. I’ve been listening to people trying to unpack what he meant all day. This is not good enough. The minimum that should be expected from a leader is clarity and that has been wholly absent.
Source of Graphic: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
Bojo Returns ..
Sorry. I don’t get this. This level of incompetence does my head in .. anyway this is a cartoonisation but not an exaggeration.
What should have been done?
- A phased return to work with those identified as most essential returning soonest.
- Ensuring that there is a plan for covid-19 safety and monitoring in all industries. This would include risk assessment and risk minimisation plans agreed with employers and unions.
- Coordination across the UK rather than England being treated differently.
- Better transport logistics – or at least show that there has been some consideration of this.
Bojo said that coming down a mountain can be more difficult than going up. Yep. That’s why we don’t run headlong down the bloody things.
Possible Futures
Some mornings I lie in bed browsing Facebook or Twitter and thoughts put themselves together in response to something I read. Having no reputation to lose I just post them.
There are genuine conspiracies I don’t know what allegations or speculations regarding particular conspiracies are true but at its core climate change is real and environmental collapse is humanity’s greatest and most existential challenge.
The recent Moore/Gibbs film does not deny the reality of climate change it questions the singular focus when the problem is multi-faceted environmental degradation driven by population growth and massive over-consumption of the Earth’s resources.
Planet of the Humans Clip from Gavin Sealey on Vimeo.
The limits to growth and the consequences of hitting those limits have four possible resolutions:
1. We continue on the same trajectory and there is a massive environmental catastrophe in which billions die in floods, fires and famines and global civilisation, perhaps even human life, ends.
2. A globally supported green new deal, premised on clean energy technologies and implemented wisely and justly by the world’s political systems, allows us to continue expanding population and consumption. Perhaps human ingenuity will build continent spanning sustainable megacities and colonies in space mining the asteroid belt and so on.
3. A global cabal of oligarchs take control of all governments through subversion of their structures and leaderships and control of populations through control of the media narrative and suppression of contrarian voices. This is facilitated by recurring or persistent pandemics and economic shut downs that essentially warehouse non-essential humans in high value (mainly white) populations and starve off non-essential humans in low value (brown and black) populations. Surveillance technologies, vaccines that create custom vulnerabilities and media manipulation limit and control the masses everywhere under systems of governance that resemble ‘1984’ or ‘Brave New World’ or some combination of the two with shades of ‘Bladerunner’.
4. The density of human interaction and conversation at global and local levels runs counter to the fear inducing narratives of the controlled media. A building ‘noospheric’ pressure results in individual and community ‘enlightenments’. A new humanity, ‘homo gestalt’ if you will, more conscious and connected, emerges and voluntarily and justly limits their own growth and consumption, establishing harmony on personal, interpersonal and planetary levels.
I’ve not ordered these scenarios in order of probability or desirability. I will say that two of them are consistent with our current trajectories while the other two both hang on a wing and a prayer.
I am not a Christian But ..
I wrote the following as part of a discussion in a FB group.
I’m quoting it here understanding that it may be very ‘triggering’ for some people who do not like their religious certainties questioned and for secularists who think this kind of talk is irrelevant nonsense. So for most this will be irreverent or irrelevant .. If it is either for you .. just let it go. ‘you be you and i’ll be me.’ 😉
Anyway I wrote:
I’m not a Christian because of the doctrinal stuff associated with that identification but I have to say that the core teaching of Jesus has it all. The core of the core as it were was the extraordinary statement that Jesus made when he was asked ‘What is the greatest commandment?’. He replied that the greatest commandment was that you should love God with all your heart and soul and might and then he went on to say that there was a second, very like it, that was that you should love your neighbour as yourself.
I recall Echard Tolle remarking that Jesus did not say ‘love your neighbour as you love yourself’, he said ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ because your neighbour is yourself. This is the core recognition of all true religion (the word means ‘reunite’). Jesus continued by saying that ‘on these two commandments hang the whole of the law and the prophets’. You can’t get more hard core than this and this should be recognised as the central message; the key meditation for anyone that claims to be following the teachings of Jesus.
That something as crucial as this is effectively forgotten, essentially relegated to a blind spot of religious consciousness, would probably not surprise a historical Jesus.
Permit me to quote:
Matthew 19:16-24 King James Version (KJV)
16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
18 He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,
19 Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
This is why we slide away from the reality of love and what it demands. Because if we recognise everyone ‘as ourself ‘ then we have to give up the privileges of our particular situation and be with the poor and the oppressed. We can’t accept this; as individuals it is almost impossible to act on this consciousness, but as a conscious community (a Kingdom of God as it were) we might just make it. This is why the narrative, the conversation is so important and also why it is suppressed – consciously and unconsciously.
Passages follow those that I’ve quoted that I don’t consider to be part of that same teaching ‘on which the whole of the law and the prophets hang’. I consider them and some other sayings attributed to Jesus to be part of a Jewish eschatological framework that was tacked on to the teachings of Jesus and that together with Greek mythopoetic interpretations subverted a non-judgemental and humble teaching about the profound Unity of all Being and beings into one, that answering the selfish misunderstandings of Peter (the Church), became both hierarchical and judgemental. And absurd:
25 When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?
26 But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?
28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Obviously mine is a very personal perspective on Christian teaching. Everyone who engages with any teaching takes what is meaningful to them. I’m not claiming to be ‘right’ about this, i’m just saying what it means to me and what I learn from it. The central truth is that we are one and love is the expression of that oneness.
Not the Borg
We’ve got to learn to talk with each other in order to create a new narrative.We have to see ourselves and each other in quite a different way. We have to deliberately reach out to each other even though this may be scary.
I posted this cartoon and reflection on my own page earlier today.
The Borg that I refer to (for the sake of non-trekkies) are presented in ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ as a spacefaring ‘collective’ that assimilate species and cultures across the galaxy. They are a metaphor for the submergence of individuality and diversity in a conformist totalitarianism that, depending on political preference, can be projected as a ‘1984’ style communism or a ‘Brave New World’ style corporatism.
The subversion of the will and consciousness of the many to the will and consciousness of the powerful few is a millenias old motif of human societies and is not, of course, peculiar to our present time. This subversion of the individual and collective will has been resisted by libertarian, communalist and humanist ideologies that are premised on values of individual dignity and universal equality.
What the Borg symbolise is the use of overwhelming technological capability to finally crush any will or set of values that contradicts those of the established power structures. The present danger is that the emerging totalitarian surveillance state in nationalist or globalist form will, if we are not vigilant, ‘Borgify’ us.
This vision of us becoming ‘the Borg’ competes with another (more fragile) vision that I like to call ‘Homo Gestalt’ after Theodore Sturgeon’s classic sci-fi novel ‘More than Human’. The thought here (my thought not Sturgeon’s – he was envisioning something more telepathic than telematic) is that emergent communication technologies, rather than being instrumental in controlling us can be instrumental in our emergence as a cooperative species, a ‘noosphere civilisation’ whose motif is collective consciousness rather than coerced consciousness.
Homo Gestalt will not sacrifice her individuality; the nature of that individuality changes organically by becoming part of the Gestalt but the Gestalt (that totality that is more than the sum of its parts) also changes organically to accomodate and reflect the diversity and individual presence of all its parts.
Our talking with each other is the beginning of the creation of the new narrative. Doing this extends us as human beings. We have to face and overcome many fears and prejudices in order to face and accept each other as the equals that we are. In doing this we will become powerful; in turning to each other we will root our own power in the power of community. Marianne Williamson wrote something that expresses this very well – even though I would use different words:
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Comic Creation Tools
There are lots of creative toys to play around with on the web; the image manipulation application at Lunapic is one of them. The image above was created using this and Comic Life 3.
I made this next strip on the Make Believe Comix site.
The point I’m trying get at in the strip is that the massive increase in digital connectivity that we are experiencing now is not going to turn us into the Borg but it may contribute to emergence of a consciously shared global consciousness.
Playing about with images and text can help make a point and it’s fun though sometimes I wonder if it isn’t just a waste of time. But then, sometimes, I think there is so little time and I wonder if there is anything that I might do that is not a waste of that time. The following page from Existential Comics illustrates how the comic form can encapsulate some deep thoughts and contrasts two responses to realisation of the impermanent nature of the self.
Related Resources:
Free Will
Not all wills are equally free. We are conditioned, constrained, conscious and compelled to different degrees. What is the relationship between the free will, the good will and the strong will?
My will is not free if I am unaware of the determinants of my drives and desires; or good if I lack right understanding of my relationship with Being and other beings; or strong when ‘the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do’
The failure to see the degree to which we lack free will has led to attitudes of condemnation rather than compassion for others and ourselves. We must recognise free will as something to be gained, developed and nurtured rather than as an innate given.
If free will is to exist in us individually and collectively the key to it must be in the extension of awareness.
The Mind Killer
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert, Dune
I read this novel Dune long ago, when I a teenager. The Bene Geserit quote came to mind today and I played with another app on my phone to cartoonise myself and my thought. The quotation is very relevant and perhaps Dune is very relevant too.
Probably a Terrible Idea
