This is a strange post, stranger even than usual. For the world is a very different place than it was some months ago.
On a private notion, my beloved mother died at the age of 85 on the 8th of December, and that was hard, even though I had time to make my peace with that fact for years. Now I am caring for her partner, who is of not exactly good health, too, and that´s hard.
I lost a lot of so-called friends, too, `nuff said. I lost any opportunity to forge, or craft, or do anything with my hands, in the process, too. I tried to start a business with forging with kids and doing forging tutorials and lectures and stuff... and the lockdown came, and left me with nothing, no chance to earn any money, no funding, no dole, since I have inherited money, which is not worth menitioning, and another inheritance is still in the process, because my cousin died, too. This is an interesting experience.
For I still find my ressilience. I find it in the woods, period. I find it stumpsitting and foraging for food, which has become a matter of actual survival, but it does not matter much. When I can get human food I eat it. When I eat roadkill, that´s also okay. When I dumpster dine, I dumpster dine.
And what is actually happening is, that I seem to be able to put a different perspective on things.
Artists in Germany suffer, and most of them suffer severely, and most existentially. There is actual hunger, and actual need. You can go to holidays, flying in an airplane where you sit shoulder to shoulder for hours on end, but cannot do forging tutorials with more than five people. Medical personnel suffer from fatigue, and while they get a pat on the shoulder, they remain underpaid, and overworked, because it is far more important for the heads of state to sponsor air traffic corporations. Museums, theatres and social insitutions are closed, while big-term automobile corporations get a sponsoring of tax money.
Oh, no, I do not buy into their conspiracy theories, for they are just methods of wagging the dog. Might even be those douchebags are being paid, but I don´t know at all. And I could not care less.
Additionally, and not without some wicked humour, I must say that there´s an idiomatic turn in Germany to classsify someone as exceptionally stupid and raving mad. It goes like "Der hat wohl Lack gesoffen", which translates as "He must have drunk paint stripper". I never thought I had to learn that there some day will be a head of state of whichever country and whatever suggesting we should get rid of a pandemic by drinking Chlorox, disinfectant or paint stripper or shove a torchlight up our arse.
In the meantime, global warming proceeds and rapidly accelerates. we are not facing the anticipated rise in average temperature of 2°C, which would have been bad, but 4°C in all. Look on the UN website, where I got my info. Scientists of the UN fear that with this rapid rise, organized society will fail.
And we fight each other because someone has more pigments than another? We claim we are the chosen ones? Yeah, fight each other as much as you want. Vegans fight vegetarians because they still eat dairy products, and everyone hates each other just because he is first in the queue at the grocery store. Yeah, fight and hate each other as uch as you want.
It actually IS my business, but I do not care. I don´t hate "them", "the others" or "the whites" or "the blacks". I do not even hate the fascists and Nazis of all cultures.
To be frank, this is the end of our civilization. There is no way out of this, since we will not develop new standards of morale, or at least return to the ones we still had in the `80`s or even the `90`s. And 80% of the population will die. Then all will start again, and if enough of us die, maybe the ecosystem will regenerate again, until we rise again to destroy everything again. We could even now change a lot of things, and it would be dead simple.
For we just needed to do less, not more. If we stopped living a life of hate, greed and lust, of madness and the frenzy of still more, more, more, we could calm down and find our resilience.
In survival lore there is an idiom called STOP. This is short for Stop-Think-Orienteer-Plan.
Mankind is in a survival situation. But do we stop and even think? No, we don´t. We run even faster. We buy products we do not need, we cultivate our adipositas and are proud of our incapacity even for everyday challenges. We lack data on the current crisis, but we accelerate even faster.
The fat cats and oligarchs just pour fuel into the fire of our greed and insanity.
I, however, will not put my hand into this chopping mill anymore. Chance is, I will die, and soon. But until then, I will live. And at least try to erase some of the lies I have been force-fed all my life.
There are scandals in the meat industry, and please get me right, even the term "meat industry" is a perversion to start with. I eat meat, and I will continue to do so. Try to kill me for it, but you might not succeed. But the culprit is, okay, we say, so just let´s stop to eat meat and all will be good. And we start to use surrogates, mainly from the soy industry, with one famed corporation at the head of the market, whose explicitly stated goal is to gain world dominion by dominating the food and crops market. You cannot change this system from within. Putting yourself outside of it, however, seems to be impossible, and, to be honest, most will die, because they are simply not tough enough, have next to no life skills and are utterly dependant on the system. When it collapses, these will whine and get aggressive and die in the process. Capitalism will become more and more totalitarian. We are already seeing the first measures taken. For the fat cats and oligarchs know full well that this system is failing and try to milk as much profit out of it as possible until it is time. They could not care less for the lives of billions. But the good news is that these are the death throes of the leviathan. The Third Reich endured for 16 years. It was hell on earth, and we will live in an even worse hell on earth. But any human societal system will be purged by climatic catastrophes, and we do not have to endure so much longer. We have some five years until everything starts, give or take one to three.
And, before you get me wrong, I am not an advocate of hoarding weapons and ammo for the apocalypse. Survival will be a matter of what always made humans survive. Even if the system collapses - and might even be there´s still hope - we need ideas and cooperation and resourcefulness far more than firepower. A garden is a more powerful weapon against global warming and hunger, and knowledge a better asset than money. Of course there will be looting and pillaging, and we are faced with the hardest time mankind ever in its history had to face, and there´s a good chance this is the point of our extinction.
There is not much to add to this, and there is no cardinal way to survive this. We had the worst leaders at the worst of times ever. Is there?
There is a reason that in every story and every religion there is one aspect that can save your butt:
Love.
Not flagellant hysteria, not hate, greed and war and violence. Love.
I just want to say: Take care. Care for each other, for your neighbours, for the elderly, for the weak, for those who had bad luck or manoeuvered themselves into a fix. Don´t judge, just lend a hand. And talk. Talk, talk, talk. Learn what the other guy or gal is about. We are all in this together, and we don´t need someone to blame. We need solutions, and we need to live again. For the foundation of our society was what in every philosophy, every story, every myth and every religion on this earth is called the cardinal sins. Don´t expect people to help you, though. Just take care. Simple as that, and don´t panic.
