Plague Journal, As The World Just Falls Apart
The question comes in due time to everyone who is aware, caring about the condition of society, about the well being of one’s fellows. No doubt that the question of concern is self-interested. What if anything ought I to do about climate warming, or the pandemic, or the political issues which divide us as Americans?
We are all connected. What happens in the Pacific northwest affects me. The burning of the forests is not just a matter of blood red sunsets for a few days here in the Midwest. How are the residents of the areas now subject to the wildfires going to resume normality — in a region under severe, prolonged drought, the ground desiccated of moisture, vast areas of natural landscape burned…? Many will chose to leave, to go elsewhere. Wouldn’t you?
What is to be done?
This tune has often inspired me. There are a few people, perhaps one person, with whom I have an indispensable relationship. As Sartre asserted, we are “thrown” into this world, born into a context that we did not create, this is our “given.” Our first duty is to remain alive, to survive. To that end friends, those with whom we can make common cause are essential. I am lucky to have friends. Best of all, I owe much to a life-long partner, my best friend who has sacrificed often to support our relationship, and to advance the projects that we both cherish.
In the performance of this song, no one says it better than Grace Slick: Let the world around us/Just fall apart/Baby, we can make it/If we’re heart to heart.
Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now
By Jefferson Starship
Lookin’ in your eyes
I see a paradise
This world that I found
Is too good to be true
Standin’ here beside you
Want so much to give you
This love in my heart
That I’m feelin’ for you
Let ’em say we’re crazy
I don’t care ’bout that
Put your hand in my hand
Baby, don’t ever look back
Let the world around us
Just fall apart
Baby, we can make it
If we’re heart to heart
And we can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
And if this world runs out of lovers
We’ll still have each other
Nothing’s gonna stop us
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
Oh, whoa
I’m so glad I found you
I’m not gonna lose you
Whatever it takes
I will stay here with you
Take it to the good times
See it through the bad times
Whatever it takes
Is what I’m gonna do
Let ’em say we’re crazy
What do they know
Put your arms around me
Baby, don’t ever let go
Let the world around us
Just fall apart
Baby, we can make it
If we’re heart to heart
And we can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
And if this world runs out of lovers
We’ll still have each other
Nothing’s gonna stop us
Nothing’s gonna stop us
Ooh, all that I need is you
All that I ever need
And all that I want to do
Is hold you forever ever and ever, hey
And we can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
And if this world runs out of lovers
We’ll still have each other
Nothing’s gonna stop us
Nothing’s gonna stop us
We can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
Nothing’s gonna stop us
And if this world runs out of lovers
We’ll still have each other
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
We can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
World runs out of lovers
Nothing’s gonna stop us
We’ll still have each other
We can build this dream together
Standing strong forever
Nothing’s gonna stop us now
Composed by Albert Hammond, Diane Warren
6 thoughts on “Plague Journal, As The World Just Falls Apart”
A thought occurred to me last night as I watched the smoke from a thousand miles away color our sunset. A national news program featured anti-mask and anti-vaccination folks giving their opinions in front of a town council that was attempting to decide if the mask mandate should be reinstated based on the Covid variant sweeping the nation. The arguments were much the same as they have been for months: masks don’t work, they are plot by liberals to usurp American freedoms, the vaccination sterilizes people, it includes microchips that will control your mind, and on and on. We watch these people express themselves through the process of freedom of speech, a venerated part of our Constitution. Yet it’s difficult not to equate this mindset with the fictionalized accounts of a Zombie Apocalypse. The walking dead, whose sole goal is to satisfy their desire to eat the brains of others. They have ceased processing factual information and are indeed the walking dead, creating an atmosphere of dystopian dysfunction that seems to foretell a pending demise of our species, along with most of life on earth.
There, hanging in the evening sky, is the result of these folks’ insipid inability to grasp the fundamentals of science, to realize that unless we work in tandem, we cannot survive. Still, their concern is seemingly all about self-preservation, propagation of their DNA, and a skewed sense of freedom based on the retention of firearms and remaining vaccine free. Many of us scoff at these people, labeling them as ignorant, but they are the ones leading the way towards the precipice and we seem to have little say in the matter. They are our fellow humans, a part of who we are as critters on this planet. They breath, eat, drive cars, vote (sometimes), go to the grocery store and in many ways function just like the rest of us, but they are somehow different. Recognizable as Homo sapiens, they are driven by something foreign to me. Like the Taliban, or Boko Haram, or the Oath Keepers, or Xi’s Chinese Communist Party, or Putin’s fascist regime, or extreme fundamentalist Christians, or any number of thousands of other groups, where they apparently do not have the ability to see the world in any context other than their own personal bubble.
In the end, it’s just sad. I’ve said this before, that we are wasting the best of humanity, that we, as a group, have created amazing and extraordinary things, that we have discovered secrets of the universe beyond the imagination of those who came before us, that we have written great literature, produced wonderful music, created astounding works of art, and yet………
A well stated assessment of our situation.
Freedom of speech ought to be cherished, maintained, — as a toddler must babble out loud for months as a precursor to language. Dysfunction would be unending babble, evidence that learning has not, and perhaps cannot take place. Anti-vaxxers, those with a preference for authoritarian rule have the right of expression. Those of us who disagree for good reason — also have the right to walk away, to not waste our precious time listening, pretending that such nonsense is credible. Believe a lie and die. The work of reason is our only hope of survival. This is nothing new.
The ultimate question remains: Can the earth support eight billion human beings?
As you have noted, what happens to those in harms way of climate change on the west coast affects all of us. Our problem is that we cannot look the other way nor can we just ignore our dysfunctional fellow humans, for what they do impacts us all. There was a time, not so long ago, where our insular communities could exist without a great deal of interaction with the extended world. Where we could grow up without a great deal of concern or even knowledge of events such as El Niño or cataclysmic fires in Siberia or floods in western Germany. Where life rolled along with a few standard bumps here and there, as is always the case. No longer. We are ensconced in a fishbowl of world events that cannot be ignored, no matter how much we might desire to bury our collective heads in the sand.
I agree. Those who reject life saving vaccines offered by knowledge of the corona virus have to be taken into account. I suggest that if a generalization is appropriate, the majority will not be convinced otherwise by any argument or expenditure of effort. They are in the thrall of one of the cults which you referenced.
A refusal to entertain life threatening nonsense is a strong statement, the only one left to us.
Perhaps we are in the beginning phase of failure of a late stage capitalist system? A system that valorizes profit above everything else will consume itself. Many things that ought not to be done, or produced get the “go-ahead” because $$$ are the predictable result, for those who already have more than they could spend in several lifetimes.
And so it goes.
I don’t mean to make this into the endless conversation, but there are just a few more thoughts I’d like to add. Most constructs of economic theory are basically created with good intentions and founded on sound theory, be it either Capitalism or Marxism or many of the amalgams of the two. It is the path taken by those who embrace one or the other that skews the intended outcome. I doubt if Marx would have approved of the vast majority of the governments that give lip service to embracing his philosophical concepts. Just as I doubt if David Hume and Adam Smith intended for the wealthy to subjugate the worker to the point of servitude with a wealth gap the size of which we are experiencing today.
As an example, countries such as Sweden seem to have been able to extrude the best of both a socialistic society combined with a free market attitude to create what might be considered the least onerous of governments. Businesses can thrive while the general population is healthy and prosperous as well. So we know it’s possible, but the cultural mores of many countries, including the US, resist this style of governing for no other reason than fear of the unknown. Business as usual, when founded in blind greed, has an extraordinarily difficult time of extricating itself from the grips of an economically dysfunction set of criteria.
What I realized yesterday, as well as my vision of the ignorant as Zombie, is that as the world burns or drowns (which ever comes first to a community near you) the size of one’s bank account has little bearing on survival. If we all perish, there is not a scorekeeper who says to Jeff Bezos, or Mohammed Bin Salman, or Vladimir Putin, “You Win”, simply because they have the most money. We are all in the same boat, a true Ship of Fools. I know this analogy has been used ad nauseam, but it’s more than apropos for where we find ourselves these days. It has never been clearly that we are all on the same playing field, that we either all get through this together or none of us do. We can only hope that that those who can actually do something about the climate (and to some degree this means everyone) will step up before it’s too late, if it isn’t too late already.
I’ll stop now.
Don’t stop. Conversation is what we need, speaking and listening mindfully, because we are not going to survive this apart from collective effort.
I have observed the same outcomes with respect to many of the authority figures of the past. Their work, texts have been used and abused to suite the intentions of “well meaning” leaders, over and over again. What has become of Christianity is a prime example. Anytime a program of action is promoted as the expression of orthodox truth, — that is a sign of violence to come.
I think we can draw upon insights of those who came before us. Insights are to be conceived and applied tentatively, as a improvised treatment… Global warming is not going to be solved by anything that we can do. Offset generations of co2 emissions, and the pedal-to-the-metal capitalism that we have today?
Where’s Monty Python’s surreal comedy when we most need it?
Yes. One’s net worth would matter little when a year’s worth of rain falls in a day.