A friend recommended Yellowstone, a Kevin Costner series playing on Amazon Prime.  It is about a 5th generation rancher, John Dutton. The Montana rancher is engaged in conflict involving the land and desires of developers, and environmentalists, and native Americans and his own family.  The episodes of season one involve the violence which is always at the boundaries of life, — family life, the exchange between communities, and financial interests.  To say that violence is endemic to financial interests is a more innocuous way to say that “progress” is about making money, and money is unconcealed power.

These matters about which revolve our lives are so crucial, that compromise, negotiation, become difficult at best.  In this tale, a contention over use of the land,  breaks down into an exchange of gunfire in the darkness of a high mountain valley.   A brother and son is slain, another brother murders a close relative.  One of the final scenes is that of a funeral for a son cut down in the prime of life, and the disconsolate aura of unspeakable grief.  As I watched the screen I felt as if I could be there.

This is a series worth seeing.

Now some lines from BREATHING, Chaos and Poetry.

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Abstraction
has been recently gaining ground.
The financialization of the economy
is the most evident proof
of this expansion of the realm of abstraction.

But
the increasing subjugation of life
to abstraction is now provoking a
backlash:

Life is reacting to abstraction,
and this return to vitality
has taken the shape of an aggressive
reaffirmation of identity –
national, religious, racial…
resulting in the emergence of
postmodern fascism worldwide.

…the explosion manifest itself
in the identitarian frenzy
which is now devastating
the political order of civilization.
Having lost faith in the universality of reason,
having no access to the sphere of decision making,
people cling to imaginary identities
based on the mythologies of nation,
race, and religion. P. 62-63

— Excerpt BREATHING Chaos and Poetry
By Franco “Bifo” Berardi

We must have a song, something to cling to, to remind us that loss and grief need not be soul destroying.  Go Now! by the Moody Blues.