Where next?

At the moment, I'm deep into capitalism, having finished David Whyte's thought-provoking book, Ecocide: Kill The Company Before It Kills Us.

If I'm honest, I'm not sure what I'm going to discover that I don't already know. That said, I'm not suggesting I know very much about (inter alia) Natural Capital, Green Swans or neoliberalism, but you don't need to be Einstein to work out that capitalism has been one of, if not the main enabler for the Anthropocene. Oh, that, and our insatiable, wanton desire for more stuff. 

Yes, that's right. Absent us, there wouldn't exist the corporate vehicle, less still greedy capitalists (I say that, of course, only mildly tongue-in-cheek.)

As I've said so many times: we need the world; the world doesn't need us.

And where does all this fit with the latest UK-wide CV19 restrictions and the catastrophic situation we find ourselves living in and through? Again, I'm not sure. Perhaps it is that we were never meant to live so close to nature, or perhaps we're not as 'smart' as we thought we were, or perhaps this is simply a course correction to wake us up to the fact that a virus - yes, a virus - can wreak havoc on an unimaginable scale.

It's all so depressing, right?

I suppose.

And the obvious thing to do would be to postulate a series of nourishing answers. But I'm leary these days about being seduced down that path. Instead, I'm more disposed and inclined to ask a better question or at least to wonder. I know, all that navel-gazing is all well and good but it ain't going to fix the mess we're in. True. So very true. But then again, let's say we manoeuvre our way through this latest existential crises, what then? Something resembling what we had before? Possibly, but I'd like to think we'd take more than a little stock of what's really important but more particularly if we can continue living without consequence. Or to exist as if we can sort out whatever shit comes our way. 

I don't know. I really don't know but for me it's more a question of continuing to sit with and contemplate how in my little corner of the world, together with my family, we might imagine a more beautiful world and what we might do to change our purview to something more resonant with our cultural past. If that sounds a bit otherworldly then fine, but right now that's where my focus increasingly returns - the past. Or better still our indigenous ancestors. I don't mean to cross the aeons but the last few generations because if nothing else they knew how to live within their means (perhaps they were forced to), to care for their locus (they didn't seem intent on fowling their own nest/s) and to love the little they had. It wasn't all a bed of roses but it feels to me all these years on much more normal than infinite or at least unprecedented growth, or whatever it is that's fuelled our destruction of mother earth.

Anyhow, have a wonderful Sunday.

Take care,

Julian