Morality - An Afterthought

Having noticed I've just unintentionally managed to get "fanatics", "desert", and "plotting" into one post, I can't resist mentioning another, purely personal - and quite topical - opinion about morality:

Bombs. Bombs are bad. All bombs; anyone and everyone's bombs. Very Bad Indeed.

They upset the frogs. And they ruin the lettuces. :-( :-( :-(

Bluegrass in The Backwoods

Last weekend, I finally got round to checking out my (fairly) local community woodland. There was some kind of annual festival on – you know, some sad little theme-park effort, with a few tacky craft stalls...

How wrong can a girl be? Some of the craft stalls were tacky, but many were superb, and most were convincingly woody – from the out and out bushcraft, thru an impressive range of atavistic green woodworking stuff, to top-notch native-hardwood furniture making. (The bushcraft guy, appropriately, didn’t have a website. But he had sold some bark containers to someone from the furniture makers’ stall. Good craft is good craft, whatever the genre.)

The public areas were cunningly carved out of mature conifer plantation, with the trees thinned out enough to allow light through for grass to grow for people to walk on, and, at the unmown edges, for tangles of undergrowth to emerge, limiting people’s wandering.

Working woodland works well as a venue: both main stage and bagpipes alike became just a vague siren call from the other side of a block. There were many entertainments. I ignored most of them, of course, because I enjoy being serious. Samba band, chainsaw carving demonstration, mountain biking display, acrobats, yadda yadda, whatever. I had information to hoover up: yum. In a brief, happy afternoon I found leads on half a dozen things I’d been wanting to find. And all within the comforting green of forest. But after I’d checked out names and faces from other woody events, fallen into intense discussion with a man who sometimes kills squirrels for a living, bought a clay plaque from another who lit up about his ancient hedgerow research, and gathered up a small mountain of contact details and leaflets, I leaned against a Scots pine tree and settled down to the serious business of listening to some really fine bluegrass music.*

For a few brief hours, I was in heaven.

There was room for improvement, of course. Pissing in a chemical loo in the middle of acres of woodland seems a little perverse, and the burger van really should have been selling venison burgers (and squirrel kebabs), garnished with some of the abundant wood sorrel, with forest mushrooms as the vegetarian option… but overall, the event was sheer bliss. I have seen the future of partying, and there’s room for a really quite surprising number of trees in it.


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* Please insert your preferred taste in music here, and don’t be put off. Banjos aren’t, as far as I know, an essential part of forest festivals. I think the gods laid that bit on just for me.

And the "news" is: Tony wants nuclear

I’m kind of motivated about climate change. If an informed, networked, intelligent society, after careful and cooperative study, decided that the only viable low-carbon energy production and consumption system for the near future had to be one that involved nuclear power in the mix, I would accept it, albeit with deep reluctance.

Instead, we have an arrogant clique, run by an arrogant man who clearly enjoys thinking of himself as a big player amongst world players, and who shows precious little love or understanding of either science or ecosystems. The kind of man who would start a war in the name of democracy, when over a million of his own people (and that was just in London) had taken to the streets to say – in a beautiful, peaceful, rather British kind of way – "well, no, actually".

I don’t want "strong leaders". I want truth, and cooperation, and genuine debate. And some intelligent, honest decision making, dammit.

I also want beauty and love, but the actions of world leaders remind me how to feel hate, on days like today. I listened to the news on the radio this morning, turned south, and spent the next minute or so visualising hurt and harm to that self same arrogant man.

It isn’t the right answer… Love is the answer, though applying it is way tricky. Gotta dismantle the ideas, and ignore the figureheads. World leaders are just another kind of life form: they possibly even deserve as much compassion as cutworms* do. But on days like today, I listen to decisions taken about the world I love, reckless, thoughtless decisions which seem way beyond my control, and what I feel is hate.


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* See "Cutworm" post, Tuesday, May 23, 2006.
(You’re right, Ingaborg: this user interface so sucks – can’t find a way to back link to archived posts: yuck!!)

Ideas of Morality

Hauling full watering cans around is a pain in the back, and it’s no fun for my conscience, either. We’re too far north here to have a hosepipe ban – yet – but I’m still acutely aware of being part of a society that has drained the lands and channelled the rivers to a shadow of the burgeoning wild they could be, and that has managed to create a water shortage through sheer childish mismanagement.

I’ve been amused over the last few days to hear that a man of the Christian church has dared to suggest that air flights might be a moral issue, in the light of what we know these days. Well done that man, and, er – yes. What's taking everyone so long? The amount of attention his comment has generated, and the sharpness of some of the replies, suggests that the remark hit home; perhaps this idea’s time has nearly come.

I of course am at a loss to understand that there’s any question. How could a system of morality _not_ include our impacts on that which is
(a) mysterious, beautiful, uniquely alive, and (if you’re into that kind of thing) the source of many mystical and unplifting experiences; and
(b) our mutual life support system?
For most of my life this has left me where I’ve become comfortable, out on the extremes, but from now on – if I can manage to stand still while the world turns – I’m willing to enjoy my journey all the way over to the mainstream.

Meanwhile, I've found there is a plus side to all the watering: frogs. They hate being watered, but they love the places where I’ve been watering, over these awful dry weeks. They leap from my thickets of cut-and-come-again lettuce, and lurk accusingly under my alpine strawberries, as I drench the ground. It gives me a tired little surge of joy and pride (always a danger sign, in us fanatics) as I realise that, in this pondless desert, I have created habitat for them. I shall water on, plotting for the day when, in a saner system, my lettuce cravings won't need to be a problem at all...