The Wall

My partner and I were driving through Scotland in our campervan, heading south after exploring communities on the islands up there, searching for places where the great turning was felt and lived out in practice. The community of the Isle of Eigg had successfully ousted their historical absentee landlord and, having collectively taken ownership of their land, they were practising a sociocatic approach to their newly won commons.

Meanwhile, a few hours away by aeroplane, Palestine continued to crumble beneath the boot of a machine that has existed for as long as civilisation has, operated mostly by men with minds that neither of us could fathom. Children were being maimed, operated on without anaesthetic, and shot in the head. My partner was making a decision as we drove: should she fly to Egypt and join the March for Freedom in solidarity with the victims of a genocide that our own government was complicit in? What do you do when you've already marched the streets of London countless times, sat in vigils, written to MPs, donated to those with more skin in the game or greater experience?

As she grappled with the question of whether she should put her body on this particular line, the rain poured down, and we wondered together what it meant to be good in a world where the river of humanity flowed into so much suffering. We knew what we should do, but we're always weighing up risk and impact when we seek to align our values with action, and this step felt a bit too far, even if the desire to join those who chose to stand in solidarity was beating like a drum. I felt grief in those moments. Sadness. Disappointment. And somewhere, always, a quiet rage that I have never managed to fully alchemise into something more productive or meaningful.

Therein lies a root of the pervasive sense of hopelessness that characterises the great unravelling - our helplessness in the face of it. The meta-modern, post-industrial, neo-colonial, neo-liberal, consumption-driven, growth-obsessed, materialistic, atomised, disconnected, polluted culture that we swim in, rolls over us like a wave that is too big to break. It is not our fault. It was never designed to be this way. But it is. How can we reckon with it if we can't name it for what it is? Maybe if we step with courage and clear-sightedness into the truth of it, we might find a way to reckon with it instead of being consumed by it, or by the denial of it, or by the fear of what it means when we accept that the aggregate outcome of human civilasation has come to this: the collapse of the planet's capacity to support life, the silencing of the symphony of Gaia, the precious and sacred song of life that is heard so rarely in the cosmos.

The decision not yet made, we stopped for a night in Arisaig, and my partner looked up flights from Carlysle. I picked up the guitar and thought about all the people in the streets who were raising their voices against the tides of destruction and violence. I wondered at the minds of those who supported the killing of ordinary people for what? Power, privilege, wealth, land, ideologies, the need to be. The song appeared without a chorus or a refrain. It felt like a protest song. It needed a slogan to chant. At first, it came out 'we are not the war', but my partner sang 'the wall'. Pink Floyd said we were all just another brick in the wall, but they didn't go on to suggest we might ease ourselves out of it. The wall is real. How many bricks need to be teased out before it falls? In a complex system, the critical mass for phase shifts are smaller than you might think.