Heroes Not Zombies

I read a lot. I’ve always read a lot. I have a LOT of books. I’ve never counted them, quality not quantity after all! So, perhaps it was no surprise that I noticed this statue last time I was in Nîmes.

I can’t think of any other statues of people reading. Do you know any? Actually maybe I should call this a sculpture rather than a statue because I don’t think it was a commemoration of a particular person (correct me if you know better).

Storytelling and sharing knowledge must be two of the most fundamental characteristics of human beings. Books, of course, are one of the most powerful ways of sharing – of telling stories, expressing ourselves, learning what life is like for others, exercising our imagination, creating a shared web of knowledge and ideas.

Dictators and zealots have a history of attacking books, destroying libraries and/or burning and banning particular books. I suppose that speaks to the power of books and learning. Those who want to control others often end up trying to control what they read.

These days reading has become even more widespread, not just through books, but through social media, newspapers, magazines, hey, even blogs!

All of these channels can, of course, be weaponised, used to spread propaganda, to undermine and disempower as much as to spread knowledge, joy and experiences. That’s why I think education is so important. We have to teach our children, not just how to read, but how to discern, how to think critically, how to be aware of the power of words.

I do think a healthy, vibrant, flourishing society is one where everyone is well housed, well nourished and well educated. How bizarre that such basics seem so utopian.

Still, I’m an advocate for better societies, where the instinct for care and cooperation is given more attention and energy than the instinct for aggression and competition.

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Isn’t this the most glorious bee?

I’m no bee expert but I think this is called a “Carpenter Bee” (please correct me if you know better).

It’s almost completely black but has this iridescent purple colour on its wings. When I think “purple”, I think “royal purple”, and, actually we associate bees with royalty, don’t we? The “Queen Bee”. “Royal jelly”. I remember the three bees on the coat of arms of the Barberini family in Rome (Palazzo Barberini is an utterly astonishing gallery of art. Put it on your bucket list!)

We also have a number of bee metaphors in our language. “Busy as a bee”. “Make a beeline for”. “Got a bee in her bonnet.” What other ones can you think of? “Honey”, in English anyway, is a term of endearment. “I love you, honey”.

Do you see what’s happening here? A photo I’ve taken of a single bee sets off my trains of thought down pathways of the significance of the colour purple, the association of royalty with bees, memories of a long weekend in Rome, and a handful of associated metaphors.

That’s what we humans do. For every one of our experience is unique. If I just showed you this photo and kept quiet, you’d tell me your own particular thoughts, memories and musings. Our experience of this bee would be different for each of us.

Reality is an ongoing process of co-creation.

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I love this photo. The fire of the Sun has turned the sky orange and tinged the water laden dark cloud red. Fingers of rain reach down to soak the surface of the Earth. The little silhouettes reveal signs of Life, of trees on the far left and of a human constructed road and telegraph pole in the centre.

This scene is one of a spectacular concurrence of the elemental flows – fire, water, earth and air – which combine and interact to create and nurture the life forces and evolutionary drives which flourish on this little planet.

Fire. The energy of Sun without which there would be no Life, and with too much of which there would be no Life. Water. The apparently simple molecule of hydrogen and oxygen combined, which cycles around the planet, falling as rain on mountains and plains, creating rivers to reach the sea, evaporating under the heat of the Sun to fill the air with clouds, ready to fall again onto the earth. Earth. The carbon laden surface rich with a vast array of minerals, the substrates of all existence, without which there would be no forms. Air. Rich in water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide, ready to be sucked into the plants which use the Sun’s energy to turn it into stems and leaves and flowers and fruit.

The astonishing plant kingdom, our predecessor in the story of Life on Earth, the complex, vast web of living organisms, mind boggling in its diversity, adaptability and resilience.

And we humans, with our inventiveness, our creativity, our ability to transform whatever environment we live in.

Isn’t the ordinary, everyday, just astonishing? Isn’t this planet and our very existence utterly awe inspiring?

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One March day I drove to Callendar, just north of Stirling. One of the old ways of describing Stirling was “the gateway to the Highlands” because Stirling Bridge was one of the few crossing points over the River Forth. North of Stirling, the Highlands began, and to the south, the Lowlands.

Certainly by the time you reach Callendar the landscape changes dramatically, lochs, mountains and glens everywhere.

This one particular day it was very still so the surface of the loch I stopped next to was just like a mirror. I took a number of photos that day and I return to them frequently. They are both mesmerising and calming.

Such clear reflections challenge us to look more carefully, to take the time to figure out what we are looking at. And that’s a lesson I take with me wherever I am.

So why not pause now and reflect, allow yourself to slow down, raise your conscious awareness and see more clearly just what beauty and wonder there is around you today.

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Look, I know I stress the importance of things like uniqueness, difference and diversity, but today I want to share the beauty of repetition.

There is a comfort in the familiar. There’s an ease in routine. We are creatures of habit. And there is a beauty in repetition and symmetry.

I delight in all of that, so isn’t this another of the essential paradoxes of Life? I’ve often written here about the importance of separateness and belonging, of our need to be different and our need to share what we have in common with others. So here’s another one – the beauty of difference and uniqueness and the beauty of sameness and repetition.

What holds these opposites together for me is awareness – becoming conscious of, embracing and engaging with our everyday encounters. Not choosing one “opposite” to the “other”, but appreciating both, relishing both, delighting in both.

And not or.

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My garden is full of birdsong. There are many small birds, robins (two of them!), blue tits, several species of small birds I don’t recognise, as well as some blackbirds and pigeons. I guess these are all the regular inhabitants here and now I’ve arrived we are checking each other out, making connections.

I frequently notice a bird just sitting on a branch looking at me. We eyeball each other and I feel the connection.

The robin pops down pretty close to wherever I’m working to check out what I’m up to, and hops around the wheelbarrow and bags of cuttings once I’m done.

The garden here hasn’t been tended for many years and there are large areas of dense thickets of brambles, ivy, seedling trees and astonishingly vast “Old Man’s Beard” creepers with stems as thick as your wrist shooting straight up high into the tallest trees. As we clear them away the sunlight gets in between the trees lighting up the neglected hidden spaces. It feels like the trees are beginning to breathe more easily and the birds are finding new routes through the garden.

This phase of garden recovery is full of discovery, and fills the day with noticing and connecting…….noticing what is here and now, connecting to the present moment.

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Maybe when you were a child you would blow on a seed head like this one. You’d blow it to see how many times you’d have to blow to send every single seed flying, a bit like you’d blow out the candles on your birthday cake.

Maybe you’d make a wish. You would use the seed head to strengthen your hopes.

Maybe you’d ask a question and the number of blows would be the answer – you’d use the seed head to predict the future.

Maybe you’d try to tell the time from the number of blows you needed (something that only worked by chance or if you knew the time in advance)

When I look at a seed head like this one I see abundance. Nature isn’t a machine. She doesn’t use the least possible resources to survive and thrive – she doesn’t follow that idea of “efficiency” stripping everything back to the bare bones, delivering “just in time”. We saw this kind of “efficiency” collapse during the pandemic because we didn’t have enough health carers, didn’t have enough PPE, had supply lines easily disrupted and depleted stores.

In Nature, and in our own human lives, we thrive better when we have abundance, when there is “redundancy” in the system.

Does the plant really need all these seeds? Yes it does if it is to survive and thrive.

I remind myself of that when I gaze at this beautiful seed head, replete with hope, with desire, and with potential.

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You couldn’t have a better shaped beak than this to get to the nectar. You couldn’t have a better shaped flower than this to tempt these birds to pick up and share your pollen.

Isn’t it amazing when you see such a perfect fit – where the plant world and animal world help each other out so beautifully? The last Attenborough series was about plants (Green Planet) and time and again he showed such astonishing relationships between plants and insects, birds or animals. One scene which particularly amazed me was of a desert where there had been no rain for over twenty years. Not only was there a sudden explosion of flowering plants when the brief rain eventually appeared, something quite remarkable in its own right. But the exactly best adapted insects and birds to pollinate these flowers appeared too. Where did they come from? Where had they been for the last twenty years??

I know that competition, “the survival of the fittest”, and ideas like “the selfish gene” have dominated our culture and thinking for a long time now. But isn’t it clear that without cooperation, co-evolution, and what Kropotkin called “mutual aid”, Life just wouldn’t exist.

This thought came to me this morning after browsing my photos, seeing this striking bird, listening to the BBC podcast, “In our Time” episode about Kropotkin, remembering the Green Planet which I saw recently, and hearing the stories about Ukraine this week.

What the Russian government is doing is the worst of the competitive aggressive violent aspect of Life, but what ordinary people are doing is opening their houses, donating food and clothes, welcoming refugees and voicing their support for Ukrainians.

I heard someone say it’s the elites who behave so badly and the ordinary people who behave so well. Too black and white perhaps. But it was the same in the pandemic. People helped each other out, got shopping for the elderly and vulnerable, whilst the elite…..well they had parties and were granted exceptions to enable them to continue to travel and grabbed multimillion pound or dollar contracts to enrich themselves.

Mutual aid, generosity, co-adaptation and “interbeing”……maybe it’s time to change the dominant narrative.

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For most of us the colour red grabs our attention. It’s used pretty universally on warning notices, fire alarms and so on.

I took this first photo one February many years ago in Capetown. The red car sitting in front of the red building captured my attention. I focused my camera and just before I released the shutter this couple walked into the shot, he with his red hat on, and she wearing her red apron. I mean, what are the chances?

This second photo is one of many sunsets I’ve photographed over the last seven years here in France. I love those moments when the sun turns the entire sky red just before it sinks below the horizon for the night.

What is it about red? Is it because our blood is red so that is the colour of Life (and also, under normal circumstances we don’t see our blood so when it appears alarm bells ring?)

Red is love. Red is passion. Red is energy. Red is Life.

Red says Be Aware! Wake up! Take notice!

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I often think the fundamental principles of health, at an individual or collective level, can be found in Nature.

Difference and diversity are two of those key fundamentals.

Vast acres of fields given over to growing single crops year after year aren’t healthy. They need to be artificially maintained with ever increasing amounts of chemicals.

Individuals and small businesses innovate and adapt but vast multinational corporations grow towards monopoly positions and reduce diversity and choice.

A healthy organisation is one which encourages diversity and supports difference. Healthy societies are the same.

So if we want healthier organisations, societies, individual lives, we should be moving towards, not away from, differences and diversity.

In the pursuit of control, maximising profits for company owners and so called efficiency, we’ve seen increasing centralisation, standardisation and monopoly or near monopoly positions.

Diversity is beautiful. And it’s healthy.

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