These are all plants which I’ve discovered in my garden this month. I didn’t plant any of them. They just appeared, clearly their seeds having been borne here by birds, wind, or other creatures. Every single one of them is a delight. Every one of them stimulates my favourite “emerveillement du quotidien” (my everyday wonder). Every single one of them has stopped me in my tracks, to gaze, admire and contemplate not just their beauty, but the incredible, unpredictable nature of Nature.
And in every case, there are several of them. There are a number of these plants, either close together, or in quite different parts of the garden.
I first saw “Selfheal” when it appeared by the forest and spread across the grass as I was recovering from an operation the year before last. I didn’t know what it was, but it gave me a real boost to discover its name and its ancient uses (I didn’t actually swallow any of it, however!).
The poppy is also a medicinal plant, and the ones which have appeared “from nowhere” this year are the tallest poppies I’ve ever seen. (I haven’t swallowed any of that either!)
Apparently the “Prussian asparagus” is edible, but there are only about six of them, so I’m letting them be, in the hope that they will seed and spread further.
Several of the “Lizard tongue orchid” plants have appeared together in a clump at the edge of the forest, and I found a “Bee orchid” in the front plot. Every orchid I’ve ever encountered strikes me as a wondrous plant. They all appear to me as astonishingly beautiful.
So, with the beauty, the wonder, the science and the symbolism of these plants, I really feel blessed. I’m going to share the photos on social media using a hashtag of #AGiftFromGaia – maybe you’d like to do the same.
I’m really enjoying reading Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac”, published in 1949. He was a naturalist who bought a farm in Wisconsin and this little book is full of beautiful observations and reflections. Read this extract –
We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.
Fabulous.
But it could have been written yesterday.
How much progress have we made with this understanding and knowledge in the last, over seventy years, since he wrote these words? How’s it going with our “sense of kinship with fellow-creatures”? Maybe there are individuals, and even groups of individuals, who feel this strongly, but where is it in the politics and economics of any country? Which political party, or politician, has risen to power on the back of a promotion of our “sense of kinship with fellow-creatures”? Heavens, they can’t even have a sense of kinship with children dying in war, famine or poverty. They can’t even have a sense of kinship with people who were born on some other patch of land, other than the one they, themselves, were born on. But, I think it’s still something we should aspire to. It’s still something we should call for. Not just kinship with children everywhere, but with our “fellow-creatures” too. The loss of species threatens the very survival of our own species. Industrial farming techniques produce poor quality food to shipped into factories and, not just processed, but “ultra processed”, something we are learning causes inflammation in our bodies, triggers chronic diseases, and, I read today, even pushes microplastics into our brains.
“a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise”……..I am firm believer in the power of wonder. I haven’t the slightest doubt that it contributes to the experience of a better life, of a better today, of a better present. If we had more wonder, we might be more humble, we might be more careful, we might fall in love more, we might understand more, we might care more.
These are values I think we can build better lives on, values we can create better societies from……let’s have more “kinship”, more “wonder”, and more desire to “live and let live”.
I’m reading “A Sand County Almanac”, by Aldo Leopold, published back in 1949. It’s a delightful series of small essays on Nature, conservation and life on a farm in Wisconsin. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to the proclamations of today’s politicians, and a wholly different set of values, and seem to see the natural world as something to be plundered.
Early in the book, Leopold muses about the return of the geese from their winter migration. And he says this – “It is an irony of history that the great powers should have discovered the unity of nations at Cairo in 1943. The geese of the world have had that notion for a longer time, and each March they stake their lives on its essential truth”
Isn’t it amazing that the “essential truth” is we all share this one small planet, and that borders are totally artificial phenomena created by human beings to either try to grab a part of geography, or to exert power over others, creating a basic feeling of “us and them”. There are those who are included within a border, and there are those who are not – “aliens”, “foreigners”, “migrants” – any title other than fellow human beings.
Life moves around planet Earth.
We see it clearly in migrating creatures, not least the birds who spend part of the year in one hemisphere and part in another. But we only have to look back over a pretty short period of human history to see that we humans too, migrate. There have been great waves of migration in the past (not least to America from Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries) and constant flows in between. Yet the powers that be seem to promote the us and them idea and think people should be judged and treated differently according to where they happened to have been born, or where their parents happened to have been born.
I think this is a kind of madness. It’s a delusion to think we can divide the human species up into all these separate, invented categories, and cruel to treat others according to where they, or their parents, happened to have been born. Who chooses where they want to be born?
I’ve long thought the problems of our modern societies are not caused by migration, but by greed, selfishness and inequality. Until we reverse the current trend of the rich getting richer while life becomes harder and less secure for the rest, politicians will seek “others” to blame – and, to often, those “others” are those who “were not born here”. Targeting those “aliens” or “foreigners” is a convenient way for keeping the Public attention away from those who are really causing the problems – the elites who grab and hoard more and more wealth, and are in the process of passing it on to their children through inheritance, enabling the next generations of the rich to become even richer, without having to do a single thing to do so.
This current system isn’t working. It’s not good for families. It’s not good for society. It’s not good for Nature. It’s not good for the planet. So who is it good for? Well, I think we know. But the trouble this, those profiting from it are a tiny minority of the human beings sharing this one little planet.
I watched the prequel to “Yellowstone” recently, “1883”. There’s a character in it called “Shea Brennan”, who has a monologue about death of loved ones, how we deal with grief, and how that can inform our life choices.
“An Apache scout told me once, when you love somebody, you trade souls with ‘em. They get a piece of yours, and you get a piece of theirs. But when your love dies, a little piece of you dies with ‘em. That’s why you hurt so bad. But that little piece of him is still inside you, and he can use your eyes to see the world. So, I’m takin’ my wife to the ocean, and I’m gonna sit on the beach and let her see it. That was her dream.”
I thought it was a really moving, and rather beautiful, scene. Surprisingly, I haven’t heard that idea before, the idea that when you love someone you exchange a piece of your soul for theirs. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever come across the idea that the soul can be broken up and a piece given away before. I’m more familiar with the idea that when you love someone your soul becomes entwined with theirs.
In fact, I prefer the image of the entwining, over the one of pieces being exchanged. The soul doesn’t feel a divisible concept to me, and, I’d say, my experience of life is that when you love someone you entwine your soul with theirs, and that your souls are entangled for ever after. Even if a relationship ends, through, drift, breakup, or death, the souls remain entangled.
However, let’s stay with the movie quote for now, because the other aspect of the belief he outlines, is that if your loved one has died, then they are able to experience the world through you in some way. That, too, strikes me as a beautiful thought, and, again, isn’t one I’ve really considered before. In the movie the character’s wife had a dream to see the ocean, so he decides to make his way to the coast so he can sit on the beach and she can see the ocean through him.
I think those with whom our souls are entangled, do continue to be affected by our experiences. Even as I write that, it strikes me as a radical, perhaps even crazy, idea, but there’s something there rings true. And it’s something I’ve encountered many times, in my dealings with patients and their relatives.
I follow the work of Christopher Ward on Instagram. He has something he calls “modelstrangers” where he stops people in the street and asks if he can make their portrait with his camera (he makes really wonderful portraits). As he takes photos he speaks to them, or actually, he does little interviews, and lets them do most of the talking. Recently, he encountered a young woman called “Amaal”, who said her brother, aged 20, had died last year, and she said “I have to live for both of us as he can’t enjoy it”, “so I want to enjoy everything” and she goes on to describe the beautiful, ordinary experiences of everyday life, which she nows pays close attention to, and which she enjoys. Really, it was a beautiful little interview. She’s obviously a very special person, but it’s the same sentiment…..that a loved one who is no longer with you can now only enjoy the delights of this world through you.
Whatever you believe about souls and about afterlife, I think this notion that we become entangled with others through love, and that we can consciously choose to share our daily experiences with them, wherever they are, for ever after, is a beautiful, life enhancing, deeply nourishing idea.
I’ve long believed that we should “relish the day”, that we should be “heroes not zombies”, becoming ever more aware of the beauty and mystery of this world, that we should stir our capacity to wonder as we go through an “ordinary” day, but, now I think I can take that a step further, and call to mind my loved ones, and share these daily delights with them, even if they aren’t here in my same time and place, to enjoy them for themselves. In fact, especially if they aren’t here in my same time and place, to enjoy them for themselves.
The dominant narrative in our current industrialised society is competition. It’s held up as the key success factor in capitalism, in business, and even, often citing Darwin, in evolution. It’s presented as the main way in which we humans have improved ourselves, succeeding over other species, beating each other to the top. It’s presented as the way to power and wealth. The key to success and happiness.
There is no denying that competition exists, and that its greatest worth is how it pushes people to improve. Sport is all about competition. It’s exciting and it drives human performance constantly to do better than has ever been achieved before.
Clearly, competition has its place.
But putting front and centre of the whole of life seems seriously misguided to me. Throughout history it has brought war, violence, exploitation, abuse and corruption. Because it all depends what you are competing for. If it’s more power and wealth, it too often results in division, xenophobia, racism, selfishness and cruelty. If you’re competing to improve, to achieve your best self, to create the best, fairest, healthiest society, maybe it’ll help.
I worked all my life as a doctor, so my area of knowledge and skill is what makes human beings thrive. If you consider the human body you can see that it contains billions of cells. Billions. Many of those cells grow together to form body organs, like the heart, the lungs, the liver and kidneys. Many grow together to form tissues, like bone, ligaments, skin. Other grow together to form systems of chemicals and cells, like the immune system and the endocrine system. Are all these cells, all these organs, all these tissues in competition with each other to be the best they can be? No, they are not. If our heart was in a continual war with our kidneys, we would be sick. If our immune system was in a continuous race against our endocrine system, we would be sick.
A healthy body is based on collaboration. It’s based on relationships, especially “integrative” relationships. Integrative relationships are defined as “mutually beneficial relationships between two well differentiated parts”. In other words, health, and, life itself, emerges from a vast, interconnected web of collaboration. When it works, we have harmony. We have flow. We have ease. We have growth and maturation. When it doesn’t work we have sickness and death.
I often think of that when I read about society, politics or economics. Why base those systems on something more likely to drive violence and a world of “winners and losers”? The body doesn’t do that.
Not only that, stop for a moment and reflect. Which human being could thrive entirely by themselves? In isolation, with only their themselves to deal with everything? None. There’s not a single baby born who would have made it to adulthood without the care and support of others. There’s not a single human being on this planet who has made it to adulthood without a vast web of “integrative” relationships – between themselves and others, between themselves and other living creatures, between themselves and the rest of Nature.
What would society be like, what would politics be like, what would economics be like, if we based it on the natural reality of life on Earth………not excluding all competition, but putting collaboration, care and sharing at the heart of everything we do?
I’ve been watching the series, 1883, recently. There’s one scene I found especially thought provoking. The character, Shea, or “Captain”, talking about grief, describes his belief that when you love someone a part of their soul becomes embedded in yours, and a part of yours in theirs. His wife, who died from smallpox, had a dream to see the ocean, so he’s making his trek West across America to get to the ocean, so that he can share that experience with the part of her soul he carries in his forever.
Whatever you believe about souls or spirits, this is either a beautiful fact, or a wonderful metaphor. I am sure that when we love someone, and they love us, then we do become entangled forever. Even if there is physical separation resulting from life paths which diverge and take us to other towns, or other countries, even if there is the physical separation of death, then this entanglement continues.
I often think that a person is more than the physical existence of their body. They are their personality, their stories, and, indeed, their soul. Every single one of us changes this world simply by living in it. It’s inevitable because we are so embedded and interconnected. The changes we make are unique. There was never the distinct you, before you were born, and there will never be an identical copy of your life at any time in the future. We impact on those who encounter us. We are changed by our encounters.
So, as memories and stories continue, so does the entanglement of two souls.
I’ve understood that for a long time, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I might share my wonder of the world, my amazements and delights, with my loved ones, parts of whose souls I carry inside mine.
I”m currently reading this astonishing book by Josephine Quinn challenging the whole idea of “civilisational thinking”. She makes an extremely well researched and detailed case for how we got to where we are now, through hundreds of years of trade, travel, migration, and the rise and fall of power bases in cities and lands across Asia, Africa and what we now call Europe. It’s an astonishing read.
In her chapter about Athenian democracy, which is often held up as the standard “the West” claims to pay due to, she shows just how different democracy was there from the versions of it countries say they have now.
It feels as if our current versions of democracy are in crisis. They are distorted by populism, which seems to generate space for new waves of autocracy and fascism. And they are corrupted by money. It’s becoming clearer than ever that wealth buys the governments that the wealthy want. There is soaring inequality, and a decades long grinding down of working people and standards of living as neoliberalism shovels money up from the bottom to the top, privatises the Commons, and pushes “deregulation” to escape any chance of being held to account for the actions of corporations and billionaires. Meanwhile the Public looks at the system and can’t see a political party which will address the real problems we face.
In the Athenian version of democracy, Josephine Quinn highlights three features which protected it from both populism and corruption (accepting it didn’t do that 100%) –
1) Lawmakers were chosen by lot, not by anyone voting for them. What, no voting?! Yep, the method was probably pretty similar to the way a jury is chosen. Jurors are selected by lot. Nobody votes for them.
2) Secondly, those chosen were paid to do the job for a year, so it remained (technically) open to everyone, not just the rich.
3) And, thirdly, they had to step down after a year, and be subject to an open public audit, to look at how they had acted during their term of service. In other words, every one of them was held to account.
These three basic features were designed to protect democracy from the rich and the corrupt, and to engage the greatest number possible of citizens in the law making of the land.
Of course, Athens was a pretty small town by current standards, and present day countries couldn’t manage assemblies of the entire population to gather and make decisions (although with modern online technologies, perhaps the geographical limits have been lifted)
This is an entirely different vision of democracy. If we chose our “representatives” the same we choose jurors, if we paid them for their work, limited them to a single term in office, and held them to open public audit when they stood down, it would make it harder for the wealthy to buy elections and for lobbyists to corrupt politicians (who couldn’t be career politicians any more) – Can you imagine it?
There are lots of other good ideas around the world which might improve democracy, from citizens assemblies and referendums creating a more participative democracy, to trials of different kinds of proportional representation, but none of these ideas are as radical as those we saw in place back when democracy was born.
On a recent visit to Saint Rémy de Provence I popped into the Musée de Morlaix where they were exhibiting the work of André Marchand. I’d never heard of him before, but he was one of a number of artists who made Provence their home. This particular painting really caught my eye. It’s entitled “La Guerre” (War) and he painted it in 1945. I mean this could have been painted yesterday. Maybe it’s not on the same scale as Picasso’s “Guernica” but, for me, it has a similar impact. André Marchand was so traumatised by what he witnessed in the Second World War, that, from that point on he decided he would include no men in his work. He kept that promise. Thereafter he painted women and scenes from Nature. He produced some truly beautiful work. I recommend researching him and checking out his paintings.
But, this painting…..it immediately made me think of Gaza and Ukraine, yet those are only two of the areas of the world where military violence is being inflicted on women and children. How is that ever right, or justified? What kind of people are we to accept that it’s ok to send missiles, bombs and drones into houses, hospitals, refugee camps? To starve whole communities of food, medicines and fuel? To destroy whole neighbourhoods?
I know the justification is that the “good guys” are trying to kill the “bad guys” but, seriously, we haven’t evolved beyond that kind of thinking? These terrible acts aren’t new. Was there ever time where warriors only fought other warriors, where soldiers only fought other soldiers? Not as far as I’m aware. Whole populations have always been slaughtered, beaten, and raped when fighters move in. It happened in ancient times. It certainly began to happen on a more industrial scale during the two World Wars, as cities were carpet bombed, and two Japanese cities were incinerated in seconds with the two nuclear bombs. It certainly continued through the destruction of whole communities, cities, forests, and farm land, in South East Asia, in Africa, and in the Middle East.
A whole culture of “find the bad guys and destroy them” irrespective of “collateral damage” (what a horrendous expression!) caused by bombing residential areas, medical facilities, schools and camps. It’s a whole culture of extrajudicial killing. Identify who you believe to be guilty and kill them. No laws involved. No “due process”. No justice.
There was a scene in the Yellowstone series which I saw recently where an indigenous American said –
The United States has broken every rule it has ever made. From its first treaty with France to every treaty with us, to their last treaty with Iran. They only hold others to their rules. They make war when they want, where they want, they take what they want, then make rules that keep you from taking it back. They make rules for the slave and they make rules for the masters.
I know it’s a work of fiction, but sometimes we need to turn to fiction to learn the real truths. It’s not only The United States which is acting this way. We see Israel doing it. We see Hamas doing it. We see it in far too many places around the globe. Are there any countries with clean hands?
Can we just stop now?
Can we evolve? Do better? And just stop killing.
Do you think we could ever make international agreements to not act as judge, jury and executioner, but to adhere to some agreed rules if we really, really can’t resist the temptation to slaughter people?
Could we make the world a better place? Or will we continue with the despicable tradition that victors in every conflict are those who inflict the greatest amount of suffering on others?
We can be better than that. It’s not hard to find daily acts of kindness, of compassion and care. It’s not hard to find people helping each other out when crises or calamities occur. It’s not hard to find people prepared to make agreements, to form mutually beneficial relationships and to work together to make their lives better.
I saw this post on Instagram recently, posted by a French philosophy site. I’ll translate it for you.
“To be on the Left, is to, first of all, think about the world, then your country, then those close to you, and then yourself. To be on the Right, it’s the inverse”
Deleuze is one of my favourite, and most fascinating French philosophers. He seemed to have the ability to get you to see something in a completely new light. This is one of his more political sayings, and, it strikes me, it’s as true today as it was when he said it. In fact, it’s even more true.
Every populist Right wing autocrat we’ve witnessed in the world appears to put themselves first, then their close contacts, then their country, and, finally, if at all, the world. Whether we’re thinking of Trump, of Boris Johnston, of Orban, Putin, Farage, or Milei, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that they speak and act in their own interests first, some of them to the point of pathological narcissism.
And yet, everywhere, the Left seems to have lost its way. We’re going through a phase where “Left” has become a pejorative term (frequently paired with “hard” or “extreme”) and we see one Right wing populist group after another achieving power, with little effective opposition.
Can we turn this around and embrace Deleuze’s priorities instead? Think first of the world, the planet we are desecrating, polluting and over-heating? Can we think of ourselves as a species, with ALL human beings our fellow citizens? Can we put that before thinking of countries, and seek to build, not destroy alliances and truly “integrative” , genuinely mutually beneficial relationships between countries? Can we then campaign for societies which serve the interests and needs of neighbours, our friends, colleagues and families, over the interests of billionaires and corporations? Can we then think how each of us can contribute to making this a better world for us all to live in?
I came across this chart the other day. Isn’t it fascinating? It charts the percentage of college “freshmen” saying that either “”Developing a meaningful life philosophy” or “Being well off Financially” was considered by them to be either an “essential” or “very important” objective.
Basically it shows an almost complete reversal of positions of these two objectives between 1965 and 2020. Now, less than half give “developing a meaningful life philosophy” compared to over 80% of them saying “being well off financially” is essential or very important. Back in the 60s, these figures were almost exactly reversed and the crossover point in the chart seems to be in the latter half of the 70s.
I’ve long held the belief that Thatcher and Reagan, as the main drivers of neoliberal economics, were at the turning point in our societies. I guess I’m part of what is called the “baby boomer” generation, and it seems to many of us that life has got harder and more precarious for most people in our communities over our lifetimes. It seems that Public Services have gone into steep decline, that wages have stagnated, house prices have soared, and jobs have become less secure.
What went wrong?
When we hear the present generation of politicians in the UK, and even more so in the USA, put forward policies which are every bit as neoliberal as Thatcher and Reagan, is it any surprise that this steep decline has been experienced everywhere. Inequality is higher now than it has been for decades. The whole economy has been “financialised” where we’ve been led to believe that the finance sector, and the rich, are the wealth creators, while, actually, their wealth is being created out of wealth, not out of productivity. The goods and services produced now seem cheaper and nastier than they were. The heroes of contemporary society are those who have grabbed the most for themselves over the shortest period of time and the huge numbers of billionaires and millionaires can’t find anything left to spend their money on except ridiculously expensive houses, yachts and private jets, so they’ve turned to buying political influence instead.
When the goals of society are to promote the wealth of the wealthiest and to deny, as Thatcher did, that “society” even exists, has, surprise, surprise, led to exponentially increasing amounts of mental and chronic physical illness.
Maybe Iain McGilchrist would point to likelihood that giving predominance to the left cerebral hemisphere over the right will have been, at least in part, at the root of this problem. But it’s a profound economic problem too. We are still trapped by the delusions of neoliberalism with its so called “free markets” which aren’t free at all, and “trickle down economics” which never trickle down.
We need something better. We need to break free of the neoliberals and the populist far right.
I welcome constructive criticism and suggestions. I will not, however, tolerate abuse, rudeness or negativity, whether it is directed at me or other people. It has no place here. ANYONE making nasty comments will be banned.
Heroes Not Zombies 