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What the geese know

May 19, 2025 by bobleckridge

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.

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Swapping souls, sharing experiences

May 18, 2025 by bobleckridge

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.

Here’s a link to the Instagram video (I don’t think you have to sign up for Instagram to watch it) – https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJraxjsoFw9/

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Why cooperation not competition should be our foundation

May 15, 2025 by bobleckridge

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?

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Our entanglements

May 2, 2025 by bobleckridge

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 like that idea. It’s beautiful.

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Should we try democracy?

April 30, 2025 by bobleckridge

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.

    I mean it’s pretty thought provoking, isn’t it?

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    Can we stop killing now? Please

    April 26, 2025 by bobleckridge

    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.

    What kind of human beings do we want to be?

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    Left or Right?

    April 25, 2025 by bobleckridge

    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?

    Does that sound radical to you?

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    A sense of purpose

    April 20, 2025 by bobleckridge

    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.

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    Who are we?

    April 17, 2025 by bobleckridge

    I’m reading “How the World made the West” by Josephine Quinn, a fascinating and mind expanding history of how the concept of “The West” arose. This paragraph really got me thinking –

    “The study of antiquity gives the lie to the idea that everyone is born with a natural, fixed ethnic identity, tied to specific other people by ancestry or ancestral territory. The concept is fundamentally incoherent anyway: at some level all humans share the same ancestry and territory, and decisions about where to draw lines across that shared heritage in time and space can only ever be arbitrary. But ethnic identification is also for the most part a relatively modern phenomenon, associated with modern levels of literacy, communication and mobility. Without these, communal identities tend to form on smaller scales. And despite their physical proximity to one another, links between the ‘Phoenician’ ports were relatively weak.”

    This reminds me of my experience working as a GP in the Irvine Valley back in the early 1980s. There were three small towns in the valley, Galston, Newmilns and Darvel. Although they seemed pretty similar in size, and even appearance, to the locals, especially the elderly locals they each had distinct characteristics. For example, one elderly woman told me a traditional saying was “Darvel for swanks, Newmilns for banks, Galston for guts” and another told me she was born in Galston but when she married she moved to Newmilns (two miles away), “But I couldnae staun it and had to come hame” – she couldn’t stand living in Newmilns and had to move back to Galston. Yet another, this time from Newmilns, told me the old piece of marriage advice she remembered was “If you can’t get a man, go to Galston and get a miner”. As Josephine Quinn writes, “communal identities tend to form on smaller scales”. 

    By the time I was working there, each of the towns had changed considerably, with mining and textile industries disappearing, and an increasing number of people moving to the valley and commuting for work. However, when I left in 1986 to take up a post in Edinburgh, a twenty something year old female patient asked me what Edinburgh was like. She had never been. I asked her if she usually went to Glasgow (there’s actually still quite a cultural divide between Scotland’s two largest cities), but she said no, she’d never been there either. I asked where she had been, and she told me she’d visited Ayr once. She definitely identified with place, not an ethnic group. 

    Anyone who has done even a small amount of genealogical research into their own family, pretty quickly finds that their ancestors come from a wide range of towns, or even countries, and those who use on the DNA testing genealogy services, find that they have percentages of their DNA which can be traced to several countries around the world. 

    Josephine Quinn makes the point that DNA discoveries have undermined the concept of separate, distinct, or “pure” races, and that her research in ancient history (her book focuses on the period from 1500 BC to 1500 AD) undermines the concept of competing “civilisations”. As she describes each period, time and time again, she shows that trade and migration play a key role in the spread of ideas, technologies and innovations, whilst strengthening local cultures of belief and tradition. 

    Nothing we are familiar with today would be possible without a long, long history of migration, communication and trade.

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    Nostalgia for good vibrations from America

    April 13, 2025 by bobleckridge

    Yesterday I heard The Beach Boys song, Good Vibrations, on the radio and it took me right back to my youth. It came out in 1966….that’ll be 60 years next year! I’d only be 12 when I bought the single. I’ve always loved it. It was innovative and it’s aged especially well. I enjoy it now as much as I ever did.

    But, here’s the thing. This time it evoked a certain sadness in me. Something it hasn’t done before. It wasn’t the sadness of getting old. Sure I can feel sad that my mortality is more obvious to me than it was when I was young, but surely that’s just normal, and it’s not something that colours my everyday. Maybe it was a bit of nostalgia – for the years, on the brink of becoming a teenager, enjoying my life with my large group of friends who all shared an enthusiasm for music. There are so many songs from that decade which delight me still….and I read a study recently which suggested the most powerful music for us (neurologically) is the music we listened to between the ages of 15 and 25. Well, those figures are not fixed, for sure, and I’ve read many other studies about the power of music to increase quality of life and slow down cognitive decline, especially the music of our teens and twenties.

    But, no, this wasn’t a nostalgia for my teenage years with my friends. It was a nostalgia for America.

    OK, I know that every Age is a complex mix of experiences and events, but I grew up through the years where music like the Beach Boys, Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and so on, created very positive, delightful, moods for me. To be honest, I started with the Beatles, moving on to bands like The Kinks, The Who, Genesis, Yes, Jethro Tull, and so on. I used to listen to the pirate radio station, Radio Caroline, and the constantly fading out and in signal of Luxembourg, 208. My vinyl collection (yes, I still have those records I bought, mainly through those years), is heavily British, but there are a significant number of American artists in there.

    I suppose the kind of feeling I had for America was coloured by that music, by Woodstock, and Peace and Love. And, frankly, those feel like kinder days.

    Those feel like lost days.

    In 2025, the stories from America are about hatred. Hatred of “immigrants”, and “others”. Stories of turning allies into enemies. Stories of suppression, of arrests and deportations. The UK and several EU countries have changed their travel advice to citizens seeking to go to America – and the message is, even a visa won’t guarantee you entry. I don’t know anyone who is thinking of traveling to America this year. It feels a place of hostility and fear.

    So, the sadness I felt when I listened to Good Vibrations, came, I think, from feeling that the vibrations from America now are anything but good.

    I’m sure you’ll have a different experience from me. We all have our own experiences. But I thought I’d just take a few moments to share what happened to me. And to hope…..to hope that, one day, maybe in my lifetime, I’ll associate America with Good Vibrations again.

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