Rosher.Net

A provocative title – and possibly a trigger phrase for some, for which I apologise – but that’s what we seem to be doing in the UK. Ruled by an elite which is so totally disconnected with those it presumes to govern that it doesn’t even try to cover up the ridiculous, aberrant, contradictory and cruel nature of its activities. To be so uncaring is a symptom of psychopathy, and when it becomes socially untenable it is insane. That we permit this to continue engenders the title of this rant. For rant it is. Self serving and mostly to get it off my chest and ultimately as needy and ineffectual as the apathetic attitudes I deplore below. My bad, my blog.

In a land where rampant “austerity” has poured money into the pockets of the banks and the rich and yet the National Debt under this administration has soared through a trillion pounds into absurdity… in a land where public servants and public services are cut and capped and curtailed and yet MPs take a ten percent pay hike… in a land where the once almost unknown term “food bank” becomes ever more common… in a land where alleged sex abusers can defer their legal cases for reasons of health and yet still sit in Westminster… in a land where the very land we walk upon and the very waters we drink can be put into jeopardy by a never-ending thirst for fossil fuel (which is emphasised by the lack of commitment to any renewable agenda, and even the ending of renewable subsidy)… when the report into war crimes is delayed and delayed while we wait for the criminals it will name to die of affluent old age… that we are not rioting in the streets is actually stunning.

Today our noses are rubbed into the filth that a further badger cull is to go ahead. Despite the wholly validated scientific analysis that the previous culls have been both ineffective and inhumane, and reports that they may in fact have exacerbated the problem of TB in cattle, they plough on. It’s not science, it’s nothing more than lobby driven ideology. What to do…

I’m not able to excuse my own demotivation either. If anything I feel more anger at my own inadequacy than I do at the corrupt machinations of those who pull the strings. As a Druid and a pagan I have to ask, “what is the point of being a Druid and a pagan if in such times we do nothing?”. Yes, we can all sign electronic petitions and join Facebook pages against the badger cull and against fracking and against cheats and frauds being made Lords and Ladies (that last, in truth, mostly to assure the government of an easy ride for their next tranche of obnoxious legislation). We can buy t-shirts and wear them proudly. We can even march in the streets (politely and by prior arrangement or face the consequences). I don’t seek to denigrate such action. But does in fact had any significant effect at all?

Pagans are Earth centred folk. There is generally no transcendental deity remote from its creation, allowing a disconnect between the two, preventing the tainting and destruction of the one from soiling the other. What gods and goddesses we see are intrinsic to the ‘verse not above it, even for those who communicate with deity through the manifest forms of the various pagan pantheons. Environmentalism is seldom far away from paganism. Non-human animals have a worth which is at least comparable with human animal, tree, river, hill and hollow. Rather than seek dominance we seek relationship, we are not given the world, we are the world. Why do we not shout louder when our gods and goddesses are so defiled? A few are picking up the gauntlet, where are the rest of us?

Nobody is bombing us today… probably we are bombing someone else, probably we are selling armaments to dubious agencies elsewhere… but here today we’re fine. For this reason, alongside a cultural stiff upper lip and a television full of candy floss programming and safe social media (programming, a word so redolent of Orwell, of course applies more to the computer than the television), we sit back and say it could be worse. But it could be so much better.

A friend recently asserted that there is no one reality, there is only the reality one experiences and that everyone’s reality differs – and that this is fine. Only when the reality someone experiences causes them to become dysfunctional does it become madness. Dysfunction is generally relative to the society with which it is engaged, but when the society itself is dysfunctional within its landscape is it not equally mad? Hence my title. We are, complacently and compliantly, living with madness. How do we feel about that?