Golden Yellow

 At a time when we are all oppressed by the appalling wars and threats of greater wars that dominate the world's attention, we are confronted with a choice between trying to reconcile such realities with our own peace and sanity, or simply attempting to block them out. After all, who are we to imagine that we can get any kind of sound understanding of all the terrible things that are happening, let alone do anything about them?

I write in the conviction that they cannot be blocked out, otherwise they are likely to break into our lives with all the brutality of the letter I came across the other day, informing my mother's uncle of the death of his son, Paul Smith, in WWII. For all our inadequacies, even for our own sanity, the horrors have to be addressed. Here, there is no exceptional  knowledge or expertise which can possibly provide the answers. 

After all, experts are people who specialise, and there clearly is no speciality that can cover the issues raised. Furthermore, experts of any kind necessarily have their own hobby-horses, vested interests, and the first necessity here is to free our minds of such interests. How come, we may well ask, do ordinary people frequently have better insights and instincts than the experts?

Such are my excuses for writing about matters about which I merely have the benefit of what might be called a lifetime of intellectual browsing, in the context of a good deal of salt water and some prayer. I am far from claiming to be always right, but I can at least claim to be detached and as honest as possible. My being virtually without power or influence I take to be an advantage, which enables me to offer my thoughts merely as a challenge to my readers to figure out what they think. If we all did this, we might find that 'we the people' all have a lot more common ground, and hence perhaps more power to turn things round, than we realise. We  may also realise that for all the complexity, the basic issues are actually quite simple, while the human race has not been wrestling with them for thousands of years to no effect. Of course, there will also be those who will do their very best to prevent any such realisations occuring!

Three apparently separate matters have devilishly preoccupied me lately, and I suppose many other people too,-  covid, Israel/Palestine and Ukraine. The 'pandemic' aptly set the stage for the other two, in being an extreme case of governmental and corporate overreach, which finally convinced me that the world, democratic or not, was in the grip of powers which do not have ordinary people, their welfare and their rights at heart. This reality is also playing out of course in the above mentioned wars.

So what is wrong? For a start, governments on all sides are in a very bad place, with in most cases national debt completely out of control and chronically escalating, and with a frequently sick, declining and discontented population. What better way to get the people to fall in behind them, to knuckle down and forget about all those impossible problems like balancing budgets and addressing climate change, so we can carry on with old faithfuls like printing money and polluting the planet regardless? We 'the people'  have to insist on addressing the basic problems rather than allowing ourselves to be distracted from them. Giving Varadkar and his mates an emphatic thumbs down in the recent Irish referenda was a good start!

However, there is the very ideology of the nation state to be addressed, which is so  widely taken for granted that most people do not even realise that it is an ideology. Some people claim that the concept is as old as the will of communities to survive, but I think not, at least, not in the sense of these modern states that envelop the individual from the cradle to the grave and determine what he or she can and cannot do and even say, in a mode quite beyond inter-personal mediation. The Judeo-Christian tradition, on the other hand, places our destiny, on the personal as well as the communal level, within the transcendent revelation of the one and only ground of Being. 'My country, right or wrong' erects the state into a false god. Collapsing the tension introduced by an independent and universal church facilitated this. 

It was indeed unfortunate that this process managed to identify itself with a necessary process of emancipation, both for individuals and so that 'the scientific world-view' could develop. It was appropriated by the Protestant Reformation and subsequent Enlightenment thinkers. Then people started asking foolish questions like 'Does God exist?' Faith was reduced to theism, with the French philosopher Pascal proposing his famous wager (that we may as well bet on God's existence for obvious reasons) and Voltaire declaiming 'Si Dieu n’éxistait pas, il faudrait l’inventer'.

Even in France (fille ainée de l'Eglise) the remnant of the Church was largely subsumed into the state. English nationalism took a giant step down this road from 'Good King Harry' onwards, and much the same impulse seems to have driven on into Amerca, even as they all considered themselves 'chosen races'. The Catholic Church, on the surface of things, languished in the fight between these assertive nation states, each considering itself a kind of church. European civilization fractured as faith was separated from reason, spirit from matter. But nationalism and indeed science fed on war. Now that same science has rendered war impossibly destructive, with our societies disintegrating for all kinds of reasons but fundamentally because they thought that they could do without God, so we simply have to put our civilisation and culture together again by rediscovering Him!

A good place to start is to recognise that there is no sense to asking 'Does God exist?' One necessarily finds oneself discussing someone else's idea of God, and they are all very inadequate. But somehow we have to get our feet on the ground of existence. Some philosophers went on to question whether life itself exists. A slap of salt water should be enough to settle that. Then one can go on to discover that good and evil, true and false etc really do exist; they are not mere social constructs. On the other hand, nothing ever gets created unless someone starts with some kind of an idea,- I am scratching my head even in order to construct a bit of a greenhouse! 

What does it take to construct the Universe? But we do have a bit of a problem in acknowledging an intelligence so far beyond our own. It is tempting to avoid doing so, confining  our attention to the more manageable 'power fields', such as a rugby field or a company or even the family or the nation state. Forget God and the Church, let's just concentrate on our parts on whatever little stages we can act, where we have some hope of exercising our will to power! 

The problem is that life becomes so fragmented that it no longer works when the ineffable is shut out; each little part becomes absurd if it has no basis in the whole, and people keep trying to force it into little boxes which they think they can manage. Nationalism is the ultimate embodiment of this will to power, and genuine community is something else, which crushes noone. Perhaps the best we can do is to think in terms of direction of travel, but we must start on the road. This is part of the reason why I opted for Irish rather than British nationality. 

Nowadays however Ireland is facing a choice between following Sweden and Finland into Nato, or holding out for an alternative. Supposing a Russian fleet sailed up the Shannon to seize County Clare with Shannon airport? Unlikely, maybe, but we would look a trifle silly trying to dig out some of the old cannons for the 18th century batteries! But how about a massive cyber attack? So what might Israel's alternative be, to attempting to root out and destroy Hammas in Gaza, not to mention chasing Arabs from the land? And what is Ukraine's alternative, to fighting on against Russia?

One thing is certain, warring nation states are going nowhere but towards mutual destruction. 'Victory' is not possible any longer, in the sense that nation states understand it. So I think in the case of where I live in Ireland, we must hang tough outside NATO, indeed be more assertive about this and advocate its dissolution, on the grounds that it is rooted in the Anglo-American will to power. Maybe we will actually get a new American President who concentrates on getting his own house in order, which I would count a good thing, while hoping it will be Kennedy rather than Trump,- it is too questionable whether the latter is capable of concentrating on anything except himself. I'm hoping the American electorate will spring a surprise on us, just as the Irish just did,- noone foresaw that referendum result coming! 

As for Israel and Ukraine, in both cases, they could start by imagining a future state of affairs where the different ethnicities have their own cantons, free of outside interference,  albeit with appropriate cooperation,- just as indeed the whole world needs to, especially Europe, while throwing off its dependence on the USA.. It is difficult, there will be plenty of set-backs, but it's not beyond the bounds of possibility, and the alternatives are truly dreadful. Considering the technologies of control that are being developed, modern nation states of all hues are threatening to become hideous tyrannies, as they try to hold atomised, fragmented populations together. 

We all need to rebuild community from the bottom up, while developing 'energy fields' that do not depend on national governments in both directions, big and small. I am working at it particularly on the level of our mini community here in Rahona, and on the level of the Gannetsway,- and I am after giving the 'Anna M' a new colour scheme, replacing blue with golden yellow. I would like it to reflect a change in my state of mind, from despondency at the way the world is going, to hope in a new beginning! There's a big effort coming up to get her back in the water.

                                           

Fishing for Meaning.

It's now over 50 years since myself and Fiona came to live in Ireland. I had  despaired of my life in England. It had already become clear that stormy weather was ahead,- that the relatively cosy and complacent post-war period that I was born into was coming to an end - but this was not in itself a cause for despondency. Anyway things went on shambling along better than I expected. No, what caused me to despair of the set-up was an  endemic, institutionalised refusal to even ask the important questions, let alone to find answers.

    The 'Enlightenment' notion that first principles, religious quarrels and questions of principle and meaning could simply be set aside, while the adults in the room got down to addressing the 'real problems' of economics and power, albeit ideally in an atmosphere of tolerance even if this was not extended to those many people 'beyond the Pale',- this notion was already buckling under the strain. After all, that society did depend on many principles about what was right and wrong, true and false that had been forged in a sharper age, but had largely degenerated into unexamined assumptions.

    I was a confused young man who was presented with such insights mainly by a small group of Benedictine monks, and in particular by one who, himself buckling under the strain, took his own life. Graduating at Cambridge University, teaching in a lousy school in the Liverpool dockland, working on Fleet St, continually being told you can't say that, participating in the revolution that those monks attempted but failed with at Downside, - all pointed to a big sign saying NO EXIT, to quote the title of one of Dom Sebastian Moore's books. What was a bloke to do?

    Maybe I, as an English Catholic, looked to that Ireland 'beyond the Pale' through somewhat rose-tinted glasses, and also through the eyes of my special friend at school, an Irish lad who was exiled to that English boarding school. Unlike so many who were actually living in Ireland at the time, we saw it as a place that was free of at least some of the brain-fog that beset the antiquated structures of the British Empire,- a place of possibilities and a certain freedom of spirit. We were not however entirely naive. One helluva confrontation was obviously going to happen there!

    How would Ireland fare in the storm of modernity? How is one to reconcile the many and varied claims of the past with the advent of an ever more interconnected but troubled world? Having grappled so painfully with such problems, was it even possible that Irish people would once again ride to the rescue of civilisation and religion, as they did in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman version?

    Back to the cave! I went hunting while Fiona minded it and the children. Besides the facts that I had to earn a living somehow and at least knew a little about fishing and the sea, and that I fell in with the right people, especially one John Maguire whose funeral I attended just the other day in Glencolmcille,- besides all this was the thought that it provided the ideal platform to confront many of the existential problems that were plaguing me.    

    The sea reflects so many aspects of the mysterious reality of God. We may contend with it, we may even on occasion confront it, along with enjoying its many gifts; but God help us if we fail to respect it, merely trying to rearrange it to suit ourselves. Going to sea, fishing, rearing a family with Fiona of nine beautiful children, all this not alone kept me sane, but to my mind this archetypal existence was an ideal environment for sorting out and hardening up the fruits of my education and early experience. Such is the sea, 'the common sacrament of Man', the counterpoint to that other fundamental sacrament which, as many a sailor could testify, has a difficult relationship with sea-faring,- marriage and family. 

    As I was coming to the end of my fishing career, the crisis of modernism seemed to be coming to a head. The referendum on divorce was hardly a promising basis to take up the challenge, but there it was and I felt called to fight it. Since then three of our five daughters have suffered divorce. I know plenty about the difficulties of marriage and the fact that it does sometimes fail. The big question is how to find our way to reconcile this fact with the imperative to assert marriage as the lifelong union of a man and a woman, which is at the basis of genuine family life and much else? I gradually came to understand marriage as the paramount icon of the Covenant between God and Humanity, wherein faithfulness and love embrace, and life itself should be transmitted. 

    The more that icon is obscured, the more society and the state become dysfunctional, unhealthy and unhappy. One only has to look around to see the results, as the proponents of no-fault divorce and as the current constitutional attempt to redefine the family as any 'durable relationship' refuse to acknowledge. Just imagine how much less expense the state would incur if families everywhere were functioning well! Instead we have atomisation and creeping authoritarianism, while the disintegration of families continues apace.

    Much else besides marriage and the family is on the line, many crises are apparently coming to head, yet I still find it difficult to raise such issues even in the circle of those whom I know and love. Is there a discernible relationship between the destruction of the family and the proposed WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty? In an astonishing line-up, national sovereingty, meaningful democracy, personal autonomy, freedom of speech and our very health and even survival are on the line along with the family as we know it. All too often, those of us who raise such issues find ourselves up against the whole gamut of methods used to shut us up. Well, we are told, 'stop ranting, if people are not listening you won't get through, there's nothing we can do about it, so why distress ourselves?' 

    Meanwhile the World Economic Forum, which somehow seems to have a whole new global generation of political leaders in its clutches, touts this historical moment as 'The Great Reset'. Their machinations are often referred to as 'the globalist agenda'. Among other things they openly propose that the world's population should be radically reduced. Indeed, how many nice, decent people have we heard say 'there are just too many people in the world'! Now of course they on no account wish to countenance the notion that the great and good could actually be doing something to rectify this little problem,- that they are all for bumping off a few billion people! A more drastic confrontation of pragmatism and principle can scarcely be imagined.

     One very understandable response is to withdraw, to pull up the drawbridge, let down the portcullis... or to sail off into the sunset! Would this be my escape route? I'm heading to Portugal again to get my old boat out  next week. But let me say, that just as I replied to those who accused me of escapism for going fishing in Donegal by saying 'I was dropping in rather than dropping out', I say it again now. I am not retreating, but going on the attack. I fancy myself demonstrating that we can actually have a Great Reset that is both fun and effective.

    Powerful ideas invariably take an aspect of truth and distort it, snedding it away from the universal body of truth that we Catholics identify with Christ and the Catholic Faith. It is nothing but the truth that the problems which confront us are both existential and global in scale, and they call for global responses. One way in which we part company with the 'globalists' is in thinking the rich and powerful are the right people to promote such responses. No, on the contrary, they constitute the problem, not that any of us with two pennies to rub together are entirely free of it. The exponentially growing chasm between the rich and the poor and the suffering of so many families are consequences of the love of money and pursuit of power; the antidote is very clearly promulgated in the Bible. What is special to this moment is the way in which the issues are lining up, the choices are clarifying, the stars are brightly shining and aligning!

    We have to rediscover that after all the Lord who created us and this whole amazing universe does actually know what He is doing. Our task is to liberate ourselves from our will to power, which we can only do by putting ourselves in His power, and let Him show us the way to go. This is far from doing nothing. There are whole libraries of books that purport to show us how to do it, and a multitude of differing approaches, but they generally involve closer relationships with our fellow travellers and with nature, and a willingness to live and to take responsibility. 

    This involves examining our lives, listening to the voice within, rejecting slogans, being ready to leave our comfort zones, seeking Wisdom and sound principles. One little technique that I have found helpful is voyaging up and down the Gannetsway on the Anna M - silly old me, but I stand by William Blake's dictum, 'He that would do good must do it in minute particulars'! At any rate, the experiences of family life, of community, of primary production and of nature are prime ingredients when it comes to appreciating first principles.

Back to Nazaré next week!

 

Some Place For Fun!

A Funny Place For Fun!

In such a stormy world, with so much suffering, I find myself sometimes asking whether one has any right to feel happy and fulfilled, to enjoy oneself, to make optimistic plans for the future? I suppose the inevitable answer is N0, we have no such right. Nonetheless, perhaps if we are capable of such feelings and plans, it is a noble and necessary thing to uphold them; but must we then close our minds and hearts in order to do so? Well, would it be better to leave the world to sink in a sea of misery? 

    'Something has gone wrong that absolutely requires us to fix it!'* But is there in fact a possibility of the radical alternative? If there is anything more depressing than the realisation that, for instance, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza are insane, and possibly the precursors of a general conflagration fatal to the whole of civilisation; that the Governments and media which conspire in the inept, incompetent and dishonest response to Covid or climate change are dancing to tunes at odds with the welfare of their peoples, or that the financial set-up  operates on the basis of Ponzi schemes that will inevitably collapse; if there is anything more depressing than such thoughts, I say, it must be the conclusion that there is very little indeed which we can do about it all.

    That may be so, and yet, hope springs eternal, like the Spring! After all, on a cold and wet day in Ireland in early Spring, the hope of it is, to say the least, elusive. Personally, I fall back on that old tale of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus; in fact, I cannot imagine how any joy is possible without that saving grace; this it is which enables me to look at my grandchildren and affirm, yes, you can have a great future, and it is indeed  worth all the trouble of living! The problem remains that it can seem improbable and remote. The only answer to this is the experience of death and resurrection here and now, in our lives.

    This requires that we submit to all the deaths in our lives, loosing our very dreams of life and letting go of illusions.  I might mention the power of governments or 'science' or big corporations to solve our problems, with their stock-in-trade rockets and vaccines, or the massive heaps of debt that go with them. This is easier said than done, but if, for example, doctors had simply been left to get on with following their experience, consulting with their contacts, experimenting on their own account - if we trusted to their genuine authority, born of actually helping people, rather than the malign influence of those who were busy making fortunes at our expense - how different things could have been!

    It also requires that we do likewise in all the minute particulars of life. It is actually a great thing that life cannot go on on its present course, so that we may enjoy the fun of trying to live differently,- not in fear for a change, but in expectation of great things to come! It just happens that I am engaged in a little rehearsal with my old boat. Things couldn't go on the way they were, five years ago,- she was leaking too much for a start, and anyway, the way diesel has got so expensive, with boats having to pay the same tax as cars, along with everything else, I had to give her up or find a new way of going on.

    So now the crunch is getting very close, even in my own little way. Will we manage to get that electric drive together, and all the other jobs that need to be done to get the Anna M back to sea? Will we even manage to get that company off the ground, making marine electric drives? It has to be this Spring! I shall be heading back to Nazaré early next month. Will I ever get to sail along with the dophins on a calm and sparkling see again? Watch this space!

  

*  Bret Weinstein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLp9YMM7CI4

'O Rising One'.

 

November was a very productive month in Nazaré, with the hull finished except for the top coats of paint, and the interior getting into shape too. We are all set up for a big effort to launch in the Spring.

Along with improving life at home, it is remarkable what a hold this project has on me, after five years of uphill struggle. The more the world seems to be going to Hell in a handbasket, the less I find myself inclined to pay much attention to it! After all, as I see it, millions are dying before they ought to be, and the mainstream media only talk about those aspects of it that they want to. I have looked in vain for reference in the Guardian for example to the recent debate in Westminster about the proposed new WHO treaty. If they think they have to guard anything, national and individual sovereignty in such matters ought to be very high on their priorities. Well, I will settle for asserting my sovereignty as best I can, and for proving how good life can be in that little zone over which I have a degree of control.

Coming home in the old citroen with Fiona was fun. Here are some photos from the ferry leaving Santander:-

As long as we manage to keep the sense of fun alive, we must be doing something right. Chances are, if we play, we can also pray; and according to Fr Simon at his talk in Glenstal the other day, the two make the essence of the Lord's Day, which the longest of the ten commandments bids us to keep holy.

I have the temerity in fact to associate the renovation of the 'Anna M' with the rediscovery of such truths. Sunday Mass in the Sanctuario de Nossa Senhora da Nazaré has greatly helped me to keep at it anyway, and this Gannetsway, which the project celebrates, constitutes what for myself is the heartland of Catholicism. Transcendent notions do need to be grounded in physical realities like geography, by virtue of the mystery of the incarnation which we celebrate at Christmas, and which makes Christian faith so distinctive,- without it religious faith can indeed be very oppressive.

Meanwhile, since I cannot expect most people to share such ideas yet, the Sea, 'the common sacrament of Man' according to Hilaire Belloc, provides a challenge, a value system and a basis for authority that I hope they will find very difficult to deny. The sea, at least, does not suffer fools gladly! And either we deliver this project or we don't, but we shall try very hard.... Happy Christmas all!

Advent star from the gate of Glenstal Abbey,

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae et sol justitiae, veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O rising one, splendor of eternal light and sun of justice, come, shine on those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

The Fog Is Clearing.

Granny and Iris.

            It’s been two months now since I posted on this blog. I have been on one hand living a great life at home in County Clare with Fiona, whom I was so fortunate as to marry 56 years ago today; also with three sons and their children near at hand. There’s a lot to be said for being a retired grandfather! Yet on the other hand I have been in something of a state of paralysis on various fronts.

The most basic is the task of figuring out the way ahead with the Anna M. A robust plan of campaign was elusive, but we do seem to have achieved it now, and I should after all have the resources to get her back in the water next Spring . However, if  she is not paying her way within two years, she will have to be sold. The short slide presentation here lays out the plan.

Meanwhile I continue to wrestle with more existential problems. For instance, how come it is so difficult to talk honestly about the excess deaths that are occurring especially in the most ‘advanced’ countries of the world? Or even about the covid pandemic itself? It was shrouded in lies from the beginning, with all that talk of coming directly from animals in the wet market, and with anyone who mentioned the Institute of Virology up the road being dismissed as a ‘conspiracy’ loonie. Then came all the obfuscation and downright lies about the vaccines. 

It seems sometimes that the Mainstream Media and our entire democratic set-up have finally taken leave of Truth. Major casualties are the UN and the WHO, though the latter’s power grab seems to plough on regardless of any accountability. The longer this situation goes on, the more radical is the breakdown of trust, the less tenable is any middle ground and the more radical the disintegration that is in danger of tearing democracies apart. 

Had the autocrats and oligarchs of the world invented a weapon to do so, they could not have done better. What they thrive on is the fear of death, chaos and social disintegration; nothing suits them better than to be able to point at democracies unable to form stable governments, democrats at each other’s throats and unable to protect their citizens as they struggle on in a state of isolation and confusion. 

There are other candidates for the prize of maximum divisiveness and confusion, notably the Ukraine war and climate change. Perhaps I will be virulently condemned for even suggesting that these may not be clear-cut issues, and much as we would love to see Ukrainians living in peace and security, there may be better ways to achieve it than through war, and likewise we will not stabilise the climate and our way of life by attempting to decarbonise too fast and by demonising CO2.

Such is the balancing act of those of us who continue to occupy what seems an ever more precarious centre ground. To those who claim that we are merely ducking the issues, refusing to commit one way or the other, I would like to quote the words of Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, spoken yesterday as he opened the current Synod in Rome, of which he is the ‘Relator General’:-

‘ When we walk, Christ is the centre. There are people on the right, on the left, there are those who walk further ahead, there are those who take longer and stay behind: it is normal when we walk together. We must learn that certain tensions in the Church are normal: it means the Church is close to the people, because not everyone thinks in the same way on all continents, on all issues. So it is important to listen with a lot of respect, also for different cultures, seeking God's will, to decide together the way forward…..

‘Since there are several people who ‘place’ me on the left, let us say that I am walking on the left. If I take Christ as the centre and look at Him from the left, I do not see Him alone, I see Christ with the people walking on the right. I cannot see Christ without also seeing them: that means that those walking on the right are also part of my community. It means we have to walk together. I hope the same experience happens to those who are walking on the right side, those who go forward, those who go behind….’

Surely here there is a moral for us all, though of course the Cardinal with his ‘if I take Christ as the centre’ is assuming that we look at Him with love and revere Him as the Truth. If we try to substitute some abstract version of the Truth, a mere intellectual construct, it just won’t work. One is likely to find oneself with no alternative to looking at some strutting tin-pot dictator, who insists that we believe his version of truth, or else jumping into an abyss. 

I believe that those guys in funny clothes in Rome represent our chief hope of saving democracy and indeed civilization,- so God help us, and them! Some will find this an outlandish idea, and others will be only too delighted if they can portray the Synod as a major bust-up and a failure; but for myself, as St Peter had it, there just ain’t no other place to go!

ps, Robert Kennedy for President!

 

'Fool me once....'

It seems as if a whole age has passed since I first put the Anna M on the concrete in Nazaré five years ago, and we are now living in a different world. I find it particularly alarming for two contrary reasons,- on one hand because the pandemic brought home to some of us at least just how immediate is the threat of totalitarianism even here in Europe, what the Powers are capable of doing once the public can be sufficiently scared, and on the other because at this stage so many people just want to forget about the whole affair. The saying ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’ comes to mind. There are some lessons that must be learned.

Exactly what the ‘Powers’ may be is hard to say. It is evident at least that there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the general population to a few multi-billionaires,- also that shadowy someones succeeded in getting governments all over the world to abandon their own protocols and fall into lockstep behind a disastrous narrative and course of action, which they are currently doing their best to avoid discussing, and so we now find a Resistance lining up against these ostriches (or snakes as the case may be). 

To what extent we need to resist an organised conspiracy, or a fortuitous confluence of interests in money, power and ‘scientism’, is perhaps impossible to determine, but certainly whatever-it-is reflects what Pope St John-Paul II used to call the ‘culture of death’, which has seen the steady erosion of the right to life and the acceptance of abortion, euthanasia and so on. This in turn is in line with the eugenicist movement of the 1930s, which had however to keep its head down for a while after the full horror of Nazism unfolded, and resulted in the Nuremberg Code in 1947. Unfortunately, the principles which it laid down have been flagrantly flouted in these recent years.

We may consider three basic categories of persons in connection with the onset of totalitarianism:- power mongers, including the deluded and the cynical ones, who for example find it in themselves to party while ordering the masses into a cruel and destructive lock-down,- then those caught perhaps between an easy life with some nice financial perks or making things difficult for themselves and possibly losing their job or worse, who merge into the crowd who simply decline to seriously interrogate either the prevailing narrative or themselves, for reasons which are however best left to themselves to figure out, because accusing them of being lazy or afraid will not get us anywhere, and might not be altogether fair anyway. Then there are the resisters.

It has to be said straight way that the later also face pitfalls, such as, too readily casting themselves as illuminati, aligning themselves with every cause agin’ the government, and vociferously objecting to anything which might impinge on their personal liberty. So it is that we are finding scepticism about the official narrative of the pandemic and the vaccines aligning in some hefty quarters almost automatically with climate denialism and scepticism about the EU and the war in Ukraine, and frequently with support for the famous American ex-president currently in trouble with the law. 

It is also true that fear, though it is the common feature of totalitarianism, does have its own raison d'être. After all fear does have its place in the scheme of things, as surely the bravest of soldiers will admit! Anyone who goes to war with no sense of fear or danger is not likely to last long; but one cannot learn from fear so long as it remains unacknowledged, unrecognised. This is the kind of fear that makes people cling to their precious narrative regardless of any facts. Going to war remains necessary in some sense, if we are to defend civilisation from disintegration, but we must let our causes be constantly tested against facts and results!

It is a fact that the world is getting hotter, and there is sufficient reason to believe that fossil fuel burning has a lot to do with it, to make it only prudent to drastically reduce our dependence on it. Anyway it is a dirty business. We didn't have to wait till coal got too scarce or expensive in order to replace steam engines with electric ones! As for the pandemic, then we saw, up close and personal, lies promulgated about the vaccines being 'safe and effective', our basic freedoms suspended, and digital passports for the exercise of basic rights issued on condition of compliance with that suspension. In China we are already witnessing where such totalitarian control leads. It is worth quoting from the chilling account of Tahir Harmut Izgil in the Guardian:-

We heard that, beginning in late 2016, everyone’s data was being entered into a system known as the Integrated Joint Operations Platform(IJOP). On the basis of this data, the police - and especially the neighbourhood police - marked the file of each individual they considered dangerous. Since everyone’s ID cards were linked via the internet to the IJOP, anyone with a mark on their file would set off the siren when they scanned their ID card at the ubiquitous police checkpoints, and would be apprehended on the spot….

    We may anticipate that there will be no shortage of crises to give governments excuses for such measures. The climate crisis may well make a contribution, on the basis of carbon credits and so on. One way or another, if we do not stand against it, such control is coming our way fast. Artificial intelligence will enable only a small cadre to exercise control. Some serious voices are saying that we have perhaps only a couple of years to effectively mount resistance to the onset of an appalling global tyranny, and that we have only a fast-closing window of opportunity to prevent it from becoming established. Even if this proves alarmist, we know well that it is better to mount resistance early than too late. Yet how rarely this has occurred in the past!

It is not to be expected that such resistance will be all harmonious. Differences of opinion and approach there will be in any aspect of life and political movements in particular, and genuine politics results from their interplay. I am not proposing to think in terms of some new party. What is essential is that we establish modes of communication and structures of mutual respect and trust, both online and in physical reality. Some like myself may well believe that to enable this there is ultimately no substitute for ‘the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’, but meanwhile we must be open to goodwill wherever it comes from.

    To make any kind of start, I suggest a few propositions which would need to be more or less accepted, such as:-

• The covid pandemic was scandalously mismanaged, and the vaccines which were said many times to be ‘safe and effective’ were neither. 

• The blanket mainstream coverage of both the wildfires and the pandemic have a certain déjà vu quality in common, in marked contrast to the coverage of vaccine harms and excess deaths.

• The world is indeed overheating, in part at least because of the greenhouse gases which we are putting into the atmosphere. This is resulting in tides of displaced persons and refugees, whose plight must to be responded to on an international basis, as does the threat of nuclear Armageddon and other threats such as the pollution and over-fishing of the oceans.

• Governments and oligarchs have apparently an inbuilt tendency to grasp more and more power over our lives, while technology is opening up horrifying new possibilities for doing so.

• Meanwhile the claims of governments to represent the interests of their populations grow thinner by the day, as they fail in such basic matters as the real economy and public debt, housing, the support of family life and the birth rate, the maintenance of health services and law and order, while marching to the tune of heaven-knows-what which is antithetical to these interests. 

• We will not do developing countries any good by sucking out all their best and brightest, to make up for the fact that we are too sick or lazy to rear our own children, and it also has to be remembered that 'good fences make good neighbours'.

• None of us want our societies overwhelmed by debt, any more than by foreigners.

• Both national governments and the EU are in various ways nonetheless essential to our peace and prosperity. They will only thrive and function benignly if full subsidiarity and accountability be reclaimed, which currently means a radical change of direction. In Ireland and elsewhere, local democracy badly needs to be developed.

• Another thing that needs to be considered is the establishment of local currencies, with their own banks. It is in working together that the necessary trust may be established.

• Perhaps the implosion of Twitter will provide the occasion for a rethink about how best to discuss this kind of thing online?

• The most basic requirement is that we do not succumb to censorship and isolation, but establish actual communities of people who know each other and can interact and communicate physically on an ongoing basis. Wherever we encounter people who do not feel free to say what they think, we are losing the battle against totalitarianism.

• We should not accept notions that undermine basic axioms of our culture, such as that God made the human race male and female, that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, or that we have a duty to protect innocent human lives. We must defend the family, based on real marriage.

• We need to work every way we can to reclaim subsidiarity, bolster local community, make sure education is atuned to parents, foster resilience and self-sufficiency.

  

  This is mainly about protecting the vegetables from the west wind.

  
  

     Last comment, on a more personal note, let those who can keep the freedom of the seas! For one thing, we will need the kind of resilience that the sea breeds. For another, air travel is too easy to control, and indeed the taps may get turned off wherever one depends on fossil fuel. I propose to do all I can to keep open the ancient sailing route between the West of Ireland and the Iberian peninsula…. See The Gannetsway Project.

The Father's Business in the Realm of Appalldom.

When the 12 year-old Jesus went awol, and Mary and Joseph eventually tracked him down in the Temple 'sitting among the doctors, listening to them and asking them questions', he responded to his mother's reproaches by saying 'Did you not know that I must be busy with my Father's affairs?' (Luke 2:41-50) He hardly felt so driven out of a mere academic interest. 'The Father's Business' was surely about vital concerns such as how to reveal truth and empower justice, with due respect for the freedom and integrity of wayward and stubborn humanity, in a world overcome with lies and injustice; about how we poor creatures may find life while all too often we find ourselves in that state of 'quiet desperation' that I call 'appalldom'; about how to make sense of it all, to construct a narrative that works and may reconcile mankind with God.

The seriousness with which such concerns engage some teenage minds should never be underestimated. Much so-called education tends to steamroll over them, crushing them into the ground. Then again adults in the midst of their care have little time for those concerns; and indeed how can one live life when there are so many appalling things going on, if one stops to think about them all the time? The young and the old however may find some common ground in finding that they can't help but do just this. It should be the concern of educators to support them in doing so, while encouraging and indeed challenging youngsters to think for themselves, to critically evaluate all the stuff coming at them, to value and seek out coherence and consistancy; teaching them about the age-old struggle of humanity to realise truth and justice. To do so, one has to share one's own problems. We all have to wrestle with problems about what we may and may not say, for a start. We do possess a mysterious inbuilt sense of truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, but following that 'steep and narrow' path is not easy for any of us. That the rich and powerful rarely do so should be no surprise, considering that they inevitably see the world through the lens of their own wealth and power.

It is a very old story. Now however it has acquired a universal aspect, with a very small plutocracy equipped with the technology and wealth to potentially dominate the whole world. That this threat is very real, immediate and personal, has been brought home to many of us by the treatment meted out to us in the recent pandemic. It is a new experience for most of us who are fortunate enough to live in Western democracies to realise that our governments and much of the media continue to lie to us, for instance about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines; that they have clearly been following some alien agenda. As it increasingly takes on the aspect of deliberate and calculated attempt to 'put one over on us', causing many of us to find ourselves appalled at the immediate prospect of digital control over every aspect of our lives, we are only too justified in being wary of similar techniques of instigating panic and scape-goating dissidents to enable drastic authoritarian methods of control. 

Some are inclined to throw the war in Ukraine and the climate problems into the same basket. This is probably simplistic. We would all like to have a tidy narrative, arranging truth and falsehood, good and bad in accordance with the notions of our own tribe, which spares us the pain and difficulty of thinking for ourselves, and enables us to find shelter from the relentless bombardment of stuff which frequently seems to be sweeping away the whole structure of life as we have known it. But the tendency to throw global warming and the war in Ukraine into the same box as the pandemic, only alarms me further, even while I recognise for instance the clear linkage between the military-industrial complex and its pharmaceutical cousin. 

In the case of the war, the trouble is that the history of American wars since Vietnam makes it difficult to credit the more venerable narrative of the Land of the Free standing up to bullies. Years ago, discussions of such matters with my Dad always came back to his saying, 'Well we were very glad of them in 1941', to which I really had no answer; but it seemed to me that the wheels came off that narrative finally when President Kennedy was assassinated. I am tentatively hoping that this Robert Kennedy Jnr may be going to get America somewhere near back on track, but when I hear him say that, for instance, 'he would settle the Ukraine war on day one', I can only say 'I wish'. My opinion is that the only people who can really settle it are the Russians, by having another revolution, though one wonders whether it may really turn out to be more benign than the Bolshevik one! Meanwhile the whole world should facilitate it by supporting the Ukrainians.

To hear intellectuals and pundits whom one respects spouting Russian propaganda is painful enough, but they too have to be heard. Unfortunately, the art of good lying is to keep a good footing in truth, while none of us are in full possession of the latter. To sort it out, the first necessity is to listen to all, so long as there is a reasonable chance the differing views are being advanced in good faith. The moment when you introduce censorship, whether you are a Putin or the 'liberal' media,  you have lost it. At least spotting the lies is good sport, and training youngsters to do so needs to be foremost in the mind of educators, even including through physical sports.

One excellent way of doing so is to take them sailing, and going to sea is a mighty antidote to lies and soft thinking. I'm still hoping to be able to do so before the year is out, but am struggling with finance. Sailing north in July is out. I'm now hoping to sail for the Guadiana for the coming winter, and with a functioning electric drive. I have come to the point where I see the ability to do so, to sail the sea freely and without the necessity of paying for diesel oil, as a little act of defiance in the face of the advancing digital totalitarianism the likes of the WEF, the WHO and even the EU are preparing for us all, - while at the same time affirming my faith in the transition from fossil fuels. Let's hope for a host of sailors happy to find their fun in such a way!

Meanwhile, the dogs are calling me for a walk. It's a tough life here in West Clare, while work goes ahead slowly on the 'Anna M', thanks particularly to my Russian friend Tole.  I am getting down to work with him about ten days a month. Those flights from Shannon to Porto however get expensive in July and August, while we have lots of people to look after at home. Big effort coming up in the autumn, and volunteers welcome!

photos by Anna and John.

Afloat in July?

    Spring is gradually giving way to Summer, albeit in fits and starts here in Ireland, where after a couple of radiant days we are liable to find ourselves back in chilly dampness. Dare we hope that the triumph of hope and confidence over hardship and doubt will extend beyond the turn of the seasons? There are many levels on which we may harbour possibly furtive expectations that this may be the case, and despite the lurking fear that we shall inevitably be disappointed, we struggle on in the hope that perhaps we may even live to see them all fire up together!

    We tend to become so numbed by the big boggies,- war, environmental degradation, economic

Salamanca cathedral

hardship, false narratives of all kinds - that we forget to rejoice in the little triumphs that do come our way, which is why thankfulness is so important, not to mention praise. Thankfulness to whom? Praise of whom? I do not see how life can work if we cannot find our way to some kind of faith in God; but what's more, if we are not to become caught up in some kind of phantasm exterior to our human becoming, it is necessary to settle for trying to encounter God in Jesus, crucified and risen, and to believe that he does indeed await us in the midst of all our striving and the relationships that it entails.

 

Palm Sunday in Nazaré

  So now, having got that off my chest, I am happy to report solid progress with the 'Anna M'. The epoxy/glass skin is at last finished, and it now has to be only smoothed and painted. Excellent weather and a great crew came together for the job: Arturo, a Portuguese American who grew up in New York, Anatoli from Siberia, Lulu from Belfast, and myself. It is fun to thus find ourselves transcending the stupid conflict between Russians and Americans, not to mention the little problem on our island of Ireland between north and south. The sea and sea-faring doing it again!

'Anna M's epoxy skin

    Progress is also being made below decks, and Arturo has moved aboard as mate, cook and general factotum. If only we can overcome the financial problems, and Alec can get his act together, we intend to sail north in July, with him aboard and his electric drive installed. He will be on the lookout for a partner interested in commercializing the electric drive project.

Brilliant crew, job done!

    We envisage a whole new kind of sailing sport, which will put the emphasis back on using the wind as motive power, and only using the motor when absolutely necessary. As explained in previous posts, the idea is that the propeller charges the batteries when one is sailing well. There will of course also be as many solar panels as possible. The less batteries one has, the more skill and patience will be needed; but down the road one may look to hydrogen fuel cells for 'real grunt'.

    It's been a long haul, while I have become a kind of commuter between Nazaré and West Clare. Now that the pandemic is past, it is great to see improvement in communications between the two picking up promptly. Brittany Ferries has the new ship 'Salamanca' on the run from Rosslare to Bilbao (and the motorway to Nazaré on which Salamanca is a great half-way stop), which is quicker and more stable than the old one, and leaves clean air behind instead of a big black smudge. I was kindly given a tour of the engine room, also spectacularly clean with its gas-powered engines, shoving the ship along calmly at 20 knots against a fresh SW breeze. But most of the up and down has to be done by air, and the new Ryanair flight between Shannon and Porto certainly makes the journey a lot easier. 

One of 'Salamanca's two engines

Early bird in Porto, two hours to Shannon.

    

    

    

    For all the wonders of technology, I would rather make the journey in the 'Anna M'! How I hope to be able to do so again! Still, rebuilding her has been fun in itself, and it is important because she represents the moment before modern sailing boats became completely different to the load-bearing vessels of the past. I still entertain the hope that the concepts we are playing around with in her will find commercial applications both for fishing and freight. 

    Meanwhile, talking of hope, I have to record my excitement at the candidacy of Robert Kennedy Jnr for the American presidency, my admiration for his courage and prayers for his safety and success.