Critical Mass

After the third "No Kings" day, we are getting closer but consistent, meaningful action is needed

I often write that we are co-creating the world we are bequething to our children. Every action matters. Every cent spent is a vote for the kind of world that is forming. Our actions impact all species on the planet. Are we being good stewards of our planet; the only planet that we know of that supports life?

It’s a heavy charge. We have to do more than “bring our own bags” as Marc Maron noted in his stand-up send up, “End Times Are Fun.”

Lynn and I saw this show at the Kennedy Center some years ago. I refuse to call it by the new name given to it by the current administration. Our culture has done what cultures do traditionally. We only have to look at human history. Like any living thing, we sprout, we grow, and we die. We rise and fall. I’m reminded now of the “Weather Report Suite” which always reminds me of my own ancestors who farmed a plot of land in North Carolina for the better part of two centuries:

Winter rain, now tell me why
Summers fade, and roses die
The answer came, the wind and rain

Golden hills, now veiled in gray
Summer leaves have blown away
Now what remains? The wind and rain

And like a desert spring
My lover comes and spreads her wings
(Knowing)
Like a song that’s born to soar the sky
(Flowing)
Flowing ‘til the waters all are dry
(Growing)
The loving in her eyes

Circle songs and sands of time
And seasons will end in tumbled rhyme
And little change, the wind and rain

And like a desert spring
My lover comes and spreads her wings
(Knowing)
Like a song that’s born to soar the sky
(Flowing)
Flowing ‘til the rivers all are dry
(Growing)
The loving in her eyes

Winter gray and falling rain
We’ll see summer come again
Darkness falls and seasons change (Gonna happen every time)
Same old friends the wind and rain
Summers fade and roses die
You’ll see summer come again
Like a song that’s born to soar the sky

Morning comes, she follows the path to the river shore
Lightly sung, her song is the latch on the morning’s door
See the sun sparkle in the reeds
Silver beads, pass into the sea

She comes from a town where they call her the woodcutter’s daughter
She’s brown as the bank where she kneels down to gather her water
And she bears it away with a love that the river has taught her

Let it flow, greatly grow, wide and clear

Round and round, the cut of the plow in the furrowed field
Seasons round, the bushels of corn and the barley meal
Broken ground, open and beckoning to the spring
Black dirt live again

The plowman is broad as the back of the land he is sowing
As he dances the circular track of the plow ever knowing
That the work of his day measures more than the planting and growing

Let it grow, let it grow, greatly yield

What shall we say, shall we call it by a name?
As well to count the angels dancing on a pin
Water bright as the sky from which it came
And the name is on the earth that takes it in
We will not speak but stand inside the rain
And listen to the thunder shout
I am! I am! I am! I am!

So it goes, we make what we make since the world began
Nothing more, the love of the women, the work of men
Seasons round, creatures great and small
Up and down as we rise and fall

What shall we say, shall we call it by a name?
As well to count the angels dancing on a pin
Water bright as the sky from which it came
And the name is on the earth that takes it in
We will not speak but stand inside the rain
And listen to the thunder shout
I am! I am! I am! I am!

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Eric Andersen / Bob Weir

Weather Report Suite lyrics © Ice Nine Publishing Co Inc.

It captures something of how I see my grandfather having worked the land over the course of his lifetime. Harrowing the fields breaks it up for the plowing and planting. Harrowings is all about this but from another angle. I’m looking at our culture and I find the view to be harrowing if we are awake and aware of what we are doing and its impact on all life.

I ponder whether our species is capable of aspiring to the better angels of our nature and thinking in the long term. For example, I like to use the 700 year increment. In 1326, the Black Death had yet to arrive. Our ancestors were doing pretty well using the technology they had available but infant mortality was still high and lifetimes, although often extending into the seventh or eighth decade were generally much shorter. The way in which society was structured then would be quite transformed in short order. We stand at a precipice not so different from that which saw the last full year of the reign of Edward II of England, one of my ancestors as I am a direct descendent of Edward III, the last king that I can reliably point to as an ancestor anyway.

Now look 700 years out to 2726. Can one imagine what the world will be then? Just as those 700 years ago were laying the ground for what has come to be, doing what they could with what they had, we, here and now, are laying the foundations of the world of 2726.

If we grow in mindfulness and study our collective history and do it unflinchingly, we can have a better foundation for the decisions that we make, just one day at a time. Everything matters.

For myself, I am growing in the awareness about how narrow my own awareness is. Working at the corner cafe down the way from “The Bunker” as I call the 1904 condominium my wife and I have inhabited since 2010, I try to keep “situational awareness” on a continuous basis over the course of my shift. It is, frankly, eshausting, but I am relatively new to this having just done my first training shift a week ago yesterday.

In general, attention spans are attenuated. We’re built to filter information and to use our prior experience to make leaps past logic and simply react rather than respond to the environment around us. We have to do this to survive and survive we have. Think of the sheer numbers of us inhabiting the planet.

This brings me back to the No Kings protest. It appears to have drawn about 8 million or about 1/1000th of the total population of the world out onto the streets. Many more would have been there had they not been indisposed by having to work or for many other reasons. Will this turn out be effective in shifting the needle of history in a different direction?

My thought is that it will if it is followed up by effective action. Historically, one of the things that has been shown to be effective is a general strike. There is a movement for this:

https://generalstrikeus.com/

Eleven million will need to be involved at minimum it is estimated for it to be effective. Is there the will among the people to do this? I don’t know, personally, but I have the sense that Marc Maron’s admonition that starts off this post is on point. It’s also a wake-up call as are all the posts on Harrowings. I call the practice in which I’m engaged “The Alchemy of Awakening.” It starts with my own attempt to shock myself into wakefulness.

I wrote about this in the post title “What It Is Like Outside” -

The story there ends with this:

“Far too much of our lives are spent in fear of economic insecurity. Many of us are scraping by. Yet, happiness is attainable and needn’t be linked to how much money we have accumulated. Fear erodes the health of mind and body. The systems that we have collectively built - or allowed others of our species to build - can be tuned to the greatest happiness of the greatest number if we but have the will to do it. I invite others to stand outside and look at the situation in which we find ourselves.

If not now, when? If not us, who? I’ll keep on this theme until I find a good reason to change it and, if you want to support me, here’s a few ways to do it:

Harrowings is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.”

I don’t know how many read it but it it hoped that it moves more than a few of you to take effective action. There are many opportunities to serve the greater good. I know that many of you are putting your backs into being the change you want to see in the world and, in doing this work, “Harrowings” is another voice supporting the co-creation in which we are all engaged.

Now I want to leave you all with something more uplifting. You can hear the energy of the crowd in this clip from Hampton Coliseum from 1988, a year in which I was working at the Geddy Foundry in Colonial Williamsburg, just two years out of Randolph-Macon. Many of my friends were in attendance, I’m certain.

A capacity crowd attended this concert; roughly 10000. The next year they came back for a pair of “stealth” shows billed as the band formerly known as The Warlocks which was promoted solely by word of mouth. The venue is known as “The Mother Ship” and I was last there for the successor band, Dead and Company, for two nights in November 2019. I’m pretty sure I contracted COVID-19 at that show although my symptoms were caught as aftereffects of elevated d-dimer levels and ground-glass opacities in my right lung rather than having acute symptoms. I was one of the lucky ones. Ironic that a new strain nicknamed Cicada apparently has just been identified.

Take care out there and remember that we are all in this together.

Onward!

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