A visit to Occupy London

Went down to the Occupy site in the grounds of St Pauls last night. What an inspiring scene it was. Every four years we’re drably informed about the politically disengaged youth of the UK. What rubbish. More like what’s being offered is not what anyone wants or needs, save the vested interests that system is designed to serve.

Finally it seems that this sentiment is reaching its endgame – helped on its way by a massive concentration of wealth to the top and cuts to the futures of just about everyone else. The ‘deal’ that we’ve been participating in – we do all the work, they get all the rewards – is finally being seen for the controlling con that it is. The illusion can never be reinstated.

Another thing I found encouraging: I attempted to talk to several of the ‘occupiers’ on camera (albeit a very old camcorder) but they steadfastly refused, believing me to be some kind of reporter – they do not trust the mainstream media at all – and they’re right not to; media push stories not facts and they’re nearly always skewed to some agenda or editorial policy.

This movement must be held very gently like the rare flower it is. We must not plant it yet but protect its roots from intrusive influence. We must let it grow into what its nature decides. Something special will come yet.

Future

I  can’t really explain it to you. It’s like I wake in the middle of the night and there’s this thing on the horizon in the looming orange of the city to the north. It gets cut in on by the trains that slide along the bank like the carriage cutting back to the beginning of a sentence leaving my words unformed around the stone in my stomach.

Yes, there’s times when time slips its pace leaving me breathless, and it’s certainly true that the things aren’t what we expected, what we were bought up to believe in any case. But I always had the idea that things as they are were just a temporary act in a much wider, and far more interesting production.

We can begin to agree on something else now perhaps but first a beautiful shape can only coalesce around the willingness of the many, as polyps invisibly create reefs in the wider sea.  

At the start of the climb

Look at us. Look at everything we have done. If you’re in a town or city and looking out of the window of a car or train, or if you’re out on the street, you’re already seeing ideas in action. The structures you’re witnessing began in the mind of a single individual, the way the roads are planned, the materials used, the planting of the trees (if there are any); every single little detail thought out.

It’s the same with the structures that bind our lives. Money, insurance, state provisions, the food system, service industries, media. The list is endless and unknowable to one person as each one is dependent on certain specialisations, skills and knowledge bases, perhaps with its own set of codes and languages pertinent only to initiates. Each one the result of a series of experiences and decisions, practice and expertise honed over our history and employed to certain means.

There can be no doubt that these all of these systems and institutions have been designed to serve. But just who are they serving now?

If you’re fortunate to have access to the internet or media of any kind, you’d find it very easy to access a huge reservoir of information painstakingly detailing the degradation of the planet and its people for the purpose of serving these very same systems. Somewhere along the way a line has been crossed and the intent skewed. If you can’t readily plug in, you only need look around to see where we’re at and where we’re going. I don’t even need to spell it out. You’ll have your own experience, you’ll have seen how much things have gotten a little fuzzy around the edges, you’ll no doubt be feeling the effects in your own life. Unless your part of an increasingly fortunate few.

For therein lies the answer to my question.

It seems it’s all boiling to the top somehow. As everything becomes monetised, as every service (once shared or given for free my friends or family) becomes based on cost and every part of our shared natural resources are chopped up, drilled into, hacked back and sold off by the few, its blatantly obvious that this is not happening for the benefit of anyone save the vested few. It is the shareholders who get the cheque dividend, it’s every other organism that gets to ‘pay’ the clean-up bill. Somehow, as I am sure you’ve already heard, the profits are privatised whilst the losses are socialised. We bail out banks, we back up ailing car corporations, we foot the bill for oil clean ups, we sacrifice our tax money to finance short sighted and ultimately futile aggressions in other people’s lands at the same time as our children are fed to commercial predators for their exploitation, our elderly are undervalued and ignored, our remaining national services are privatised and our environment is trashed.

The bill for all of this is monstrous and can never be repaid – and I’m not just talking about money.

But now we’re not going to even try.

Our problems are now too numerous for demands to be made of the corporations (including governments) I’m talking about. We’re beyond listening to their banal demands for endless consumption and violence. We simply want out of this ugliness and the advent of another world. Besides what’s always diluted the efficacy of similar calls for change is the infighting as to the best way to get it. There is no catch all answer. There is no one truth. There is no logical, empirical panacea. Try as we might we won’t be able to fit nature into a tidy box. We just have to return to authenticity, we have to learn to listen to our hearts. Simple?

We all want the same thing anyway. It’s a place where every gift is valued and every expression recognised, where we get out what we put in; we already feel it with every act of kindness given or received. It’s about the chance to share all of the gifts available in this world with every form of life here. After all, the mountaintop has the same views regardless of what path you take to get there.

The path is steep but we’re finally beginning to climb.