| Rant and Randomness |
[Sep. 10th, 2009|11:31 am] |
Why do you do this every day?
by adotjdotsmith
The new Michael Moore film quotes a Citibank report which says "The US is now a plutonomy, the top 1% of the population control 95% of the wealth."
I'm fairly sure the UK won't be far behind those figures.
I'm playing some roleplaying games recently where characters have to be passionate about various environments. They have to look at the City and realise what achievements the concrete and steel are, how magnificent it is that we managed to impose our will on nature in this way – locking out the forests and vines, controlling the creeping growth to make clean and stable structures. That is a great achievement... but it makes us blind.
1% of the people have 95% of the wealth. That means no matter how hard the millions in our offices work, no matter how much they sacrifice of their lives to provide for their families, it's never outside the 5%.
The whole thing is a con game. Just like cities are.
No city can survive without the countryside providing food for it. The tarmac and smoke don't grow their own food, by definition. They just sit like sterile concrete ant nests, teeming with frantic life and overwhelming death.
I don't mean death in any symbolic way, such as compared to the amount of plant life outside them. No, cities are the places of death. There are far more people, far more crime, and a history of denser populations over time than in the countryside. If you map out where most people die in your country, it's in the cities.
But I don't hate urban areas, or think they don't have their own strong amount of life. They clearly do. Londinium has been a thriving (or at least crowded) metropolis since at least the time of the Romans. If a city could be said to have a spirit, London's would be very much alive. It would have years of poverty and suffering built into its very brickwork, but also a more consistent and varied fight for survival than many places on the globe. It has incredible beauty, and history, and colour. It also hosts the biggest con game in Europe, drawing refugees from far afield and promising a better life. This isn't a lie – you can have a better life in the UK than many places on this planet. It will just be within the 5%, and probably towards the bottom of it.
So the cities are furious hubs of activity in a game where the outcome is already known for virtually everyone. Social mobility was pathetic in 1997, and is worse under this government. (No, it won't be better under the Conservatives). And that's the other half of the lie.
Here's a statement: the Conservative party WILL win the next UK election. We don't know when it will be held, we don't know what their policies are, but it's already a guaranteed fact.
I don't think this means we're not a democracy. If it's the will of the people, I don't mind knowing the inevitable this far in advance. My problem is that the Tories will get practically 100% of the power, and anyone not voting for them is unrepresented in any meaningful way. Since no party since WWII has had more than 50% of the total vote, this by definition means at least 50% of the country is locked out.
A friend works in a theatre which is dependent on Arts Council funding. Their risk assessment for next year includes the condition “If the Tories get in”. I believe one of the powerpoint slides may have literally included the words “We're f***ed.” Anyone wanting funding from the government is trembling right now, because we can all see the inevitable. (Disclaimer: this does not include arms manufacturers. They will continue to be subsidised by the next government and do very nicely, thank you.)
The Lib Dem voice points out that if you're under 40 and live in the UK, there's a 50% chance your MP has *always* been of the same party. In other words, if your town had a Conservative MP when you were born, there's a 50% chance that didn't change at any election since 1970. We have a thing called “Safe seats”, which translates as “No matter who you vote for in your local area, this person is the one who will get in.”
What can we do about this? Well yes, you could move to a safe-seat area of the party you like. Also, we could get a more representative system (but no-one remembers how to have one of those which lets any party achieve anything). And you run straight into the problem the US is having, which is that it's full of hateful morons Republican voters. In the liberal fantasy of making this country a better place, you run smack into the reality wall that many people genuinely want the Conservative party in power. They might be amnesiacs, or fall under the umbrella of Steve's Republican Question (“Rep voters: Are they actively evil, or just really ignorant and stupid?”) Either way, England is a deeply conservative country and that means liberals will not have enough power to achieve big things anytime soon, under any system.
(I'll leave out how big business completely runs our politics anyway. It's been kinda known for at least 20 years.)
So we're left with the cities: crime hotspots and polluted prisons for the majority of people who work just to survive. In them, though, and in London particularly, we see the greatest hope as well (and no, not “from the proles”.) Very big cities are *LIBERAL*. They allow diversity, they encourage anonymity and individuality, they set trends and inspire, foster rebellion and make room for everything alternative. I remarked a while ago that I never see blue hair in Hertfordshire. In London, if a pretty girl walked down the street with neon blue hair, it was practically invisible. No-one stared (although appreciative looks were common). I saw a girl coming over the bridge in town here and assumed she had the same, but it turned out to be a blue hat. Of course it was a hat. We're not in London anymore.
Francis and Louis
by adotjdotsmith
So I'm not going to give up on cities, with their weight of dark concrete and glass, their heat retention and eternal background noise of people living their lives and dying by the thousands. There are wild spirits in the woods, a clearer sense of life and death on the farms, but the city is a howling spirit of destruction which has the best and most glorious shouts for life contained within it. It is the only place where we can push the boundaries enough to get out of this ridiculous social cage.
In paganism, you learn to bring in the more fulfilling parts of nature to your life – the fertility in the land, the new growth in spring, the sun returning after winter. You also value that Winter, and the necessary rest, and the beauty of its harshness. You respect it, because it could kill you. The city, though... that features far less. Any attempts to incorporate it into the worldview are often based on finding mythic or rural aspects within it. A much more difficult approach is to embrace the city for exactly what it is, and try to feel and live it to the same extent that we love the peaceful streams and forests. You move from tree and root magic to rat and pigeon magic amongst tarmac, glass, mp3 players, widescreen HD tv. The spirit of the place becomes more about people, not other life. The moon shines down upon it, but only where she can peep between buildings - not lighting the entire cloudy sky. Neon and streetlights shout upwards to replace her.
It's a scary thing to take your tools and walk into the teeming den, unsure of how they will work against these new Gods.
Tesco Bokeh
by adotjdotsmith
The photos are all by adotjdotsmith, taken from flickr. In the top one someone has written "Why do you do this every single day?" on the concrete pillar.
I'm going to make this type of post again, taking 3 photos I find randomly on flickr and seeing where it goes. |
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