“The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.”
Murray Bookchin
It is Friday morning and we are skipping a morning paddle so I head to the gym.
I finished The Ecology of Freedom last night.
It was heavy going. The sort of book you read a few dozen pages and need to think about the concepts being addressed. I can’t recall when I started reading this book, but it has taken a while to get through. It is a decent book, almost 500 pages in hard cover and the text is small.
“There are no hierarchies in nature other than those imposed by hierarchical modes of human thought, but rather differences merely in function between and within living things.”
Murray Bookchin
It is an incredible book.
Bookchin manages to clarify in writing the complex thoughts I have regarding societal structures. Concepts that work in the mind yet are difficult to bring into any sort of cohesive focus. I understand something on a primitive level, without knowing the how or the why. Sometimes I can ruminate on the topic and begin to pull threads together but I can never bring ideas into clarity.
“Humanity has passed through a long history of one-sidedness and of a social condition that has always contained the potential of destruction, despite its creative achievements in technology. The great project of our time must be to open the other eye: to see all-sidedly and wholly, to heal and transcend the cleavage between humanity and nature that came with early wisdom.”
Murray Bookchin
The hierachy of Governments and technology would be clear to anyone who has taken the time to question what are the external forces driving our decisions. It doesn’t take long to realise that these structures have instilled the notion in all of us that we need them, we in fact, we really don’t most of the organisations that claim to help our lives.
Bureaucracy supporting bureaucracy.
Systems and structures that have society convinced that if they were not there to organise and run our lives without them, we would not manage.
This is the anarchist philosophy.
What Bookchin does so well, is weaves in this system of anarchy into his environmental viewpoint.
This book, grounds my thoughts on government and technology, and weaves these systems in the environmental catastrophe we are creating. Two remarkably unrelated streams of thinking neatly woven together in a clarifying thought stream.
“What compels me to fight this society is, of course, outrage over injustice, a love of freedom, and a feeling of responsibility for perpetuating and enlarging the human spirit — its beauty, creativity, and latent capacity to improve the world. I do not care to come to terms with an irrational society that corrodes all that is valuable in humanity, that eats away at all that is beautiful and noble in the human experience.”
Murray Bookchin
Brilliant writing and compulsary reading for anyone who views the Government as an over bearing glacial process that does more to control its population than aid us, while creating a narrative for understanding the inevitability of abusing the environment in these hierarchies.
“Unless we realize that the present market society, structured around the brutally competitive imperative of “grow or die,” is a thoroughly impersonal, self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology as such or population growth as such for environmental problems. We will ignore their root causes, such as trade for profit, industrial expansion, and the identification of “progress” with corporate self-interest. In short, we will tend to focus on the symptoms of a grim social pathology rather than on the pathology itself, and our efforts will be directed toward limited goals whose attainment is more cosmetic than curative.”
Murray Bookchin
For me, it is an entirely tragic. I do not share Bookchin’s optimism that we can turn this ship around. We are so tightly and desperately attached to our Governmental slave masters we cannot see that they are ruining the planet to keep their machine operating.
I am not sure if Bookchin has any other books.
“Any attempt to solve the ecological crisis within a bourgeois framework must be dismissed as chimerical. Capitalism is inherently anti-ecological. Competition and accumulation constitute its very law of life, a law … summarised in the phrase, ‘production for the sake of production.’ Anything, however hallowed or rare, ‘has its price’ and is fair game for the marketplace. In a society of this kind, nature is necessarily treated as a mere resource to be plundered and exploited. The destruction of the natural world, far being the result of mere hubristic blunders, follows inexorably from the very logic of capitalist production.”
Murray Bookchin
I spend the morning reading a new book, A Guide to the Good Life by William K. Irvine.
I enjoyed his writing and this look at Stoic philosophy as a pathway to a more fulfilling life seems like a good idea until Suttree arrives.
We do the groceries. Shell protests the entire time that she should not have to endure such mundane tasks.
We open a bottle of wine and settle in for the evening.
A severe storm warning has been announced by the UAE government. This message also includes a ban on organised sport for the next two days.
What would Murray Bookchin have to say about a government who bans its people from getting together because there is a chance of bad weather?
Shell is taking panadol with her wine. Is she sick?
In bed early after over eating at dinner.
“Oh, pity the poor glutton
Walter de la Mare
Whose troubles all begin
In struggling on and on to turn
What’s out into what’s in.”
It is Saturday and a storm has rolled in.
No paddling today. Maybe tomorrow.
Rainy days are rare in Dubai. You can’t go anywhere because the roads flood. This is an issue if you need to get somewhere, but today, we have nothing planned.
Staying in bed, reading while it rains, sounds perfect.
“I
Charles Bukowski
think that the
world should be full of cats and full of rain, that’s all, just
cats and
rain, rain and cats, very nice, good
night.”
There are times when I eat and I retreat into my mind. I lose awareness and simply consume. There is nothing conscious about this eating. There is no mindful chewing, no consideration in the pleasure of what I am eating. I am simply shoveling food in my mouth and swallowing. A mechanical process that has no off switch. No way to stop, because there is something automated about what I am doing. Robotically consuming.
And consume I do. Imagine a first serving that is almost enough for two. Then imagine finishing that serving and without any thought, going for a second serving that is just as large. Finishing enough food for four people without realising what you are doing at the time. Your consciousness has retreated somewhere so it does not have to witness your disgusting gluttony.
At some stage, shortly after, I become aware of how uncomfortably overfull I am. My stomach has distended to allow for the copious amounts of food I have forced into my face. I feel physically ill, yet that discomfort pales in comparison to the self loathing that follows. The slow reaslisation of what I have just done.
Absolute disgust. And guilt. And self hate.
I do this every weekend.
I don’t know why.
“In a way, gluttony is an athletic feat, a stretching exercise.”
John Updike
I read all day and do nothing.
The Pies get thumped. You can’t win them all.
“Win without boasting. Lose without excuse.”
Albert Payson Terhune
It is Sunday and the city is washed clean.
We head to Nikki Beach for a paddle.
After the storms yesterday, the ocean is a stunning blue blanket of calmness.
We end up on the water for over two hours. The weather is warming up and the sea is crystal clear coolness when you jump in for a break.
Home and starving.
Time to get ready for the work week.
Ramadan. We finish at 1.15 pm every day for the next three weeks.
I spend the afternoon reading instead of preparing for the week ahead.
It will be a busy morning. A problem for future Grant.
“Those who are wise won’t be busy, and those who are too busy can’t be wise.”
Lin Yutang
This weekend’s wine –
Friday
2019 Domaine Chanson Chablis Montmains Premier Cru (Burgundy, France)
The greatest expression of Chardonnay is from Chablis. Even the great Montrachet does not deliver like Chablis. Peaches, citrus and cream with the essential Chablis minerality. The palate is tight, acidic and powerful. An excellent Premier Cru despite coming from a large producer.
2021 Luna Argenta Negroamaro Primitivo Appasite (Puglia, Italy)
It is hard to know what I was thinking when I picked this wine. I find Primitivo very hit and miss and I am yet to find a wine that uses appissimento successfully. despite both these handicaps, this wine delivered. It was a typical warm climate stewed fruit, jammy palate, but it had enough going for it to make it potable.
Saturday
We finished the Primitivo.
