WHAT HAPPENED?
An Open letter to the Governments and Governors of the World
Aman Bloom 072 212 4017 amanbloom@gmail.com
Cape Town, South Africa, June 2008
What happened? You were once an idealistic young man fighting for freedom. Your own personal freedom and the freedom of the oppressed. You saw in diligence and incorruptibility the brightest of futures, a united people working together to make a just and sane society, a society that was based on need and merit, rather than greed and connections. What happened?
What happened? You were once a tough-minded, sweet-natured young woman, who saw in perseverance and honour the brightest of futures, for your mothers and sisters and for the daughters who you would bring into a new world, a revitalized world of equality and integrity. You committed yourself to work against a culture that was based on undue privileges and the constant taking of advantage. What happened?
What happened to you who struggled to start a business, a business where you would be proud of your product, a product that people would find worthy and want to buy. You would make an honest profit and people would gain from your labours. Or you studied to become a professional, one whose main occupation would be to be of service, to undo wrongs, to heal, to make things right. Right?
What happened to you? Please answer me that.
Oh, certainly, sometimes wimps get elected president and start wars; sometimes madmen or fanatics get hold of an idea and ride it roughshod into history by butchery and crookery. But, that’s not you, is it? Is it?
Sometimes the privileges of power result in excess, the swagger, the arrogance of leadership. The extra rights that those in power sometimes fall prey to, get addicted to, so that they hurry to use them whilst they can or, worse, refuse to give them up, and these, these ones they spend most of their effort, their grand effort, the sum of their lives, keeping and taking advantage of that power, discovering new ones, being advised of newer ones, ones that would be abusive if they were done by ordinary beings, so that they are swayed from the righteous path that led them here and wander into, what, unrighteousness? That, that is certainly not you. Is it?
Is it?
Were you abused as a youth by a violent step-parent, or have you become disillusioned by the realities of political or corporate means, the demands of advancement, the compromises and negotiations, and then did you become hungry for more, wallowing in disillusion until it became a balm for your ills... Is that what happened?
Are you being held hostage, in fact? Captured by greed. Is that what happened?
Through this fall from grace that you represent and foster, the general culture takes its cue, and thus we have criminality, insolvency, despondency and despair, the very elements that you once sought to eliminate from society.
And do you feel that if you tried to free yourself, that they, the others, would lose respect for you or would seek to harm you and, if so, what happened to the courage and will that you had in your youth? Squandered? Your decency has become victim to your ambition. None of this could have made you happy, or even satisfied.
And so, why, why do you stay where you are? When you could do so much, if you changed...
xxx
31.3.09
WEC: A Good Thing?
WEC: A Good Thing?
Aman Bloom, ©2009, Grahamstown, South Africa
Maybe it’s a good thing, this worldwide economic collapse.
I don’t mean just the ‘opportunity in adversity’ notion, which I’ve often maintained. Much like the charlatan behind the screen wildly controlling the buttons and buzzers, the so-called Wizard of Oz, obfuscating the actual scene with semi-skillful use of smoke and mirror, this exposure and collapse have revealed the actual lack of efficacy, insight, deliberation, care and concern of the harbingers of economy, the brokers and investors, the connivers, the vampires of finance… ‘Crooks’ may be too decent an epithet (Nixon was not a crook, he insisted. No, he also wasn’t that good.)
These are people who held an imperious confidence in their own abilities, not only to create handily the double-deal, but to extricate oneself through fancy dancing and ‘bundling’ from any bungle, scare or whoa, any shift in expectation –even though expectation was sabotaged by their connivances, made redundant through their extremes— or through the occasional intrusion of, hmmm, an unplanned inconvenient war or nasty natural disaster.
Mendacity. Not a big town in the UAE…
If it weren’t for Bush, we wouldn’t have Obama. I don’t mean just the US; I mean the world. Maybe other ‘Obamas’. i.e., honest, decent public servants will have a chance of running other major governments. Not that governments will be able to resolve our current concerns, but at least perhaps they’ll be less in the way or on the wrong side.
Come-uppance. Like even though my fist hurts after I smack someone in the face, at least he’s hurting more, and for longer. Yes, though they’re still managing to get their undeserved bonuses or severances, to keep the unnecessary extra cars and homes and trophy brides (just you wait!), yet the face in the mirror has changed and there’s some certain satisfaction for me in that. My fist hurts, yes, but just look at that face!
More importantly, this is just the beginning. More than the follow-up to the Savings & Loan debacle (also a Bush-ism), from the Enron scandal, the dot-com bust (they made out on that one, too, didn’t you know?), Halleburton’s record profit, from now on, at least, they will be watched, they won’t be trusted or allowed to wander. Ubiquitous and resistant, ensconced and immutable, like guard dogs that might turn on their master, they will be chained. Unfortunately, we the people seem still to rely on the services of governors and the press, hardly our allies anymore.
Revolution, anyone?
Against, or for, whom or what? There’s the present quandary. All the people to whom we would normally go for aid and advice are suspect. Even we ourselves are so dulled and propagandized we can’t see beyond the envelope, the cage, the system. Nature doesn’t write it in the clouds. Anymore. We’ve lost our base and our direction. The sextant is rusted! It’s a good day to die.
Well, at least it’s a good day…
Holy, sacred Nature is indeed still calling. The answers to predicament are all writ in her journals. She is still within each of us, perhaps buried under a ton of carbon, a block of books, a pile of cares.
This means nothing to those who refuse to trust themselves, who seek relief outside or above or from those who claim to still know, though we all can see that their ideas are old (not ancient), tired, reworked from failure, or based on vain belief and blind faith.
I, for one, don’t know what to do, except to continue what I’ve been doing. Question authority, subvert the dominant paradigm, invent considerations, acquire skills, drive my plow o’er the bones of the dead, see no colour, honour diversity, live simply…
All homilies, I agree.
With Respect, Grace, Patience.
Aman Bloom, ©2009, Grahamstown, South Africa
Maybe it’s a good thing, this worldwide economic collapse.
I don’t mean just the ‘opportunity in adversity’ notion, which I’ve often maintained. Much like the charlatan behind the screen wildly controlling the buttons and buzzers, the so-called Wizard of Oz, obfuscating the actual scene with semi-skillful use of smoke and mirror, this exposure and collapse have revealed the actual lack of efficacy, insight, deliberation, care and concern of the harbingers of economy, the brokers and investors, the connivers, the vampires of finance… ‘Crooks’ may be too decent an epithet (Nixon was not a crook, he insisted. No, he also wasn’t that good.)
These are people who held an imperious confidence in their own abilities, not only to create handily the double-deal, but to extricate oneself through fancy dancing and ‘bundling’ from any bungle, scare or whoa, any shift in expectation –even though expectation was sabotaged by their connivances, made redundant through their extremes— or through the occasional intrusion of, hmmm, an unplanned inconvenient war or nasty natural disaster.
Mendacity. Not a big town in the UAE…
If it weren’t for Bush, we wouldn’t have Obama. I don’t mean just the US; I mean the world. Maybe other ‘Obamas’. i.e., honest, decent public servants will have a chance of running other major governments. Not that governments will be able to resolve our current concerns, but at least perhaps they’ll be less in the way or on the wrong side.
Come-uppance. Like even though my fist hurts after I smack someone in the face, at least he’s hurting more, and for longer. Yes, though they’re still managing to get their undeserved bonuses or severances, to keep the unnecessary extra cars and homes and trophy brides (just you wait!), yet the face in the mirror has changed and there’s some certain satisfaction for me in that. My fist hurts, yes, but just look at that face!
More importantly, this is just the beginning. More than the follow-up to the Savings & Loan debacle (also a Bush-ism), from the Enron scandal, the dot-com bust (they made out on that one, too, didn’t you know?), Halleburton’s record profit, from now on, at least, they will be watched, they won’t be trusted or allowed to wander. Ubiquitous and resistant, ensconced and immutable, like guard dogs that might turn on their master, they will be chained. Unfortunately, we the people seem still to rely on the services of governors and the press, hardly our allies anymore.
Revolution, anyone?
Against, or for, whom or what? There’s the present quandary. All the people to whom we would normally go for aid and advice are suspect. Even we ourselves are so dulled and propagandized we can’t see beyond the envelope, the cage, the system. Nature doesn’t write it in the clouds. Anymore. We’ve lost our base and our direction. The sextant is rusted! It’s a good day to die.
Well, at least it’s a good day…
Holy, sacred Nature is indeed still calling. The answers to predicament are all writ in her journals. She is still within each of us, perhaps buried under a ton of carbon, a block of books, a pile of cares.
This means nothing to those who refuse to trust themselves, who seek relief outside or above or from those who claim to still know, though we all can see that their ideas are old (not ancient), tired, reworked from failure, or based on vain belief and blind faith.
I, for one, don’t know what to do, except to continue what I’ve been doing. Question authority, subvert the dominant paradigm, invent considerations, acquire skills, drive my plow o’er the bones of the dead, see no colour, honour diversity, live simply…
All homilies, I agree.
With Respect, Grace, Patience.
Hippies Were Right?
WERE HIPPIES RIGHT?
There was a joke in the 60s that went: If you think cops are pigs, next time you’re in trouble try calling a hippie!
But now, let’s say, we’re all aware of the needs of the environment, and so I can go back to the 60s when we were reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or the even more seminal, and way earlier, Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, to those who were beginning to cry the unheard and unheeded warning, while being denigrated for being (or characterized as being) uncouth and unwashed –as if either were evidence of any other failing…
Well, what I’m suggesting, as advice and as honorific, is that the so-called hippies (intellectuals, radicals, revolutionaries, anarchists, tree-huggers, beatniks…) have been more right than anyone else for the past half-century, and are still finding it difficult to be heard or heeded.
Rather you go to a Henry Kissinger or Karl Rove for advice and solution, because they talk tough and their voices are strident, like your gym coach.
And not just about the environment, either. As Buffalo Bill Clinton, suggested, it’s the economy, stupid. Or the stupid economy. We’ve been for years warning the people that the fiction and the artifice would eventually lead to catastrophe, as if Enron or the first Bush’s Savings & Loan debacle weren’t enough evidence. Double-dealing is as double-dealing does.
Are you listening yet? Confused still?
I’m saying that these people who’ve been demonstrating, remonstrating, demanding, praying, revealing, displaying, providing, berating, belaying, complaining, decrying, etc., etc., that they really, really have something to say, have had something to say, have been saying something. You just haven’t been listening. You’re so indolent, so selfish, so scared…
The planet that we live on, so we’ve been trying to tell you, is already the paradise that you seek. Just stop mucking it up, is all.
For certain, you’ll have to give up a few things. I wrote a lengthy essay about ten years ago; started it ten years before that. Called “A Housewife in Akron as Leader of the Planet.” Akron is a city in the USA, not far from Detroit. A manufacturing town. Automobiles. One premise of the essay, as the title indicates, is that until normal housewives, who are preoccupied with a husband whose job is insecure, two children, growing debt, etc., well, in addition she must take on a leadership role regarding the health of our planet, the one we live on, that we depend on. Little things, like recycling and conserving energy, gardening, exercise…
Okay, we’re all accepting that now, or claim to be. But, in addition to all those positive things that will make her family healthier and more sufficient, she might also need to engage in –I hesitate in using the following word, so pregnant with horror— sacrifice.
You see, another of our problems is the equitable distribution of goods and services. It seems that somehow there are some people who own a lot more and consume a lot more than some others and, plainly, there’s just not enough to go around and at the same time keep our environment healthy.
It’s a question of television versus, let’s say, whales. Let’s say that everyone in the world who wants one can have a flat-screen digital TV, but that the cost of all that would be the loss of all the whales. Eventually, not immediately. And so, is it worth it?
I enjoy offering the following proposition: It’s the end of the 19th Century and the big cities in the world are getting buried in horse shit, literally. Plus, the expense of housing, feeding and maintaining all these animals is getting, well, out of proportion. Plus, the flies. Something, perhaps something drastic, needs to be done.
A stranger appears, a fast-talker, but convincing. He offers us a vehicle that operates on liquid fuel, that doesn’t need feeding or caring when not in use, that one only needs to press a pedal to move it forward, and at speed. Want it?
One little thing, though. In exchange, he wants in the next century, 40 million of our lives (not to mention the losses due to injury and destruction of property. Oh, and the oil…) Deal?
The price we pay for technology, I suppose. Would you say we’ve lost the industrial revolution?
Sure, people have died in all sorts of ways, even before there was industry. What’s a few million more or less. Right, Josef? Adolf?
Oh, but it might be a disaster if we lost us all, no? Or all the whales?
Back to the main premise. Being which, should we be listening to the ‘hippies’ now? Now that they’ve been proven right for the last half-century and all the other savants –the economists, academics, politicos, strategists, industrialists, consultants, and all the vested interests— proven wrong, or at least misdirected. As if putting all their, I mean, our, apples in the wrong apple cart? The one in their yard…
For sure, some of us seem to have benefited, at least temporarily. If unnecessary wealth is a benefit. If unnecessary largesse is a benefit. But, who’s to say how much of something, of anything, is unnecessary? How about when ¾ of all wealth is held by 1% of us? Feeling left out, are we? And, let’s admit, if you’re well off enough to be reading this, then you have lots, lots more than most.
So, we return to sacrifice. From the essay:
A scary word: sacrifice.
Images of a reluctant virgin offering, resigned to its fate.
The individual who must apparently give more than its share, unto all that it has, for the alleged benefit of the whole.
Charity. Much better. Voluntary; painless; select. From love, duty. Righteousness.
True relationships require full and complete sharing. They do not receive, as in charity; they demand, as in sacrifice.
Not what I am willing to offer, but what I must give.
The former may simply not be enough or proper; the latter need not be seen as sacrifice, only that it is enough and proper. Is it a sacrifice to gain, say, peace, love and understanding, by dropping a few points in the poll?
Would you be willing to sacrifice, say, your soapies, if it meant that others who have no TV could have a radio? Would you give up your daily pasty if it meant that others could have an egg? Your spare telephone for their taxi fare; your vacation home, your SUV, your cupboard full of clothes, your cosmetics, your extra shoes, the new set of golf clubs…? Not just for them, but for the planet and its other inhabitants, the animals, the plants, the brooks and streams…the clean night air…the Milky Way. Would you, would you make that sacrifice?
I wouldn’t expect you to be the first or the only. Volunteers?
Must we rely on the government to help us, to force us, to, dare I say, legislate sacrifice?! What’s in it for them? Am I suggesting that governments only work in their own interests? Hmm, am I?
And, if we can’t depend on them, what are we expecting from the corporations, the industrialists, whose whole life and livelihood require growth, more and more growth, more and more consumerism, more debt? And isn’t it these that finance government in the first place? It’s looking like a vicious circle… A very vicious one indeed.
Make no mistake about it. These people have in their minds fought for and won their privilege, are not about to give it up for the sake of the masses. For Henry, Karl, Josef and Adolf, the collateral loss of millions of lives, human and otherwise, is another ‘unfortunate’ line item. Their ‘solutions’ to problems of overpopulation, peak oil and peak water, carbon footprints, etc., you don’t want to know about.
The worldwide revolution of housewives, is what we need. But, isn’t it that when they do get up a revolution, it’s usually for more, not for less? How do we go about making this change, a change of direction, for not more, but for less? For the children, for the innocents.
It would be freeing, you know, to rid ourselves of the encumbrances and return ourselves back to the garden. Risky business, but a calculated risk; rather than the present conundrum and debacle. Righteous, rather than self-righteous.
Though, where to begin, and how? Right here, with this, and soon?
Ubuntu…I am because we are. Remember. Think. Believe. Act.
Aman Bloom,
Grahamstown, South Africa
February, 2009
I would be pleased to share the essay “A Housewife in Akron as Leader of the Planet” with anyone or any publisher who requestst: amanbloom@gmail.com
There was a joke in the 60s that went: If you think cops are pigs, next time you’re in trouble try calling a hippie!
But now, let’s say, we’re all aware of the needs of the environment, and so I can go back to the 60s when we were reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring or the even more seminal, and way earlier, Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac, to those who were beginning to cry the unheard and unheeded warning, while being denigrated for being (or characterized as being) uncouth and unwashed –as if either were evidence of any other failing…
Well, what I’m suggesting, as advice and as honorific, is that the so-called hippies (intellectuals, radicals, revolutionaries, anarchists, tree-huggers, beatniks…) have been more right than anyone else for the past half-century, and are still finding it difficult to be heard or heeded.
Rather you go to a Henry Kissinger or Karl Rove for advice and solution, because they talk tough and their voices are strident, like your gym coach.
And not just about the environment, either. As Buffalo Bill Clinton, suggested, it’s the economy, stupid. Or the stupid economy. We’ve been for years warning the people that the fiction and the artifice would eventually lead to catastrophe, as if Enron or the first Bush’s Savings & Loan debacle weren’t enough evidence. Double-dealing is as double-dealing does.
Are you listening yet? Confused still?
I’m saying that these people who’ve been demonstrating, remonstrating, demanding, praying, revealing, displaying, providing, berating, belaying, complaining, decrying, etc., etc., that they really, really have something to say, have had something to say, have been saying something. You just haven’t been listening. You’re so indolent, so selfish, so scared…
The planet that we live on, so we’ve been trying to tell you, is already the paradise that you seek. Just stop mucking it up, is all.
For certain, you’ll have to give up a few things. I wrote a lengthy essay about ten years ago; started it ten years before that. Called “A Housewife in Akron as Leader of the Planet.” Akron is a city in the USA, not far from Detroit. A manufacturing town. Automobiles. One premise of the essay, as the title indicates, is that until normal housewives, who are preoccupied with a husband whose job is insecure, two children, growing debt, etc., well, in addition she must take on a leadership role regarding the health of our planet, the one we live on, that we depend on. Little things, like recycling and conserving energy, gardening, exercise…
Okay, we’re all accepting that now, or claim to be. But, in addition to all those positive things that will make her family healthier and more sufficient, she might also need to engage in –I hesitate in using the following word, so pregnant with horror— sacrifice.
You see, another of our problems is the equitable distribution of goods and services. It seems that somehow there are some people who own a lot more and consume a lot more than some others and, plainly, there’s just not enough to go around and at the same time keep our environment healthy.
It’s a question of television versus, let’s say, whales. Let’s say that everyone in the world who wants one can have a flat-screen digital TV, but that the cost of all that would be the loss of all the whales. Eventually, not immediately. And so, is it worth it?
I enjoy offering the following proposition: It’s the end of the 19th Century and the big cities in the world are getting buried in horse shit, literally. Plus, the expense of housing, feeding and maintaining all these animals is getting, well, out of proportion. Plus, the flies. Something, perhaps something drastic, needs to be done.
A stranger appears, a fast-talker, but convincing. He offers us a vehicle that operates on liquid fuel, that doesn’t need feeding or caring when not in use, that one only needs to press a pedal to move it forward, and at speed. Want it?
One little thing, though. In exchange, he wants in the next century, 40 million of our lives (not to mention the losses due to injury and destruction of property. Oh, and the oil…) Deal?
The price we pay for technology, I suppose. Would you say we’ve lost the industrial revolution?
Sure, people have died in all sorts of ways, even before there was industry. What’s a few million more or less. Right, Josef? Adolf?
Oh, but it might be a disaster if we lost us all, no? Or all the whales?
Back to the main premise. Being which, should we be listening to the ‘hippies’ now? Now that they’ve been proven right for the last half-century and all the other savants –the economists, academics, politicos, strategists, industrialists, consultants, and all the vested interests— proven wrong, or at least misdirected. As if putting all their, I mean, our, apples in the wrong apple cart? The one in their yard…
For sure, some of us seem to have benefited, at least temporarily. If unnecessary wealth is a benefit. If unnecessary largesse is a benefit. But, who’s to say how much of something, of anything, is unnecessary? How about when ¾ of all wealth is held by 1% of us? Feeling left out, are we? And, let’s admit, if you’re well off enough to be reading this, then you have lots, lots more than most.
So, we return to sacrifice. From the essay:
A scary word: sacrifice.
Images of a reluctant virgin offering, resigned to its fate.
The individual who must apparently give more than its share, unto all that it has, for the alleged benefit of the whole.
Charity. Much better. Voluntary; painless; select. From love, duty. Righteousness.
True relationships require full and complete sharing. They do not receive, as in charity; they demand, as in sacrifice.
Not what I am willing to offer, but what I must give.
The former may simply not be enough or proper; the latter need not be seen as sacrifice, only that it is enough and proper. Is it a sacrifice to gain, say, peace, love and understanding, by dropping a few points in the poll?
Would you be willing to sacrifice, say, your soapies, if it meant that others who have no TV could have a radio? Would you give up your daily pasty if it meant that others could have an egg? Your spare telephone for their taxi fare; your vacation home, your SUV, your cupboard full of clothes, your cosmetics, your extra shoes, the new set of golf clubs…? Not just for them, but for the planet and its other inhabitants, the animals, the plants, the brooks and streams…the clean night air…the Milky Way. Would you, would you make that sacrifice?
I wouldn’t expect you to be the first or the only. Volunteers?
Must we rely on the government to help us, to force us, to, dare I say, legislate sacrifice?! What’s in it for them? Am I suggesting that governments only work in their own interests? Hmm, am I?
And, if we can’t depend on them, what are we expecting from the corporations, the industrialists, whose whole life and livelihood require growth, more and more growth, more and more consumerism, more debt? And isn’t it these that finance government in the first place? It’s looking like a vicious circle… A very vicious one indeed.
Make no mistake about it. These people have in their minds fought for and won their privilege, are not about to give it up for the sake of the masses. For Henry, Karl, Josef and Adolf, the collateral loss of millions of lives, human and otherwise, is another ‘unfortunate’ line item. Their ‘solutions’ to problems of overpopulation, peak oil and peak water, carbon footprints, etc., you don’t want to know about.
The worldwide revolution of housewives, is what we need. But, isn’t it that when they do get up a revolution, it’s usually for more, not for less? How do we go about making this change, a change of direction, for not more, but for less? For the children, for the innocents.
It would be freeing, you know, to rid ourselves of the encumbrances and return ourselves back to the garden. Risky business, but a calculated risk; rather than the present conundrum and debacle. Righteous, rather than self-righteous.
Though, where to begin, and how? Right here, with this, and soon?
Ubuntu…I am because we are. Remember. Think. Believe. Act.
Aman Bloom,
Grahamstown, South Africa
February, 2009
I would be pleased to share the essay “A Housewife in Akron as Leader of the Planet” with anyone or any publisher who requestst: amanbloom@gmail.com
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