Deep Time

Deep time and memory are something we have lost. Or more specifically they have been stolen, raped and pillaged from collective consciousness.

We need to find a way as a people and as individuals to somehow be able to reconnect to it.

Now more ever we read posts and we hear of workshops and events created specifically to reconnect us to ourselves and the natural world or what is now known as the ‘natural world’.

But for me, regardless of how effective they may or not be, they are missing something entirely unless they take into to consideration class consciousness, colonialism, capitalism and critical theory.

For me Deep Memory represents our true connection to the natural world. Deep Memory is connected to trans-generational trauma and the trauma inflicted upon human and other-than-human organisms by being exposed to colonial capitalist culture which, essentially, has been created for one reason and one reason only: to ensure and maintain a class of ruling elites that will do anything to survive.

How Long Will The Trees Last?

Let’s be truthful with ourselves, just once, just for a minute…

All of our empirical knowledge is based on our tiny, brief lifetimes. If we say we remember a really hot summer from our childhood, in reality, the most we are travelling back in time is 40 years or so.

Anthropogenic climate and environmental-disruption was well under way by then.

None of us experienced our childhood in pre-industrial times.

So, yes it does get hot in summer. But it’s getting hotter and global corporate fascism is the elites response to ensuring their longevity. Yes, green fascism is alive and well and the corporations that control our culture are very advanced in shaping public opinion.

One of my earliest childhood memories is of thinking if they keep cutting down the trees soon, there will be no trees left and I pondered for awhile wondering just how long the trees would last.

Sadly, now I know that answer.

Not much longer.

Patriarchy, the Patriarchal Mindset and the Continued Degradation and Exploitation of Woman and Mother Earth

In ‘woke’ circles you don’t have to move very far before you hear the word ‘patriarchy’. A few years ago, it wasn’t the case. When I first encountered radical feminism and the radical feminist analysis of our dominant, male-centric culture I didn’t quite understand what the word ‘patriarchy’ meant. Let alone words as multifaceted as ‘feminism’ ‘or radical’. I also, at first, didn’t grasp how the words or any definition of them I had learned could be applied to what was happening to human and non-human individuals and cultures on a global scale in real time.

Now I do and I wish to share what I have learned.

We have to understand that it is the same violence that violates the Earth, whether it be effluence that causes living things to die or any other forms of corporate extraction or exploitation as violates women, children and men. It is the same patriarchal mindset which is the root cause of both. We not only have to understand these things we have to let the idea permeate our DNA and shape who we must become as people if we are truly ever going to be able to make a stand.

The patriarchy teaches us everything, is ultimately, for exploitation; a religious code made whole within the framework of a legal system. If you own woodland, you can cut it all down and sell the timber and you don’t pay a penny in tax.

The patriarchy defines the abundance and multitudinous of Mother Earth as ‘natural resources’. Gifts, we are told, that are ripe for the taking if any man is resourceful enough to take them. The same logic applies to Woman as it does the Earth.

Recently, the Supreme Court decision to reverse the ruling on Roe vs Wade, took away women’s right to autonomy of their own bodies. Now more than ever women are being rendered possessions of men and, ultimately the State. This is an extreme example from a court and a country that has been subverted by fascist theocrats but it is very relevant in the unabated onslaught against women and the natural world.

The phrase ‘the patriarchy’ makes more sense now than it ever did when it comes to describing the damage caused by the militaristic capitalistic society we find ourselves trapped within.

The Coming Scorched Earth

Soon our idea of what constitutes the ‘natural world’ will be left for dust. Choking in an ozone filled haze of smog, blinding us, entirely.

The trees and grasses and wild flowers we love so dearly will disappear completely….the dandelion, the butterfly, the white-tailed bumblebee. All will be gone. Sadly, just the tip of the iceberg. The glacier shedding a billion tonnes of ice. Daily. Yearly.

We have been conditioned, particularly here in the British Isles, to think of climate change as something that will benefit us in some sort of way. At least our summers will be better. We will endure the searing 40c heat as we must. The supermarkets, as always, will fare well and so will the shareholders.

Nature no longer exists. Deep ecological time is extinct. This is the last half an inch. The last strata.

Soon all the birds will be gone. The trees will begin to die. The acidification of the oceans will continue unabated and the coral reef will die and the dead zones will become larger and larger.

Let’s stop for a moment to contemplate what a dead zone is: it is an area of the ocean where there is no oxygen and no living thing is able to exist within it.

Let’s stop for a moment to consider that: the ocean; an abundance of life and life giving protein. Gone. Dead. Forever.

The grass will become turn from green to brown and the earth will harden and turn to dust. The smell of the scorched earth will fill our nostrils.

Our idea of what constitutes the natural world is already skewed. The landscapes we think of as natural and wild are actually man made and completely shaped by human activity.

We are lost. I wish there was something I could write or say that would make you feel better but I can’t.

This isn’t my option. This is the sad fact of living through the days of the Sixth Mass Extinction. Nothing will come after.

Maybe within this context you might be able to understand the rise of fascism on a global scale.