Wednesday 20 January 2016

We are SO Screwed !

Yes, just what you wanted to know - more GOOD news !
But it is; this is the preliminary title to the book that I have been scribbling notes for , for years...
Clearly the title is provocative, but in the sense that Martin Luther King Jr's non-violent resistance was provocative; it is meant to "jolt" you awake, to then move from complacency, through despair and then to hope, joy and laughter.


But it is a tough slog. The world, which has always been a mess, is just now just a bigger mess because there are more of us with more technology to mess things up with. The thing is we are part of History, the story is on-going, and when we can see our role in this "never ending story" we can play our parts as they should be played: with fervour and devotion and excitement. Life is grand - the greatest gift ever! So being seeing and admitting to the fact that we are "SO screwed" is only first step on the road to recovery.


For we are all drug addicts, sex addicts, alcoholics, whatever version of messed up you choose. But that is OK ! It is the human condition. Despair is not a condition of being ill, it is the condition of not being able to confront your illness, hope for a cure, and then work - WITH OTHERS - towards health.

Our society is sick, It is on life support. The signs are clear to see: Donald Trump for President? ISIS beheadings and bombing worldwide. Diabetes and obesity and cancer rising across the world. More and more children with autism, severe allergies, learning disabilities, kids with cancer, kids from divorces who then find it hard to trust anybody... rainforest destruction, Monsanto killer seeds, climate change...

You get the idea. And yet there is still hope, joy and laughter in the world.
Despair is not a viable option.
But neither is delusion.
Neither is denial.
Sticking our collective heads in the sand to avoid seeing the ugly, harsh Truth that we have are making a Hell of our Gorgeous Earth, our only Home, is not going to help.
Obviously.

But how do we step forward? How do we live each day to its fullest potential?
How do we love our neighbours as ourselves?
We must change.
To change requires provocation.
I am thus hereto provoke you. Not just with reason; but with contradiction and paradox.
For as G.K. Chesterton said:

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

Our world is mad. Most of us, me included, are touched with bits of that insanity too.
We are in the Cuckoos Nest.
This blog, and the book that will accompany it, will be, I hope and pray, a helpful vehicle for our return to sanity.
Let's escape, together....