The Golden Sprial
As always I am never quite sure where one of these posts is going to lead me, whether into the waiting jaws of trolls and critics, or into a place where I am heard by peers and my words carry some weight. Lately I have found myself pulled in many directions as many different injustices are committed within my own country, let alone the world as a whole. And being the kind of person that I am, I have no tolerance for such things, but my words are so small in comparison to those that hold power that I feel they are drowned out at times. Nevertheless, I find myself sitting here at three in the morning, writing, hoping that something I say may bring some change in someone somewhere.
I recently read an article I would like to share with anyone willing to read it. My finding this article was due to yet another facebook argument. Something I detest. I still have an aversion to them, but I am no longer able to just keep my mouth shut. Someone had shared a news post that read that President Trump was going to change the definitions of mental illness and he believed that those with a mental illness should be forcibly contained to protect the public due to the recent mass shootings that took place here in the states. My response was simply..
“Okay, can I just ask, how much more dystopian does the world need to get before we recognize it as a dystopia?”
Again, I felt this to be harmless, just a question, however I had someone who said that this was needed to get “help” for the homeless and it was the right move to make. My response was that in essence what was being said here was that if the definition of mental illness was changed to include anxiety, depression, homosexuality, and even disagreeing with the words of those in power, that they could forcibly contain anyone at any time. This seemed dystopian, and while probably not how it would be intended to be used, it is still a huge policy shift, just as the shift to make abortions illegal, or the shift in immigration policy, or the shift when it came to the pipeline that went through Native American lands, or the shift to stop trying to find green energy to stop climate change. So many little shifts have happened, and I decided it was time to do some research, as I do. The following quote is from an article by a David Tollerton of the University of Exeter, the link to the article will be below.
“When it comes to an event as ultimately extreme and emotive as the Holocaust, we should of course be wary of blunt and counterproductive comparisons. In this regard Lipstadt’s article offers a powerful corrective. But this is not the end of our task.
It is the task of historians to draw parallels, however uncomfortable. Nazism didn’t immediately descend into fully fledged terror in the Germany of the 1930s, it came in a series of legal and policy shifts. There were those, in Germany as well as in the rest of the watching world – who strongly objected from the start to the laws that took away Jewish rights and protections and continued to oppose Hitler and his supporters as the nightmare unfolded. But there were also many people in whom Nazi rhetoric found all-too fertile ground.
A similar dynamic is in operation today. The gradual “othering” of migrants to the US – and, indeed, of refugees in Europe and elsewhere – has the same feeling of an incremental downward spiral in the public’s humanity, and it is here that historians have a duty to draw comparisons rather than simply seeking to police the border between historical events.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/comparisons-between-us-immigration-policy-and-the-nazi-period-may-not-be-helpful-but-they-are-hard-to-avoid-98879
This caught me off guard. I was doing my best to not correlate the events of today with nazi Germany, and while the events themselves are not the same, the fact that the parallels are there is terrifying. So what do we do when the world is falling down around us? Is this not something that could be seen in a dystopian novel by a notable author such as Phillip K. Dick? And if we are already in dystopia, what do we do next?
A wise woman said to me recently that the revolution must start within us. I do believe that is a great start, that the individual can make the difference. And so I try to start a revolution here and now, not by writing something saying that we should stand up. When you hear the words “gun violence” your mind immediately goes to the word “gun”, and then we decide without them the shootings would stop. But what if the word we should be looking at is “violence”? What if every single person planted something helpful to the planet once a month? What if we simply said we weren’t going to go to work until women had complete rights to their bodies? What if every time you saw a person being harassed because of the color of their skin you walked over and put yourself between the attacker and the victim?
I have decided that I will make changes where I can, I have decided that the revolution is already upon us, and I have decided not to sit down anymore, to ignore a comment on facebook from someone who doesn’t agree with my morals just because it is uncomfortable, to not post something just because it may upset someone. If I want change in the world, I need to be that change. It’s the Fibonacci sequence, if I can inspire one other person, and then another, and then two more, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. In this endeavor I have decided to try to post some videos in the near future of things I have done or will be doing. They may not be often, they may not be long, but they will be there. And the first of which will include this…
This is my first attempt at a hydroponics system. The plant I have chosen is the peace lily because of its ability to scrub the air around me, and I will be expanding this system as time and finances allow. I will document how I did it, and what I will be doing to it as time goes on, and I hope it might allow some revolutionaries or young activists to feel that they can do something for this planet, even if it is small.
Thank you for reading this rather long post yet again my valued readers. I know I can get long winded and even ramble, but I am tired of waiting for the hat to drop, and I don’t want to be standing on the sidelines when it does. Let us be proactive rather than reactive, and let us be the golden spiral and watch us all grow.
