Tag: harmony

A Harmonious Existence

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Having walked into the living room and seeing the television was on, in particular the news, I was left in no doubt we live in disharmony. This does sound like one of those “well duh” statements but then as we seem so determined not to do anything about it maybe it isn’t quite so obvious as first thought. The headline story was a fire breaking out in Moria refugee camp on the Greek Island of Lesvos. They avoided throwing accusations out there but it’s pretty clear there will be plenty of legitimate ones involving local fascists, and that is what they are that is not hyperbole. What happens next as over ten thousand people, including thousands of children, spend the foreseeable future living rough on the local hillside is anyone’s guess. This story was followed by a quick report on wild fires raging across California and on the fact they have so far destroyed five whole towns as well as the resulted in the largest financial cost from fire damage in the states history. After this I left the room.

Fire may be the main focus of these stories but one represents our inability to coexist as a species and the other to coexist with the planet. The end result of both will be our own destruction. There is a George Carlin joke about the Earth and humans, I have probably mentioned it on here before, but he suggests the earth will be fine it’s us who’s fucked. The earth will just shake us off like a bad case of the fleas. That is paraphrased of course but the gist is a familiar one. If we’re not living harmoniously with ourselves or our environment we will be the ones to lose out. Countless memes describing the human species as nothing more than a pestilence, the earth has caught a human cold. In a contemporary reference the earth may have just contracted a virus.

How can’t we live in harmony then. It is easy to point out what is wrong with the world and ourselves but to suggest ways to fix this are infinitely harder. We are becoming more polarised and disharmonious on a daily basis, despite the facade of action and rhetoric we’re actually doing less to combat the environmental damage we’re responsible for as a species. Somehow we need to come together once more. Unfortunately we only seem capable of this in times of crisis and while these things are a crisis they perhaps don’t quite seem so in real time. Somehow we need to allow people to continue living their comfortable lives while reducing the harmful affects of them or make them realise other people entering their society are not going to take everything they hold dear. Really I have no answers. Living as an example is one and showing examples on larger scales would be another but all it takes is a few weeks of intense media pressure and all the good work would be undone. In fact about one day would probably be enough. We are so individually disharmonious that how can we ever expect anything to change on a macro scale. Look within you say. Well that’s an interesting angle.

A Delivery Of Bread, Harmony and Brexit

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Today began with an interesting morning of delivering bread. I went along this morning with one of the delivery drivers so I could learn his route in case he ever needs some one to cover him. This driver is an interesting man. Certainly at three o’clock in the morning he was far more chatty than I expected but after I while I managed to warm up and discover the ability to hold conversation. We chatted about a few things but at one point after I told him I had lived in Greece for a few years he asked me what the situation with the immigrants is. Now this kind of question can go one of two ways and it comes from a basis usually of “poor refugees” or “economic migrants we may have to be wary of”. I have found myself in this situation enough times to recognise this and give a general answer about how conditions are terrible there and now I can warn of the dangers of this virus in the camps. If he is inclined to be on the economic migrant side of the debate he doesn’t really get a window into the conversation from that angle and I’m careful not to go full refugee’s need rescuing and help coming to Britain because it opens up the possibilities of pointless arguments I cannot be bothered with.

Inevitably the conversation one way or another led onto politics and down the rabbit hole of nostalgia that Brexit has become. He was confident enough of his beliefs to admit to disliking faceless bureaucrats and being pro-Brexit. I suggested it wasn’t as straightforward as that because unfortunately we have plenty of faceless bureaucrats in the UK, we will soon be the United States’ little bitch and I enjoy living and working in foreign countries. The conversation very quickly got to the point we’ve all recognised before where the next step is basically you saying “No you’re wrong” and him saying “No actually you’re wrong”. For anyone who had one, a Brexit discussion reaches a very quick climax of that exact sort without fail. And you know what, there was something about that moment which I realised I missed.

The chap I was having this debate with was the archetypal northern mid-50s working man, he was even called Dave. That is no word of a lie. I like him he’s a good man and I really enjoyed this conversation about a topic which we’ve all forgotten took over our lives six months ago before we moved onto the killer virus. It was painfully evident that despite society having an enormous hug we’ve still got a long way to go to build bridges and men like Dave are still as determined about their understanding of societies ills as snowflake millennials like me of their opposite.

I still can’t get over how much of the perfect box he fit in and genuinely I’m not saying that as a criticism. I think we all forget in our determination to be right and force our version of right on others that we may just be wrong. It is only in understanding that and that men like Dave are not the enemy but very much on the same team as us that we may actually remove those who have pillaged and offered such little genuine hope to people. Dave hasn’t created this shit show, neither have I although we both continue to allow it’s existence as we wag fingers at each other while having our pockets picked. We talk of this virus bringing us together as a society but if we don’t get over any of the other bullshit we’ll just as quickly become divided down old lines once more. It’ll take us all. If not the old order will have won once again.

A Three Point Piece

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I suspect I’m going to attempt to talk about too many things in this piece, three to be precise, but I’ll try anyway. I should probably stop wasting words telling you this though. To start with I feel it necessary to be critical of yesterdays piece. My issue is that there seems to be a certain immaturity to how I write about politics, and most likely when I talk about it too. This is evidenced I feel by an excessive amount of rhetoric and the danger with this is that not only is it, in my eyes at least, a sign of immaturity but is also a sign of a bad argument, a lack of understand an argument suitably in depth and also perhaps a sign of being a bit of an idiot. I hope I’m not an idiot but I know theres a good chance I would accuse others of such things were they to write in such a manner. Ultimately I’m not happy with it. I could have written it better, made better points and made them in a more evolved way. The problem with not publishing these yet is that I am unable to get your (constructive) feedback, but if anyone ever reads back on these I would love to know what you have to think.

The second thing and third actually were inspired by my avoiding writing this and procrastinating on facebook. Greece is burning again and having lived there for three years, give or take, on and off, I feel a connection to it and a sadness at the continuing trauma that is the Greek tragedy. I may have lived in Exarchia, the anarchist run neighbourhood in the centre of Athens, but it truth I never really integrated and always lived fairly anonymously within it. The new right-wing government has seemingly followed through on it’s threats and has spent the last six months closing down squats. Tonight is the eleventh anniversary of the murder of a 15 year old boy by a police officer, who was coincidentally let out of prison a couple of months back, so expect the streets to be a war zone once more. I love Greece but it’s run by dangerous morons, who are elected by scared morons. Nations seem to repeat events and behaviours throughout their history, Greeks have spent the last hundred years killing and suppressing each other. I said Greek tragedy, but perhaps it’s more of a black comedy. Just not for any of those involved.

And finally, a meme I quite like and thought worth mentioning. Quote ‘The deer isn’t crossing the road, the road is crossing the forest’. It is all about perspective and until we change our perspectives on how we view each other, the world around us and the natural world we are a part of we are going to continue missing the point. Missing the point of our own existence and dragging down the remnants of the harmony that we not only stopped seeing but refuse to see and seemingly have lost the ability to even comprehend anymore or ever again.

That is all.