Absolutely Nothing

War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. — Norman Whitfield & Barrett Strong, 1969

War reporting. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. — Me, today

This morning I received a newsletter from a colleague, in which, reflecting on the past few years, he writes "The singular lesson of COVID was to avoid streaming news and social media at all costs." I quite agree, and while I have done well avoiding social media I have done less well avoiding streaming news—indeed any mainstream news—continuing to naively hope that a once-balanced and thoughtful publication like, say, The Guardian would have something thoughtful and balanced to say about covid, vaccination, lockdowns, masks, president Trudeau's attack on civil liberty, and now war. It does not. The Guardian has become as reactionary and sensationalist as The Sun and the Daily Express, just a little more left-leaning (which today of course means leaning towards coercive state control and the shaming of the non-compliant). In terms of the situation in Ukraine The Guardian is doing as effective a job of whooping up war fever as the rest of the gutter press.

The narrative of Good and Evil has no doubt existed since story telling began, but moves through different degrees of blatancy, the area between the extremes being explored to a greater or lesser degree depending on the era, and the storyteller. When society is in a mature state it is collectively able to embrace difference, non-conformity and mind-changing, when regressing it shuts down on all of that, screaming the words GOOD and BAD as loudly as possible, dragging people to one side or pushing them to the other.

These days, as I've written before ¹ we seem to have lost all ability to view the world in a nuanced way, with the news media perpetuating our declining maturity. It's as if our newspapers and news broadcasts are being put together by junior (elementary) school children who are newly learning about journalism—and getting it wrong.

The world needs a scapegoat— or to be more accurate, the ruling powers of the world need a scapegoat. The right-wing, unvaccinated 'covidiots' were convenient for a time, but as their message that vaccines didn't work, had unpleasant side-effects for many, and were only good for the pharmaceutical companies and their share-holders seemed to actually be true (who'd have thought?) a new scapegoat needed to be found. Enter Vladimir Putin, who as leader of the "enemy of freedom" from the cold war era, and on the brink of invading Russia’s west-leaning neighbour, Ukraine was a perfect candidate.² You may notice, if you cast your mind back a few weeks, how the rest of the world prodded and prompted Russia to make this threat a reality. That’s a perception, of course, and you may see or remember it differently, certainly though it seems that NATO did not take the threat seriously and were taken by surprise when it actually occurred—or they did take it seriously and deliberately did nothing to stop it. War is really good business for the western world, and it doesn't take a cynic—and certainly not a conspiracy theorist—to figure that out.

The press are all over it, of course, because as well as weaponry, war sells newspapers too—and ad space. The newspapers will rile you up to side with whoever they choose as the goodies, ganging up with them against the baddies. Honestly, there are very, very few places now where you'll be invited to think for yourself, to look at nuance, to see different perspectives. It takes a rare observer/reporter to achieve that. Personally I believe Charles Eisenstein, author of The Ascent of Humanity and Sacred Economics is one of the few who effectively achieves that balance. Read his recent analysis of the Russia/Ukraine situation ³ to see what I mean. You may of course disagree, and consider me biased in promoting this perspective. It's possible; I am trying though to seek balance, to stay awake. Goodies and baddies are for 5-year-olds, not for thoughtful, discerning adults. This is not an episode of Star Wars. Don't let the press and social media stupefy your brilliant mind. Resist.

1. Binarism and the Loss of Nuance, September 2021

2. I'm not saying that Putin is not a dangerous, insane megalomaniac (as he is portrayed). That may well be true. I'm only asking you to consider that he believes himself to be right, and a substantial amount of Russians believe he's a hero. That belief must come from somewhere. It's too easy, and too lazy to just to brand him "psychopath" and leave it at that, as if that somehow solves or explains anything. We can't fairly or usefully say every single patriotic Russian is a psychopathic nutcase. Our job as observers is to understand what we are looking at, to open our minds and maybe even our hearts. Putin is one of us. As challenging as it may be, let's not forget his essential humanity, just as our hearts go out to all those suffering the dire consequences of this latest world catastrophe. However it was caused, let's try not to perpetuate it with more hatred and vilification.

3. The Field of Peace, Substack, 28/02/2022