…keep 2 metres apart!
This piece was written on March 29th 2020, but never till now published here. Spookily, I discovered it when the world’s largest island becomes world news*
No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
(MEDITATION XVII from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, John Donne)
We have been cut loose from all our yesterdays, compelled to migrate to a new world which might or might not exist, beyond the horizon, like Abbot Brendan in the 16th century, or Columbus in the fifteenth.
Where are we coming from? An archipelago with millions of islands, separate from one another, the better to worship Freedom, an imaginary god who blesses his devotees with Opportunity, more accurately spelled as opportunism. Put simply, it preaches that if each serves his own interest, there will be general Prosperity.
It’s odd to say “no man is an island” today, when we must keep apart physically. In the last few days we’ve been choosing country walks from our collection of remembered footpaths, taking care to avoid the narrow ones. We’ve encountered others like us, some walking the dog, others for their own fresh air and exercise. We see them first in the distance, then as we approach, both parties keep a generous distance apart, across which we greet one another with “Good Morning” and a smile. As for our narrow local streets they are emptier each day, and there’s hardly any traffic on the road.
In war, plowshare-makers amend their production lines to make swords, in defiance of Isaiah’s prophecy. Our enemy is invisible but human ingenuity will give us the tools to see and kill. Sooner or later.
In these days of Corona-virus, we’re on a war footing. Dyson for example is using its vacuum-cleaner expertise to blow instead of suck and provide hospitals with breathing machines. These initiatives are requested not commandeered, and any new law of compulsion has to go through Parliament, which has claimed several victims in the House of Commons, in which social distancing means the Tories sit one side, Labour on the other. So now our Prime Minister and Health Secretary have the inconvenience of suffering the bug, but the prospect of being immune thereafter.
Armies of volunteers are applying whatever their skills can offer, to meet every identifiable need. I’ve offered my time to the Royal Volunteer Service (formally WVS and established in 1938 in advance of WW2) in the Check In and Chat role. It’s all done from home but I can’t understand their App. Would have been better employed in helping design a user-friendly product and then running user acceptance tests as I’ve done for fifty years, but it’s too late now. Too much has changed, I was left behind years ago.
I hope Brexit gets forgotten by all parties. The fuss they used to make, as if there were nothing more important! How crazy it was: like asking a millipede whether it wants to move forward or back. “Didn’t know there was a choice”, says the arthropod’s front end; so it asks its legs which way to go. Half say “Just as before, if you don’t mind.” The other half says, “Let’s try the other way, for the craic, for the adventure of it,” and the poor creature finds itself consumed in hate for its own self and goes chasing its tail end for ever more. Politics is sometimes self-harm, like mobilising troops or starting a quarrel between US and China.>
We’ve been used to airy-fairy ideas based on wishfulness and propaganda, which amount to marketing and adversarial debate. Strip them away and the naked reality is revealed, without the evil of suppressed truths.
The past is immutable, the future is unfathomable. We must deal practically with now, assign our ambitions and dreams to the bonfire of the vanities. Ideological strife makes no sense. The task is to stick with the real. This is why the current world crisis offers an Opportunity.
Necessity is essentially a stranger to the imaginary. (Simone Weil)
*…whereas now, in President Trump’s second term, he plays brinkmanship with Putin’s Russia over Greenland…
a wayfarer’s notes 