CoVID-19 Day 41
It was May Day yesterday but today would have been the May Day celebrations in Lancaster’s Dalton Square and on the streets. So instead there’s a virtual celebration — march round your garden or living room if you wish — and I’m part of it.
It’s weird because I’ll be watching myself, pre-recorded. It’s great that we are using technology to overcome the obstacles and it shows a determination that we will press on regardless. But each conversation, conference, rally and get together adds to the tension, amplifying the dissonance. We can’t live like this indefinitely.
I can’t say I’m feeling the walls pressing in on me. I have the luxury of my own space and I can walk out onto the beach. What’s crushing is the sense of the world writing it’s own obituary. I should move on from this because it’s too depressing but it must be said. That we refuse to go back to normal must be the reality, not another hope.
My song is one of hope but sadly was written when I felt hopeful. Yet May Day represents all that has been done because working people dared to hope when their lives were hopeless. Throughout the world and in all centuries the oppressed have stood up for what was right without any evidence that their aspirations could possibly be realised and though many of us who rage against the machine have good, or at least reasonable, lives our aspirations can feel beyond a glass horizon.
The evils in our society largely come down to billionaires who cannot spend what they have and corporations that are literally heartless. As George Monbiot put it, we are beyond the age of hope, we must now act. The dystopian world we imagined is the world we live in and much of what we hoped to save has already perished. Carbon neutral by 2050 is a con. Green energy isn’t the answer. We have no cake to eat now the bread is gone.
But hope is not only the green on the other side of our fence, its the denial that our paved yard is beyond remedy; that self determination is ever utterly beyond us. Its what one pope called hope against hope. We are 99% there. It’s the 1% we have to deal with, who are 99% of the problem.