At what point do I make the shift from passivity to action? Make that decision to get out of the chair and do something? Last week we were amazed by the eruption of rioting; the sparks of wildfire blowing in the wild winds leaving no area that could really be called ‘safe’. It was a demonstration of sorts but what, exactly, was being demonstrated? Riot, looting and criminality were the first words to be bandied about. Then came sick and broken, absent fathers, poverty, MPs fiddling their expenses, bankers’ greed; each of us relying on our ideological underpinnings to choose the language that might make sense of it all. After this there were the calls for harsh punishment of the criminals and politicians tried kicking the police but then the police kicked back and so Cameron was quick to praise them.
Yesterday evening I went to see Just Do It, a documentary following the activities of climate camp activists. Their non-hierarchical methods of organising, their clever ways of only announcing the target at the last minute in order to stay one step ahead of the police, their humour and playfulness, their skill in presenting their case as well as being prepared to be arrested, all made for an enthralling account and they were an attractive bunch of people – always ready to attempt to engage police or passers-by. And of course non-violent. Added to which Marina was always ready with her teapot.
On the other hand, inchoate is the word that comes to mind in relation to the riots and inchoate riots have a long tradition in this country. According to the OED inchoate means ‘just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary: a still rudimentary democracy’ is one example the OED uses, and the other is: inchoate proletarian protest’! These are very telling examples.
How do we turn the riots into a political language. When I say ‘we’ I include the rioters and criminals – after all they are attempting a dialogue with those of us who didn’t join them. Democracy, if it is to mean anything, must be inclusive; too much inequality and it must degenerate into exploitation and class warfare.
I was also reminded of the looting that burst into the open in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – just when Bush was announcing ‘mission accomplished’. What attempts were there to understand, make sense of what happened beyond the seeming lack of preparation and foresight by American planners. Rather like blaming the police after the riots last week. But these are human actions; people getting off their backsides and doing something – claiming freedom. An item always on the politicians agenda, though it often seems to mean the freedom of the rich to become even richer.
One more thought linking the above to our brief examination of that movie, The Tree of Life: I was reading The Slaughterer, a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer and he mentions the Tree of Life as a text of the Cabalah or Kabalah. And apparently there is some linkage between the Tree of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil from the Old Testament’s Garden of Eden: the one that Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat the fruit from; the consequence of which was to bring death to humanity. Cameron, of course, wants the rioters to be stuffed with the knowledge of good and evil as though they don’t know what it is. I bet they do.
Back to blackbirds:
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?