Hillcraft

I begin with an apology to those who have downloaded my story “Winter on the hill”. I’ve been going through it in recent days and discovered it’s riddled with more typos than usual. This is embarrassing. There’s a fresh copy on Smashwords now which tidies it up somewhat. Still, there’s no getting away from the fact I’ve been a bit distracted this year. We all have, I know. But worse, I began the year angry, and that’s never a good sign, and certainly not a good start.

It suggests there were more shadow issues inside me than I’d thought. This is always the case, the shadow leading us on a merry dance all our lives – a blessing when we can spot his tricks, a curse when we do not. The trigger for my anger was the result of the December 2019 election and the rout of Leftist politics, to which I’d hitched my wagon, my shadow plainly visible in those talking heads I’d labelled “right wing nutjobs”, “gammons” and “swivel eyed loons”. I’d seen the election as the last chance for a reversal in our direction of travel as a nation – less poverty, a renewal of the regions, and a green new deal. The majority of my countrymen, however did not agree.

2019 was an ugly year, a year of lies, fakery and flying spittle. It was also the year I realized it was no longer possible to make sense of anything, that the optical apparatus of the western world is so bent out of shape it swerves all semblance of truth. We have resolved it out of the equation of our life and times, and are thereby building a new Zeitgeist on quicksand, one in which the poor sink first, while sustaining the rich on their backs. In some respects, then, 2020 is the year we deserved, if only as a reminder there are some things that have an inescapable truth about them. You can ignore them all you like, say they’re not true, but that won’t make them go away. There were those who denied the existence of Covid from the beginning. Indeed, even with seventy-five thousand dead in the UK, some still do.

So the lesson of 2020 is that truth does not belong to those who shout the loudest, or to those who pour the most money into public relations. I don’t know where we’re going as a nation, only that I’m not angry about it any more, and I have “Winter on the Hill”, and my dialogue with its various characters to thank for that. I accept some people firmly believe in things I think are strange, and I accept persuading them otherwise is not a matter of pointing out my own version of the truth. Indeed, this is as likely to inflame them, as it runs counter to their own world view, that dialogue – true dialogue is presently impossible.

This is not to say I no longer believe, for example, that BREXIT is the biggest act of self harm in our post-war history. It’s an opinion based on an analysis of geopolitics and global economics, at least in so far as I understand these things. Many more of course understand things differently and therefore disagree with my view. But Winter on the Hill has taught me not to label these contrary opinions as merely crackpot, or even dare I say dangerous? It has also granted me some insight into the reasons Brexiteers think the way they do. But reaching this point you find you have transcended politics. You have swapped partisanship for the hill-craft necessary in crossing the daunting terrain as it now presents itself in 2021 and beyond.

The sight of Londoners fleeing the Capital, before the new Tier 4 rules came in, reminds me we shall not be spared the stupidity of crowds any time soon. The temporary blockading of the Channel ports and the halting of continental freight is a reminder of the fragility of the supply chains keeping our supermarkets stocked. But my hill-craft also tells me this is simply the nature of the new landscape we are traversing, and this, the incoming and decidedly inclement weather. Better to prepare for it than merely shake our fist.

I wish I could say I think 2021 will be any less “distracting”, that the stories I write will be free from error, but I suspect this will not be the case. What I can say though is that a partisan anger at the poverty, the foodbanks and the holes in the road has gone, and is in any case counterproductive. It doesn’t solve the problem, but if the best I can do is buy the homeless guy a sandwich and a cup of tea, then so be it. That’s all I could ever do. Compassion is a bottom up thing, and we’d all do well to remember that, because it’s only by the grace of God it’s not us sitting there instead of him.

And yes, come the next election, there’s a chance we’ll be falling over ourselves again to vote for more of the same, because most of us are not interested in solutions to longer term questions, even those concerning the sustainability of the species. We just want to know how to go on living as we are right now, without changing anything, even when we know change is likely coming, and the truth of the world is poking us in the eye day by day, by way of warning.

True hillcraft requires more than knowledge of the ropes and a gung-ho spirit. It requires a calmness of mind. It requires us to have the confidence not to go jumping at every passing fluffy cloud that sweeps the tops, but equally we must beware the overconfidence that scorns the anvil-heads. Angry, we remain blind to the subtlety of the way ahead, and come to grief in quick-time. Only by calmness do we navigate winter on the hill, and see ourselves safely to the other side. This is not to say I’m done with the shadow, only this particular manifestation of it. Heaven knows where he’ll take me next.

My thanks to everyone who has kept me company over the year and my very best wishes to you all.

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Freud on a Friday

I had a feeling in my water the government was going to issue a strict “stay at home” order last Friday. So, after work I swung through Rivington in the West Pennines – my local beauty spot. I was thinking to get a little open air social distancing, before the clamp-down. I was not the only one.

The Great House Barn at Rivington is a popular watering hole and a favourite of mine. But the advice was to avoid cafés, for risk of infection, so I drove by in search of a quiet pull-in, further up on the moors. I was amazed to see the Barn was packed out, the car-park full and spilling over onto the roadside. There were people, kids, dogs everywhere. Indeed, it reminded me of a Bank Holiday weekend, a time when Rivington is better avoided because of the crush.

Social distancing they were not, and I wondered why. The advice has been clear enough. It’s to save your life, or save you enduring a distressing bout of illness. Is it that we no longer believe a word we see or hear any more? Are the post-election utterings of politicians taken as the same vacuous nothingness? Are the hysterical headlines of the press all meaningless noise? (I mean who can blame us on either score) but what else explains the fact so few people are taking this seriously?

I found my quiet pull-in, managed a brief walk in the sun. It all looked spring-like, but there was a chill wind taking the sweetness out of it. Plus, the trails were thick with weekenders, and they walk so damned slow it’s like they’re barely alive. Their dogs were also loose and bounding up to sniff your balls. So much for social distancing.

“Aw, don’t worry, he’ll not hurt you, mate.”

It was not an enjoyable yomp, more like a turgid commute up the M6. I returned home frustrated, feeling unclean. It was as if the panic buyers were now hogging the countryside, greedy for the very air we breathe, hanging their bags of fido-turds as they went. Social distancing from now on means going no further than my garden gate.

The clampdown came that same night. But it was not as severe as I’d expected, more a polite request for the pubs, clubs and café’s to shut. So then my local shop was at once cleared out of beer and wine. I suppose now the pleasure seekers are holding their gatherings indoors. In every country this plague has visited, the health services have collapsed, and medical staff have died saving the lives of others. Our lack of caution is blind, irrational and selfish. It puzzles me.

Since Friday, I’ve been thinking hard about this social distancing thing. We’re advised it’s fine to go out for some exercise, that fresh air and the countryside is good for you. But there is also a danger here, that there will be tens of thousands of people every weekend making a rush for the same open spaces. Then there will be the exodus of the caravanners, and the holiday-homers, off to the remoter places to hole up and wait the plague out. The risk there is resentment of the locals, on whom we descend as we overwhelm their modest health provision.

So we need to stay at home, walk round the block – at midnight if need be, to avoid each other, provided there is no curfew. 2020 is cancelled – well except for my garden, which will be very tidy indeed this year. And I will use the time to deepen my practice of Tai Chi.

Freudian psychoanalysts have a very pessimistic view of human beings. They tell us we are slaves to a thing called the id. This is an unconscious, primitive drive that craves simplistic gratification in whatever form it can get, a thing at odds with logic and reason. Then there’s the super-ego. This is unconscious too, but contains the balancing forces of guilt, shame and morality, preventing the id from destroying us in wild orgies. And then there’s the ego. This is the conscious bit which tries to reconcile the forces of the id, the super-ego and the demands of society. But generally speaking we’re a lost cause unless we can sublimate the resulting tension into some form of creative endeavour. Or we go mad trying, or more likely we succumb to the id, to its selfish and unthinking drive for pleasure. And we behave like idiots, like sheep in its siren pursuit.

I’ve never been a fan of Freud because he doesn’t offer us a way out, and that’s always frightened me. His work shines a light on our stupidity, our gullibility, on our neuroses and the reasons for them. But most of us, he says, are lost causes. We are irrational, unreasoning automatons. We are slaves to desire, and blind to the consequences of our actions. He saw right through us, shook his head.

And I see now, he was right.

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The Ego and the Gun

The Ego is our self constructed sense of self. It is a thought-form, so called because it is constituted entirely of our thoughts, thoughts about ourselves, about others, and about the world around us. It is in part, self defensive, assuring us, amid a sea of conflicting opinion and ambiguous social currents, that our way of thinking, our way of living is the correct one. It’s also inherently fragile, having left out all those things we deny we could ever think or allow as part of our identity – things like falling in love with someone of the same sex; feelings of friendship or even just basic respect towards someone of another race or creed; accepting that women are human beings; admitting sometimes we get things wrong; admitting other people’s ideas are as valid as our own.

Throughout all of life’s complexities and ambiguities, we can trust the ego to safeguard our position, and it will raise a storm of emotion when its superiority is threatened, when it fears exposure for the fraud it ultimately is. Then it will insist we take action, defensive or offensive. The ego can lead us astray, it can have us make fools of ourselves, it can cause us to incubate neuroses; it can make us hurt or even kill others.

One of the most powerful symbols for the ego is the gun. Take a look at the entertainment aisle next time you’re in town. Pick the top ten DVD’s and see how many carry a gun on their front cover. There he is, the hero, the “ego,” bearing a weapon in order to assault his enemies. It is the archetypal statement of superiority, that my ego has acquired the power to exterminate yours, that my argument shall ultimately triumph over yours, for no better reason than I am stronger or cleverer or more dangerous.

The young are easily seduced by the gun. They are persuaded by perverted cultural programming that it possesses not only a noble imperative, but also a romance. The young are also least prepared, emotionally, psychologically to have much of an idea about the ego, the ego being itself too strong and too big to be seen, masquerading as it does as the very root of our being. We think it’s who we are, that there can be no “us” without it. When threatened it will turn to weapons, and if no weapons are to be had, then fists will do, and failing even that then some malicious comments posted online will sate its appetite for a while.

And there’s really not much the gun-less can do. Fear of death will have me nodding readily to your tune. I may not be happy about it, I may resent it, and you may rest assured my own ego will ensure the first chance I get, I’ll turn the gun on you. And the hotter the revenge against your insults to me the better, for there is nothing quite so satisfying as the signs of a violent and horrifically painful capitulation on the face of one’s enemies. What? Got no gun? A Samaurai sword, or a knife will do. Plenty of those on the covers of DVD’s as well.

The strength of an argument, of reason, will always be outmatched by proficiency with arms, which makes me wonder how we ever progressed beyond a state of barbarism, to find the time to build cities and invent rich cultural lives as well.

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