The silence from Pale Green Vortex on the topic of the EU as the referendum in the UK approached was both deafening and deliberate. I had written plenty a while ago on various aspects of the EU, to the point where I was finding the entire theme dispiriting, my own enthusiasm for this blog plummetting to a level where I was wondering whether to tie a little bow around Pale Green Vortex before consigning it to the dustbin of history. Such is the effect of directing ones focus too much onto matters of politics, parapolitics, and geopolitics. In addition, the world was awash with comments and opinons on the matter anyway, and the last thing we needed was yet another bunch of comments and opinions. It is actually the easiest thing in the world to spout opinion, even if it is of the reasoned and intelligent kind. Nothing special about that at all.It was with considerable shock that, on that fateful Friday morning last week, I finally tuned in to the outside world to discover the result of the referendum. It was, I had decided, just a formality: the result was a foregone conclusion. At the end of the day, folk in Britain would lose courage, and by a considerable margin decide to play safe, follow the track taken by so many of us in our personal lives, the track with the signpost saying 'I know this is all horrible, frustrating, and rubbish; but rather follow the comfortable, the known, the familiar. It is, in the end, easier than striking out into pastures new.' When I first saw the result, I wondered whether I was reading things right, or whether it was a preposterous joke. When it finally sunk in that this was real I picked myself off the floor, dusted myself down, and got on with the rest of my life.
Aside from any good things and bad things about leaving or staying in the EU, I took one big message from result. The vote suggested that the spirit of plenty of folk has not been completely quashed by decades of control, control, more control, mind control in the guise of producing nice, decent people (political correctness) and the rest. I had all but given up on the British, especially those in England, so I take the referendum result as a cause for slight optimism. I don't vote in general elections, local elections etc, for reasons that have been explained on Pale Green Vortex before; but this referendum was a bit different, since it was about control by institutions that are vicious and undemocratic even by the vicious, undemocratic standards of the conventional political world. It was about how many layers of control we want (and the answer is 'as few as possible'.) The result demonstrated that it is possible to bring about a few changes after all.
I like Europe. But I do not like the EU. This is, by the way, another mind game, a psy-op, played by many in the media, referring to the EU as 'Europe'. Not true, but designed to confuse the unwary. I realised many years ago while spending a year in New Zealand that I am an Old World person. Despite the language being more-or-less the same as I had spoken all my life, and in spite of the culture seeming superficially similar to that of Britain, New Zealand felt to me very far from 'home'. I really felt like a stranger in a strange land. Conversely, I experienced a distinct affinity of spirit whenever I visited Italy, Holland, Spain.
Europe: pizzas, piazzas, plazas, playas. Canals, the Rhine winding its majestic way. Passegiata, the many moods of the Mediterranean. This is an idealised view, I know, and there is another side. The ghastly urban high-rise wastelands of some of the Spanish coastline - how could they do this? Disenfranchised, disempowered beings on the Paris metro or hanging around on street corners, people whose soul appears to have fled by night. There are many dark images of Europe, but still.....
During one period of my life in particular, Europe - mainland, continental Europe - saved me. It was around thirty years ago that I would embark upon my annual pilgrimage to Italy. I use the word 'pilgrimage' deliberately, since I went in search of emotional, psychological, and spiritual sustenance. I travelled alone, or with my girlfriend of the time. Seeking to break out of the greyness which seemed to embrace the skies, the buildings, the culture and most of the people of London, I went in search of colour, vibrancy, spontaneity. In Italy I found all this in abundance, at times in superfluity. I especially loved some of the art of the Italian Renaissance, and the late-medieval dudes from the generations beforehand: Giotto, Duccio, Cimabue. Without them, I do not know what might have come of my life.
The EU is not Europe. Like most politics, it is a synthetic structure superimposed on the organic, natural flow of real life, as directly experienced. Opaque Lens refers to it, in his recent bit on Shamanic Freedom Radio, as the EUSSR, and I think that sums it up magnificently. Predictably, and sadly, the aftermath of the EU referendum is bringing out the vultures, the creatures of darkness ready to pick through the carcasses in search for anything that furthers their own power, their own agenda, their own rubbishy career. Out they come, sad beings with nothing better to do with their lives than accrue fake power to themselves within a system that is sick and distorted; to sow fear, division, dissent. The Tory power-grabbers, the Labour opportunists, the inevitable Sturgeon with her 'what about Scotland?' whingeing and whining. What a pathetic parade they make. These are people who I currently refer to simply as low-graders: poor specimens of humanity, really, involved in a low-grade game that has no end, and which unfortunately affects all of us. That, I suppose, is all part of the game.
Image: The Tower, Ancient Italian Tarot
