Teachers and Trippers: from Edinburgh with love

Pale Green Vortex Man foresakes the mountain regions and heads to the Big City. It happens increasingly rarely, and for ever briefer periods of time. Last week saw him make one of these occasional forays south - all the Big Cities are south if you live in the Scottish Highlands - in order to attend a special event.

It's a familiar pattern. After about an hour and a half, around Blair Atholl, I wonder whether I have made a mistake. I experience the urge to get off at the next station stop and go straight home. Then we hit the Lowlands, and I feel clumsily out of place. Demeter, Ceres, the agriculture deities, have well and truly deserted me. The Fife coast, the great sea, revives my spirits. Then we hit the Big City, the great capital, Edinburgh.

Forty seconds off the train and I'm already suffering mild culture shock. Now I remember what it is about the Big City: vast numbers of people moving around at great speed and with great apparent intent. The problem is that I've completely lost track of what the very important thing they are clearly involved in is. Funny, really. I did, after all, spend almost three decades of my life in and around a far bigger city, Whittington's dream, London.

I make the cardinal error of wandering into a department store. OK, Princes Street is not the ideal place in Edinburgh for me at the best of times. People have the habit of nearly knocking me to the ground, as they move around in a kind of unconscious trance, fixated solely on the clothing hanging on the stand over there. In a few hour's time, I will be considering civilisation, its origins and future. I don't see much evidence of it around here just now.

'Psychedelics and Civilisation': the talk by Graham Hancock. One of the few events seductive enough to entice me down to Big City life. It's dark by the time I venture out from my room in search of the venue. Grand Sheraton Hotel: sounds pretty posh to me. So it transpires. There is a statement here, however, and an intention. No more hiding apologetically behind a bush, a bit like Eve and Adam naked and shameful before God. No. The idea is that the discussion - psychedelics and civilisation - needs to come out into the mainstream. The time has arrived, hallelujah. Just so, just so.

I arrive just slightly early. The conference room where the talk is due to take place is on the vast side. As one of the earlier ones there, I find a seat near the front and watch. People keep coming in.... and coming..... and coming. It's extraordinary. By the time Graham gets off his seat and onto the stage, the auditorium is practically full.

Five hundred tickets were sold for the event - a sell-out. Nowhere had I expected such a number to turn up to a talk overtly concerned with psychedelic substances and, in this case, their more-significant-than-normally-recognised role in the unfolding of human civilisation. For me, it was a remarkably heartening experience just to see all these folk. Even if the talk hadn't taken place, the trip to the Big City would have been worth it.

Fortunately, the talk did take place. Graham Hancock is a well-known figure in the worlds of ancient (and by ancient, I mean ancient) civilisation research and, more recently, the role of psychedelics in human life past and present. His book 'Supernatural' is a great and important read regarding psychedelics and multi-dimensional consciousness from a historical and pre-historical perspective. It is one of the most important works on my bookshelf. Graham is also a first-class speaker, and his talk led us through vast worlds of time, space, and personal experience. If and when it turns up on Youtube or elsewhere, it will form an outstanding introduction to the topic for someone getting interested, or just an inspiring synthesis for those already familiar with this rich and varied landscape of untold (well, not quite any more) perspectives on the human project.

Graham elucidated a wide range of themes. Here are just a few:

The use of psychedelics has been extremely widespread in times and places past. More and more evidence emerges by the day that points in this direction: much of humanity's sense of the sacred has been promoted by its psychedelic experiences. The times we live in, where psychedelics have been demonised and are heavily criminalised, are anomalous. The one and only reason for this state of affairs is that LSD, DMT, ayahuasca, mushrooms and the rest are inherently challenging to the control of the status quo.  As Graham sweetly put it, they make you question stuff. And this, above all else, is anathema to a system based upon negative false premises, and upon people just doing what they are told to do.

He described one of my favourite analogies, and one which has appeared on Pale Green Vortex before. How the brain is not (in my view, cannot be) the source of consciousness. Instead it is more like a television set, a receiver, which just normally happens to be tuned to one channel only - 'channel normal'. But we can be far more completely human if we extend the range of channels we pick up. We discover the remote control that got lost behind the cushions on the sofa.

Graham also ventured lovingly into the worldview of the Gnostics. I don't know why this always resonates with me so deeply - maybe it's the resonance of truth. But he fearlessly put forth the Gnostic notions (highly heretical to orthodox Christianity) of the fall of Sophia, the demiurge, who has created a world of error, and the nefarious dealings of the archons. He also explained how polarity as it exists in our world is there as a teaching device, a hugely important but rarely known realisation, one which enables us to make far more sense of the crazy and sometimes nasty world we inhabit.

April 19th is national 'Coming Out' Day, when psychedelic people are encouraged to tell someone about their personal experience of these substances and their potential benefits. One of the more sensible things about psychedelics was said by Dr Rick Strassman. Known sometimes as Mr DMT, as a result of the officially-approved studies he did into DMT during the 1990s, he was also a serious practicing Buddhist, affiliated with a particular Buddhist group in the USA. He suggested that some users of psychedelics would benefit greatly from taking up some Buddhist meditation, developing personal discipline from the practice of ethics etc. General thumbs-up for the goodly doctor. He went on to say, however, that similarly some practitioners of Buddhism could benefit from a small number of carefully organised and controlled psychedelic trips, particularly those who had been soldiering away for years on their meditation cushion with limited higher dimensional success. Fierce disapproval came the way of Strassman from the direction of his fellow Buddhists for saying such a thing; it was an event which eventually led to his own parting ways with this particular group. 'Holiness wins out over Truth' is the succinct way he summed things up. It's a good story for reflection by those who are committed to following rational, tolerant, open-minded Buddhism, I think.

Saturday morning came, and I was out early. This is sometimes the best time to experience the Big City, before it properly wakes up. I was strolling on the way to the train station when the penny dropped, making a loud clunking sound on the Edinburgh pavement as it did so. All my life I have viewed myself as the weird one, the great minority, the anomaly, the outsider. Suddenly I realised it isn't like that at all. I am actually the normal one, as indeed were most of the attendants of Graham Hancock's talk. We do what human beings have tried to do for most of their time on Earth. We endeavour to embrace our humanness, our divinity and to more fully realise that sacredness in our daily lives. We live, however, within an aberration, the socio-economic-political structure of modern times. This is not 'normal', neither is it typical of the human story. It is a relatively recent devolution in the way that humankind goes about its affairs. This is one of the more profound implications of the 'deep ancestry' work of Graham Hancock and others. It changes the name of the game, and it changes the way that I feel about my own endeavours in life. Walk on....

The Psychedelic Society: check it out. The Psychedelic Society of Edinburgh was formed a mere year ago, but succeeded in getting five hundred people to this big event in the Big City. I think that's fantastic. Don't you?



      



      



      

In Praise of Richard Dawkins

Aaaaargh...... surely not.....

Note: I held fire on completing and posting this piece when I heard that Richard Dawkins had recently suffered a stroke. I don't like to hit people when they are down, even if they're never going to read what's been written about them. Anyhow, he is on the mend, it would seem, a process I hope may continue. And this piece has been finished.

'Any model we make does not describe the universe. It describes what our brains are capable of saying at this time.' Robert Anton Wilson. A very important quote, readers. Very important.

On his occasional appearances in Pale Green Vortex, Richard Dawkins has got a rough ride. He is, in my view, a leading exponent of 'scientism' as opposed to what I might consider the genuine scientific method. Science, as I understand it, is the open-ended and open-minded investigation of the natural and physical world. Scientism, however, is an ideology, a belief system. It states that a phenomenon is real, or is to be taken seriously, only if it can be verified through the means currently available to scientists. If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. It is closely aligned to philosophical materialism and, by confounding and attempting to coalesce 'scientism' with 'science', intends to convert the populace to a materialist, reductionist view of the world. It is a dogma defended and promulgated enthusiastically and viciously by its band of believers. In common with other dogmas, it is poison.

Homeopathy I have found to be a classic litmus test of the scientistic mindset. Homeopathy doesn't work because I cannot see how it works. How many times have I heard this protest, especially from those who consider themselves learned, rational beings? The homeopathic substance is diluted to such a degree that it doesn't exist, according to our view of the world at least: this is the gist. Let's just examine this for a moment. The doubters are saying this: I don't understand it, therefore it doesn't exist. Is this scientific, rational? I think not. It assumes that we humans have attained the apex of understanding, we know everything there is to know, and there are no surprises around the corner any longer. I suppose this has been the stance taken by the ignorant throughout the ages, always to be proved wrong. The enlightened, properly scientific approach is this: hmm, homeopathy. Seems a bit strange to me. But there are many who claim its efficacy. Maybe there's something in it. Let's put it on the back burner for now.

Homeopathy can work because I know it works. I have personally experienced its beneficial effects in the same way that I have experienced the effects of antibiotics. Anybody who says that my experience isn't real because it doesn't fit in with their own view of how the world works is not going to get much time from me.

Richard Dawkins is also to be taken to task for the shabby way he has treated Rupert Sheldrake on more than one occasion in the past. Sheldrake, I submit, is a more rational, scientific man by far. But even in the case of Dawkins with his jihad-like campaign of (not very) rational humanistic materialism, life is not all black-and-white. I propose three ways in which he is to get the thumbs-up.

Firstly, Dawkins has given us a very useful word: 'meme'. The word has even appeared on Pale Green Vortex. My dictionary informs me that 'meme' is 'a behavioural or cultural trait that is passed on by other than genetic means e.g. by imitation.' And Dawkins came up with it in 1976.

More centrally, Richard Dawkins has stood firm in his criticism of monotheistic religions, particularly Islam. As I have mentioned before, it is one of the modern world's great mysteries. On the one hand, the official story tells us that the modern era of fear and control was brought into being by a bunch of fundamentalist Muslims hijacking some planes and crashing them into highly prestigious sites in the USA. The official story also tells us that all over the Near and Middle East, and in north-east Africa, different factions of Islam are blasting each other to pieces in an orgy of hatred, this giving rise to a vast number of refugees fleeing the horror and trying to elbow their way into Europe. Yet, despite all this, we criticise Islam at our peril. It's not a good thing to do. It's fine to take a potshot at a white European simply wanting to protect her or his own culture; but to say something critical of Islam - steady on, there.

So Richard Dawkins has defied the monster of political correctness and ploughed his furrow regardless. For this, he is to be applauded, I feel. Belief-based religion; faith based upon blind belief ; religion based on a book, be it a Bible or a Koran: what a low level for the divine human experiment to have fallen to. I am considerably less charitable to Christianity in its various forms than my oft-times inspiration Neil Kramer. Words of wisdom may be encoded in the Bible; Christianity may have acted as a cover for mystics of times past, in order to escape persecution. Nevertheless, I feel we would be better off without both these pesky religions and their pesky books.

I am reminded of the songs I had to sing at primary school. 'Jesus loves me this I know/ 'Cos the Bible tells me so.' Believe in the book, little children, believe in the book. They like to get you young - they do it with the new religion of global warming nowadays. Another song:'Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war/ With the cross of Jesus, going on before'. Ah yes, the God of love, love, love. Going to war in the cause of love. Even at the age of eight, I was not taken in by this nonsense. Why should I believe in the words of this book any more than in the words of 'Noddy goes on holiday'? Nobody ever pointed out to me why, probably because they couldn't.

The third reason to say 'thanks' to our venerable pseudo-scientist concerns an incident that happened in his youth. Whatever one might think of some of his viewpoints, Richard Dawkins is to be praised for saying what he thinks without being cowed by the looming spectre of political correctness. In 2013 he related an incident that took place while a pupil at boarding school. One of the masters 'put a hand inside my shorts', as he did with several of Dawkins's schoolboy friends. Our jolly atheist's conclusion was that, although the experience was unpleasant and embarrassing, 'I don't think he did any of us lasting harm.'

A number of people, especially connected with anti-abuse agencies, expressed their outrage at Dawkins's comments: giving the wrong message, condoning abuse, 'evil is evil' etc. Er, hang on a minute. Dawkins was merely expressing his personal experience. The truth is the truth, and that's that. I don't think he was putting forth a particular programme or agenda, simply saying what happened and how he felt it affected him. Following on from that, I gain the impression that he would have liked some kind of dialogue on the topic. Pedophilia: such an emotional word that discussion becomes impossible. But is a rock start having his rock'n roll way with a fifteen-year-old girl fan after a concert the same as some of the acts committed by Jimmy Savile? Without condoning the former, I would say 'no'. But much of the mainstream media treats all and sundry as the same, and encourages all variety of pedophile to be viewed identically. The hysteria and histrionics stirred up by the word 'pedophile' prevents a reasoned view. My problem is that, whenever I see hysteria and histrionics acting as agents of confusion, I think it's deliberate - there's something else going on there.....

So, Richard Dawkins: a man with whom I am at variance over many things. Nevertheless, may he continue to speak up. Speak up. Speak up.
            

Going to Church

I have recently begun an activity which, to anybody who knows me, may seem rather bizarre. I have started visiting the local cathedral. Not, mark you, for Eucharist or Holy Communion. And certainly not for the speeches given by a man in funny clothes, on the subjects of sin, repentance, the wrath of God for the unrighteous, and his quirky sense of the meaning of love. No. I have generally popped in during the middle of a morning walk - about 11.30 is a good time. Sometimes there are two or three tourists around - normally female -, sometimes I have the place to myself. Despite the words of error often spoken within the cathedral walls, and despite the international missionary zeal that sometimes echoes through the place, the cathedral remains by and large a still, quiet, tranquil space.

Built during the nineteenth century, the cathedral has little historical significance. It was constructed, though, in the neo-Gothic style that was the rage at the time, and I find it effective. It is simple without being plain and without suggesting the sinfulness of richness and colour. Unpretentious stained glass covers most of the windows. On one wall there are a few miniature icons of Jesus presented as a gift by Alexander the Second, one-time Tsar of Russia. There is a copy of Melozzo da Forli's well-known Angel Gabriel in Annunciation. What I like most, however, is a little Madonna and Child, so sweet and delicate. It is apparently a copy of a fifteenth century Sienese, but looks older to me, like a contemporary of Duccio. I enjoy gazing at it, immersed in the silence of the cathedral.

It's a funny story, the Italian art thing. Thirty years ago, I was in the throes of life as a dedicated Buddhist. I lived in Buddhist community, and worked as chairman of the modestly-named West London Buddhist Centre ( a position I was in some respects remarkably ill-suited for; but that's another story). You might have thought that everything my soul yearned for would have been provided on a plate in this heady life deep in the Buddhist spiritual world. Wrong. Despite all my Buddhist, supposedly spiritual, life, I would long for my annual trip to Italy, to look at art. Italian art. Italian renaissance art. This spoke to me, fed me, in ways that no manner of study of Buddhist texts, sitting-on-a-cushion meditation even, appeared to do. One year I made a thorough cultural pilgrimage through the centres of northern Italy. From Ventimiglia and Genoa in the west, then to Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Venice, Siena, Florence, Lucca, Pisa. Rarely in my life have I felt so vital. It finally came to an end when I walked into an exhibition in Pisa that was composed entirely of crucifixions, and I felt a wave of revusion ripple through me. But I had had almost two months of immersion in painting, sculpture, and architecture by then.....

That I have lived for a decade within an hour's walk of the cathedral and until a few weeks ago had never entered its portals speaks volumes of my feelings about Christianity and Christianism, particularly the fundamentalistic, literalistic brand that remains in vogue hereabouts. But something has loosened up: not regarding the religion as such, but about the nature of its many expressions. I think that returning to Acharya S.'s work following her untimely death has had an effect. Her contention, which I find pretty watertight, is that Christianity, in common with other 'major world religions', has its own roots in the ancient astrotheology (sun, moon, planets, stars, zodiac etc). Furthermore, its assault on the former 'pagan' traditions is due in part to the need to cover up its own astrotheological beginnings.

Seeing the veneer of Christian dogma and doctrine overlaying the natural 'spirituality' of humankind for what it is - a synthetic gloss on the real thing - permits one to look beneath. I can enter the cathedral without playing the game. Opening my eyes to the Madonna and Child in my local cathedral, I was astonished that I felt myself to be looking at Gaia-Sophia, Mother Earth. And she was presenting us with her creation: possibly the entire world, possibly the divine child as representation of the human species, her special offspring, the one who is capable of becoming aware of its source. Maybe the creative act as an eternal, ever-present reality, the 'world' coming into being on a moment-to-moment basis: the never-ending game of creation and its emanations in their infinite variety.

Ah, poor old Mother Earth. She's having a hard time of it, we are told again and again, at the hands of her most destructive creation, humanity. She is angry,we are told, especially about our rapacious use of fossil fuels; she's had enough, fed up with it all. This is a common sentiment; some people who I generally respect take this line of thought. May I respectfully suggest that it may be utter bullshit.

James Lovelock has a lot to answer for in this respect. Having done a lot of valuable work in developing Gaia theory, ten years ago he produced a book entitled 'The Revenge of Gaia'. I have a copy on my bookshelf, which stares out at me from time to time; I think it's time for the book to be sent to the garage,out of sight, but just hanging around in case I need to refer to it at some point in the future. Over the course of nine contentious chapters, Lovelock outlines how the Earth is hotting up quicker than a modern-day fan oven, and it's all our fault. Gaia is straining to absorb the change, and is going to get real nasty with us as a result. Lynn Margulis, co-creator with Lovelock of Gaia theory, apparently opined that Gaia is a 'tough bitch', and can come through all this. The overall tone of Lovelock's book, however, is that Gaia is old, worn out, and that she is unable to absorb the manifold damage done to her by humanity's exploitations. 'Gaia, the living Earth, is old and not as strong as she was two billion years ago' (chapter nine). 'Unfortunately, we are a species of schizoid tendencies, and like an old lady who has to share her house with a growing and destructive group of teenagers, Gaia grows angry, and if they do not mend their ways she will evict them.' (end of chapter three).

I suspect Lovelock has come to regret writing the book: a while ago he admitted that the Earth wasn't bubbling and boiling the way he thought she was going to, and maybe he got something wrong. This in turn provoked the wrath and typically cruel and vicious ad hominem attacks from the green totalitarian zealots, who accused him of being senile and past it. What thoroughly nasty people.

So let's have a look at Mother Earth. No, let's look first at ordinary, decent mums. Or at least the image of an ordinary, decent mum. Ordinary, decent mum is a picture of unconditional love. Her function, if you like, is to give birth, protect, and provide for her baby offspring. She gives freely, without thought of receiving anything in return. She is prepared to sacrifice something of her own welfare for the sake of her child. This sounds like a ridiculously lofty spiritual idea, the stuff of high-level Buddhas and similar entities. My own experience of observing mothers, however, suggests that this is not too far off the mark. Mothers can make considerable sacrifices physically, emotionally, and energetically in child-bearing and pregnancy, in the act of giving birth, and in the rearing of their offspring. As their progeny have grown up, I have seen mothers in great sadness, anguish, despair even, as the child they have lovingly nurtured refuses to grow up into anything other than a monster. But punishment? Revenge? No way. Unless she's not the real deal, and is an archon in disguise.

If everyday mums do not have punishment and revenge on the menu, how less our archetypal female parent, Mother Earth? The notion that she's out to give us a hard time because we've been naughty boys and girls, using up her resources, shows a severe twisting of the archetype. She is, I would suggest, more than happy to give of her resources (even her coal, gas, and oil, for crissake!) for her special children, as the Gnostics would have it, those endowed with a spark of divinity (however hidden it may sometimes be). On our side, it behoves us to act respectfully, responsibly, lovingly, with her great gifts. Use them well, wisely, and she will be happy. Use them for nefarious ends, as has so often been the case, and Mother Earth may well lament to see her divine children failing to follow their innate divinity. But calling for revenge, for punishment, just ain't gonna happen.

Footnote: as an illustration of the nature of the Divine Mother, check out the Duccio at the beginning of this piece. The divine child is messing around with the Madonna's headgear. There are several Duccios depicting a similar act from the infant. He is apparently pulling aside her headdress, though to me it looks like he's tweaking her ear. Whatever, it's a tad irritating for the long-suffering mum. But is she angry? Does she look disturbed? Is she about to whack the baby with a rolling pin? Nothing could be further from the truth. Pseudo-greenies, if you're going to invoke archetypes to shore up your viewpoints, at least get the archetype right.....
      

  
              

Vortex

A vortex is not always everything it's cracked up to be. My father was once rather obsessed with a vortex. He would talk about it frequently. The vortex in question was Corryvreckan. Located in the narrow stretch of water between the islands of Jura and Scarba, it is a whirlpool of considerable repute. Being off the remote west coast of Scotland, the Corryvreckan whirlpool is difficult of access, particularly if, as was the case with my father, you were normally domiciled in faraway Oxfordshire. However, one year he made it. Up the highways to beyond Glasgow, then on the twists and turns of the byways that snake across the rarely-frequented vastnesses of southern Argyll.  He took the requisite tiny boat in the direction of the famed whirlpool. It was a calm day, the tides were wrong, and all he saw was a quickening of the waters as they passed between the two islands. He returned home in disappointment.

Meanwhile, back at this particular vortex of the pale green variety, anybody considering that it needs a serious overhaul would be absolutely correct! Pale Green Vortex has been going for almost six years now: we are still awaiting a letter of congratulations from the Queen, along with that invite for tea and biscuits with David Cameron. During the whole of this time, the design - if it can indeed be called as such - has remained steadfastly unaltered. It is not, in all honesty, something that is a top priority, but we may get round to it some day or another.

During these past six years, I have become aware of a major activity of many bloggers, podcasters, and the like. That activity is questioning whether or not they are going to continue with their blog or podcast; or whether at the least they will give it a considerable break.  I know of a number of instances where an announcement of cessation of activity has been made - only for them to start up again soon afterwards. This process is one that I understand very well. There has been a number of occasions on which I have come close to bringing Pale Green Vortex to a halt, whether temporarily or forever. A couple of times I resumed with renewed enthusiasm as a result of some timely encouragement from some readers.

Once you've got something going, it's easy to feel that you need to continue a regular and fairly frequent output. Last year was exceptional, in that I had more time available for writing, plenty to write about, and output flowed easily - happy days! This period is now over, though, I feel in my bones. My attention is being drawn to matters that require a longer period of gestation. What's more, they are rather more personal and clearly autobiographical (everything that goes on Pale G.V. is part autobiography), and to me fairly biggies! So I am letting myself off the leash of such regular postings, and will see what happens. I may continue to write as frequently as I have done, but I can't say. Vamos a ver. I certainly hope the fruits of some of my current 'inner work' will make its way into the Vortex.

I was in the process of preparing a piece on our good friend Richard Dawkins, but then I heard that the fellow recently had a stroke. Actually, I was writing a few nice things about him, but I still feel it inappropriate to put my piece out there just now.

So let's end this post with a quote from another good friend of ours, David Icke: "The key to 'power' is persuading those you depend upon that they're dependent on you. Just like how the whale depends on the plankton, not the plankton on the whale."

We can go as superficial or as deep as we wish with this one. There is far more to it than immediately meets the eye. If this is the key to power, than it is also the key to unravelling the grip of that power.

Who depends upon who? Maybe it's not quite like that at all. Maybe it's more like an unconscious collusion. We like to find someone to blame: the Jews, the archons, the banksters, Bilderbergers, a bunch of extraterrestrials, some deep secret black magick shamanic mystery dudes. Whoever. It makes things easy if we can point the finger, and there are plenty of folk who invest a good deal of time and energy in trying to uncover the requisite object for their finger waving. We kind-of feel secure, as if we understand, we've got things sorted, tied up. We're back in control. But I feel we need to own up to our own role in the mess. Playing the victim is not good enough. It takes two to tango. If we are not actually dependent on those supposedly with 'power', we have to organise our lives - emotionally, psychologically, physically: energetically if you will - to reflect that. This is the real work, the real waking up. And it's far more difficult than going around blaming everybody else. Not to say that we ignore the world 'out there'. It's no good being like me thirty years ago, in the middle of Buddhism and feeling that the world 'out there' is irrelevant. No, the world out there with its shadow and general energetic configuration is anything but irrelevant. We need to absorb all that it is, seeing deeply into its nature. Then we are finally in a position to skilfully weave our own independent way, shape our life in the mould of authenticity. Enough people do this, and the whole rotten system falls apart. It continues, in part at least, because we continue to validate its phoney ways. We each have to find our own means to leave it behind, create anew; in the words of Timothy Leary, drop out......

      

Publish and be Damned! - Part the Second....

OK. Here we go with the other extracts......

"For years I have searched far and wide for real justification for despoliation of Scottish uplands and mountains. I have found very little. In the absence of true rationality and logic, I have had to conclude - reluctantly - that factors less objective are at work. 'Ideology', in my book at least, is a dirty word. We can associate it with its horrendous consequences, as with Fascism, Stalinism, Islamic fundamentalism. Ideology essentially comprises a system of beliefs supposedly cohering into an entire, consistent worldview. Adopting such an ideology makes life easy, since we no longer need to approach each new situation with fresh eyes. We don't need to think. A ready-made answer is at hand, provided by interpretation of events based upon our adopted system of beliefs. One size fits all. There is also the comfort of self-identity: I know who I am: I'm a ........ist. Now I can sleep soundly at night.

The ideology I am referring to here can best be termed, I suggest, extreme environmentalism. A dogmatic approach to environmentalism suffers from the same blindness that other ideologies are prone to. Blanket answers to complex situations. In this case, fossil fuels are bad, renewable energy is good, so it follows that a bunch of wind turbines in a mountain landscape is no different from, just as vital as, a windfarm project anywhere else.

What I have written here is not fashionable, especially since the environmentalists are the good guys and gals, aren't they? Sometimes well-intentioned, I suggest, but unconscious of the blinding and toxic nature of ideology, whatever its shape or form. In my less charitable moments, I conceive of ideology as a kind of mind virus, warping ordinary decent people into inhuman fanatics blind to the wider realities surrounding them. Most politicians, in fear of appearing politically incorrect, will readily go along with whatever the environmental bandwagon tells them to promote.

So why bother? Why not just give up? What is it that causes people to sweat, curse, and toil into the hills each year? A few to die? Why do MCofS office bearers continue to work tirelessly against yet another lunatic proposal? This is, I submit, a most thankless task, and the MCofS folk engaged in this are among my greatest heroes. Literally. My eternal gratitude goes out to them. Why, indeed, do I bother to write yet another tedious letter of objection to some faceless bureaucracy miles away?

Having already ventured into the unorthodox and the unfashionable, I now propose a brief excursion into the life and work of J.R.R.Tolkien. There is a chapter near the end of 'Lord of the Rings' which is omitted from the celebrated film version, presumably because it spoils the notion of a simple happy ending. This chapter is called 'Scouring of the Shire', and is most relevant to our current plight. In this final section of the tale, our hobbit heroes return from their adventures to their native land, the Shire, only to find it has been despoiled beyond recognition during their absence. The green agrarian landscape has been transformed into an industrial wasteland dominated by outsiders (sound familiar?!).

Tolkien himself was reared in the English Midlands, and lived to see the progressive industrialisation of the region with its attendant destruction of the land. His dismay at this change, not just in the Midlands but as a recurrent theme in human affairs, forms a kind of subtext to much of his work. His concern has been referred to as that with the loss of the power of the land. 'The power of the land': a phrase that resonated with me deeply when I first heard it. It seemed to encapsulate what we most wish to protect and maintain better than any other words I have come across. Like love, power of the land does not lend itself to precise definition,  but we know it when we are in its presence. We don't need to attend a leyline workshop at Glastonbury, or venture into the woods at twilight in search of elven folk, to know it. Nan Shepherd's book 'The Living Mountain' drips power of the land from every page - as does Robert Macfarlane's magnificent introduction to the 2011 edition. The book is a wonderful testament to the living presence that is the mountains, in this instance the Cairngorms, and our personal interaction with it. All good mountain writing that succeeds in touching the visceral level of experience will exude this quality. Maybe we should talk here of 'power of the mountain' rather than 'power of the land'.

And here we arrive at an irony. In these tedious yet impassioned objections to 'inappropriate developments' in the mountains, it is this 'power' that is at the bottom of my pleas. It is not energy efficiency, damage to tourism and other business, subsidies to fat cats, carbon capture of peat bogs, not even aesthetic considerations strictly speaking. They all play their part, but the main mover and shaker is less tangible, and inadmissable as valid evidence. Writing to Fergus Ewing about the power held by the mountains, and its necessity for the well-being of the nation, will not yield results!

The hill and mountain community, if we can speak of such, is a marvellous thing. We are a disparate bunch, sometimes with apparently little in common aside from the mountains. Yet there can be an openness between otherwise strangers that a psychotherapist will spend months trying to evoke. Coming off Ben Macdui, you meet a couple going up, and within five minutes major life events are being shared. Back at the hostel in the evening you get into conversation with someone about recent adventures in the mountains. There is a look in the eye, as if a secret is being shared. We know something, though that something is rarely brought into full awareness, rarely given voice or coherence. It provides a mutual understanding and respect, and is what I am referring to here as the power of the mountain.

Meanwhile, the attack on these places of mental and spiritual refreshment continues unabated. As Tolkien suggests, it is an ever-recurrent theme in the tide of modern humanity. Last June I was on the South Glen Shiel ridge when suddenly I heard a loud mechanical din issuing from far below. Non-natural sounds are not unusual hereabouts, since the A87 is a favourite route for bikers, especially at weekends. But this noise was coming from the other side of the ridge! Peering down, I could make out a scene straight out of 'Scouring of the Shire'. Diggers and other mechanical plant, bare earth and peat, vehicles, scruffy little cabins and the rest, spread out over a considerable area. If it was Romany gypsies or young people enjoying themselves making such a mess, there would be a media frenzy. As it is, this was clearly another officially-sanctioned project going its ugly way. Looking harder, I could make out pipes. Long, black, and lots of them. A micro-hydro electric scheme, in existence courtesy of generous government subsidies, the kind which, according to an ecologist I once bumped into, create puny quantities of electricity. I shuddered, then made a firm decision not to allow this to spoil the day. On to the summit of Maol Chinn-Dearg, and silence. Powerful silence."

The good news is that several high-profile windfarm proposals in wild and mountain areas have been refused permission in recent months by government authorities national and local. A good deal of upland Scotland has already been trashed, but this is something. It is in good part a result of the agreement of 'core wild areas' in Scotland, a project spearheaded by the John Muir Trust. Many thanks to them for their hard work and persistence. Like the MCofS, the John Muir trust is, in my view, far from perfect. But these are the two organisations tirelessly working to give some protection to the mountains of Scotland. Nobody else is doing it. So they deserve our support and gratitude.





       

  

Publish and be Damned! (Part One)

Back in summer last year I submitted an article to 'the Scottish Mountaineer', the periodical magazine of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland. As I said to the editor in my accompanying letter, I had struggled with a title, but came up with 'To love and protect - a personal view'. I pointed out that some of my views might not be shared by all MCofS members (an understatement....) but that, as an independent member, I felt able to exert the freedom my consciously-chosen position confers. Should he decide against publication, I would understand.

My article has not been published, and I understand. To be honest, it makes little difference to me personally. The MCofS finds itself in a sensitive position, trying simultaneously to take a stand against destructive government policies while remaining in a position to communicate and negotiate with aforementioned authorities. They don't want to upset the applecart too much. At the same time, I felt it to be a shame for the MCof S not to be able to let loose the unorthodox viewpoints of some of its members. It would do the organisation good, I feel. In my opinion it would be beneficial for some 'mountain people' to look a bit more deeply into the political and parapolitical chessboard where the shape of our landscapes is being decided and played out. In addition, I had taken into account the nature of my audience when writing, trying to go softly-softly where I considered appropriate.

Anyhow, I have decided that bits of the article deserve an outing. Some of the stuff echoes things I have written previously on Pale Green Vortex, while some is 'new'. I have therefore included a number of sizeable extracts below for the reader's delectation.....

What's in a mountain?

"In his excellent and wide-ranging article for the May 2015 magazine, 'What's not to like?', Dave Gordon asks a question: 'Why do so many people responsible for Scotland's landscape seem to dislike it so much?' I read it as a plaintive cry from the heart, childlike in its directness. There was also an 'Emperor has no clothes on' quality to the question. It is so obvious and puzzling, yet rarely asked. Maybe the answers are a little uncomfortable......

I recall an evening about a decade ago. I was in the throes of leaving my home in London for a life in Highland Scotland, and was having a farewell evening meal with some friends. Puzzled by my imminent departure for the far north, one of them requested an explanation. I launched into a comprehensive discourse: how out-and-out urban living was no longer a possibility for me; how I needed at least one foot in a more natural world; how my love of mountains had been rekindled, and how I cherished the opportunity to climb a few while my body was still up to the task. There followed a moment's silence. 'I still don't see why you need to move to the north of Scotland just to climb a mountain' was his rejoinder. This friend was not a windfarm developer - he was an artist, dedicated to beauty and expression of the human spirit. But he just didn't get it.

On reflection, I suspect that there aren't a lot of people who actively dislike our mountains. But there are plenty who fail - and fail completely - to recognise their value. To lives wholly encompassed by urban living and human affairs, mountains are simply irrelevant, and therefore entirely dispensible. These are people who, like my friend, don't get it at all.

Wind at any cost

Another recollection, this one from several years ago. I was watching one of those 'great outdoors' programmes on television featuring Cameron McNeish. In this edition, our indomitable adventurer was standing at the entrance to Glen Dessary. This is, he pointed out, one of the great wild spots of Highland Scotland. It had been tamed somewhat by plantation forestry, but that no longer mattered all that much, since we had got used to it, and accepted it as part of the current landscape. 'Maybe' he concluded as he tramped off into the hills 'the same will happen with windfarms.'

Whether Cameron was aware of the implications of his words, I do not know. Flexibility and adaptability have been vital ingredients in the numerical success of the human species. But they turn out to be a double-edged sword. We can learn, over time, to put up with just about anything. All manner of injustic, servitude, indecency can eventually become tolerable and the norm. With a shrug of the shoulders, peoples come to accept what is conceived of as 'their lot'. The relentless blanket promotion of the supposed benefits of windfarms, regardless of location, is a prime example of the process. It serves to gradually erode public resistance. A new sense of 'normal' is established, and what was once viewed as awful is now seen as part of the usual course of affairs. In Stalin's Russia this was called brainwashing. Here, we hesitate to employ such terms. The methods are more softly-softly but the results are similar.

It was while I was considering this article that news came out of the UK government's decision to cut subsidies for onshore windfarms a year earlier than originally projected. Eager to discover the possible consequences for our mountain landscapes, I checked out half a dozen or so mainstream news sites on the internet. I was amazed to find that all the articles I read were almost identical. Sometimes entire paragraphs word for word. The usual suspects were out in force: RenewablesUK with dire warnings about investment; Greenpeace, WWF and FofE dealing out doom and gloom; Fergus Ewing with his 'What about Scotland?' stance. Not a word about the thousands of people anxiously wondering whether their lives might not be thrown into turmoil by the march of the turbines after all. Just to read these articles, we would be led to believe that the government's decision was an unmitigated social, economic and environmental disaster. Thus is public opinion moulded. And the reality, I submit, is far from what was being presented.

Not everyone is aware of the importance of the press release (and it is press release that I had been reading regarding windfarm policy in the previous paragraph). 'News' is often nothing more than a compilation of these instant-newsbite pieces of publicity. In 2008, journalist Nick Davies wrote a revealing article for the Guardian newspaper in which he summarised his research into this area. In a survey of over 2000 news stories, a mere 12% were found to be composed wholly of information researched by the reporters; 80% was completely or partly created from press releases and the public relations industry. And the 'facts' in the stories had been checked in only 12% of stories. This is the woeful situation that, to put it frankly, I believe is exploited with great effectiveness by those who view the mountains with indifference. They are adepts in the dark art of perception manipulation."

OK, so that's Part One of what my fellow Mountaineering Council of Scotland members have missed. Part Two to follow shortly.






 

  

Celebrity Chef Merkel's Special Soup Recipe

"You must understand that this war (WW2) is not against Hitler or National Socialism, but against the strength of the German people, which is to be smashed once and for all, regardless whether it is in the hands of Hitler or a Jesuit priest" Attributed to Winston Churchill, 1940, quoted Emrys Hughes, 1950.

A certain amount of space is devoted on Pale Green Vortex to matters of geopolitics and parapolitics. This is not something that I particularly enjoy, or feel at home with. The prospect of groups of people dedicating their lives to organising and perpetuating programmes of control and manipulation of others does not sit well with me at all. My mind does not work naturally in the style of Machiavelli. I am often slow on the uptake, and am not even much good at chess. All the same, my 'consciousness research' has inevitably led me into serious consideration of the fabric of the human world we inhabit. It is as much a creation of consciousness as is the world 'in here'. Things and events do not happen 'by chance', nor are they just 'givens', any more than the dramas that unfold within the mind of the individual.

It is not an accident, methinks (sometimes reluctantly), that I have turned up in this world of heavy polarity, where the forces of darkness run rampant, in life 'out there' at least as much as inside the personal consciousness. There is a meaning, or a purpose, or an intention, in all this. Maybe it simply reflects the nature of my own consciousness, maybe it's a sublime teaching device, maybe both. Whatever, it strikes me that the notion of personal nirvana is out of the question. It just makes no sense, and there is no easy escape. Consciousness is everywhere, subliminally demanding illumination, and when the Bodhisattva in Buddhist stories vows not to disappear into nirvana but to stick around for all sentient beings, he or she is not really expressing a choice, but a universal reality, an inevitability. It doesn't come through in the Buddhist texts, but other than being satisfied with a half-baked, one-eyed version of nirvana, there is no option. Buggering off into Voidness just doesn't cut the mustard, doesn't come into it.

The sexual assaults and molestations on New Year's Eve in Cologne, Hamburg, and elsewhere were as predictable as they were nevertheless disturbing. Equally predictable yet disturbing was the reaction from much of the public face of Germany. In my previous piece I wrote about Acharya S, a woman of integrity and honour. This time round, no such luck. Angela Merkel, for one, Executioner-in-Chief of the open door policy of national suicide. The mainstream attempt to justify this awful move has been relentless, but it has failed to really wash. Then there are those who are complicit in all this. Rather than expressing condemnation of the acts of that fateful night and demonstrating some support for those who were attacked, Henriette Reker, mayor of Cologne, simply issued a code of conduct for women to obey in future, thereby keeping those 'men of Arab or North African appearance' at arm's length. Various so-called feminist groups simply bleated their indifference by commenting that white German men commit rape as well. True, no doubt, but not in organised marauding hordes. Then we have a male, German Interior Minister Ralf Jaeger, giving his tuppence worth. What happened on New Year's Eve, he tells us, is no worse than what goes on in right-wing chat rooms on the internet. Thanks for putting us right on that one, Ralf. It's true: simply expressing an opinion is just as bad as an unprovoked physical attack on a woman.

This is all shameful; I am tempted to label all these people as traitors to their nation and people. At the same time, I am aware of their status as victims as well as perpetrators. And, as John Lash eloquently points out, victim and perpetrator, abused and abuser, often exist in a mutual bond of identification. The dynamic is a single dynamic, the mindset of  the one easily apprehended and transferred to the other.

The mind control programme imposed post WW2 to keep Germany in its place has worked magnificently. Whisper a word of doubt or protest at 'multiculturalism', verbalise the smallest suspicion that maybe we are not all precisely the same (and that there doesn't need to be anything wrong with that), and you will get the stock retort: Hitler! Holocaust! At which point most people simply slouch quietly back into their corner. It seems to me that vast numbers of Germans have been comprehensively cowed into submission by a false choice presented to befuddle them and shut them up. Support open doors, welcome anyone in, or stand accused of being a Hitler Holocaust person. This is, once again, a false dichotomy: there are plenty of possibilities other than crass egalitarianism or being a Hitler Holocaust person. It's up to Germans to wake up and realise this.

There is indeed a good deal of racism in western Europe: much of it is directed towards the indigenous white peoples. Imagine if the New Year's Eve assaults had been perpetrated by gangs of white German males on young Muslim women. What a national and international outcry would have resulted; what venom would have been spouted at white German men. No holding back this time. Would Henriette Reker simply be issuing codes of conduct to Muslim women about how to keep the testosterone-fuelled German boys at bay? Don't think so. It is a similar situation in the USA. White man kills black youth, resulting in enormous publicity, outrage and public anger. Group of black men kills young white female: barely any media attention, as in the recent case of 20-year old Sara Mutschlechner, student at University of North Texas. The mainstream media distorts public perception, not so much by blatant lies, as by selective reporting, focussing or excluding as it sees fit in order to serve its own pre-programmed agenda.

Neil Kramer suggests that, when Empire is doing well, and things are running smoothly for it, its actions are invisible. It is when it is struggling that Empire's machinations come to the surface and are obvious to behold. I hope he is right on this one. The actions and manipulations of Empire are clear for all to see at present. The veil is thin, if not pulled completely aside. In the meantime, we shall see how events unfold. As Gurdjieff once said: 'You can never awaken using the same system that put you to sleep in the first place.' Wise words indeed. Empire cannot be brought to its knees through the ballot box (at least not as currently functioning) since it is an instrument of Empire. At the same time, individual policies of Empire can be questioned and overcome through the voting system. It is up to the people of Germany whether they find the courage to confront that which has been imposed upon them or not.

Oh, nearly forgot: the Merkel soup recipe!

1. Take plenty of normally incompatible ingredients.  Mix together well.
2. Stir thoroughly and bring to the boil.
3. Stand well back.
4. Serve with an accompaniment of indigestion tablets.

Image: chinadaily