A shift in direction and priorities...

I’ve been an activist in one guise or another pretty much since the late 1970s. I’ve learned a lot of very hard lessons over almost half a century. Experience is a great teacher, even if it is an absolute bastard at times. I’d be lying if I said there haven’t been occasions when I’ve seriously considered jacking it all in and simply live my life as a ‘normie’. However, as the clusterf**k we’re having to endure impacts my life as well as that of the community I live in, walking away from activism isn’t an option, no matter how pissed off I may get with it. I think that sentiment is best summed up in this poem:

Feeling it...

I can’t put a finger on it, but
...I can feel it…can you?
Too much
...‘information’...well, so called 
...bullshit
...gaslighting
...stirring up division and hate
That’s a list for you, isn’t it?

The world moves faster, and
...I feel I can’t escape
A walk in the woods is just
...a temporary reprieve, that’s all
Back from a walk in the woods and
...it’s all still there
There’s no let up, no rest, no end in sight
...the pressure just sodding builds

Something’s going to blow, but
...I’ve no idea when
...I’ve no idea how
...I’ve no idea who
...sometimes, I’ve no idea why
We live in ‘interesting’ times don’t we?
...too ‘interesting’ for my tastes 
Bang goes that nice, quiet retirement:(

I do what I can to fight it, but
...it’s all consuming...if you let it be…
I’ve no idea how long I’ve got
All I know is that I want to live
...for the day
...because life is for living…
...not stressing
Easy to say but, hard to do

So, while walking away from activism isn’t an option, setting priorities that focus on areas where I have some experience and expertise most certainly is a priority. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I’m re-posting a fair number of articles from our sister blog, At the grassroots. That’s a blog that’s focused on actually getting things done at the level of the neighbourhood, in our communities, where it matters. This is in stark contrast to the fear porn and doom mongering that too many people who should know better are addicted to. This is what I had to say about this in a poem that has already been published on an older blog post and which I make no apology for reproducing again below:

Despair or hope?

Despair or hope...who chooses?
Is a life of fear all there is?
Do we endlessly doomscroll while falling into a rabbit hole of fear?
Or do we say enough?

The ever present screen in our pockets makes us slaves
Slaves to fear, slaves to division, slaves to hate, slaves to despair
They silently pull the strings, making us their puppets
Dancing to their sick agenda of division...

We're not slaves, we can choose
Their screens don't own us
The puppet masters don't own us
We own ourselves...

There's a world out there away from their strings
A world away from their screens
A world we can make our own
All we need is to say is enough, no more! 

If we’re honest, most of us have been there with the doom scrolling. It’s not good for us, is it? The same applies to endlessly reading (and sharing) the fear porn. I’ll admit that I’ve overdone it with the fear porn and doom mongering in the past. None of us are perfect and we all learn from our mistakes. Mine was spending too much time pointing out what’s wrong with the world while not doing anything like enough to offer up possible alternatives. Hopefully that lesson has been learned, and with the re-posts from At the grassroots, I now think I’m getting the balance about right.

Whether every reader of this Stirrings from below blog appreciates that is however, a moot point. The stats for the last post I published – A sense of belonging 7.7.25 – are somewhat lagging behind what we’d normally get for a doom mongering post about the slide towards World War Three. Such is life...

Suffice to say, I’m not going to let the prospect of lower viewing figures for posts that focus on prefigurative action deter me from putting them up. It’s a question of getting our priorities right by focusing on how we can bring about change in the here and now. It’s also about not getting sucked into other people’s agendas and psyops. There are people who would probably like us to do that but...it’s not going to happen, trust me on that one! So that’s it – there’s a shift in our priorities going on, as the more perceptive readers of this blog will have noticed. It’s a bit of a journey to be honest but, it’s one we’re happy to take.

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PS – If any of you actually want to read any more of my poems, you can do so by going here.