Collected Works

As well as writing in my spare time I also write poetry as a hobby of sorts. The frequency and quality of any work I produce is best described as sporadic and variable. As a result of this I usually leave it on the back of an envelope rather than on a blog. However, rooting around I have found a few that I thought might be quite fun to share.

Feel free to peruse at your leisure..

Religion/Philosophy

I have a keen interest in religion and different philosophical perspectives having held various different views in different points in my life I have generally settled on a sceptical, empirical stance, though I have as little time for rude atheists as 

I have a keen interest in religion and different philosophical perspectives having held various different views in different points in my life I have generally settled on a sceptical, empirical stance, though I have as little time for rude atheists as I do for religious fanatics. This set of poems reflects my general musings on the subject.

The Meaning Seekers

We are the meaning seekers, lost in eternity,

Hunting for salvation, in a never ending sea.

Beyond the horizon, we believe we see a shore.

Our trouble is our reason, via which we commit an act of treason,

For we are discovering that there is no reason, just eternal laws.

The cup of knowledge can be a poisoned chalice,

It depends if we treat those around us with love or with malice.

For this can be our prison or it can be our palace.

We are the meaning seekers, lost in eternity,

Hunting for salvation, in a never ending sea.

For we may never reach those far off beaches,

And be here for ever more, on our lonely shore.

For we feel we have to travel to far off beaches,

And fear that if we stay we shall cling, like leaches.

From whom nothing of beauty can escape,

A ragged halfling who in living is only able to take,

A nuisance parasite who lives only to break.

We are the meaning seekers, lost in eternity,

Hunting for salvation, in a never ending sea.

For the grass seems always greener, our neighbours always richer,

An endless seeking for a victor, some sort of final fixer,

But the grass there is all of ours, this wonderful human mixture.

We would find it less lonely, if we came to know our common humanity.

We are alone in the universe, that is near a certainty,

We are truly free but the price of this is maturity.

To Vilify?

I'm prepared to reconsider, to compromise,

Your prepared to stigmatise.

Every civilisation claims to lie at the centre of the universe,

A notion that some might call perverse.

We for ever seem to mythologise,

Hiding the true nature of things with our lies.

We cry, we lie, we dream to fly with every verse,

Some willingly whilst others are coerced.

False dichotomies, pathetic fallacies,

It haunts us, makes us enemies,

When at last we can recognise our common humanity.

We can lay to rest this bloody profanity.

A species at war with itself is doomed,

It may as well lay in its own tomb.

Pillaging the earth to increase our wealth, true insanity,

Commodifying life itself, an error of the utmost depravity.

For the earth herself will heal in eternity,

She follows ancient law written for posterity.

Natural law has no mercy,

It is only the law, how to act is up to humanity.

If we are to survive we must reclaim our democracy.

Achieve balance in our lives, end this hypocrisy.

For all that we try to say that we own the earth, and often to greed succumb.

We merely loan it from those yet to come.

Noise correction

Noise correction, spoil, protection,

Opposable thumb, appendix forensics,

Feeding reality, pleasing imagination.

Burning through the fog the truth shown,

The flaws in old logics elegantly displayed,

From tree we climbed, not angel flown.

The binding of our ethics,

From our history has grown,

Search not for the mythic,

Let natural elegance be shown.

Let us cleanse from our souls the mystic,

To show our own brilliance as we have grown,

Our skills they are truly prolific,

Yet our oneness is yet not our own.

Time

The time we have is but a temporary thing,

Life can be hard, a pulsating, raucous, at times noxious din,

It is the raging cacophony that all things in the cosmos sing.

It can be happy, it can be sad, but in spite of its flaws,

I thank thank any gods you may happen to believe in,

to be caught up in this glorious whirlwind.

Feminism

I don't consider regarding myself as a feminist as particularly newsworthy but the subject itself very much is. The general premise of equality seems to be a challenge to some people, though an unequal society sometimes very conveniently benefits those who don't want to hear about how we might alter it in positive ways!

There are of course complexities and nuances within feminist discourse, such as ensuring that all women are represented in the movement and getting well meaning but sometimes unhelpful people to know when to stop talking. Below is my own 10p's worth..

A Plea for our Full Flowering Potential

Delving into the decisively delicate demeanour of the less documented division of humanity.
A difficult and daring endeavour, denoting distinction from its other.

A binary position, an indelicate imposition, a patriarchal crushing of any other disposition.
Of course the feminine is a valid position, at the very least there is societal tragedy by its cultural omission.

Is it fear that leads to such idiotic reductivism?
Whatever the cause, patriarchy leads to a pariah’s prerogative;

Protest your plight with all your might,
Never placidly provide for those who ask for tithes!

The Journey

She climbed the stairs carved into the side of the mountain in trepidation, her hair getting caught in her eyes as a bead of sweat made its way down her forehead.

A strong hot wind blew as she climbed the steps, pulling at her clothes and making her lean forward close to the stair, scared she might fall.

She had often doubted whether she should make the journey to pay homage at the shrine.

Was it appropriate, did she even have the right to enter?

It had been a long road getting to where she was going and she wasn’t going to give up now because of a load of hot air!

Finally, as she turned around the last bend in the stair nearing the summit it came into view, the temple of the Goddess.

A great statue of her sat cross legged over a colonnade, her hair sweeping down over her flowing robes in golden coloured stone.

As she got to the top of the stair she came to a wide courtyard filled with figures standing guard at the entrance.

As she walked across the courtyard she could see they were in fact statues; Athena, Artemis, Boudicca and a great denizen of other goddesses and women of history.

As she came to the entrance she could see carved in the stone above;

“Only the true of heart should enter here”

She paused for a moment looking back across the courtyard and the long torturous path it had taken her to get to where she was.

Finally, she took a deep breath and entered..

Romanticism/conservation

I have always been interested in conservation and have rather romantic 

I have always been interested in conservation and have rather romantic sensibilities (articles which reflect this can be found earlier in my archive e.g.).

Below is an eclectic mix of these themes...

  

Whispering whims of whimsy

Whimsy, such an elemental cloud,
A cluster of sweet ideas,
A posy of purposeful prose with a preponderance for piety.

Wondering waifs, fanciful fruit of the imagination,
Flagrant fruits of fancy, wistful wonderings of the flowering mind.

From voluptuous Venusian to Martian masculinity and every grain in between,
The formation of ideas in the human mind is most likely the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

  

Orb

Orb is a wonderful word, our collective orb is a wonderful world. 

Seen from space it is an iridescent, gleaming, ‘pale blue dot’, spaceship earth, our only home. 

If we could all see with the eyes of a god this might give us a clearer view of our situation: We have, very recently, become more aware of our predicament, at least notionally. 

Unfortunately for most of recorded (and most likely unrecorded) history we have acted as if the world was a boundless plain, a flat earth of plenty with no horizon.

As close as this was to the experiential reality of our ancestors the physically limited domain that is our world has suffered the all to real effects of our myopia. 

Let us hope that we can learn to soar like an eagle with the eyes of a god, tempered by the wisdom not to fly too close to the sun.

  

A Longship Query

Oh mighty boat of the ocean waves,
A trireme would see you as but a knave,
Are you and your crew as Napoleon and his wicked brew?

Are you ‘Great Interlopers’? Knaves of the wave,
Monsters from the deep sent to crush the brave?

From where do you seek your courage?
To which gods are you true?

What ideas do you tie to your mast and do they fly true?

What is the nature of your wake?
Do you ask or take those you would have as your mates?

Is the furrow of your prow a clear azure blue,
Or is it as crimson as the bloodied swords of your crew?

From distant lands you have come and far shores you go to.
Is there any plan in your quest for all things new?

   

King Play

A powerful creature, king of beasts,

Yet sometimes he famines sometimes he feasts.

For nature though fair no mercy she shows,

Although known for her beauty only cruel logic she knows.

Man the inventor, a plucky bird-beast,

Not known for his courage but for his cunning at least.

Bird-beasts and kings though long had fought,

An uneasy sort of truce had wrought.

Though then came the colonialist, 

Arrogant and pale, newcomer to the East,

Only with greed and cruelty greets.

A plucky bird-beast,

Holding a lethal tree beak,

Picks his way past mires in the heat,

Rustling in khaki shorts he hunts,

For the king of beasts.

King stalks proud and sleek,

Winding his way through glades and reeds,

Eyes burning with intense heat.

He freezes, he stands, what is this he meets?

A bird-beast standing like a bull elephant,

To him, the king of beasts!

The tree beak of the bird beast spits and splits the air,

Crack, thud, red tears on red fur,

Kings eyes grow sharp, narrow with pain,

He roars, he charges, his foe to meet.

Crack, thud, red tears on red fur,

King falters to a lope, a stagger,

King sits, red tears from raw gums,

And roars at a decadent republic rising from the fall of a monarch.

Crack, thud, red tears on red fur,

With his last sight,

As bloodmist clouds day to night,

King sees a solitary tear,

Run down the bird-beast's cheek,

A hint of regret for killing the meek.

Like Pots That Gods Have Made

Earlier this year I had the good fortune to be able to go on holiday, not something I can afford to do very often! I travelled to near Bordeaux in France and managed to practice some wonderfully horrific French on the locals. It turned out that I was a little south of where I thought Bordeaux was on the map and I found that we were in the French part of the Basque country.

Aside from a rather nice local type of Basque pie on arrival and the symbol of the Basque country adorning most public buildings, doorways (and even the top of the pie!) there was not much sign of any sort of cultural friction that I could see. As part of this trip I also travelled down into the Spanish part of the Basque country, where, again, I could not see a great deal of surface level tension, though I did actually hear people speaking Basque and all signs and public signage were bilingual.

It turns out that there are approximately 500,000 Spanish Basque speakers as opposed to 50,000 or so in France.  France, as part of its development as a modern state, has developed the French language as being central to its national identity whereas Spain has a much more recent history of internal conflict and a highly federalised system of government to account for all of the linguistic and cultural diversity present in the country.

I should add at this point that this is not meant as a nuanced, culturally particular ethnography comparing different approaches to affirmation of cultural identity within the nation state between two countries. Such work exists and is highly valuable but I was just a tourist. My observations serve to illustrate general principles which at the current time appear to be rather important.

As part of my Spanish excursions I went to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, which though in itself is a fascinating artwork, houses some gorgeous exhibitions. One exhibit looked like giant broken pots, as if made by the hands of some great god and dropped. In the same way that many mountains look like the teeth from some immense beast long since deceased.

The museum also displayed an exhibition by Yoko Ono which showed a range of interesting work though two particular points stood out at me, one piece which emphasised the universality of water and its essential role in our survival and a quote of Yoko’s;

“We as viewers are thus assigned a much more important role than we are used to. We have to become active for the actual work only takes place when we start using our imagination”

The idea of the universality of water and its essential role in our lives and of becoming active in a work made me thing of the issues of resource distribution and political representation. We all have universal needs for basic resources that provide for human needs and we all need to consider how such resources are distributed so that we all have reasonable and equitable access to them.

‘Resources’ can be taken to mean a range of different things from obvious basic necessities such as food, air and water to things that we would very much like to have and, quite reasonably, treat as rights, such as various sorts of political and monetary resources, a pension when we retire, a right to political representation etc.

We live in an era of constraints on resources across the board from peak oil to peak water to peak population, and (some might argue) peak economic growth.  I have met plenty of people who contest different aspects of this; from neoliberal economists who don’t appear to understand the laws of basic physics (the second law of thermodynamics and a planet of finite size) to those on the left of the political spectrum who regard aspects of environmentalism as conservatism in a new blanket which is counterproductive to improving the lives of the majority.

I have sympathy with both points of view, the seductive idea of endless growth and progress from the point of view of your regular economist and utopian and the irritation that the hypocrisy of rich comfortable white people harping on about saving resources whilst flying on holiday as billions of people barely have enough to eat. 

I personally am an open minded sceptical type, I think that a range of ways of looking at something could be constructive but I would like to see your working and plenty of evidence!

I don’t think that it is impossible to raise the living standards of most of the human race to a comfortable level without destroying our habitat, nor do I think it is impossible for everyone to get along in a way that is truly democratic without the looming threat of social violence as a motivator. 

Heck, call me a utopian, I’ve not quite got as far as being a broken hearted idealist just yet.

In order to achieve such wonderful outcomes though there are certain ways of going about things that are much more conducive to success than others. For example, militarising the planet to calm your own paranoid fears of your own shadow are not going to make the world a better place. Nor is using up all of the world’s non-replenishible resources as quickly as possible to make your national bank balance look better temporarily.

Going back to my Spanish travels, I have visited the country once before, to the bottom of the country near Sierra Nevada. A number of things struck me, in addition to the warmth of the people. What I noticed was how parched the landscape was even relatively early in the year, though impressively there were large hydroelectric dams, part of Spain’s concerted push towards renewable electricity generation. I also got the general impression that more housing had been built than was strictly necessary!

None of these things have been exclusive to Spain, many European countries have made a strong push into the use of renewables and other countries such as Ireland have had large property bubbles.  These are all symptoms of the effects of the large scale political and economic trends that have been developing in Europe over the past decade or so. As are the recent spate of increased calls for economic decentralisation and independence movements that are taking root across the continent.

A very constructive and healthy pooling of common assets and economic integration in the wake of the mass insanity and retributions of the 20^th century developed in the form of the European Coal and Steel community, then the European Economic Community and now the European Union. This expanding organisation has developed cooperation and economic integration between once warring peoples across a continent and this is truly something to celebrate. However, I do worry that we have over the past few years entered potentially ruinous territory..

FEAR NOT… This is not where I then go off on some sort of paranoid rant about how Brussels is the antichrist and that immigrants are somehow responsible for the budget deficit, late trains and sleet.

What has occurred is that a common currency across a number of nations has forced a pooling of risk between very different economies and led to very large scale distortions in the amounts of money that people have been able to borrow and lend to each other. This has led to innumerable, briefly profitable, promises being made to other countries that cannot be kept. The results, so far, have been large scale housing booms and busts, rapidly rising levels of unemployment in southern Europe, spiraling national debts and rising social unrest. The whole thing went too far too fast and we are all now in a bind, there is not enough money on earth to bail out Europe, not that anyone will tell you that..

Other parts of the world such as China and the United States are having their own similar problems from over-leverage, kicking problems into the long grass and pretending everything is fine when it is clearly not. This is all part of a wider picture of reaching limits to resources, post WW2, and the mass industrialisation that it spawned we have undergone, as a planet, what has been termed ‘the great expansion’, a massive ramping up of usage of resources, population growth etc. Now after many decades, we are reaching the limits of what the earth can sustain ecologically on a range of fronts – this need not be an insurmountable problem.

Large scale political institutions and increasing centralisation of resource allocation does not appear to be the most constructive way to deal with such issues. They are currently wildly massive levels of inequality within and between countries. If the fundamental issue of the equitable sharing of resources, economic, political and environmental are not solved in a rational manner the end result,  if you are not careful, involves lamposts, rope and pitchforks. 

  

Decentralisation seems the most sane way to diffuse this potential bomb.

This where we come back to Spain, as well as the long term issue of the autonomy/independence of the Basque region there are other groups who would like to run their own affairs. The Catalan region is currently attempting to hold a referendum on independence, with increasingly authoritarian responses from the central government. Both groups have understandable points of view, the central government, after having got through the Spanish civil war, the despotism of Franco and now having a decentralised country want to keep everything together and try to focus on recovering the economy (however impossible that may be at the current time). The Catalans largely want to run their own affairs and be left be, don’t we all!

I currently reside in Scotland where we have recently been asked (and answered) the question as to whether we want to go our own way. That the vote did not lead to independence is not necessarily the only outcome of the vote to consider. Voter turnout was higher than it has been in any vote since just after the Second World War, 97% of the eligible populace registered to vote! The Scottish referendum seized the imagination of the nation as for once the electorate were actually allowed to become active and were assigned an important role.

In being allowed a voice, and an authorised platform in which to air their grievances, the people have been able to articulate their points of view and a more federal, decentralised structure for the entire UK is the likely outcome which can serve the interests of everyone well considering the wider context.

In the urge to consolidate political power and sustain the unsustainable political leaders such as Rajoy of Spain risk waking the monsters we left to sleep in the past and undoing the good work of recent decades.

Will our civilisation come to resemble those celestial pots, too large for their use, crashing to the ground in a thousand pieces, leaving their remains like broken teeth?

Let us hope that the ideals displayed at the Guggenheim shine through and that the populace are given the chance to engage with the piece before it falls apart under its own weight.

Conflation and Hyperbole

“The subject-matter of philosophy is, then, necessarily obscure, and this obscurity philosophy necessarily reflects and expresses. But besides the expression of obscurity of expression, and, while the former is pardonable, the latter is not, being when all is said and done, nothing but bad craftsmanship.

The object of words is to express meaning, and he who has learnt to use them well, will express his meaning with the greatest ease and clarity. Hence, a writer should make it his first duty to be clear and intelligible, not only in justice to himself, but also out of compliment to his readers. Few philosophers have observed this elementary rule.”

('Philosophy' p.9 by CEM Joad)

A great many words in popular usage in the communication spheres of politics, business and popular commentary have become ‘buzzwords’. There are few terms I like less than ‘U-turn’ (I picture politicians running madly in circles). It appears that any genuine consideration of events and change of opinion by a politician is now equated with losing face. Constant reinforcement of this idea by the media is as childish as it is irresponsible and is partly why so many politicians now resemble stilted robots.

The general issue of the conflation of terms, in an atmosphere of general confusion and obfuscation over their meaning, can be applied to a range of subjects. In political discourse such language can have very stark real world consequences as competing sets of vested interests dance a sort of demented waltz on the backs of the populace as they vie for influence.

There are some excellent investigative journalists, such as Ben Goldacre, who make it their business to blast pseudoscience out of the water in particular subjects. To cover a comprehensive analysis of the range of subjects in which these issues arise would take several books. Though even within one subject you could spend several weeks typing; I shall just illustrate one example that borders between the social and the biological:

Sex and Gender

Two of the most conflated terms in popular usage are ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and it appears abundantly clear that the majority of commentators have absolutely no understanding of the difference between the two terms. Not only is this sloppy journalism it is also unhelpful, not least because it leads to an overly simplistic and problematic view of human beings but also because the true complexity of the situation is genuinely fascinating. For example, the ‘I’ newspaper recently discussed the ‘gender’ of foetuses in an issue related to the illegal selective termination of pregnancies based on sex in the UK (such phrasing is at the very least unhelpful).

So, definitions, what is all the fuss about?

Sex

The definition of sex is, at its most basic level, simply the categories of male and female. The defining characteristics to fit individuals into these categories are, however, more complex and composite in nature than they might initially seem. A person can be defined genetically as being male or female by having XX or XY sex chromosomes (though there are genetic variations of this with XO, XXY, and XXX individuals). In turn by a person’s ‘gonads’, organs that produce gametes (a testes in a males, an ovary in females). This too can be subject to complexities with a variety of developmental variations that can result in people with vaginas with testes, people with penises having ovaries, and people can be born with both ovaries and testes. The external genitalia, a penis or a vagina, (again you can see where complexities start to arise and we haven’t even got to gender yet!). Secondary sexual characteristics and hormone patterns,  can be even more variable than the previously mentioned characteristics.

(Taken from Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto-Sterling, )  

In mentioning all of these details what I am attempting to illustrate is the complexity even inherent in biological sex. This is not to say that sexes do not exist, or that the everyday reality of being a member of a two sexed species is a fiction. 

What it should be a good warning against are intuitive sounding ideas such as many arguments in evolutionary psychology which draw explanations of the social from the biological in a crude and reductive way– ideas may appear intuitive but correlation does not imply causation.

Gender

Gender can generally be defined as “the collection of psychological [mental and behavioural] traits that differ between males and females” (Levay and Valente, p.188). 

                               
The term 'gender' is often, incorrectly, used interchangeably with 'sex'. However, it has a much more complex, and specifically human, definition.
All animals have two biological sexes, but only the human race has gender.
What makes this definition unique to the human species, is that we are the only truly cultural animal. Many other species of animal show behavioural differences between the biological sexes, but only humans have ideas of what being a 'man' or a 'woman' mean, which varies between cultures and within cultures over time. This is where biological explanations of the differences between men and women are potentially very destructive.

For example, only extremely limited inferences can be made between the nature of human sexes by comparing us to other species, even our closest relatives. To confuse sex and gender as the same thing is to miss out what makes us human and rely on negative, clumsy thinking with little to no explanatory value.

Human social existence is greatly variable and is manifested in an almost endless variety around the world. Not only are the norms expected of men in women socially in different societies around the world wildly variable but the idea of only two immutable, distinct sexes is a very culturally specific idea. Whilst the recognition that some individuals are transgender in the Western world has incrementally been gaining recognition there are a variety of gender identities around the world.

In spite of the real world complexities of both terms and their general conflation in popular discourse you do not need a PhD to understand the difference between the two terms. 

Even relatively innocuous confusion of the terms is at best misleading. For example, the science editor of the Independent confusing the terms when talking about the idea that the Y chromosome may one day disappear:

"Reports of the demise of the male Y chromosome have been greatly exaggerated according to scientists who believe that the “end of men” is a gender apocalypse too far."

"This would suggest that medical treatments should in future be tailored more towards a patient’s gender, and that doctors may have more reason to treat men and women differently according to their sex, said Professor David Page, director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

He clearly has no idea of the distinction between the two terms, and he is supposed to be a science editor!
Mixing them up is not only factually wrong but deeply unhelpful when it comes to propagating unhelpful social stereotypes and inaccurate societal myths about how people are composed and the relations between men and women.
The reality is far more interesting and can even improve a nation's football skills...

Its all good: America – A Requiem?

As Bob Dylan says during the last song of his album 'Together through life';

“Cold blooded killer stomp into town,

Cop car's blinkin', somethin' bad goin' down,

Buildings are crumblin' in the neighbourhood,

But there's nothin' to worry about 'cause it's all good,

It's all good, I say its all good”

Bob Dylan is an artist that is hard to encapsulate, on one level he can quite rightly be regarded as a cultural icon and a visionary lyricist and on another he could be argued to be a vein fraud. Is one description correct and the other false? I would argue that there is an element of truth to both, and that the arc of his life in many ways is an interesting metaphor for the rise and decline of that bizarre beast that is the United States of America.

Born in a rural backwater of an industrial powerhouse booming its way to global domination after the worst conflict which the world has ever seen. Rising in its aftermath as the undoubted ‘master of the world’ the United States had an unprecedented global reach and hegemony which no other nation has ever surpassed. Both brilliant and hollow the shining mirage of the American Dream dazzled a globe both with alluring lights of plenty and the light of white phosphorus on those who happened to get in the way.

Like the artist, the beast is now old, too many cigarettes and a binge of fossil fuel economic hedonism have left a rising empire languishing in its own entropic decay.

Whether or not it has a sane retirement after a booming heyday, who can say?

The Green Okapi

I need to write you down before you escape from me into oblivion. Your fantastical colours and your casual backwards glance as you gently walk off down an emerging street from the jungle never to be seen again. The very fact that I ever witness your existence is only made possible by the very fact that that you are about to disappear for ever. My very being in an emerging urban humanscape that was your home is what consigns you to oblivion. Your out of placeness, otherworldly beauty and fusion of naive trust and human familiarity condemn you.

You are a fantastical beast that can only be of a dream; vivid parrot green hind-quarters with white fleck stripe zebra stockings pulled up neatly round your ankles. A crimson torso seamlessly slides from the green as russet shoulders ponderously swing your careful feet. A dark blue head sways round just one time to look me in the eye, there is no blame, no malice, an almost Buddhist serenity in that unknowable gaze. With that, a flick of the ear, and you turn and lope away.

This vivid description is part of a seamless dream I had after reading “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe. A concise, beautiful novel that is as powerful as it is important. It speaks of a world and a time that I know very little of, and yet poignantly brings to my attention a collision of worlds. I do not mean to speak of any demeaning ‘noble savage’ gibberish, there are human frailties amongst the society under duress in the novel as in any other. Human societies interact and change constantly, both internally and externally, with a fluid complexity that is surely staggering.

What is so sad in this tale, to me, is not just the personal dramas of the individuals involved but the particularly tragic nature of this inter-societal interaction. The combination of arrogance and paternalistic pseudo-benevolence of the colonisers is as heart breaking as it is nauseating. How can they think so little of another group of human beings so as to have the delusional self-assuredness and disturbing certainty of the correctness of their actions that leads them to unravel whole societies?

There are of course a variety of answers to such questions and those being subjected to exploitation don’t exactly just sit there passively and accept their fate! An interplay of personal human interactions is taking place in such a context with a complex interplay of prior social obligations, differing cultural attitudes and wider socio-economic forces at play.

My dream then led me from this visage of a semi-mythic wild nature to an emerging ‘modernising’, or at the very least, rapidly changing landscape; forests being felled, railways set forth into ‘mysterious’ forests and great beasts transported as curios to be gawked at by curious creeps in distant lands..

I found myself on a train, a buzz was in the air, beer was available from the train bar at astonishingly low prices, a sensation of excitement and new possibilities permeated everything. A new land of endless bounty and riches lay out forever on a leafy green horizon.

Such colonial myths of course hide the fact that such places were only ‘new’ to incomers and were not virgin wildernesses. They were, and are, full of people who are often viewed in the same way as the green okapi. Like the beast, they, ‘the noble savages’, are supposed to conveniently lope away nobly into the mist of oblivion, according to the colonial narrative.

Places are not destroyed by change, in the sense that some sort of primeval nature is being lost by the arrival of ‘civilisation’. Such myths conveniently omit the history, agency and rights of the people living in such places. The ‘large-scale socio-economic forces’ I refer to are of course those of colonialism; which at its base was the attempted mass theft of resources and exploitation of human beings from another part of the world. 

I must shamefully admit that I had not heard of Chinua Achebe until he passed away recently, and on cue I assume his book sales rose and I found myself in possession of a copy of his highly lauded work. I am, as I should state, white, middle-class and from the UK – one of the societies that so hideously exploited others around the world for self-aggrandisement.

The economic and social forces that led to the tragedy that is ‘Things Fall Apart’ are still very much at work. No such situation is of course one-dimensional or simple but I have never come across a work that better illustrates the tragic effect of these forces and can only hope that any increased reading of Achebe’s work after his passing can engage more people in those societies with a legacy of exploiting to dismantle these destructive forces as best as possible, irrespective as to if there ever was a green okapi.