18 April.
If there were just one thing people may take in, go to ralphschism.com 22 or 3 december 2023 (i will create guide later) and there is the magnificent Roger Dewhurst of right at the southern end of Lizard Peninsula, describing how his bees even there - a seemingly more wild region of the SW, collect mircroplastics on their pollen runs, and weave it into even your organic fanciest honeys.
The question any parent of, say, teenagers today, might ask THEMselves, is what on earth are your kids going to be thinking of your generation when they are fully adult and start to think for themselves.
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Kairos: Seven years i carried this around in my wallet. I have very little in my wallet. I know how to keep things simple. Today it comes out to play.
I kept it secret all these years. Except for one... actually not true, i shared it face to face with AC Grayling in 2019 - curiously, him a super scholar, he had not heard the word. I think it's lovely! Makes me smile - smiling matters, when i am thinking of the many i have known 15 or more years to whom it applies.
contact 07958 five2638one ralphschism{atsign}gmail.com. But digital sucks, voice so much better.
NEW SITE under development
Ready by 1 May 2024
PLEASE COME BACK 20 April there will be a lot more and it will be more coherent then.
One 'footnote' or rather context throughout, If i refer to Extinction Rebellion, that name has two entirely separate meanings depending on town or countryside. In THE ENVIRONMENT - i.e. the countryside where the habitats and wildlife mainly are, and need specifically protecting, XR merely became the exact same half a dozen people per small town who would have always been in the Green Party, FOE or just gone along to any group discussion on the local environment. And i am afraid just as useless and ineffectual (and to quote a many year Green Party highup to me 2014 - Hereford Greens collapsing mid 00s "Egomaniac") as they always had been. Which to me matters. Indeed from 2017ish the new XR banner became a negative matter distracting from real ongoing eco work necessary. Yet another new sticker, when no one was ever managing to retain functional alliance to do real work to resist environmental damage in that environment under any other sticker. (Herefordshire Shropshire Powys). It's all just gone backwards ....
Whereas XR marches or gatherings in large towns and cities, very different, a more national 'awareness' raising exercise all comers would attend. Aimed at getting in the papers....
I write for a year - 'riff', almost full time, at https://www.ralphschism.com/
There is a huge amount of free essaying on the environment, psychology, super simplifying life in a way no one else gets to (i know as i have been a student of that - ultra simplifying all, AND living well, thirty years). Many free hours of audio podcast and video.
Although I do not wish to join the 'mindfulness' bandwagon - as I have studied and lived 30+years, 'zen', or persisting very tough life-event evolutions including the worst of loss-grief - the kind that takes 5 years to crawl back from nearly fully, and I know it is almost ALL wrong. I know (from 7 years trying it out with others) that i have a very useful range of takes on moving through, FOREVER, 'traumas', stresses, and very very wounding periods of life... its all there for free.
(but hint in one short sentence its about 'taking part'. Properly, even when you don't like polluting, dangerous, angsty, and these days almost default two-faced, humanity that much - and that includes 10 years from 2005 as SOS legal counsellor to those in truly cruel legal abysses, and realising from that 99% are just lost nowadays. Taking part i think is best of really not fun, no tea and cake involved; there must be a real price paid in fact, not merely 'new friends' found in personal benefit; 'volunteering' is not 'taking part'. Nor is 'armchair activism')
Indeed finding a TRUE 'silver lining' in all - even the very worst of painful damaging periods of life, is my speciality, you could say.
I need to soon try and turn it into more compact books.
This IS relevant to environmentalism as it really is about 'fighting' - i say even as a pacifist decades, (who has lived at times in war zones), but fighting in such a way it neither destroys the fighter, nor the polluter (they weren't born that way, blessem). Finds grace...only grace works, in the end... I believe even Rambo sort of found that via his cinematic journey...
THE PURPOSE of this site is as follows.
I purchased this url a few years ago. I discovered the word in 2016. I think it is a useful word. Indeed when i stumbled across it it felt quite like a gift from the fairies (i do NOT believe will save the planet like almost all silly 'New Agers' seem to, sadly i had to spend far too much of my life around from the turn of this century...nor will 'positive' energy' or ANY kind of' "manifesting"....sorry i got real rude of late and started to finesse my now standard line " ehhh... if you would so kindly show me something that ever got DONE via your so wonderful 'manifesting' please, madam..[it always is] .." always said quietly and with total angelic zen...which of course they still call, behind your back, a 'microaggression'.)
Purpose: twofold really, or maybe threefold:
I feel that the 'message' on saving the planet, reducing footprint, has always been awry. At Ralphschism I have essayed on this the last year. In short it needs to be SO much more engaging, even sexy. I wrote on a notepad 25 years ago "how do we [hated phrase, but 'shortcut' language] sex up the green message?"
And in short - as riffed there, for example the mass of 'stuff' - man made molecules, that are used in one way or another by an average household of 30 somethings, nowadays is three or four times more than it would have been in the 1980s. If the calculation is done fully - including for example the far higher frequency houses and cars are repainted (or even cleaned). In fact that even must include 'gardening' - a stuff-intense operation - many in the 80s 90s were left weedy [there are none - birds find the best good meal of foodstuff on nettles, which are uniquely habitat to a fair few moth species] The average person in the 80s owned at most two suitcases of clothing - by which one means all clothing including shoes and coats. Now its far more. I am not sure thirty somethings are even aware of this. Or for example (as riffed on in ralphschism) that the very rich of that period would only own a couple of jumpers, over decades, that ended up threadbare and moth eaten, and they still carried on wearing them. And no one would think otherwise.
I am eco and science expert for years and not only does your mainstream media imply all is getting better (via 'offshoring' of our emissions, so as our stuff is made abroad where the omissions aren't counted as ours - as the politicians wish), it is even worse in that often the waste sent abroad (after 'recycling') where it is burned.
It is a gender thing. I know from years of eco chatting. Or i HOPE so... most fairly with-it men (through their dumbphones, they think they are) these days essentially take the nihilistic smartman line
" India and China arent doing much yet, until they do ...there is little point thinking of our footprint...[ i.e. i still want to reserve the right to a big trendy pickup truck like everyone else living in suburbs now neds] "
I hope women may at least understand the following: "Indians and Chinese (and the other 2 or 3 billion in developing nations - who want our lifestyle) arent entirely stupid.... and if somehow we SET AN EXAMPLE... as we do with children day in and out....maybe they wont in fact carry on into the same entirely unsustainable trajectory we have followed the last 50 years of consumerism .... they have Youtube, too..... and Britain did once have some cultural sway, even respect for our societal advances..."
A 'project' but this is now or never, but longterm forever...
I personally am a virtual puritan monk 30 years: no booze; grew out of any experimenting with elicit substances by age 23, no tv 23 years...etc.. And i like only quiet VERY rural existence. But i know piety and earnestness do NOT work. The 'Green' movement has always failed to roll out the message further as their message is too hard for people and is never engaging.. I have studied this 20years... it is time to try and DO something, and i need collaborators in that.
Then we have the less easy message for others.
I have meandered a little like George Borow for 10 years - about 1/3 of my waking hours, developing, maintaining a chronicle of what people think about the environment (and from 2017 brexit and other societal developments from then)
It will be a great book too when i get around to it.
However there is a not great story at its heart, which is i have been a central member of half a dozen groups (including Libdems in region who had some green initiatives) over 17 years who set themselves up to be custodians/protectors, stewards of the environment. Indeed this has been my main occupation for 15 years - being part of then setting out freelance to DO things to protect the environment of The Marches - my region from around Glasbury, South of Hay-on-Wye, all the way up the England Wales border roughly 75km up to Bishops Castle. Mainly concerned with the rivers Wye, Arrow, Lugg, Teme, Clun and catchment areas.
The truth is ALL failed. The Wye was in great shape 25 years ago - even 20 when for 10years i was there most summer days with my daughter as video captured here https://www.ralphschism.com/2024/04/real-women-time.html (100s of clips at a once pristine river coming soon...emotional blackmail/leverage.. whatever it takes...ALL the way now.....somehow!)
BY15 years ago it was seriously degrading and ALL these rivers the last decade can be thought of as good as dead. 20 years ago all the children of the village would be dipping their toes in and screaming with glee at the minnows nibbling by 10 years ago there were almost none left (stock records held by a friend of mine at the in theory cleaner river Arrow - alongside the Wye, next valley NW, say in 40 years the total mass of river animal life has reduced 97%)
And the main reason: sorry, not a popular answer, i know as i have had this conversation 500 times face to face one on one in the last decade: The environmentalists have always only been ineffectual, atomised, in fact frankly fake. ANY real eco initiative (by definition always voluntary) is longterm, and requires pulling together a good team of at least 4 or 5 committed people collaborating. My chronicle of the last 15 years is only of 'performative' environmentalism - for the stall in the farmers market, Fakebook, or the media.
Throughout much of the last 15 years i have had (for several reasons but the main one administrative efficiency) during 100s of chats with eco 'aware', and actual supposed operators in that field, a digital recorder rolling (to protect myself too, as so much of the UK became snide word policing or even false allegations). I simply have a superb evidence dossier of NO ONE EVER DID ANYTHING. And that is at many eco meetings, including the rise and fall of XR, among councillors - town or county, stating they are committed to green; WITHIN the 'green' party! And also among my own (now ex) friends of many years all stated serious 'greens'.
And then we have the biggest scam of all:
I explain to "Mrs Buzz" here. late March 2024
https://www.ralphschism.com/2024/04/efficiency.html?m=1
that page links to this:
https://www.simonclayton2020.com/p/wye-mar-2024.html?m=1
And... years ago i thought, this wonderful word pseudeia....i am afraid sums up every environmentally 'active' person i ever met in those Marches
...people who wander widely, making up lying stories (pseudeia), from which no one could learn anything.....
Collaborators in the above could end up with LOTS of arts funding
BUT its not nice 'council' approved art we need, we need BRUTAL Guernica style grown up art. I understand rich people. (and they own the land). The rich mainly went to private schools, wrenched from the mothers bosom (if it was cocaine or champagne free) and the family was replaced by Greek psychodrama and ...well thats how Boris became Boris. They respond to REAL dirty, painful, self harming ...art... aimed at THEM. NO 'green' has fought the upperclass with their own weapons - the best of satire, tragicomedy, no holds barred art.... our last and only hope as ALL the many landowners i have known simply have no respect for environmentalism as it fails to reach them using their own language against them.
At least we need a propper Glyndebourne oven ready opera.. on how the ways of the Glyndebourne class are the ones turning the oven heat up....
The 'LINKS' pages at the top will have new material soon attempting to present a 'whole'.
FROM
https://vdoc.pub/documents/logos-without-rhetoric-the-arts-of-language-before-plato-1n9lo45jtubo
.......Alkinoos insisted that Odysseus continue with the story and report whether he saw any of his companions from Troy, perhaps to test him as to whether he has first-hand familiarity with these men. For although Alkinoos claims that he believes Odysseus to be telling the truth, he may be obliquely alluding to his distrust of Odysseus when he said: “. . . we as we look upon you do not imagine that you are a deceptive or thievish man, the sort that the black earth breeds in great numbers, people who wander widely, making up lying stories (pseudeia), from which no one could learn anything. But come now, tell me this and give me an accurate answer: Did you see any of your godlike companions, who once with you went to Ilion and there met their destiny? Here is a night that is very long, it is endless. It is not time yet to sleep in the palace” (XI.363–66, 370–74; Lattimore 1967, 177). Alkinoos suggests that Odysseus’ story is well crafted but does not clearly prove the truth of his claims. Alkinoos is not yet content that Odysseus is not an imposter. Indeed, his words may well be heard with an undertone of suspicion or even anger. Nausikaa’s advice turns out to have been at least incomplete, if not misguided: not only Arete but also Alkinoos must be won over, although Alkinoos had seemed easy to please at first. Indeed, Odysseus’ emphasis on feminine power seems to backfire with the king. Alkinoos is eager to assert his male authority over Arete’s power, and expresses some anger in his insistence that he holds the real power in the region. Although Odysseus has succeeded in gaining Arete’s favor, he has miscalculated in orienting his speech primarily to her, and is forced to continue the Hades story. Odysseus now must face the suspicion and anger of the king, which seems to have been aroused by Odysseus’ attention to and.........
This site is not really to promote anything, merely to act as first info point.
I would like to share it with others. Meaning have them run or guide things. I have spoken with 100s of supposed eco aware eco thoghtful the last 10 years and 99.9% bullshit - only waste time. It is called people pleasing - a serious illness.
This site i am temporarily using as fundraiser - unlikely it will work. Funds to ONLY write fully and enagingly and spread a REAL message. But i would like others to write with me or add in their take.
https://ralphwalkson.blogspot.com/
where i wrote:
I am also setting up specifically for the writing (and MUCH evidence in audios over 15 years) on, sadly, environmentalism sham - seen day after day from the INSIDE, a new stand alone website called https://www.pseudeia.com/ where stories and recordings will be gradually added to as a repository of REALITY
For simplicity, but it is wrong as a term 'greenwash' - I say so as (lifetime) but my last 15 years especially focused on environmental and nature-protection 'causes' in the (MOST BBC covered area of the UK AS ENVIRONMENTAL SYMBOL) Wye valley region it is sadly only the environmentalISTS who allowed complete eco destruction to have occurred there from around 15 years ago...previously West Herefordshire was England's most biodiverse and healthy ecosystem. I need to tell that tale properly now. IN short they - my people in theory, simply did nothing real - meaning engage in the well understood democratic checks and balances, to hold back greedy rapacious development. (BOTH domestic - repurposing so may old farm outbuildings and newbuild - causing population to roughly double in 20 years without improved waste removal systems - meaning home sceptic tank upgrade as most rural properties are not in the municipal system , and also trebling or more of 'factory' farming)... aside the country's most symbolic nature repository of a river