TOUT doit changer

Tout doit changer. Du tout au tout. Rien ne tient la route.

Nous avons complètement évacué la dimension spirituelle de l'être humain au bénéfice d'un monde purement matériel, avec les effets pernicieux qu'engendrent cette société matérialiste de gaspillage et d'exploitation à outrance.

Je tenterais d'expliquer bien des processus qui m'amène ainsi à postuler que tout doit changer de fond en comble. Ainsi je tenterai d'expliquer ce qui dans la science et dans la spiritualité converge, car nous sommes habités par la sacro-sainte science.

Pourtant la science telle que nous la connaissons n'a que 5 siècles environ et tente de mettre à sac l'acquis de millénaires en tentant d'expliquer le monde de manière soi-disant rationnelle. Or cela dépend du point de vue d'où l'on observe la création pour se rendre compte que la vision de la science est d'une grande étroitesse et que l'on peut à tout moment corroborer les découvertes de la science par le spirituel et montrer là, par le fait même, en quoi la science ne fait que constater, découvrir ce qui existe de tout temps; sans son apport.
L'univers n'a jamais eu besoin de la science pour exister. Cela devrait servir d'explication première ici et de rappel à l'ordre de ce que la science peut produire: une vision tronquée de l'univers et une arrogation vaine de sa supériorité. N'en déplaise aux sceptiques!

Dans L'esprit d'invention - Le jeu et les pouvoirs (2018), Élisabeth Dufourcq écrit dans le sous-chapitre Classement des signes d'échanges, déclassement des savoirs inclassables: "De fait, les sceaux, gravés à l'origine par un très petit nombre de scribes, jetaient une marque indélébile sur la nature vivante.
Pour des siècles ils donnaient un avantage considérable à ceux qui les scellaient, celui de classer les biens, de normaliser les échanges, de vérifier le respect de procédures, mais aussi de contrôler les faibles. Ils leur permettraient de surveiller, voire d'embrigader les esprits, d'enraciner plus définitivement de quadriller la vie de gens qui ne les décryptaient pas.
Mais, simultanément, ils « démonétisaient », si l'on ose dire, et de ce fait il risquaient de marginaliser les connaissances qu'ils ne pouvaient classer. Au nombre de celles-ci se trouvaient les savoirs intimes, variés et vivants, transmis oralement dans les familles, les villages et les tribus. Comment figer par l'écriture les nuances ou les gestes transmis depuis les siècles?
Comment évaluer ces mille savoirs mémorisés d'expérience, au prix d'essais, d'échecs et de succès comparés? On imprime difficilement dans l'argile les tours de main, les regards et les odeurs, les vibrations des ondes et les équilibres infimes. Comment monétiser les savoirs venus des échanges entre les femmes et les sages-femmes, les artisans et les cuisiniers, les verriers et les céramistes, les jardiniers, les teinturiers, les alchimistes, les sourciers, les rebouteux? Ce qui est certain, c'est que malgré leurs recherches, les archéologues n'ont retrouvé à ce jour aucune trace d'un usage domestique ou privé de l'écriture.
Ce sont ces sciences très tard dévoilées qu'un jour les inquisiteurs du Moyen Âge soupçonnèrent de sorcellerie et que les scientistes du XIXe siècle disqualifièrent en les traitant d'empiriques... ces sciences aux mille dosages secrets, enracinées dans l'intimité des familles, transmises depuis le temps des mages persans par des dynasties d'artisans ou de corporations frissonnantes parfois d'une magie poétique.
Pendant les milllénaires, le prestige de signes comptables réservés à un petit nombre de scribes autorisa les plus autoritaires d'entre eux et leurs successeurs universitaires à prendre de très haut cette science qui demeurée gestuelle, orale, voire criblée de proverbes et d'incantations, n'avait pas voulu se « dégager de toute attache mystique ».
Ainsi, des pans entiers de savoirs, qui pourtant ne restaient pas dormants, furent classés hors circuit des sciences officielles et des pouvoirs, presque confinés dans une préhistoire orale qui, dans d'innombrables familles et d'innonbrables métiers, dura presque jusqu'à nos jours.
Ce qui est certain et riche d'enseignments pour notre temps où nous passons massivement de l'écriture manuelle au logiciel électronique, c'est que dès la fin du IVe millénaire avant notre ère, l'écriture codée et maniée par un petit nombre de spécialistes était devenue un outil d'encadrement d'une puissance inestimable. Â Sumer et plus tard en Égypte, quoique de façon différente, elle allait permettre à ceux qui la maniaient de surveiller, quadriller, presque de « penser pour » les gens qui ne la maîtrisaient pas, la maîtrisaient mal ou qui avait l'imprudence de s'en servir sans en mesurer la puissance. Sans anachronisme, on peut mesurer de nos jours, à l'heure de l'électronique, le risque hégémonique lié à une toute nouvelle écriture: « Un jour, disait en 2013 Eric Schmidt, président de Google, la technologie aura tellement évolué qu'il sera extrêmement difficile pour les gens de regarder ou de consommer quoi que ce soit sans que cela ait été, d'une façon ou d'une autre, pensé pour eux. » Ou bien encore: « la vie privée pourrait bien être une anomalie. » "

Four arguments for the elimination of privately owned cars...

The article title is in part borrowed from a book title: "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, by Jerry Mander which was published 40 years ago.

I will be attempting here to make my arguments for the elimination of cars. Of course this will be short. A book would have to be written to expose thoroughly each argument. This is the basis to any change of paradigm: the elimination of private car ownership. Everything else is a tributary of this. So if we do not operate this elimination of private owned cars, nothing else goes.

First argument: owning a car is a religion. We have to change religion.

We have to go back to a time when there were no cars! This is an argument dealing with the use of time and a looming climate crisis. Cars have made possible an ever-ending urban sprawling. Anyone can argue about the 'convenience' of cars ad nauseam but the fact is cars have made our life an incredible burden on our relationship to our existence on the biosphere, disintegrating the necessity to deal with our surroundings. We have to do a 180° and reinvent our civilization to a time without cars and with the modern tools at our disposal: better collective way of transportation, internet. We have to surpass the worst aspect of thie industrial revolution and plan a future that allows for a natural pace. This will help eliminating most of our deseases, linked to our lifestyle.

Second argument: cars are weapons of mass destruction

Cars have existed for a century now. Each year worldwide there are 1.2 million people being killed by cars. That's more than all the people who died during all the wars on the planet since the beginning of time. And this is only the people being killed by cars. Collateral damages run in the tens of millions depending on the years: people being injured, having nervous breakdowns, being killed by the enormous amount of pollution cars create, not mentioning all the animals being swept away by cars every minute. Each car produces its own weigh in pollutants every year.

Third argement: Cars make us forget about our natural belonging

The multiplication of cars makes for a miserable life for most people who spent half their wages nourishing their cars. We organize our cities for the cars. Half of the space in any given city is for cars thus expanding further and further the realm of a city. The reality that has been created for us and that we willingly embrace for its apparent convenience is a smokescreen nonetheless. We are unable to perceive the distraction it is from assuming our main role as a species, that is a role of stewardship over the planet.

Fourth argument: The time we spend in cars is time not spent on anything else

Hence we are being fooled in thinking that cars are convenient for transportation. If we were to built our cities differently with work, leisure, supplies at walking distance we would not need cars. We would meet people in the streets, spend more times with our love ones, read a book (here the argument is the same that could be brought up concerning television), we would find time to be more creative, etc.

Here is a quotation from Jerry Mander book mentioned at the top . It applies as much to television as it applies to cars or any construct we cart around with us:

Psychiatrist R. D. Laing, among others, has said that the growing incidence of mental illness these days may be explained in part by the fact that the world we call real and which we ask people to live within and understand is itself open to question. The environment we live in is no longer connected to the mix of planetary processes which brought us all into being. It is solely the product of human mental processes. It is real, but only in the way that a theatrical play or a fun house is real. Our artificial environment is there and we can experience it, yet it has been created on purpose by other humans. It is an interpretation of reality; it no longer reveals how nature works and it cannot provide much useful information to human beings who seek to see their own lives as part of some wider natural process. We are left with no frame of reference untouched by human interpretation.

Listen to  "Something in the air", from The Nature of Things on CBC TV
Air pollution is a major killer, even in places we think of as 'safe,' so scientists are using new technology to measure it and study its effects on our bodies.

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COVID-19 and confinement: next time something of the sort happens there will be no prisoners

My next place

To some extent I was prepared for this. I was lucky to have taken the decision to leave the city last year and be on unemployment insurance. So I had much time at my disposal to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. At first, in March, like most people, I was worried about things to come. My UI benefits were running out and wondered what would be next. And then we got the good news of the emergency payment for three months, no question asked, or almost. I decided earlier that I was once again leaving an apartment for something else because eventually I will find myself with as little as 700 $ a month to live on. I needed a cheap place.

A friend made an offer. It took me 24 hours to say yes because it involved not only to agreeing to a place at 200$ a month - instead of the 540$ I pay at this moment (which for most people is already very low for a 2 bdrms) - but it also involved to leave the city to a remote location. At the same time last year I wouldn't have thought that to be such a good idea. I was in Montreal and knew about that building in that remote location.

But now considering my situation it makes total sense. I know the village quite well and I know that building quite well. Last summer I was on its roof with the owner to spread tar to waterproof it. I also painted the outside window frames all around with him.

Ironically, last year though I wasn't thinking about that place. I wished I could find myself a loft, a place without walls. Well this place used to be first the general store of the village and then 15 years ago, a café. There is a second floor the owner used as his upholstery workshop. A workshop with a great view.

The view from the second floor

Since I already lived three years in small villages without a car, I know it's possible. There is a bus service twice a week that brings the people from the small villages to the bigger city to do some purchases such as grocery. The cost is the same that of any transit system in a metropolitan area.

So the COVID-19 phenomenon should be seen as nothing short of a miracle. It officially started about three months after Greta Thunberg held worldwide big rallies exhorting us with "our house is on fire". This miracle comes at a cost. It is a painful cost but one that even though we did not expect it to be like that, makes sense in our endless abuse of the planet in so many different ways. This tiny nanometer species forces us to stop everything, systematically everything. Nothing of the sort could have been achieved otherwise. Unfortunately, very few people will get the message and most will toss away any attempt at rethinking our place on this planet. It is sad because next time something of the sort happens there will be no prisoners.