- BBC - WOMAD 2002 - audio and video clips
- WOMAD homepage
What's it all about?!
I just realized that I've spent all these years shilly-shallying about social justice methods and tactics knowing all along that it was simply a matter of emotional integrity. I mean that the whole of the epistemological project hinges on valence ... light fight or flight, but having to do with desire and aversion. Immediately, this comes across in the long series of petty swindles we pull on each other under mutual agreement not to let on that we see through one another's games.
This mendacity's first victim is authentic affection. When was the last time you experienced or manifested spontaneous unpromted affection? It's vein to hope that we aren't actually and really human beings, that this part of us is actually and truly something that can be put on freeze-frame indefinitely. Nothing of the sort, of course, so we're all walking around wounded with various degrees of resentment and antagonism (can you spell "passive-aggression"?). Of course, fool that I am, I decided not to cop into this game, so I'm the odd man out ... trusted so much that I can be treated like the crumb that falls off the table, as though entirely surplus to requirement. And I will indeed keep on with those spontaneous gestures, since I know my own authentic presence rests on it; I may barely be hanging in here (for the whole of today I lost use of my laptop when the keyboard started acting up, as usual, but could not be cleared in the usual manner) and I may not be for long (I can't say for certain that my decades of poor diet has given rise to this heart anomaly, but it can't have helped) ... this is no normal abusive relationship: I can't sue for divorce from the rest of the human race ... none of us can.
The point is, of course, that no amount of data can lead unambiguously to a correct decision about "the good", and those are the decisions that inform our political lives. All those issues rest on our valuations and assessments, our goals and intentions, our hopes and fears. But, of course, without even the simplest integrity concerning our own emotions, it isn't likely that any sensible concensus can be arrived at, since very nearly all of us are fully occupied with the busyness of conniving and contriving.
