Pistis reclaims 100 years and a sense of 'history' (weekending May 2nd 2020)

‽istis reclaims 100 years and a sense of ‘history’ (weekending May 2^nd 2020)

As Captain Tom Moore (Honorary Colonel) celebrates his 100^th birthday, ‽istis wonders about ‘history’ and memory - in a week:

‽        when reports are broadcast[i] of the death of another centenarian whose twin brother died 100 years’ ago from the ‘Spanish flu’ (with that pandemic infecting an estimated 500m people worldwide – a third of the world’s population - and killing an estimated 20m to 50m people)[ii]

‽        when US deaths from COVID-19 surpass, in just a matter of weeks, the number of losses in 11 years of the Vietnam War (with this week also seeing the anniversary of North Vietnamese troops entering the Independence Palace of South Vietnam in Saigon, a symbol of the end of that conflict)

‽        of the anniversary of[iii]:

o   George Washington’s inauguration (1789, probably attended by enormous crowds…)

o   Hitler’s suicide (1945)

o   British Captain James Cook landing at Botany Bay in Australia (1770)

o   the World's worst nuclear disaster: 4th reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station in USSR exploding and radioactive contamination reaching much of Western Europe (1986)

o   Bell labs announcing the 1st Solar Battery made from silicon (1954) and the Hubble space telescope being placed into orbit (1990)

o   1st commercial flight across Pacific operated by Pan Am (1937)

o   Sierra Leone gaining independence from Britain after 150 years (1961)

‽        …and on and on…    

Just think of all the changes that Captain Tom has seen in a century of apparent extraordinary development and progress / regress / transgress / digress / congress (delete as appropriate)… 


What events, experienced or learned about - personal, familial, small or large group social, national or global - stand out for you? And, perhaps more importantly, why? What is the link, the chime, the resonance, the role each memory perhaps plays in building and sustaining the stories I, or you, or we tell ourselves individually and collectively? 


And what meaning might all those events and stories take on if memory is thought of as a reconstruction of the past in order to serve the interests of the present?[iv]   


What a difference it might make if a little less of the victors’ view dominated and if the word we used for the past was ‘herstory’, or ‘theirstory’, or ‘ourstory’?


 And ‽istis wonders how we might manage our particular and different reference points, narratives and meta-narratives (perhaps especially those that can fuel division and conflict)? 


Just possibly a start might be to consider that ‘facts’ can perhaps be contested and that the most significant part of the word ‘history’ may be ‘story’…   


And if we were to work to find common ground, to identify the shared interests of the present and then let the past be (re)constructed to serve all our interests, then imagine how different 'history' and the world could be?

© Pistis

---

[i] https://www.wral.com/pandemics-kill-twin-brothers-100-years-apart/19076241/

[ii] https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic

[iii] Take your pick from easily accessible ‘this day in history’ websites… 

[iv]  (apologies, source of this idea, sadly forgotten!)

Pistis reclaims the next slide please and downturning curves (weekending April 25th 2020)

‽istis reclaims the next slide please and downturning curves (weekending April 25^th 2020)

Understandably, the COVID-19 curves dominate the briefings:

·   rates of new infections

·   deaths of people in hospital (never alone but not with loved ones)

·   deaths in care homes (also never alone…) and ‘at home’ deaths (including people dying with but not necessarily dying of…?)

·    COVID-19 deaths as a proportion of total deaths

·    the size of the gaps: between those needing PPE and those able to access PPE; between the number of tests carried out and those set out as the ‘goal’ (which is so very definitely different to a ‘target’)

·    us in comparison to them (back-patting, hand-wringing or scapegoat-identifying is optional)   

But ‽istis, cannot help but revisit territory mapped somewhat in recent blog entries, and wonders what it would take to lower other curves on other graphs or slides, for example (just a selection):

‽    the gap between rich and poor (the top 10% of households in the UK started 2019 with 45% of national wealth, while the poorest 10th held just 2%)[i]

‽    world firearm-related deaths which, it is reported, were higher than global conflict and terrorism deaths[ii] in every recent year apart from 1994 (the year of the Rwandan genocide) with, apparently,  more Americans dying in firearm-related incidents (1.5million – killing each other or themselves) since 1968 than in all wars in US history (1.2million)[iii]

‽    suicide levels – with apparently close to 800,000 people dying across the world due to suicide every year[iv]

‽    the number of women killed by a current or former partner - surging by nearly a third as overall numbers of female victims of homicide hits a 14-year-high; 80 women killed by a partner or ex-partner in the year to March 2019[v]

‽    the unprecedented 70.8 million people around the world forced from home by conflict and persecution at the end of 2018. Among them nearly 30 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18[vi]

‽    the 1 in 20 children estimated to have been sexually abused in the UK (recent research with young people aged 11 – 17)^[vii]

‽    the estimated 24.9 million people whom traffickers are robbing of their freedom and basic human dignity across the world[viii]

‽    the calculation of 8.8m early deaths a year from outdoor air pollution[ix] 

‽    the estimated 300,000 child soldiers around the world[x]

‽    the contribution of malnutrition to nearly half of under-five deaths; affecting one in three children globally[xi]

‽    the current estimate that 52 million children under the age of five will die by 2030, largely of preventable causes (ibid) – is that really c.14,200 a day?!  

‽    levels of unequal access to tested and approved existing vaccines; the apparent 20 million children who do not receive basic inoculation, and 1.5 million children under five who die from vaccine-preventable diseases every year (ibid)

‽    …you might like to research and add your own (graphs and curves: of flora, fauna, animal, sea life, insects, habitat, flooding, drought and on and on and the connections between them across our delicately balanced, perhaps poised-on-the-edge world - for future blogs...), checking the statistics and the sources where possible, asking critical questions - perhaps mostly of ourselves…

And ‽istis wonders whether the apparent new-found perspective:

·        the ‘world turned upside down’/’things can never be the same again’ sentiment

·        the 20:20 vision of what perhaps really matters

·        the capacity for extensive state intervention (at least until the debts need repaying)

·        the fast-tracked medical research and development

·        the apparent recognition by so many of what and who is important… 

will extend to make a difference when there is no longer a sufficient threat to ‘us’ - to those who hold the power, who call the shots (and often take or at least order the military shots, or who play the golf shots), who benefit, are enriched, usually win, and strangely keep rolling the double sixes on the dice used in the global crap game.

Dice loaded, perhaps, possibly, maybe by decades and centuries of exploitation and profit; by smart-targeted, behavioural-insight-informed psychology and algorithmically crunched mass-gathered data; by prejudice-empowered discrimination and oppression; by a sense of superiority and entitlement (as though you had any say in matters of birth or brain or brawn); by denying rights; by rigging the system; by controlling the movement of what is shown on the next slide please - and even deciding whether there is indeed a next slide, please…  

If there were daily briefings on some of these other matters, then just imagine how different the world might be?

               

© Pistis  

---

[i] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/dec/05/gap-between-rich-and-poor-grows-alongside-rise-in-uks-total-wealth - plus - ‘The expanding gap between rich and poor is not only widening the gulf in incomes and wealth in America. It is helping the rich lead longer lives, while cutting short the lives of those who are struggling… https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/us/politics/gao-income-gap-rich-poor.html

[ii] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/gun-deaths-firearms-americas-homicide/

[iii] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/guns-killed-more-americans-firearms-deaths-us-wars-iraq-afghanistan-vietnam-vegas-mass-shooting-a7984421.html

[iv] https://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/

[v] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/13/female-homicide-victims-england-wales

[vi] https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/refugees/

[vii] https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/statistics-briefings/child-sexual-abuse

[viii] https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-trafficking-in-persons-report/

[ix] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/12/air-pollution-deaths-are-double-previous-estimates-finds-research

[x] http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/childrensrights/childrenofconflict/soldier.shtml

[xi] https://www.unicef.org.uk/campaign-with-us/child-health-report/

Pistis reclaims sound and silence - unnatural, natural, supranatural… (weekending April 18th 2020)

‽istis reclaims sound and silence - unnatural, natural, supranatural…  (weekending April 18th 2020)

‽istis stops for a moment and listens to sound and silence, perhaps possibly, maybe unnatural, natural or supranatural…?

‽        Perhaps many sounds less, many sounds fewer: motorways, skies, shipping lanes; piazzas, shopping centres and markets; cafés, pubs, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, concert halls; places of worship; village halls, community centres; playgroups, nurseries, children’s centres, schools, colleges and universities; buses and trains, stations and airports; leisure centres, gyms, stadia, sports grounds and parks – cities, towns and even-quieter-than-usual villages.

‽        Possibly ‽istis hears more, naturally: a country funeral for someone who loved music, had planned the hymns and the organ voluntary, the readings and the poems – held with a small group of family and silent witnesses dotted around the English churchyard – hearing the fly past of insects (a military man, somehow fitting) and a blackbird, not letting the going be gentle, fanfaring the rite of passage with glorious defiance from a tree top.   

‽        Maybe other sounds fill the air and the airwaves:

·       the hubris, defensiveness, apology-if-anyone-thinks-an-apology-is-needed, the presenting of evidence (or not) or the caution of a press conference;

·       the ‘no, you go ahead’ sub-aqua-style burblings of on-line meetings;

·       the missing-you, familiar banter and ‘strange times’ video exchanges between family and friends – kisses blown between partners, from children to grandparents and back;

·       the working from home background music, maybe still a little guiltily played (but perhaps not as guiltily done as the emails sent and received between colleagues still in pyjamas);

·       the shouting, silence, anger and crying (loud or inward) of abuse – possibly the norm, maybe new, in relationships where heightened stress may, at a stretch, just about contribute to the search for a clinical explanation but never, never provide an excuse;

·       the louder-than-usual conversations between friends and neighbours after physical-distancing, are we far enough away yet? encounters in the street or on the footpath;

·       the voices in the head, longstanding or recent;

·       the rolling wheels of a walking support frame assisting a heroic veteran, inspiring generosity, helping health and social care staff 

·       the 24hr news on radio, TV, laptops and phones – dominated by COVID-19, perhaps overshadowing or masking the news from elsewhere and otherwise;

·       …and yes, the loud or silent sound of extra grief… 

   

And ‽istis, wonders at the presence or absence of supranatural sounds: one hand clapping? the sound of Occam’s razor paring away at faith in an apparently silent or silenced Deity? the quiet insidious spread of infection along personal, organisational, national, international and deeply embedded structural veins of vulnerability and discrimination? 


But, again, for it is a Thursday in the UK, ‽istis joins in the new tradition sound: of applause for the essential workers, for social care staff, for health care staff; the sound of so many people standing in solidarity and appreciation and hope alongside the hand-made rainbows…       

© Pistis  

Pistis reclaims an appreciation of... (1) (weekending April 11th 2020)

‽istis reclaims an appreciation of... (1) (weekending April 11^th 2020)

In what is likely be the first of a series, ‽istis reclaims an appreciation of… hands. These very ideas manifest by the work of human hand: holding a pen, moving a mouse, lifting a coffee cup, tearing out hair as a deadline approaches! 


Perhaps, possibly, maybe - to help prompt some thinking– hands:

‽      form and function: impaired or disabled – congenitally, accidentally,  through illness or disease, through war or torture

‽       holding a knife or a gun or a ball or a kite or a flower or a baby 

‽       the opposable, longer thumb: in the mix of research exploring evolutionary advantages and species dominance

‽       restrained for crimes committed or alleged, restrained for abuse

‽       assisting nature: fruit of the earth and work of human hand

‽       the subject of ‘the old ones may not be the best’ jokes: Andes?, always still at the end of the arms-es

‽       flesh and bone and muscle and veins and tendons, universal under the skin

‽       crafting and creating, forming, shaping, sculpting, drawing, painting, writing, building…

‽       playing a musical instrument, holding a microphone, holding a megaphone

‽       surgeons’ skill, assisting diagnosis, changing dressings, changing scrubs and masks, delivering babies, managing equipment, making notes, giving medicine, signing discharge records, signing death certificates

‽       not being shaken, not being held, pressed against the window of a nursing home

‽       blessing and praying - religious (perhaps especially at Easter, Rama Navami, Festival of Pure Brightness, Mahavira Jayanti, Hanamatsuri, the Night of Forgiveness, Passover… [i]) or not

‽       being washed (again and again)

‽       being lent to others

‽       applauding

‽       …

‽istis, reclaiming an appreciation, wonders what on earth these hands can do. 

© Pistis  

---

[i] https://www.reonline.org.uk/festival-calendar/

‽istis wants to reclaim a lighter tone but… (weekending April 4th 2020)

‽istis wants to reclaim a lighter tone but… (weekending April 4^th 2020)

‽istis wants so desperately to reclaim a lighter tone; but perhaps any ‘tone’ is a point on a continuum? 

Yet, whilst ‽istis generally seeks to embrace a fluid, non-binary, shades-of-grey-between-black-and-white position; more shimmering reflective mercury than dull, set concrete; even a 'quantumly' approach to things – maybe a crisis narrows the options? 
  

Perhaps, possibly, maybe some people are very much - only:

‽        in or out

‽        working from home or having to go to work

‽        clapping the health and social care staff and the essential workers - or not

‽        following the science or being swayed by other imperatives  

‽        flouting the guidance or complying

‽        tested or untested

‽        right now, washing their hands or not

‽        in touch with friends and family via social media or unconnected, offline

‽        guarded by appropriate PPE[i] or vulnerable and at risk

‽        safe at home or at risk at home

‽        sharing and collaborating or retaining competitively

‽        coughing or clear-chested

‽        waving or drowning  

‽        fearful or calm, fatalistic or faith-full, hopeful or utterly despairing

‽        rested or absolutely exhausted

‽        accessing much needed health care and treatment for existing conditions or on hold

‽        receiving financial help or mounting up the overwhelming debts

‽        full or hungry

‽        creating or slumping

‽        dressed or still in pyjamas

‽        in conducive social conditions or utterly exposed because of: poverty, living in a crowded refugee camp, in a place of war or conflict (perhaps add your own list of circumstances)…

‽        breathing with the assistance of a ventilator or not

‽        together or alone

‽        alive…

And ‽istis (now thoroughly far, far away from a lighter tone) longs for the chance - past, present and future - to help make things different.     

© Pistis  

---

[i] Personal Protection Equipment