REVOLUTION
Graham Morgan
Once revolution had a great appeal to me. I had no idea what it was or the consequences of change when forced on people, or taken up by people but I knew something was wrong.
Something was utterly wrong with the world, whether that be the way we blithely allowed the land to be poisoned or burnt or turned into a lifeless grey concrete desert. And something was wrong with countries and ownership which manifests in the determination to conquer and control and dominate. The plastic swirling in the oceans, the poverty imposed on billions to provide luxury for the few or even just luxury for us in the Western world which most of us weren’t even aware of.
I hated it, I hated nuclear bombs and racism, I hated bullying and loneliness and I could not stand arrogant desires to despise people because of their difference, whatever that might be.
For me revolution meant that would all change. I had only a vague grasp how or why but dutifully put up posters in support of the miners strike while the crowded police vans parked on the road I lived on. I more or less happily occupied our university buildings and helped barricade the corridors for a cause I no longer remember and I worked with my friends to make the asylums we were ‘cared’ for in, a thing of the past and joined in in making our lives the ones we wanted, run democratically by our idealistic little groups. I felt I must have passed some edge into some sort of utopian liberation when the all women, mainly lesbian house, finally allowed a few of us men in it to share dinners and drinks because somehow our small group was not quite what they meant by the patriarchy.
It was a nameless, ‘This is wrong’ time with an urge to make a difference, to create somewhere where we felt safe and valued and accepted.
I did however remain slightly erratic by dipping into student societies that supported the existence of Israel and those determined that it be destroyed; by skirting the Socialist Workers Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party but never really fitting in or signing up or believing.
And I am still like that but maybe in a new way. I tend to think nowadays, that my anger and my urge for justice was more a product of insecurity and awkwardness and too much self loathing. I think, well I know, that I hated myself at the time and could not quite understand that that is what it was, the furthest I got was to seek to identify nameless traumas that did not quite fit as well as I would have liked into an explanation of my life.
In doubtlessly hideous hindsight, I think maybe in those days if I had known how to fit in and laugh and talk. If I had found pleasure and release in dancing or singing or loving and could walk into a party without fear. If I had known how to make friends and not assumed any friend I made would vanish, my life would have been very different and I would not have had to use the injustices of a society I did not connect with to justify and explain my sadness.
And now, when maybe revolution might be the only way we manage to save a planet and our species from destruction I have even more fears. I worry that revolution, whatever the underlying cause is, is about trying somehow to improve and change things for the better but the more I think about that the more it seems to me that change and improvement is another form of materialism and status and our weird vision of what success is.
Whether we are dictators or oligarchs, freedom fighters or activists for social justice our aim and need seems always to make better and better and better.
And sad to say, better and better and better rarely is better. We may be healthier and live longer but the earth is worn out by our need for betterment, our cultures are toxic with the divisions each different community determines is the best and finest and most ethical form of living. Are we happier? All the statistics say that young people increasingly struggle with despair and illness. Are we richer? Yes of course but has that made us more content? Not that I can see. I like to scroll on my mobile which is more powerful a machine that we even dreamt of when I was born but does it enhance my day or my families day? No! Just now my family were pleading with me to leave the phone alone and talk to them and I got angry because I had spent a day working at something, again all about social justice, which will never have a good outcome and was not in the mood for silliness. I wanted to go to bed and stare at my phone and have a drink.
More and more I would like to cauterise our urge to create a better world, a richer world, a finer more just and fair world and instead ask that we finally learn that we have all we have ever needed maybe more than we should have ever had. The very act of creating a better world perhaps does the exact opposite. I would hope that I could turn a corner and stop trying to be more successful and more happy and stop trying to make other people happier and more successful and stop demonising those that I believe prevent that.
I sometimes grumble that I sleep on a sofa bed in the kitchen, why do I? It is in a warm house with food and a loving silly vibrant family and outside the house I have a wider family who I hope I have forgiven and who I hope have forgiven me. I have food and clothes and books and so, so, so, much more. Why on earth would I be discontented? And why would I have the arrogance to think that I can do anything better with my life than remain utterly grateful for what I have and maybe humble enough not to seek better and better and better all the while pretending it is for other people instead of accepting that better is a symptom of how we got to where we are now.
(Photos; current books october 2023, leaves in Duchess woods october 2023)