Revolution, anyone?

This is unlike anything I have ever written.

Time for a revolution.

The pic is from Bondi beach this morning.

Climate change is an equal opportunity invader. Our first world white privileged complacency has just gotten a massive kick up the arse. I wonder if the groundswell of community rage that’s simmering with the fires relentlessly chewing through Australia will spill into action.

I rarely get political, because for me, it's irrelevant which party is in, because the system is broken.

The system is broken.

I sometimes travel down timelines. Have you ever done that, followed a thread of a possible future and just played it out to see where it will end up? I don't tend to go too far these days, because I always end up in apocalypse. Five years, maybe ten, and all these earnest and frantic conversations are a dim dream. In my world. Not saying it's true, just saying this is where I end up in my time wanderings. But that’s a whole other conversation.

Where was I? Oh yes. Australia.

There's a climate change rally on Wednesday at Sydney Town Hall on George St at 530pm. I never go to rallies. I prefer my activism to be one on one, by living a reality other than the consensual dream/nightmare. Teaching by being. Singing a different song, to break the trance of fear that is tool used by media to motivate us. Singing a song of choice and opportunity rather than victimhood and oppression. We can't control what is done to us. We can control how we respond to it. We can find the blessing in the lesson. I tend to teach internal skills to dance with transition, rather than throwing myself into any social movement to create that transition.

So this is all new territory for me.

Last night I played a little scenario in my head, of going to the rally and grabbing a megaphone or a microphone and jumping up in front of everyone. In my scenario of course everyone stopped and listened. It's my scenario, I get to be the heroine. You know how it goes.

This is what I say into that microphone, in the movie in my head...

-Raise your hand if right now you have a life that is fulfilling and nourishing, where you bounce out of bed every day knowing who you are and why you are here. Knowing you are bringing your gifts into the world in a way that fulfils you. Knowing you have enough time to be with your families, to make art, to sing, to dance, to spend time in nature listening to birds, to swim in the ocean.
-Raise your hand if you are living your birthright.

-Raise your hand if you feel part of a tribe where everyone looks after each other, from neighbours to leaders.

-Raise your hand if you have a life that works, really works.-

In my little mental movie a couple of hands go up, maybe. So I continue.

-Raise your hand if you feel right now that you don't have a life that works.-

And all the hands raise, a sea of them, a forest of limbs thrust skywards. In my mind I track through the rally to the city and it's like a wave cresting, the hands keep rising, ripples spreading further, and further, over the country, and the hands keep rising, in their millions and then across the oceans, and the hands keep rising, in their billions, all over the world. Rising.

And rising.

And rising.

Can we rise?

A system that means that the humans within it do not have lives that work, is a broken system. Period.

I am not a politician. I would suck utterly at it because my heart and my body are my compass and I light my way with a guidance system of deep rightness backed by reason, rather than logic overriding emotion.

The tangled morass of sticky threads of influence, barbed-wire spiderwebs of interconnected financial systems based on nothing but hypnotism and greed, people in power jostling for more power, and the part where we actually give a shit about living breathing humans so numbed by overwhelm that it's simpler to retreat into statistics and outcomes... this thornsnarl of lies and self interest is not my maze to navigate. I would asphyxiate in a week dealing with these things.

I would simply burn it to the ground and start again.

Politics isn't my thing. But now something has switched over in me.

I've felt like for years we've been lost in a forest, but it's a nice forest. Sometimes a bit dark, mostly quite light, with beaches and birds and sure, we're lost, but there is enough to eat and drink and it doesn't get too cold in the winter.

But now I feel like we've fallen in our lostness into a swiftly flowing river, and like an old Tarzan movie, the music is getting super dramatic, and we're caught in the current, bashing into hidden rocks, spluttering and drowning and the whole thing is heading to a big fucking waterfall.

I tend to notice patterns. Tracking is about pattern recognition.

For me, what feels utterly true is that we are living in a global system that is broken. We're running around with bits of gaff tape, trying to patch over the leaks in the pipes running from a huge concrete dam, when behind us the dam wall is cracking and the water is fouled.

The system is broken.

I want our existing ways of governing gone. Gone. Our house is sick. There is rising damp in the carpets and mould in the walls and rats are chewing through the wiring. It is a sick place to live, rotten in its foundations. I cannot see the sun, cannot smell the wind. And now the country burns and the colour blue has been sucked out of the sky, leaving queasy uneasy reds and oranges. I yearn for blue. I yearn for clear air, crisp horizons. I yearn for a system that supports the humans in its care, instead of a country heading incrementally towards fascism.

What are the alternatives? Small countries like NZ and Sweden and now Finland can manage with actual heartful humans in charge; men and women with empathy and compassion, to ignite our own passion and compassion; that's how it works, leaders wake us up, they ignite our better selves. They call on the part in us that wants to be good, wants to be connected, wants to be part of a healthy tribe. Where we can feel pride in the way we look after each other rather than creeping shame at what we allow, shame we don't want to feel so we wall it off, bury it, freeze it, numb it and allow more and more human rights to be taken away, until our hearts simply disconnect and we collapse into apathy. Until the territories of our own hearts are small and shameful prisons and we simply can't let ourselves feel how we created this for ourselves and each other.

We did this.

We are doing this. Right now. We. Are. Doing. This.

Leaders motivate us in one of two ways. They ignite our belief that we can be better, or they play on our fear so we will make decisions from our smallness. And whichever way the momentum runs, it will keep running.

How do we want to run? Do we want to be better than we are, or will we keep giving away those parts of us that allow humans to be magnificent.

The system is broken. If we threw out this government (oh please, please let us throw out this government) we'd just get another one with the same kind of problems, because it is the system itself which is sick, because governments are run by people with vested interests in industry and we are all addicted to our first world lifestyles and if it comes to real sacrifice we will not do it until we absolutely have to, when the whole rotten house falls down around our ears. I want to cry.

I want a leader to rise. A real live honest to goodness leader. I want to see Robin fucking Hood, Joan of fucking Arc. Gandhi. I want someone I can believe in when there is nobody I can believe in. Not even myself. I wish I had the political chops to leap up at that rally and scream at people that we have a choice, that we can say no, and if we all do it together then it's a revolution, so let's revolt. I want to break the broken system so it can never be rebuilt in the way it exists now, but the broken system is the whole world and in all my imaginary wanderings, in all my time travels, I cannot see a solution where any leadership steers this ship away from the rocks because WE are the broken system and until we realise that we are just pointing fingers at everyone but the true culprits. Us.

It is up to us. The system is broken.

I don't know what the alternative is, not at this pre-collapse stage. And in this I understand why we do nothing, because the only thing more paralysing than shame is despair. So we hide in our netflix, we obsessively pore over the social media feeds about the state of the world, social media feeds given to us from algorithms tailored to feed our fear. And. We. Do. Nothing.

Australia is the canary in the coal mine for climate change. Everything just changed for us, forever.

Shit just got real.

Can we?

I'll be at the rally. I doubt I'll jump up and grab that microphone, because as strong as the impulse is, as deep as the glorious engine of my rage is, I honestly have no idea what to do next. In the movie in my heart, Australia rises, all those arms in the air thrust for the sky, we chant with one voice and unite and we wake the fuck up, change our attitudes, become willing to make sacrifices to our lifestyles, lose our self interest, look after each other no matter what. Because that's what a tribe is. A group of people who look after each other no matter what. In the movie in my mind, this is what happens.

And then... I don't know what happens next. I have no answers. The Kali in me just knows this shit has to change.

Revolution, anyone?
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