My mate Evil Dave came back off tour for a couple days… my folks being away, we got a few ales in and got ‘tipsy’ in my back yard… for once the sun was out (ish) and it wasn’t blowing a gale, and so there we sat chatting… about Rock and changing the world… like you do.
Now, Evil Dave, he worked at the Live Earth[1] thing that happened a bit ago (07 July 2007). We are both a bit ‘right on’ and I suppose the idea of something like Live Earth basically appeals to us… thank f**k I had Evil Dave there to give me a eye-witness account… “Why can’t saving the world be more fun” says Dave. I’m not going to give you the details (because I’m not Dave) but, I think, it really will come as no surprise to you that the whole thing was about as ‘Eco’ as Jeremy ‘the environment is gay’ Clarkson… and how could it be?
What Dave pointed out so succintly, with his plaintive statement, was that for all the good Live Earth may’ve done to ‘raise awareness’ about climate issues, the fact is that going to concerts will not save the whales… and I should point out that I’m not justhaving a go at this Live Earth thing… the point is that whenever there are these big, super-bloated, feel-good ‘Green/Eco’ events, it take the initiative away from individuals… it helps to instill the belief that massive, radical social change – change that all serious people (like my mate’s gran and the barman at the local) recognised is needed – will come about, primarily, by the activites of Establishment institutions… it’s all part of way that Establishment power structure take away people’s sense of connection with the world they live in… ‘Yes’, we think, ‘climate change: bad… but so long as I go to Live Earth, give to charity, buy fair trade… it’ll be fine… THEY are on it…’
The problem, typically, with Establishment attempts to tackle the problems facing humanity – and the earth as a whole – is that they only reinforce the notion in the populace that we need a leader to sort stuff out, that it is beyond our reach and capablities. It’s all incredibly subtle and never expressed in any explicit way, but it’s the underlying presupposition that Establishment institutions are thinking for us…
So yeah, changing the world is boring… it is the day to day commitment to work towards a future you will probably not live to see… handing leaflets out, watching lectures, reading news, talking and debating with people, trying to increase the common perception that if the world is f**ked, as most of us suspect anyway, it is only up to us to do something – anything- about it...
But it’s not so different from other thing in our lives…
…take me… I wanted to be in a Heavy Metal band… First, I had to learn how to use a guitar… years of boring classes and quiet practice… never mind the hours of air-guitar in the mirror, learning how to make it look good… then, finding a band, people who you can work with… then writing material that is at least coherent, the endless string of s**tty gigs… of course, having chosen possibly the most unlistenable form of music yet created it was always going to be a struggle…
…and that’s my point… if you have a goal or aim that does not resemble the status quo, that opposes the way things are, you’ve got to expect it to be difficult to realise, with bearly noticable results… stick to the way things are and you can have an easy, ‘fun’ life… choose to work for an alternative perspective and it will be boring and slow and unrewarding…
…but that’s how Power is, and has always been, challenged and defeated…
Bing!x - www.bing-em-all.blogspot.com
[1] http://liveearth.org/070707_liveearth/
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