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Good day yesterday with Mark, who shares both my love of walking and conviction the world is run by and for the criminally insane. As we walked – on moorland and cliff edge, quiet lane and wooded path, riverside and reservoir bank – we shared experiences of living with a view of the world at odds with mainstream understandings. It’s like believing planet earth a globe when all around you say, no, it’s flat. You like some of those people; indeed, on many things you respect and value their knowledge and advice. Just not on this question of who rules and what they’ll do to ensure things stay that way. There are times you doubt yourself: not that you’re wrong – too much evidence for that – but that you’re wasting your time and would do better to just shut up.
What do you do? Say the world is flat to keep things harmonious and not be deemed at best a bore, at worst unhinged? Say you’ve seen the light and now recognise that climate, peace, freedom from tyranny and material security for our children are all safe under a system that must subordinate everything to the needs of Profit? What do you do? Going with the flow is always an option, an easy one at first blush, but you know there’s a price whatever you choose.
The art of living, I think, is to hold in the same breath the knowledge of how dangerously and stupidly corrupt the world is, and of how much beauty it nevertheless contains. But no one in their right mind would say this is easy.