Firstly – I speak only for myself.

Secondly – yes, I was at the Ferry blockade, and at the legislature blockade. I was only in passing at the Ministry of ‘Fracking and Status Quo’ occupation, however a good friend of mine took a hit for the cause.

Thirdly – I woke this morning to hear that back in the UK, the second severe winter storm in a week is battering the southern UK, causing unprecedented flooding, evacuation of towns, severe weather alerts. I will call my father later to see how he is doing…

This last seven days in BC have been intense. The debate is active and moving in all directions. I do not intend to go ‘down into the weeds’ of all the sub-debates that are raging online and in the press. Whilst those conversations are important (and possibly un-resolvable…) I believe that this is part of something bigger that we are all living through.

We live in an Era of Consequences – mostly unintended. And that is what is at issue. I believe there is a way out. And it involves intention.

I align myself with the cause of the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs. I am not indigenous. I only came to Turtle Island 21 years ago from the UK. I see what they are standing for and happen to agree.

I came from the UK. Our own Indigenous issues were dealt with at the point of a sword a thousand years ago or more. There have been resurgences; the Diggers, the Levellers – to name just two that have become popularized through song. More recently the grass-roots campaigns against the connect-the-dots-of-cultural-and-scientific-value-that-are-owned-by-the-government-and-hence-can-be-appropriated-at-no-cost Newbury Bypass, airport expansion in Manchester and London, and in its most recent incarnation – Extinction Rebellion.

I am no cultural historian, however when I moved North to go to University in the 1980s (Birmingham to York) I experienced a transition in culture. Whilst the surface looked the same, I met the strong undercurrents of another way of being in the world. I am going to call it ‘Celtic’. I will leave it to someone who knows more to get the labelling correct.

I met it through music and through the sub-culture in which I found myself and discovered I felt very much at home with. There was a brightness, an aliveness, a fire – that I recognize and tend within myself to this day. It is a belief that there is a deeper, more profound connection between us recent Humans and the Planet that sustains us. A connection which has been challenged and rent-apart by what I will call ‘Colonialism’.

Left to ourselves, we Humans are pretty amazing. We have self-organization and mutual-support built into our DNA, despite the profound misquoting of Darwin that has become popular in Economist circles. We can imagine, plan and create incredible things. We create myths and stories to reinforce those creations to pass them on into the future. Science just being one. It got us out of the African Savannah and into a position of top-of-the-heap across the entire planet since the last Ice Age ended some 11,000 years ago.

Where things got sticky in my view is when an idea arose from our creativity, that by inserting oneself into the free interchange between the means to survive/thrive and other humans, a third party could derive un-earned benefit. I will call it ‘appropriation’. It is a powerful idea. It has its uses. It makes the organization of humans at a scale above the independent village through specialization possible. Money is another consequence of this idea. It is undoubtedly powerful. The second idea is ‘distinction’. As a coach, I use this idea every time I speak. Teasing apart the wheat from the chaff in my clients thinking enables them to gain clarity, focus and momentum which otherwise eludes them. I use it on myself too. It is brilliant.

However there is a wild potion brewed from ‘appropriation’ and ‘distinction’ which I believe creates the DNA of Cancer. ‘Distinction’ can be weaponized into ‘Divide and Conquer’. Distracting people from what unites them, emphasising what divides them, creating a limbic-brain smokescreen that keeps them from seeing appropriation at work. For a grounding, I recommend you read The Sneetches and tap into the profound wisdom of Dr. Seuss. These two ideas together un-checked become the most dangerous idea we have ever had. I will call it ‘colonialism’.

This powerful complex of ideas have become so much part of the human project that we are all adept at weaponizing it against each other without even seeing it. It is I believe what the Indigenous are alerting us to right now (and have been for a very long time as they have been on the un-broken receiving end of its Genocidal focus since Europeans came ashore) and what we are all just at the beginning of reaping the whirlwind of.

This ‘colonialism’ idea and a finite, abundant planet cannot co-exist. One will die. I put my (tokens of value, ultimately based in the natural world) money on the planet on this one. Either we give up on colonialism, or it will take us all with it. For current news reports, check out the wildfires-followed-by-flooding in Australia, the unprecedented Antarctic Heatwave, the intense winter storms in the UK. The list continues…

And so to the title of this post. We live in an Era of Consequences. It is just now they are at the scale of our collective means of survival. We have been here before, just on a smaller scale. And – do not get me wrong – each of those ‘smaller’ scales was unimaginable tragedy for someone or some group. Looking at the last 1,000 years that I can call to mind. The ancient world also played out this dynamic and many others.

1. Enclosures. The means of survival was grabbed by force from the occupiers of the land in the UK. The self-appointed land-owners (strongmen, war-lords) inserted themselves and demanded tribute. Large numbers of people were displaced, causing profound political difficulties that exist to the present day between groups who were nothing to do with the appropriation of lands. The self-appointed Aristocracy won.
2. Industrialism bought with it tool-making and the ability to create means to elevate the human condition. And also new opportunities for appropriation. Cities. Workforces. Child labour practices. Debt-slavery. Real slavery. Taking ownership of lands. Immense wealth followed for some. They wanted more.
3. Full-on Colonialism. Build the most powerful Navy the world has ever seen and go ‘exploring’ to find where the expenditure of money could reap rewards bigger than available from the depleting stocks available back home. Use flags.
4. Convince the population back home that those you meet are no better than wild animals, that you are ‘civilizing’. Make them proud to be part of the ‘Greatest Empire the world has Ever seen” – even though life remains rough for most of the population.
5. … you get the idea…
6. ‘Discover’ the ‘New World’…
7. Kill everyone you meet who is not like you and take what they have. “Only a few years ago, scholars spoke with confidence of a probable 100,000 Aboriginals in what became Canada, but now moderate estimates suggests that there were three to five times that number in the Pacific Northwest alone.” BCCampus – The Millenia before Contact.
8. …more of the same…
9. Discover fossil fuels and create the most profitable enterprise the world has ever seen.
10. Convince everyone that they are totally dependent on fossil fuels, inserting yourself in perpetuity as the sole provider of everything that is important to life.
11. Undermine ANYTHING that is not fossil fuels.
12. Suppress anything, anyone, any body, any people, any group who oppose this agenda. Use ‘divide and conquer’ to separate people who have far more in common than they have differences to waste their energy opposing each other rather than you.
13. …rinse, repeat…
14. Coastal Gas Link LNG

In BC and across Canada right now, there is a lot of energy around the right and wrong of the protests and actions taken. Lots and lots of weaponized distinguishing going on – which group is ‘right’, which is ‘wrong’. There are real consequences for groups on the receiving-end of this divisive energy. Groups involved on the same side rehearsing this again and again, wasting energy that could be used challenging the very idea that got us here in the first place. Many politicians are also ‘dismayed’ and confused. That is not suprising. We are all enmeshed in the ‘colonialism’ trance.

I think that a majority of people know that something is seriously amiss with where we are right now as a culture. Colonialism, and its modern offspring ‘Neo-Liberalist’ capitalism are in the process of undermining and destroying the social and practical underpinnings of organized social enterprise.

We are in the midst of the breakdown.

It is messy. It is going to get messier. Going backwards will not solve anything.

Clarity and Intention will guide us through to the far side. Imagining a better world in the future and working toward that through the breakdown. Not harking back to some mythical ‘golden past’ that never existed.

The cure is self-love. That is a bigger conversation.

And there is more to say – far more. I just needed to get all that out of my system.