Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde
I walked in the general direction of the park, where Bunyip and Candy tore about like crazy things on grass that was being mowed by people using push hand-mowers.
There were repaired statues, which made me think of Hera, and gardens of rambling plants. Though less rain had been predicted for Sydney Town due to climate change, there was actually more rain, and unstable, humid weather was the norm. In the distance, I could see tall wire fences with rolls of barbed wire on top.
‘What we have here are defensive barriers, forts, trenches to preserve this city, but you have to be sceptical about it all, as the people outside these walls are just as human as ourselves,’ fumed a girl about my age, who looked like she had stepped out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, with a face like a new coin.
‘You are sowing seeds of mischief again,’ a boy who looked almost identical to the girl added. ‘But that is the question: do we strive for a closed society based on commonalities, a kind of family? Or, do we become an atomised, open but hollow society of interchangeable individuals or data points?’ Then he said, ‘Hello, my name is Theodore, and this is my sister Gabrielle.’
An old man pushing a mower said from the side of his mouth as he moved past. ’The problem is that your open society without bonds cannot inspire solidarity and get people to lay down their life to defend it. It is just an empty, technocratic state. People don’t feel that such a place belongs to them: they are just paying guests.’
‘But we escaped from tribes, clans, and nepotism hundreds of years ago. We blossomed with large-scale cooperation of unrelated people,’ an extremely old lady with bird-like eyes declared.
‘Nah, all that poppycock was on its way back. Clandestine loan clubs were just one example,’ a joker raking leaves yammered.
‘Hello,’ I said, but Gabrielle just looked at me spitefully with her blazing eyes, which could throw you down stairs with a glance, flapped her hand, and said, ‘You wouldn’t be very handy to have around.’ I ignored her. Some girls are like those chooks that will peck others to death.
Gabrielle continued looking at her brother, ‘All I’m saying is that we are happy to slander those outside. But, you told me about places like East Germany, USSR, and North Korea. How do we know that is not who we are? Besides, the individual is the only entity with legitimate power.’
‘Well, we often believe what we wish to believe. And while I believe that the individual is sovereign. I also think that excessive individualism leads to the breakdown of social cohesion and a feeling of belonging, what is called anomie,’ ’Theodore replied, winking at me.
‘I saw that!’ Gabrielle cried. ‘I’m sure that we are deceiving ourselves. It is tyranny that has to protect itself with armed guards and suspicion of others.’
‘Don’t be a sook! I know that you want to rip these fences down, but perhaps we should consider why they are there in the first place,’ Theodore looked into the distance. ‘Rousseau said we became a civilisation when people built fences. Besides, respecting other individuals may require us to respect authority and society’s laws and norms.’
‘Many escaped to freedom and then felt alone and anxious. So, they wanted to flee from this freedom into certainties, submission, and dependence, preferring to be a cog in the machinery. We gave away our freedom to duty, conscience and public opinions. I want to let my passions and desires roam free,’ Gabrielle declared.
‘Passions is the word,’ Theodore smiled, sitting down like a dog settling onto a warm bed.
‘I like to live with intensity and poke the hornet’s nest,’ she replied. ‘And you only live once.’
‘Theodore scrunched his nose, ‘What is the connection between living once and taking risks? None. And ranting and strident people are intolerable to others.’
I had the impression that Gabrielle saw herself differently to the way others saw her.
A grumpy-looking old woman with a stuffed or dead parrot on her shoulder, sitting on a nearby park bench, piped up. ’Look, you errant mammals, Western culture just transformed people into mediocre, fat, thoughtless consumerist automatons. There was an avalanche of pop music with the same sound and merit as a nursery rhyme, tonnes of fast food that made people obese and art that required no expertise or ability, only some fictitious loser/victim concept repeated over and over again. People having it off with a revolving door of fungible bodies. All mediocre excess and decadence. No moderation, no constraint, no virtue. The same people who were ranting about global warming were the gluttonous ones buying and wasting loads of stuff, flying about on planes, and delighting in getting new blood by pumping others through educational visa mills.’
Another person with long hair almost covering the face put their chin up and declared in a strangely lifeless way, ’No, no, no, I blame those coddled radical universalists who demanded extreme levels of self-sacrifice and integration with people with whom I had nothing in common. It was their cultural relativism that led to our cultural entropy. We became a nation without meaning, flimsy, with no glue holding us together. Society became increasingly violent and degraded by those devoted to social justice, which could never be achieved in their view.’
‘What rot! We should have opened the borders. You lot and your misremembered past! Migrants with their grit and hard work would have created jobs and businesses. The whole idea of a country and nationalism is nonsense. People should have the right to live wherever they want,’ observed a shaved-headed person with a giant nose ring and mocking brow.
‘Nup, valuing diversity over continuity did us in; that’s my view,’ claimed a gardener, with a velvet voice, pushing a mower. ‘Borders define communities.’
‘Down with your disciplinary societies of schools, factories, prisons, and hospitals, jailed by walls, rules, schedules, and expectations,’ blurted a rat-nosed, egg-shaped head, which popped up from a trapdoor. ‘I will never again accept an "electronic collar" shadowing my every move. I am more than the cost of my car or house and more than a data point!’
‘All you need is love!’ shrilled another mouthpiece.
‘You are all just electrified meat, don’t you know!’ A being with greenish skin and overly large eyes whined in a robotic drone.
A sarcastic-voiced person in a t-shirt with a large pink elephant on the front said, ‘It’s funny how someone can tear down a hospital system as being an institution of power and “medicalisation;” a place of imprisonment. And, when they find out they are sick, they respond by saying, “You are always inventing diseases.”
"We are just one species of great apes, you know. We just take ourselves too seriously,’ a voice from the tree shadows chirped.
‘We’re the only apes that really cooperate, so they say,’ responded another.
‘It’s predators that have forward-facing eyes,’ trilled a high-pitched bard.
‘Depending on who has the power, that’s how the victim-oppressor game goes. The goodies become baddies if they can grab the reins,’ snorted a pig-faced man meekly, or perhaps that really was a pig and someone was behind somewhere.
From far away a voice sounded off, ’You should always consider what others have to say, especially if you don’t like it, and ask yourself, What if they are right?’
‘…..full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,’ a serious-faced woman striding past added.
And on and on they went.
Why, oh why! I thought, do I always seem to attract these dorky nerd types to me? I’m like a geek magnet. Then I thought about how I had overheard Panda saying that snipers had been covering us all the way from Parramatta to Darling Harbour. Had I put my trust in the wrong people?
I felt an elbow in my ribs. ‘You’re looking over at my old stomping grounds in Surrey Hills. I spent many a night on the dance floor in the clubs there……Another night I woke up in ..someone’s bathtub and rode the porcelain chunder-bus….. Might as well be on another planet now.’
Dion was rolling a cigarette as he mournfully told me this with a faraway look in his eye. ‘I’m not sure I exactly like who I used to be so much,’ Dion shuddered. I believed in having a night watchman state in those days. But I can tell you that most of the stuff you think when you’re young, you’ll laugh at or think is crazy later.’
‘No one likes their younger selves much. We are trying to figure stuff out and try things on for size,’ piped an invisible troubadour.
‘What are you doing, Dion!!!! Cigarettes are bad, you know that.’ I shrieked.
‘Good onya if you want to try and stop me, but I’m not your Saint Ardent who puts his principles into practice. Sometimes, I choose to do things that are risky and maybe not so good for me. That’s my choice. Besides, my uncle smoked all his life and made old bones.’
‘That’s just an anecdote, and don’t expect us to look after you if you get sick,’ jeered Valour, appearing with Tom.
‘What you choose to do is who you become. And that’s a destructive choice’ added Tom, sounding like Nan.
‘I wouldn't try to make your choices for you, and no-one should try to make choices for me or anyone else,’ Gabrielle snarled, in a way that was at odds with her angelic looks.
Her brother Theodore smiled as he cut in, ‘Your choices are generally the wrong ones, sister dearest.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t compromise on my beliefs like you do,’ she said fiercely.
Tom frowningly added. ‘People can grow up learning the wrong norms and values and may be victims of their circumstances, and so choosing to smoke may seem normal to them. But even if people have the same circumstances and opportunities, risk-taking seems to be socially valued, and if you refuse to smoke or do risky and risqué things, you can be called a boring berk.’
‘If we were all so rational, we wouldn’t have much fun would we? I am exhausted, swimming in all your thoughts,’ Dion sighed. ‘I just embrace my ignorance and bad decisions and act confident about it. That’s all. Come on, you crumb snatchers. Let’s go shopping. We all need a bath and a change of clothes.’
We meandered across the road, which was once so busy that you needed to come out of the egg on the other side to get there, and opened a heavy glass door and entered another world. Mirrored walls reflected cut-glass perfume bottles and skin lotions. I could see a grand piano on a raised platform and shelves of quaint handbags. ‘Oooh, I’d like one or a hundred of those,’ cooed Dion.
‘My Nan showed Tom and me how to make a dilly bag from plant fibre,’ I said.
‘Not my dream,’ Dion replied as he rushed towards a bag with letters stamped upon it. ‘You could buy a small car for the same price in days of old. But who would buy that when you could look fabulous instead!’
‘I would have bought a bike and saved the rest of the money,’ Valour ventured. ‘And one of Nan’s dilly bags.’
‘Well,’ sniffed Dion, ‘not all of us can be fabulous.’
‘Off you go up to the next floor, and choose some strides and clobber of your choice. Tom and Valour, you will get some boring and practical duds. Gabrielle, I’m sure, will be in combat gear. What about you and Theodore?’ Dion mused.
We selected a few things from off the racks and then collected Bunyip and Candy, who had waited outside, and began to walk through what seemed to be a forest that smelt of damp leaves and sunshine, with a path down the middle. After a time, I could see a majestic building that looked like a Greek temple.
Valour pointed, ‘Cultural appropriation!’
‘That was the art gallery,’ Dion whispered. ‘I met my husband there in front of the Henry Moore sculpture.’
‘We were quiet for a while until Tom asked, ‘What happened to the gallery, Dion?’
The relationship between art and politics and art and society became a quagmire. Some claimed that certain types of art were unclean because they had once been in the service of governments, religions, or ideologies. Or some perceived moral or ethical failure of the artist. Though to me, art has always powerfully stood free. It was also a status game, of course. Those who don’t have the talent and the genius try to tear down others to make themselves or their group look good.’
Tom interjected, ‘Art has been used as propaganda and has been banned when it criticised a government or state. In the time before, the censorship was of a different variety….’
Dion continued, ‘I have not always been consistent, but I fell out with the group I was in because I would not denounce artists like the genius Caravaggio, who they said replicated androcentrism, for being born a man. None of us choose our physical attributes, so I found…find it ridiculous. Anyway, I was cast out, and the rest of them stormed the gallery…… We then both joined the Demos, though we called ourselves The Sacred Band of Thebes.’
Only knowing partially what Dion was talking about, Theodore, who himself looked like a shadowy old photo, said, ’Art becomes stale and conventional, and then someone with ambition gets defiant and claims to have blown up the stylistic hegemony but dies as a tragic genius at age 27. Then it’s all imitation and repetition. In the days before, art went bad due to the politicisation of the arts and awards.’
Gabrielle replied, not looking at Theodore, ‘Art shouldn’t be frozen in time. We shouldn’t judge art with our head turned backwards.’
‘Is an art piece guilty of the crimes committed by the artist? That is the question.’ Theodore mused.
‘Painters and sculptors were regarded as craftsmen before Caravaggio,’ Valour stated. ’People started to expect artists and musicians to act crazily and wear weird outfits because they were a special category of human. Soon enough, nearly everyone was trying to act like a ninny, to be cool,’ he said in a way that a person who was deeply uncool would say.
Tom simply said, ‘According to Aristotle,”The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”’
Dion was sniffing, and I could see that he was really sad, so I went and took his arm, and we continued walking on towards the water.
I could hear Valour mumbling from behind, something about art actually being a lie that may sometimes tell the truth.
‘You should realise, Dion, that you violated the trust of your group and should be punished,’ Gabrielle snarled, ignoring Valour.
‘I had a legitimate grievance. And I resist the chilling effect of suppressing speech. It is too easy to dismiss dissent as prejudice; you may soon be backsliding into suppression of freedom of religion, association, and other rights.’ Dion countered.
‘This,’ said Valour, is called the slippery slope fallacy.’ But then he looked upwards, and his mouth did a U-turn. ‘…. Although someone once wrote, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”’
A kookaburra began its maniacal laugh just then, which made my knees buckle, and Dion laughed, ‘It thinks we are all fools. It may be right.’
We went swimming in the glistening water, in our clothes, as Dion said that it would give them a wash. He handed us some shampoo, and we washed our hair and goofed about. At one stage, Bunyip came dog-paddling around us, and Candy followed. Then, they went to lie in the sun.
‘What’s that fence for, Dion?’ I asked about the long fence that stood further out in the shining water.
‘That’s to keep the sharks out of our swimming spot; there’s plenty of them ... and other predators.’
As if they had been summoned, some thuggish looking types on jet skis zoomed past.
‘They are looking for a breach in our defences so that they can come in and claim squatters’ rights,’ Dion explained. ‘They would like to eradicate me and put you back in the kitchen. They have many paranoid fantasies.’
‘I blame the system, not the individual. You are scapegoating them!’ Gabrielle hissed.
‘No wonder Nan thought it was a good idea to stay in our cave in Springwood,’ I exclaimed.
‘If no one challenges the anti-social criminal types, then a criminal culture will just move in and take over,’ Valour stated, with unblinking eyes.
Our heads zipped about as Gabrielle zoomed out, swimming towards the fence, yelling, ‘Get me out of this gulag-matrix!’
‘Silly young galah, she’ll come a cropper, acting like a headless chook!’ Dion shook his head.
‘Makes you wonder if there is a biological basis to rebellion and crime,’ mused Valour, looking around at Theodore.
‘Don’t look at me; we are not identical twins, so we only share 50% of our genes.’
We watched as Gabrielle talked animatedly to the hoons on the jet skis for a while and then turned around and swam back to us, smiling for the first time since I’d met her.
Theodore snickered. Looking out to the hoons, ’do they believe in love at first sight? Or should you swim out there again?’
Later, we all went back to Centrepoint Tower, and Panda produced a picnic basket with sandwiches, so we all sat about on the floor, eating and talking.
‘We already have a small newspaper going, but we are thinking about how we can restart a radio service,’ Panda said enthusiastically as she munched her bean sandwich. ‘Some of our older citizens are working on a basic electrical signalling system, but getting back to the level of communication that existed before the fall looks out of reach. The power and communication systems were some of the most complex man-made systems ever created. Then we handed everything over to AI and we lost that understanding.’
‘Could we help with the newspaper while we are here?’ I asked.
Gabrielle yelled, ‘You’d have a great face for radio!’
‘That might be a bit tricky, as we are very careful how we report the news. Before everything fell apart, the media landscape had become very ideological. I mean that reality was being warped by beliefs. So, we have certain rules in our reporting. The Fourth Estate has to win trust and provide knowledge so people can make informed decisions.’
‘What are these rules? We can learn,’ I cried.
‘Well, things like not using dramatic or emotive language, not making claims that can’t be backed up with evidence, not making subjective statements based on opinion, not insulting people but questioning arguments and ideas, and not assuming that we can read the minds of others. And not trying to slant the news towards a certain perspective by putting in some facts and omitting others. This was a major problem in the past days, leading to outrage and disintegration of trust.’
‘Words can stir emotions; they can captivate and convince and shape beliefs and attitudes; they can also manipulate public opinion. I could use the word “challenge” or “opportunity” to describe a problem,’ I said. ‘Or “demonstration” or “rebellion” to describe a protest.’
‘Nan said that she sometimes felt like that man in the book 1984, who was told things by the government and media that she knew were not true, but because of the oppression and surveillance, she could not express her scepticism, as it was too dangerous.’ Tom added, ‘Luckily for her, she stayed away from social media because AI made thoughtcrime real.’
‘In the time before, we had a national broadcaster,’ Ardent mused. ‘It was supposed to stand “solid and serene in the middle of our national life, running no campaign, seeking to persuade no opinion, but presenting the issues freely and fearlessly for the calm judgment of our people,” I’ve always found those words something to strive for, if we can ever….’
‘The problem is that people like to feel that their group has all the answers, and you’ll end up making everyone mad,’ Dion scoffed. ‘Also, the democratisation of the media allowed everyone to have a voice in the times before, and this caused fracture and splintering when the people who had been kept out suddenly had some power.’
I was thinking, Nan’s said there was extreme surveillance, and Dion claimed a media free-for-all. Which was true? Did people live in echo chambers, which became ideologically convinced of their righteousness, seeing anyone with differing views as the enemy?
‘Yes, I was thinking that things would work with institutional neutrality…..but if there are too many voices’…, Ardent mused.
Where’s Gabrielle?’ Theodore cried.
We got up and started searching the room, with our hearts thumping. Had Gabrielle somehow got out and joined the hoons? If so, what would she tell them? And what would they do?
My imagination had started sliding about into various scenarios when we found Gabrielle asleep under the tomato plants on the floor above. With all of us looming over her, she woke, smiled, and said, ‘Greetings, compliant drones.’
I fell asleep easily that night, but I awoke in the early hours with zaps of anxiety and feelings of doubt, guilt, and remorse. I’m not sure why I sometimes turn into a baby in the middle of the night, my defences down and being ambushed by the past. The next day, when I regain my balance and perspective, I can’t understand why my mind becomes my assassin during the wee hours.
Of course, grief was a place I still visited. But in the silent night hours this place seemed closer. During the day, I was able to inhabit other spaces, and then, I would stop and worry that my memories of Nan were fading and slipping away from me.
When I told Tom, he said that ‘…we all travel in a mental world.’ Then Valour interjected and said that I should ‘…. try to get more exercise during the day to increase endorphins and decrease cortisol, the stress hormone.’ I thought that exercise sounded like a good idea.
Tom said that they were taking Bunyip and Candy to the park, and then they hoped to check out the library and see if they could borrow some books. Panda added that an enterprising person was running a small bookshop behind the cafe as well, if they were interested.
After breakfast, I journeyed down the stairs with the intention of doing some further exploration. I had only just reached the outside when Gabrielle and Theodore came clattering down the stairs behind me.
‘Go boil your head! We’re off to the boggs,’ Gabrielle barked. ‘Come on, Theodore, if you were any slower, you’d be a fossil!’
Theodore winced, then muttered, ‘She’s actually hoping to have a pash with one of her new boyfriends and give me the flick.’
‘Get stuffed, Theodore, you beta male incel!’ She yelled and then took off running towards the park. Theodore sighed and said, ‘Sorry about that. We just really rub each other up the wrong way.’
‘No worries. Some people are just chalk and cheese,’ I replied, which wasn’t the smartest thing to say.
‘So where are you going?’ He asked as his yo-yo made twists and turns.
Theodore was always monkeying around with a yo-yo or doing ball tricks. Being with him or Dion could get tiring with their constant movement.
‘Exploring……. you can come if you want.’
Theodore seemed to consider this for a moment and then said, ‘Thanks, but I’ve got a job to do for Ardent.’ He smiled in a way that was so dazzling that all the world disappeared for an instant. And then, turned and walked away. Valour said that I had an avoidant personality type that tried to escape hostility and abandonment; it may be true, but I was not upset.
Recently, I asked Valour if such a thing as human nature exists outside of culture. If so, do the theories we have adequately describe it? Or does reality lie outside those theories? For once, Valour had no answer.
I turned to what seemed to be the most promising direction and began walking along footpaths that had been repaired. I waved at a person watering large planter boxes outside number 13 and at another sweeping leaves neatly into piles.
I walked for hours, and I could see clearly that this city was a place of natural beauty, with its shimmering waters, a cathedral of blue skies, and wheeling white seagulls. ‘Beauty will save the world.’ Where had I read that?
I walked, contemplated, admired, and noticed, and all the time, memories stirred and slithered about in my head.
The Ancient Australians walked here, fished here, and slept under the stars here for thousands of years, separated from the rest of the world, a private enclave, until a ship appeared with what were first thought to be giant possums climbing trees. But we’re really people with values, practices, and beliefs that were unimaginable and alien, bred of the competitive and peopled world of the north, to those already here. A people “Gone now and scattered.” But still here.
I saw something glinting beneath my feet, and I bent down and picked up a coin with the number 20 and a platypus swimming. I slipped it into my pocket.
Of course, Nan haunted my thoughts and had visited me in dreams, though she said nothing. She was just there. Sometimes I imagined that I’d seen her just breezing around a corner, or I’d see her face in a pool of shadows. She was never far from my thoughts, lingering just out of reach, just below the surface.
I wondered sadly if Nan’s stories had died with her. All those rich and varied experiences, set in time, which shaped a person. Were they all lost and never to be thought of again, except through some secondhand snippets of tales told to Tom and me, which we may wheel out now and again on anniversaries, and then, when we are no more, never to be heard again?
Of course, somewhere in the world someone was being born, others dying, laughing, being betrayed or falling in love. But time keeps going and moving on to who knows where?
I found the built environment interesting, too. I saw a crumbling building that looked like a stack of wire. I saw the sandstones of Macquarie Street that were beautiful and serious, exuding authority, but with masterful details in stone that I could not imagine being able to make myself. Another building reminded me of a broken laundry basket, and another of a smashed paper bag. There were holy buildings that evoked feelings of quiet contemplation and others that were grand and overpowering. I felt stirred up, alive, and yet meditative.
Seeing a door open amongst the bank of secure and battened-down buildings, I stepped inside and found myself in a narrow and dark stairway. The sound of my shoes reverberated in the dark silence and fusty smells, but I soon entered a large office, where the sun rushed in, with desks and stacks of papers and books and computers and many other things.
A handbag was hanging over the back of a chair, and because I was so used to looking at the personal things of others, without thinking what an invasion of privacy this was, I pulled open the bag.
There was a purse with lots of cards and a few coins, a folding shopping bag, a tube of sanitiser, and a tiny umbrella. And, of course, an old mobile phone, which would have had photos of family and friends and good times past, long gone.
‘Hoi! What are you doing?’ Said a berating voice. I dropped the bag in shock, faced by an angry woman with long hair and eyes like knives. It was like she was up riding on an emu and looking down on a snake.
‘Ssssorry, I didn’t know that it belonged to anyone.’ I whispered.
Her face underwent a transformation. Her eyes softened to those of a kawaii koala, and a gentle smile blew in like a breeze and settled on her face. It is remarkable how the right words spoken in truth and humility can diffuse the possibility of a bomb-like blast between people. Unless someone is a psychopath, because then you are in trouble, whatever you do.
The woman’s name was Helen, which was a very traditional name, like mine and Tom’s. I was named for a grandparent that I hadn’t met but who was talked of and remembered in many ways. Other people had followed the celebrity habit of naming their kids very distinctive names that they concocted and imagined. Nan said that it took a lot of brain energy to remember all these names and their unique spellings. Some felt that an original name would bring a future filled with success and greatness, like a rapper or influencer.
Helen explained that she was looking for information about the pandemic, as she was writing a history book for the people of the future. She said that the virus had first spread in wild birds, and then it fanned out when these birds migrated across the globe. The virus mutated, and then it really began to spread and evolve, sickening and killing other animals, including cows. This opened the mammalian doorway to humans.
‘Those of us that are left, the humans, the birds, and the mammals, are the survivors,’ Helen said, then added, ‘for now.’
We then got to talking about all sorts of things and telling our stories. Helen said that language evolved to tell stories and gossip, which connects us together. Privately, I believe that we are always alienated from others. As much as I feel connected to Tom and Nan, their minds were, and are, in many ways a mystery to me. We can never truly enter the consciousness of another. I told Helen this, and she just said, ‘No man is an island.’
I also remembered how Nan would say, ‘I knew a different world, and you will never know it, and so, you can’t understand what is lost.’
I asked Helen where she used to live.
‘I lived near the city with my parents and grandparents in the same house, and this, in a way, has motivated my interest in history.’
She went on to explain.
‘We were working-class, poetry-loving people. We lived in a tight community, with everyone helping out when times were tough, which they often were. Then, in the 1980s, the area started to gentrify, and richer people began to flood in and buy the houses. Our community was being replaced, and land taxes were increasing. By the time I was born, my grandparents and parents were barely holding on, and they were feeling like outsiders. Then, Sydney became part of the international real estate market, and people from across the globe began to replace the middle class.’
She paused a moment, then added fervently, ‘People live in homes as part of a community; their foundations are tied to tradition, shared meanings, and their obligations to one another.’
‘You could also add another layer in there,’ I said. ‘The Ancient Australians were displaced on their lands first.’
‘Mmm, I didn’t think about that…… But, of course, if things had been different, you and I wouldn’t be here, and the continent would probably have been isolated from the rest of the world. Viruses are the biggest threat to groups who never farmed animals. I mean, you can’t domesticate a kangaroo! The people never developed immunity to viruses such as smallpox, influenza, measles, and chickenpox, which decimated farming populations over thousands of years. I have an autoimmune disease, and the genes involved helped our ancestors survive the bubonic plague.’ Helen added.
‘It’s always “but,”’ I said acidly. ‘And it seems that viruses also affect people who farmed animals.’ I pointed around at the empty streets. My head was scrambled from Helen’s verbal flux.
‘Look, all I’m saying is that capitalism went too far; there was a race to the bottom. It is an economic system that can bring people out of poverty, but it needs to be balanced, not just monetising everything and generating revenue,’ she added angrily. ‘I’m not advocating some kind of blood and soil beliefs; what I’m saying is that nation states should care about their own people first. New people can come in and join the community, but they’ve got to want to be part of that community. They have to be integrated and part of the project, so to speak. What I can tell you is that most people wouldn’t fight for a country that was sold out under their feet.’
‘Is everything just a struggle and a fight with winners and losers?’ I asked.
‘The English poet Alfred Tennyson described “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” to describe a world of merciless competition. We humans also hubristically tried to control nature. But while many see the beauty of nature, nature is cruel and indiscriminate. It cares not for us, though we are part of it. We don’t have to be like this; we can choose not to -…..’
Helen paused, then continued. "Look, it’s confusing; we were being pulled apart by the globalists and the nation-state isolationists, but it doesn’t matter anymore, as those days are over and there are so few of us left.’
‘Extreme capitalism, a kind of attempted human supremacy over nature, led to climate change,’ I added. ‘And, while some of us have survived, as you say, for now, none of us may survive if things get worse.’ As if to emphasise the point, hammering rain began clobbering the roof, making it impossible to talk above the insolent noise.
‘Her beauty and her terror,’ shouted Helen.
Later, when the rain had suddenly stopped and the exhausted sun appeared beset with cloud, Helen collected her stack of papers and handbag, and we left the building, locking the door and entering the smelly, flooded street.
A smashed statue lay in ruins; only the cat had been spared destruction. Seeing my questioning look, Helen merely said, ‘Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Then scratched onto a beautiful and elegant building, I saw the words, “Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong – we hunt! If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down! We’ll close in and beat and beat and beat -”
Where did these words come from? Then I thought, where do we come from? And why are we here? I wondered and asked Helen what she thought.
After a while she said, ‘I don’t know the answer; all I know is that we probably only live in this world once, and so I try to be a good person and good neighbour. I try to plant trees that will provide shade for those in the future. I take heart by thinking that while our past is mired in cruelty, it is also embedded with kindness, sacrifice, and compassion.’
‘Does this mean that we should try to expand our circle of compassion to those groups outside these walls, Helen?’ The people who wrote these words and others like them? Other fellow travellers on this planet?’
‘Some groups have always been given greater consideration than others, for different reasons. In the long past, local community, ancestors, parents, and religion were given greater moral regard. Then, in the days before, they weren’t. Personally, I shun anyone who would harm my life, liberty, possessions, and society…. Though, let me say that it is not that I want unchangeable moral laws or codes. But I do think that some things are objectively right and wrong.’ Helen then voiced some beautiful words:
‘The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.’
I wasn’t sure what to say about this and the intense way Helen said it, and we continued to walk in silence, our shoes squishing along the street. Sometimes, I thought that I didn’t understand much at all about the people and world around me. But I did think that it might be a good thing if some superior and enlightened being existed who could see the truth of all things and ensure that fairness and justice and what was right prevailed.
A word popped into my mind: flamboyant. There, rollerskating along the footpath, past tall, boarded-up buildings, was Dion with a beatific smile on his face. He was heading towards us, like a bullet, and I felt the wind as he went past us, then swung around, and hugged Helen, like Heathcliff and Cathy on the Yorkshire moors.
Helen was weeping and wouldn’t let Dion go. I stood there, mouth swinging, amazed, like all the windows and doors of my mind had blown open. I had got a certain idea about Helen and what she might think and believe, and now she had shattered that. This just proved to me that I could never work anybody out.
Arms linked, they turned around, and Helen said. ‘Dion’s my cousin.’
‘Darling Lenny’ Dion puffed as he looked emotionally at Helen.
‘What are you gaping at? Helen demanded.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I thought you’d be all buttoned-down and stuff…..’
‘Nothing about Dion harms the public good. He and Tubi were a happy and committed couple. And I am a strong believer in marriage,’ Helen huffed. Besides, “I contain multitudes.”’
Helen’s words made me think how Tom said that the Ancient Greeks regarded monogamy as being quintessentially Greek and that it was ‘barbarians that engaged in polygamy, impalement, and despotism.’
He also said that, ‘The Greeks had a very high opinion of themselves, but seemed to have thought and written about almost everything. They were amazingly observant and reflective. They asked questions and made investigations about many things. They didn’t just tell you what to do.’
I was also noticing that there were some similarities between the people I was living with, maybe, except Gabrielle, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I wondered if they were shaped by certain genes or by the times and experience. Maybe both? Tom said that evolution was always happening and those who could adapt to the rapidly changing world were likely to survive.
What I had noticed is that Ardent and his group had abandoned self-interest; they wanted a unified society and would fight and sacrifice themselves for it in different ways. I had heard Valour telling Tom that when there is a death of meaning and a way of life is not worthwhile, people will just lie down and die, and they’ll stop having children in their despair.
Nan said that when she was younger, the notion of freedom in the culture was one of subjective individualism and relativism. This led to depression and alienation. People had turned inward and were constantly analysing their internal state, focusing on themselves and their appearance in the world.
People also used their moral and political displays to gain social status and impress others. Some wanted to be on ‘the right side of history.’ Others, on the side of truth. These things were sometimes the same, or there was some overlap. Sometimes not. First they looked around to see what were the high-status or jingoistic beliefs of the times, then they set about giving the performance of their life. Thinking things through wasn’t required; you just took a box off the shelf of the things that you should believe.
I was still thinking about this when Dion turned and told me casually that Gabrielle had escaped and was with a group of hoons or Sovereigns.
My mind rolled back to what Gabrielle had said about tyranny and how it ‘…. has to protect itself with armed guards and suspicion of others.’
I asked Helen and Dion about this. Dion waved his hand. ‘I would rather live in a prison than a cemetery.’
Helen added, ‘Aristophanes said that you learn the lesson from your enemies that cities should build high walls and ships of war.’
Dion ruffled my hair. ‘We all have hope here that we can make our future better.’
Helen added, ‘One day we will all pass into another realm. But for now, we are here seeking peace and freedom, moderated by the rights of the peace and freedom of others. We are not free, though, from the responsibility to do what we believe is right. In these choices, we make our future. But, since I don’t believe in fairy tales, we are going to make the wrong choices. And this fragile thing that we are building can be killed, like love is, by a wrong word or clumsy move.’
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