Author Archives: malpagaia

PaGaian Socialist – Newsletter #1 Equinox

Posted on by malpagaia

 

“But this is not yet the end of the road. No, it is only the beginning. Man calls himself the crown of creation. He has a certain right to that claim. But who has asserted that present-day man is the last and highest representative of the species Homo Sapiens? No, physically as well as spiritually he is very far from perfection, prematurely born biologically, with feeble thought, and has not produced any new organic equilibrium… Once he has done with the anarchic forces of his own society man will set to work on himself, in the pestle and retort of the chemist. For the first time mankind will regard itself as raw material, or at best as a physical and psychic semi-finished product. Socialism will mean a leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom in this sense also, that the man of today, with all his contradictions and lack of harmony, will open the road for a new and happier race.”

(Leon Trotsky – 1932)

Quarterly newsletters from PaGaian Socialist will be timed to coincide with planet Earth’s Equinox and Solstice moments in recognition of their primal influence on the development of our human intellect and consciousness. The intention of PaGaian Socialist newsletters is to encourage the development of our spiritual, political and social consciousness in preparation for an urgently needed revolutionary social change. The planetary crisis in which the human and all other species are now immersed is the result of profit driven forms of governance and industry. The full extent of the threat to our planetary life support systems is deliberately camouflaged by an international capitalist ruling elite that cleverly uses deceptive religious and temporal spin to minimise the spiritual, political and social consciousness of a subordinate international working class.

As we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century, the life support systems of planet Earth – better known as Gaia, are rapidly deteriorating for the vast majority of species, so too the economic and social circumstances for the vast majority of the planet’s human population. If we are going to have any chance of stopping and reversing this deterioration and develop more ecologically and socially sustainable systems for most if not all species, then a more sophisticated socialist form governance and industry is now urgently needed.

Human productivity and the development of human consciousness has now been dated back for millennia to a time when stone tools, symbolic art and ritual burials first emerged, to be followed over millennia by the production of complex language, agriculture, pottery, metallurgy, industry etc. Although our human ancestors had evidently produced a spiritual consciousness many millennia prior to developing a more rational scientific understanding of their world, both science and spirituality are now essential elements in the further development, cultivation and sophistication of our human, spiritual, political and social consciousness.

PaGaian Socialist newsletters will combine principles for a ‘functional cosmology’ as defined and elaborated on by the late Thomas Berry, with a contemporary Earth based spiritual practice and internationalist, socialist, political perspective. The aim of PaGaian Socialist newsletters will be to present information that is careful, trustworthy, newsworthy and not least, revolutionary. As the author of PaGaian Socialist newsletters let me elaborate on my use of the terms ‘PaGaian’ and ‘Socialist’.

‘PaGaian’ – expresses a reclaiming of the term Pagan as meaning a person who dwells in country, yet with Gaian spliced in it expresses a renewed scientific and contemporary understanding of that country – as planetary. (‘PaGaian Cosmology’ -Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. 2005 xi) – italics mine.

‘Socialist’ – expresses my understanding of governance and productivity that places an emphasis on meeting the economic, social and ecological needs of the human, as distinct from profit driven forms of governance and productivity, with their emphasis on the accumulation of privately owned property and wealth, most of which becomes available to a relatively small percentage of humanity.

In this way, the combined term ‘PaGaian Socialist’ encourages the fulfilment of the human through permanent, spiritual and political revolution – ‘permanent’ in the sense that it is simultaneously a personal and a planetary revolution. My spiritual consciousness is mainly informed and inspired by the late Thomas Berry’s ‘Twelve Principles for a Functional Cosmology’ and my partner Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. author of ‘PaGaian Cosmology’. My political consciousness is informed mainly by the writings of Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky, whose political lessons are best represented nowadays by the international revolutionary socialist program and political party of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its Social Equality Party (SEP) as expressed daily on the World Socialist Website – WSWS.org

Equinox 2016.

At this moment of a Gaian Spring&Autumn Equinox, the alignment of the planet’s day/night shadow line can be viewed as an equally balanced vertical north/south orientation. At this particular time of year, the view from outer space is that of a planet clearly divided equally into two light and dark hemispheres. This planetary orientation is as good and natural a time as any for the human to not only celebrate this balance between the light and dark cycle of our planet, but also to become more aware of the importance of ‘balance’ as an essential aspect of cosmic creativity and thereby of human development. For this particular Equinox 2016 moment, I am using its natural cosmic balance to emphasise that equality must be an essential component of scientific socialism. Just as cosmic and planetary balance was essential for life to emerge and evolve, so too a more balanced ‘social equality’ is now emerging as essential if we are to halt and reverse the deterioration of the Gaian life support systems we are all so dependent on.

Just as an out of balance planetary axis and solar orbit would likely bring life as we know it to a wobbly end, so too millennium of un-balanced, artificial social inequality has driven the human into enslavement, exploitation, discrimination, poverty, wars and far too much unnecessary suffering. The geopolitical tensions that exist in 2016 are as widespread, intense and dangerous as they have ever been throughout human history, with some of the more powerful imperialist nation states now sabre rattling with nuclear weapons. The prospect of Gaia being plunged into a nuclear winter with all of its life destroying consequences is now possible because the human continues to suffer the burden of an artificial, un-balanced, social inequality – the essence of what Marx and Trotsky rigorously understood to be the struggle between a ruling class and a working class. The enslavement, exploitation, discrimination and impoverishment of a so-called working class by a so-called ruling class is not only incompatible with planet Earth’s natural more balanced order of things, it deliberately works against nature as a whole. Living with the burden of an all too often violent class struggle between a dominant ruling class and a subordinate working class is unsophisticated human behaviour – to put it mildly.

What we urgently need to do now is cultivate more sophisticated forms of relationship, governance and industry. To achieve this we must have a sufficiently empowering story going on between our ears, a primary story by which we can evaluate all other stories, be they spiritual or temporal. Gaian seasonal moments such as the Equinox and Solstice moments are not only a valuable expression of cosmic balance and natural creativity, the ritual celebration of them can also provide us with the text for a suitably sophisticated, unifying, primary story. As indeed it must have been for my Western European ancestors who evidently put in a great deal of time and effort building sacred places such as the more well-known Stone Henge in England and New Grange in Ireland, both of which were built-in recognition of and to celebrate planet Earth’s solstice moments and their seasonal harvests.

A primary story that is both personal and planetary, is essential for the expression of our inherent right to be, our right to habitat and for the fulfilment of our lives. Without a suitably sophisticated primary story of our own by which to evaluate all other incoming information, we will always be vulnerable to the daily waves of information that is more often than not biased and or deliberately misleading. This is particularly so in the context of commercial advertising, political propaganda and religious teachings, most of which is designed to win over our hearts and minds – not to mention our wages. Our personal primary story should enable us to cultivate a healthy body and mind – physically, psychologically and spiritually, that is capable of contributing to what a growing number of us humans now regard as urgently needed creative, revolutionary, social change.

For it to be our primary story, it must by definition be distinct from any other – secondary, story going on between our ears. Every one of the billions of cells that make up our body knows that ever since the emergence of the first living cell we have been in a seamless relationship with all of life on planet Earth. Every organ in our body knows that it is related to and must cooperate with every other organ in our body. Our animal body remembers and knows where and what it is – a planetary place and being. This biological information is being made more clearly available to us through science and must be among the foundation building blocks of our primary story.

Our primary story should also inform and be informed by a planetary consciousness that has been manifesting through and expressed by the human for millennia, at least since that time when our pre-historic ancestors started to deliberately observe then celebrate a rising and setting Sun, a waxing and waning Moon, with their daily, monthly and seasonal changes. Planetary consciousness manifests as a result of and in accordance with an evolving human consciousness. We can safely say that planet Earth, through the human, now deliberately reflects on and celebrates itself as conscious Self-awareness. This level of planetary consciousness has been made manifest through the productivity of the human, who from our earliest forms of carved objects to the recent photograph of planet Earth from the surface of her Moon, has continued to shape the material world in general and our social circumstances in particular, for the better and – unfortunately nowadays, for worse.

While the economic and social circumstances for most of humanity is clearly out of balance and thereby the cause of massive in-equality, poverty, violence, destruction and human suffering, a ritual celebration of the natural balance that occurs during planet Earth’s equinox and Solstice moments can have a very positive influence on our personal and social experience and hence – more importantly, the continuing development of our human consciousness toward an urgently needed planet wide, revolutionary social change.

“In this world, at this point, no political revolution is sustainable if it is not also a spiritual revolution – a complete ontological birth of new beings out of old… This time it will be a global consciousness of our global oneness, and it will realize itself on a very sophisticated technological stage; with perhaps a total merger of psychic and electronic activity.”  

(Barbara Mor – 1987)

 

malpataffy,

Equinox 2016 ce, 12016 he

Southern Hemisphere.

What will it take,

Posted on by malpagaia

to rid ourselves of the profit driven exploitation and impoverishment of most working families and the wars they are persuaded to pay for with their taxes and their lives? The bells are now tolling louder than ever for the death of capitalism but what will it take to finally put it out of its agony?

It could well be an international revolutionary industrial action on the part of any one of several industry groups that has a big enough international work force to have the desired catastrophic impact on the ruling class and their global financial system, thereby motivating a broader international working class follow on response.

As a starting point, I will quote from a recent report prepared by Kumaran Ira for WSWS.org dated 9th June 2016 –

“From the beginning, the WSWS and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the United States intervened in the Verizon struggle to provide a political leadership to the strike. Opposing pseudo-left groups’ attempts to subordinate workers’ struggles to the corrupt union bureaucracies and the Democratic Party, the SEP called on workers to form rank-and-file committees independent of the unions in order to organise the struggle. It insisted that the critical issue was establishing the political independence of the working class and a struggle of the working class for socialism.

The WSWS Verizon Strike Newsletter was circulated and recirculated between thousands of strikers and looked at as the only publication that gave workers a voice and provided a strategy to break the isolation of the struggle. Hundreds of workers also took part in online discussions hosted by the WSWS.

The central question confronting the working class is the building of the revolutionary party based on Marxist program to provide a political leadership to the working class. It requires mobilizing the working class on an international scale independently from the unions and their pseudo-left allies. This is the main task advanced by the ICFI and the WSWS.”

 A similar provision of revolutionary political information and leadership was provided by WSWS.org to striking US auto workers earlier during 2016.

Using the example of these recent industrial actions undertaken by US auto and communication workers, let us just imagine that following the political leadership of the ICFI program with direction from local SEP branch members and the daily pages of WSWS.org, a sufficiently large number of rank and file action committees are formed at or near their respective work places, within regional centres world wide. Within a matter of weeks following their formation, a network of international, independent, democratic rank and file committees of auto and communication workers are formed within their respective geographic regions, to unite and organise their industrial offensive. This they do according to a political program that is both independent of and hostile toward the capitalist ruling class and their industrial unions.

Using the theoretical example of a United International Auto and Communication Workers (UIACW) as a typically large industrial group, this is how such revolutionary industrial action could begin the serious struggle toward replacing global capitalism with an international socialism.

Day one (date to be announced).

  • At the end of their shift on this pre-determined date, the UIACW as a whole hand in resignation notices to their employers en-masse.

World wide, all casual and permanent waged auto-workers quit their jobs having determined in advance never to re-apply for them. For the purpose of this exercise they are now referred to as the Independent United International Auto and Communication Workers (IUIACW).

Day two.

  • Members of the IUIACW continue to develop their local rank and file SEP committees and electing their representatives.
  • Globally the auto industry comes to an overnight halt, attracting immediate world-wide attention that starts sending shock waves through all major stock exchanges and Governments.
  • Crisis meetings are held by auto industry owners and their newly redundant union representatives.
  • Other waged and salaried working classes, especially those within the relatively larger industrial groups start taking a keen interest in what amounts to breaking news of the single biggest voluntary withdrawal of productive force since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Day three.

  • Stocks and shares in the auto industry start to fall sharply, dragging down several other major industrial sectors.
  • Governments and industry leaders make all sorts of threats against the now unemployed, IUIACW and their SEP representatives.
  • Rank and file local SEP committees of the IUIACW continue to inform, organise and prepare themselves for a period of prolonged unemployment and no wages.
  • Other waged and salaried workers start to witness for the first time in their lives the potential revolutionary power that exists within the rank and file of the international work force.

Day four.

  • Stocks and shares in all the major manufacturing industries continue falling with those in the auto industry reaching new lows, causing several European exchanges to restrict trading on some industrial sectors, sending even more shock waves throughout global financial markets.
  • Governments and industry leaders continue with threats that now include forcing the IUIACW back to work and or the hiring of new workers from the vast reserve army of the longer term unemployed.

The IUIACW expected and prepared themselves for such threats being made by Government and auto industry owners. Firstly the IUIACW had determined not to re-apply for their old jobs under any circumstances and secondly, they know it would take too long for the auto industry to employ and train a sufficient number of new relatively inexperienced workers in time to save the industry from a complete collapse. 

  • The IUIACW continues to be politically guided and informed through the leadership of their local SEP rank and file committees and daily reports on the WSWS.
  • Other waged and salaried working classes take increasing notice of the impact the IUIACW is having on the global financial system and the now panic-stricken threats being issued by Governments and industrial owners. World wide, these other workers also start to understand why the threats of Government and owners are being regarded by the IUIACW and the SEP as ‘hollow’ threats.

Day five,

  • World wide stock exchanges continue to restrict trading in most industrial sectors and several European and Asian exchanges cease trading in all industrial sectors.
  • Internationally Governments and key industry leaders hold emergency meetings to try to avoid the looming global financial crash and if possible save the auto industry.
  • The IUIACW through the SEP and WSWS calls on the international waged and salaried working class to join them in the worlds one and only Marxist revolutionary socialist program. A program that within a matter of days has demonstrated it is has the necessary force to overthrow the ruling class and begin replacing their political power and profit system with an international socialism capable of meeting the economic and social needs of the international working class.
  • Having already questioned the IUIACW/SEP as to why they quit their jobs rather than go on strike, other waged and salaried workers world-wide begin to see for themselves the empowerment of workers who become totally independent of their employers and their pseudo left unions.

Within a week we see the first signs of a developing Independent International United Working Class (IIUWC) being motivated by the revolutionary industrial action of the IUIAW and the political leadership of the SEP.

Day six.

  • All major stock exchanges stop trading fearing that the global economy is about to ‘crash beyond recovery’.
  • Governments and industry owners fear the worst and invite representatives of the IUIACW to negotiate an international agreement for their return to work.
  • During simultaneous press conferences held in key capital cities, the IUIACW/SEP representatives make it clear to a world-wide audience that they have absolutely no intention of returning to work under existing bourgeoisie governance and profit driven structures. At these same press conferences the IUIACW/SEP representatives also call on their fellow international working class to join them in their Marxist revolutionary socialist program to form an Independent International United Working Class (IIUWC) that is politically independent from all factions of the bourgeoisie owners of industry and their pseudo left unions.
  • World wide, waged and salaried workers in all industrial sectors become more interested in and supportive of the IUIACW with a rapidly growing number of them organising and preparing to join forces with the IUIACW to form an IIUWC/SEP alliance.

Day seven.

  • Another week, and another new world-wide political perspective beginning with the death of capitalism and the birth of international socialism.

 

Details yet to be imagined.

 

Robert (Taffy) Seaborne

2nd edit – Winter Soldstice 2016 .

Lest We Forget, to question the lies and propaganda used to persuade the universal soldier to kill another.

Posted on by malpagaia

My preferred definition of a ‘universal soldier’ is – any human who is willing to obey a command to kill another human. It is precisely this level of strict obedience that enable wars to be threatened and or waged, so what is it about the story that goes on between the ears of the universal soldier that persuades and enables them to kill each other?

Apart from the few psychopaths who do it for the perverse excitement of it, most universal soldiers believe they are justified in obeying a command to kill each other because they are protecting or defending either a deity, a country and or their kin, from a perceived enemy. Such belief and obedience on the part of the universal soldier is usually justified whether the enemy is perceived in reality – as in battle, or as an abstract notion – such as in a perceived threat expressed in propaganda and or as dictated through nationalist military policy and strategy.

While I can understand and accept it being a natural instinct for adult humans to defend and protect ourselves and our kin from danger, I cannot understand or accept the need for any of us to obey a command to kill another human who has been deemed an enemy on the basis of religious belief nor nationalism.

The patriotic belief held by the universal soldier in their need to protect or defend a deity and or country, has existed for millennia. However, it is still a relatively recent phenomenon when compared with our more ancient and natural instinct for protecting and defending our kin – in other words for our survival as a species.

From my PaGaian Socialist perspective I can imagine how our natural defensive instinct to protect kin evolved over many millennia, at least since the time when our earliest human ancestors needed to constantly defend themselves from non-human predators. So what was it that caused our more recent human ancestors to start defending themselves from each other, from the enemy within? I don’t believe the emergence of the human as an enemy was such an inevitability as was the earlier more natural defensive instinct to defend ourselves against non-human predators.

The threat of danger from other humans was more likely to have resulted from an increasing number of groups spreading throughout the planet resulting in a diminishing of fertile land and resources available to such nomadic groups. As fertile lands and resources became more scarce and hence more valued, they were eventually settled. The earliest settlement of fertile lands with its increasing human productivity and cultural diversity inevitably led to the need to defend such places. This phase of human development and separation not only produced the original universal soldier, it has since come to dominate human consciousness, and threaten our very existence as a species. How and why has it come to this?

It doesn’t take a great stretch of my imagination to visualise the emergence of relatively small centralised groups organising and arming themselves to defend their settlements and resources from other human invaders. Then, it is only a matter of time before such groups eventually morph into roles of leadership, ownership and rulership, with the eventual formation of standing armies that are prepared to both defend against and or attack their human enemies. While such human war-like development can appear to follow an evolutionary development of our survival instinct to protect and defend our kin, in hindsight, it is more accurately described as a material, cultural construct, born out of increasing human productivity, ownership, rulership, wealth and greed.

Since the industrial revolution of the mid 1770s, this form of material development has rapidly morphed into nuclear armed imperialist nation states that now threaten our existence as a species. This is why the human population in general and the universal soldier in particular are constantly being lied to and thereby persuaded to accept war and the need to kill each other.

What then is the lie that the majority of us are being told? It is a complex lie, one that needs to be analysed and considered in some detail. If it were simple and easy to identify then the ruling class purveyors of the lie would not be able to recruit sufficient numbers of the universal soldier to protect their wealth and control.

Like most military apparel the lie is well camouflaged and difficult to see, it is couched in devious metaphor designed to distort reality and discourage any questioning of whose interests are really being served by the command to kill. The lie is camouflaged by the clever blending of abstract cultural constructs of deity, country, freedom and liberty with the more natural human instinct to protect and defend self and kin. These abstract cultural concepts underpin the well and truly tested strategy of divide and conquer. The human population is deliberately divided in many ways, but most importantly from the ruling class perspective, we are divided by nationality, ethnicity and religion.

Even though this strategy and level of division inevitably results in conflict and war between nationalist ruling classes, it is worth it from their elitist perspective because not only do they need to protect their rulership and wealth, they as a class do not expect to sacrifice their own lives, they are not the ones being commanded to kill another. Lest we forget, or worse still, lest we continue to believe the lies, illusions and propaganda perpetrated by a ruling class whose continuation depends entirely on the obedience of the universal soldier to kill another.

Again, from my PaGaian Socialist perspective there is only one political story and program that comes anywhere near meeting the necessary criteria for achieving and end to war and permenant peace on our planet, namely The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its associated political party, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) as expressed through the World Socialist Web Site – WSWS.org

 

Malpataffy

25th April 2015

Born Lucky

Posted on by malpagaia

Show me a person who appears to enjoy good luck more often than most and who may thereby be known as a ‘lucky so and so’ and I will show you a person who almost certainly doesn’t leave their consistent good luck entirely to chance. I am convinced of this assertion from my own life experience, firmly believing that ‘good luck’ is not only a matter of chance but that it also has a lot to do with the way we process information and make our decisions. The information we receive and convert into stories we tell ourselves on a regular basis can either enliven or dull our imagination, which may then have positive or negative influences on our values and decision-making. While it is true that we often experience good and bad luck merely by chance, being lucky or unlucky also results from good or bad decision-making by ourselves and others, especially those others to whom we are closely related. For me, it was my mother Dilys whose values, imagination and story telling all but guaranteed I became a ‘lucky so and so’.

I was made in Scotland at a place called Campbeltown, probably during October 1943, because I was born about nine months later in Wales at a place called Cardiff. During the first five years of my life my mother Dilys often said to me “Robert you were born lucky and its better to be lucky than rich”. In hindsight I believe these words had a lot to do with the fact that my parents survived on a very modest income and that my mother had lost her first two children at birth, so I was indeed ‘third time lucky’.

With the help of her closest female kin – her mother, sister and at least one aunty, Dilys nurtured and raised me in the Welsh town of Penarth, while my father Jim was stationed in Scotland remaining obediently subservient to the British Royal Navy and seeing me in the flesh for the first time during my third year – 1946. Throughout my youth I idolized Jim because he was a tall handsome detective sergeant who told me lots of exciting naval and cops and robber stories and on some rare good mood payday evenings he would take me to the movies. Unfortunately when it came to nurturing my younger brother Richard and I in the ways of the world, our father was about as useful as tits on a bull. Maybe its just as well, because I hate to think where he might have led us; during his later years he idolized Margaret Thatcher…, I rest my case.

I believe it was a combination of post war euphoria plus a relatively strong Welsh matriarchal influence on my early formative years that began having a major influence on the way I related to people and places. On reflection it was as though my childhood years were a never-ending adventure, with everything and everyone appearing to enjoy being in a seamless relationship, ‘Cynefin’ is a contemporary Welsh word I came across during my Social Ecology studies at the University of Western Sydney UWS/NSW (2000 -2002) and it well describes what I remember of being grown up by my Welsh mothers and aunties in Penarth –

“a place or the time when we instinctively belong or feel most connected. In those moments what lies beneath mundane existence is unveiled and the joy of being alive can overwhelm us.”

 Unfortunately as for most five-year olds, my childhood adventure came to an abrupt end when I was made to start learning the devices of the world and my Cynefin place was pushed aside, to make room for a place called school and a so-called proper education. School and teachers were so un-attractive and of little interest to me, hence I didn’t learn much from my early school lessons, it was my mother who during my ninth year eventually taught me how to read – better late than never. Dilys was the best teacher I ever had and could have been my one and only teacher had the culture of the day allowed her to be.

My childhood indoctrination into believing that I was ‘born lucky’ has been a lifelong conviction and way of experiencing the world; it has enabled me more often than not to assume constructive intent on the part of others, somewhat naively during my youth, then with a tad more caution during my adult years. This way of experiencing the world in general and relating to other people in particular has enabled me to cultivate mostly positive and meaningful relationships with the people and places that I have had the pleasure of living and working with. It is a way of relating that has brought me far more joy than sorrow and I believe it has been this quality of relationship with other – including the other than human, that has enabled me to acquire a spiritual, ecological and political consciousness that inspires me to continue cultivating my world view, values and not least, my seasonal and daily PaGaian praxis.

As with our spiritual vision, so too with our ecological and social visions, they are planetary by nature and PaGaian by name.

( Taffy Seaborne & GlenYs Livingstone – Southern Winter 2013)

 

During my early fifties while living and working among the Anangu traditional owners of Central Australia (1990-98), I had a sort of ‘born again’ experience that nowadays I put down to the Anangu and their cultural landscape having reminded me of what my life was like as a young boy. My then partner and I were on a deliberate pilgrimage to experience what we imagined might be the ‘real’ Australia and as it turned out for me at least, experiencing a more real Self. Among the many benefits of living among and learning from the Anangu, I became more aware of the fact that I had been and was continuing to enjoy a relatively privileged lifestyle, not so much in a material sense, but more in the sense of having been ‘born lucky’. I am convinced for example, that it required a bit more than good decision-making for me to transform my career self from Welsh apprentice toolmaker to Australian Park Manager of Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park. Now I want to try making more sense of what that bit more is.

 

My later adult returning to Cynefin was an adventure of my own making that began in 1965, when as soon as I had completed a tedious five-year toolmaking apprenticeship I was lucky enough to convince a desperate chief marine engineer to give me a job on board a merchant vessel, that went tramping around the world. This too was one of my life changing decisions and it reminds me of how my imagination is inclined to process information that manifests as good luck rather than bad luck. When we left port in Bristol England there were two of us so-called junior engineers on board ship, a few weeks later while anchored off the Bahamas we received orders to pick up food and supplies for the war effort in Vietnam and deliver them to Da Nang and Saigon. I got all excited and looked forward to an adventure, with a double pay war zone bonus thrown in for good measure, whereas my fellow junior engineer felt so bad about the idea of sailing into a war zone he jumped the ship in San Francisco, never to be seen again. On more careful reflection my fellow junior engineer’s first language and all of his thinking was Welsh with English being his second language, it may well be that he was a young conscientious objector, if so then I take my hat off to him and say yachi-da boyo, I hope you are alive and well.

 

It was my experience of having sailed with a couple of very entertaining Australian sea dogs and what for me turned out to be a life changing movie called ‘They’re A Weird Mob’ written by John O’Grady, that had me imagining a new life adventure ‘down under’. I don’t mind admitting that it was the combination of scenes of Bondi beach with lots of bikini clad girls, the six o’clock swill in the pub and the blokei-ness of the building gang that influenced my life changing decision to emigrate to Australia. When I tell people about my weird movie experience come life changing decision, most of them say it would have had the opposite effect and put them off moving to Australia. Once again though I must count my lucky stars and vivid, albeit naïve, imagination for having decided in 1967 to emigrate to what for me actually did turn out to be ‘the lucky country’. The number of good luck stories that then led to my so-called ‘born again’ experience among the Anangu of Central Australia and my ongoing PaGaian praxis are too many to mention but some do stand out and are worth telling.

 

Working within the William Ricketts Sanctuary on Mount Dandenong Victoria, roughly between 1978 and 1985 and learning how to relate and communicate with such an interesting eccentric artist proved to be an exceptionally good stroke of luck for me. William must have been well into his 80’s and I was the local Forest Overseer employed by the then Victorian Forests Commission, to among other things, help William with the maintenance of his sacred place. Most of my forestry crew found William to be a bit difficult, even annoying to work for. Fortunately I was able to avoid such difficulty thanks mainly to being in awe of what he had created, particularly his sculptures of Central Australian Aboriginal people, who until then had not entered (let alone raised) my consciousness in any way whatsoever. On reflection it was time spent sitting and staring at the mounted life-size statue of a male Aboriginal elder and further up in the sanctuary a statue of a female Aboriginal mother embracing her many children with the words ‘Earthly Mother’ at her feet. My partner Glenys and I have a large framed picture of William’s Earthly Mother that alternates between seasons to oversee our communal ritual space and our bed. Being in awe of these images and entering into many of the sacred niches on William’s holy mountain must have sown the seeds for me to eventually visit and be further inspired by, the people and country that so inspired the artist himself decades earlier. I have a strong feeling that William Ricketts also had a mother who made sure he became a ‘lucky so and so’.

 

It was a combination of good decision-making and good luck that resulted in my being employed by the then Australian National Parks & Wildlife Service (1990-95), a federal agency that jointly managed the Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park with its traditional Anangu owners. During my time as District Supervisor (1990-92) then as Park Manager (1992-95) we successfully re-nominated the park as a World Heritage Area based on its cultural values and built the long-awaited Anangu Cultural Centre. It was for me an amazing period of learning in general and these two major cultural projects in particular meant that I was privy to information and stories that I would not otherwise have been so lucky to receive.

 

It was during the next three years (1995-98) while I was employed as the Project Officer for the Anangu Pitjantjatjara (AP) Lands, that I was able to visit Uluru during my free time purely for the purpose and pleasure of re-creation. This is when I had my so-called ‘born again’ experience, a time when Anangu and their landscape taught and reminded me about the importance of relationship: relationship with Self, with other and with all-that–is. In hindsight when compared to my childhood Cynefin, my time in Central Australia turned out to be my adult Cynefin and as such the second most significant and lucky period of my life.

 

My ‘third time lucky’ at the relatively grand life changing scale of ‘good luck’ was meeting my beloved Glenys Livingstone during early 2000. We were both studying Social Ecology at the UWS/NSW Hawkesbury campus, Glenys for her Doctoral thesis and me for a Masters degree, we both graduated on the same day during May 2003. I was trying to build some kind of bridge between my Central Australian pilgrimage and my need to continue making sense of main-stream contemporary Australian society that I had chosen to re-immerse myself in. Glenys was rigorously re-storying the Deity no less, using female metaphor and seasonal ritual celebration as a catalyst for personal and cultural change. Our common heritage, spiritual and philosophical interests were not the only aspects of our relationship that proved to be a good match. Our family names Livingstone and Seaborne was an inspirational early clue that there were some of the more subtle realms also busy match making on our behalf.

 

During the past fifteen years Glenys and I have enjoyed living and working together here in a village called Springwood, in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia. We are literally surrounded by a World Heritage listed forest, an ideal natural environment within which to hold sacred space for the purpose of celebrating what we refer to as Mother Earth’s seasonal ‘holy moments’. Each year Glenys is host and celebrant for the celebration of eight seasonal moments including the Winter and Summer Solstice moments, the Autumn and Spring Equinox moments and the four cross quarter moments in between. During our time together Glenys has produced her book entitled PaGaian Cosmology – Re-inventing Earth based Goddess Religion, and we have since built our PaGaian Mooncourt, a sacred space designed specifically for the purpose of celebrating the seamless relationship that exists between the Human, the Earth, the Sun and the Moon.

 

As one might expect, being born lucky has served me well enough to enjoy what I now comfortably consider to be my ‘full material liberation’. However, it was not until my beloved Glenys introduced me to her Earth-based eco-spiritual practice that I was able to attain my ‘full spiritual liberation’. With my spiritual consciousness already being informed through my PaGaian praxis I was able to become more careful about receiving and processing information in general and have since narrowed my information gathering and processing down to three main categories of consciousness – spiritual, ecological and political. I can now endeavour to inform each category thus: spiritual consciousness through my PaGaian praxis, – ecological consciousness through being guided by the twelve design principles of Permaculture, and my political consciousness through the political teachings of Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky; as represented and expressed by the Social Equality Party’s  World Socialist Web Site – WSWS.org. I am confident that there will continue to be many ways and means for the toiling and exploited working class to develop their political and socialist consciousness and thereby eventually attain ‘full material and spiritual liberation’ (L. Trotsky 1938), but for me, being ‘born lucky’ more or less guaranteed it.

 

Malpataffy,  – Summer Solstice 2014.

 

a 70s something lucky so and so...

a 70s something lucky so and so…