It is winter, no denying that any longer. The frost has spread from the pumpkin to all of the places, sheltered or not, where nighttime lows can reach. Unlike our hibernating friends, we humans don’t disappear or migrate for the season, but neither do we lean across our fences to share our reflections of ourselves, each other, or on the art of gardening at this time of year. Most of the time we are trapped inside artificially heated boxes and sometimes we might even find that this is a time to contemplate.
Don’t misunderstand me. I like my box. It was designed by me and for me. We did it together, my husband and I, and it does reflect us in ways a structure doesn’t ordinarily do. There is value in that, especially in a world where not a lot does reflect our image – unless you count the changing images in our mirrors as we age and fade. Our values, though, the way we see the world, the world we want to see has not faded, but neither is it shared by most of what we see in public.
It won’t be long before thaw sets in. This is Northern California, after all, and even with climate change, we expect the weather to treat us well. Once that begins, it will be back to the garden, waving over the fence to neighbors, chatting about the world around us and playing horticulturist on our small plot. It is that word: horticulturalist that gives me pause today. I can’t help but think of all of the experts and pseudo-experts that suffix, -ist, implies.
We just had another failed climate change conference; failed, of course, thanks to American denial. I guess this could give credence to the old joke about de-Nile being a river in Egypt, since it appears that most Americans have been drinking the water. It is hard to imagine sophisticated leaders of the most powerful country in the world – men and women who have no trouble believing that a smart-bomb will hit its target every time and avoid the family of fifteen eating dinner a dozen feet way – hard to image that these gifted imaginers cannot see what is happening everywhere around them. Climate change happens and if we were the first to drink from the stream of denial we also seem to be only the first in line to do nothing about repairing the damage. Are these deniers also called climatologists or environmentalists by someone? I wonder, but am not pleased with the answer I get.
Our airways are filled with chatter about the Republican nominees for president, how they feel on every subject and what they might do to our world and to us if they are elected. There is also what their elected counterparts are already doing in bills like the Levin-McCain bill that will bring a permanent state of military control to our legal system. Our top military leaders, thoroughly schooled in the tradition of civilian government and aware of the damage military systems do to democracies, seem to understand that this is fascism brought home. Why don’t we? Those elected officials are doing their best to remove the electoral process from any control except their own. I see this as a move against the re-election concept, and more fascism in the claim of doing what is good for us.
They don’t even try to cover up their intent any more. I used to be good at uncoding the racist, sexist, fascist, anti-humanist rhetoric. That is a talent I haven’t needed lately. Everyone knows what Newt means when he talks about making children from the projects into janitors instead of students. Everyone knows what it means to have a crowd cheering the execution of so many, many of who were most certainly not guilty and many more who were brown or black. We know what it means when the promise of jobs legislation is instead anti-women’s healthcare bills and attempts to claim that life begins at a single cell – for the planet, perhaps but not for such complex beings as we are. It takes a lot more time and effort, evolution, education and nurturing to make a human being.
Which brings me to the –ist that tops my list: anthropologist. You don’t need a degree in this particular –ist to be an expert on just this one important facet of its practice: Anthropologists, when excavating the remains of our prehistory, pay particular attention to such things as indications of our rituals. Did our ancestors kill their group members who had transgressed; did they banish them? Did they take care of their old, their injured and infirm? Did they nurture and educate their young? Did our ancestors have the traits we define as human, or were they pre-humans who might be on their way to humanity but had not arrived as yet?
It may be dirtier work than they are used to, but we need to bring in those anthropologists and give them everything they need to excavate the truth about us, the us of now. Have we lost our humanity? The Occupy Movements gives me hope, but I am not sure that even their numbers can offset the trend away from humanism and back to barbarism that surrounds our country. What would we do if our team of anthropologists, after doing due diligence to science by examining all of the signs we leave in our world, determine that we are no longer pre-human, or human at all, but that we are moving into a post-human phase, where education no longer holds sway, where compassion is reserved for fiction, where racism and sexism and all of the toxic –isms have become so well integrated that we see them as normal and, even in some ways, advantageous and no longer notice or are offended by them?
What would we do if our science told us we were in this kind of trouble? Pass the water bottles, folks, and take a deep swig from that Egyptian river.
-
As always, my garden musings are copyrighted, but I would be happy to hear your comments even if I prefer to keep my words as my own. If you have questions, would like to order reprints, or have ideas for other columns, you can reach me directly at: Georgia
Over The Garden Fence 