This is maMMon: fat, fatuous and grinning. Without pity, incorrigable, avarice incarnate. My golem, built of despair and apathy, vat-grown from googled parts. This is carcinoculture encorporate: growth for growth's sake. Look up and see him appear to the fanciful in shimmering oilslick on the side of a skyscraper.
When writing about serious issues, indeed even when thinking about them, one instantly comes up against a barrier. To use the word 'environment' is to immediately alienate your audience. To talk about corporate misdeeds, environmental damage, social ills, whatever, is to be ignored or fobbed off as a 'crank'. There is no way to broach the subject. There is no way to look someone in the eye and say:
“I just found out about what Coca Cola is doing in Columbia. I can’t get the image of the 14 year old daughter of a trade union activist who was kidnapped, tortured, and dumped at the side of a road out of my head. My friend, I, formerly a lover of Coca Cola, can no longer drink this or any of the thousands of other drinks owned by the Coca Cola Company. When I go to Turkey, I cannot drink the local bottled water, or anything else bought by Coca Cola. The fact that the sugar used in Coca Cola is harvested by child labour, the environmental destruction in Bhopal, India, none of it mattered to me. I drank Coke regardless. But this, this story changed my mind, and I cannot forget it. My friend, I come to you for your advice, and solidarity. I can no longer suffer alone. I must share my story. I cannot do this alone. Join with me in not drinking Coke. Show me that this does mean something.”
But no, it cannot happen. My story is ridiculous; a secondhand anecdote about foreigners.
I don’t know why it is, but seriousness is taboo. There is the feeling:
“If I listen to this, if I give my heart, where will it stop? If I learn of the wrongs of Nestle, I can no longer enjoy their ice creams or chocolates or cereals or the products of any of the many other companies they own a large stake in. Where will this end? Every choice I make will require weeks of research, choosing between one manufacturer who poisons the water and another who subcontracts sweatshops. There is no holy path in this world. I do not want to know about these things; who am I to cry about the fate of the world, or to sit in hand-me-down judgement? We must be realistic. We must harden our hearts. I have no time to mourn the deaths of those I don’t know. People die every day, and if they die at the hands of American-trained paramilitary militias working on behalf of Coca Cola to suppress workers rights in bottling factories then so be it. If union leaders are executed at their bench in the factory then so be it. I wash my hands of it.”
Public space is increasingly invaded, branded and privatised. We are bombarded with information specifically designed to demand our attention, compromise our judgement and self control, and misinform us about the reality outside the bubble we live in. Our views, our ideologies, our various sub-cultures are intentionally shaped by multinational corporations; the collusion of ad-funded media and complicity of governments mired in massive debt hides systemic coercion and corruption beneath.
The crucial thing to understand is that this has not happened all of a sudden. Nothing is ‘going wrong’ with the system. Power has always been inextricably linked to wealth and force; to control. The only differences today are differences of scale and means. At no other time in history has Man had the power to alter the workings of the planet as a whole. Much of this is intentional; interlaced empires span the globe, funnelling the wealth of the world into fewer and fewer grinning mouths.
Dreadful as this is, the game has been the same since the Holy Roman Empire. What have changed are the unintentional means: bioaccumulative poisons jumping ten times with every step up the food chain; millennia of stored carbon pouring daily out of chimneys; fiddled genes creeping into the pool. We have the power to damage things we cannot repair, and we are using it.
My rage, my bitterness, my despair is carcinogenic. I cannot live with this knowledge, yet I am compelled to learn more, uncover more. No more can I believe VERITAS VOS LIBERABIT. Rather, THE TRUTH HURTS. Yet there is an enjoyment, a very similar enjoyment to smoking, I think. I crave dark knowledge, powerful truths that can bleach hair. Wisdom that shows in the face. I can’t help but read: read as if the next article will show me how to solve the problems, all the problems; read as if knowledge itself were enough to protect me from the horror knowledge itself provokes; read as if it made a difference; read as if the next line can forestay the crippling apathy and futility. I read everything I can, and finish nothing. My room is piled with open books, nested on each others’ cracked spines.
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This painting is on a one metre square box canvas, with indian ink, latex, graphite and gilding wax. Plus the ubiquitous transfer type. I am in the process of putting together a small exhibition for Lent about translation and faith: this is the last in a triptych and shows the 2nd or 3rd (depending on whether you credit Luke 4:5-8 or Matthew 4:8-11) temptation of Jesus. After his baptism, Jesus fasts for 40 days in the desert and is then tempted by the devil. Here's Luke in the King James 1611 translation:
