Why do we have rich people and poor people? What purpose does that serve?

Why do we care whether people are male or female, or how they identify?

What is so special about anyone’s skin colour, or where they are born, that we ought think differently of them?

Why do we have permanent war machines? Why do they cost as much as we’d need to provide healthcare, education, and everything else everyone needs?

Why do we have corruption?

Why do we have war?

I have this terrible habit of asking awkward questions. I can’t help myself. I find they clarify things better than the acceptable questions. I learned recently that, according to Sir Isiah Berlin, this may make me a philosopher.

The system is broken – social, political, and economic paradigms are all broken, and what’s more they are broken beyond repair. This is not a view from nihilism, quite the opposite, it is one from realism. Identifying problems is the first step toward finding solutions. Tinkering won’t do.

If we are to find climate justice through common cause and action, we will not do so within the paradigms that created the climate crisis we are facing. That much is clear. Certainly not in time to avoid triggering dangerous feedback loops. We may have already missed our chance, yet better to try than to accept we have failed before we have begun.

Politics and economics as they stand today remind me of the picture above: a steaming pile of horse muck. It needs rotting down before it is any use in growing a garden. It needs composting. I find it a useful metaphor to keep me sane in a seemingly insane world.