Watershed

Dear A,

Good to hear from you in the UK. We are al­right, thank you, and glad to hear you are too. The com­ment about the preva­lent po­lit­i­cal prob­lems af­fect­ing us is, in­deed, per­ti­nent. We are dis­tressed.

We are pro­foundly con­cerned and di­rectly af­fected by the deep and dark di­vi­sions both here in Cat­alo­nia and in Eng­land. But we feel so for­tu­nate in a great many ways, not least for the peo­ple close to us and the priv­i­lege of the na­ture and so­ci­ety around us.

Here it is pal­pa­bly clear the Span­ish au­thor­i­ties are sick to the back teeth with the Cata­lans and will apply what­ever legal and phys­i­cal means they deem nec­es­sary to bring them to heel. The sen­ti­ment, should we need re­mind­ing, is etched in the faces of the na­tional po­lice of­fi­cers en­forc­ing sov­er­eignty as I write. The para­dox, of course, is that force weak­ens and leads to en­trench­ment and re­sis­tance. In­ter­na­tional analy­sis, un­der­stand­ing and pres­sure for a po­lit­i­cal so­lu­tion re­mains woe­ful, but I am not sure what the Cata­lans, those be­hind bars, in exile or flood­ing the plazas and high­ways, can ex­pect. The world is dazed with noise, most of it dark, shal­low, in­cit­ing and be­wil­der­ing, all feed­ing one truth, the pal­pa­ble un­ease of wa­ter­shed. One can say it was ever thus, but so many foun­da­tions, not least the fun­da­men­tal, the ecol­ogy, are now crit­i­cally eroded.

The global ev­i­dence of greed and ag­gres­sion and a height­en­ing of self­ish­ness and in­tol­er­ance may be cycli­cal but in the all-know­ing age and the given the mon­u­men­tal im­pact of hu­man­ity, it is also an un­bear­able weight for the vast ma­jor­ity with dom­i­nant qual­i­ties of ethics, moral­ity, kind­ness and a fun­da­men­tal want and need to live good, ful­fill­ing, sus­tain­able lives. With such men­tal strain comes ill­ness and so­cial sick­ness where logic and tol­er­ance wither. More than ever we need to bal­ance the flood of out­side news with the buoy­ancy of fam­ily, com­mu­nity and ecol­ogy and do all we can to sup­port those peo­ple and na­ture that are most rel­e­vant - within arms’ reach.

Where we live there is con­sen­sus over the in­jus­tice, an un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment and, it has to be said, dig­nity and peace­ful but deep­en­ing re­solve that re­flects so much the feel­ings of mil­lions. We are not liv­ing with di­vi­sion. The great worry is for the many young peo­ple we know and some of whom I have taught, now liv­ing in the epi­cen­tre, Barcelona.

As for Eng­land, it is not the huge fi­nan­cial con­se­quence for our busi­ness and, hence, lives that we have had to try and man­age since the frac­ture. It is not the fact that, like here, we have had no vote. It is fam­ily di­vi­sion, it is, also as with here, the stir­ring of the mud at the bot­tom of the pond. It is the dam­age done, the un­cer­tainty and the cer­tain, a sev­er­ing. Again the noise and en­trench­ment, the dis­till­ing down of the deeply com­plex into stir­ring sound-bites and, as with the world over, a de­valu­ing of truth, hu­mil­ity and com­pro­mise. And now, be­cause “enough is enough”, a deal with no de­tail, no as­sess­ment other than it is pro­foundly not what was promised, must be signed off. Stun­ning.

Whether it is Spain or Eng­land, au­thor­i­tar­ian procla­ma­tions that they have drawn a line under mat­ters and we all need to move on, sound log­i­cal but pro­foundly do not re­motely bear analy­sis, as I fear the weeks and months ahead will show. May peace pre­vail.

Our chil­dren see ecol­ogy over-rid­ing all of these things and they are pro­foundly right.