Freedom 1

Two recent Blogs are starkly different, and intentionally so. Murray McGrath's "After Thoughts on Independence" (22 October) is followed by an extract from a history of political economic thought of a century ago entitled Social Credit History.

A century ago, during the 1920s and 1939s, young people were not only asking fundamental questions about the social order of the times. They set about educating themselves to fnd the answers in order to participate in the social order as workers, citizens, artists, craftsmen and householders. The dominant feature of those two decades was the after-effects of World War I. Young people aged 16 plus were sent off into the trenches to kill or to be killed, and to watch their comrades die, for a cause that nobody can explain to this day.

Their families did not forget. They sought the reasons by studying, privately and in groups, in colleges and universities, adult education institutes, evening classes, and extra-mural courses, in pubs and clubs, in towns and cities throughout the British Isles. Men of letters wrote works of poetry and fiction alongside political, religious and philosophical tracts that were read, studied and discussed throughout the land, so that their authors became household names. Rich and poor studied alongside each other, with a view to building the free society envisaged by Murray McGrath.

Nevertheless, World War II followed the 1930s, and concluded with the dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Driven by the worldwide corporations, a basic materialism set in over the rest of the century. Despite the work of Rachel Carson (1907-1964), and so many others, the sense of wonder at, and respect for, creation has ceased to be part of the educational curriculum.

Rachel Carson became perhaps the most articulate scientist the world has ever known. In The Sea Around Us she told how human beings, having devised ingenious technologies, explored our planet’s past and the origins of life itself. A decade later, in Silent Spring, she documented exactly how humanity is poisoning every living creature on earth, including its children. A 1994 reprnt of Silent Spring carries the following text on the back cover:

"What we have to face is not an occasional dose of poison which has accidentally got into some article of food, but a persistent and continuous poisoning of the whole human environment"

"First published in 1962, Rachel Carson's scientifically passionate exposure of the effects of the indiscriminate use of chemicals is still of vital importance. In her vivid and well-informed text she describes how pesticides and insecticides are applied almost universally to -farms, forests, gardens and homes with scant regard to the consequent contamination of our environment and the widespread destruction of wildlife. She argues that unless we recognize that human beings are only a part of the living world, our progressive poisoning of the planet will end in catastrophe. Silent Spring remains the classic statement which founded a whole movement and should be read by everyone who is concerned about the future of our world."

Beautifully written, thoroughly researched and highly readable, Silent Spring remains an inspiring 'must read' to all concerned at the corporate take of control over the human body itself.

(See Freedom Part 2 in next Understanding Blog.)