Nimue Brown's Blog, page 441

Chanelling the folk

For a long time it was a commonly held belief that folk customs could be assumed to contain ancient Pagan remnants. After all, the common folk are so often an illiterate, uneducated lot, not too bright… what can they do but repeat what they’ve always done? Clever people from the literate classes can interpret things into the unwitting actions of the folk people.

I’ve been doing some deep, deep work over the last few days, listening to the voices of my peasant ancestors, and this is the wisdom I have brought back to you.

We have to make our own fun, and so we make stuff up. We tell stories. Some stories are old and some are new and some are the kind of new stories that are really the old stories in new skins.

Begging is mostly illegal and shameful. None of us are beggars. Although, if you get a nice bit of greenery and a dead bird to show people, that’s not begging, that’s tradition. Sing the song, do the dance, pass the bowl round. That’s not begging either, that’s a custom and it’s heritage and thank you yes, a pint would go down very nicely just now. Got any apples? How about a nice bit of pudding? We’re very good at coming up with things that aren’t begging at all, but that result in people who have a lot of money, food and drink passing it around to those of us who don’t have quite so much.

But we’re just simple country people acting out the timeless traditions. So that’s different. If you don’t pay up, we’ll plough your drive, or piss on it, or put a rude verse in about you for next year. That’s traditional too, that’s not menacing anybody, it’s how things are done.

It’s amazing how many ancient folk traditions involve passing round a bowl or demanding refreshments. We could talk about the symbolic sharing of wealth to encourage the fertility and wellbeing of the tribe… we could shoehorn that into what we want to think ancient Paganism looked like, but I’m not convinced. I’ve been out with mumming sides, I’ve carol sung door to door. Most of the year you cannot knock on doors and demand money in exchange for a song, but in the week before Christmas, it’s fair game. Most of the year you can’t turn up in a costume and demand sweets, but on the 31st of October a lot of people will have sweets in, just in case. Penny for the guy? Ritualised begging. It’s mostly about the begging, and the sweets. I wonder how long we’ve put a skim of religion over the top of that? Because of course if you let yourself believe it’s religion or tradition, you can also pretend that the people you are ritually relieving of distress aren’t also bloody poor and in need the rest of the year.

It’s not poverty, it’s not begging, it’s traditional, and therefore the rest of the time we can pretend the need doesn’t exist. Because we’re clever and literate and we can read in the signs of ancient religion that tell us these people are just fine, and acting out ancient Pagan heritage, and not actually starving.

Most mummers these days aren’t starving, but as Christmas is the season of token-gesture charity giving, it’s worth a ponder.

(Also, I owe a lot to Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun for this.)

The next big thing

Graeme Talboys drew me into this one, so you might want to take the time to backtrack and have a look at what he’s done with these questions too. http://grumsworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-next-big-thing.html I shall also be tagging a bunch of people to spread the love, so do have a look at what they’ve done. This is basically a cheery promotional thing for authors that I have done in a slightly convoluted way.

What is the working title of your next book?

In terms of things not yet published, Letters Between Gentlemen (Fic) and Druidry and Prayer (not fic) I’ve also got an audio project in the works called The Unquiet Land, and there’s going to be Hopeless Maine Book 2 at some point – Inheritance.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Most of my ideas come from inside my head in a response to things that happen outside my head, and it’s the interface between the two that gets the writing done. Actually there’s a whole rant in Druidry and the Ancestors about the frequency at which this very question comes up in interviews, because it assumes that ideas and inspiration come from ‘away’ and not from ‘within’.

I pay attention to everything around me – I’m a compulsive observer, I read widely, listen to the radio. I think about everything, and I imagine what things would be like and how they look from other perspectives, and I ask, what if? Then some alchemy occurs, and books happen.

What genre does your book fall under?

Druidry and Prayer will, unshockingly be a non-fic Druid book. Letters Between Gentlemen is shaping up to be an illustrated sort-of novel in the Steampunk genre. Unquiet Land is gothic alternative history type of thing. Not entirely sure how to pigeonhole that yet, it’s early days. Hopeless of course is a gothic, graphic novel Steampunky sort of thing.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Well now, For the Letters, the main character would, quite simply, have to play himself. Those of you who have been paying very close attention to my creative entanglements may be able to figure that one out! I’d also like the fabulous Chantelle Smith to play the female lead. Which may come as a surprise to her because she’s better known as a singer… Unquiet Land, well, that’s audio and written for a specific voice, hopefully he’ll like it, so that doesn’t need casting. As for Hopeless, my dream is not of a live action movie, but of a Studio Ghibli production and anything Hayao Miyazaki wanted to do would be fine with me!

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Ah, if only I’d started this thing with one book I’d have a fighting chance. But I never seem to be working on just one thing. Too many irons in the fire, too many ideas, too much the grasshopper mind. How about: Nimue writes a book which is distinctly different from the books she has written so far in which things happen that may or may not, depending on genre, be wholly fictional?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Druidry and Prayer I shall wave at Moon Books, I feel able to say this because Trevor expressed interest in public on facebook the other day! Hopeless Maine book 2 will be published by Archaia. The Letters, we’re contemplating and at a guess the audio work will be a self pubbing business.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I very seldom know. Partly because of the having multiple projects on the go at any one time thing. Letters Between Gentlemen, I’ve been working on for nearly a year, sporadically. I expect Duridry and Prayer will have its first draft down in a month a two. The Audio, not a clue, depends on how the inspiration flows.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I try very hard, in all areas of work, to find space that don’t have much other content in and shoot for there. On the downside this does not make the marketing easy and I know being able to say ‘it’s a lot like X’ is helpful, except that if X has already done it, I want to do something else. I’m not even that reliably like me, I suspect, because I get bored far too easily. There are days when I want to be Neil Gaiman, and Terry Pratchett an Douglas Adams. There are days when I want to be Dunsany and Lovecraft and Clive Barker all at the same time. There are dark days, and gothic days, and angry political days, and all kinds of other things going on.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Most of it lately has been inspired by a heady combo of Tom Brown and Paul Alborough. However, Druidry and Prayer was mostly inspired by the fact that there wasn’t much about prayer in Alain Du Botain’s Religion for Atheists book so, even though I’m not an atheist, this made sense to me as a gap I needed to take on. Hopefully it’ll still make sense when I’ve finished tackling it.

What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

As I get bored easily and I hate things I can predict, I try very hard to come up with things that will surprise and entertain and take you somewhere you haven’t been before. Regardless of genre.

I shall be tagging…

Tom Brown http://www.mothfestival.wordpress.com

And

Jonathan Green jonathangreenauthor.blogspot.com/

And

Rachel Tansy Patterson tansyfiredragon.blogspot.com

(And if you want to be tagged, yell)

The landscape of light

So here we are at the turning of the year, the mistletoe has been cut in various places, Druids have been out and about at Stonehenge, and soon the days will start that slow process of getting longer again, at least round here.

I realise that the impact of the wheel of the year is bound to vary depending on how far you are from the equator. I struggle to imagine living closer to the arctic circles, with the long night of winter and the long day of summer. I rather suspect that would drive me nuts, but evidently plenty of people manage to live with it. I find it equally hard to imagine the stable nature of light and dark nearer the equator. I‘m too involved with the cycle I was born into.

The balance of light and dark across the year, and the shape of the seasons is closely tied to the land we live on – or at least where that land is in relation to the shape of the planet, its tides and climates. Here in the UK, the Gulf Stream keeps us warmer than neighbours to the east at the same latitudes. Where Tom came from a lot of weather tended to come down from the Arctic over the winter months, making for a very different kind of winter. I’m conscious of the warming effect of the River Severn too, not needing to get that far away to notice a temperature difference.

The shape of the hills affects the patterns of light and dark too. For me, down by the river, the coming of first light and the timing of the sunrise is affected by the Cotswolds. The sun has a great big hill line to get over before I’ll see any sign of it. It sets over the Forest of Dean for me, too, that’s another hefty hill range. For a person living in the shadow of even bigger hills, or mountains the patterns of light and dark will be even more influenced by this, and living on an open plain is a whole other experience.

It makes me realise just how local the experience of the shortest day is bound to be, because it’s going to be a lot shorter for those of us with hills, and all those other variables.

Today I am celebrating being where I am, wet and grey though it is. It’s not like anywhere else. Nowhere is.

Free range human

For most of us, when to sleep and get up, when to eat, when to rest, and the choice to be active are not things we get a lot of say in. Work and school dictates hours for most of us. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve been able to sleep as much as I’ve wanted to, eat a diet of my choosing, and have control over levels of physical activity. I’m not fully self determining, but the difference to health and weight wrought by what changes I could make, have been huge.

The whole spectrum of MBS practices and related religions, Druidry included, encourage us to be aware of our bodies and to treat them with respect. There’s not much gain to be had from attentiveness if you don’t feel able to act upon what you learn, though. I became very good at ignoring bodily pain, illness and exhaustion because for a long time I felt I had no choices. I’m prepared to bet I’m not the only person who has, at some point, felt this way. Not enough hours in the day to sleep properly. Not enough time to make proper meals. Too tired mentally to exercise properly. And all the rest.

I’ve got better at slowing down and listening to my mind and body. There’s a temptation to work flat out when I can, and to limp when I can’t keep running, but this brings very unproductive bouts of depression and cycles of burnout. I’m not sure I can explain how, or why, but I got into a mindset of feeling un-entitled to rest, or time off, or anything nice even. I had to work, and work more, and harder, and if I wasn’t wearing fingers and soul down until they bled, I just wasn’t doing enough. That’s not a good thing to live with, I might add. I think it stems from feeling inadequate and like I needed to compensate for something, but I’ve never got to a point that felt like ‘enough’ by that measure, and the goalposts kept on moving further away. There came a point when my body started saying ‘no more’ in such loud and serious ways that I had to change my thinking.

It’s not enough to be self aware. That awareness has to be acted on. I am conscious of the total luxury of being in a situation where I can afford to eat the things that agree with me (my preferences are helpfully cheap, but that won’t be true for everyone), where I have support to take breaks, time to take exercise and can sleep as much as I need to. I’m very aware that not everyone has this. The job, and the demands of others deprive many people of needful things, but surviving and making ends meet is essential and I know a lot of people would not, and could not handle the trade-offs I’ve accepted to make this lifestyle work. There’s no one right answer for everyone out there, and we have to make our compromises and consider our priorities.

However, the modern, hectic lifestyle that we’re all supposed to adhere to is not an unassailable fact. It is not as inevitable and all powerful as we might be encouraged to believe. It is possible to make changes, and sometimes even quite small changes can make a huge difference. A bit more water and a bit less caffeine. Ten minutes of winding down time before heading off to bed. The occasional lie in. Often, doing things the slower, cheaper way gives the body a much needed physical release. Why pay for a gym when you can do some of your transport on foot and save money?

I wouldn’t wish on anyone the kind of radical life upheavals that have got me to where I am. I’m pretty confident that it’s possible to make a lot of changes without having to have an epic crisis, personal disaster or nervous breakdown first. In fact, if you can go the easy route, consider it. There’s a lot to be said for not pushing yourself to breaking point.

I know a lot of readers of this blog are on top of life and time management and are getting good levels of quality and free range humanity in your lives. I also know from the comments people leave that far too many of you are still stuck in a battery-farmed lifestyle banging against the edges of the too small cage and struggling to see how on earth life without said cage would ever be possible. I’ve heard it said that if you get a battery hen to take home (it can be done) then many are agoraphobic and it takes them a while to learn how to cope with new freedoms. We’re a lot like chickens, except that we are often so much more complicit in building our own cages and keeping them firm, and that was the hardest lesson I’ve had to learn so far. I agreed to the bars. I accepted them and behaved in ways that kept them in place. Most of us do, one way or another. The cage is safe, it may keep us in, but it keeps other things out and requires us to think a lot less.

Humbug season

I get round to blogging in this way every year. I am not a fan of Christmas. I have no issue with spiritual Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus – that’s their festival and they have every right to get on with it. What drives me nuts, is this other thing. This celebration of gluttony and excess in which we are supposed to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to give to people we don’t even necessarily like with a side order of a lot of wasted food and a frightening amount of rubbish destined for landfill.

Every year, I get more hostile to the whole process and my desire to get away from it grows.

I’ve made myself a promise therefore, that this is going to be the last year in which I do anything conventional around Christmas. The boy is ten, and able to cope with the idea, and I think also conscious of the same issues. He’s too environmentally aware not to be uneasy about the waste and excess, even while he does like getting presents. We’ve talked a lot about making good memories rather than owning more things.

What would happen if we took a tiny fraction of the money spent on things that will never be used, or played with, and did something else with it? What if that money went to people who have nothing, who are homeless, hungry, and suffering around the world? What would happen if ‘keep things out of landfill’ got hardwired into the Christmas message? Hard to imagine that one. Tis the season to generate a great deal of junk. What about all the animals who are still given as gifts, despite, surely, everyone knowing that this is not a clever time to get a puppy or a kitten?

I’ve sung a lot of Christmas carols down the years – I like community singing and it’s a great way to raise money for good causes. I notice all those messages about peace and goodwill. I don’t remember a single carol about getting drunk, eating too much, trying to be polite about unwanted gifts and throwing far too much in the bin on Boxing day. I remember Good King Wenceslas taking things to peasants, and I remember tidings of comfort and joy, and I keep thinking how far off the mark we are, so often.

If you want to do Christmas, please, please reclaim it as something warm and human and get away from this orgy of commerciality and irresponsibility.

In the meantime, I’m plotting what I’m going to do next year, when I’m not going to be living in the middle nowhere and my scope to be useful should be much improved. And I’m trying not to feel too horribly frustrated about what I’m not able to do this time around.

Winter sun worshipper

In the summer, when we get normal weather, not the endless rain of this last year, I avoid the sun. I’m a bit prone to heat stroke, and when it gets too hot to do anything outside I’d rather be inside, doing something. I have a suspicion that in those conditions, siestas would suit me very well. But at this time of year, with the long nights and many overcast days, I’m much more open to being a sun worshipper.

Part of this has everything to do with the power of contrast. It’s a bit like the post against a dark background from last week – things make more sense when they show up against a different sort of backdrop. Conventional takes on the wheel of the year have us honouring the darkness at midwinter and the sun at midsummer.

Yes, I know I can be a tad perverse sometimes.

At midsummer, it’s the long night that I want to experience. The softness and darkness of summer nights calls to me after the searing heat of day (well, in theory, not this year). Then, in these short, dark days, I turn my face more readily to the sun.

It’s beautiful today, slightly cold but very bright. I lingered over the school run, enjoying the feel of sun on my face and the visibility of wildlife. When it’s all shades of grey out there, bird identification is a lot harder. Not that this morning’s egret would have been hard to spot against any backdrop! At this time of year I really want to be outside in the sun. It’s especially good for doing the long walks on dry surfaces, lane walking and wandering the towpath.

In summer I am very much a creature of night and twilight when I can get away with it. Now, at the dark time of the year, I reach for light. Not the fake light of Christmas decorations or even the light switch, but the stuff that just occasionally turns up in the sky. That which is in short supply gains extra importance. Not that I think I’m terribly guilty of taking things for granted, but I notice what is barely here a great deal more. I‘ve come to a keen appreciation of sufficiency as well.

Today there is sun and because it is winter, I raise my head as a sun worshipper, delighted by the few degrees of extra warmth on my chilly skin.

Taking a side

Collaboration has undoubtedly delivered more human success than anything else. None of us have all the skills, or all the knowledge. People who work in teams get something that is usually more than the sum of its parts. And yet, the idea of competition, or winners and losers is so much a part of our culture. The whole way in which capitalism works pretty much depends on exploitation, (I shall resist the urge to get all Marxist about this one). Business is all about win and lose, and competition drives the market place. We are told that competition is healthy and delivers the best outcomes to consumers. Frankly I’m sceptical about that one, not least because the definition of ‘best’ tends to be ‘cheapest and most widely available’.

The moment you set up sides, and decide that there’s an us, and a them, then its not long before we have to win and they have to lose. Once we’re looking at a win-lose setup, then ideas about compromise or consensus are right off the table. We aren’t looking to agree, we want to win, score more points, get more things, come out on top. Our culture tells us that when we win in this way, we have achieved something. We are superior to the losers. Cleverer. We deserve our success and can take pride in it. The losers deserve to have lost and deserve the humiliation and practical consequences of failure.

Our judicial systems are adversarial, and that sets up not just assumptions about the kind of outcome that’s desirable, but a structure in which the win/lose arrangement is pretty much the only thing you can get. When it comes to situations of human error and tragedy, this means that people fight to win, which means fighting not to be blamed, and therefore not taking responsibility, and therefore vital lessons can be easily not learned. As with what so often happens when medicine or infrastructure goes wrong and kills people. This is not my definition of a good win at all.

When you get into a conflict situation and you get that conventional ‘win’ and watch the other person lose, you have the option to be smug and self righteous. You have all the cultural support imaginable to kick the person who is now down. Or perhaps you get the hollow feeling that you were playing the wrong game all along and that what you have is really another form of lose.

In a win/lose scenario, the more that’s at stake, the more important it becomes to seem right. Being right is a secondary consideration. Winning comes first. In war, the first casualty is often said to be truth. It’s just as probable in other forms of human conflict. Where we want to win, and where winning is more important than how we get there, honour doesn’t get much of a look in. Truth is likely to be further hidden beneath piles of obfuscation and perhaps even self delusion. We want to believe in ourselves as righteous winners, after all. That’s what it’s all about, allegedly. Except that way lies a mire of mistakes and emotional self harming, a total lack of scope to make good changes, and a whole range of methods to entrench and escalate hostility. Again, I have to say this is not my definition of what ’win’ ought to look like.

What I think is this. When people draw lines and take sides, rally round flags and declare enmity, there is only one available outcome. To some degree, everybody is going to lose. Often not just the people involved, either. We lose in our humanity and understanding, in our capacity for making something better. I want a win that takes everyone forward in a good way. Or failing that, as many people as possible. I want wins that are about truth, compassion and best outcomes for everyone.

By peace and love to stand

We swear, by peace and love to stand, heart to heart and hand in hand. Mark, oh spirits and hear us now, confirming this, our sacred vow.

I was out with the Sapling Bards today for a mistletoe rite. It was a lovely gathering and I had the pleasure of meeting a great many excellent people, putting some faces to names I already knew, and reconnecting with some dear friends. It was a lovely day in a lovely space, and the rainbows were more than compensation for the rain.

We used the Druid’s Prayer, as above. It’s a common feature of Druid rituals and I have said it many times in the past, in the company of many others. I found myself reflecting during the prayer – it’s repeated three times so there is time for a fair bit of thinking – about people I’ve shared that prayer with in the past. Good friends I’ve not seen in too long. People I met once and have not seen since. And those other, more troubled connections where peace and love did not get much of a look in, when it came to the crunch. I wondered, as I often do, what I could have done that would have been better.

I care about peace, especially the sort that comes from cooperation, restorative justice and compassion. Retribution is just a way of extending the suffering all round and that never struck me as being a good idea. But when people fall out in extreme ways and become unable to tolerate each other, where is there room for compassion or gentleness? What happens when one heart is so closed, impenetrable or incomprehensible to another that no amount of ‘heart to heart’ seems to help? What happens when the peace and love we swear not only to those in circle, but to anyone we want to be in honourable relationship with, is betrayed? I don’t have any answers.

Sometimes its not within the gift of a given individual to make everything right. We are beings of finite power, and seeing the wrong does not means being able to fix it, and wanting to fix it isn’t always enough either. We have to forgive the people who are not able to be what we want them to be. I know, that to move forwards I have to forgive myself for the things that I had no control over and no means to repair. I think its when we start to imagine that we *should* be able to set all to rights that we can start driving ourselves mad with a sense of inadequacy, or having to lie to ourselves to make us seem like we’re better than we are. Worse still is what happens when someone is so desperate to seem right that they lie to everyone to hold that illusion, wreaking emotional havoc as an inevitable consequence rather than admit to being human. I’ve seen what that one can do and it isn’t pretty.

People of integrity and good heart make mistakes. Often for the best of reasons and with excellent intentions. I’ve had some horrible things done to me by people I know thought they were acting for the greater good. I don’t feel good about that, but I’ve tried to understand it. I’ve been on the wrong end of self importance, and power gaming, and people driven by fear and all manner of tricky human things. I have misunderstood things in ways that caused pain to others, I have been rash, inconsiderate, short sighted, I have made a thousand and one tiny errors of judgement that will have caused unnecessary suffering. As do most people. The trick is to try and learn, and not beat yourself into an ineffectual pulp in response. We all mess up. It’s the point when we choose to believe that we’re on opposite sides to some fellow human being that we’re really in trouble. When there are sides, you make losing inevitable and no one really wins at all. Where there’s cooperation, there is also hope, and scope for improvement.

Today I swore peace and love to a group of people I mostly don’t know. The odds are that will never be tested in any significant way. But when it is, you find out whether your oaths were strong enough to hold, and sometimes they won’t be. But without the hope that I could offer those bonds of love and peace, I could not get into circle with anyone. I have to be able to say it and mean it and trust that those around me are meaning it too, even though I know that sometimes those words are not upheld.

Mark, oh spirits, and hear us now…

And never let me become complacent about what any of this means.

Baebes in the Cathedral

Last night I went to see Mediaeval Baebes perform at Gloucester Cathedral. I think they’re an amazing group and have followed their progress with interest from that first album. It was mediaeval songs and for reasons that escape me, anything of that ilk seems Christmasy to a lot of people. If you’ve not heard them, I have no doubt youtube can fill the gaps in your knowledge.

The Baebes do anachronism in a way that I love. That urge towards a mix of historical and new always draws me, as with things Steampunk. In this case it’s a mix of words and tunes from the time before major and minor scales, and the days of Latin and Middle English, with wilder, modern beats, really modern arrangements and an energy that simply is not like anything else. I like eclecticism. I studied music formally until I was 19, including exposure to 20th Century art music. Generally classical music does not do it for me, it never goes far enough and I respond more to the raw, earthy qualities of folk. Somehow, Mediaeval Baebes combine the technical skills of more classical music with the innovation of 20th Century art music and the human passion of folk. I like it, a lot.

Gloucester Cathedral has fantastic acoustics, and last night’s music seemed designed to engage with the echoes of big Church spaces. There was also a really interesting blend of Pagan and Christian content. Much of the mediaeval material in the repertoire is gothic in its Christianity, full of ideas about corporeal decay and the transience of the flesh. There were pieces taken from the Pendle witch trials, exorcisms and other unlikely sources alongside things that were songs back in the day. A real adventure in ideas and cross-pollination.

Perhaps the strangest moment of the whole night came at the start, when someone acting on behalf of the cathedral got into the pulpit and undertook prayer. Now, I like cathedrals as performance spaces but I never feel easy about taking people who came as an audience and, because it’s a church, making them pray. I think you do better PR for religion by not pulling stunts like that. But that’s what we got. And after the amplified ‘amen’ of the speaker, came silence. As a Pagan it is my habit to sit in respectful silence through other people’s prayers. There must have been a good 500 people in the audience, and not one ‘amen’ into the silence after the prayer. A long and uneasy silence, as I felt it.

The cathedral hums and reverberates to music and clapping, as though it had been built for the express purpose of being filled with song. At one point, there was a solo voice piece that had a distinctly Arabic/Islamic feel, and I wondered if anyone had ever sung from that tradition and in that space before. It worked. The building held that sound as beautifully as any other, and while there was a strangeness to it, there was also a rightness.

There is nothing more likely to turn a person off from religion than cold, formulaic content that washes over and does not affect the listener. There is nothing more conducive to spiritual experience than beauty that appeals to the senses. They were temple dancers and priestesses, they were invocations to wild goddesses and to the Virgin Mary, they poured a vast array of emotions and ideas into the great space of the cathedral, and the space resonated to their singing as though it loved them in turn. Maybe it did. And whether we connect that feeling of being uplifted to a God, or a Goddess, or human endeavour, or community… doesn’t really matter. It’s the innate soulfulness that really counts.

After the awkward prayer, there was awkward silence. After the Mediaeval Baebes, there was clapping and happiness.

In a poo economy

There was a wonderful article in New Scientist this week, about algae that can produce fuel. The overall affect of the algae fuel would be to reduce rather than add to CO2, which is monumentally exciting. The algae themselves need feeding, and using human waste and farm waste would be the way to go, which solves additional problems. Post-algae-munching you get something that can be put on the land as fertilizer. I think its win all round.

The more I think about the implications of a poo based economy, the more excited I get. Oil is owned and controlled by the few but shit is the property of the masses. In a poo economy, we all get to be producers. I rather imagine that when it is locally sourced poo and not shipped in oil that makes your economy tick, the producers will have a different status. In such a reality, there would be no reason to stigmatise poor people as ‘scroungers’. Instead, every last one of them is a valuable producer. So much else would change off the back of that.

We all shit. It’s a fundamental human process. Ill people shit. Disabled people shit. People of all skin colours and religions shit in the same ways. If shit was a valuable commodity with a distinct application, how much would change? So much of the ‘logic’ of our cultures is economically based, and has everything to do with assumptions about money equating to value and worth. If shit is what makes the world go round, everyone has an economic value.

I rather think that if shit was the power source, then we would easily get a better consciousness of output in relation to power use. Most of us have no idea how much shit we produce, or really what happens to it. What if you needed to balance that personally against the fuel that goes in your car? A revolution in awareness is almost inevitable.

And, to finish on an amusing thought… we might finally get some real value for money out of the political classes, because after all, when it comes down to the issue of being full of shit… Who better than a politician to serve the needs of the many?