Eco-communities as a social vision

Eco-communities as a social vision
Egalitarian and ecological communities, like the pictured East Wind (www.eastwind.org), are very close to our vision of an ecological society

29 August, 2008

"Wond'ring Again" by Jethro Tull, Album: Living in the Past (1972)

the above cartoon was created by Ben Heine

There's the stillness of death on a deathly, unliving sea,
And the motor car magical world long since ceased to be,
When the Eve-bitten apple returned to destroy the tree.

Incestuous ancestry's charabanc ride,
Spawning new millions, throws the world on its side.
Supporting their far-flung illusion, the national curse,
And those with no sandwiches, please get off the bus.

The excrement bubbles, the century's slime decays;
And the brainwashing government lackeys would have us say,
It's under control and we'll soon be on our way.
To a grand year for babies and quiz panel games
Of the hot hungry millions you'll be sure to remain.
The natural resources are dwindling and no one grows old,
And those with no homes to go to, please dig yourselves holes.

We wandered through quiet lands, felt the first breath of snow.
Searched for the last pigeon—slate grey, I've been told.
Stumbled on a daffodil,
Which she crushed
In the rush;
Heard it sigh,
And left it to die.
At once felt remorse and were touched by the loss of our own,
Held its poor broken head in her hands,
Dropped soft tears in the snow,
And it's only the taking that makes you what you are.

Wond'ring aloud, will a son one day be born
To share in our infancy,
In the child's path we've worn?
In the aging seclusion of this earth,
That our birth
Did surprise—
We'll open his eyes.


Poetic lyrics about a furure environmental destruction and civilisation collapse caused by human actions based on false and rotten but well enstablished in their minds nationalistic and religious imaginaries: eternal expansion of a nation/race, eternal births and uncontrolled increase of population based on oldfashioned relligious beliefs, class/racial/national/relligious discriminations, etc. Those concepts also controll and shape the form of technology humans choose to invent and use in order to "serve" and fullfill them.

But the survivors don't learn anything and they try to rebuild their civilization as they knowed it: An elit of rich and superior at the expense of millions of poor died in starvation. Such a vision is not so far from reality when people have not changed their minds even before a global disaster. Unfortunatelly, survivors will reproduce the same exploitative societies and ideologies in a similar way every social revolution (from the ancient past or even our recent years) simply reproduces another version of the same political status of people division and human exploitation.

In the end, Ian Anderson seems to vision the birth of a new Messiah that will open our eyes.

You can hear this song in youtube

and thanks to anonymous a cover of this song by Sossity

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can hear this song in YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKzMWB9kSiM

candiru - stratis aigaiopelagitis said...

thank you very much! We restored the link with the original song and we put your link with this beautiful cover