...or do they?
Ask Macbeth.
Chinua Achebe’s seminal and brilliant 1958 work Things Fall Apart has the sound of inevitability, fate, destiny. And yet – the thread of this intricate African fable is more subtle. In fact, at every turn it is the choices of the central character Okonkwo, a successful man, famed in his younger days for his wrestling prowess but haunted by the spectre of the father he deemed a failure, that triggers many of the tragedies that befall him, his family and his village.
And that encapsulates the most important lesson we never learn.
Its a lesson that is known on one level. It is set deep in cultural understanding and psychological examinations of human nature; is evident in famous Shakespearian anti-heroes.
In one of the many notable soliloquies in the Scottish play, Macbeth begins his pre-regicide speech by acknowledging the here and now “here on this bank and shoal of time” as he contemplates the consequences of his actions. Still in Act 1, Macbeth hopes that “its surcease were its success”. He is hoping that in fact there will be no consequences from killing King Duncan even though he almost immediately acknowledges that “in these cases we still have judgement here”.
In Things Fall Apart there are also – as with Macbeth’s witches – ethereal and terrestrial forces that proclaim, predict and influence actions. Most obviously, Okonkwo is subject to and a clear victim – as is his village and culture – of the abomination of colonialism in its mundane brutality. It is the choices made by the men on both sides that create the endless tragedies.
And if we step swiftly sideways into the less prosaic, real contemporary world – this is a lesson we reject – however many times and however many examples of destruction are laid out in human history – often repeats of repeats of repeats.
Despite the horrors of wars currently raging or brewing around the globe and the appalling losses of innocent lives – it is still the case – that the greatest and most imminent threat facing humanity is the destruction of the environment.
This is something we are doing. We know we are doing it. We choose – if not to keep doing it at least to not do anything about the doing of it. Same thing.
And do we have any examples of the catastrophic effect of similar actions. Well – you could say too many to mention. But let us take Australia. Not somewhere I’ve ever been.
Today 70% of this continent country is arid. And its getting worse.
Aboriginal peoples lived ‘down under’ for 40,000 years without decimating the land which was verdant and fertile.
It was European settlers who – as well as abusing the Aboriginals and corrupting their ways of life – destroyed the natural world there with farming methods unsuitable to the region, plant and animal species that were not native and which debased the land. In particular cattle rearing, which has turned whole swathes of the land into irretrievable desert. Australian cattle farming – one of the most environmentally harmful on the planet – goes on apace today.
Here in Britain – something I have written about endlessly – is how the post war gains aimed at improving the lives of ordinary people after the human sacrifice and slaughter of WWII, were systematically unpicked from the early 80s when Margaret Thatcher (PM 1979 - 1990) began her cruel policies and a programme of privatisation which, when completed this century, put most of what had been in public ownership back into private hands where profit rules and we see the devastation of society all around us in crumbling and dysfunctional, old and worn infrastructure that fails so many. Sewage in the water and in prepping itself for private profit - the Post Office created one of the worst mass miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
A decade and a half of Tory rule this century added to the misery with an austerity programme that led to decreased longevity in some poor areas and an increase in child poverty. In-between Thatcher’s horrors and Cameron/Osborne’s austerity social cataclysm we had – of course – Tony Blair’s illegal invasion of Iraq. Another ‘choice’ albeit made directly against the clearly expressed will of the majority of the British public and the evidence. The repercussions of that miserable adventure are with us today.
Somehow given the choice between what is the right thing to do and obvious self destruct there is something about human nature – at least for some – and sadly often those in power, that leads them to make the obviously bad choice. Tony Blair’s give-away for when he knew he was making the wrong choice was to talk about ‘difficult decisions’ It became, in my view, shorthand for – crapping things up.
But we do it en masse too. Not just individually. The UK (though not, I’m proud to say, the people here in Scotland) voted for the self-destruct of Brexit. It is acknowledged as such by economists and all sentient beings and yet the main architect of this – media darling Nigel Farage – rises ever higher in popularity where he was put but the media that still platforms him.
America voted for Donald Trump not once but twice. And you’d have to have been living under a rock not to know how horribly that is playing out.
If humanity doesn’t start pulling away from obvious bad choices soon; if we as humans simply hope, like Macbeth, that the obvious consequences just wont happen when they obviously will and if we don’t curb the men with Macbeth’s “vaulting ambition” then things, everything, will fall apart.
But things don’t fall apart all by themselves.
Things Fall Apart because we break them.
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Do check out My BOOKS and as the summer hols are upon us - remember all the poems in Fun Poems For Children are performed by me on youtube I put these put for the grandkids during covid but they're now public.
Plus why not have a read of an early relevant post
Armageddon Will Not Be Televised
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Finally - as folk keep asking - just a reminder - I've never been on any social media and still do not have a smartphone 😊 so no need to waste time searching.
Bye for the summer, see you in September.