There are some saying that the recent Hamas attack in southern Israel was that country’s 9/11. It’s hard to miss the inference there. A gruesome and “unprovoked” attack on innocent people. An outpouring of grief and international solidarity. A demand for retaliation. As in those attacks over 20 years ago, these were no less horrendous.

But after 9/11, the Bush regime used its muscle to severely curtail civil liberties and start a “global war on terror”. Muslims were demonized, surveilled, detained, often indefinitely. And the antiwar movement was castigated for being unpatriotic, or worse treacherous. How easy it was to distract the public from real threats like economic predation, corrupted social and political institutions and the accelerating perils of climate change.

Israel is in a similar position. The Israeli public has been deeply dissatisfied by its government and their extremist, far-right politics. In recent months, the country saw its biggest protests when Netanyahu’s coalition attempted to weaken the courts power. They were met with tear gas and water cannons. How easy will it be now to crush any opposition with the accusation of treason in a “time of war?” Who will take to the streets in Tel Aviv now to protest a government which becomes more and more fascist by the day?

In the months following 9/11, many were asking how the world’s most powerful nation was so ill prepared for these kinds of attacks. Similar questions are now being raised today. How is it that the strongest military power in the Middle-east was incapable of stopping this brazen invasion by a ragtag group that possess no army, navy or airforce? Where were its vaunted “Iron Dome” defenses against a bunch of paragliders? Israel is known for its surveillance technology which it exports worldwide. How could they have not adequately monitored one of the most watched cities in the world? And how come it took the military hours to reach the besieged enclaves near the Gaza border? These questions aren’t conspiratorial. Incompetence can be just as deadly as complicity. It demands critical review because the stakes couldn’t be higher. These terrible incidents are often used to advance the most odious of objectives.

As in the US, the left was always weak in Israel. It is now all but moribund as war hawks circle the open air prison of Gaza, meting out a bloody collective punishment to anyone on the ground. It matters not that half of the population are children. Everyone there has been dehumanized as a savage, or as one Israeli official said “animals.” That the rhetoric is blatantly genocidal is of no concern to American politicians. On the contrary, they are being encouraged to “finish them,” as presidential hopeful Nikki Haley tweeted.

No matter what one thinks of the politics of Hamas, its right to resist occupation, its ill-advised prison break, or its heinous rampage, the consequences for Palestinians will only become bleaker. Targeting civilians is only something Israel can get away with in the Western media. It can carpet bomb entire neighbourhoods, target hospitals, schools and UN shelters. It can cut off food, water, electricity and medical supplies. It can literally kill thousands of people. And it will all be forgiven as Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

Few to none in the mainstream press will talk about the blockade that has cut off Gaza from the rest of the world since 2007. Or about the crushing poverty. Or about the undrinkable water (Israel bombed the treatment facility years ago). Or about the bleakness of life in the occupied West Bank, where home demolitions, checkpoints, settler violence and night raids are a fact of everyday life. Few to none will discuss the fact that Israel has been designated an apartheid state by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Or that the former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, among many other Israeli officials, agreed with these conclusions.

It is understandable why so many Palestinians feel hopeless. They have been among the most maligned, dehumanized and persecuted people on earth for the past 75+ years. Violently dispossessed of their land, treated as second-class citizens within Israel and backward savages in the occupied territories. Demonized in the Western press. When they’ve resisted their occupation, a right they are entitled to under international law, they are cast as genocidal monsters. When they resist nonviolently, as in the BDS campaign, they are cast as anti-Semitic. And now Arab countries are lining up to “normalize” relations with its oppressor. Is it any wonder why they would feel such desperation? How could any young Gazan have hope for a future when all they’ve known is brutal captivity?

The days ahead will be bleaker than any before for the Palestinians. The 9/11 narrative being employed today will be used in a similar manner to strip Israelis of whatever rights they may have left and strip Palestinians of their very lives. We can only hope that they will stop short of the unthinkable.

Kenn Orphan, October 2023

To my friends in Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, I am hoping you all remain safe and unharmed. There are no speeches or platitudes that can airbrush the horror which has unfolded or which may come. And no person of conscience would celebrate the slaughter or suffering of anyone, especially of civilians.

But for those of us outside this region, it is urgent to see the context of how this all came about. None of this came about in a vacuum. This is not a justification for terrorism. Absolutely not. But if we truly care about peace, we should begin with understanding.

In much of the media, it is once again being portrayed as a conflict of equals. Of culture against culture, religion against religion. As two countries in some kind of eternal war. And this is a dangerous falsehood.

We can go back over 75 years and explore how following the fall of the Ottoman Empire, British Mandate Palestine continued its colonial project which began the cycle of dispossession and violence. To the odious, centuries-long persecution of Jews in Europe which led to the Holocaust and the forced displacement of millions of Jews, many of whom fled to the Middle-East. To the UN partition of Israel/Palestine which was grossly unfair toward the Palestinians in land allocation and resources. To the Nakba, or Catastrophe, where scores were massacred and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their villages and homes by violent militias. To the repeated betrayal of Palestinian aspirations for self determination by American politicians and their biased and militarized foreign policy. To decades of entrenched discrimination, segregation and ethnic cleansing. But I think it is best to look at the past few decades instead.

In recent years, Israel has been designated an apartheid state by the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and by Israeli human rights organizations like B’Tselem and If Not Now. Even President Jimmy Carter warned of this years ago, and the Israeli ex-Mossad chief Tamir Pardo called his country an apartheid state. Mossad is Israel’s intelligence agency. All of this is demonstrated to most reasonable people when presented with the facts on the ground.

Nearly 3 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem live under Israeli occupation. Israeli apologists claim that the Palestinian Authority is their government when, in actuality, it is merely a proxy government for the occupation. Thanks to the unfair Oslo Accords, Israel has been able to effectively divided the occupied West Bank into three administrative areas. In all but one of those zones, Israel has absolute control. Palestinians in the remaining area are still subject to the Israeli occupation by way of the administration of its proxy, the PA.

All Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem face home demolitions, walls, barriers, separate roads, scores of dehumanizing checkpoints, daily violence from illegal settlers that include being shot at and the burning of olive groves, and military tribunals instead of civil courts like their Israeli settler counterparts. Palestinian children are routinely spirited away in terrorizing night raids and taken to detention centers that are often undisclosed. There they often face abuse and neglect.

And over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, which has been blockaded and besieged for nearly 15 years, have absolutely no say regarding their unjustified imprisonment or the routine collective punishment meted out by the Israeli military. These Palestinians are subject to indiscriminate carpet bombing and are prevented from leaving the Strip by Israel and Egypt. Israel has historically targeted schools, apartment buildings, shelters, mosques and the press with indiscriminate bombs. And the UN has warned repeatedly that Gaza will be unlivable thanks to poverty, scant access to clean drinking water, and routine Israeli drone surveillance and bombardment.

Within Israel, towns and neighbourhoods have committees that have the right to exclude whomever they want on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Those that have a Jewish majority can effectively ban non-Jews from living where they want, echoing the redlining practices in the US that excluded Black Americans from purchasing homes in predominantly white, middle-class neighborhoods. Many Palestinian and Bedouin communities are disproportionately discriminated in building permits and are often disconnected from basic services like water and garbage collection. In fact, there are over 65 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel and it allocates only a fraction of its budget to Palestinian Israelis councils.

This context is vital to understand how persecution and dehumanization foment alienation and rage. It is also important to note that Palestinian civilian deaths far outweigh Israeli civilian deaths. Again, this is not a justification for terrorism. But it demonstrates the disproportionate amount of suffering in reality, opposed to how it is often represented in mainstream media.

The war Israel is going to wage on Gaza this time could be the most devastating one yet. Israel is now governed by some of the most far-right figures on the political spectrum and in the past few months they have used violence against their own citizens at peaceful protests. Some have faced criminal charges. Many have openly expressed racist sentiments and genocidal intent. All food, water and electricity to the small, walled-in enclave has been severely restricted or cut-off. In response, a cornered Hamas will likely become even more violent toward those it has captured.

Therefore, if we truly care for a just peace we must make our voices heard now. Western governments have direct impact on how this will unfold. Billions of dollars have been allocated for a military response to what is, by all accounts, a humanitarian disaster. We must not only demand a ceasefire, but a just peace. For Palestinians humanity to be recognized. For an end to the decades long oppression, dispossession and apartheid. And for a viable, fair path forward for Jews and Palestinians to live as equals and, hopefully, as brothers and sisters in that beautiful land.

Kenn Orphan, October 2023

This summer I binged on disaster in my free time. I pored over videos of fierce floods sweeping through streets in Beijing. Of fires ripping through the Northwest Territories, Siberia, my own province of Nova Scotia and reducing Lahaina to ash. Of mudslides in Brazil, Italy and California. I know, not the kind of thing most people binge watch. Some might even say it is “disaster porn” and ill-advised. But I’ve never been “most people”. And much of my writing career has been devoted to analyzing catastrophe and the systems that fail us and the planet.

Throughout my binging it occurred to me that every consecutive year, for at least the last 10, has been one of breaking bad records. These are not necessarily bombshell revelations, but this time they hit me in a different way. Although this dire urgency of our time felt more tangible, there seems to be a bizarre phenomenon emerging in the West. A disconnect that feels almost psychotic.

The prevailing mantra of our corporate governed lives is to “check our mental health”. To do “self-care” and wellness exercises. And yet, how often are we told to check the mental health of our world? We can do every wellness practice we want to, but what good is it on a world whose arrangement of power is bent on distraction, ruthless exploitation, brutality of the most marginalized and a penchant for self-destruction? What self-care practice would suffice on a world bereft of coral reefs, rainforests, glaciers, ancient boreal forests, animals, insects, birds, fish, people?

I find myself in a strange place these days. A place between places. I often feel as if I am standing on a cliff, watching the storms gather on the horizon while families picnic in a park behind me, blissfully unaware of or not concerned about the danger looming ahead. Nonplussed by the ticking of the doomsday machine our species has meticulously constructed for ourselves and countless other species over centuries.

It is a kind of purposeful sleepwalking. A strained and resistant normalizing of what is anything but normal. I see people pantomiming a life that is about to come crashing down. People plying the shallows of a social media milieu where drowning in laugh emojis or platitudes is preferred to meaningful engagement. I won’t lie. I’ve done my share of pantomiming too. But every now and then I catch a glimpse in the mirror and peer through the façade. Every now and then I see the trepidation in someone else’s eyes. An existential dread. A living hourglass whose sand has reached single digits.

Thanks to millions of years of evolution, we’ve been conditioned to normalize. It is a way to survive. How ironic that our innate instinct of surviving calamity is also courting it? Despite the unraveling of our biosphere and the subsequent degradation of economic and social systems, we are still ladled with this myth of normalcy via advertisements, political speeches, popular entertainment and the prevailing culture.

We are sold a promise of well being even as inequity is growing exponentially between the uber-wealthy and the rest of us. The wellness industry is little more than capitalist predation under a cloak of fake concern. And buying into it perpetuates the myth that everything will be just fine as it is now.

To be sure, this age we live in is fraught with stark contradiction. Self-congratulatory “captains of industry,” surrounded by their fanbase of pathetic sycophants, reside within the fragile bubble of a new gilded age. They sail their yachts over seas choked with plastic and Sargasso weed. Blast off to the upper atmosphere to extol the reach of humanity in skies laced with climate warming carbon dioxide. Dive to the depths of an ocean being raped of its living treasures at a pace never witnessed before, to gawk at the sarcophagus of another ego-borne tragedy of a distant age.

All the while, influencers. celebrities and corporate shills try to convince us that we can “live our best lives” even as more people are holding 2 or 3 jobs and not making ends meet, millions are choosing between rent and food, millions more are making impossible decisions to cross scorching deserts or unforgiving seas for a better life or to simply survive. And shanty towns and encampments for the houseless are expanding around nearly every city. Many of us have been protected from these early impacts of climate change, civil conflict, famine, war and economic devastation. But collapse isn’t an even process in a world already saddled with deep inequality between classes, regions and countries.

I often find myself trying to come to terms with this nascent phase of collapse. Especially the part where so many of us in the West, myself included, appear transfixed by shadows on the wall. It is Plato’s allegory writ large. Only these shadows aren’t in any cave. They are in everyone’s pocket. A portable box full of holograms which all too often parody our reality. A tyranny of algorithms that filter out unpleasant things or “news”. I must ask; will we go out seeing the world for what it is and what it is becoming, or believing in an AI generated storyline about life and who we are?

Now, I understand the value of storytelling. Writers, whether their genre is fiction or non-fiction, are quite fond of them. They can reveal the complex layers that conceal our nature. They can illuminate the dark and expel ignorance. They can illustrate our interdependence, our empathy, and increase our understanding. But they can also shield us from the things that matter most. They can obscure reality. And when a story does that, it becomes dogma. And that makes me feel that the stories we tell ourselves matter now more than ever before in history.

Many of us feel overwhelmed and powerless. All we can do some days is muddle through. Many feel tired, stressed and sad. And we need to do what we can to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. Our emotional, mental and spiritual well being are as important as our physical bodies. And the latter includes our economic, housing, nutritional and educational needs.

But corporate well-speak is a poison because it seeks to obscure the disease of our collective body. Even as it feigns comfort, it ultimately blames the individual for their mental breakdown. Its bromides are not a balm. They are a cover for its own malfeasance and inadequacy to address the human condition and our ecological crisis. And they often end up becoming yet another profit-seeking scheme for slick advertisers and pharmaceutical companies. The global wellness industry is worth an estimated $4.2 trillion dollars.

If we truly are careening toward existential disaster, I don’t want to be “well” with that. I want to go out celebrating and preserving everything that makes this life worth living. Birds, insects, animals, fish, whales, sharks, coral, reptiles, fungi, plants, trees, mountains, meadows, rivers, streams. And for us humans too. For art, culture, literature, music, theatre, good food. For excellent housing, education, healthcare, ecologically sensible transportation and a living wage. For play and leisure time, laughter and tender intimacy, as well as unhampered ecstasy and unrestrained fun. For community, human and non. I want solidarity more than a corporate approved version of self-care. Because wellness is utterly meaningless on a world that is being murdered. And I simply have no desire to be a well-adjusted corpse on a dead planet.

Kenn Orphan, September 2023

That more people know about the reckless and expensive jaunt of billionaires to the bottom of the sea to gawk at a shipwreck on an unregulated submersible, than 500 migrants who are missing and presumed drowned after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean, is exactly what is profoundly wrong with our world.

One disaster at sea happened after wealthy thrill-seekers made an ill-advised plunge in an unregulated metal tube that is sealed from the outside. If ever there was a metaphor for the death cult that is late capitalism, this is it. The other was caused by enforced poverty, war, persecution and climate change.

The UN estimates that a record 110 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide. Millions of people across the Global South must make harrowing decisions each day regarding survival. They face the existential threats of drowning at sea, dehydration in the desert, or murder by criminal gangs, militias or border patrols.

Both tragedies were preventable. But only one has garnered the world’s attention, as well as enormous resources and efforts for rescue.

Imagine a world where hundreds of impoverished migrants drowning at sea received the same concern, resources and coverage as a missing submersible that serves as tourist vessel for a handful of pampered billionaires.

You’d have to imagine it, because that’s not the world we live in.

Kenn Orphan, June 2023

Photo is of a migrant boat in the Mediterranean. Source AP.

So, a vile man is finally dead.

Pat Robertson’s 93-year long life was a textbook example of willful ignorance and cruelty writ large. Here is a short list of how this was so (note: it only gets worse as you get to the bottom):

1. Robertson said at the start of 2010 that God wouldn’t bless America that year because there was too much abortion and homosexuality and not enough prayer. “Fifty million babies slaughtered,” Robertson said God told him. “You can’t have legislation that is anti-God. You can’t foster in your midst things that I call an abomination.… If you do, sooner or later judgment’s going to come.”

Robertson’s god was the quintessential bully.

2. Robertson hosted fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell on his show The 700 Club just days after the 9/11 attack. At one point, Falwell said, “The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’” Robertson replied, “I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government.”

I like to imagine Falwell and Robertson sharing a cell somewhere in the Great Beyond, where they can reflect on all the cruel, stupid rubbish they said on television.

3. In a 1992 fundraising letter, Robertson wrote: “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” Socialist, lesbian witches? Where’s the problem, Pat?

4. Robertson said Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 because God was angry about abortion. “I was reading … a book that was very interesting about what God has to say in the Old Testament about those who shed innocent blood,” he said. “Have we found we are unable somehow to defend ourselves against some of the attacks that are coming against us, either by terrorists or now by natural disaster? Could they be connected?”

No, Pat. They weren’t.

5. In March 1990, Robertson referred to homosexuality as a “pathology” that needed to be treated. “Many of those people involved with Adolf Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals,” he said on The 700 Club. “Those two things seem to go together.”

The fact that thousands of queer people were persecuted and slaughtered by the Nazis in death camps from 1933 to 1945 did not seem to make into Robertson’s odious historical revisionism.

6. In 2011, Robertson compared Islamophobia to being anti-Nazi. “I was thinking, you know, if you oppose Muslims, what is said?” he asked on The 700 Club. “Well, you’re a bigot, right? Terrible bigotry. I wonder, what were people who opposed the Nazis? Were they bigots?”

Robertson was often obsessed with Nazism. Ironically, his brand of anti-Nazism often aligned with the tenets of Nazism itself. Like demonizing an entire class of people based on their religion or ethnicity.

7. In 2014, a 700 Club viewer asked whether an upcoming trip to Kenya was risky. “You might get AIDS in Kenya,” Robertson warned on air. “The people have AIDS in Kenya. The towels could have AIDS.”

There isn’t much more to say about this bit of ugliness.

8. Robertson told 700 Club viewers that the lawsuit filed by Texas’s then–Attorney General Ken Paxton challenging the results of the 2020 election was a “miracle.” “They’re going to the Supreme Court to say, ‘This election was rigged, and you’ve got to overturn it,’” Robertson said, pushing Trump-backed falsehoods. He also said God would intervene.

In short, God didn’t intervene. And the attempted far-right coup on January 6^th almost ended what was left of the deeply corrupted and tattered republic.

9. Robertson was accused of using his charity Operation Blessing to fly mining equipment to his personal diamond mines in Zaire.

It was apparent that Christ’s parable about the rich man was lost on Robertson.

10. When the biodiverse Galapagos Islands were threatened with an oil spill, Robertson could barely contain his glee. He wasn’t at all concerned about the wildlife that was in harms way or the people who would be adversely affected by the potential disaster. No. He was giddy that the place where Charles Darwin made his groundbreaking observations about the nature of evolution would soon be destroyed.

Owning “godless evolutionists” was more important to Robertson than, ya know, actual living beings.

11. Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake in January 2010. Robertson didn’t waste a minute in blaming the people of that country for this natural disaster. He said that Haitians had made a “pact with the devil” long ago in their history when they dared to rebel against the slavery imposed on them by the French overthrow their oppressors.

Apparently, according to Robertson’s genocidal god, the people of Haiti have been “cursed” ever since.

12. Robertson blamed the Palestinians for ALL of their suffering. This wasn’t because he “loved the Jewish people,” which he often claimed. It was due to his narrow biblical exegesis which required the establishment of the state of Israel, the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the rebuilding of the Temple in order for Christ to return. In this version, a third of the Jews would be wiped out. So, despite being a feckless supporter of the state of Israel, even as it was committing ethnic cleansing and human rights crimes, his real reason for supporting Israel was grounded in an idea of supernatural genocide. He also employed antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories whenever it suited his narrative.

13. In the early 1980s, General Efrain Rios Montt swept to power via a military coup and his junta slaughtered thousands of Indigenous people. Robertson flew to the country to personally congratulate the newly installed dictator. To add insult to genocide, as Rios Montt was carrying out the extermination of the Mayan population, Robertson held a fundraising telethon for the Guatemalan military.

To be sure, Robertson never met a right-wing death squad that he didn’t adore, especially when it gave the promise of enriching him.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should provide you with ample evidence of this man’s character, or lack thereof. So, I have no tears to shed for him. Not one. But I have copious ones for the people he vilified and bludgeoned with his influence.

Pat Robertson was a petty, ignorant, cruel and callous bully who used his pulpit to persecute the most marginalized in society and provide cover for murderous regimes, apartheid and oppression, while fostering prejudice, superstition and bigotry. He will not be missed by the people for whom he caused enormous pain.

Kenn Orphan, June 2023

Many thanks to friends outside of Canada checking in on us. We are far from the Halifax fires, about 25 km, and it is primarily affecting a suburban community. But the air quality is impacted everywhere in the province.

There are also other fires raging across the Maritimes, with an enormous 20,000 hectare one in Shelburne County. And thousands of people have been displaced, with many losing homes, animal companions, lifelong memories. This is not to mention the tremendous loss of wildlife.

This week, Nova Scotia is set to have record breaking temperatures as high as 30C (86F) by Thursday. This, combined with dry conditions and low precipitation, has created a tinderbox of our forests. Any incendiary can ignite a blaze. But there is an elephant in the room.

Less than a year ago, hurricane Fiona caused widespread damage across Atlantic Canada. It was the most costly weather event ever recorded in the province. Now, Nova Scotia is seeing an early wildfire season. In fact, we’ve seen more wildfires at this point in 2023 than in all of 2022. And our region is not alone. Across Canada, the catastrophic impact of the climate emergency is fast becoming a new normal.

In addition to this, the forest industry has commodified vast swaths of wooded land, stripping it of its biodiversity. Sprawl and loss of habitat has devastated urban wetlands, which are instrumental in halting or slowing fires. Add to this a renewed “gold rush” and it is a recipe for future disasters and an acceleration of climate change.

We can’t reverse climate change. It isn’t even likely that we could slow it down. And there is no indication that anyone in power is doing anything substantial to seriously address the crisis anyway. In fact, under the current arrangement of power, the economic elite continue to ravage the living earth, suck out its primordial blood, and stuff their coffers with coin unabated. Our collective future isn’t even a footnote in their forecasts.

But the rest of us will all need to navigate this new and terrifying world soon and mitigate the suffering that will undoubtedly come with it. We will have to take our place within the intricate web of nature that, for too long, we have rejected for the dangerous and self-destructive myth of human supremacy.

No one will have the luxury of sitting on the sidelines merely watching things unfold on the horizon. Because that horizon is rapidly approaching us all.

Kenn Orphan, May 2023

*Photo is of the fire in the Upper Tantallon area of Halifax.

Dear Americans,

People aren’t desperate to get into your country because it is the greatest nation on the planet. They aren’t risking perilous journeys on rafts or trains of death, traversing rivers and tumultuous seas, through rainforests and scorching deserts, past criminal gangs, because America is some shining star.

They are trying to escape the threat of death and a misery that has been caused, in large part, by ruthless, decades-long, economic, geopolitical and environmental policies your government, at the behest of corporations, has implemented throughout the Global South. Policies which have decimated their livelihoods, robbed them of their resources, destroyed their ecosystems, and propped up ruthless regimes that rule them with terror and brutality.

Seriously, do you really think most people would want to go voluntarily to a nation where there is no universal healthcare, homelessness is ubiquitous, gun violence is rampant, racism is normalized, and immigrants are demonized by the press and at least half of the political class? You are the only option they have left. Think of it as a choice between the lesser of two evils.

Sincerely, Reality.

Kenn Orphan, May 2023

*Photo is of migrants via the New York Times.

What is it about solitude that so many of us fear? Perhaps it is because it is only in solitude that we are forced to listen to the silence. Forced to face the realities of possessing a body that so often feels separate from the natural world we inhabit. For many of us, there is a strange comfort that comes with being surrounded by others. It can sometimes serve as a distraction from looking deep into ourselves.  

I know that for me, solitude has often been filled with a sense of dread or terror. And yet, I’ve often felt alone even when amid people, even people I know and love. Part of this comes from living in my head so much. Some may understand that people with a propensity for melancholy usually dwell in a space we carve out in our minds. Sometimes it can feel like a refuge. A sanctuary. Other times it feels like a prison. Solitude is not necessarily loneliness, but it can often feel like it.

Several years ago, I took a road trip on my own. I packed a bag and drove up the California coast with no real destination in mind. No itinerary. Stopping wherever and whenever I wanted to. Staying long if I wanted at places others might have become bored with. Staring off into the distance atop an oceanside cliff. Sitting cross-legged in a forest as the twilight gathered around me.

It was in the forest that I felt most at home. I observed creatures scurrying about or still. Some were communal, others were decidedly solitary. Life was teeming under the soil, in the bark of the trees, in the skies above. Everything was connected as if it were a tapestry. I imagined myself staying there forever. Letting this body decay to compost. Nourishing something far greater than myself.  

In my youth, I was raised in Christianity. And I was taught about Jesus and his solitary sojourn to the desert. Even though now, I have left organized religion behind, that story still speaks to me. It revealed a need we all have to seek out that which cannot be found in the midst of others. And to face our demons, as Jesus faced Satan. In a sense, facing the darkness within us.

This solitude isn’t the same as the type of aloneness which modern society imposes on us. We have created a kind of atomized existence where we are expected to be independent. Individual fortitude and self-reliance have become virtues that are endlessly lauded. While the sages and scions of our age continually tout “wellness”, the model so many of us have internalized is “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”. Ironically, when that phrase originated, it was intended to mock such a concept as ridiculously impossible.  

Now, as we find ourselves in the maw of late capitalism, we see how that idea has worked out. Our fragile biosphere, the living web of life we all rely on, has been given a backseat to the “economy”. The irony of this is that this economic arrangement was never built to benefit all of us. And we are only now beginning to see this Faustian bargain for what it is: self-destruction.

None of this is to suggest that everything about modern life is evil or destructive. There is still art, music, literature, dance. And I am not a Luddite. I appreciate the sciences, the advances of modern medicine, the exploration of the universe and of this wondrous world we live on. And I enjoy electricity and other technological conveniences. Even social media, with its copious flaws, still has room to make real connections with real human beings. And it can galvanize people to take a stand against injustice or brutality.

But all of this is tenuous if we think and act as though we are above nature and not dependent upon it. Or if we become convinced, we do not need other people in order to thrive and feel meaning. And I fear that too many of us are attaching our mental, emotional and spiritual health to a system that, in the end, doesn’t care for us in the least except as a commodity to be traded when it is profitable.

Solitude gives us a chance to pause in this frenetic and abusive culture. If we listen closely, it forces us to realize that this is not the way things are supposed to be. If we feel alien to this world of illuminated screens and sprawling concrete, maybe it is because we are. It was not designed for us to pause. Not created for us to connect with each other. A world of endless distraction and obfuscation. So, to stand outside of it, even for a short time, can be a revolutionary act.

Kenn Orphan, April 2023

*Photo is one of my own, and is Mushamush Lake, Nova Scotia.

Recently, I’ve been listening to The Lost Birds: An Extinction Elegy, by American composer Christopher Tin. It is an arrangement based on the poems of Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Christina Rossetti. It is sung beautifully by Voces8 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Tin composed this marvelous arrangement as a memorial to various bird species that have been driven to extinction by habit loss, pollution and encroachment. The pieces soar and dive in a powerful rollercoaster of emotion, especially when one has been a student of extinction for as long as I have.

But it also got me remembering an incident from my childhood. I think I was around the age of 13 when I saw this. I was coming home from school. Actually, I was just outside the school entrance. A small bird was screeching up at me. He seemed inconsolable. I couldn’t understand why, until I saw him hopping up to a mutilated figure. It was the crushed body of a bird like him. Back and forth, he bobbed and shifted. Looking at the crushed corpse, then looking back up to me. I felt its desperation. It was as if to ask why? Why?

It was at that point that I realized species, other than my own, felt. They felt pleasure and pain. But more, they felt sorrow. How else could I explain it? Self interest? Yes, but isn’t sorrow about self-interest, at its core? We feel sorrow because we loved greatly. I know, with confidence, that this small creature had as much feeling as I had on any given day when I felt grief. It felt passion. It felt love. It felt confusion. It felt injustice.  

That experience has haunted me throughout my entire life. I can still see that bird. Its eyes. Its frantic movements. I can still see the crushed cadaver of his mate. And I can still feel the sting of guilt that I didn’t do more. But what could I have done? I remember kneeling and telling him how sorry I was, but what good was that? I gently moved the body of his love off the pavement and under the shade of a shrub nearby so that he could attend to her without danger. Then I walked away, unable to reverse the enormous injury to this small, sentient being.

Birds loom large in our collective storytelling. Anzû wreaked havoc over the ancient Sumerians, Vaqub governed the Mayan underworld. A crow was often associated with death in many European folklores. And Impundula worked with Zulu witches to prey on the vulnerable. But they also come as an omen or as teachers. To the Chinese, Jingwei taught us perseverance. To the Medieval Saxon, partridges taught us kindness. And according to many Indigenous North and Central Americans, hummingbirds taught us love. But these are symbols. Birds, of any variety, exist independent of our anthropomorphism, and they have suffered enormously from our avarice, apathy and cruelty. Still, I cannot deny the influence of these stories on my own reflection.

Fast forward to a time when I worked in hospice care. As a grief counselor. Once again, I was there, kneeling at the bedside of the dying and the bereaved. Feeling useless. Feeling inadequate to the task of stopping the misery that was unfolding. But eventually learning to fill the role I was given. Being there. Offering an ear. Helping with final arrangements. Telling difficult truths about death and preparations and burial. Explaining civil documents. Bringing a cool or warm beverage. A blanket. A hug, when asked. A warm human body.

I’ve realized since, that empathy isn’t about solving anything. It is about presence. It is about being with another in a time of joy or a time of sorrow, without judgement. It isn’t about doing anymore than that. Of course, if someone is in jeopardy our task is to administer assistance as best we can. But so much of life is about coming in after a tragedy has occurred. The aftermath. Arriving at the scene. Sifting through the wreckage. Finding the wounded. Applying healing balms and bandages. Handing out blankets and water. Breaking bad news. Holding and warming. And paying honour to and burying the dead.

I am grateful to have been on both sides of this transaction. Not that I have enjoyed being in either, just that it has given me some insight. Grief is an unforgiving and intrusive visitor. A mood and vibe killer. Bursting in like an insolent, seemingly inconsolable child and smashing all the crockery while they demand even more of your attention. More of your attendance. It is no one you’d consciously invite into your home, much less your head.

But I will admit, these experiences have helped me traverse some dark inner terrain, many of them in recent days. Because some days I feel lost in the miasma of my own grief or melancholy, and this hyper-capitalist dystopia we call civilization. These lanterns help to light my way. And it has deepened my empathy for the wider world of species who suffer daily from our kind. From our endless consumption and trashing. Our mindless drive toward the destruction of the only home we’ve ever known.

Empathy is what makes us human. And it exacts a toll. But its absence is lethal to us and the planet. In a sense, we are all arriving at the scene of a tragedy. The aftermath of an unfolding disaster we often feel powerless to stop. The Sixth Mass Extinction. If we can feel the despair of one small bird, we can surely feel the sorrow of an entire species. We can be present in this moment and provide comfort while paying respect to those beings now gone forever. And right now, this is the best starting point for protecting and preserving what we can, while there is still time left to do so.

Kenn Orphan, March 2023

Photo Credit: Stutchbury Lab: Behavioural and Conservation Ecology

It was a crisp, sunny day in San Diego 20 years ago, when I stood on the curb next to friends and comrades. My placard read: “No War for Oil! No to Imperialism!”. We waited for hours before George W. Bush’s entourage arrived, there to protest his illegal war against Iraq. On the opposite side of the road, counter-protestors jeered and mocked us. One held a sign that said the exact opposite of mine. It became obvious that despite the spin of the Bush administration, his fans knew exactly what this was about. And they reveled in the idea that the American Empire could invade any nation, take anything that it wanted by force, and no one would be able to stop it.

Over the next months to years, those of us on the left endured near constant harassment for our antiwar positions. “Freedom fries,” an imbecilic jab at France for not joining Bush’s “coalition” of death. Journalists and academicians banned, silenced or fired from their jobs. Death threats and accusations of treachery. Indefinite detention. The normalization of “pre-emptive” war. Demonization, attacks and persecution of Muslims. Intrusions into citizen’s (and foreigners) private lives. This was the aftermath of the attacks on 9/11. The malignant growth of a militarized surveillance state that would have repercussions into the present day.

Bush’s unprovoked war on Iraq would proceed to claim hundreds of thousands of lives. Millions more would be forever displaced, scarred and mutilated from the carnage. Fathers and sons would be tortured at Abu Ghraib. Innocent men would be spirited away to a concentration camp in a US-occupied section of Cuba. Children born after battle would suffer from horrific birth defects and cancer thanks to the use of depleted uranium in armaments. An entire region would be destabilized for decades to come. And the US would never have to answer for any of its crimes.

Today, we are witness to the horrors of another war. Putin’s assault on Ukraine. And if one is honest, it is impossible to miss the many similarities to Bush’s war on Iraq. Similar excuses being made to justify barbarism. For Bush it was a “war on terrorism”. To fight an enemy “over there” rather than on US soil. For Putin, it is a “war against Nazis”. To protect Russia from the encroachment of the West. Just like Bush, Putin has persecuted dissidents who oppose his war. Threats, demonization and even imprisonment have awaited many who dissent. In both cases, truth was replaced by meaningless slogans, vulgarity and sentimental nationalism. And in both cases, real flesh was torn, real bones were crushed, real blood has been spilt, and real people have been killed, all thanks to propaganda and lies.

But as Putin justifiably faces charges of war crimes in the International Criminal Court, I cannot help but see the glaring hypocrisy of it all. Bush, a man who destroyed countless lives, walks free. He gets to paint portraits, go to football games with celebrities, and occasionally share wistful nuggets of wisdom to a fawning and forgetful press.

And how many other world leaders and military or state officials are living a life free of prosecution after committing similar crimes? Netanyahu. Modi. Kissinger. Salman. Bolsonaro. Assad. The list is long. Men (and some women) who committed war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, toppled democratically elected governments, oversaw brutal occupations, apartheid, drone bombings of ambulances, weddings, funerals, a grandmother picking okra in her field, a teenager sitting at a café, or provided cover for these crimes. They are not only free from criminal prosecution, they enjoy the spoils of power or prestige as if nothing ever happened. In a sane world, wouldn’t they all be on trial in the Hague?

We are told by some that we are living in a multipolar world now, and that we should be happy about that because the evil American Empire is no longer the primary global power. But this simplistic worldview conveniently ignores other forms of despotism, imperialism, colonialism and oppression. It makes it seem that the US is the sole arbiter of barbarity and injustice. It makes it easy for some to erase the lives of others who languish and suffer under a different sphere of oppression. And it obliterates solidarity for the international working class, which exists independent of the government it languishes under.

Regardless of whether we are living in a unipolar or multipolar world, the effects of this arrangement of power remain virtually the same for most of us. The powerful, in whatever polarity they may reside in, use their assets, armaments, institutions and political leverage to avoid prosecution for their crimes. All the while, they get book deals, go on speaking tours, get wined and dined at lavish restaurants and resorts, and stuff their bloated coffers with coin. In the meantime, ordinary people, especially in the Global South, are exploited, slaughtered, displaced, disappeared and brutalized. And the living earth itself continues to be besieged and rendered unlivable thanks to their unbridled greed and rampant militarism. It is worth reminding that unipolarity or multipolarity are meaningless terms on a dead planet.

Twenty years ago I protested an illegal, unprovoked war of imperialism against a sovereign nation. Today, I protest the same. Unequivocally. Because the stench of hypocrisy is more than I can bear. Because solidarity with people is far more important than solidarity to any state entity. I choose a sane world, however elusive, where all power is held to account, over normalizing, justifying or providing excuses for the insanity and barbarism we see around us today. Because, no matter who it is, be it the US, NATO, Russia or any other powerful state actor on the world stage today, their destination for us is the same. And it leads to our collective demise.

Kenn Orphan, March 2023