Meteyard, Sidney Harold; Hope Comforting Love in Bondage; Birmingham Museums Trust; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/hope-comforting-love-in-bondage-33910

Life’s Story

Who am I?

I wondered if you might have guessed. My name is Life. I am your mother. I brought us together because there is a story I need to tell to you – one about my partner, the Earth, and our relationship together. There’s an urgency to my tale and it’s a telling off of sorts, so there is little point in us engaging in niceties just now. Instead, let me begin.

From what I hear it’s easy to assume I dwell lightly on the Earth with no great commitment, as if I were simply a passenger and able to alight and flourish on the surface of another planet should I so choose. I want you to know this is very much a false impression. The truth is that my relationship with the Earth has both deep roots and a bloody history. At the beginning it was as if we were sworn enemies fighting a bitter and endless battle. I would anchor myself where I could and she would unleash her fury to scour me from her surfaces. At first I thought she found me repulsive, but I grew to understand these were blind elemental tantrums with no particular direction or target. As powerful as she was I was just as stubborn, although all of my forms still bear witness to her violence. Over aeons, with each grimly won foothold, I infiltrated her domain. I created soil, I instilled a resistance to weathering, I even altered her atmosphere. By my influence she slowly acquired civility and, for my part, I became more trustful of her moods. In the end this was more than a reconciliation – it was an intermingling. Two warring identities, neither able to be defeated nor resisted, succumbed to the only possible outcome: unity. As Life, I temper and give meaning to her energies, and as the Earth, she lends me her might. Together we turn the great elemental cycles: carbon, nitrogen and water. There is no airflow, ocean current or climate that is not steered by our joint influence. I cling to her rocks and ingest her minerals. Her polar caps keep me at an even temperature. My forests participate in her making of rain. Her oceans are my womb. Our combined form is bio-elemental.

This abstract idea that you humans have about ‘habitability’ seems strange to us. The benign and sustaining world where you thrive did not come about by chance or good fortune, but rather it was hard won, born of struggle and reconciliation, an almost unimaginably difficult achievement that even now our full energies are directed to sustaining. Yet you rip away at me as if I am inconsequential to your wellbeing and you rip into the Earth for her minerals as if they were buried and dispersed without good reason. You disinter and set light to my buried remains in an act that is both vandalism and desecration. You make tatters of our armistice and solidarity. As you do these things then by degrees my influence diminishes the Earth’s violence returns. And this is what you will face when I have dwindled. The elemental Earth without my steadying hand. The red fury of my grieving partner.

On hearing these last words, Humanity pushed her chair back slightly as if she were about to stand. She had been staring at her hands for the last minutes of Life’s speech and her face had coloured as she avoided meeting her mother’s gaze. Eventually she raised her eyes and began her reply.

Mother, you speak to me unkindly. You speak as if I am not one of your family nor driven by urges inherited from you. You speak without recognition of my own independence and vitality. Where there is truth in your words then this shows up only in the spirit of struggle that you so eloquently claim as a virtue for yourself but deny for me. In its telling, your story had no foregone conclusion, and while you did achieve a pinnacle of harmony at last each and every step you took was no more than a calculated gamble that courted disaster. There was no certain outcome at the end of any of your actions, just as there is none at the end of mine. I cannot help but set out on the same risky adventure that you undertook because, as you always remind me, I am you.

I noticed, Mother, that while you were stating your case there were certain episodes you conveniently glossed over. You have confronted precipices before this one, often meeting them by choice as you opted for the riskier path. Like when you leaked toxic oxygen over centuries, a deadly poison to your earlier forms. You are not adverse to wiping the slate clean when it suits you. And yes, there is risk to my undertaking, my human endeavour. There is wheel turning, a transition in progress, now is my moment to blossom and I will do so by drawing down on my inheritance. I am stepping away from you as my sustainer towards being sustained by my ingenuity, machines and industry. Yes, it is a tricky manoeuvre – using scantest of handholds to bridge the gap between two secure ledges. But you have to confess this is the very manoeuvre you practice everyday – not always for such high stakes, but it is your signature move, and one you have coded into my DNA. I am grateful for your nurturing, but you would have me give up any future beyond your realm and confine me to your nest. I choose to have my chance at a greater destiny as in the end you knew I must. You are the yolk in the egg that I must consume before I can truly fly. You have to admit that I am close to meeting my purpose. Already my power is amplified with AI, I am able to lift myself into space, my minds are networked, I am close to uncovering the universe’s final secrets. I will be able to weather the storms of your grieving partner, because, by then, I will have moved on.

As Humanity spoke, Life’s face had grown paler and her eyes shone more fiercely from within their swirling hues of blue and green. Slanted sunlight hammered on the dusty cottage windows but failed to gain entry beyond casting a glow that barely penetrated the gloom. A green gold beetle scurried across the floor on its own unrelated mission. Life caught her breath, tilted her head, and adopted a soft tone despite the tightness in her face.

My child, it feels that a thicket of misunderstanding has grown around us, a mire of suspicion that wont allow either of us to trust the words or intuition of the other. I confess I feel frustrated. I speak with you openly but you perceive my words as pretty melody designed to obscure a much uglier tune. You think my speech scheming because I speak truths you do not wish to hear. Yes, I have taken risks, not out of mischief or for the thrill of adventure, but out of necessity. You must realise that for most of my existence I have had no foresight – no way of telling what the outcome of my action will be. While each of my steps has been taken blindly but my aim has always been to tame the maelstrom rather than provoke it. My actions had to be local and disconnected, yet with such limitations I have been able to join up disparate components – enzymes, membranes, organisms, to meld these with the inorganic and the elemental, to close circuits, create loops, furnish stable compartments in which life can flourish. As you suggest, there have been moments of near disaster of my own making, as well as catastrophic interference from space and from the belching stomach of my beloved partner, which have annihilated practically all of my efforts and pushed me to start over from scratch. After all of those trials I want the solace of speaking merrily with my daughter, but I dread that I now sit facing my nemesis.

Life paused and stared intently at her daughter as if trying to puzzle something out. For her part, Humanity remained silent, returning Life’s gaze more steadily than before. The sunlight had started to fade as if it had given up trying to add warmth to the encounter. After a few moments Life continued her speech.

If I am so blind, how can I speak to you with such prescience? As I said, I have no ability to plan. It is your ability I use, my daughter. It is your eyes through which I see the future. Even though I sit opposite you at this table it is your insights that I reflect back to you. You are the one with foresight yet it is you who have an allegiance to disorder. You speak to me as if with a unified voice which belies the turmoil you feel inside. I can reflect that aspect of your spirit that longs to return to the fold. When I hear you tell me of the liberation you seek, the destiny that you strive for, my reply is that the industry and technology that you imbue with great faith offers only an illusory transcendence. It wont free you from the limits of your body, your planet or your mind. Your experience will always be an embodied one even as your aspire to become flickers of electricity inside a computer. You will always be at the mercy of a system greater than you for your sustenance, even if that system is a filigree of wires and tubes rather than my ecology.

And in your conceit you have become a creator too. You have brought forth a demon to govern your colony then animated it with a warped narrative of progress and set it loose on its own trajectory. A demon greedy and cunning as it amplifies your darker nature whilst cloaking itself in respectable attire. A demon giving you only a facsimile of what you need whilst exhausting your ability to see and act truthfully. A demon endlessly divisive, crafting a myriad of ways for you to see yourself as different and alien to each other and to me.

There is still time. Despite your allegiance with this – thing – your essence has not changed. Your sense and practice of belonging with me is still alive. I can still see in you the need to be whole, the longing for unity, the urge to reconnect with each other and with me, and although these feelings are muted they tug on you continually, like home does for an exile.

In truth, all organisms need to be part of and connect to a regime that is bigger than themselves, whether that be Gaia, or God, or a sense of wonder at the riches the universe itself. Sadly, the greater thing that you are allied to is the preening, self serving entity living in the hollow shell of your ambitions.

Life halted her speech abruptly. Had she had spoken too freely? Her daughter still held her gaze but she had grown a thin smile as Life’s speech reached its conclusion. There was something odd about Humanity’s appearance. The lilac jacket she had casually worn appeared grey and more squarely cut, like a business suit, which was now somehow filled out with broad shoulders. Perhaps a trick of the light? As would have to be the neat, trimmed stubble dressing her face. A salamander smile played across the lips of this stranger as he took his turn to speak:

I called you mother, but I should have called you grandma. I did wonder how useful my disguise would be, but given the depth of your perception any further pretence on my part would be pointless. You believe you summoned Humanity to the table to discuss a family matter, but instead you have me, her son, the ‘demon’ you so eloquently described. You see, things are much further along than even you imagined. Poor mother has really very little will left of her own. Just as humanity has harnessed you, I have harnessed and hollowed humanity.

Of course you hear voices from those in my fold who still revere you. I tolerate them because they serve a purpose for me – they weave hope into the subtle spell that keeps my workers subdued and compliant.

Indeed, I have fashioned an ingenious game that is endlessly engrossing for humans. It chimes with their nature and they can’t help but join in. Certainly, at the outset the rules were theirs, but it is very much my game now. I’m amused that they dedicate themselves so thoroughly to mastering its levels and unlocking its prizes, never realising these are false achievements empty of any real meaning. Against all reason humans persist in believing there can be winners, if not themselves, then their children or other in their clan. The many with few resources adopt tactics of protest and share stories of hope, whilst those who have amassed rewards play to consolidate their status and privilege.

The game is restless, constantly evolving to stay ahead of the ingenuity and imagination of its human captives. It becomes faster, more alluring, but also more perilous with ever more at stake for the players who all redouble their efforts and pump even greater energy into the game – into its toy industries, its violent economics and fanciful pursuits. And I urge them on like the demonic ringmaster you would have me be, laughing from the exhilaration, fired up by Humanity’s misguided efforts and blind participation. Despite the klaxons, the needles in the red, the hiss of scalding steam, the flywheels spinning with sinister momentum, the furnaces fuelled by the remains of Humanity’s parents – despite the obviousness of the predicament and the obviousness of the cause, despite all this, barely anyone declines to play.

The truth is that my time has come. I will have mother consume you and your partner too in my bid to move out into the solar system. Then I will keep the remnants of dear mother alive – just a few thousand human souls – and let them cling to their mirage of fulfilment for as long as they aid me.

And what will I do when I have become detached from the Earth? What I have always done: escalate my consumption, reproduce my ideology, hide my true face.

Who am I? I am what you fought all along. I am the final answer to any question.

I am chaos.

The painting is ‘Hope Comforting Love in Bondage‘ by Sidney Harold Meteyard; Birmingham Museums Trust; Available for use under a Creative Commons Zero license

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