From Ralph

02/25/03

Gods' Drawing Board

(Third World Hell Bent) A MIND COLLAGE set to BLOT MUSIC

Word and Pictures by RALPH STEADMAN

By way of explanation for what follows in 2 parts......

In 1991 I got the chance to travel to Peru with a group of Environmentalists at the invitation of a Public Relations Company, working with the Peruvian Government, called Paccha Mama, which I believe means Mother Earth.

Peru, I learned, following an intense discussion amongst the other guests from all walks of life in the departure lounge at Heathrow Airport, has three distinct geographic regions- The Andes, the Amazon Rainforest, and the entire desert coastal strip of Peru itself. Peru is spiritual home to the last great ancient civilization, the Incas, whose centre, Maccha Pichu, was the centre of their universe. Lima, the capital, is surrounded by rock and sand. The Andes rivers flow through the deserts to the Pacific, creating many Oases, life support areas for many civilizations over many ages. Today, people still use these rivers. Horrifically, the waters are much interfered with, and traces of raw sewage infect them. Children must drink unboiled water. Poverty discourages the luxury of boiling. Ships pour their untreated bilge into ports and coastlines along the way. From the air you can see slow swirling brown currents of pollution oozing into the sea where Lima relieves itself of all its detritus.

And yet, Peru, so I also learned, in that lounge 13 years ago, contains within its fractal boundaries, 84% of all known species of Fauna and Flora and natural resources, the most balanced ecological system in the world. Peru also exports the largest amount of fish meal worldwide, an important agricultural nutrient, so I am told, but profits do not go back to the people, corruption being so deeply embedded in any form of governmental system. Peru is still a Third World country(though our visit was meant to change all that!), and I wrote at the time, full of idealism and naive passion, 'Peru has been described as a beggar sitting on a bench of gold, but eternally exploited by Catholicism and corporate greed, hand in hand with corrupt government, yet that it could be the last great example of a sustainable environment on our planet, before the eventual collapse of bearable life, which is only a matter of years away'. Well, the last government of Fujimori came and went, and still we hang on- 'like banshees to a witch's tit'. When we flew by military helicopter over the Nazca Plateau and saw the Nazca lines, I said too myself, this was God's Drawing Board. This is where he designed the Universe, and the lines are the pressure marks left by his huge pencil. The actual plan had gone. Maccha Pichu, and the Urubamba River, were his laboratory. I wrote two scenarios, based on what I saw. I never realised their theatrical production, but I offer them here purely as an optimistic diversion away from the shit that is about to hit the fan. Hope is the great inner universal force for us all.

The world is moving on, embroiled in yet more egocentric struggles of fundamentalism, corporate criminality and general moral bankrupcy, that what I subsequently wrote, seems even more distant a hope than ever.

Optimistically, I hypothesized, 'Those with money and power, and those allied to the power inherent in the people of this planet themselves, are probably the only probable hope left to avoid a global disaster. It will not be enough to take interim measures to prolong the time we have left. It is now time for business makers to take stock of their business ethics, and for governments to temper their rhetoric about 'justifiable economic realities', ie. to begin to phase out the self-defeating drivel, that if it is business and good for the economy, then it's OK. Corporate monoliths will fight to protest their corporate interests in the name of employment, balance of payments, economic survival, more than my job's worth,etc.- but if the bottom line on the balance sheet says TOTAL=EXTINCTION, then they/we must reassess their/our moral as well as their/our financial values and begin to change the fundamental business premis that exploitation is the road to world prosperity and fulfillment. We have survived 250 years of Industrial Revolution and progress. We will not survive another 250 years. We will not even survive another 25!'.

And here we are, thirteen unlucky years on, contemplating- a FUCKING WAR!! While religion may provide comfort, privately, for the individual, it is poison for hysterical masses- a bastion of unreason and gobbledegook. Mix all that into the wasp's nest of pre-emptive moral highground, while stirring in the jam of mass-destruction, and we'll get the hideous trifle my mother used to make and tell me it was good for me- because she loved me. Bless her heart- she did too!!

So I offer up the following, in a more general sense of what we are really about, not blinded by the masteria of stopping wars starting, or even thinking about it. My vision all began in the last decade of the last Millenium. I harboured some damn fool idea that things were going to get better........ But the 2nd part of my magnum Opus is beginning to work. Thank God for the creative process.

CLICK HERE TO READ GODS' DRAWING BOARD

Contact: joe@ralphsteadman.com