The World and other Places.

My potassium iodate is stuck in Customs somewhere.

Last week I was talking about how the stability of our world is the hands of a few unstable men. Netanyahu has just made things much worse for all of us, but hey, he needs to take the attention off starving women and children in Gaza. Bombing Iran recasts him in his preferred SuperHero slot of Victim and Avenger. Instead of just another murdering bully.

And it takes the pressure off at home too. Ultra-right wing religios in Israel support the war in Gaza, but they don’t want to lose the military service exemption for their children. Those young people need to study the scriptures. Other folks’ kids can do the dying.

The whole thing is revolting. It doesn’t matter whether it’s ultra-orthodox Jews, the Ayatollah, End-Time Armageddon-loving Christians in the USA, Modi madness that hates the Muslims, because they aren’t Hindus, Putin mania that wants Ukraine, Putin mania supported by the Russian Orthodox church. Oh God… what God? Whose God? All these damn sky gods justifying the invading and destroying. And we’re not even talking about invading Greenland or who should ‘control’ Kashmir. Or what the Taliban is doing to women in Afghanistan. What the Manosphere is hoping to do to women everywhere. We are in a vortex of hatred.

When I was a teenager and I used to complain about my hometown to my mother, Mrs Winterson, she always told me not to worry because it would be utterly destroyed in the Apocalypse.

‘Even Marks and Spencer?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but Woolworths first.’

I know these people from the inside out. I was raised by them. They are not secular. The non-believing progressives fail when they approach this spreading madness rationally, any of it, because faith is not rational.

And this is why I am stocking up on a few things in my middle- of- nowhere life. Including the potassium iodate, in case some god-fearing male detonates a nuclear weapon.

I accept that a bit of something to counter the effects of radiation probably won’t do me any good at the time. But it makes me feel better now. I have food and medical supplies. Water purifying tablets and plenty of torch batteries. A few nice solar lanterns. I always have candles and firewood. The wind-up solar radio is cute. A 2G phone is cheap. I will do what I can. I roamed around the prepper sites when I was researching my book on AI - because prepping and religious end-time are plaited together, just as Big Tech and prepping go arm in arm. What you don’t see on those sites is anything that will help the heart, the mind, or the soul, survive. There’s nothing about about a book of poems or your favourite novel in the grab-bag. No tiny sketch pad. A mouth organ. Plenty about crossbows. I haven’t bought one.

Potassium iodate is used to prevent the uptake of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland. So I am thinking, what do I need in my prepper-stash to prevent material that is morally and emotionally radioactive from doing me permanent damage?

What would it be? Potassium Iodate for the Soul?

The great thing is that as soon as you think about it, you know what it is.. If the power is off, you can’t watch Netflix but you can read by whatever light is available. You can write if you have a notebook and pens. You can draw. You can tell stories to your family, or if you are alone, to your dog. Or to yourself. But that depends on knowing some stories to tell.

At events I do, I encourage the audience to reflect on what stories they know by heart - whether it’s fairy tales or ghost stories, adventures from history, discoveries from science, anything that unfastens the mind from where it’s stuck in time. Anything that draws resource from inside, rather than waiting to be entertained.

At present we have terrible world news all day every day. It’s important to be informed. Important to read good journalism, opinion, comment, from a range of thinkers, whether or not we wholly agree with their views. But it’s just as important to read for pleasure. To go to the theatre if we can, see a band, to listen to music, take that walk and get some air, instead of doomscrolling on your phone. Think of this as prepping.

You are preparing your mind and your spirit to withstand difficulty and loss. Hardship and sadness. You are building inner resources to manage life when it becomes unmanageable on the outside. Even if the world were not in this state, our own lives are unpredictable. We lose friends, lose jobs, lose lovers, the money suddenly vanishes. The kids leave home. Are we prepared? How can we prepare?

Wise advice tells us to keep some savings, learn new skills, make sure we have friends. That’s all good. Not often are we encouraged to read a poem every day. To plan our reading list for the month ahead so we have something to look forward to. To listen to music, not as background but as meditation - might just be for 10 mins a day. To decide to draw a tree, and do that every day until we learn to draw a tree. To go to a gallery, because it’s free, and to look at one or two things only, and carry them in your minds for the rest of the week.

These things sustain us at the time and they build up resilience. If we are going to survive whatever is coming towards us in this world, if we want to help others - and helping others is a duty as a well as a joy, as all religions tell us, (but the religios aren’t reading those bits right now) Anyway, to be this person, this person with compassion and values, we need more than cash in the sock drawer and extra tins of tomatoes. Humans are hybrids. Of course we have to be practical and manage our outer life. But if we have no inner life we won’t last long. Covid lock-downs showed millions of people that without the outside world they had nothing in their lives. What interested me is that that this didn’t prompt any national reflection, or government initiatives to reset the conversation towards a deeper understanding of our human needs. If we are only outward facing we will not manage bad times or solitude. We won’t help ourselves and we won’t be able to help others.

So, this is a good moment to prep. To read more, think more, have real conversations with real friends about our values, about what we believe in, about what matters. You may well disagree with your friends, and that in itself is stimulating. What do you stand for? Do you know? Be clear, not woolly. Where would you compromise? If ICE agents were ripping folks in your neighbourhood out of bakeries and laundries, restaurants and car washes, what would you do? If protest becomes a criminal offence, will you protest? Will I? Is any war ever justified? Will you fight if there is conscription? How will you fight back against the madness?

And if you had to leave your home in a hurry, what one or two books will you take with you?

I would take Italo Calvino Invisible Cities, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass. Probably a book of fairy tales if not too heavy. I would choose these books because they are high calorie energy-dense reads. I would take a pack of Tarot cards for images and meditation. A notebook and pens. The rest I have inside me and I hope it will hold.

Think about all this. It’s not a waste to time. It’s a way of life. Perhaps it is life.