Dear Santa,
For Christmas this year, my wish is a simple one.
Please send a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland to the technocrats. My hope is that the story’s magical fantastical encourages them to realise that in their rabbit hole of big pharma, big food, big everything, they are nothing more than the Queen of Hearts painting the white roses red.
Santa, when you ride in the sky tonight, take a moment to look around the technocrat’s rabbit hole. You’ll see fields and fields of life-making soil covered up with solar panels. I know, where are the Christmas Trees of the future going to grow? And if that wasn’t change enough, some of your favourite words, like truth and happiness, have been given new meanings. It’s probably best that you stop off at a local independent bookshop on your way and pick up a dictionary to double check those definitions. I really hope that in all this topsy-turvy you haven’t been identified as misinformation and added to the cancellation list.
“Santa. Cancelled. Never.” I hear you cry. But from the technocrat’s point of view, you are a non-tax paying myth, whose media and resources can’t be controlled and who doesn’t fit easily onto an excel sheet. Even worse, you radiate hope and traverse spheres. And even worse than that, you have three things that they most want. No Santa, not a toy making factory, a red coat and a mighty beard. You can read minds, are immortal and self-sustain and this makes you a serious target for kidnapping and cancellation.
No, I’m not being alarmist. When am I ever alarmist, Santa? No, please don’t get your list out. But in all honesty, I do feel that we are living through an invisible war that is attacking every pillar of civilisation. As culture is ambushed, uniqueness and mystery are painted over and the human, hypnotised by fear and micro-nudges, steps ever closer to becoming a pure organism of productivity and profit-points. Meanwhile, logic gaps sound the alarm and unfold before us like a Fibonacci pattern. Take for example, New York, where life was seemingly evaluated at the value of a burger during the first roll out of the Covid vaccine. Or the plethora of polarising leaderships popping up all over the world that divide, shame and conquer in the name of equality and freedom. You’d best watch yourself tonight, Santa, in case you and Rudolph fall into a logic gap that delays delivery.
I once planted a viola in a sunny spot in my garden. Do you remember? It was by the front gate. Every day it opened its petals to the sun. One day, I think it was a Tuesday, I noticed that it had disappeared into the soil. I was disappointed – it was the exact spot where I'd wanted to see a viola from my window. Some months later, the same but different viola popped up in another sunny spot in my garden, once again opening its petals to the sun. I couldn’t see it from my window, but when I was in the garden, I could see it bloom and spread under the privacy of the quince. Okay, I hear you Santa, all that blah-blah and why mention a viola if you have one? I’ll get to the point - after all the eve of Christmas is nearly upon us.
In my gardening story, the viola was more powerful than my technocracy. I planted a viola in a place that was technically favourable for the viola but mostly convenient for me. The viola, however, acting on centuries of wisdom, found a better spot to bloom courtesy of a worm, a bird, a tree, the soil, the rain and the sun. And here’s the rub - if humans are of the soil - humus - then we are much more like the entangled viola than the technocrat’s perfectly manicured swim lanes of profit and resource.
As the viola showed us, change happens moment to moment. The issue I have right now is that change doesn’t feel moment to moment. If feels like the technocrats dole out change as a series of painting-by-number kits. There’s the ‘bad cow’ picture, the ‘let’s mandate freedom’ picture, and the ‘who needs the immune system’ picture. And just to be clear, I don’t blame you, Santa, for all those painting-by-numbers gifts you shoved into the Christmas stockings of would-be technocrats from the 1950s onwards.
Santa, I can see the brush the technocrats are asking me to paint with, but I won’t pick it up. I don’t believe their maths – that humans are the problem. I believe that we are the solution in the saving of our world; if we do not surrender our moral imagination in exchange for the industrialised freedom that the technocrats are selling. Okay, so I know that it took me three attempts to get Maths GCSE. But this is just biography. I’m going to trust my maths and take the advice of the Mock Turtle – someone who knows what it is like to lose ‘realness’ and become an assemblage of other things:
“Well, I never heard it before,” said the Mock Turtle; “but it sounds uncommon nonsense.” Alice said nothing; she had sat down with her face in her hands, wondering if anything would ever happen in a natural way again. [Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 10]
This Christmas, I do believe in you, Santa. But I don’t believe that farm animals are world ending and that we should eat printed food. Our childhood stories tell us that the cow jumped over the moon, that pigs can fly and that a chicken crossed the road. Which means animals are similar to humans, right? So, if the writing is on the wall for nature, and humans are part of nature, then logic follows that we are on the technocrat’s wanted list too.
So, before I become one of the ingredients for Mock Turtle soup. I’m willing to give the power of my kindness and imagination a go and be more viola. Yes, sir, I’m keeping my feet firmly on the soil. To do so, I choose the Cheshire Cat as my guide. The cat’s nonchalant philosophy reminds me that rose petals, painted or not, eventually turn to compost.
Santa, may the Cheshire Cat and our imaginations help us find our way out of the technocrat’s rabbit hole. And may the technocrat’s wake up and realise that everyone has a right to paint their own picture, their way.
Thank you for making the world merry and bright, Santa. I hope you make it out of the rabbit hole tonight and return home safely.
With festive wishes,
Louise x