Platform 14

  • May Day!

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    By Shelley Griffiths

    Platform 14

    Unless you have managed to obtain a level of blissful ignorance to the degree that you no longer see what is going on in the world, you’ll know it all seems to be going a bit wrong. Whether it’s wars, genocide, the worsening climate crisis, the cost of living crisis, cultural sociopathy or just how violent and unkind the world now seems, it’s hard not to let it get you down. 

    To put it simply, if you are paying attention, you can’t possibly be happy with what is going on around us. Add to that a sense of powerlessness in this dystopian nightmare that we call civilisation, it can get to the point where the existential crisis can only lead to either a reclusive implosion or an angry explosion. Frontline activism or apocalypse-prepping hermitage. I tend to alternate between the two unless I’m going through a Zen phase, where I accept what is without rage. I must confess that is not often. I’d like to say that I’m working on being more Zen-like and meditating and praying more, but as there are so many demands on me right now, (this is the busiest time of year for veg farming) rage is a useful motivator. However, because I’m often quite tired, my rage is more of an exasperated huff that I will not let the haters and naysayers win, rather than a growling fierceness these days. 

    I’d like to be more Christlike and share the sentiment that we should ‘forgive them, for they know not what they do’, but in truth, I fear they know very well what they are doing and they just don’t care. If I were to express myself fully at the demise of our species I would either be arrested or committed, so instead, I channel my despair into my writing, and more recently into stand-up comedy. Those that only know me as an outspoken activist and those that have railed against my typically autistic plain speaking might not think I’m funny. But here’s the thing: while I love love love making people laugh, there’s something quite powerful (and dare I say mischievously addictive) in creating an awkward tumbleweed moment when the truth hits hard. So, if I’m funny that’s great. And If I’m not, I made you listen whether you liked it or not. Win win for me. The awkward moments of truth bombing make for great storytelling when I regale them in my never ending stream of narrating my life.

    Without oestrogen coursing through my veins making me all soft and nurturing anymore, I’m less patient than I used to be. The subsequent intolerance to bullshit along with the refusal to accept the normalisation of gaslighting and manipulation by sociopathic behaviours has helped me to secure strong boundaries. That has really worked in my favour in being able to live in this messed up world. 

    I have been trying to find compassion and patience for my fellow humans since I was three years old when I was sent to school ridiculously early as a gifted child with a savant mother who was very proud of me and my cursive handwriting. It wasn’t long before I realised logic does not prevail in either the classroom or at home. This is a common experience for undiagnosed autistic children and I have always felt like I am not like others. I wondered if I might be from another planet, or perhaps a dolphin trapped in a human body. But not human.

    My spiritual journey took a new direction when I became aware of the barbaric practices of eating our fellow sentient beings; a sick and twisted behaviour we call animal agriculture. When I found out the truth about what actually happens, particularly in factory farms, I ran around telling people the awful reality of how we have been hypnotised into thinking this is normal while hoping that they would do what I did when I found out the truth; to go vegan immediately. 

    Sadly, not only did this course of action lose me family and friends who still avoid me to this day, I also discovered with utter dismay that there are two types of people: the first (and the most common) are those who are triggered into an aggressive cognitive dissonance because the truth is uncomfortable, and will do everything to continue supporting the cruelty with flimsy excuses, and then there are those, who like me, are forever changed by the realisation of what we were supporting and vow to evolve immediately. Which type are you? Watch Dominion, Cowspiracy, Pignorant or any of the documentaries that expose the truth and see if your tastebuds still win over having integrity once you know the truth. It takes a soul that is lost to the dark to know the truth and still choose cruelty. What are you choosing for your soul?

    If you are still a carnist, or even worse, a vegetarian (the meat industry is actually less cruel than the dairy industry which is also the meat industry, but with added rape, baby stealing and exploitation added to the cruelty) then this might make uncomfortable reading. Especially if you came here thinking I was going to make you laugh because you found this blog through my comedy networking. I might say something funny later if you hang on in here. Or I might just hurl the truth at you like a chimpanzee at the zoo throwing faeces at the plexiglass. 

    It’s rather marvellous that I started doing stand-up comedy. Without sounding too dramatic, I’d even go as far as to say it’s been a life saver because last year was probably the worst year of my life. Not only did I lose my beloved pooch of seventeen years, but the vegan family I thought I had found by creating an intentional community at Vegan Valley fell apart. It all collapsed when we failed to raise the finances to buy the adjoining property at Vegan Valley and people I thought were lovelies who claimed to share our vision for a community based on kindness turned out to be largely ego-led, self-serving and unkind. I’m still in disbelief that people who are mostly lovely could behave so appallingly.

    We had one community member who was training to be ordained as a Buddhist minister sneak her belongings away when we weren’t there leaving us to deal with a rotting caravan she left up the furthest end of the land and she even left us a bucket of her shit to deal with. Not the behaviour you’d expect from someone training for ministry.

    Shocked and dismayed, I scuttled inside myself for several months. The comic irony of people joining a community based on kindness only to be thoroughly unkind was wasted on me while I reeled from the rejection dysphoria that often accompanies neurodiversity. 

    I still continued working, living, eating and being but my grief was at times debilitating. My grief started expressing itself with worsening pain all over my body. With IBS, fibromyalgia, insomnia, hot flushes, menopausal brain fog and so many tears I think I actually did cry a river, my sorrow was all consuming and relentless. Neurodiverse people often feel the pain of injustice more keenly than most, so rage became an integral part of my recovery. First you get mad, then you get sad. Then you heal.

    Prior to last year, the pandemic coupled with total disappointment that my fellow humans could vote in greedy criminals to lead us, and of course the Brexshit debacle made me despair. Add estrangement from my family including my only son, and my mental health started to really decline after I lost my adorable little dog Tuki. I had a couple of spectacularly dramatic meltdowns (behind closed doors and not in a supermarket as was a regular place to fall apart as a child) but still off the scale on my internal cringeometer. 

    You always find out who is there for you when you are in crisis. I ended friendships with people who were clearly only fair-weather friends and ran away to Cardiff to live on a houseboat and write my memoirs which were suitably bleak for someone having a breakdown. 

    As with all breakdowns, they are always breakthroughs in disguise, and my healing became more apparent when I started to become intensely bored by my malaise. I started to see the comedy in my sad broken existence with journals called things like ‘The Private Musings of a Broken Flip-flop’. I either poured my heart out in tragic streams of consciousness or dissociated with intermittent fantasies of becoming a nymph of the woods, and shunning people and society entirely. 

    When I started writing ‘The Eco Village’ (a spoof documentary television series) I started to find myself grateful for the truly awful and equally wonderful characters we have encountered during my mission to create an actual vegan eco village. It changed my perspective. What happened says far more about them than it does me, and whilst I do not claim to be without flaws, my altruistic heart remains keen to share what I have with others and not let people in survival mode stop me or the wonderful vision we have for Vegan Valley.

    I’ve always been goofy and toddleresque in my unmasking around Paul and he encouraged me to pursue stand-up when I started thinking about it. I joked that his encouragement could be a cruel trick to see me humiliate myself on stage but what I really feared was that he was misguided like the lovestruck partners and parents of X-Factor contestants that have no talent. 

    I took the gamble of planting myself in the spotlight as a parody of myself and making people laugh with my observational comedy. Despite my inability to ‘fit in’, I’m surprisingly relatable. Who knew?! And without having to navigate the complicated nuances of two-way conversations, I can just allow hyperlexic autistic Shelley to unmask and share my observations on this mad world into a microphone with an audience willing to listen. It’s liberating. 

    In my obsessive need to understand why people behave the way they do, I extended my research and learning into areas of how trauma affects our brain wiring. I practiced EMDR and somatic healing. I learned how trauma can trigger us into survival mode. Myself included. We should all forgive ourselves and each other for choices we make when we are in survival mode. 

    People who operate from their amygdala and the fight or flight mode of survival are not thriving. I considered all the reasons why we aren’t thriving and came full circle to the realisation that my original vision all those years ago for a self-sustaining community where we leave the toxicity of the rat-race behind and carve out an existence where we have the time, energy and motivation to do more than just exist is still the answer. To create a place where we can thrive. To achieve that we need to feel safe to be ourselves.

    I’m planning more stand-up gigs and am working on a travelling show I would love to take to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival called ‘Laugh While You Can’, a variety show of sorts where I take up the mantle of the sandwich board wearer warning that the end is nigh on one side and a joke about it the other side. It’s creative activism that mocks our mad society and I have to say, brings me much joy. Thriving whilst the planet is burning seems an odd concept, but it’s really the only way to get through it. 

    There’s nothing quite like a sense of purpose to add meaning to life. The more people that decide to thrive and share the abundance that doing so brings, the more the pendulum swings towards a complete cultural turnaround and salvation for our species. In short, the worse it gets the closer we are to revolting and choosing kindness over consumerism, equity over capitalism and peace over war. To choosing a better way to live. 

    Hopefully, I’m also planting seeds of consciousness through my comedy, whether it’s with laughs or awkward silences. Who knows what will blossom a result.

    Written in May 2024

  • Your Body, My Choice

    A Pastor Shells Soapbox Sermon

    November 7th 2024

    I’ve seen quite a few social media posts today where American women report having been approached by men and told “your body, my choice”. It seems like a terrifying devolution of our species and witnessing how quickly we appear to be regressing leaves me with a feeling of despair. I keep having to remind myself that despair is often a precursor to significant change and action. When things go from irritating to enraging, we are often mustered into reacting. 

    Despair is often a precursor to significant change and action.

    I feel the collective rage against the machine gathering momentum and that we are on the precipice of great change. The dying beast of capitalist patriarchy is baring it’s teeth and clawing it’s way into our perception with the audacity of a sociopath that thinks he is invincible. But he isn’t. He’s getting bolshy, but that will be his undoing. You’ll see. 

    I have said it before right here in my previous blog posts, but I will say it again: brace yourself because things will seem to get worse, however let’s consider that maybe they need to. Where people were hesitant in the past to say the racist or misogynistic things they were thinking, they are now emboldened by this bizarre ‘handmaid’s tale’ development of the ugly political landscape governing our western counterparts across the pond. Dark souls feel safe enough to show us who they are and fragile masculinity has found his voice. Insecure white men labelling their toxic far right narratives as supremacy and by doing so, they out themselves so that we can see their true colours at last. If the genocide of vulnerable people in countries away from your own hasn’t spurred you into action, may the threat of your own safety or those dear to you finally wake you up. Have you seen what’s happening? Do you care? Empathy seems to be dying so if you still have any, this is your call to action.

    On a positive note, it is more likely that rather than things getting worse, they are simply getting revealed; the veil disguising the covert darkness that has ruled us is finally being lifted. More and more people can start to see the evil we are dealing with. The good news is that the greedy sociopaths and their minions aren’t particularly bright, so whilst it’s heartbreaking to see the worldwide human and animal rights crisis worsen, we should try to find hope in the old adage that given enough rope, they will hang themselves. The louder they become, the more our global apolitical apathy will alchemise into an uprising that is long overdue. Our general indifference, abject consumerism and the selfishness prevalent in our time needs jolting into awareness and action. So come on, what are you waiting for? Now is the absolute best time to take action! If you still think the privilege you currently enjoy is going to protect you, wake up and look at how close it’s getting to you. If you care about your children, your sisters, in fact all your fellow humans (and non-humans) then it’s time to gather and ready yourself to change things. It’s time to create communities, to meet and discuss ways forward that can replace this dystopian nightmare we think is reality. 

    The more the pendulum swings towards misogyny, greed, depravity, and darkness, the closer we are to a sharp swing the other way towards kindness, compassion and the evolution we require to survive as a species. In short, the worse it appears to get, the closer we are to a revolution. To evolution.

    There has never been a better time to come together and rise up. I am not talking about mass civil disobedience like the violent protesting with the poll tax riots in the 1980s. No, I am talking about coming together as communities to choose between ourselves how we want to live, and then just getting on with doing that. While the rest of the world are arguing, we can exit the system, and do it with love and compassion. Instead of fighting them, we can channel our energy into stepping away from dysfunctional systems designed to have us turning against each other and choose love. It’s very simple really. Reject all that is dark and step into the light. Be honourable. Be willing to be held accountable for your actions. Be honest. Be kind. 

    Turn the telly off. Stop eating body parts that lower your vibrations and put death in your belly. Stop poisoning yourself. Stop working all the hours to buy things that you do not need and will never make you happy. Stop trying to escape reality with booze and drugs and the fleeting dopamine highs of shallow pleasure seeking. Stop doom scrolling. 

    We need to be growing our own food and sharing our resources and loving one another regardless of our differences. By coming together and rejecting the divisive narratives being thrust upon us, we can unite and prioritise in ways that lead to better ways of living, of communicating, having better life balances, eating healthier food, and generally waking up and seeing what needs to be done. When it comes down to it, growing our own food as communities and sharing what we have with those less fortunate (without discrimination) is the solution to many of the problems we face.

    The worse it appears to get, the closer we are to a revolution. To evolution.

    I’m seeing more and more communities form with people choosing to kill their egos and embrace a more altruistic lifestyle; where the bigger picture takes precedence over feathering their own nests. If the apocalypse is coming, or perhaps is already upon us, then compassion and humbleness is what will save us, not grappling to have more or pursue personal shallow desires. It’s time to find what connects us rather than focussing on what divides us.

    People are finally realising the pursuit of happiness is a negative experience as it focusses on what you lack. Instead, we can give up chasing the more shallow goals of wealth, status and worldly success, and enjoy a paradoxical manifesting of the abundance we have already. It calls us to serve one another and practice gratitude for choices we can make that will unite us. We actually have everything we need to thrive without causing harm to each other so it’s time to collectively choose that. It’s time to get back to basics. Back to nature. Back to each other. Devoting your life to causing as little harm as possible creates a purpose that compensates for the struggles of doing so. Being aware of the consequences of your actions and choosing better is how to evolve.

    The sheer arrogance of anyone thinking what happens to another being’s body is their choice should create a dialogue where carnists start to see their own arrogance in thinking fellow sentient beings are mere body parts to put on their plates.

    The feminist position that no man should be able to govern women’s reproductive systems must surely also translate to what we do to females that are not human. The toxic superiority that anyone can think that someone else’s body is for the taking or exploiting or governing without their consent is finally being discussed the world over because of recent events, so let’s keep that going. Consent was a buzz word with the ‘me too’ movement, so let’s revive the concept of consent; not just amongst humans but to all beings that deserve the right to live, to be free and to choose their way of life. 

    You can’t call yourself a feminist and be okay with babies being taken from their mothers because you want their breastmilk in your tea. You can’t challenge the toxic superiority that we have the right to control, exploit or govern body parts of sentient beings without also examining your own choices. The hypocrisy will become more obvious as the backlash regarding consent reaches a momentum where it’s on the lips of the majority. The mirror being held up as to who we are as a species is truly topical at the moment and that is a good thing. It’s time to challenge the reflection. To encourage kinder choices. To become more compassionate. To celebrate what is good and kind about us.

    The saying that it is your body, your choice must also mean it’s your planet and your choice. Choose wisely and choose quickly as future generations are depending on you.

    The meek will inherit the earth, so choose kindness. Your soul is yearning for it, the planet is desperate for it. It’s time.