clanciai

 

 

The Fountain House

 

In 1948 the world was drowned in the social problems of the aftermath of the second world war, mainly the countless multitudes of ’displaced persons’. In Europe most of these were of course Jews, and the problem was so overwhelming, that there was no option but to place them in concentration camps, so called Displaced Person Camps, naturally not like the Nazi camps but all the same behind barbed wire, waiting for the problem to be resolved, which it wasn’t in Europe, as long as Prime Minister Clement Attlee of Britain and his foreign secretary Ernest Bevin refused to allow more than a very limited number of Jewish immigrants into Palestine, not to upset the Arabs, who had oil. Chief responsible for these post-war concentration camps was general Patton, who enforced the confinement of these people behind barbed wire, expressing the view that such people only could be treated as cattle.

 

Only president Truman had some human views on the situation, who insisted on Palestine being opened to unlimited immigration. The labour government of Britain was equally insistent on refusing this. Instead, more and more of the displaced persons of Europe saw America as their only possibility.

 

Of course, they were not less displaced over there, and Ernest Bevin cynically attributed the American insistence on the opening of Palestine to the Americans being themselves unwilling to accept the displaced persons, but America did actually take care of them. One of those umbrella organizations was the Fountain House, who in this very year had their first premises opened on 47th Street in New York, which still are their headquarters, the same year in which all the eastern European states were engulfed by the Soviet Union as satellites together with North Korea and Israel finally reached independence and could be opened to free immigration.

 

The activities of the Fountain House had started already in 1940 by a kind of patients’ upheaval in a mental asylum (Rockland State Hospital in New York), where the patients joined hands to help each other back to a normal life by getting themselves discharged and into work. They called themselves We Are Not Alone (after the novel with the same title by James Hilton), and their basic principle has always remained the same through all the years – to help each other by helping themselves. The corner stone is to constantly remain in touch with each other and look after each other – solidarity between victims of society and circumstances.

 

In that way they have nothing to do with any kind of politics or religion, and the activities are not about rehabilitation or health care of any kind. Instead, focus is on those who simply have got lost or met with misfortune, getting stuck in the meaningless blind alleys and vicious circles of the fatal and lethal, arbitrary and soulless bureaucracy of the Kafka society. The individual initiative is underscored as most important of all to regain, when it has been imperilled or eliminated by outer circumstances, and you’ll notice how much more the human dignity is upheld at the Fountain House and its so much safer environment than in society. ICCD (”International Center for Clubhouse Development”, 425 West 47th Street, New York,) has in fact become advisor to the UN and is the only international organization in this field with the possibility to directly influence the secretariat of the UN and governments by expertise advice and partakes in the sessions of ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council of the United Nations).   

 

 

 

Displaced persons

 

Their number are increasing,

all those victims,

not only of society,

but more and more of circumstances

of no accountability for anyone.

They drift along, get lost,

but there is always somewhere

someone waiting for them,

even in your utmost loneliness

you never are alone,

and even if you are,

the crowds of ghosts and memories

are always there reminding you

that you can never separate from life

and least of all by suicide.

There is a fountainhead

that never stops to flow

and keep the current running

of the ever vitally expanding life,

and even if you feel unique about your fate,

you can be certain there are others sharing it.

The problem is, you never are yourself,

but all the life in all the universe

depends on you, for you are part of it.

 

 

 – a tribute to "the Fountain House", or, "The International Center for Clubhouse Development" (ICCD), 425 West 47th Street, New York, now an international network with centers practically everywhere and advisor to the UN (ECOSOC unit).

 

 

 

 

The Keltic Cult

 

by John Bede.

 

Kelticism is today like it always has been. By never being politic except exceptionally, since all politics always ended bad, since man in his vanity never got it through that all power is evil by its latent paranoia and self-destructive corruption, since already the ancient Greeks realized all power only to be hubris and downright unnatural, it has never retreated but only expanded; and I dare propound the thesis that it still dominates all English- and French-speaking countries. Even the Venetians, who founded the first modern republic, which became the longest living ever, were originally Kelts. Even in Spain and Portugal, and not just in the Basque province, the Keltic legacy goes on, like in the Alpine countries, the Netherlands and far down into the Balkans. The Kelts never surface, though, except where they are obvious, like in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, which is the secret of its survival and very existence: it has always been invisible and worked underground.

 

The Kelts never had political leaders but were guided by the Druids, who simply were the bearers of Knowledge, of nature and culture, of history and tradition, of the soul and the universe. Their everlasting memorial is Stonehenge, which is like a universal laboratory, a combined altar and astronomic observatory, planetarium and landmark of cult and worship, of the same functional and metaphysical importance as the great pyramids of Egypt and the temples of Central America from the same period. The Druids did not rule but merely acted as counsellors, but their words carried weight, since they were venerated as holy, since they held the only real power, which is knowledge, especially of the soul and nature. Their religion therefore was a universal and pantheistic nature cult with no gods, where the divine element was life itself, which was the object of worship, especially in its toughest and most lasting forms, therefore above all the trees and especially the oaken tree. It was consequently humble in character and not in the least dogmatic or self-imposing. It was quite simply natural and lived basically only on the natural piety and feeling of universal unity inspired by all free life in living nature. Therefore it could also like a chamelion steal into and absorb any other religious or philosophic form. It was the only religion that could adapt itself to any other religion.

 

My mission during the last years, when I have been so quiet and inactive in The Free Thinker and on Internet, has been trying to add to the stabilization of peace in Northern Ireland in its passage from chronic self-destructive political violence to reconciliation, compromise and co-operation, and I claim this to be the right course for the whole world. We don’t need violence. We don’t need ambitious power. We don’t need nationalism, egoism and greed. What humanity first of all needs is to make peace with nature, which he has caused and continues to cause irrepairable damage, which now obviously imports the possibility of her revenge with eventual disasters ruining the planet as a consequence. All people must co-operate to manage the crisis and survive, and then it will not do to have war and violence and self-imdulgent autocracies. The Druids concentrated on the right management of knowledge from the past and the economy of the present to keep nature and history in balance as continuously, smoothly and harmoniously as possible. There are still so called druids, but during the centuries they appeared in various other forms, such as the philosophers of antiquity, the saints of the middle ages, the humanists of the renaissance, the philosophers of the enlightenment, and so on. Their primary task is to administer wisdom and carry on the tree of knowledge, that is the vital knowledge of man’s accountability in life and the universe. And thus they are the very teachers that humanity always needs and always will need, and who always will be where needed.

 

John Bede, summer 2008.