Spine 2: Return to Zion (Part 9 of 9)

No one can be told what it is. You have to see it for yourself

This post follows Part 8: To Kirk Yetholm, and The Box.

Cradling the jar of tea in my hands, I gazed down into my tea leaves.

I could see that my why predated Spine 2.0. It predated Spine 2024. It even predated the Legendary Triad itself.

My why began a decade ago, back when I was living life more like an observer than an active participant. Reacting to events, thinking short-term. I was unhealthy, unhappy, and disillusioned. Lost within the Matrix.

The Matrix

Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that our modern way of life, founded in complex societies comprising many millions of people, has lost its way. As a collective we fail to embody the social and egalitarian qualities of our natural human condition, the fabled noble savage of Roman lore.

Instead, our advanced societies exhibit obsessions with the accumulation of status, private property, wealth, power and seemingly inexorable corruption. Rousseau famously lamented that “man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”.

Orwell was one of the principal intellectuals of the last century to warn of our impending descent into oppression and tyrannical rule. While he defined doublethink, the condition where propaganda trains us to simultaneously hold contradictory thoughts in our minds, Hannah Arendt went on to describe organised confusion: inundation with so much contradictory disinformation that we can no longer discern fact from fiction (here on Substack, you can delve deeper in Life in the Matrix).

Roll forward to 1992, when Steve Tesich described our living in a post-truth dystopian pseudo-reality. Around the same time, the idea of neo-feudalism was emerging. It described how sectors of public life were being consumed by multinational private companies, with a corresponding shift of power from government to corporation that harkened back to the medieval social hierarchies of lords and peasants.

A decade later, Yanis Varoufakis coined the term techno-feudalism, highlighting how this feudalistic monopolisation played out within the domain of technology platforms.

The exploitation of these platforms by modern lords was described by Jonathan Ong and Jason Cabañes, and expanded on by writers like Peter Pomerantsev in their exposures of the global disinformation architecture. This comprises networks of PR professionals using fake accounts to disseminate micro-targeted disinformation, while undermining rational discourse through discreditation and harassment. It laid bare the extent of organised confusion and propaganda in the digital sphere.

Our Matrix today is a rabbit’s warren of stress, poverty, illness, distraction and disinformation, within which it is increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction, good from bad, moral from immoral. With 22% of the UK population now living in poverty, and so many feeling that life is out of their control, it’s easy to become dispirited; to be left flailing around, searching for an anchor in life. Something that can connect us back to humanity, or hope.

“A drowning man will clutch at a straw” goes the proverb. He’s unlikely to clutch for books, scientific papers, or engage in serious political discourse.

Instead, he’s likely to be vulnerable to oratory, lies, propaganda; to be exploitable through the tried-and-tested tactic dating back some 2,500 years, divide and conquer. This tactic has worked so well that, for the past fortnight, even despite Trump’s support tanking in the US, all the UK’s opinion polls have placed the Reform Party squarely in the lead.

The Masters

Who are these divide-and-conquerors, our neo-feudal landlords? The oligarchs, some of whom fund our political parties with donations. Their wealth continues to skyrocket, as Oxfam explains in its latest report: “In 2024, total billionaire wealth increased by $2 trillion, with 204 new billionaires created. This is an average of almost four new billionaires per week”.

Takers Not Makers. Oxfam, 2025

Few people truly understand the meaning of a billion pounds, let alone tens or hundreds of billions of pounds. And yet, instead of taxing that wealth so that we might all live healthily, the billionaires are all set to siphon ever more from the poor, so they might grow their wealth into the trillions.

I might need to explain the word “trillion”, for it isn’t a word many encounter in daily life. One trillion pounds is 25 million times the average annual salary in the UK.

The likes of Reform will surely work overtime to convince us this is morally justifiable. That the real reason for mass impoverishment is a few poor people in dinghies, or multiculturism, or “woke ideology”, or “government waste”. Anything but those mountains of money growing up and out of the bank accounts of a small number of neo-feudal lords, breaking through the clouds up into the stratosphere.

Zeus’ plagues upon humanity really flew out of Pandora’s Jar, didn’t they? But if you cast your mind back to Hesiod’s story, Zeus left one thing in Pandora’s Jar. He left hope.

The Search For Hope

Through the ages, Zion has represented hope. Hope for a fabled, spiritual, prophetic utopia.

In the Abrahamic religions this hope relates in various ways to Jerusalem. In modern Christianity it’s used figuratively to relate to the spiritual realm. In Rastafarianism it relates to the hope of building a harmonious society in Africa. In Mormonism it has many connotations, one being the hope of forming a New Jerusalem in America.

For religious Zionists, both Jewish and Christian, this hope relates to the migration of Jewish people to the historical Land of Israel/Palestine. It’s considered a return from exile; making Aliyah, and the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Some hope this will expedite the second coming of Jesus, and the prophesied End Times.

For many areligious political Zionists, it relates to the hope for the safety and security of Jews who have been persecuted, exiled and genocided through millennia (the English Edict of Expulsion of 1290, the Russian pogroms of the 19th century and the Nazi’s Holocaust in the 20th being just a few notable examples; of which the latter murdered 6 million people, amounting to two-thirds of the European population of Jews).

However, support for Zionism was far from universal. Relatively few Jews supported Zionism at the start of the 20th century. There was particularly strong opposition from Orthodox and Socialist Jews, and assimilation was generally preferred, especially in Western Europe.

There remain many Jewish communities today who do not share this hope for migrating to the Land of Israel/Palestine. Many disbelieve in a Jewish state, with some believing it is only God who can reunite the Jewish people in a Jewish State. Many find the genocidal reality morally indefensible, and some think it antisemitic.

But; it was with Disraeli’s enthusiasm, with the coining of the phrase “a land without a people for a people without a land” (conveniently overlooking Palestine’s population); with Theodor Herzl’s formation of the World Zionist Organisation in 1897, with the UK’s Balfour Declaration of 1917 (staunchly opposed by our only Jewish MP who decried it antisemitic), with the manner of withdrawal from Mandatory Palestine and with the collective failure of the international community to intervene in a peacekeeping (as opposed to settler-colonial) capacity, that the runway was laid for the progressive ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide of Palestinians that we’ve seen ever since.

In 2019, there were 5.6 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations. 1.5 million of them lived in refugee camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Since 7th October 2023, almost all the 2+ million Palestinian residents of Gaza have been forced from their homes. Most will be unable to return, since 92% of housing units have been destroyed or damaged, replaced with over 50 million tons of rubble. Well over 50,000 Gazans are documented to have been killed, but as in all genocides the total count is impossible to know. And of the UNRWA workers trying to help the homeless refugees survive, Israel has killed 284 of them, totalling over 400 aid workers in all.

Aid workers like Doctors Without Borders’ Mohammed Al Ahel, a laboratory technician bombed in a refugee camp; Ahmad Al Sahar, a doctor blasted in an airstrike while working in one of the last partially functional hospitals in northern Gaza, and Alaa Al Shawa, a volunteer nurse sniped while travelling in an medical convoy.

Two days after Alaa was shot in the head, Israeli forces returned to Doctors Without Borders’ clinic in Gaza City, to bulldoze their vehicles and partially destroy the medical clinic.

Gaza: Life in a Death Trap. MSF (Doctors Without Borders)

“The basic contradiction in Zionism - the wish to control the whole of Palestine while stating this can be done by a Jewish State - is there because it is impossible without genocide or racialized expulsion”

Haim Bresheeth-Zabner, son of Holocaust survivors

The Hope in Zion

Even amidst so much bloodshed and destruction, I find hope clinging onto life as powerfully as limpets cling onto their rocks. I hear hope resonate through our voices. I see hope etched on our faces. And our actions are its manifest reality.

Hundreds of thousands of people make a monthly pilgrimage to the seat of UK power in London, giving voice to the voiceless in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Be they protesting alone, or representing trade unions, Jewish Voice for Labour, Na’amod, or countless other groups standing up for our common humanity. This demonstration of hope is replicated in cities and towns across the UK, and more widely across the globe.

Charities work painstakingly to document the genocide, render assistance and offer hope to victims in the most hazardous of circumstances. These are not small in number. Oxfam, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, The Red Cross, Islamic Relief, ActionAid, War Child, Unicef, Mercy Corps, UK-Med, MAP, Amnesty International, The World Food Programme, Christian Aid, Action for Humanity, The International Rescue Committee, Greenpeace, Plan International, World Central Kitchen and many others. Donors, workers and volunteers alike, united in their vision: a hope for a better tomorrow.

Indeed, many Palestinian refugee families still carry their house keys from the 1948 Nakba, in the hope that one day they might return to their homes.

Hope. It’s what the concept of Zion represents, in different ways for different people. Not a physical place on Earth, but a hope for safety, salvation, freedom from persecution, unity, equality, justice and truth.

In the Matrix, Zion represents hope for people’s liberation from the Machines.

For me personally, I define Zion as the hope for a better future for the whole of humanity.

A peaceful, democratic future, where truth and justice are valued. Where we strive to provide that “safe and just space for humanity” that Kate Raworth describes in her doughnut model of economics. Where we all enjoy the opportunity to live happily, healthily and sustainably.

The Spine and Zion

If Zion is hope that we can strive for, then why, throughout this story, have I equated the Spine with Zion?

The Spine is a microcosm of the real world: honest, truthful, and our natural home. It sits aside from the organised confusion of Big Brother’s Oceania, the Architect’s Matrix, and Wonderland’s rabbit hole.

Nobody said navigating the real world is easy. It’s awash with risks and fraught with challenges. It’s raw, tough; sometimes ugly and dangerous. Battling through sleep deprivation, injuries, ice, bogs and Garmin’s Sentinels. There are few modern comforts, no telescreens or convenient doublethink here. There is only truth, and the truth can sometimes be brutal.

But to live well, as Aristotle would have put it, requires exposing ourselves to discomfort in our quest to seek the truth. It requires our presence in and understanding of the real world. Thus, we can only forge a path to Zion by exploring our most difficult trails, and finding our Way among them.

The Pennine Way is our most difficult trail. So, the Spine; it’s not just the Pennine Way, it’s a Way to Zion. And just as we understand the journey is the destination, then the Way is the goal. Peace, freedom, truth; the Way is Zion.

My Way to Zion

A decade ago, I recognised the need to build a framework to guide my life. Running was the first step I took along that journey. It rapidly improved my fitness, health and happiness, giving me a solid foundation upon which to build.

I felt it necessary to push myself to run longer and longer distances. Half-marathons, marathons, 50ks, 100ks, 100Ms and beyond. And if not further I’d go harder, higher, colder, hotter, more technical. All the while I was searching for something: direction, purpose, that elusive why.

The further I pushed myself, the more the training and racing demanded of me. To progress I needed to develop more aspects of my being and my character. Fixing longstanding health problems, refining dietary practices and sleep patterns, sharpening my mental resilience and defining my purpose. I turned to writings of philosophers ancient and modern to guide me in constructing a life philosophy I could take pride in.

This combination of physical and mental refinement is what got me to the start and ultimately the finish of Spine 2024. An event so overwhelmingly difficult that I knew I didn’t want to run the Spine, or anything harder, again.

That meant I’d reached the end of my running journey, and with it, my journey of transformation. I was proud of how much I’d grown, but I sensed there was plenty more to learn; and with no bigger challenge, no next destination, I couldn’t see a Way forward. It threw me into disillusionment.

I needed to unearth that underlying why. I needed to grasp it, feel it, internalise it, and live it. I couldn’t think what else to do other than run the Pennine Way again.

At the start of Spine 2.0, I experienced complete confusion as to my purpose in the race. But all the time I was asking the wrong question. Instead of asking why I was rerunning the Spine, the question I should have asked was why I ever ran it in the first place.

Why had I ever run Dragon’s Back, or the Arc of Attrition? Why had I run a marathon, or a local Parkrun? Why had I ever laced up a pair of running shoes to start with?

Why

My why was my need to find my Way. My vision. My philosophy. My Zion.

My framework through which I could understand the world and act purposefully within it.

Aristotle would have thought my passive existence a far cry from his goal of eudaimonia (living well). To him, a life well-lived came about through noble pleasures - those that are virtuous, enduring, independent. He argued that intellectual and moral virtues, developed through study and practice, offered the path to happiness. To arete, human excellence.

Stoics like Epictetus and Aurelius emphasised behaviours in accordance with nature and reason, predicated on respectful social relationships and self-control. To them, happiness came by striving to live a virtuous life.

In eastern philosophy, Daoists thought the objective to live in harmony with the Dao; the underlying order, nature itself. Their concept of wu wei, effortless action or flow, comes about by acting in synchronicity with our nature.

Whichever philosophies we adopt, adapt or formulate, the power of a life philosophy is in its capacity to help us find our Way to inner peace.

But this doesn’t mean entirely disconnecting from the Matrix, with all its suffering, wars and disinformation. Far from it. A life philosophy worth its salt empowers us to be active participants in reforming it, while recognising what we can and cannot control.

While we cannot control outcomes, stop wars or rebalance the wealth of billionaires, we can act within our own capacities. For example:

• Educate ourselves: set aside time to read books, and switch news sources to independent media

• Support democracy: choose parties that promote democratic reform (the Green Party being our primary option in England), or independent candidates

• Engage: join local political groups, form People’s Assemblies, work with pressure groups, support local groups like food banks, write to our MPs

• Spend locally: choose local, independent produce, and where possible, reuse rather than buy

• Be curious, and speak the truth

The Matrix can’t sustain a “post-truth” dystopia without our acquiescence.

It’s our decision to scroll through social media, or read a book. To buy from Amazon, or a charity shop. To drive, or cycle. To consume BBC News, or independent media. To watch TV, or contribute to our local community. To stay silent in the face of disinformation, or to lodge a complaint with the regulator. To go to the cinema, or to a protest. To make excuses, or to act.

“It always seems impossible until it’s done”

Nelson Mandela

“To live your brief life rightly; isn’t that enough?”

Marcus Aurelius

The Jar, The Monkey and The Why

I sit here with my tea jar, reminiscing on my Spine journey, feeling a deep sense of satisfaction with my newfound sapience. That monkey crashing cymbals is a very distant memory, at least 268 miles away. Instead, there is a peace, assuredness and unity that comes from my own personal philosophy.

That wu wei flowing descent from Auchope Cairn still flows within me.

I’m retracing my steps alongside the River Aire to Malham. Revelling in the pitch black ceiling over Sleightholme Moor. Leaping apprehensively over deep bogs. Bathing in photons atop Cross Fell. Fracturing my hand on the ice. Learning brain chemistry in Keld’s Winter Tearoom.

Stumbling upon the Flintstones’ car. Sleeping behind a peat mound in a gale. Delighting in meeting the shopkeeper from Mr. Benn. Breaking trail through waist-deep snow. Dancing on the Cheviots. Leaning into the Helm Wind. Connecting with the wizened mosses.

And I recall so vividly how I wrestled with those confounding questions: why did I swallow the red pill?

Why did I rerun the Spine?

In The Republic, Plato tells the Allegory of a Cave.

Imprisoned and shackled within a dark cave, only able to see a theatre of shadows cast by unseen actors unto the cave wall, these prisoners have no reason to believe there is any worldly reality other than the shadows cast before their eyes.

When one of the prisoners is released and shown the theatrical setup, he is confused and disbelieving. And when he is dragged out of the cave and shown the outside world, his eyes are immediately blinded by the light.

At first he instinctively recoils toward the safety of the cave. But on second thought, he musters his courage, turns back toward the light, and allows time for his pupils to constrict. And he begins to see the sun, and the earth, and life for what it really is.

Now he must tell his friends the whole story.

The humble story.

The story of a jar.

And a monkey.

And a why.