Charles sits silently with me as I muse about life

Charles Mackay’s timeless book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds” sits at the end of my desk as I muse about life.

Although silent in every sense, thoughts ignited by Mackay’s marvellous 19^th Century book repeat in my mind sometimes engineering doubt about those things I have spent more than a decade understanding.

That momentary doubt is just that, momentary; for as quick as that doubt arises, the unequivocal evidence of the damage we have caused extinguishes those mental interrogations.

However, I cannot escape the fear that I too might be caught up in a delusion such as that alluded to by Mackay except for the madness he refers to was just that, a madness driven by emotion and superstition, broadly and socially accepted at the time; they were cruel mental confusions, devoid of fact and reason.

Personal concerns about climate change have me frequently on the end of much finger wagging followed by the accusation of “You, environmentalists!” as if I am personally responsible for the ills of both Earth and humanity.

Being described as an “environmentalist” is not wrong, but decidedly unsettling.

Sometimes I correct people saying, “My unease, my first concern, is for the people of this planet and our fellow species and so the natural by-product of that is caring for and about the environment, and within that allowing people and all other life forms to thrive”.

My journey to becoming what might be termed a “climate activist” began, unknowingly when, as a teenager, I worked for the dark side. Yes, I spent about two years travelling the coasts of Australia and in New Guinea’s Gulf of Papua working with an oil survey company, setting off explosions, killing fish of all sizes and recording data that allowed geologists to determine the presence of what I now know is a destructive fossil fuel.

My sojourn from reporting ended when I returned to Echuca’s Riverine Herald, then the North Central News in St Arnaud and then, in the early eighties, I finally settled at this newspaper.

Life took a telling turn late nineties when a severe road accident forced me into early retirement and then after several years of recovery (it’s a salvage and repair job that never ends) the essence of reporting, curiosity, surfaced again the pursuit of answers took me, by chance to a free public lecture at the University of Melbourne.

Seeking social answers, the first free lecture I attended mentioned betterment of the community, but it was really about building resilience in communities wrestling with the impact of climate change.

That ignited my interest and so for more than a decade now the university’s free lectures have been something of a haunt for me as they provide a rare opportunity to hear from people from all parts of the world with the sharpest of minds; minds that have been applied to exploring and understanding what it is we have done, and are doing, to the slither of life giving gases that surround our planet.

The delusions Mackay alludes to can be found among those unable to suppress their superstitions and a longing for what was causing the suppression of reason and good sense killing off the revelatory thinking needed to respond to a rapidly unfolding new world.

An endless trail of rubbish around the city's streets

A common sight outside a local opportunity
 store and although that is distressing enough,
what is of real concern is the seemingly endless
 trail of rubbish left around the city's streets.

Radio National accompanies me on early morning walks around the environs of Shepparton.

At that time of the day, the ABC station transmits primarily news and information and the stories it tells can be uplifting, damn depressing, or simply interesting.

What is on the radio at that time matches pretty well the tenor of what I see and experience when walking around the inner-city and surrounding neighbourhoods.

Occasionally a motorist will stop at an intersection and wave me across while they wait, or a passing fellow walker will offer a cheerful “good morning” as they go by.

Those small, and seeming inconsequential moments, reaffirm your faith in humanity, but then just as quick as your spirit soars, it can come crashing down.

Rubbish is probably the most significant marker of human presence.

Blatant dumping of household rubbish and sometimes industrial waste is reported by this newspaper and other forms of media, but what rarely rates a mention is the likes of the trail of litter throughout the city’s streets and shared pathways.

That rubbish is incidental – a bottle here, a can there, a shoe, a cardboard box, junk mail blowing down the street, scraps falling our passing utes and trucks, clothing, plastic bags (they too are rubbish, but handy for carrying all the other detritus), used nappies, and on one occasion of used woman’s health product, which I had swooped on before realizing what it was.

Probably the most frustrating is the packaging from around something bought at a nearby store. That packaging is often torn open and simply thrown on the ground, often ignoring a nearby rubbish bin.

While that might be frustrating, it is the behaviour of those who seek a secluded spot for a quiet drink that is the most intriguing – many of course throw their cans and bottles carelessly away, but some go to great lengths to hide their empties or pack them neatly back in the box or bag in which they carried them.

Why, I wonder if they care so much to pack their empties back in the box or bag, or make an effort at hiding them and not take it to a rubbish bin?

And what does the sometimes apocalyptic-like news have to do with the litany of rubbish that fouls our city’s streets?

Well, that discarded piece of seemingly harmless rubbish is sort of “ground zero” in caring for your home, caring for your community, caring for your environment and caring for your fellows.

Walking the streets of Shepparton cleaning up after others, the thoughts of reporter John Vidal often crowd my thinking – he recently wrote: “We weep at the disappearance of endangered species but avert our eyes to the causes of Earth’s destruction”.

That said, and this being early 2017, let’s personally enact a New Year’s resolution; first, not to litter and second, pick up and properly dispose of any rubbish we see; making our hometown just a little cleaner and somewhat tidier.

Looking to an alternate universe through the sliding doors

A “sliding doors”-like experience revealed an alternate universe during two recent and significant Shepparton events to become the marrow around which this was formed.

Interestingly and confusingly, what was happening was clearly and obviously of this century, but equally clearly and obviously, the events were driven by and rooted in values that prevailed last century and so dominated prevalent thinking.

Strangely and even more puzzlingly, what was happening, measured by modern standards ticked all the contemporary boxes, but oddly the processes were rooted in what was, and seemed remote from what will be.

Adherence to the principle of dealing with things as they are, rather than how we would like them to be may well be a pragmatist’s view but it was not a philosophy that sat well with our forebears; those who shaped the Goulburn Valley as we know it today.

Had they not been adventurous in their thinking and reached beyond their grasp, the bounty we now enjoy would still be hidden from us, locked in reticent reflections.

About 160 people recently gathered in Shepparton’s McIntosh Centre for what was the “Goulburn Regional Assembly” – one of about 10 such gatherings initiated by the State Government throughout Victoria – in the hope that they would “set the future for the region”. The Shepparton event was for Murrindindi, Mitchell, Strathbogie, Greater Shepparton and Moria Local Government areas.

That was clearly an event of today, but it appeared largely locked in ideas from yesterday – here we were in our modern times; times that are in urgent need of disruptive ideas when most appeared to be favouring conservative notions beyond their use-by date.

Personally imagined was a world driven and sustained by disruptive, and maybe dangerous ideas but the sliding doors “thing” illustrated that instead of having fun and wrestling with new and innovative thinking, we are still flailing about in a collapsing universe, impeded by an incomplete and imperfect imagination.

It was Einstein who said something about the fallaciousness of attempting to resolve a problem with the thinking that created the trouble and who also noted that imagination was the most important of our faculties.

Those at the recent regional assembly agreed on priorities for action and although they had some merit they could have easily been from a century ago.

The sliding doors/alternate universe thing arose again with a strange immediacy at the more recent final meeting of the year of the City of Greater Shepparton Council.

Again, all the contemporary boxes of meeting process were ticked and despite the fact that on occasions the discussion was somewhat confused, all was in order except that once again the alternate universe flooded the scene, at least for me.

Goulburn Regional Partnership
 Chair David McKenzie.

A brief chat with Euroa’s Shirley Saywell at the recent McIntosh Centre assembly was illuminating when she said: “We know what needs to be done, so why don’t we just do it?”

Agreed Shirley, but sadly progress is not that simple for as you well know, it is littered with false starts, wrong turns, false hopes, the pervasive individualism that distorts the human experiment, and anarchical-like values that frequently pander to personal passions.

Our PM wants us to be agile and innovative, but of course, that is within his ideological framework.

A few agile and innovative ideas we should be considering are: working fewer hours; a universal basic income; shifting from a competitive to a cooperative economy; returning to and renewing democracy in that we choose our leaders through sortition; cutting the nation’s war/defence budget by at least two-thirds; investing richly in the public infrastructure; and understanding and preparing for energy poverty.