Complexity is wonderful, but we need to simply it - urgently!

Complexity brings many bonuses, but benefits we urgently need to simplify.

The wonderful advances arising from that complexity can only be realized and made a lasting positive if we are able to better understand how we go about claiming our space.

Geo-engineering - Taking a
spanner to the world.

The prevailing idea that humankind is of pre-eminent importance and therefore justified as it stomps about the planet building an uncaring military/industrial complex is one that abhors decency.

Physics insist that everything seeks equilibrium and it is only through the application of energy that humans can escape the hard-edged boundaries of those scientific limitations.

And it has been with an alarming degree of indecency that we, you and me, have used fossil fuels to disable those equilibrium-seeking scientific realities.

Subsequently, while we wallow in the wonders of a lavish life provided by our unrealistic and unhealthy dependence on hydrocarbons, the thin envelope surrounding earth and upon which we depend, is quickly, in geological terms and even human terms, becoming less effective.

It has become an abused commons into which we have dumped the residue of our fossil fuel-energized lives disrupting the finely-tuned balance that allowed life on earth, from the microscopic to the massive, to procreate and prosper.

In more than a decade of listening to, and participating in, the climate change conversation, discussion has shifted dramatically, particularly in past year or so, from mitigation to adaptation.

Mitigation, because of our greed, quite bluntly, was never going to happen and now even those who blatantly deny the human finger-print, at least on the public stage, are championing geo-engineering to stabilise a climate they said in the previous sentence was not in need of repair.

Adaptations using even more of the processes that are the essence of our troubles reflect Einstein’s view that “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Beyond that geo-engineering is unproven and brings with it consequences which we don’t yet understand and we may well not be able to grasp the meaning of the emerging difficulties until it is too late.

Scientists are sceptical by training and so rarely, if ever, present their work in terms of blunt ultimatums, but ever so slowly that is changing and more and more they are telling us that life on earth, and that includes you and me, is under severe threat.

I weep as I write for it is not evident that we have the needed courageous intellectual athleticism to step back from what it is that drives industrial civilization.

For a few years I have advocated a four-hour work day, no overtime, no double shifts in a neighbourhood, all powered by renewable energy, where walking and cycling is commonplace and in which you work and share with your neighbours – that is more urgent now than ever.

Where are we now? What do we do? What do we want?

Our politicians, regardless of philosophy, right or left, or anywhere else on the political spectrum, appear disconnected from reality.

Albert Einstein - doing
the same thing and
 expecting a different
 result equates with
insanity.

The Greens are probably closest to being in the moment, but because we live in a liberal democracy, they too are powerless to make the changes needed if humanity is to flourish.

The voting process is a vital and if nothing else is a symbol that the idea of democracy is still intact and so whatever we may think or imagine, vote we must and vote we should.

We cannot ignore the September 7 election and hope that something will change, for doing nothing and expecting a different result echoes with the Albert Einstein observation that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

So where are we now?

The world is in environmental, economic and resource disarray; food security for billions is a fantasy, happiness for an equal number rests with the fluff of consumerism, peace is always seemingly out of reach, and history, both ancient and contemporary, clearly illustrates that it is the rich, and responsible men, who decide on our future.

Interestingly the status quo, which has been, and is, the engine behind this shambles with which the world community presently wrestles, has many influential advocates, while the future is abandoned largely to silence and chance.

The future is an unknown place for no-one has ever been there, but our behaviour today is the building blocks from which tomorrow is constructed.

Sadly, most candidates on September 7 offer little or nothing to enable us to break the status quo shackles that bind us to a profit and growth paradigm that is destined only for chaos and disaster.

What do we do?

We need wake-up and arise from our entertainment induced slumber and understand that we are not powerless, rather not accepting responsibility and being powerless are either side of the one coin and so in accepting responsibility, we become powerful.

Our politicians, right, left or otherwise, must, beyond anything else, accept responsibility for the broad ethical, inequality and societal collapse that have engulfed Australia, and pressure from a responsible electorate, that is you and me, will force that attitudinal change.

What do we want?

We want acceptance and understanding from our government that all is not well with the world; we want them to acknowledge and act on the fact that our climate is in grave danger; we want them to also acknowledge that our economy is collapsing and can only be rescued through the implementation of a steady state economy; we want the decentralization of all services; the localization of food supplies; we want them to re-shape how we live, making traditional work less important; and to create and build resilient communities.