Personal pools of inadequacy arise at Simon's celebration

Personal pools of inadequacy became both deeper and wider as plaudits were piled upon the life of the late Simon Furphy.

This rather special portrait of Simon Furphy
was on show at the recent celebration
of his life on the banks of the
 Sevens Creeks at Arcadia.

Funerals are rarely places of criticism or doubt and so to hear such laudable talk of a fellow who for 60 years had been an intimate player in Shepparton’s practical and social life should not have surprised.

No, the praise was not a surprise, but what did catch me unprepared was how Simon’s honesty and passion for life left me feeling like I had not really had a “crack”, how I had been less than an ideal husband, father and friend, and how I had failed to use my skills, whatever they might be, to make this a better place.

From all accounts Simon lived his life as if the glass was half full and even in the final days of his struggle with bowel cancer, he was, according to family and friends, fiercely optimistic, illustrating to the end a signature trait.

Hundreds of family and friends recently gathered on the banks of the Sevens Creek, beneath shady gum trees, at the Arcadia property of his brother and sister-in-law, Andrew and Frederica to recognise and celebrate the former Shepparton solicitor, through music and story.

Simon had been a diligent fellow, but also, so we were told at his “celebration”, of his ease in acquiring friends and his curious penchant for striking alliances that brought personal benefits or enriched whatever group he was with.

No matter how jolly people may be, funerals, or a celebration in Simon’s case can be less than uplifting for even though we might all still be alive, and that of itself is cause for joy, there is a sombre sense about the whole affair.

Listening to the wonderful optimistic, upbeat, sociality and enthusiasm Simon brought to life ignited reflection upon what it is to be human.

Unquestionable Simon, as with the rest of us, had his failings and as suggested by author Isaiah Berlin, was built from the same “crooked timbers of humanity”, just as we are.

Ironically, just about the time we gathered on the banks of the Sevens Creek to listen to music and tells stories about Simon, and celebrate his life, a book about our denial of death had slid into view.

We all live with the implicit understanding that death awaits us and so are driven to sometimes bizarre ends to achieve imagined immortality and frequently those efforts manifest themselves in less than kindly ways.

Strip away the façade that is modern life and revealed are the reasons why men hurl themselves over parapets to certain death, why we exhaust ourselves acquiring what we want, rather than need and why we are victims of a surfeit of emotion.

And yes, it was a celebration, and yes, if I perceive Simon as portrayed, it was sad we kicked up our heels without him.

Democracy and decency demand recognition

Democracy and decency demand that we recognise those who lived in this country before the Englanders arrived in 1788.

Many here believe they enjoy the privileges of a democracy, and some do, but it is slanted to favour just a few, those who by birth and so social class fall in with the machinations of the moneyed minority.

Democracy in its truest sense will not exist in Australia until we have, initially at least, recognized in our constitution that other people lived in this country before Europeans set up camp in Botany Bay.

Australians are inherently easy going and tolerant to a fault, and so have stood back in quietist fashion allowing the more aggressive to supplant democracy with other processes that favour a minority and disenfranchise most.

We now live in a militarized plutocracy; we have been duped into endorsing governance processes that protect the affairs of the elite, while we are rewarded with crumbs from the main table and garrulous distracting entertainments.

The progeny of those who have lived here for 40 000 years mostly make-up the disenfranchised; democracy has failed them; racism has railed against them; and forever seeking refuge in claims of innocence, our ignorance has reigned over two centuries of missed opportunities, brought about by our arrogance and our failure to acknowledge that through our ways we were unable to accommodate the needs of others.

Suggestions that we wait until 2017 to even vote upon the idea of recognizing those original inhabitants is an indefensible delay; the white man’s ways have disrupted and in many cases destroyed the lives of indigenous people and all they seek now is recognition.

Humans, irrespective of where they are from or their affiliations and what their interests might be, need to be recognised.

Recognition is a fundamental human need and right with research clearly illustrating that people emotionally prosper when they are embraced and welcomed into the group or community.

Anarchy - is misunderstood,
 but has an
 inherent decency about it.

Democracy is about recognizing your fellows and with that allowing them to be an integral and so useful part of our community.

Indigenous people traditionally enjoyed a powerful tribal culture in which the expectations of individuals were defined and adherence to those values was demanded, but within and around that was a freedom that most today would consider anarchy.

The perverse tolerance and liberty introduced by the invading Englanders, along with their foreign ways, destroyed existing inherent tribal culture and through the application of a militaristic and authoritarian colonialism built around those who had survived here successfully for 40 000 years a way of life they didn’t understand, and mostly still don’t.

Democracy in its truest sense, as opposed to the present plutocracy, is what all Australians need, or maybe even the genuine exploration and understanding of anarchy.

Card tables and raptuous applause, not paddlocks and memory sticks

Never seen before security and other restrictive arrangements around Brisbane’s recent G20 forum where the reverse of how it should have been.

Where the G20 Summit should have been
held - card tables and rapturous applause.

Rose petals and red carpets should have been thrown down before the leaders of the world’s 20 richest economies, rather than barricades and bomb searches.

Money has always perverted human values and ideals, that’s a generalization, but accurate and timely, and so rather than meeting in secretive and secluded places those same leaders should have gathered around a few card tables at the city’s King George Square.

An appreciative audience should have looked on, cheering as the leaders agreed to liberalize the world economy, making certain that the less than one percent that control most of it, agree to share their spoils with the rest of the world.

The cheering and applause would not have slowed when those G20 “men in suits” voted unanimously to instigate sweeping changes around the world to ensure everyone would not only have something to eat, but that their homes would be secure and the political intrigue with which the world is riddled, would vanish to be replaced by hitherto unseen transparency, friendship, compassion and collaboration.

Amid the continuing rapturous applause, the delegates would commit as one, vowing to act in unison with neighbouring and distant countries as they worked to build a world community in which contemporary Western lifestyles would be softened to allow less developed countries to prosper and edge ahead.

With the world fed, housed and thirsts quenched, and the economy broken to become a servant of man, rather than the reverse, the G20 leaders would have packed up their papers, folded their tables, acknowledged the crowd and taken an economy flight home.

Utopian flights of fancy always stumble and fall when reality intervenes, especially when it is the hard-edged, brutal and unforgiving economic convictions to which the contemporary world has willingly surrendered its kindness, fairness and decency.

Collusion and conspiracy breeds behind closed doors and the transparency allowed by the bright light of day is quickly obscured by darkened windows, cloistered and secreted away in brief cases and on memory sticks, hidden from public gaze by locks and impenetrable codes.

Endless arguments justify the G20 retreat from public gaze, but surely if what is discussed and decided upon is in the broad and best interests of ordinary folk, from the bloke baking your bread to the woman in charge of this newspaper, then why can’t it be laid out for all to see, and consider?

It can’t, not because of the aforementioned arguments, rather because it is simply not fair and despite the swagger and fist-pumping of G20 leaders it is about further entrenching an economic inequality that favours a few and disadvantages most.

Crowd watches as contradiction is unveiled in Tatura

About 400 people watched and applauded as a social conundrum was unveiled recently in Tatura.

Tatura's bronze statue of World War
One Victoria Cross winner,
Private Robert Mactier.

However, the unveiling of the two metre high bronze statue of World War One Victoria Cross winner, Private Robert Mactier, was more of a contradiction than a conundrum.

Whatever, it defies logic in a society troubled by violence from that which is domestic through to war mongering on a national and international level.

From now on the people of Tatura, along with most other communities throughout Australia are forced to confront each day what is the societal acceptance of violence.

Victoria’s Deputy Premier, Peter Walsh, told those watching the unveiling at the refurbished Tatura war memorial precinct, that the bronze image of Robert Mactier was not about celebrating war rather, simply recognizing his courage and sacrifice.

That may be so, but the subliminal message is rather different.

Taturians are repeatedly told, and inherently know, that a successful community, state or nation is one that is collaborative and compassionate, and one in which firearms, of any sort, are irrelevant to those aims.

In passing the Hogan St life-size image of a pistol brandishing Private Mactier, who received sweeping social recognition for exploits that in other circumstances that would have been less than admirable, they are forced into mental gymnastics to remind themselves that was then and this is now.

That sounds fine except there is still a man with a gun in a public place (true, it’s only a statue) whose killing of others was feted and recognized in bronze.

The complications are manifest for few of us truly understand the context of “then” and beyond that even fewer of us can make a meaningful connection between what was and “now”, and the malleable minds of many become ensnared in the perverse intricacies of violence, subduing the other and the indecency of war.

Private Mactier was obviously a brave, daring and decent man who played his part in what was then a perceived need, but surely a century of maturity is sufficient for us to judge our mistakes and understand that the liberty we seek is not to be found in humbling our fellows and have them adhere to our behaviours.

Australia’s relatively peaceful history is credited almost without fail to the actions of those such as Private Mactier, but considered practically Australia’s physical remoteness has been its greatest ally.

Beyond a few incursions in World War Two, and the arrival of the first fleet in 1788, modern Australians have, without fail, travelled beyond their borders in pursuit of war.

Like a gang of thugs, or a street hoodlum we have gone looking for trouble and Private Mactier was integral to that dynamic and his “presence” in Hogan St ensures its preservation

Fuel excise rises should remove cars and build great public transport systems

Rises to fuel excise charges are a good idea, but!

Increases to the fuel excise should be
 such that they remove motor vehicles
from our roads and then pay for a
modern and sophisticated public
transport system.

Just as smokers have been discouraged from inhaling nicotine through increased prices, we should be driving motorists off our roads through increased costs, and fuel excise rises will help with that.

And this is where the “but” comes into play for if we make it more expensive for motorists to drive their privately owned cars on publicly funded roads we need to provide an alternative.

The alternative is a public transport system that is efficient, clean, modern, comprehensive and sufficiently structured to make sure everyone can get quickly and easily everywhere they want to go, at a reasonable cost.

Sound impossible? Unquestionably, but to go back two centuries and suggest we aim for what we have now, there would have brought howls of utopian madness.

The collision of world circumstances, led by our misunderstanding of what impact our carbon-intensive lifestyles would have on human habitation, along with that of many other species, clearly indicates that public “everything” demands precedence over privatization.

We already have, and understand, what it is we need to do to produce electricity in a genuinely sustainable way and so that could be used to power an intricate, efficient and timely public transit system.

Presently, the public spends lavishly to build and provide an infrastructure from which private enterprises profit handsomely and although the public get some momentary benefit, the resultant riches go primarily to a privileged few.

The equation looks pretty straight forward – make motoring the preserve of the enthusiast and wealthy; invest heavily in the public transport/transit system and in doing so create many thousands of jobs in the construction, running and maintenance of this wonderfully people orientated way of sharing our resources.

Along with building, operating and maintaining our new public transport/transit system we could set about dismantling the centralized and dirty fossil fuel power sources and employ vastly more people creating, building and maintaining our democratic renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy and in limited way the one fossil fuel, gas.

The idea of dismantling the privatized road transport system and replacing it with a sophisticated and cutting-edge public system is loaded with complexities and difficulties, but so was, and is, what we have now and if we had known before what was ahead, including the untended consequences, we would never have set out on the journey.

Ideological liberals who preach a smaller and less intrusive government have had two centuries, at least, of market-driven  and privatized opportunity to legitimize their claims, but the fallacy of their argument, now illustrated by the increasing world-wide economic chaos and brutal inequality, demands they step aside and allow “public everything” to predominate.

State level naivety prevails at Shepparton meeting

State level naivety prevailed at a recent Shepparton public meeting.

Victoria's Minister for
 Agriculture, Peter Walsh.

Victoria’s Minister of Agriculture said the state’s farms would double their production by 2030.

Mr Peter Walsh, who agreed earth’s climate was changing, argued human ingenuity and technology, along with the will to achieve an outcome, would see climate change lowered in importance.

In keeping with the stance of most climate change deniers, Mr Walsh supported his arguments saying it had been dry and wet before, and would be that way again, with a poignant example from his family’s history.

That story, with huge emotive power for the 200 at the meeting, overlooked it being an isolated event from the 20s and 30s that does not compare to 2013, which was riddled with significant weather catastrophes around the world, driven by a seriously disrupted climate system.

Obvious during Mr Walsh’s vision for the future was an ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of the collision of world circumstances making the realization of the Minister’s dream strikingly difficult, if not impossible.

It will be problematical to bring this cornucopia of food imagined by Mr Walsh to market for various reasons, among them the fact that a disrupted climate will change every growing circumstance; the implications climate change will have on water supplies; a serious depletion of energy, both in terms of oil and electricity; and a shortage of the fertilizers used in abundance to enrich Australia’s ancient and less than fertile soils.

The reality is that the earth is warming, humans are responsible and we can no longer expect the same result from the same effort, using techniques and ideas that filled our larders, even as recent at two decades ago.

Farming as we know it has a limited future and because of the atmospheric damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels, along with the inequality arising from the ruthless focus on profit and growth, we stand on the cusp of a future in which localism will prevail and the imagined riches of the South-East Asian markets will be out of reach.

Minister Walsh visualizes record harvests of grain, meat, fruit, dairy products and anything else that can be extracted from Victoria’s less than giving soils, with that produce being funnelled to the hungry and welcoming Asian people.

The reality that farming is not again going to be what it was, ever, was not something that could be discussed rationally and reasonably at the Shepparton meeting as farmers were not there to hear how success tomorrow depended upon them rejigging their operations

They were there to hear a debate between the Government and its Opposition, but within the confines of what they knew and understood, not how they needed to invent a whole new way of farming.

Energy is the foundation of life

Energy is the foundation of life in the Goulburn Valley.

Whatever form you choose: it makes our cars go, warms and cools our houses, makes the trees and grass grow, fattens our animals, takes us around the world and takes our kids to school, allows us to make and use things and, in a more intimate sense, literally makes our heart beat.

Energy in all its varied forms is what has allowed humans, who have understood it best, to build and develop a complex society which, without energy would collapse.

Read Ugo Bardi’s “Extracted” and you begin to understand that fossil fuel-based energy upon which modern civilization is founded came from two specific periods in earth’s history, 90 and 150 million years ago.

It is unlikely the world will ever exhaust its fossil fuels, rather they will become so expensive and difficult to extract that economically, we will be forced to leave them in the ground.

Beyond that, there is the further complicating factor – the burning of fossil fuels has altered the chemical makeup of earth’s atmosphere and is changing weather patterns to such a degree that humanity is edging closer to the abyss.

Some people have thought deeply about this challenge and on Friday of next week, the Shepparton-based group, Slap Tomorrow, will present a forum in Mooroopna at which the idea of powering tomorrow will be explored and discussed.

Leading discussions will be the Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales, Dr Mark Diesendorf.

Dr Disesnedorf, who has written the book “Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change” is convinced, and can illustrate how Australia could be powered now by renewable energy, if we only had the will.

With him will be a director of Applied Horticultural Research and an adjunct Professor of Horticultural Crop Physiology with the University of Sydney, Dr Gordon Rogers

He has a PhD in crop physiology, and 24 years in agronomy and crop physiology specialising in sustainable horticultural production systems, crop water uptake and irrigation in horticultural crops.

Dr Rogers can help farmers understand how they can apply renewable energy to their agricultural processes.

Dr Mark Diesendorf.

A third speaker is a PhD student from the University of Melbourne, David Coote, who has focussed his studies and research on community-scale woody biomass energy systems, the integration of bioenergy with solar power, small scale on-farm use of renewable energy and biodiesel manufacture.

Overseeing the September 26 forum will be thinker, comedian and advisor to the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne, Rod Quantock.

The world’s conventional energy sources are either past their peak, or unusable and next week’s Slap Energy forum will shine a light on a new and renewable energy future.

Governments profit from fear and we need to 'invent peace'

Many governments had profited by and strengthened their hold on power through the creation of fear.

Fear is the foundation of violence and it appears an eccentric behavioural contradiction to claim your intent is peace, but which you seek through fear, laying the footings for violence.

Peace is not simply the absence of war or violence rather, it is a concept foreign to humanity and so something we have to yet invent.

Wim Wenders and Mary
Zournazi's have written about
"Inventing Peace".

War and violence have a strange pathos and it appears unable to meet or sate the human need for such anguish and bleakness, but from which spills a perverted heroism, bravery and honour, all of which are misunderstood and misplaced.

Early this century the U.S. Government initiated a “war on terror” and along with killing many people and causing untold damage, it did little except militarize and psychologically wound its own people and alienate millions in countries around the world.

Violence simply begets more violence and now Australia, in the thrall of a similar rhetoric and ideology that led the U.S. to its “war”, is reacting similarly with the “Team Australia” chant and a confected fear of terrorism.

Obviously there is a core of people who have earned the epithet of “terrorist”, but many who assemble behind them are little more than ordinary disaffected and disillusioned people who feel excluded from their society.

Governments, whatever their persuasion, must create an inclusive environment in which social equality is the rock upon which individuals and communities specifically and society generally rests.

With an increasing number of young Australians finding it difficult, if not impossible to secure a foothold in our complex modern society, we are creating fertile grounds for oranizations to recruit youths to stand with them as they prosecute their “blood on the streets” causes.

Rather than spending millions of dollars combatting perceived terrorism, we should be looking at from whence it comes – largely people who are disillusioned by and excluded from our society.

Peace does not produce heroes in the traditional war-embodied sense, rather it produces heroes who are quiet, unassuming, and respectful and who know clearly, that violence begets violence and that we don’t need entrepreneurs who thrive and benefit from confrontation, but what we do need are people who understand and profit from peace.

Instead of spending to protect our borders we should be working at understanding how we welcome, embrace and make these people a part of our society; instead of spending to frustrate home-grown terrorists, we should be building an inclusive and collaborative society of which they are an integral part; instead of spending billions on our military forces, we should be using that cash to both understand and invent a world first – peace!

Newspaper readers can help make an idea a reality

Newspaper readers have much to do
 beyond just read - they have a critical
role in  the achievement or world peace.

Readers of this newspaper (first published in the Shepparton News) have a significant and important individual role to play in achieving world peace.

Should that sound outlandish, just remember world peace is simply an idea and nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

Interestingly it is an idea that appears to have wide currency for frequently people declare that world peace is what they most desire.

Maybe such an answer sounds politically correct and simply gives the respondent a warm and fuzzy feeling as it makes them feel as if they are at one with the universe, even if for a moment.

That said, there is a difficulty for the intent, or wish seems to get lost, or at least politically distorted, when it is contaminated by the rush, wants and needs of the real world, and so the statement is simply rhetorical and never makes it into the realms of practicality

Such a suggestion does the idea of peace a serious disservice for the absence of confrontation, violence or pugilistic-like behaviour is what is real; what’s not real and absent all remnants of civility is the so-called “real world”.

In that “real world” we argue, and frequently resort to killing each other, over almost anything.

The 20^th century was passionately violent and the “great peace”, as described by some, from after WW2 through to the beginning of the 21^st century fell that way as humanity lolled about gorging itself after discovering the keys to nature’s pantry – fossil fuels multiplied fabulously the efforts of every individual.

Distracted by that energy abundance we partied and built like there was no tomorrow, seemingly oblivious that there is actually a tomorrow; a tomorrow populated by people we haven’t meet yet and to whom we have an ethical and moral responsibility.

And so we return to peace.

Ask most people and they are eager to leave the world in good shape for those that follow, or that is what they say.

We need to husband what energy we have for while it does many things, it leverages peace, but peace, real peace begins with you; your thoughts, your speech and your behaviour, and, of course, how you treat your fellows.

Peace in its finality is a complex beast, but it begins and is built on a simplicity that is foreign to the complexities of our modern world.

Most believe they contribute naught to the violence that pervades our world, but we need to be careful; careful in many ways, but particularly in whom we hand responsibility for we don’t need leaders and other decision makers who militarize the language.

The solution is not in subduing the other and winning, rather it is collaborating and co-operating to stand side-by-side rather than face-to-face.

Climate should be discussed and notice taken of W.B. Yeats

Climate change must be the first order of business at Brisbane’s November G20 forum.

W.B Yeats - "“Things fall apart;
the centre cannot hold”.

Those at the forum should not or cannot avoid the topic.

An understanding of the science explaining how our world is changing would allow those at the forum to make informed and reasoned judgements about international economic cooperation.

Any decisions made without first recognising and allowing for the differences climate change will bring to our market-driven society are irresponsible.

Economic growth, as understood by most, is entirely dependent upon a benign climate and the uninhibited access to the earth’s finite resources; resources that have taken billions of years to accumulate.

Those ageless resources are now so depleted and subsequently becoming so scarce and expensive that to enhance a process depending on unlimited “everything” is  reckless and in the eyes of some, a crime against humanity.

Strong words: words that elicit thoughts of the post WW1 Yeats poem, “The Second Coming” in which he writes: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”.

The equations that will drive our ultimate demise are not complicated and to understand them requires little more than primary school mathematics and nothing of the arcane, convoluted and bizarre intellectual trickery the will prevail at Brisbane in November.

Our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, one who stands among those who deny global warming, has already declared that climate change will not be allowed to interfere with the “important” talks at the Brisbane forum.

Contrary to that, Mr Abbott should be encouraging his international counterparts to consider the undeniable realities of climate change, while adhering to its stated aim: “We will identify the remaining key obstacles to be addressed and reforms needed to achieve stronger, more sustainable and balanced growth in our economies”.

These obviously highly-intelligent people appear to be locked into fantasy-fuelled belief that technology will rescue humanity from this collision of economic chaos, resource depletion, over-population, governance disorder and seemingly endless military confrontation. It won’t, we need social solutions.

G20 leaders say their immediate task is to break the cycle of low growth and diminished business and consumer confidence, something it says it is well placed to achieve in Brisbane.

Should they be serious about global economic security then they must first consider climate change; restructure the global economy to ensure financial equality for all, end the hugely disparate earnings around the world; understand what “sustainable” really means; ensure gender equality; invest heavily in building resilient communities; and educate and help people understand how they can grow and provide much of their own food.

Organic growth, and resilience, will sprout from communities of a type sadly unlikely to be considered at Brisbane in November.

Quoting Yeats again: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”.

 

We are losing perspective and wasting social and political capital

Some 38 Australians died in the skies over Ukraine and so Australia unhesitatingly wades into the resulting international intrigue, spending vast sums and expending, both frivolously and wastefully, social and political capital.

The tragedy over the skies of Ukraine pales
 when compared to the self-induced
 tragedy right here in Australia.

In contrast, recent research clearly shows some 15 Australians will die every day from drinking alcohol and that attracts only questions about the accuracy of the research; a few jokes; some chest beating and then, nothing of any consequence.

Alcohol will kill some 5500 people this year and nearly 160 000 will be hospitalised because of alcohol related difficulties.

Along with those startling realities is the unseen and somewhat unmeasured tragedy of alcohol in which families are torn apart; private and public property damaged and destroyed; careers disrupted and ruined; and all that is good about being human debased.

As sad as the Ukraine airliner tragedy might be, it is irrelevant in the extreme compared to the non-stop tragedy right here at home that this year will kill, we know, more than 5000 people.

Rather than stomping around the world spending our money and untold goodwill attempting to untangle the web of eastern European complexities, our politicians should be using our money and their time and effort to help their fellow Australians understand that the answers they search for are not at the bottom of a glass.

Echoes of the ANZACS reverberate around the Flight MA17 phenomenon.

Both events have had a huge, and understandable, emotive pull on Australians and have been exploited by our politicians of all stripes,

Many Australians, and New Zealanders, died nearly a century ago at what is now known as “Anzac Cove”, and now a comparatively few Australians died when Flight MA17 was shot down over Ukraine.

Those who fought and died to become “ANZACS” in the uncertainties of the First World War have been mythologized and successive governments have spent lavishly to burnish the ghastliness of death in the name of your country.

A purposely painted picture of humble clerks or council workers, or countless other ordinary men and women, simply scrambling to stay alive in fearfully desperate circumstances as “heroic warriors”, has been a major political bonus for nearly a century.

The polish used to mythologise those who fought and died in wars is now being applied to the victims of flight MA17 and so our nation’s emotions have been roused to the point where almost any solution, at any cost, is permissible.

We are losing perspective – MA17 is important, but rather than focus on one event in a relatively remote part of the world over which we had no control, our nation’s energies should be concentrated on easing a domestic problem over which we do have ultimate control and could save the lives of more than 5000 Australians.

But we won’t do anything. Why? It’s simply too hard; it’s politically divisive; alcohol and its consumption is a populist issue with our addiction crossing all boundaries, political or otherwise.

Answering MA17 questions will lionize our politicians; slowing the deaths from alcohol, along with the urgent and essential changes, will make them villains.

Talking with strangers, falling foul of an adage

Prof Penny Russell.

An adage is frequently used in a metaphorical sense to help explain a complex message in just a few words.

The phrase such as “A fish always rots from the head down” is an adage suggesting that when an organization or state fails, it is the leadership that is the root cause.

The adage that the “spoken word can never be revoked” is understood to have a biblical history and that being the case it would undoubtedly not be used in its original format in today’s secular conversation.

However, only recently it surfaced during a short conversation with Sydney’s Professor Penny Russell on one of Brisbane’s wonderful “CityCat” ferries.

Prof Russell was travelling to the St Lucia campus of the University of Queensland to attend a meeting of the Australian Historical Association.

As an historian, Prof Russell has long been eager to better understand manners and broader behaviour and so in 2010 wrote about much of what she had learned in the book “Savage or Civilized?”

In the introduction to the book, Prof Russell said that when she told people she was writing about Australian manners, they tended to laugh and ask, “Have you found any yet?”

Quizzed about the book, it quickly became obvious that what the Professor had written was not proscriptive, that is deciding what is right and wrong and so suggesting answers, rather it was descriptive, simply explaining what existed and why.

Prof Russell said she always found that one generation frequently considered its manners to be better than those of following generations.

That, she explained is rather subjective and needs to be considered in the context of the times – for example Facebook demands manners that would be foreign to and simply unknown by people of even a generation earlier.

Discussing manners, Prof Russell said it was once considered an abuse of manners for a man to talk with a woman while wearing hat – bingo!

Yours truly was wearing a flat cap; an apology was volunteered and accepted by Prof Russell who said that it was just an example of what had once been common and as she could hear her own words as she looked at my cap.

It was a poignant lesson about manners and a wonderful example of how the spoken word can never be revoked.

Elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2012, Prof Russell is the Bicentennial Professor of Australian History, Chair at the Department of History at the University of Sydney.

Having only just begun to read her book, it seems a personal practice of talking with a stranger every day would have generations ago put me into the “savage” class as it was then considered bad manners to talk with anyone without first being introduced.

(Having read this, Prof Russell added an adage of her own: '”Beware of what you say to strangers, lest they turn out to be journalists”?)

The incoherency of democracy stumbling from a 'low blow'

Writing coherently about something that is decidedly incoherent is difficult.

Democracy stumbled recently as it took a low blow with the repeal of the carbon pricing mechanism and so appears ill-equipped to untangle the complexities of climate change.

Former Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, among others, including many from the other side of the ideological divide, have declared climate change as humanity’s greatest ever moral challenge.

That observation follows an even earlier comment from former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter who said in 1971 that the energy crisis was “the moral equivalent to war”. Climate change is about many things, but chief among them is our frivolous use of energy.

Few, if any have argued for the abandonment of democracy, a social governance process that has underpinned societies for more than two centuries , but it was no less than Albert Einstein who said a problem cannot be resolved by the thinking from which is arose.

The world now faces difficulties created and encouraged by democracy and so applying the Einstein maxim that revered social governance process should now be questioned.

Democracy allows for debate, difference of opinion, the rule of law and within and around those attributes, tolerance.

That heady mix of values are now entrenched, most certainly in developed countries and although they now have a foothold in many other places, their import is as varied as the cultures which have embraced them.

Returning again to Mr Rudd’s 2007 observations, he noted then that climate change was so vast that it was beyond politics.

His prescient comments apply to what presently exists – climate change is unquestionably the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced and democracy appears unequal to those challenges.

Beyond that, the magnitude of what is ahead appears to escape the understanding of the Abbott-led government.

Yes, addressing the causes and mitigation of climate change is something that is beyond politics and demands creative, innovative and courageous ideas that appear to exceed the capacities of existing egalitarianism.

Democracy as an ideal is to be celebrated, but it was adherence to its fundamentals that gave rise to the Anthropocene – a scientifically recognized era acknowledging the influence of man; an era of industry, growth, conflict and profit that has disrupted the world’s climate.

Sadly, the climate change conversation has been politicized creating a “them and us”, a “goodies and baddies”-type discussion, which is simply wrong for no-one is correct or incorrect, no-one is either good or bad rather, we’re all responsible and so together face the unintended consequences of the natural expression of our species’ will to survive.

So where do we go from here?

Work hard to understand and reclaim democracy; support those who epitomise its values and step away from those who don’t.

Standing writes about 'the precariat' and provides a template for the Australian Budget

Guy Standing wrote about the
 'precariat' in 2011 and provided,
 unintentionally, a template for
Australia's 2014 budget.

Guy Standing unintentionally provided a template for the first budget of the Tony Abbot-led Coalition Government.

The British professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London wrote about “The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class”.

Most everything the professor discussed in his 2011 book as damaging to society has been embraced through the intricacies of this year’s federal budget.

The “precariat” arises when people find themselves in precarious life positions; that it become increasingly difficult to find work and frequently they can only find lower-skilled, temporary positions that are inevitably poorly paid.
Our market-driven consumer society demands a regular and substantial income, something that is missing when people find themselves in casual, temporary and poorly paid work.

Those living in and operating on the fringes of society – that so-called “fringe” is now creeping into the fabled middle-class” - have long been the prime users of a societal welfare infrastructure that is now being eroded by a government that has declared an end to the “age of entitlement”.

Utilitarianism, much discussed and criticised by Standing, has been wildly embraced by the present government that believes all are equal and in applying its ideological strait-jacket expects all people, whatever their skills, talents or intellectual adaptation to the market system, to survive unaided.

Nice thought, but it is clearly wrong for not all have the necessary aptitudes to prosper in a society whose emphasis is on profit and has little regard for the welfare of people.

A market-driven society in which everything is a commodity, including people, and has no respect for idleness and leisure, both attributes upon which innovation is reliant, as they make no obvious contribution to the balance sheet.

This rude push to put an economic value on everything robs people of reflection, leaving them with no time to contemplate, ponder and simple wonder about a better way.

The agenda of our relatively new Coalition Government has seeped into every crevice of Australian society and nothing appears sacrosanct in its bid to make repairs to the country’s budget; repairs that disinterested economists argue are not needed and are little more than a fabrication.

Everything, even our intergenerational responsibilities, are being discounted as our government rails against everyone who finds comfort in renaissance-like values of literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry.

The ideological neoliberal-driven agenda has the government muddling about in the past and pandering to populism; a populism fuelled by a fallacious fear of the other, a distorted sense of security and a misunderstanding of risk.

Standing explains how those any many other matters are giving rise to the “precariat”. His book is unsettling, but worth reading.

Basque Country once ripped asunder, is now rebuilt and helping show the way.

Spain’s Basque Country was a personally unknown entity until discussed by Nathalia artist and social justice/peace activist, Bill Kelly.

Nathalia artist and social
justice/peace activist, Bill Kelly
 with a piece he drew
following a recent operation.
 

“Kelly”, as he is known by everyone, including his wife, Veronica, has a unique interest in the Basque County evolving from his passion for both art and peace.

A decades-long interest in the Pablo Picasso painting “Geurnica” created in response to the bombing of the Basque Country village in northern Spain, by German and Italian warplanes the Spanish Civil War on the eve of World War Two, has left Kelly with a unique perspective of Geurnica.

An American by birth who has lived in Australia for decades, Kelly has a third allegiance which is almost as powerful as both his birth and now home-place.

Much of Kelly’s art has a sense of yearning for peace – the essence to Picasso’s “Geurnica” and he visits there at least annually to contribute to ceremonies recognizing when peace died at the Basque village in 1937 and is now reborn.

With personal interest in everything of the Basque Country ignited by Kelly, it was fascinating to learn that a professor of political and social philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Daniel Innerarity, is a prolific author of books discussing the human condition.

“Humanity at Risk: The Need for Global Governance”, a series of essays edited by Innerarity with Javier Solana, includes a quote from the a founder and editor of the daily Il Manifesto, the late Luigi Pintor, who said, “A society that assumes growth as its goal is like a person who considers obesity an ideal.”

Following the Pintor quote was an essay by Dimitri D’Andrea from the University of Florence in which he discusses the globalized risk and global threat for future generations from climate change.

The famous "Guernica" by Pablo Picasso.

D’Andrea wrote: “The fact that global warming is rooted in the ‘economic innocence of day-to-day consumption’ makes the catastrophe threatening us doubly unthinkable; unthinkable for it is too big for us to imagine and unthinkable because it is difficult to trace back to normal everyday life”.

The involvement of Basque Country thinkers in this social dilemma is not surprising for although they are relatively simple people who have lead equally simple lives for centuries, they are recognised deep thinkers who have contributed much to the world community.

The unannounced and unprompted attack on Geurnica in 1937 ruptured modern life in the Basque Country and in a seemingly disconnected way prepared the Basque people for the certain rigours that a changing climate will bring.

Kelly has been privileged to watch the Geurnican people recover from that sudden and violent rupture of their peaceful lives and within that play an important part in the rebuilding of the community; a community, for their work towards reconciliation and environment, named as a “UNESCO European City of Peace”. They are now far better able to, and are preparing for a different future.

 

 

Brighten up a dull life? - try volunteering!

Volunteering is sure way to brighten up a dull life.

Volunteers play a key role in helping
 maintain the Cotton Tree cenotaph.

People have myriad wants and needs, but chief among them is a sense that they belong, they are connected to someone or something, they are valued and important to the welfare of others. Volunteering answers those needs.

Thoughts that people have a worthy purpose are not only personally life-affirming, but through volunteering their community becomes a better place.

Everything about volunteering is advantageous for both as the volunteer benefits immeasurably and their efforts can change the lives of others.

Modern life appears to be about “me, me, me” with individualism being championed by many corporations and some governments who camouflage the endless pursuit of profit and growth as democracy.

The idea that people must be beholden to and servant of the economy has stripped people of the rich, important and intricate beliefs that can be found again through volunteering.

Our need for a common purpose, the essence of volunteering, and the sense of camaraderie inherent in groups has been exploited for centuries by political parties, commercial operators and those in the military.

The power of volunteering and the potent sense of wellbeing it brings to participants existed for all to see, and feel, at the recent 2014 Volunteer Recognition Awards in Shepparton’s McIntosh Centre.

Some 300 people gathered at the centre to hear who had been recognised by the City of Greater Shepparton as being among the city’s best volunteers.

The warmth and humility of these hard-working volunteers was tangible and so thick in the air, it was almost possible to imbibe it, suggesting that volunteerism is something that almost feeds upon itself.

An example of how the benefits volunteering brings to communities can be seen at the Cotton Tree war memorial on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, which a decade ago was in rather sad disrepair – today it is wonderful.

A local retired fellow, know to all as “Prickles” and whose father had died in the First World War, felt his dad deserved better and so began volunteering his time to tidy the surrounds, making the cenotaph something of which to be proud.

Prickles worked hard mowing the grass, creating some flowerbeds and brightening up the precinct until a request to the local council for some garden soil saw him caught in a bureaucratic controversy that, because of public risk and similar matters, forced him to become an official, but unpaid member of council’s staff.

Illness has forced “Prickles” into retirement and for the past four or five years Michael Powell has trimmed the plants, mowed the grass and generally kept the memorial tidy.

However, Michael is also stepping back a little and another local volunteer Bill Shaw is to become the “keeper of the cenotaph”.