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.