Yes, it's time to 'scare the horses'

I

t’s time to “scare the horses”.

A more than a decade of reading about and listening to some of the world’s best minds and understanding the damage you and I, and our fellows are doing and have done to earth’s atmosphere, the constant, although subtle, message has been not to scare the horses.

Yes, It's time to scare the horses.

Okay, but what does that mean?

The facts about climate change, indisputable and illustrated beyond debate by the world’s scientific community, are so contrary to life that to articulate them, as we must if we are to emerge intact from this dilemma, would freeze people into inaction.

Many have warned of that freeze, along with caveat that many “lectured” to about their behaviour, re-double their resistance, become angry,  even more remote from reason and so increasingly determined to adhere to behaviours that are worsening our troubles and align themselves, emotionally and physically, with values contrary to what the world needs.

Circumstances that manifested themselves in two world wars most certainly scared the horses and although the responses were varied, people, although frightened, unsure and uncertain, broadly and generally responded with a commitment that saw sweeping transformations in behaviour preparing communities around the world for the privations, destruction, costs and deaths of war.

Climate change demands an even more disciplined approach, but unlike a war there is no obvious adversary and so while some are scared and confused, a small, but powerful and massively influential minority whose power and influence rest in maintenance of the status quo, continue to laud what exists and encourage more of the same.

As convincing and as populist as their arguments might sound, they are false and beyond that, what is proposed for United Nations climate talks in Paris later this year can be shown as insufficient to put the world on a path to repair.

Preparations for war illustrated the amazing innovative, inventive and can do nature of people and within that their adaptability, which has taken humans to the top of the food chain, as we stood together to confront a common enemy.

Having a clear understanding of who and where the enemy was simplified affairs as it gave people a focus; somewhere and something upon which to vent their frustrations, fears and anger.

Climate change is a more complex, convoluted and wicked problem as the enemy is “us”, making it difficult and confusing, and somewhat impossible, to be angry with yourself and along with that put yourself, your family and friends, and in fact the whole of society of which you are an active part, in the “enemy” category.

So rather than bolt about like scared horses and be angry and irrational, we need to understand and accept we were wrong, we made a mistake and although time is scarce, we need to bond on a war-like footing, make bold decisions, take equally bold actions and make the great escape.

The militarization of the world and subequently our police forces is not to be unexpected

Events in Paris that produced this response
 were not to be unexpected.

Recent events in Paris, Sydney and other parts of the world were not to be unexpected.

Broadly, humanity’s trajectory is toward violence; aggression predominates in most of our activities from commerce to sport and politics and to even the humanities.

It should not surprise us therefore; that a society rooted in violence has many people who see the solutions they seek in bloodshed, brutality and the physical and emotional battering of others.

Most of us see ourselves as remote from what happened in those two cities and although that may be physically true, our endorsement of existing governance structures, either nationally or internationally, makes a lie of that.

Not for a moment should we endorse the behaviour of those branded as terrorists, and although they may be driven by ideologies we find offensive, they are simply people who have been marginalized by our market-driven, competitive, consumerist society soaked in violence.

True, the world is now a safer place than it has ever been, but only a slither of good-will stands between us and the expression of disenchantment such as witnessed in Sydney and Paris.

None of us arrive in the world with pre-determined fates, rather our destiny is shaped by the environment in which we grow and develop and so it is what happens around us that sculpts what we become.

Present society is violent in intent, but this surreptitious attack on our thinking is mostly wonderfully camouflaged to appear simply as commerce, competition or entertainment.

With our minds and thinking under the constant influence of violent images we vote for governments embedded with institutions which depend upon violence (pay your tax or we will send you to goal) for their legitimacy.

The world's police forces are becoming
increasingly militarized.

Police forces around the world protect society’s status quo, but many who disagree with what exists make their point using the tools and violence that same society has made available, endorsed and allowed to infest most every process.

Much of the developed world draws its control, its power and authority from violence; a surreptitious violence not always apparent, but always there, always ready for application ensuring the inequality that favours a few and maligns most is preserved.

World events illustrate just how militarized our police forces have become and so the sight of a death-laden police officer has now become normalized and so unsurprising to most.

Gone are those officers whose first and only defence was inquiry and a few words of compassion, benevolence and advice as they set about resolving a human drama.

What happened in Paris was seen as an affront to free speech and in that spirit of that cherished doctrine, maybe we should be looking beyond our much prized democracy; a governance process history illustrates fails every test of equality and fairness.