Human construct stands between us and mitigating climate change

A human construct is what stands between us and moving toward mitigating human-induced climate change.

Humanity is surrounded
by an economy that was
once our servant, but
 now is now our master.

Humans, bit by bit, piece by piece have built an economy that now straddles the globe and while it was at first our servant, it has now, through the apparent fault of no-one, become our master.

The economy has been elevated to God-like status and to suggest anything likely to unseat it, borders on blasphemy and brings accusations of ignorance, naivety and even stupidity, arguing that such foolishness is a misunderstanding of what it is that gives humanity sustenance.

Such allegations arise from an addiction to the paradigm in which the world economy is embedded and with most governments, whether they be liberal democracies, communistic, despotic regimes, religion-based democratic facades or something of any other flavour, bowing before the might of money, to suggest something different is not only decried, but considered grossly irresponsible.

Humanity, or at least some of it, has been fortunate to escape from the daily trepidations of the hunter and gatherer life; something that has been achieved through the construction of an economy which has, in many ways served us well, but at the same time has ignored the subtle beauties of life; beauties that are sadly irrelevant to the simplistic brutalities of the economy.

Growth, a code word for exploitation, has seen man excavate the world’s ancient sunlight, and in the past two or three centuries use the fossil fuels we discovered with a rude rush of exuberance to see all the available environmental sinks on the earth filled to over-capacity, disrupting the earth’s atmosphere to create disarray in the world’s climate to manifest weather patterns with which humans are unfamiliar.

That unfamiliarity is of such a dimension that the future of humanity, along with most other species with which it shares the planet, is problematic.

The time for action is already a few decades past and certain weather related difficulties cannot be avoided, but it is time to bury our concerns about the world economy and change our rhetoric to align it with ideals that are about equality, philanthropy, altruism, sharing, kindness and an understanding of the other to ensure that life on earth can endure.

The world’s economy has evolved in such a way that the distribution of wealth is disturbingly wrong in that about 15 per cent of the population controls 80 per cent of the wealth and nearly half the population less than two per cent.

The economy has served a few on earth well, disadvantaged more and if we are unable to rein it in and return it to again being the servant, as opposed to a master, then climate change will continue its march to a rather gloomy conclusion.

 

Addicted to the pleasurable rock of life

Work has always been, and still is, the rock to which my life is anchored, as is that of many others.

Bruce Springsteen

That, however, is a habit I don’t want to break as it pointedly enriches who and what I am. It makes me, in my view, a better person.

Naturally it is easy to be philosophically flippant about the pleasure work brings when not locked into seemingly endless and equally pointless and heartless sweat inducing toil, reminding me of the words from the Bruce Springsteen song “Factory”:

“End of the day, factory whistle cries,
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy,
somebody's gonna’ get hurt tonight,
It's the working, the working, just the working life”.

Work, for me, however is not about that sort of drudgery (of course some jobs  have had that flavour), rather it has largely been an ongoing joy through which the human interaction brightens my being, makes me smile and brings satisfaction to every day.

Interestingly though, our addiction to contemporary understandings of work, sees us devote a hefty, and almost irrational portion of our lives to maintaining a structure that ultimately enriches only a few, while the many toiling endlessly, get little.

The “responsible men” who, by what they make appear default, but which is really intent, and call the shots in society repeatedly bleat about the need of the “many” to work harder and longer, for less, to ensure, they argue, the integrity of an economic system that ultimately serves only them.

The disparity between rewards to the worker and ever bulging bank balances of the few is what ignited the unrest that become known as “the occupy movement”.

The “occupiers” have my support and sympathy as I can sense the injustices they live with and the subsequent unfairness that assaults them every day as a system deemed to be as it should be favours only a few.

However, as understandable as their cause is, it seems somewhat ill-directed in that it seeks equity, or at least an increased sense of fairness, in a system that is in itself fundamentally flawed.

The literal meaning of work has been so distorted by capitalistic tub-thumpers that it equates more now with drudgery than a vocation or a soul-enriching contribution to the broader betterment of the human experiment.

Modern times have seen most people enslaved to an economic paradigm from which we need to urgently disengage, both individually and as a society.

Economics is invariably politics in disguise and is structured with the intent of the few to profit, control and provide substantial individual short-term comfort ignoring, to the long-term peril of all, the ecological significance of our finite world.

•Next: Considering the four-hour day.