Unfolding dilemmas are greater than our vocabulary

Our vocabulary is inadequate to help us understand and address dilemmas presently facing humanity.

What is evolving, what faces us, what must be addressed and so resolved are changes to our lifestyle so different from our experience, understanding and knowledge that they are beyond language; they have a complexities that largely exceed quantitative and qualitative description.

Lester R. Brown.

Standing between us and the resolution of those difficulties is, oddly, democracy and, understandably, the egotism, individualism and the natural human hunger for what is better that drives the concept that is capitalism.

Democracy has been society’s friend for centuries, but the resolution of the world’s climate difficulties, dealing with the exhaustion of our finite resources and managing the intricacies of the world’s imploding economy needs an authoritarian-like government: or maybe a kindly dictator.

The long-term survival of society and its maturity to something in which people are put before profit will force the abandonment of what is understood to be capitalism; finally we will grasp that the blatant antagonism of capitalism is foreign to the broad wellbeing of society.

One of Europe’s leading experts in sustainability strategies and corporate responsibilities, French woman, Elisabeth Laville, has argued that the rich of the world (that’s you and I) should be focussed on increasing their wellbeing, while decreasing material possessions.

Laville’s ideas can only be implemented if maturity brings with it a comprehension of the terms, the ideas, the concepts and the vocabulary that allowed the construct of an unbalanced world; a world that favours the rich both in terms of possessions and around that, rights.

Our vocabulary is our identity and although one is no better than any other, in our capitalistic world those “who have the gold, make the rules”.

Those “rules” are obviously not working, but the vocabulary which supports and authenticates them is embedded in our language and the survival (literally) of our society hinges on us truly understanding the implications of what it is we are saying.

Writing in the preface to “How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse” Lester R. Brown said it was not easy to talk about the prospect of social collapse, because it is difficult to imagine something we have never experienced.

 “No generation has faced a challenge with the complexity, scale, and urgency of the one that we face,” he said.

Discussing the collapse of civilizations Brown quoted former Rockefeller Foundation president, Peter Goldmark, who said: “The death of our civilization is no longer a theory or an academic possibility; it is the road we’re on”.

Signposts urging us to change direction abound, but we need to understand and comprehend the vocabulary in which they are written or we will continue on this troublesome road.

The contradictions and clashes between beliefs and reality

Beliefs and reality are often estranged.
Most believe the world is a violent place, and of course they are correct, but if considered historically, they are simply perpetuating a myth.

Dr Rodney Tolley

Traders invariably believe that customers need parking close to their stores as the resultant success of their businesses is linked, inextricably to the convenience of arrival by car.
That is quite wrong as surveys throughout the world, including some by traders themselves, have illustrated that customers seek a host of things, among them safety and the ability to easily access the store on foot, but have parking near the bottom of their hierarchy of needs.
Those two matters, it should be noted, are just two of many discrepancies between beliefs and reality.
Steven Pinker explored the changing realities about violence in his latest book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes”.
Pinker acknowledged that our world is a violent place with our sensitivities sharpened by the 24-hour news service that presently encircles the globe alerting us to every violent act, no matter how small, big or obscure.


Steven Pinker

However, comparatively few people today have to live looking behind, Pinker pointed out, in the fear that they will be murdered, assaulted, tortured, raped or abducted.
The belief is that people face all those dilemmas, but the reality is that we are in the midst of a peaceful epoch and violence in its absolute sense is something of a rarity.
Car parking is another troublesome myth, different obviously, but equally ill-founded.
Speaking recently in Melbourne the chair of the global movement, Walk 21, Dr Rodney Tolley, said traders unquestionable believed car parking was what had the biggest influence on their businesses, when quite clearly it was other things, among them their easy accessibility by pedestrians.
Dr Tolley was talking to a relatively benign audience of mostly planners and those interested in urban design and argued that most business owners didn’t truly understand what it was that customers really wanted.
He said that the walkability of towns and cities, and within that easy access to shops, was now “core business” and needed to be treated seriously by all in the community.
Dr Tolley was not simple theorizing as he was able to produce hard numbers illustrating how businesses had sharply improved once pedestrian access to them and the walkability of the general area had been enhanced.
Life, it seems, is not exactly what we believe; we live in haze of myths, of ill-informed fantasies and are surrounded by judgements that are demonstrably inaccurate and yet in the name of emotional comfort, arrogance, ignorance and pride we to persevere with beliefs that have humanity teetering on the edge of the chasm.

Christmas offends, but I just love it

Christmas offends my sensibilities – but I just love it.
Christmas was born with the birth of a myth that invokes Christianity and became a marketer’s dream when the idea of gift-giving captured the modern mind.
Christmas, in its present form, worsens difficulties the world faces with the exhaustion of resources and encourages a way of life that is the antithesis of a sustainable world.
Christmas and climate change, or global warming if you prefer, seem unrelated, but are inextricably linked with industry working overtime and ploughing through resources to churn out what it is we want, rather than need, for this festive season.
Christmas does, however, have a positive dimension in that it encourages altruism throughout December, a generousity that is largely in retreat for the rest of the year.
Christmas is for many, wrongly and yet understandably, a real or imagined deadline for tasks ranging from the completion of projects to decision time about relationships or other personal moments of consequence.
Christmas gives oxygen to a lie that may seem innocuous and fun, but in a subtle manner illustrates to those at the heart of the deception, our children, that they should treat those in authority with some suspicion, bringing on an uneasiness that has the potential to surreptitiously trouble them throughout their lives.
Christmas, despite its Christian underpinnings and its consumerist overtones brings about brief moments that point to the richness of humanity and in so doing unearths the warmth, connectedness and collaboration that will be essential if humanity is to find the capacity to dispense with its differences and stand as one, rather than many, in confronting emerging difficulties.
Christmas for me will be particularly enjoyable as it will be the first I have spent with my one and three-year-old grandsons, something about which I often feel distress for long have I believed that we should all live where we live, meaning families should not be in disparate parts of the country, or even worse, overseas.
Christmas brings its dilemmas, but for me it is a particularly special time and I trust it is exactly that for you – season’s greetings!