Living in perilous times as civil religion unravels

We live in perilous times.

The civil religion of progress is unravelling.

Our careless use of fossil fuels is
changing the world's climate.
 

History is peppered with apocalyptic predictions that amounted to naught and to question someone’s religion is tantamount to foolishness for even disconfirmation of the belief frequently only deepens commitment.

Even though the collapse of progress is irrefutable, its adherents believe with religious-like fervour and to question or doubt it brings scorn and castigation driven by simmering anger, even a sense of insult.

Progress as presently known and understood became possible when we stumbled upon ancient sunlight and in discovering how to release the abundant energy stored in coal and oil, humanity’s trajectory changed, dramatically.

Progress of the past three centuries has been almost wholly dependent upon on the fossil fuels earth has carefully put aside for millions of years and after what is only a geological blink in time, we are scrapping the bottom of the energy barrel.

Many believe contemporary progress, essentially that profit and growth is infinite, but the finitude of our earth contradicts that and rather than maintain our focus on the contemporary idea of progress, we need to abandon the precepts to which we are addicted and re-invent the idea.

Progress should be about the broad betterment of the human project, based on a sweeping and fresh understanding of what leads to human happiness and flourishing; values, that when examined closely, are unrelated to existing beliefs of progress.

Present progress is built on the energy of our rapidly diminishing fossil fuels and because they have been used with such exuberance and foolishness, we are facing unimaginable changes in the human condition, complicated by equally unthinkable changes to the world’s weather system.

The garrulous among us praise the modern market system, but chief economist for the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, has described climate change as the greatest market failure in human history.

Rapid deterioration of our climate is a symbol of the unravelling of the progress myth, but it is not alone for evidence of its collapse can be seen in our refusal to acknowledge that we live in a finite world and that we need a new way.

Our consumer-based lifestyle revolves around and depends upon our continual gouging of finite resources; resources we need to husband rather than wastefully use to pander to a lifestyle that will leave our children, their children and those who follow with a world stripped of its essence.

Many believe technology will resolve emerging difficulties, but nothing exists, is being developed or is even imagined that is able to fill the void left by the seriously depleted fossil fuels.

Our devotion to progress and technology has removed the need for innovation, severely limiting our chances of inventing a fresh and resilient future.

We missed a chance we never really had

We have missed our chance.

Well, not really for we never, in fact, had a chance.

Rachel Carson wrote
'Silent Spring' warning
us that our
 capricious wants were
damaging the earth.

Humanity is headed in precisely the wrong direction for rather than improving the values under which humans flourish, they are worsening.

Inequality is greater now than ever; fewer people than ever control the world’s wealth, be that economic or material; class distinctions are greater than ever; and peace is more distant than ever.

What exists and the choices offered on Saturday, is and were contrary to what is needed if society is to thrive and arrive at a point from which we can build resilience.

A friend argues that “what” is without substance or reason until we understand the “how”; demonstrable realities, both big and small, refute that view, illustrating that until we understand “what” we want, “how” is hollow and irrational.

What we need is to escape from the environmentally destructive rigours of the corporatocracy that has routed democracy and in which the economy is sacrosanct, while the wellbeing of people is seemingly irrelevant.

We live in a world in which authoritarian or totalitarian governments are eschewed, but that is exactly the guise under which most of the world’s corporations and other successful businesses operate.

Solidarity and success for them comes through a command and control system, which, beyond a few rare instances and the constructed guise of democracy, are effectively despotic with an allegiance only to profit and growth.

Donella Meadows
told us about
the realities
of the 'Limits
to Growth'.

Rachel Carson, warned us in her 1962 book “Silent Spring” of how our industrial way of life was destroying nature at an alarming rate and a decade later, a team led by Donella Meadows, wrote and published “The Limits to Growth.

Carson and Meadows were castigated by the business as usual brigade, but the authors told truths, which today are being realised with the added complication that the ceaseless and careless burning of fossil fuels has damaged our climate to the extent that civilization itself is under threat.

Professor David Karoly from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne recently warned at Swanpool that immediate cessation of our carbon dioxide emissions was our only hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

No option on Saturday offered anything remotely like that, in fact quite the reverse, and so now it falls upon us to gather under the umbrella of intergenerational responsibility and bond with those who want to preserve people rather than profit.

What do we do? We acknowledge that not all is not as is should be and that the promises that influenced our vote on Saturday will do naught to ease the situation; and stand and work with those mostly volunteer groups that aim to build resilient communities able to endure an unfolding age of scarcity.

A Federal Budget loaded with irrelevant numbers

Last week’s Federal Budget was irrelevant.

The idea of a budget is not irrelevant, but a list of financial strictures that pander to life as we know and understand it, is wholly inappropriate.

Life in Australia ranges in extremes from damn difficult to obscenely prosperous, but beyond our daily difficulties, most people live relatively happy and expansive lives.

Those who profit from what exists stand with the advocates of more and lament any budgetary changes that limit their opportunities to further boost their bank balances.

Contrarily, those on the other side of the scale and whom, for various reasons, have seen much of the country’s wealth bypass them, equally lament changes, with their protests being almost unheard.

Australia is unquestionably the lucky country; well, for the moment.

Australia, as does the rest of the world, faces a collision of events that any budget built around existing economic dynamics is fundamentally flawed.

The world is changing, no surprises there, but it is changing in a way that is publically unacknowledged by the world’s financial gurus, among them those who are calling the shots with regard Australia’s future, be it economic or otherwise.

There is a rude immediacy about how the world operates with liberal democracy holding us hostage to the next election and more colloquially, to the next episode of television’s “The Block”.

Rather than piece together a budget, good or bad depending on personal situations, ideology or political adherences, that responds to populist needs that further fuels business as usual, we should be endorsing courageous decisions that prepare us, for the shocks ahead.

The workings of the world, and by implication Australia and so the Goulburn Valley, depends almost entirely on oil or some derivative of it and with more than half the world’s easily accessible oil already gone, it is going to become increasingly expensive as it becomes more difficult to extract.

To counter that, the government needs to enthusiastically invest in the public infrastructure and discourage private profiteering that arises from exploitation of the public domain.

The issue that will trump all concerns our changing climate and although there should have been a budgetary response three decades ago, it is still not too late, although any effective response will now need to be innovative, bold, courageous and be an immediate break with the “business as usual” paradigm.

Australian society will need to be seriously decentralized; public transit systems massively refurbished and upgraded, while there is an equal divestment in the private infrastructure (roads); community infrastructure and resilience needs to be bolstered; food security needs to be localized; and while work is psychologically important, it needs to be re-imagined and restructured allowing people to work fewer hours, live closer to their work and spend more time strengthening communities.