The extremes of the Tour will resolve humanity's dilemmas

The Tour de France - the essence of what
 it is can resolve humanity's
 dilemmas.

Watching the Tour de France I became puzzled as to why men push themselves to such physical and mental extremes and along with that why we, their less focussed fellows, watch with such adoration and dedication.

Such passion is not strange, scarce or unique, nor is the human fascination with watching others search for the extremes of their abilities, physical or mental.

The roads of France in July each year equate in a modern sense with the “excitements” of gladiatorial Rome, as do the feats of men and women on any of the world’s many sporting arenas from the bellicosity of boxing to the beauty and finery of ballroom dancing.

Men and women test and push themselves to their limits and we watch with unalloyed enthusiasm.

Sport, it seems, has evolved to become the modern construction of war; that human confrontation that drives our emotions, ignites  passions responding to a siren-call that leads to outcomes commonly considered everything from horrible to honourable, but never to be missed.

So we watch with our emotions unleashed, our infatuations running free and, for maybe only a brief moment, we too are vicariously there, sweating, experiencing and feeling the heat of the spotlight, although, unlike the participants, our only investment is time.

Our urge to physically and mentally exhaust ourselves can be philosophically understood, but even participants would probably be at a loss to explain their behaviour as motivation seems to emerge from deep within the human psyche.

Motivation is like the many-headed Hydra monster of Greek mythology – it has many faces; identify one and there is another, and another, and then another.

Sport voyeurs and the participants they watch are stimulated and inspired in Hydra-like ways, but within that they are strikingly similar and yet as different as a blink and a wink.

Interestingly, the passion, excitements, addictions and distractions of sport, for participants and spectators alike, embody the values that are taking humanity closer to the abyss.

We are watching, but not taking any note of where it is we are going nor, it seems, do we care.

Distracted by the titillations of sport, and an endless array of technological entertainments, we seem immune to and so ignorant of the fact that we have exhausted our world’s environmental sinks and are consuming our way to catastrophe.

Sport, and this “loudness” of other distractions are not of themselves individually troublesome, but they are integral to the machinations of a way of life that has disrupted earth’s ecological balance.

Enthusiasm, passion, patience, commitment, resilience, energy, compassion, team-work, single-mindedness and tenacity are the ingredients for success in the Tour de France.

They are, also, what is creating troublesome times, but applied in pursuit of different goals they will resolve our dilemmas.

Touching the 'untouchable' will secure our future

The sacrosanct eight-hour day might seem untouchable to adherents of the present scenario, but a four-hour day in most industries would see a similar amount of work undertaken and completed with hitherto unseen efficiencies.

The "responsible men" gather to plan how
 they can ensure the 'many' work harder and
 longer to boost the bank balances of the few.

Those who only see the welfare of man linked inextricably to the economic paradigm and therefore have no understanding of the richness of human contemplation and the fruitfulness of humanism would weep at the idea of people doing what they love rather than having their shoulder to the wheel.

An eight-hour day is a fantasy for many and a move to halve that would need a cultural change of tsunami-like proportions, which undoubtedly would be accompanied by threats from the “responsible men” about the inevitable collapse of society.

Contemporary work injects discipline into our lives, bringing with it a certain contentment arising from that understood regime and so to live with what would effectively be a half-day holiday every day, people would need to re-think their affairs enabling the fortification of personal resilience and survival understandings that future scarcity will make imperative.

Naturally, a switch to a four-hour day would bring complexities, but from those subsequent intricacies would emerge people who were psychologically more intact, happier, better workers and, importantly, vastly improved communitarians.

Suggestions of a four-hour work day will bring, no doubt, a chorus of comments ranging from “stupid” to “won’t work” from those unable to see the finer attributes of life and whose futuristic vision is limited to what they can see through the prism of growth and its attendant consumerism.

A four-hour work day will naturally slow our exploitation of earth’s finite resources, first by reducing our manufacturing throughput and so resultant output and secondly by an overall reduction of our monetary wealth and, one would hope, a decline in our apparently inexhaustible desire to accumulate.

The seismic-like cultural change of a four-hour day would ricochet through the whole of society and with such a short working day it would be advisable to live where you work, or at least within easy walking or cycling distance, bringing an urgent reality to the idea of a five minute life – that sees most everything critical to day-to-day doings being just five minutes away.

The idea that is “work” will be re-shaped, restructured and re-thought with many working either at home, or from home, and travelling, maybe weekly, to a central place.

Work is essential to our mental and emotional health just as is the “balance” we are always encouraged to bring to our lives about many things.

Should we have the capacity to understand how our egos ignite to underpin the consumerism that drives the capitalistic ethos, then maybe we can find a true balance in our lives between work and living.

The sun sets on the era of cheap and abundant energy

Pause, if you will, look back and take in the spectacular sunset as the era of cheap and abundant energy slips below the horizon.

Windmills could again be common as we
 witness the sun set on the era of cheap 
and abundant energy.

It’s over: nearly three centuries of phenomenal growth ignited by humanity’s cleverness and hard work, made possible by the unleashing of ancient sunlight in the form of fossil fuels, is ending.
The feast is finished and a famine of energy is shaping to bring on what is in fact a true famine, a decided dearth of food to feed earth’s ever-growing population.
As with other life forms, human numbers ballooned when the circumstances allowed and in that goldilock’s-like epoch, those years when it was not too hot or too cold and we had, thanks to oil, a team of labourers working non-stop for us.
However, those “labourers” are tiring and soon, after a couple of centuries of our wasteful use of the ancient sunlight that became, among other things, oil, the tireless work they have done will again fall to us, changing our lives in ways we can’t yet even contemplate.
Enjoy the sunset for the following sunrise will be a red sky in the morning, which, if we take note of a sailor’s adage, will be a warning.
I feel like weeping as the realization that this wonderful life is ending sweeps over me, but then my optimism returns as the wonder of human resilience, innovation and tenacity fills my mind.
We have lived for nearly three centuries as if the limitations of nature were irrelevant, arrogantly striding the world confident that humanity had successfully manipulated the world to suit itself when all along it was Mother Nature who was actually in charge.

The late
E.F.Schumacher.

We stand between an emotional sunset and a troubling dawn that will introduce us to a new era in which the comforts of the past couple of centuries will evaporate, meaning the essential positivity that has sustained us for decades will still be in demand, but directed at different outcomes.
The dichotomy between never-ending growth, something most economists consider the epitome of good business, and earth’s ecological finitude illustrates an alarming, and a societal threatening, misunderstanding of realities.
The late author, E.F.Schumacher, discussed the realities of primary and secondary goods with the former being provided by nature and the second by human effort.
Beyond that, however, there are tertiary goods where fanciful abstractions on the world’s economy created from nothing are ultimately worth nothing.
The serious shrinkage of fossil fuels, complicated by a crumbling economy takes us closer to the abyss, but standing between us and that fall is the richness, versatility, resilience and tenacity of our fellows and if we stand with them, then that striking sunset will lead to a different,  but better,  day.