We need to watch and learn from our front row seat

Goulburn Valley people, and their Australian fellows, have a front row seat to watch the removal of another rivet in the superstructure supporting the U.S.

America's President,
Mr Barack Obama.

U.S. president, Barack Obama, has argued for a package of tax cuts and government spending aimed at invigorating his country’s economy.
The package, worth about $US447 billion ($A421 billion), is ill-directed, being aimed at a return to business as usual and in doing so appeasing most Americans who see their comfort in living as they have for many decades.
Rather than spend the country’s wealth on a way of life that is unquestionably unsustainable, Mr Obama and those around him, should overtly embrace the hope, audacity and the idea of change that saw him elected in 2008.
America is staring at economic collapse; a societal breakdown that will end its world hegemony and is the natural outcome of what former political philosophy professor and noted author, Sheldon Wolin, has described as “inverted totalitarianism”.
Wolin sees decided danger in the dysfunctional marriage between government and the corporate world, a union that he argues has routed democracy leaving America with a militarized, industrial complex.
Survival of that complex hinges on an obedient populace, one, which in Wolin’s terms, is distracted and titillated by such things as sport, entertainment and discussion and debates about what are ultimately unimportant matters.
And so while democracy survives in name, what America has, and Australia trails along behind, is inverted totalitarianism – a facade claiming social equity, but which is really a process favouring a few.
Mr Obama’s plan does have tax cuts for both employee and employers and billions to prevent teacher lay-offs and hire more police and fire officers, and it would spend $50 billion to improve highways, railroads, transit and aviation.
Examined, however, through the prism of climate change and seriously depleted energy resources, the plan’s outline quickly becomes distorted and dated.
Rather than grasp at exhausted ideas, the Americans need to abandon what once worked, and failed, allowing them to embark on an adventurous and exciting new project that would fundamentally change the fabric of its society.
Such systemic change is resisted by an American elite that appears unable to comprehend the fraying of its empire and beyond that is so misled by its own beliefs and values, that its impending doom goes unseen.
Rather than rescuing flailing and failing companies, the U.S. should be advancing concepts that call for the localization of communities and employing the idea of late author and influential economist and statistician, E.F. Schumacher that “small is beautiful”.
America is the world’s biggest and most influential economy and as its collapse will render ours destitute; we need to watch attentively, and learn, from our front row seat.

Living and coping with the challenges of Alzheimer's disease

Australia’s ageing population brings many riches, but they do not come without a cost.

Old age offers much, but
brings many complications.

The knowledge and wisdom of the baby boomers, now mostly in their sixties and beyond, is being lost with Commonwealth Government statistics showing that about 250 000 people in Australia have dementia.
Dementia, the government’s Department of Health and Ageing has said, is not a natural part of ageing and there are many different types of diseases and conditions that cause dementia-like symptoms.
After the age of 65, it adds, the likelihood of being diagnosed with dementia doubles every five years and people over the age of 85 currently have a one in four chance of developing dementia.
The financial cost to Australia is huge and growing, but the unmeasured cost is the physical hurt and emotional pain imposed on carers and others supporting those who actually have dementia.
Dementia is triggered by many diseases, and among them is Alzheimer’s disease, which worsens the functioning of a person’s brain impacting on such things as such as speech and language, personality, decision-making and judgment or awareness and ability to interact with the environment.
Difficulties arising from a brain whose capacities are being eroded have become intimately familiar in the past decade with first my mother-in-law dying from complications associated with Alzheimer’s disease and now my father-in-law, although in his late 80s, is wrestling with the same adversities.
He is a beautiful man (I accept my familial biases), honest, loyal, generous, courteous and in every sense a gentleman.
Those qualities still exist and were evident when his daughter, my wife, and I cared for him for about a week just recently.
It was a lovely, but sad, time – Basil was a wonderful houseguest during which time it was important to focus on the moment and not think too much about him once being the efficient and effective manager of the Echuca livestock saleyards.

My father-in-law
 managed events such as this
 two or three times a week.

He had once, two or three times a week, orchestrated sales involving hundreds of animals, co-ordinating their sale, movement within the yards and, ultimately, their readiness for transport by the buyers.
Alzheimer’s disease has been the formal diagnosis and steps have been taken to slow its onset and although they have been effective to some degree, the side-effects, occasionally, have been unwelcome.
Patriarchs are often portrayed as the rock upon which families depend and the mental deterioration of one shouldering that responsibility brings a seismic shift in family dynamics.
His authority, seemingly suddenly erased by the disease, has shifted what were once his responsibilities to his children bringing convoluted undercurrents that are worsened by the complexities of emotions arising from these chaotic times.
The raw cost to society through the loss of a valuable member is measurable, but not so the unsettling confusion surrounding that loss.

Security on our streets begins when we flick a switch

Finding security on Shepparton’s streets seems pretty straightforward – it begins with the flicking of a switch.

It is unlikely your
 television has a
  switch anything like
 this one, but if it had,
 then moving it to the
 off position initiates
 security on our streets.

However, that is reductionism taken to its extreme as the sought after security arises from a social paradigm of such complexity that it makes brain surgery look artless.
Safety on Shepparton’s streets, as is the case for any town or city, begins when we reach for the remote, turn off our televisions and effectively remove from our lives the programmed violence and its daily assault on human values.
We are born as empty vessels and as our lives take shape we are filled by the influences of those around us, the way of life of those who raise us and the philosophies and values of the institutions that impact on our lives, from our schools, the government, laws, the media and finally, and critically, our entertainment.
Television is unchallenged as the one form of media that has almost unimpeded access to our lives, influencing our values from the seemingly impossible cheery morning shows and attention grabbing frivolities throughout the day, to the early evening news and current affairs shows that pander to the corporatism of the world, and the endless blood, gore and drama of evening viewing that ignites and excites our emotions.
Television simply fills up all the emotional holes in life to make the road smooth, but in a strange contradiction it is also hardening our values making us less conscious of community and consequently less willing to step away from our addiction to support our fellows.
And so while the road is smooth it leads to nowhere, at least not to a place where our streets are secure.
Television seeps almost unknowingly into our consciousness, while newspapers, books and magazines demand a more active participation and leads readers into a line by line contemplation and judgement that encourages reflection.

Neil Postman

Being aware of our ever-reducing attention span, television doesn’t allow for such luxuries, hurrying from scenes of war, death and destruction to heart-warming images of a team of rescuers hauling a helpless horse from a bog.
This seamless shift from tragedy and scenes of human deviousness to images of human goodness confuses the intellect and as discussed by Neil Postman in “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, we become desensitized to death and other human difficulties.
That, aligned with a violent computer games and movies in which violence is celebrated, tells the viewers/participants that whatever troubles them can be resolved by bellicose behaviour and so as night follows day, aggression, in its many forms, stalks our streets.
Modern life has conspired with the liberty afforded by our streets to rob them of the what it is those public places allow, a social life that has the wonderful addendum of security.   

Innovation and aultruism first line of defence

Altruism took centre stage with the success of Shepparton’s recent Biggest Ever Blokes lunch.

Prostate problems are
 something men usually
 die with, rather than from.

The philanthropy ignited by the now annual event warrants applause, but probably even more important is the awareness it creates about prostate cancer.
There is an inherent reluctance among one half of the population, blokes, to discuss personal, physical bits such as their prostate gland.
Sexual prowess is of huge importance to men and difficulties with their prostate is inextricably linked to that aspect of their lives and so often is it something, for most blokes, not talked about or only referred to obliquely through black humour.
The Blokes Biggest Lunch draws what is really just another moment in the lives of men – sadly fatal for many – out from its shadowy existence and makes it a more acceptable, and understandable, human experience.
Beyond being a significant social event, which in itself is therapeutic, the lunch is about raising cash to help efforts to find a solution to prostate cancer and so in a broad sense is about the wellbeing of men.
I do wonder, however, if the even more pressing and sweeping difficulty of the damage humans are causing to earth’s atmosphere would garner equal interest and support. That being a rhetorical question, I know it would not.
Nearly 3500 men die every year in Australia because of prostate problems and as sad as that is, it is inconsequential compared to the decimation of people that awaits when human induced changes to earth’s atmosphere begin to illustrate that it is really nature that calls the shots, not us.
The same influential group the gathered to hear and talk about prostate cancer, need to again assemble and discuss their response to the fact that our planet is in peril.

Dr Graeme Pearman

Rather than simply dip in their pockets, they need to actively encourage a reduction in our dependence on fossil fuels and for the broad well-being of all who live here, they should act individually, or as a group, to make innovation of way of life.
Evolution is far too slow – just two weeks ago, the former Chief of Atmospheric Research and CSIRO Climate Director, Dr GraemePearman, told Melbourne’s Bayside Climate Action Group that in considering global warming, we have just four to five years in which to act.
Evolution takes time, time we don’t have and so in its place we need intelligent design – that is intelligent design of the entire human infrastructure.
Every company, from the smallest two-man operation to the mega-corporation, and everything in between, needs to continue doing what it does, but on a diet which will end its energy obesity .
Innovation may solve the difficulty of prostate cancer; innovation, and altruism, is the primary defence against global warming.

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.

'Closure' rarely provides true answers to source of discomfit

Rarely does the much touted “closure” people suffering various traumas seek provide real answers to the source of their discomfit.

Daniel Morcombe

That imagined end is transitory with the emotional damage continuing as every-day, and seemingly ordinary, events hurl people back in time.
The arrest and charge of a fellow with the murder eight years ago of Queensland youth, Daniel Morcombe, may have brought some closure for his parents, Bruce and Denise, and two brothers as it helps to explain the primary reason, but ignores deeper social issues.
Research abounds suggesting our lifestyle choices bring on events such as that in which the Morcombe family has become embroiled.
Although ridicule awaits those who resort to such simplifications, and in this specific case it well may not be true, the built environment we prefer – that being remote subdivisions that do not allow for genuine socialization of people – can have a huge negative impact on an individual’s behaviour.
An increased density in our living, not overcrowding, makes it likely, if not certain, that not a day will pass without us having an unexpected, but socially reinforcing, face-to-face meeting with a neighbour.
The wellbeing of our neighbourhoods and the broader welfare of our communities, means we have healthier, happier and energized societies that in turn can be measured by the behaviour of individuals.
Residential sprawl, that is developer-driven creation of residential subdivisions stranded without a motor car from the life of the city, is evident in Shepparton.
What is happening in Shepparton, and or course the rest of Australia, is an echo of the phenomenon that swept America after the Second World War reducing it from a country that had some of best public transit systems in the world to being absolutely car-dependent.
Many of that country’s most tight-knit, inclusive and civil communities were sacrificed on the altar to oil as residential subdivisions erupted throughout the nation, mostly distant from the services that ensure communities can expand intellectually, socially and organically through daily serendipitous meetings with others.
Without the benefit of true community, America has become, without challenge, the most violent nation in the world – murder, rape, assault and other disruptions to life result from illegal processes that saw public transit destroyed and replaced by the car, all in the name of profit.
It is unreasonable to suggest that the murder of Daniel Morcombe could have been avoided if human-scale communities had existed, rather than the sprawl of modern development, but the dynamic that leads to such events would have been eased.
Humans are social animals, we need to interact with our fellows, we need to belong, we need acknowledgement, and, although we may not know it, we need mentoring – all things that spring from chance meetings in tight-knit communities.
 

A steady flow of ideas boost and protect civilization

Civilization is a fragile thing.

The late Ann Rand
who said culture
cannot exist without
a constant stream of
 ideas.

Its veneer of decency is all that protects us from the brutality of the mob.
And that sliver of integrity between good and evil has, for the want of ideas, obviously failed in parts of Great Britain.
That scarcity of ideas has been equalled on two recent occasions here in the Goulburn Valley, although with a distinctively different outcome, thanks to restraint of those who felt the sharp end of that dearth of ideas.
Little protects us from what we have witnessed in England with the levee that stands between us and that angry anarchy being nothing more than one good life-affirming idea upon another.
A poverty of ideas, or a life built around muscle, brutality and a disregard for others, brings upon those in that life, the chaos seen in Britain or to a lesser degree what has happened here – the closure by Heinz of its Girgarre plant and the sacking of 150 people from SPC Ardmona.
Interestingly it is not so much simply an absence of ideas that creates the vacuum, as it is also a failure to even consider that there might be a different, and better, way to do things.
The late author and philosopher Ann Rand said that a culture cannot exist without a constant stream of ideas and the alert, independent minds who originate them.
Sadly the freewheeling values of our commercial world are the reverse of what their proponents believe them to be as they are contrastingly quite narrow, being primarily about growth and profit for a few at the expense of many.
What began in Britain as something of a pillory of those values was quickly seen by others as an opportunity to promote different values and so it exploded socially, resulting in death, injury and theft, and property damage.
Ideas are the oxygen of anything and everything – it was little more than an idea that first saw the Girgarre plant opened; an idea closed it; and an idea will hopefully see it reborn.
Today’s commercial world is nomadic and responsive only to profit and growth, but that will change as our access to abundant energy ends, within a decade or so, and businesses that understand and are able to operate in a steady state economy, will finally be putting down roots.
When that happens, what we know and understand as civilization will be given a significant boost for following the death of globalization, international trade and travel, we will see the re-birth of the true local community; a tight-knit social structure that hinges on the well-being of people, not things.
Civilization, just like nature on which it depends, is fragile and should we treat either badly, they will change, sometimes beyond recognition.