A smile brings an understanding about life's complexities

A pretty young woman smiled at me recently.

That, in itself means nothing beyond the fact that it makes near 65-year-old bloke feel pretty good, but it does tap into the far broader psychological questions of life.

Edward O. Wilson.

The smile, altruistic and given in a moment of fleeting inclusive friendship, illustrated that what is best about life is simple, uncomplicated and without cost to either the giver or the receiver.

In fact a smile and its more exuberant cousin, laughter, is an international human language, just as are those other emotions of sadness, fear and distress – they make sense and we relate to them irrespective of colour or creed.

However, the simplicity of a smile and the force of its message are a timely reminder of the insistence and urgency of a message of which we should all take heed.

Human life is of such complexity that it now stands in direct conflict with the intricate biology that sustains all life on earth, including you and me.

Trying to make sense of a life he considered to be burgeoning out of control, E.F. Schumacher sat down in the early 1970s and wrote “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People mattered” to quickly secure something of cult following.

The implication of Schumacher’s “small” was that something as uncomplicated as a smile and so simple seemed closely related and stands in contrast to the complexity to which humanity is now heavily embroiled.

Climate change, oil scarcity and the world’s economic difficulties are or little significance according to American biologist and author, Edward O. Wilson.

Edward O. Wilson's
"Biophilia".

Wilson, writing in “Biophilia” and then “The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth”, repeatedly emphasised of humankind’s need to ensure the sustenance and survival of every species, from the microscopic to the massive, to equally ensure its own survival.

Wilson explains that fewer than 10 per cent of the life forms on earth are known to science and of those, less than one per cent has been studied beyond simple anatomical description and few notes on natural history.

He said we don’t need a moon base or a manned trip to Mars, rather an expedition to planet earth.

Considering Wilson and Schumacher’s views, we don’t need the gigantism or complexity of our modern world, instead we need certain smallness, an understandable simplicity of life and a way of living that is on a decided human scale.

Contemporary growth, many claim, hinges on complexity, size and speed, but within such sophistication are often unintended consequences that alienate humanity and solutions are to be found in something that is smaller, slower and simpler.

That, by its very nature, would less demanding on our biosphere and so would make everyone smile, young or otherwise.

Far too little, far too late!

Proposals to upgrade the rail infrastructure on the Seymour line are far too little, far too late.

Prof Kevin Anderson.

Rail is unquestionable to most environmentally friendly way to move people and goods, but the climate change broadside that is about to pin us down will ensure we are not going anywhere.

Rather than invest time, money and effort into figuring out how we can maintain the status quo, that being “business as usual”, those energies and resources should be directed at strengthening communities, making them more resilient and so more able to cope with the unfolding and unquestionable changes.

Rather than worry about our rail network, we need help people understand and create the “five-minute-life”, that is, a way of living which everything important in our day-to-day lives is five minutes cycling or walking away.

Writing in his latest book, “The Conundrum”, American journalist, David Owen, argued that if we are to endure the emerging difficulties; we should not be going anywhere.

His “stay at home” philosophy is about each of us using less energy and so reducing our carbon dioxide emissions; emissions that according to the world’s leading climatologist, James Hansen, are making the world an uncomfortable place.

"The Conundrum" by
David Owen.

Hansen’s thoughts, and warnings, have been repeated by a former director of Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre, the UK's leading academic climate change research organization, Professor Kevin Anderson.

Watching what is happening in and around Shepparton suggests that many continue blissfully unaware of the shifts in lifestyle predicted by the likes of Hansen and Anderson.

After two century-long indoctrination into the capitalistic insistence on growth, most of us, myself included, are unable to escape the mantra that life should be bigger, better, faster, safer, happier and packed with consumer goods, mostly resulting from fossil-fuelled energies.

A few minutes spent listening to either Hansen or Anderson will remind us, that our future will be somewhat different from that decades-long promise.

Interestingly, a friend recently said many young people have fallen into a depressive malaise because of such doom and gloom, but there is little I can do other than apologise.

However, what we can do as a broader society is encourage our governments, at all levels, to force us into decided austerity; an austerity that would enforce a degree of poverty and so slow our consumptive behaviour.

Hansen and Anderson’s thoughts were reinforced when the ABC reported last week that carbon dioxide levels were now higher than at any time in the last 800 000 years, while the last decade in Australia was the warmest on record.

To ease the doom and gloom malaise my friend pointed to, we need to invest time and energy into making our neighbourhoods and our communities more inclusive and happier places, rather than making them easier to leave.

Misunderstanding our reason, if we ever had one

Humanity has misunderstood its reason, if it ever had one.

We emerged from primordial slime and
then benefitted from near ideal
"Goldilocks-like" conditions.

We are a problem solving species and that is something at which we have been wonderfully effective, but interestingly some of the resultant solutions have produced seemingly unresolvable unintended consequences.

In solving problems we have, it appears, frequently asked the wrong question.

The questions were driven, and still are, by survivalist instincts and base human emotions from which we have never truly escaped.

Humanity, generally, is still somewhat childlike, grabbing selfishly at most anything that goes by, but with little thought for others, always seeking immediate gratification and within that caring little about what tomorrow will bring.

The idea that is maturity has been distorted in being applied to trivialities, rather than being used to honour the steadfastness and wisdom of some, particularly experienced and older people.

That however, is in itself contradictory, as wisdom, experience and age do not necessarily equate, but it is where wisdom, something which is short supply, is most commonly found and so we should not be uncomfortable or embarrassed about turning there for help or advice.

Humanity has scrambled for, and fought among itself, for earth’s resources, whether land, oil, people or whales, but in expanding its understanding of how to exploit those assets, it is locked technologically into an apocalyptic way of living.

With scant regard for tomorrow, justified by hollow and shallow rationalisations, we have battered the other into submission, plundered earth’s finite resources, privatized the profits and socialized the costs, while leaving behind the mounting residue of our less than honourable behaviour to accumulate in and so have filled up the earth’s environmental sinks.

Being simply the fortunate bonding a few elements in the primordial slime that benefitted from ideal conditions, we did not really evolve for a purpose nor was there any real planned reason, rather driven by species survival we simply capitalized on whatever came our way.

That was fine until we evolved to exceed nature’s capacity to cope and so now we must voluntarily moderate our behaviour and live within our environment’s finite bounds.

For millennia, the entire Holocene, we have been favoured by near ideal circumstances – Goldilocks-like temperatures of not too hot or too cold – but undeniable science illustrates that what is a massive human experiment is going wrong.

Never before has mankind been so close to the precipice and rather than compete in a search for endless growth in a finite world, we should step back, think about, understand and benefit from the social warmth, trust, co-operation and help between fellows that appeared to be the locus of the recent floods and fortified by that comforting reassurance, build and shape our reason.

Considering that, we have much to do.

Considering life retrospectively

The dynamics of a drought can only be understood retrospectively.

Floods - are they the opening
gambit in the next drought?

What happened throughout the Goulburn Valley in the past few days is hugely different, but it too can only be understood retrospectively.

People throughout the area, particularly those living in Tallygaroopna and Congupna, wrestled with an excess of water, the reverse side of the drought coin.

Accurately pinpointing the beginning of the recent south-eastern Australian decade-long drought never happened, but had we understood that, our communities would have been able to avoid the worst of the difficulties.

Knowing a decade with scarce water supplies was about to unfold, we would have planned and conserved our resource, easing practical difficulties and ensured people were psychologically prepared for the certain changes in their lives.

Drought, however, is remote from the minds of those presently wrestling with the outcome of record rains, filling sandbags and doing what they can to protect their property from rising water.

Considering the reality that we never really know when a drought has started – strangely, considered in retrospect, this could be the start of another – how do we know whether or not the flooding of late should be attributed to changes in our climate brought on by human activities.

The climate change doubters, or skeptics, will rush to the barriers declaring recent record rains were simply cyclical and little more than nature doing what nature does, while the global warming adherents will argue the event fits exactly with scenarios predicted by the climate scientists.

So while knee-deep in water, do we mark this as the beginning of a drought; a predictable and understood cyclical event; or is it evidence of human-induced climate change?

It is the latter argument that is beyond question and, yes, it may well be the beginning of another decade long drought and, no, it is not a predictable and understandable cyclical event.

Had it been predictable and understandable, the events that filled the pages of this newspaper in recent times could have been avoided.

Climate change is subtle and silent and remains that way until we experience events such as those of the past few days, but it is something which we can neither touch nor see.

So while we need to band together and support all those troubled by the floods, what is even more important is that entire communities need to gather and consider their response to a demonstrably changing climate.

Dr Cameron Hepburn

Our behaviour is the root of the trouble and it was only on Thursday that a visiting professor, Dr Cameron Hepburn told nearly 300 people at a Melbourne lecture that about half the complications leading to climate change would be eradicated if we stopped subsidizing technologies dependent on fossil fuels.

The saved money, he suggested, could then be used on a small suite of climate change abatement policies to support Australia’s carbon tax.

Life looked at through the rear view mirror is easily understood, but Dr Hepburn, like us, does not have one and so is eager to understand future workable climate change abatement processes.

Our narrative around which Australia has been built is lost, or distorted

Those who gather in Canberra to govern our country have lost, or grossly distorted, the narrative around which modern Australia is built

Canberra's Parliament 
House seems to be built
 on pointless rhetoric that
appears to have little
to do with the effective
 management of the
Australia.

Pointless rhetoric of our federal politicians is rarely about the effective management of the country rather, it is more about discrediting those who have a different political view.

The 24-hour news cycle has its upside, but the reverse of that is the seemingly silly almost minute-by-minute examination of the lives of politicians, celebrities and their ilk.

Living under the heat of such a fierce spotlight and trapped by public expectations of a faultless performance, our politicians are left without time to reflect, consider and dare not demonstrate any apparent weakness by admitting that they are unsure or simply do not know the answer.

We, the polity, are to blame for that.

Australia, as does the rest of the world, faces pressing problems with the most serious, and the most unyielding, being human induced climate change that will bring unstoppable transformations to our lives demanding that any worthwhile response be bi-partisan.

Rather than simply point-score at the expense of counterparts, our politicians need to work together to prepare Australia to deal with a threat that if left unattended, has the potential to not just seriously disrupt life as we know it, but actually decimate the community.

In recent times the country has almost ground to a halt as we argue endlessly about some insignificant triviality, suggesting we choke on a mosquito, while we swallow, with ease, a camel; the camel being the threat of climate change.

Climate change is just the first order of threats as hard on its heels and invariably implicated in a multitude of ways, is resource depletion, species extinction and an imploding world economy.

You would imagine that with a trio of threats, of which anyone alone has the potential to cause relentless difficulties, those Canberra cronies would put aside their pointless child-like bickering to prepare the country the most all-encompassing challenge it has every experienced, vastly bigger and more consuming than either of the World Wars of the 20^th century.

Courage, commitment and conviction has lifted humanity to where it is at now and should we successfully take the human project any further, those same traits are urgently important and the first to demonstrate that bravery, allegiance and passion must be those who gather in Canberra.

The challenge of steering Australia through the ideological changes of coming decades is so massive that only the most courageous need apply; only those who are genuinely committed to our country’s long term welfare and care little about personal gain, or party leadership; and only those prepared to compromise and so make decisions that will steer us away from present consumptive life styles.

Conversation darts about in pusuit of water

Conversation darted about as it tried to pin down the bizarrely complex, convoluted and knotty issue of water.

Nearly 50 people gathered in Shepparton’s Harder Auditorium today (February 22) to hear a little more about the seemingly never ending discussion about the future of the Murray Darling Basin.

Yesterday’s meeting was set up by the City of GreaterShepparton as a part of its role in the Murray River Group of Councils (MRGC), that is the rural cities of Mildura and Swan Hill, the Shires of Gannawarra, Loddon, Campaspe and Moira.

The meeting, set up to primarily allow discussion among participants and encourage submissions to the Murray Darling Basin draft plan, was led by Bendigo-based associate planner from consultants, RMCG, Rozi Boyle.

Shepparton mayor, Cr Michael Pollan, introduced Ms Boyle, but omitted to mention that the consultant did not actually represent the Murray Darling Basin Commission and so initially she was the target of comments from those unhappy with some aspects of the plan.

Once it was clear that Ms Boyle was simply explaining the process and in reality was neutral on the issue, most simply reverted to discussing issues with others at the meeting.

Simon Furphy, using his calm solicitor-like skills, outlined his position and seemed to find quiet and unspoken support among those at the meeting, except for one fellow who spoke up encouraging the council to include everything he said in its submission.

Yesterday’s conversation was not about if and when a plan will exist as it has been decided a plan will happen and timeline for action has been settled.

What, however, is still uncertain are what the plan will actually say and submission are still being sought, both from individuals, groups or bodies, such at the MRGC.

A further similar meeting will be held onThursday, February 23, at Mooroopna’s Westside Performing Arts Centre from 6pm for two hours.

More detail about the plan can found at www.greatershepparton.com.au or the Murray Darling Basin Authority website – www.mdba.gov.au.

Speed and road deaths inextricably linked

Death will occur in less than second in a serious road collision.

The image used by Victoria's
 Transport Accident Commission
 to encourage a reduction
in speeds.

The speed at which a person dies as their car crumples is alarming with the sequence of events that kill being explained at a Shepparton “Cool Heads” program last year.

Death arrives at a speed that exceeds human response and although its finality is catastrophic, further complexities for occupants arise when one or more are injured, severely or otherwise, and often subsequently left with devastating life-long disabilities.

The collisions are the outcome of fatigue, inexperience, inattention, stupidity, vehicle failure and, contrary to the view of a recent correspondent to this newspaper, speed.

Even the slowest of us should be able to deduce that speed – a statistically confirmed fact in the causation of road collisions – is the product of fatigue, inexperience, inattention and, most certainly, stupidity.

A motor vehicle, again it should be clear to even the dullest of us, is a heartless immobile contrivance that awaits human input and reacts to simple instructions many of which may well come from one who is tired, inexperienced, inattentive and beyond and within all that, stupid.

Therein lies a recipe for almost certain disaster, for with stupidity in control, seasoned by inexperience, inattention and fatigue, this heartless metal contrivance is taken to  speeds beyond the abilities of whoever is in charge and, of course, those of the vehicle.

Evidence explaining events leading up to road collisions are the same the world over and so it is common to read such things as: “When the facts are truthfully presented, however, the behavior of the implicated driver is usually the primary cause. Most collisions result from excessive speed or aggressive driver behavior.”

That evidence is easily found as most internet search engines will, almost as quick as you can die in a road collision, find confirmation of collision causes and without doubt will list speed as being among the prime instigators.

Gustave Flaubert

Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission is the reservoir into which the residue from the state’s road collisions collect and being acutely aware of the role speed plays as it stalks our roads, the Commission has worked tirelessly to reduce such stupidity. 

It understands how speed increases the likelihood of collisions, but faces implacable opponents who, should something go wrong because of their arrogance, ignorance or stupidity, find perverse comfort in attributing responsibility to conditions, others, vehicle failure and just about any variable, except themselves, and certainly not the fact that they drove above the applicable speed limit.

French author, Gustave Flaubert, lived and worked before motor cars existed, but seemed prescient when he said: “To be stupid, selfish and have good health are the three requirements of happiness. Though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.”