Grand court house proposal assualts good sense

I

deas reminiscent of the energy-rich 20^th Century and appealing to and warming egos are embedded in a plan to build a large, glamourous and centralized court in Shepparton.

The grand new court house proposed
 for Shepparton - energy scarcity
and information abundance
makes it already obsolete.

Cutting to the chase, it is simply the wrong thing to do.

Shepparton people frequently lament the centralization of government and health facilities in Melbourne, and a few major regional centres, and now, in a Goulburn Valley sense, we are doing the same thing.

Centralization of services was good sense in the energy rich and information poor 20^th Century, but the circumstances have reversed; we now have an overabundance of information and a scarcity of energy.

Living in what is colloquially known as the “information age” and the officially deemed “Anthropocene” – an era in which humans are now the major influence on the earth’s biosphere – leaves us no option but to design our lives around those two facts.

Rather than taking the people to where the infrastructure is, we should be taking the infrastructure, which now is frequently little more than information, to where the people are.

So instead of spending richly on creating a soon to be impractical 20^th Century piece of infrastructure, we need to understand how the disruptive information technology works and take the until now court house-bound law processes to the people.

The modern court house need be nought more than a mobile, compact team of people, armed with a barrage of technology around which the information age has been built, and through that take what is a virtual court house to the people.

True, the virtual court house idea is not ideal but even a cursory look at world events, with just a hint of understanding, illustrates that Shepparton will not be afforded exemption from the unfolding rigours facing humanity, such as resource scarcity and a seriously disrupted climate, and so maintenance of our civil society might need some less than ideal ideas.

It seems that the concepts upon which the last century were built have infiltrated our being to such an extent that we can no longer think beyond the horizon and our subsequent sclerotic thinking prohibits us from imagining that there might be another way; a better way of doing things that allows us to take off the blinkers that so limit our view and subsequently our perceptions.

What is proposed is unquestionably impressive, but for those of us interested in creating a community that is both sustainable and resilient, and ready to withstand the unsettling and difficult decades ahead, it assaults good sense.

Shepparton should be applauded for its ambitious endeavours in providing the city with a grand new art museum and now an equally grand court house, but considering the needs that our different future will demand, both are inappropriate.

Living life, vicariously

R eporters mostly live life vicariously. They watch, record and write about what went on, but usually as a spectator, looking on from outside the arena. Thinking of this, the words of the late U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt ring loud: Theodore Roosevelt. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Quietism, with its philosophical overtones, in some ways describes those who stand outside the arena for they neither challenge nor support anything and in Australia’s prosperous decades of the 50s, 60s and 70s it was a profitable stance. The decade of the eighties changed all that, it continued apace in the 90s and now in the second decade of the 21st Century, it is critical that people, including spectators and reporters, not just watch and report, but join the conversation. Shepparton presently, and urgently, needs all hands on deck, everyone needs to step into the arena, join the affray, take a chance on victory and risk defeat. The city, and it is not alone, needs ideas that will equip it to live with weather quite unlike anything it, and the greater Goulburn Valley have ever experienced. Climate scientists use evidence to illustrate changes in our weather and so they are in the arena using both their skills and knowledge to help us see what is happening and explain why we should join them. Having mostly lived vicariously as a journalist, insisting on objectivity, fairness and balance, my life has largely been that of the spectator, but that all changed about a decade or so ago when it became obvious that because of our behaviour the earth was warming and so the Goldilocks-like climate that has allowed humans to prosper was changing. Climbing the fence and stepping into the arena was the easy part, but struggling with the “dust and sweat and blood” arising from blatant indifference, apathy and the grossly misplaced confidence that technology and man’s inventiveness can resolve all, makes the vicariousness and inculcated quietism of my other life mighty attractive.

Walking and Cycling given priority in five-step city plan

W

alking and cycling in line with a “five-step plan” should have priority when imagining Shepparton’s town planning and infrastructure needs.

The need to acknowledge and implement that plan falls upon both the city’s paid officers and its elected representatives.

Let’s look at the plan.

A sign of the times
 in Shepparton.

Step one: The plan and it associated infrastructure must first and foremost be walkable.

Pedestrians must be able to use and access easily wherever it is in the city they want to go.

Step two: Once the needs and convenience of those on foot are attended to, the cyclist should be considered next, meaning that after pedestrians’ needs are resolved, facilities and amenities should be such that cycling is not only easy, but next to walking the preferred method of moving about.

Step three: Obviously, in city as geographically large as Shepparton, walking and cycling are not always feasible or possible and so the next option is public transit and so that should always be close to the top of the planning agenda.

With fossil fuels become less viable, private transport will become an ever reducing option and so the city needs to reinvent Shepparton around one of the many forms of innovative public transit systems.

Shepparton was recently visited by a fellow who explained how the city could be serviced by battery-powered, Google-controlled, driverless vehicles that would circulate throughout the city, taking both people and freight wherever they, and it, needed to go. Such “pods” are already technologically possible.

People and freight would arrive in the city by sophisticated rail and then taken around the city on their Google-controlled, driverless pods.

Step four: This is about land and property use – for a town or city to be walkable, there has to be somewhere to walk to and so our designers need to ensure the city is dotted with beautiful public spaces where people simply want to be.

Property use is also about ensuring the present and preferred idea of sprawl, that is growth at the cities edges, is reversed with the emphasis being put on infill and the development, or redevelopment, is concentrated on the inner-parts of the city where the infrastructure is at its most intricate and developed. The city’s rating system should reflect that, rates being the cheapest in the centre and more costly as you get toward the periphery,

Step five: When steps one through to four are completed, the city’s attention should turn to road transport, but not until all four of the first steps have been totally developed and all options exhausted.

Five fundamental steps toward making Shepparton a city that may just endure the rigours of the 21^st Century; a century that beyond doubt is going to be different from all those passed, particularly the energy-rich 20^th Century.

Considering the terror that is alcohol, the legal drug that tears at society's heart

D

eaths of Australians at the hands of terrorists have been comparatively few and rare, but some 15 others from the “lucky country” die every day and hundreds are admitted to hospital in the same 24 hours, all because of alcohol abuse.

The 'legal' drug tearing
at the heart of society.

Governmental and the essential social response has been sorely missing as the  nation has been stampeded into a near state of panic about terrorists, while frighteningly little is being done about our distorted consumption of a legal drug.

So, which is more damaging, or tears more at the fabric of Australian society – the remote possibility that someone might die at the hands of a “terrorist” or the undeniable, unequivocal reality that, as 2010 research shows, excessive and long-term consumption of alcohol kills 5554 people and results in 157 132 hospital admissions in just one year?

Alcohol is legal and is easily accessed and the damage it causes both to those who use it and all those around them, easily surpasses that of those drugs declared illicit and catastrophized by the media.

Heroin, crack cocaine, methamphetamines, marijuana or even tobacco do not come close to the health and safety hazards caused by alcohol.

A recent discussion between friends about the use of methamphetamine (“ice”) produced an argument for the doubling of police numbers, as a minimum, to limit the spread of what was seen as a drug able to rip at the essence of Australian society. No one mentioned the real terror – alcohol.

Coincidently the American-based website, “Wisdom Pills” listed just five reasons why alcohol, the most dangerous of all drugs is not illegal - all five reasons were about the economy.

Alcohol is deeply implicated in most every strata of society and those who have the power to limit its use and restrict its easy availability are mostly just like everyone else, they are “users” and so are stripped of motivation to make the necessary changes.

So while our Prime Minister talks endlessly about “death cults”, engages Australia’s armed forces in pointless confrontations and spends without restraint to attend to the supposed safety of Australians, he sits idly by as thousands die every year from a drug which is both legal and commonly available throughout our communities.

Being a non-drinker, the title of wowser probably fits but such a crown is uncomfortable as the driver is an interest in the facts, devoid of emotion for any person, government or other institution genuinely concerned about societal safety would strip away the sentiment and sensation and consider objectively what it is that is killing so many Australians and what can be done about it.

True, many Australians drink responsibly, but those who oversee the sale of this drug need to act equally responsibly in limiting both its sale and promotion, starting by emulating the cigarette example.

Blood in the streets leads to only more violence, trouble and personal sorrow

B

lood in the streets was, I once thought, the only possible resolution for our troubled and dysfunctional world.

Blood in the streets - it doesn't work,
 leading simply to more violence.

That in itself was rather strange for violence was something I found abhorrent, yet “blood in the streets” seemed to a youthful mind as the path to a better world.

Fortunately, age and philosophical maturity saw that sense quickly evaporate, bringing an understanding that the difficulties of the world cannot be resolved through violence of any sort, rather only worsened.

That “blood in the streets” ache was a combination of youthful vigour, aspirations and hope tangled up with a sense of uselessness, desperation, isolation and impotence.

Fortunately other influences in my life were absent, I didn’t drink nor smoke and although heavily maternally influenced as a young boy, I had risen above religion and my sense of self was secure.

Fortunately, also, the times of more than four decades ago were different; dramatically different and the contemporary rash of discontent sweeping around the world was a distant and unimagined reality, as was the internet.

The idea then that people could be radicalized and so embark on a bloody crusade against ordinary people to make a point about ways of life, and philosophies they disliked seemed inconceivable.

Questions about why young men, and young women as illustrated recently by the fleeing of three British girls into the embrace of ISIL, appear to have obvious answers; answers many leaders throughout the world, particularly in the developed nations would not like to hear.

There is, of course a large slither of what most perceive to be religion involved, but in a more human way it is about people responding, as mistaken and distorted as it may be, to the damage that you and me, and all our fellows, are doing to our only home.

People, regardless of where they are from, all have a profound sense of place, their home, and when they see that threatened they will react, frequently violently.

Beyond that, our modern corporatized and globalized world promises much, but delivers little, particularly to most people, exampled by the fact that just one large bus-load of people have control of more wealth and resources than nearly half the world’s people.

Such inequality breeds discontent; discontent distorting the minds of people such that it manifests itself as blood in the streets.

Violence presently witnessed around the world is becoming ingrained and will not be easily resolved, but the first step is about more equitable sharing of the world’s wealth and resources.

Beyond that the governments of the world need to reinvigorate democracy and regain control that by sleight of hand has been surrendered to the world’s corporations.

The option is more blood in the streets.

Yes, we can stop now and we must

“W

e can’t stop now” was a recent utterance about Shepparton’s then proposed new art museum and interestingly an idiom that echoes around the world about how we live and consume.



An artist's impression of what
is proposed at Victoria Park
Lake in Shepparton.

The briefest of searches will illustrate, without any serious contradiction, that we are on the wrong path and it is imperative that we “stop now”.

A new art museum for Shepparton is a wonderful idea, but in locking the city monetarily into particular pathway, it also locks us out from tackling ideas and projects; ideas and projects essential for a city braced to confront the challenges of the 21st Century.

Rather than single major projects such as the art museum that appeal to our better-selves, we should be looking at and investing in what might be termed the “fine grain” of our community.

True, the proposed art museum, as it is envisaged, will have multiply applications, but in a broad sense it will have relatively narrow uses and the overall cost to the community will preclude the creation and development of alternative community assets the future will demand.

It is undeniable that the world has already passed what is colloquially known as “peak oil" and so the collapse of this energy resource marks the end of private transport and so the need for all levels of government to invest immediately and heavily in public transit systems.

Beyond that, those same authorities, and in this case the City of Greater Shepparton, need to legislate and act to create communities that can be easily and conveniently traversed by human powered transport, on foot or by bicycle.

Even though a walk through any of Shepparton’s supermarkets suggest otherwise, finding food will become increasingly challenging and so our council should be planning and creating community gardens throughout Shepparton, Mooroopna and all other centres within the municipality.

The push to improve Melbourne/Shepparton rail services warrants applause, but the real urgency is to refresh, rebuild and recreate the wonderful rail network of earlier this century that laced Victoria together, including the Goulburn Valley.

If Shepparton is to prosper in the coming decades it needs to find another way and not depend on exhausted energy-rich ideas of the 20th Century for a conflation of 21st Century difficulties, among them climate change, makes what once worked, redundant.

That “other way” is not about building stand-alone art museums, rather building a resilience that takes its cues from a simpler life that demands less of earth’s finite resources, encourages us to share those same resources, and reduce our demands on the carbon-rich energy that further disrupts earth’s climate system.

“We can’t stop now” philosophy is clearly wrong, we can stop, and we must stop as the security of future generations rests with us understanding the need to change direction.

Australia's obsession with terrorism can be traced to our sense of mortality

A

ustralia’s obsession with terrorism, or at least that of the Federal Government, can be traced to the incumbents’ sense of mortality.

Ernest Becker - he explains
how our fear of death makes
us do what we do.

Look no further than the works of Ernest Becker who explained the perverse motivations stemming from our mortality in his 1973 book, “The Denial of Death”.

The Jewish-American cultural anthropologist and writer, who won the general non-fiction 1974 Pulitzer Prize two months after his death, synthesized the thoughts of thinkers Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, and Otto Rank to help us better understand why our denial of death drives what we do.

The basic premise of Becker’s book is that human civilization is ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our mortality, acting in turn, as the emotional and intellectual response to our basic survival mechanism.

And so each lives in the shadow of certain mortality and our Coalition Government, led by Tony Abbott exploits, knowingly or otherwise, that fundamental flaw in our character to spend huge amounts building elaborate armed forces, introducing perverse limits to personal freedom in the name of safety and within that creates a society-wide fear of the other.

Any brush with mortality, be it physical or through film, literature or discussion, noticeably changes our views on many things, including our willingness to flee into the arms of a strong leader who appears to offer a protective shield against death.

That same leader has sophisticated weaponry, patriotic rhetoric and is supposedly doing God’s will to rid the world of evil, and each of us, subconsciously or otherwise, wrestling with our mortality feel some warmth in aligning ourselves with those seemingly charismatic people.

True, there is no argument, we are all going to die, we are all mortal and it is also true that for the broad betterment of us as individuals and the nation, we need to accept our death rather than deny it.



Alec McLean - his first encounter
 with death was at just four.

Death, many thinkers have explained, often futilely, is intrinsic to living and its acceptance and embrace often make living a vastly more rewarding affair.

My father had his first lesson in death at just four-years-old when his dad died after a horse kicked him in the chest.

His mother died a sad death when she drowned in the River Murray, and in his old age, dad said he spent all his spare time going to friend’s funerals.

A few years before he died, we sat on the river bank drinking tea, talking about death and dying and he said it was something for which he held no fear.  

Subsequently, that chat, along with personal efforts to shoulder open death’s door and being enlightened by Becker, death is personally stripped of its fear and makes me sharply aware that Abbott and his cohort are up to no good.