The 'Responsible men' talk, but miss the point

The “Responsible men” gathered in Shepparton last week to consider national and global food security.
FoodbowlUnlimited and The Global Foundation combined to auspice what they deemed “a significant public conference” to benefit people ranging from your neighbour to others throughout the world.
Speakers featured Australia’s Federal Minister for Agriculture, Mr Joe Ludwig, who kept his talents well-disguised, and Visy Industries executive chairman of, Mr Anthony Pratt, who gave the keynote address.
Most conference attendees held significant influence in our communities and because of that were positioned to make decisions about the unfolding of our world, here and overseas.
Corporate and private agendas were obvious on Tuesday and it is unlikely any participants left with a sense that the security they sought was to be found in something quite different from what was advocated.
The business as usual paradigm is broken and the security discussed on Tuesday is not to be found in repeating what has obviously not worked, rather it demands society’s re-shaping to permit the dispersal of wealth, opportunity and within that, social access and equity; in fact a steady-state economy.

Federal Minister for
 Agriculture, Mr Joe
 Ludwig.

A film recently shown in Tatura, watched by 13 people, clarified the catastrophe of industrialising our food system, while Tuesday’s talks, in essence about the maintenance of that broken structure, attracted about 170 people, including a Federal Government Minister.
The urgent need for growth that sustains our corporate world has resulted in many sins, but corporate propaganda portrays those iniquities as societal benefits, but in reality they about enriching a few while marginalizing many.
Contrary to that, a steady-state economy is grounded in equity and access seeking sustainability, quality and wealth distribution in everything it does as opposed to the ultimately destructive and unsustainable binge on quantity that began in the industrial revolution and reached its zenith in the 20th century, but has begun to unravel in the past decade.
Tuesday’s conference had the honourable intention of searching for a way to ensure a reliable and ongoing food supply, but seemed to overlook, or purposely ignore, ideas that could solve the challenge.
The solution is in the creative destruction of what exists leading to a whole new way of doing business that is not solely about profit and growth.
The emphasis must be on doing things on a human scale avoiding the present distorted measure of success that clearly is quantitative as opposed to qualitative.

Neoliberalism puts profits ahead of people

A world order that profits on inequalities crafted to answer neoliberal desires is sliding into disarray.

Naom Chomsky

That paradigm, which enriches a few and financially, psychologically and physically cripples many, is bringing a disorder that most of Australia’s comfortable can’t understand.
Many in the Goulburn Valley stand among the comfortable and while just a few see the inevitable, many feel a shiver of uncertainty as “they” appear equally undecided about what to do next.
Neoliberalism is a notion that has surreptitiously swept up most political isms leaving nearly all vulnerable to an ideology that flourishes in a greenhouse-like magical aura that corporate financed public relations machinations have convinced us is right and proper.
The ideology is about smaller taxes for the wealthy, fewer limitations and restrictions on doing business, the dismantling of public education and social welfare programs and, of course, the removal of anything that might interfere with the working of the free market.
Writing in the preface for Naom Chomsky’s “Profit Over People”, Robert W.McChesney said: “At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few”.
Neoliberalism is one of those places where democracy goes to die as its adherents are happiest when the citizenry is largely depoliticized and pre-occupied with various frivolities leaving it advocates unhindered as they continue to exploit the world for their private gain – in essence privatizing the profits and socializing the costs.
The arrival of neoliberalism has been so silent, and subsequently unannounced, that few have had the opportunity to attempt to understand the risk it brings to the broader well-being of our society.
Rarely can we point a finger at any one thing and argue that we are watching neoliberalism at work for it has permeated society to such an extent that its manoeuvres appear normal.
Its stratagems are not in the broader interest of society and so the responsibility falls upon each of us to step back from life’s distractions at least long enough to consider what is and isn’t in our best interests.
Having reached a workable conclusion, our task doesn’t end there for it is at that point we need to engage with democracy and have make our presence felt at the ballot box.
That, however, is not end of our involvement, rather it is really just the beginning of democracy and the casting of your vote should be little more than a prelude to involving ourselves in helping piece together ideas that will make our community more socially equal, and a collaborative and happier place that enriches communities, rather than individuals – that is the ideal, but the neoliberal doctrine delivers something quite different.

Tatura screening explores the disconnect in our food

The disconnect between the generous array of food in supermarkets and how it is produced was explored in a movie screened in Tatura on Wednesday night.

The movie - Food Inc.

“Food Inc”, filmed in 2008, showed the audience of 13 how the deception about our food arrives on our tables began with misleading advertising.
The image that our food came from traditional farms where chooks roamed free and cows grazed contentedly in open paddocks was shown to be a lie with the source of most foods being from industrialized farms in which the reverse was the norm.
Food Inc concentrated on the American market, but as one who watched the movie said; “It’s all scalable”.
“All those distressing American scenes are happening here, but to a lesser degree,” he said.
More detail about the movie, shown free by Transition Town Tatura, can be found here.

A coincidently understanding of the 'Royal road to chaos'

Coincidence is sometimes a little unsettling.

Sam Harris

The movement to “Occupy Melbourne” had reached something of a crescendo as I neared the midway point of the book “Lying” by Sam Harris.
The book had been closed for the last time when the media erupted with the news that Victoria’s former Chief Commissioner of Police, Simon Overland, had been treated less than honestly.
Although not described so honestly and blatantly, he had been lied about and to.
The OccupyMelbourne people were protesting about corporate greed, a hunger for profits assembled legally and within the bounds of democracy, but which are frequently the proceeds of mischievous honesty and questionable egalitarianism.
However, as with many things it is not that simple, for close examination will quickly and easily show, that many protesting are simply using the medium as a vehicle to express a private grievance. They are, in fact, also lying.
Harris claims he had no specific memories of his values about lying before he took a course at Stanford University “The Ethical Analyst” which was built around the single question “Is it wrong to lie?”
He said that course “profoundly changed my life” and his book subsequently had a significant impact on my thinking.
Harris discussed the difficulties we all experience in maintaining our fidelity to a life of non-lying and the first personal identifiable encounter came after the recent John Furphy Memorial Lecture.
Traditional politeness elicits a degree of “harmless” lying as when talking with others about such orations; diplomacy displaces honesty.
Professor Geoffrey Blainey is a fellow who I respect and was looking forward to an uplifting and inspiring address and there were some high points, but broadly I was disappointed as he had used his rich historical knowledge to inculcate doubts about the science that legitimizes climate change.
Adhering to the new personal measure, not lying, it was at the after-lecture refreshments my first test emerged when others who had been at the lecture asked my opinion.
Explaining personal conflicts with Prof Blainey’s views, I was surprised, and delighted, to find that many others felt the same confirming that sometimes the sense of the crowd is to be of more value than that of authority – I use the term ‘crowd’ with some disquiet as it was really only about six people.
Lies, from white to black and every colour in between, seem to be the superstructure upon which life is built right from the supposed democratically elected most powerful man in the world to the appropriateness of you wife’s latest outfit.
Harris has described lying as the “royal road to chaos”, an observation certainly confirmed by the first of those lies with the second being subjective, for all parties.

Feeding the doubt and worsening the dilemma

Life at either end of any spectrum is mostly untenable.

Life at either end of 
most any specrrum can
 be untenable.

Contentment, serenity, ease, happiness and reward are all to be found mostly near the heart of that span, with the discomfit worsening as one reaches the realms of the malcontent.
Although that underlines and reinforces populism, it doesn’t necessarily mean the other, who might be simply a protestor or a mischief maker, is mistaken in their beliefs.
They are, in the minds of some, iconoclasts; therefore being people who challenge traditional beliefs, values and customs and in disturbing populism they are frequently forced to the extremes of the spectrum.
Having listened to many debates about climate change, it is one of those conversations that almost immediately dumps people at the extremes of the spectrum – to participate you are forced to those extremes declaring yourself a believer or a skeptic for no-one, it seems, can logically, and comfortably, walk the middle ground.
That became clear recently when listening to ProfessorGeoffrey Blainey talk in Shepparton about climate change, its impact nationally and on the Goulburn Valley in particular.
The professor had a wonderful historical argument, that being as it should for he is a noted Australian historian, but that view, as sound as it was, overlooked modern science that illustrates, conclusively, the existence of significant changes to the earth’s climate.
It was interesting to sit in the Harder Auditorium at Shepparton’s TAFE College and hear the John Furphy Foundation Memorial Lecture and almost feel the near 160 strong audience warming to the thought that we need to apply more than simple raw science to the climate change conversation.
For too long it seemed people had been forced to the extremes of the debate and driven into that untenable position of either being for or against climate change.
In his friendly and knowledgeable way, Prof Blainey allowed people to stroll, intellectually and metaphorically at least, in the comforting middle ground, some distance from those untenable extremes.
Personally, the professor’s views were somewhat discomforting as he cast some doubt on the modern reasons for climate change and encouraged those in the audience to give even more weight to historical arguments.
Being a thinker of particular clout in our national community, his views that brought doubt to the modern understanding of climate change would be seized upon by skeptics and used to further leverage their argument that the climate debate it a fraud – it is not, and to interpret the eminent man’s views that way would do him disservice, or maybe it wouldn’t?
Skeptics thrive on such doubt and the subsequent confusion they sow further delays the action this human induced dilemma demands.

Furphy 'specialist' to speak at 2012 John Furphy Memorial Lecture

A fellow who is not a Furphy, but is considered a Furphy specialist will speak at next year’s annual John Furphy Memorial Lecture.

Professor Geoffrey Blainey
spoke at Wednesday night's
John Furphy Memorial
Lecture in Shepparton.

An Emeritus Professor of English at La Trobe University, John Barnes, will deliver the eighth annual oration on September 13, exactly 100 years, to the day, that noted author Joseph Furphy died.
The great, great grandson of John Furphy, Adam Furphy announced details of the 2012 lecture after Professor Geoffrey Blainey had spoken at Wednesday night’s memorial lecture.
Adam, along with being the Managing Director of J. Furphy and Sons in Shepparton, is the chairman of the regional advisory board for the Shepparton campus of La Trobe University.
The Harder Auditorium at Shepparton’s TAFE College seats 160 people and was nearly full for Wednesday night’s lecture.
Prof Blainey, who obviously has a deep and broad understanding of Australian history, encouraged people to consider that history fully before blandly accepting many of the present arguments about climate change.
He pointed to changes in the world’s climate that had resulted in significant alterations to Australia’s coastline, including the creation of Bass Strait and the appearance of Tasmania as an island, which were all events that Aborigines of the day had learned to live with.

A discussion initiated, a discussion continued, but never finished

A discussion that began in August in the columns of this paper continued recently in the office of the City of Greater Shepparton’s mayor, Cr Geoff Dobson.

The mayor of the City of Greater
 Shepparton council,
 Cr Geoff Dobson.

The mayor, an amiable fellow near the end of his second term in that role, which, he says, will be his last, seemed remote from the political intrigue often associated with such roles.
Discussion canvassed many ideas, chiefly; however, those examined many times, and particularly in August, in this column.
The mayor appreciated considered views and both he and I wondered why those with an interest in the future wellbeing of our city did not take the time to make an appointment to talk with the mayor, whoever he or she might be.
People with a view about how the city can, or should, behave and respond to its community responsibilities should, it was discussed, formally talk with the council, rather than simply expand on their views among friends.
Without individual and thoughtful input from ratepayers, as opposed the emotional recklessness of groups, the council, in Shepparton’s case just seven people, is forced to operate in an incestuous vacuum, or at least a process driven by personal ideas or simple anecdotal opinions of others.
The connection between community wellbeing and so its accessibility of food turned talk to community gardens; public transit and its ever increasing need was discussed; talk shifted, at one point, to the need of increased residential density in the city, that being shop-top residences as an example; and, the mayor having another appointment, our cordial conversation ended.
The mayor encouraged me to consider initiating a group that was not (these are my words) argumentative, confrontational or critical, rather simply people who thoughtfully considered the city’s future and wellbeing, and then a few times a year presented its findings to the council.
Leaving the meeting, it soon became obvious that the “elephant in the room” had been overlooked.
Not even discussed and so inadvertently ignored had been the question of energy, a question so large, which, if answered successfully, holds the key to the future of Greater Shepparton.
Energy, in all its facets, is the essence of the Goulburn Valley, without which Greater Shepparton would be substantially different for what we know and enjoy today, even with an abundance of water.
Some groups, conscious of its importance, have taken steps to address impending energy crises with ideas that have been enthusiastically embraced.
That enthusiasm, in this case solar energy, illustrates that the community is often intellectually and physically ahead of local, State and Federal Governments.
That trio, however, is frequently hedged in by democracy, which is a lovely idea in principle, but works best for those with the loudest or most persistent voice.