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.

Addicted to the pleasurable rock of life

Work has always been, and still is, the rock to which my life is anchored, as is that of many others.

Bruce Springsteen

That, however, is a habit I don’t want to break as it pointedly enriches who and what I am. It makes me, in my view, a better person.

Naturally it is easy to be philosophically flippant about the pleasure work brings when not locked into seemingly endless and equally pointless and heartless sweat inducing toil, reminding me of the words from the Bruce Springsteen song “Factory”:

“End of the day, factory whistle cries,
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy,
somebody's gonna’ get hurt tonight,
It's the working, the working, just the working life”.

Work, for me, however is not about that sort of drudgery (of course some jobs  have had that flavour), rather it has largely been an ongoing joy through which the human interaction brightens my being, makes me smile and brings satisfaction to every day.

Interestingly though, our addiction to contemporary understandings of work, sees us devote a hefty, and almost irrational portion of our lives to maintaining a structure that ultimately enriches only a few, while the many toiling endlessly, get little.

The “responsible men” who, by what they make appear default, but which is really intent, and call the shots in society repeatedly bleat about the need of the “many” to work harder and longer, for less, to ensure, they argue, the integrity of an economic system that ultimately serves only them.

The disparity between rewards to the worker and ever bulging bank balances of the few is what ignited the unrest that become known as “the occupy movement”.

The “occupiers” have my support and sympathy as I can sense the injustices they live with and the subsequent unfairness that assaults them every day as a system deemed to be as it should be favours only a few.

However, as understandable as their cause is, it seems somewhat ill-directed in that it seeks equity, or at least an increased sense of fairness, in a system that is in itself fundamentally flawed.

The literal meaning of work has been so distorted by capitalistic tub-thumpers that it equates more now with drudgery than a vocation or a soul-enriching contribution to the broader betterment of the human experiment.

Modern times have seen most people enslaved to an economic paradigm from which we need to urgently disengage, both individually and as a society.

Economics is invariably politics in disguise and is structured with the intent of the few to profit, control and provide substantial individual short-term comfort ignoring, to the long-term peril of all, the ecological significance of our finite world.

•Next: Considering the four-hour day.

Corporations decry socialism, but use it when it suits

Corporations decry socialism, but turn to it immediately the rigours of capitalism fail to boost bank balances and collapse threatens.
Examples of this apparent guilt-free switching of allegiances proliferate seemingly excavating the true meaning of the free market – profit in any way you can, for as long as you can and when it goes sour, turn to an enrich yourself from the public purse using nebulous arguments. Although iniquitous, those arguments have a powerful emotional pull in that they appeal to human values that are rooted, mistakenly, in the belief that the broad well-being of society is inextricably linked to the success of the at-risk corporation.


Henry Ford

Interestingly, that very corporation that has championed capitalistic behaviour and subsequently become rich beyond imagination sees its saviour in socialism and shows no embarrassment as it reaches out it hand asking for money.
The corporation’s hand does not shake, nor does it show any sign of discomfit or the slightest humiliation as it asks for government aid, conveniently forgetting that it stood among critics of government interference, frequently damning it for humane policies designed to protect its prime resource, its people. 

The world-wide car industry, and of direct concern, that of Australia, has long stood at the front of the queue seeking government handouts, endlessly arguing that health of the country’s economy is inherently related to that of the motor industry.

The industry has repeatedly returned to the public trough over the last decade it has gobbled down some $12 billion and now it is back for more. That payout, notably, is bigger than that of any other individual industry.

The world-wide car industry, and of direct concern, that of Australia, has long stood at the front of the queue seeking government handouts, endlessly arguing that health of the country’s economy is inherently related to that of the motor industry.

The industry has repeatedly returned to the public trough over the last decade gobbling down some $12 billion and now it is back for more. That payout, notably, is bigger than that of any other individual industry.

Running a business becomes easy once you understand, and can implement the idea that you first must privatise the profits and socialize the costs, just as our motor industry has been doing for years, and then create a felicitous and imaginary situation in which you are too big and too important to fail.

Rather than investing endlessly in a fundamentally fragile industry that does nothing but deplete the world’s finite resources and fill up earth’s natural sinks with its wastes, we should be using that cash and those finite resources to build a way of living in which the emphasis is on the permanency of people rather than the fleeting pleasure of machines.

It was in 1945 that Henry Ford finally wilted under the pressure of marketeers and stopped building cars with few refinements and as cheap as he could to follow Chevrolet as it introduced fashion and frivolous fineries through a new model every year.

Car makers apparently abhor socialism, but after successfully socialising the costs, it is now attempting to protect those privatised profits with a “world car”, a homogenised product that has that sense of communism about it.

Pandering to a dead paradigm

Celebratory applause has welcomed news of a new residential development near Mooroopna whose obedience, it seems, is to a dead paradigm.
The Victorian Government has tipped in $2 million toward a $6.5 million project in Mooroopna’s “West growth corridor”.


Mooroopna's railway station
 - effectively cut off from
 the town.

Applying values that have held our gaze for decades, the so-called corridor, north-west of the town, of nearly 300 hectares will allow for about 1600 housing allotments and become home for some 4000 people.
In an era of seemingly endless energy, including easy access to a wrongly assumed infinite flow of oil, and a time when we were unaware of how residential sprawl equated with size of our carbon footpint, such applause would have been appropriate.
To excavate a weary cliché, “the times they are a-changn’”, or more accurately, have changed, and although predictions are invariably wrong, the future of the “west growth corridor” is, in an energy constrained world, decidedly questionable.
Rather than cast our lot in with a project that breaks new ground, literally, we should be redirecting that cash toward the total redevelopment of central Mooroopna allowing for an increased density of residences with access to near car-free public spaces and, of course, the opening up of the railway station to those on foot.
Density does not equate with overcrowding, rather with thoughtful placement of residential areas generating a distinct sense of community that is mostly missing from many modern housing estates.

A former Mooroopna fellw, Jack Findlay,
won the world motorcycle championship
in 1975 and his feat is acknowledged at
this stature in the middle of the town.

Ideas from the mid and late 20^th century that saw housing estates developed on the basis that people wanted detached homes on individual blocks, remote from community services and absolutely car dependent, continue in present times and provides, it is almost certain, the template for what is envisaged near Mooroopna.
What is planned for the corridor appears to be the manifestation of thoughts remote from an acceptance of facts illustrating an understanding that rather than encouraging remote residential expansion, we should be working towards the reverse; the creation of a new central Mooroopna.
The utopian vision is vibrant – the future of the former Ardmona fruit factory is not bathed in optimism and that space should become the heart of the new Mooroopna providing easy pedestrian access to the railway station with the other end of that public space open to the town’s existing main street; surrounded by residences of two or three stories; a public vegetable garden; shops and a variety of government services.
Like it or not, we face a future of scarcity in which the skills of the artisan will become invaluable and spaces, places and facilities should be allowed within the “new Mooroopna” at which these people could work and their services be accessed.
The “five minute life” would be possible – home, work, shopping, socializing, leisure and public transport all within easy walking or cycling distance.
Whether or not Mooroopna is ideally sited is debatable, but the fact is that it is where it is and so short of uprooting the entire town, something that is impracticable and undesirable, those with the cash and the planning power should be revitalizing the heart of the town.
A “new Mooroopna” would be that heart, contrary to the west corridor growth plan which does nothing to appease the need of community rather; it worsens world troubles and simply enriches the few who endorse such expansionist plans.

Sign leaves me wondering

The rather large electronic sign maintained on the burnt out shell of the Shepparton Hotel by Greater Shepparton’s Cr Milvan Muto leaves me wondering.

Messages on the high profile sign, it beams over Shepparton’s busiest intersection, are frequently less than complimentary of some people and certain institutions, but that, in itself, is not what ignites my wonder.
Many are celebratory about the behaviour of Cr Muto arguing his demeanour as being essential to the democracy and honesty of the council, of which he is a part, while providing a much needed voice, it’s argued, for the excluded, suppressed and unheard ratepayers of the city.

Shepparton's Cr Milvan
 Muto



That may or may not be the case, depending on your stance, but that is not really the point for what is truly interesting is the admirable tolerance of all in what might be termed the “Muto-affair”.

Most of us have not been privy to intimate details of what has been happening between the council and one of its brethren, but the details to which we have been privileged, point to a conversation within a breath of violence.

Contemporary understandings of violence are mostly about blood and bruises, but verbal violence can be equally damaging with the first line of defence being tolerance, but frequently the impact is on our emotions and sometimes that can be equally hurtful as torn skin or a broken bone.
I look at the sign and wonder about the tolerance that allows it to continue broadcasting to anyone, who cares to look at the often less than complimentary messages.
Freedom of speech, decency, civility, respect and a “fair go” are all values worth protecting, but I do wonder when the right to one’s opinion crosses a difficult to define line to become abuse.
The recognition and enactment of those values breeds tolerance and it falls to each of us, as best we can, to consider life from the position of the other and yet, at the same time, engage with and apply those things that make for a broadly happier, safer and stronger community.
Considering that, I wonder, does tolerance morph to become broader acceptance of an evil? Does our tolerance, something endorsed by most recognised religions, actually reinforce and therefore fortify the very thing that was both disruptive and surreptitiously destructive to the broader wellbeing?
The diplomacy inherent in democracy is to be lauded, but it takes special wisdom from an alert and adroit thinker to understand when the subtly of mediation is exhausted and further progress rests with an almost dictatorial-like decision.
Cr Muto is at first blush a pleasant fellow who appears to have the wellbeing of the city at heart, but he seems socially ill-equipped for the broad-ranging demands of a city councillor, the evidence of which is displayed most days on his sign.

Socrates knew he knew nothing, and died for that

Socrates knew he knew nothing, but those who imagined they knew everything put him to death.

We continue to harvest the impact of that centuries old error and today, it seems, the much-celebrated mediocrity of mankind has been substituted for wisdom.
We had our chance at greatness, but let it slip by and now we have a misunderstood unhappiness.
About two centuries ago we discovered how to access fossil fuels allowing us to unleash countless millennia of ancient sunlight, freeing us from endless toil and through innovation the lives of most were enhanced in hitherto unimaginable ways.
Although people can point to the wonders of the modern age and say “all is well”, in fact it is not as that error lives to haunt us.
Excited and blinded by the discoveries of about two centuries ago, we wrested the earth of its finite fossil fuels and luxuriating in that success and moment of excess, we choose to ignore the almost limitless energy resources provided by the sun, the wind and geothermal, an inherent life force of the earth itself.
Wisdom was absent and in its place was momentary pleasure and, particularly, profit. Socrates, metaphorically, had again been put to death, once more by those who imagined they had all the answers.
It is always easy to be intelligent after the fact, but rather than exploit and exhaust our finite fossil fuels, we should have metered them slowly out, using the energy they provided to allow us to develop and create a beautiful alternative energy system, that would be still serving the world today and ready for centuries to come.
Rather than creating personal mobility systems (cars) that made just a few rich, most subservient, severely depleted our oil resources and irrevocably damaged the world’s environment, we should have been conserving that “black gold” in order to build the ancillary equipment that a workable alternative energy system demands.
Some have articulated solutions for the future, but in most instances that solution needs equipment whose creation depends upon oil, that irreplaceable black gold.
Looking into the abyss, we wonder what Socrates would suggest. Probably, for a start, that we step back and then turn our minds to imagining a solution to a dilemma that has arisen from the lack of thought and a weakness that has seen us abandon all that is good as we have pursued short-term gains, profit and pleasure.
The future is long and will be undoubtedly tedious unless we understand and learn how to husband what ancient sunlight the earth has bequeathed and within that build a sustainable world that uses primarily renewable energy.
It was a grave error to put Socrates to death and yet we have again, metaphorically, made that same mistake.

Always seek quality ahead of quantity in 2012

An earlier conversation urging a preference for quality ahead of quantity probably aroused puzzlement among some.

The drive for quality in modern businesses is overt and almost without fail rewarded monetarily or in a way that enhances the self-esteem of an individual or a group of people.
Business today sees quality and the subsequent recognition and reward for its achievement largely through the prism of customer satisfaction.
That satisfaction, according to the hierarchy of most businesses, certainly the successful ones, is unquestionably about increased sales; about the growth of the company and so more throughput.
Contemporary economics lives within a language code that is confusing to the un-initiated, even to many who speak the language, but stripped of its bewildering fineries, the more throughput a company has, the better the end result, assuming its governance is in order.
In this instance, quality is simply about ensuring the maintenance of an ever increasing throughput, which in a world without restraints is honourable and so worthy of our applause.
However, our world is in reality quite different from the seemingly infinite world in which our ideas of growth and business were conceived.
Beyond the remote original thinker, whose sanity was questioned as was their allegiance to God or the gods, the piecing together, since the Industrial Revolution, of the mercantile world happened largely in ignorance that nature was calling the shots and not, as it was then believed, and still is by many, some mythical supernatural being.
Quality in its modern meaning is about whether your new washing machine lasts two or twenty years or whether or not your car will perform as intended for its expected ten years.
Quality time also means spending an uninterrupted hours with your kids, rather than being divided between them and some portable electronic device or simply being distracted by thoughts that you should really have your shoulder to the wheel and not “wasting” time with your family.
The idea of quality has been so distorted that its real meaning has been disenfranchised and the essence of it being hijacked by our modern industrial world to ensure riches and comfort for a few and servitude for everyone else.
Quality, in its deepest sense and if we are to unravel its mysteries, demands a whole societal re-focus that puts the wellbeing and contentment of people clearly ahead of the manufacture and consumption of “stuff”.
Work is clearly essential to our wellbeing, but it needs to be work about survival and not work building and making stuff that simply depletes the world’s resources and has little to do with, if anything, enriching personal psychological value.
Quality is something that takes time, it is personal and its achievement is hugely satisfying.