Noisy 'hurrahs' and a chorus of criticism meets Budget

A "business as usual" Budget
 from Australia's treasurer,
 Wayne Swan.

Noisy hurrahs matched by a chorus of criticism greeted last week’s Federal Budget.

None were right, none were wrong, but missing was the long, long, long view; something that in the contemporary conversation is called “sustainability”.

Business as usual, seen from whatever political view you favour, is no longer appropriate and that, even allowing for a difference in opinions, is what our Treasurer, Wayne Swan, delivered.

That approach to, and acceptance of, the fact that we live in an unchanging world is problematic in the extreme.

The realities of last week’s Budget infiltrate our economy and the lives of most fundamentally change little, maybe we shift from one foot to the other, but change to a different lifestyle is foreign to all but a few.

The Swan Budget went to extremes to ensure we could live life as it is – more hurrahs and applause – but it overlooked the reality that our nation should be building and preparing for a distinctively different future.

Global warming is a gathering storm on the horizon and coupled with impending world food shortages, an imploding world economy, an exploding population, oil scarcity and climate difficulties, of which we have as yet only seen the leading edge, Mr Swan’s Budget should have responded to those unfolding dilemmas.

Rather that concerning himself with the much touted surplus, Mr Swan, supported by his Labor contemporaries, needed to demonstrate courage in delivering a budget that created a platform from which Australia could easily step to address those aforementioned difficulties.

The unfolding circumstances are hitherto unknown to the human project and with the ego-driven individuality of the past millennia being obviously not appropriate, the budgetary process should have addressed those excesses.

Rather than sketch out a scenario that allowed Australian’s to continue as being among the worst in the world on a per-capita basis at pumping carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, Mr Swan should have helped us understand numbers, and actions, that would have eased, if not stopped, that behaviour.

That, of course, would not have been easy as recent surveys have shown that Australians concern for their environment, and after all climate change is an environmental issue, has disappeared almost entirely from their list of worries.

With a deep breath, Mr Swan should have used his economic tools to shape a new look Australia: one whose strength lies in simplicity as opposed to complexity; the need to switch from growth and consumption to resilience and conservation; and an Australia that understood the dilemmas of our unfolding world and was prepared to bond to address those challenges.

Fine ideas, but waiting outside the door to mug us all is “reality” and there is our first challenge, untangling ourselves from that pseudo reality and addressing irrefutable truths.

The choas of democracy is our responsibilty

Canberra's Old Parliament House is
 a museum of Australian Democracy.

Democracy and chaos are somewhat symbiotic.

 

As a political process, democracy appears to be at its best when the noise is loudest, opinion discordant and the idea of a civil and just society seemingly lost in a fog that obscures the common good.

However, beneath all that jarring chatter, flows a placid river of common intent; a commonality that bonds people, a mutual understanding and a strangely silent agreement that the process will, finally, enliven and enrich the lives of all.

That, of course, doesn’t make the art of democracy any easier.

Wrestling with the seemingly unassailable dichotomies of democracy we should remember what the former Great Britain Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, said in 1947: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".

The success, or otherwise, of democracy is deeply subjective for personal judgment is shaped by ideology, morals and ethics.

Where you stand in life, a position that might have fell your way because of hereditary fortunes or the circumstantial happenings that might have simply dumped you where you are, is what shapes your views.

Should you have landed on your feet among the favoured few, then, for you, democracy works perfectly; the machinery of politics is in good working order; but if the events of life have not been so kind, then democracy seems weighted in the favour of others.
From this unappealing mess of personal wants and needs, peppered with ideological passions evolving from nurture, society must plot a course toward some sort of social good that allows for diversity, but in the same breath encourages a discipline that keeps the barbarians at bay.

Considering Churchill’s view, democracy does appear the best of societal administrative processes, but right now the idea that a free market unimpeded by government is testing its inherent fragility.

Free market ideologues argue the democracy they favour encourages endeavor, entrepreneurship and rewards individual effort, while those who might be called “social-democrats” see an enriched life for all arising from an understanding and appreciation of, and the application of, all that is public.

Through whatever prism you see democracy its validity depends on people engaging with the process; it depends on a willingness to declare ownership, a willingness that can only be expressed by expanding your life to encounter that of others.

Athens is the celebrated birthplace of democracy and one who was there at the time, Pericles, said: “We do not say that man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own affairs; we say that he has no business here at all”.

It is both our business and in our interest to participate in politics and ensure the chaos continues.

Using our opposable thumbs to rebuild the world

Nature equipped mankind with opposable thumbs.

Nature ensured, also, that man would evolve with soft, sensitive pads on both those thumbs and opposing fingers enabling us to exploit our fine, evolving motor skills.

Nature, sadly, was unable to ensure a certain, and necessary, equity between our physical prowess and our intellectual skills and abilities.

Mankind’s numbers were quite small in the early unfolding millennia of our history with only some 30 million plodding about planet about 2000 years ago.

In what seemed instantly, at least in a geological sense, the growth in our numbers became exponential and in just a blink of time our numbers this year passed the seven billion mark.

The earth was groaning; it was full.

Interestingly it is not our physical size that has filled the earth, rather what our ill-balanced intellect has allowed.

Fundamentally we have evolved from being a hunter-gatherer based society to a cultivator of food supplies and that, associated with other basic improvements in our way of living, primarily the development and use of medicine, has lifted our numbers to levels beyond which nature can cope.

Humanity misunderstands it reason.

Throughout its chaotic evolution, mankind has equated success with growth and consumption and within that contentment is measured by the accumulation of material goods.

We are mistaken: success and its associated contentment should be measured by, and equated with, the resilience of communities, their strength and enrichment of neighbourhoods; neighbourhoods that are the core of life, rather a place from which people disperse every day as they pursue growth and enrich themselves to enable even more consumption.

Rather than devote ourselves and our time to further exploit our traditional system, we need to focus on working less within the existing processes and use that “new” time to be a part of life, engage with your community to make it a more vibrant , interesting and so exciting place to live.

That, I acknowledge, is utopian in hope, but the present promise of utopia favours a few and access to that sympathetic place hinges on a brutal individuality, a willingness to exploit the other and nature, and within and because of that threaten the wellbeing and future of all other species upon which human life irrefutably depends.

Employing those opposable thumbs, and our powerful thinking processes through which we can consider, plan, anticipate, exercise memory and understand our past, and decide how to behave to provide for the future, we have built a world that is stumbling blindly, it seems, toward the abyss.

Now is the time for us to abandon personal wants, act altruistically and build a life that has a truly civil society: open our eyes, step back from the abyss and working together, rethink and reconstruct our world.

Our primary role is to multiply, but it is a process that can easily become dysfunctional

The primary role in life for you and me, as with any other species, is to multiply.

A sign of the tmes.

That is to procreate and within that behave in such a manner to ensure our genes are protected and have the best chance of survival.

Survival within the tumult of life is a brutal affair and it was Charles Darwin who arrived at a complex understanding of how life evolves and that has been reduced, in a sense wrongly, to “survival of the fittest”.

Reductionism is sometimes callous and unforgiving, particularly when it tears apart and strips bare the powerful and emotional human concept of birth that has been subjected to aggrandizement over the millennia of human life.

Humans have evolved to have a powerful thinking apparatus, the mind, and unlike most other species understand the past, present and future; memory and anticipation allow changed behaviour in the present.

Most other species, from microscopic to mammoth, survive on what might be termed instinct and humans, while also driven by that, have the capacity for consideration.

Equipped with that “powerful thinking apparatus”, an understanding of the past, present and future, having the ability to consider and plan, and, within that, physically change the circumstances of their environment, human numbers have, and are, growing exponentially.

The world already has in excess of seven billion people and although human endeavour broadly warrants applause an honest appraisal of our achievements should ignite a stern rebuke.

For decades now we have known about and understood the nexus between human numbers and resources – too many people gouging relatively scarce resources produces an inevitable collision; a collision, if left unattended will decimate the human population.

Like so many other difficulties facing the world, or at least humans, any workable solution to this one, limiting our numbers, is weighed down with millennia-old emotional baggage that inhibits clarity.

Birth is a landmark event for humans and is celebrated with enthusiasm in all cultures and having a deep and mysterious sense of success, it is a great leveller as birth is available to all, whether rich or poor.

Any suggestion that in some way birth should be restricted and human numbers subsequently limited is met with outrage, but if allowed to continue without restriction, we face unimaginable difficulties ranging from famines to water shortages and from conflicts to simply space to survive.

With a comprehensive tripartite understanding of life – that is the past, present and future – man needs to consider what was appropriate from the past, our present behaviour and how they equate with predictive predicaments.

Any workable solution is not obvious, but we need to stabilise the population; we need to have fewer people dependant on the planet; and we need to have a bias in which deaths exceed births.

The friendships of youth are a lesson to be understood

Friends seem unlimited when you are young.

Friendship in those uncomplicated days of youth were easy for few had managed to accumulate any real emotional baggage and so were still dripping with naivety and innocence.

We all have something to learn from
 the friendships of the young.

The friendships of youth are a lesson to us all as they are forged on an openness, unburdened from suspicion, threat and the understandings that emerges as we are exposed to the individualities and peculiarities of the culture we live within.

As a kid, we enjoy and wallow in the commonality of all – we were simply members of the human family, and that is all that mattered.

However, as we age many things, beyond our hair, thin out and our friendships also fall away and the arrival for most of a deep and meaningful friendship after 30 is somewhat rare.

It was Aristotle who said that the traditional idea of friendship had three components: “Friends must enjoy each other's company, they must be useful to one another, and they must share a common commitment to the good”.

In contemporary western societies, it has been suggested that we tend to define friendship in terms of the first component and, beyond that we find the notion of utility difficult to align with friendship.

Finally the idea of “commitment to the good” is so subjective that rarely do transitory friends find they are able to commit to such extremes, except on single issue matters.

Work is one of those “single issue matters” and with many companies diligently convincing workers that what they do is a “commitment to the good”, although considered broadly it may not be, it is a place where many friendships, often life-long, evolve.

Work has plagiarized what was once the province of the neighbourhood where the emphasis was once entirely on the good; the welfare of all who lived there and friendship was integral, arising from that trio of enjoyment, utility and commitment.

That common sense of endeavour produced enduring friendships, resilience and an unspoken agreement that all would “muck-in” to ensure the welfare of “the one” and therefore the greater welfare of the entire neighbourhood.

Aristotle understood
friendship.

Friendship is about many things, from the sharing of material goods, the acknowledgement of emotional needs and sharing with others in their joys, successes, sorrows and the many other manifestations of life, both good and bad.

As years pass, pre-derelictions, passions and past-times harden and become fewer as do meaningful friendships and accompanying that collapse is the dissolution of resilient communities.

Should we value community, then build friendships and in considering that we turn again to Aristotle who said: “Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit”.

However, free of forebodings, friendship was something the young seemed to accomplish in mere minutes.

Our troubled climate demands we 'avert our gaze'

Each of us has a sense of what it is that worsens our wellbeing but, it seems, we can’t look away.

Charles Mackay

It is a frequently witnessed reality: those moments when the life of someone who appears to have it all unravels because they are unable to avert their gaze.

However, the dilemma is not just a concern for individuals as with seemingly no effort it can quickly ratchet from just a few to engulf many becoming what 19^th century author, Charles Mackay, described as “the madness of crowds”.

Mackay wrote, seemingly prophetically with regard human-induced climate change, about the continuing folly of the human race and its institutions, along with the distortions and peculiarities that we abide by and make us less than we could be.

Mackay wrote with intensity in nearly 600 pages about everything from Tulipmania (a period in the 16^th and 17^th centuries when both the rich and not so rich were paying massive sums for tulip bulbs) and alchemy to the Crusades and haunted houses.

The “madness” Mackay wrote about continues today with many similarities, but loaded with, and worsened by, some modern distortions.

Mackay’s ideas are still relevant with some, fortunately a minority, being doubters of the unquestionable evidence of human impact on the stability of earth’s climate.

Charles Mackay's
 "Extraordinary
Popular Delusions
 and the
Madness of Crowds".

Most seem to acknowledge our impact on earth’s ecological wellbeing, but with it comes an even more sinister difficulty with just a few of us able to free ourselves from our consumptive behaviours: a way of living that considering the undeniable evidence is a sort of Mackay-like madness.

The broad well-being of society is presently inextricably linked to the economy and that is another madness from which we need to avert our gaze and consider with an equal passion the integrity, health and well-being of people.

The idea that is profit and growth has long been and intimate part of human affairs, but it is one which has had a royalty-like bizarre respect since the Industrial Revolution some 200 years ago and as that paradigm has enlarged, the quality of life for most has reduced.

Human induced climate change has an impact beyond the control of any one nation and we, certainly the developed nations, need to break the monopoly that the military, industrial and entertainment complexes have on our gaze, look away, take note of what we see and understand that all in the world is not quite as it should be.

The undeniable facts pointing to human induced climate change remind me what the late US Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts”.

Our gaze, and opinion, reveals its own facts and wrongly, we frequently cling to those illusions.

Climate change demands we adopt a war footing

Australia, along with all other countries in the world, should be on a war footing.

However, that is not to confront each other, rather to gather our resources and build resilience into our communities for what will be the biggest single challenge humanity has ever faced.

A decade-long drought for south-eastern Australia followed by record rainfalls of which many Goulburn Valley people felt the impact of both were little more than an entrée to the main event.

The resolute skeptics of human-induced climate change continue their doubt-mongering even though conclusive findings by some of Australia’s most respected organizations, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), point to significant and dangerous changes in our climate.

Both those organizations have considered what is happening to earth’s atmosphere and by implication our climate and subsequently our weather, is unquestionable attributably to human activities.

Honourary president of the United Kingdom’s Campaign AgainstClimate Change, George Monbiot, said: "Climate change is perhaps the gravest calamity our species has ever encountered. Its impact dwarfs that of any war, any plague, and any famine we have confronted so far. It makes genocide and ethnic cleansing look like sideshows at the circus of human suffering."

Monbiot’s observation about what we are facing is as grim, if not worse, that what the world experienced at the beginning of World War Two.

It was then that all the great powers of the world took control of their economies and directed industry to make as many weapons as possible, as fast as possible, to kill as many people as possible and win the war.

Right now, the call to action is equally urgent, but for a different reason.

When the US entered World War Two in December 1941, government expenditure exploded and GDP (now understood to be an inadequate measurement of a nation’s wellbeing) doubled in three years.
The Soviet Union, Germany and Britain all did the same. This rearmament boom did not bankrupt the governments. Instead, it created jobs and lifted the whole world out of the Great Depression.

The same science that
puts froth on our
beer illustrates that
climate change is real.

That sweeping activity energized the people of the world to kill and destroy and now we need to do the same thing, but contrarily to save lives and protect property.

Individual efforts are honourable and need to be acknowledged, but only a society-wide, government backed initiative will create sufficient societal movement to help us endure.
That is alarming and catastrophic-like talk, but it is real and climate change being human-induced demands we behave differently and trust the science; the same science that puts froth on our beer.

Our lives of froth and bubble are about to end and although decidedly unhappy about that, we should, unquestionably, prepare as if for war.