New Year's Eve - a time to resolve to become more resolute about learning

New Year’s Eve is that moment in the year when many resolve what they will do to ensure changes in their life.

Bread and circuses were the staple
 diet of ancient Romans.

Such resolutions are usually about altering some personal behaviour, exercising more, being friendlier, drinking less, giving up smoking, changing a job or maybe, growing some vegetables at home.

All appealing ideals and worth pursing, but watching world events, listening to learned and articulate people and reading widely, it’s obvious that New Year’s resolutions will have to be less narcissistic, somewhat more altruistic and broadly more concerned about the other.

Life, as it is presently understood and enjoyed will become increasingly remote as this decade ends and another begins to unfold.

The bounty we presently enjoy every day, and especially at events such as Christmas just passed, can be traced to the first agricultural revolution about 10 000 years ago when humans made tentative steps from the life of hunter gatherers to settled agriculture.

Abandoning the practice of always being on the move in search of new hunting grounds, tribes put down roots, and geographically fixed communities took shape with civilization being born.

The arrival of agriculture bought a surfeit of energy, albeit small, but an excess sufficient to create an economy in which the resultant tokenism that allowed it to operate became known as money.

That tokenism has in itself no value being little more than a claim on past, present and future energy which was initially little more than human, animal or that provided directly by nature through wind, water or the sun.

Those energy sources where, for millennia, ample, but then we discovered and learned to exploit fossil fuels to build today’s modern world, but after about 200 years that resource is nearly exhausted and a by-product has been a damaged and disrupted climate system; a change the threatens humanity.

So, a worthwhile resolution would be to learn more about, and appreciate, the growing scarcity of energy and subsequently decide what you are going to do about your intergenerational responsibilities – how are you going to ensure that your grandchildren are going to live a contented life on a planet sucked dry of easily accessible energy?

The ancient Romans fed the populace bread and circuses in what was an abuse of the social compact and the distractions of that era are evident again with stories of moon landings, energy-rich entertainments, meaningless political chatter, resource-based wars and border confrontations are distracting us from the facts that energy is in short supply and our climate is seriously damaged.

A New Year’s resolution?

Learn about the world’s parlous energy state and beyond joining and supporting a local group encouraging resilience, learn about and respond with enthusiasm and optimism to climate change.

The demise of Holden brings moment of sadness, spiced with apprehension about our response

Strangely, I felt quite emotional when the news broke yesterday about the 2017 demise of Holden.

Strange, because of vehicles my dad owned, I grew with an allegiance to Fords, but had never really identified with the Ford-Holden debate.

The past decade had seen me become quite sensitive about the inordinate amount of public money being spent on the car industry, either in its sustenance or in provision of roads and other public infrastructure afforded the motor vehicle.

Public transport made huge sense in that the cost to individuals was vastly cheaper and the societal costs, including such things as injury and death and damage, that which is obvious and that which is not so readily apparent, was equally massively reduced through the use of trains and buses.

Good sense told me that the world didn’t need a private car industry, rather an intricate, efficient and well quipped public transport system that would be rich in jobs and having made the transition from private transport use to a public system we would find most of our needs adequately answered.

The demise of the car industry, even this tiny segment, seemed for someone concerned about the impact of private cars on earth’s atmosphere, and their wasteful use of earth’s finite resources, like a moment for jubilation.

So why the sad face

Rather than sad it is apprehensive for from here we can evolve to become a society that puts the public need ahead of private wants in that we could see this as an opportunity to launch a new way of doing things.

The need for Holden epitomizes
our addiction to private
answering our private wants.

Apprehension arises from our deep addiction to private wants that will likely frustrate the much needed societal changes that are about resilience, sharing and putting the public need ahead of individualism, a much celebrated trait in modern society.

Interestingly, Holden has been a part of my life – the car first rolled into Australian life when my first birthday rolled by and the last Holden will roll off the assembly line when my 70s roll along.

That, really, means nothing, just the hope that another 70 years will not pass before we can understand the folly of our dalliance with globalization, and how dearly we are paying for that liaison.

Hopefully we will also apply ourselves to creating processes not beholden to the mercy of fossil-fuelled fantasies such as those to which the motor industry is obliged.

Holden played an integral and important part in Australia’s development, but it’s time is past and rather than hover over the corpse we need to shift our gaze to a future that will be quite different from what was.

Declining energy reserves, a damaged climate and a disordered economy suggest we should be focussing on affairs closer to home.

A human plague worsened by untrammelled growth

Pope Francis - he has spoken out
about untrammelled growth.

Humans are a plague on the earth and one of their constructs further worsens their presence.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being human rather it is our behaviour in that we have colonized most every available space, domineering earth’s resources, almost to the total exclusion of other species.

The dilemma of our untamed tumour-like growth – population numbers are rising exponentially; energy use is surging; debt, both private and public, has exploded; our consumption of food, and the chemicals needed to produce them, is alarming; species are become extinct at an unprecedented rate -  is evidence of our wilful denial of earth’s finitude.

Concerns about blindly pursing growth were raised by Pope Francis in his first papal exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel”.

He said, “While the earnings of the minority are growing exponentially, so, too, is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few.

“The imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation…. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules…. “The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule”, the Pope said.

Freeing people from doing things to simply survive and so being able to make things they could profit from was a spin-off of the agricultural revolution.

That revolution brought a security guarantee and being released from the need to find food every day, people could then spend time producing a “luxury”, trade it profitably and then enhance their lives.

The idea of profit was born and further enriched by the discovery and understanding of fossil fuels and with that trade and consumption became an entrenched way of life.

There was however, as with everything, an unintended consequence.

In our rush to build and boost profits, we were blind, wilfully or otherwise, to those effects, with few ever talking about finite resources or the additional complication of greenhouse gases that were changing, quickly, the human-friendly climate.

The profits grew, the resources became even more finite, and the human-friendly atmosphere worsened and the troubles described by the Pope became more ingrained.

The surplus of energy that first arose from the agricultural revolution that was small by today’s standards, but sufficient to allow people to engage in non-subsistence activities.

That new and “free” energy distorted and disrupted our values, disconnecting us from the balance we had long lived within and extinguished our understanding of how to live a worthwhile, resilient and sustainable life using less exogenous energy.

Maybe it is the kids we need in charge, rather than the adults

Daniel Innerarity's
is worth reading.

Kids love socializing, getting into groups and sometimes even gangs, and making up the rules as they go along, as they play.

Maturity brings marked changes in that their innocence vanishes and much of their sociability to become frequently dogmatic, insular, individualistic, hubristic and seemingly unable to take the advice of another.

The outcome for you and me, Australia and the world generally is toxic.

Now adults, our decision makers understand the concept of winning and losing, they are richer, more powerful and influential with measureable behaviour and yet, fundamentally, they still play games and make up the rules as they go.

Spend a week critically observing the news and in watching the behaviour of those at the top of the human food chain, it becomes obvious, even though we have been told, repeatedly, that the “adults are now on charge”, that we continually resort to rules that are politically convenient, ignore externalities such as the environment and rule to benefit a minority. Decency is dead.

Maturity is more than chronological status.

The accumulation of years does not magically open the door to wisdom for it is a status only arrived at, or achieved through earnest and endless endeavour to grasp and understand the human experience and the culture from which that experience arises.

Kids find the lure of the present irresistible and for many, age brings few changes and it was Daniel Innerarity writing in “The Future and its Enemies” who said people often repress their awareness of the future.

“Thinking about it (the future) distorts the comfort of the now, which tends to be more powerful than the future because it is present and because it is certain”, he wrote.

Prof Kate Auty.

Considering how the past and the present will congeal to become the future demands more than simple adulthood, rather it insists on a wisdom that understands that life is not linear – what was is not necessarily what will be.

Today we make the error of colonizing the future; a colonization that Innerarity says consists of us living at its expense in an imperialism of the present that absorbs the future and feeds off it parasitically.

Many are entranced by what was and long for those comforting times, but we can’t go back, rather we have to negotiate with tomorrow and in being somewhat like a kid, make up the rules as we go and avoid acting like an adult where we persist with ideas and beliefs that are dogmatic and remote from wisdom.

Warnings from Victoria’s Sustainability Commissioner, Prof Kate Auty, of endemic social wrongs fail to stir the adults and so maybe we need the kids to make up a few rules as they go – our future depends upon it.

Decisions based on media-driven arguments rather than brutal facts

Decisions about what is and isn’t dangerous to life hinge mostly on emotional media-driven arguments and rarely the brutality of the facts.

 Advocates of alcohol
never comment about
its deadly dark side.
 

Should the latter be allowed into the conversation, alcohol would be banned tomorrow, or at least its sale and distribution severely restricted.

What are presently illicit drugs draw most attention for there is something strangely, and dangerously romantic in the mystery that surrounds them and the bizarre changes they make to human behaviour.

Alarming realities arise from the use of these methamphetamines – the most common being colloquially known as “ice” – and although they are unquestionably socially and economically damaging, they pale when compared to the equivalent harms of alcohol.

Alcohol brings with it a litany of costs and social damage, bettered only by the ferocity of nature unleashed, as is presently unfolding with the changing climate to earth become less accommodating to humanity.

The Australian National Council on Drugs (ANCD) only this month released its “Alcohol Action Plan” and beyond pointing to an alarming death rate of young people from alcohol – one in eight under 25, it listed a tsunami of problems, suggesting that if it was new to the market, alcohol would be banned and declared illicit.

Chairman of the ANCD, Dr John Herron, said, “The level of alcohol related damage occurring in our communities is simply appalling and the Council has responded by developing a plan for action; for governments and communities to address the situation.

“The health, social and economic costs associated with alcohol use simply cannot be allowed to continue at the current level.

“We all understand that the culture of drinking and intoxication has a long history in Australia and we all agree that these levels of harm are unacceptable, however whenever we speak of culture change the industries that profit most from this culture run the same old fear campaign of a nanny state takeover,” Dr Herron said.

Alcohol consumption has been normalized to become an accepted and an almost fossilized way of life, but still with the criticality of tearing through the fabric of the society it permeates.

We lack the courage and intellectual skill to discipline ourselves and admit our addictions and failings and so continue to behave in ways that give this drug oxygen, despite warnings from those such as Dr Herron.

Viewed through the prism of a lifelong non-drinker, the answer appears clear and easily arrived at, but the idea of prohibition brings complexities that make brain surgery appear comparatively simple.

Those with the legislative power to control alcohol mostly enjoy a drink, and so it is unlikely they would vote to restrict sales because of personal and professional ramifications.

And so it seems, it is only through education can we escape this self-enforced alcoholic arrest.

Picasso's 'Geurnica' connects to coal seam gas

Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” told of the death and destruction that disrupted life in the small Basque town in 1937.

Pablo Picasso's iconic 'Guernica'.

This massive piece of 20^th century iconic art told not only of the brutal tragedy of war, but warned of the violence energised and prosecuted by what was then modern technology.

Everything, but nothing has changed.

Leap forward nearly a century and today’s technology is unimaginably better, killing with precision in which the perpetrator is remote from the grisly consequence of their behaviour, but the intent is still the same.

Sitting through a recent day-long discussion about coal seam gas (CSG) there appeared to be a bizarre and yet tenable connection to Guernica

CSG is, as is with the extraction of any fossil fuel, about technology that when used inappropriately can bring difficulties, disruption, and at the extreme, death.

Picasso’s Guernica is the product of technology and human intent driven by a lust for power and the satiation of greed that has overridden decency and a sense of care for our fellows.

Listening to the CSG advocates it was difficult to escape a legacy of realities that equate with the terror of those Guernica people who were going about their business on a regular market day when aerial-borne technology left their lives in disarray.

The CSG technology is, however, at the other end of the spectrum, being something from below rather than above.

Victorians presently enjoy a moratorium on CSG, but the protagonists are ready to exploit our Victorian soils the moment the ban is lifted, possibly after next year’s state election.

Advocates of CSG praise it with enthusiasm and with equal conviction play down its disadvantages, of which they argue are few, contrary to their opponents who rate in such a way that it is as disruptive to communities as what happened in Guernica.

Depending on who is talking, CSG is either alarming or a wonderful boon to humanity.

Just as it is with climate change, personal ideologies inhibit peoples’ thinking, causing them to either rally behind this “new” gas or irrevocably damn it.

Exploration for and exploitation of the gas appears relatively safe and brings with it access to a fresh power source that allows for the continuation of an energy-rich life style.

Others adhere to a contrary view, arguing the process risks the purity of essential aquifers, rogue escaping gases damage our atmosphere and it consumes alarming amounts of water.

Complex and convoluted laws seem to favour the “drillers” rather than landowners and appear inadequate to administer a process that has sufficient potential to unravel the integrity of whole communities.

Picasso’s Guernica was of another time, but the passion it ignited is of the type needed today to balance this debate about an unconventional gas.

Each of us is captive to embedded ideologies

Ideology holds us all captive.

That, of course, is neither good nor bad, rather simply a consequence of being human with a large and contemplative brain

Robert Jensen.

.

Further, the ideology to which we are enslaved with was not present at birth rather it arose from our culture, family environment and the influences of our peer group.

Again, whatever myths, values and beliefs become the software of our lives are of themselves neither good nor bad either rather, it’s how we intimately experience them, apply them to our lives and relate to others through those ideas.

Beyond all that, the accident of our place of birth brings with it a host of ideologies, some that are simply about survival and others that reflect the essence of the society in which we are raised.

Australia’s recent federal election was a subjective struggle between ideologies; ideologies distorted invariably by the personality cult and played out before an audience frequently unable to distil individual emotions and wants from the broader and critical public needs of Australian society.

Ideologies are, of course, not fixed, although their permanence is such that to rise above or beyond them can be a task beyond the capacity of most and so although a prevailing ideology may spell doom, rarely can we escape it.

Our ideologies have changed because of major revolutions with the popular view suggesting that those of most significance are the America, French and Russian, but the better answer is really the agricultural, industrial and delusional revolutions.

The first gave us what is considered civilisation, but that robbed us of the egalitarianism of tribal living, the industrial revolution accelerated our extractive behaviour and now we live in delusory times.

Writing in “Arguing for Our Lives”, Robert Jensen says: “Perhaps the most stunning example of this is that during the 2000s, as the evidence for human-caused climate disruption became more compelling, the percentage of the population that rejects or ignores that science has increased.”

“Why would people who, in most every other aspect of life accept without question the results of peer reviewed science, dispute the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists in this case, he asks?

It is here that ideology intrudes, overriding good sense and leaving people marooned on what was once an isthmus, which science having sliced though leaving it remote from the mainland.

Our extractive behaviours take no account of earth’s finitude and nor do our pre-conceptions, our ideologies or our willingness to discount the future expand our chance of escaping from this delusory age.

Again, ideologies are neither good nor bad rather, it is how we respond and apply them to the lives of others and, of course, understanding how pursuit or ignorance of them can impact on the planet.