Our first duty is to our health, for without it everything becomes irrelevant

Without your health everything else becomes irrelevant.

A person who is both mentally and physically intact is as well-equipped as they can be to confront and deal with whatever challenges life might present.

Shepparton-based group, Slap Tomorrow, is concerned unfolding changes to our climate threaten community health and so has arranged for four speakers to visit the city on Thursday and discuss how we live in and deal with a climate different from that with which we are familiar.

Your health is, of course, your business until, that is, that moment when “your business” becomes someone else’s business and so is a measurable cost to society.

Climate change, shown to be unequivocally real and a clearly a result of human activities, will unquestionably injure our health and as is the case individually, be a measurable cost to society.

Rather than taking the Federal Government’s present course of dismantling everything that helps us understand and mitigate climate change, we should be working to build a nation that instinctively lessens the damage and creates a resilient society.

We, that is you and me, have elected a national government that sees itself beyond the limitations of science and although it claims acceptance of climate change, its behaviour suggests something quite different.

Extreme weather events, worsened by climate change, throughout Australia have produced obvious massive physical damage, but largely invisible has been the health costs that often don’t appear until months, or years after the event.

Health, as is the case with so many other things, is not something you appreciate until it is gone.

Climate change has the potential to erode our health, not just individually, but in penalizing all of society and although we all lead busy lives, each of us needs to spend a couple of hours learning about how we can best understand and behave in a different climate, particularly if we value our health.

Listening to and learning from the quartet coming to Shepparton on Thursday can be the edge of a local individual response, but nationally it is somewhat more complex as our present government has declared Australia “open for business” taking us down a path contrary to what is needed if Australia is to play a meaningful part in easing the causes of climate change.

Australia was, until recently, among the leaders in climate change mitigation, but Tony Abbott and his cohort have dismantled our global warming-defence infrastructure, exposing us to the mirth of the world and hugely risking the health of Australian’s.

The wealth of a community is not truly measured in acquisitions and wealth, rather in that same community’s general health and a broader wellbeing that is remote from the celebrated profit and growth mandate of our market driven system.

Trapped in a vacuum of imagination

Shepparton is trapped in a vacuum of imagination.

Worse than that, we have so enthusiastically pursued what it is we already understand and are comfortable with, that we now find ourselves stumbling about in a blind canyon.

What the Goulburn Valley needs is imaginative leaders; those who understand the choices that confront not just people here, but society generally.

The history of conflict; conflicts whose costs are measured in millions of lives, serious disruption to many of those left alive and a financial cost beyond measurement, is simply a matter of poor choice and the failure to imagine that there was, and is, a better way.

Shepparton faces challenges which are simply a microcosm of the malign difficulties presently facing the world and the challenges they present can be eased, or avoided completely, by making the right choices.

The City of Greater Shepparton council has set out to “Make Shepparton Greater” listing commerce, health, justice and transport, both road and rail, projects as priorities on which both it and the community should focus.

The enthusiasm and excitement about this idea is to be applauded, but with restraint for although the projects are of themselves worthy they contribute little to building a Shepparton that will endure the unfolding differences ahead.

Rather than building on what exists, all of us, from the council down, should be stepping back, learning about how the world is going to unfold and understanding that the creation of a resilient Greater Shepparton, one able to withstand the inevitable shocks spinning off from energy depletion, and food and water shortages arising from a damaged climate, demands imagination.

What do we do?

Rather than constantly expanding our boundaries, we should imagine ways of moving people toward the centre of the city, making walking and cycling nor only easier, but preferable because it is both quicker and cheaper; we need to develop a public transit system, not only within the city itself, but one that links-up all the towns and villages that make up the Greater City; we need a complex mosaic of community vegetable gardens throughout the city; frequent (monthly?) programs should be aimed at helping people understand why we need to embrace resilience and within that begin to talk about the importance of sharing.

We don’t forget, however, about the health or justice aspects of Making Shepparton Greater, but we make them part of city whose maintenance is less energy-intensive.

We have a choice – we can follow the energy-intensive business as usual trajectory or we can use imaginative thoughtful ways of living that will see us break the business as usual mould; consider and implement renewable energy and in contemplating sustainability, build a resilient community and, in doing so, “Make Shepparton Greater”.

Asylum seekers are many things, but not 'illegals'

Asylum seekers are many things, but they are not “illegals”.

They are mothers, father, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, friends and people, just like you and me.

They are people with families, friends, hopes and dreams and just like you and me, they laugh, they cry, they feel pain and they bleed.

Our government has attempted to demonize the relatively few people, on world terms, who have sought asylum in Australia by constantly referring to them as “illegals”, but it is critical to distil fact from fiction and remind ourselves that they are not are not breaking the law.

It legally legitimate to seek asylum in another country no matter how you get there, and it makes no difference whether you arrive with a first class flight ticket or you simply breast-stroke up to the beach.

Our rejection of asylum seekers – and we can’t seek refuge in espousing personal beliefs of not objecting to refugees, for they are being treated harshly by the Australian Government and it is “our” government – questions our decency and humanity.

The people who seek refuge here have done nothing illegal rather, what is illegal, or certainly bordering on it, is the manner in which we detain these effectively innocent people, lock them up and in doing so deny them access to the wonderful egalitarian values that we trumpet with glee as being a symbol of Australia.

Everything about how we treat asylum seekers throws into question the values that have made this country great.

My shoulders droop as I hear the latest in the sad saga in our treatment of asylum seekers and felt especially emotionally injured when Prime Minister Tony Abbott said no one who arrives by boat will be settled in Australia.

We are witness to a strange and almost unconscious extension of our White Australia Policy that officially ended in 1973 and whether or not we realise it, we are still uncomfortable and nervous about “the other” and so our rejection of the asylum seeker is the de-facto continuation of that offensive idea.

True, many generations of Australians have worked enthusiastically and hard to reach our present level of comfort, but genuine success will always elude us until we learn about and understand that personal richness is to be found in sharing.

So rather than slam the door shut in the face of anyone seeking asylum, we (and that means the government and by inferences that is you and me) need to stop private enterprise profiting from the desperation of others; check their credentials quickly, not years as is currently the case; send back the few who have blemished records; and quickly allow the remainder, many of which are highly skilled and valuable people, to join our communities.

The G20 - don't know, don't care, don't understand

The late Donella
 Meadows.
 

Joe Hockey and his G20 counterparts don’t know about, don’t understand or don’t care about the indisputable facts spelt out in the 1970s by the Club of Rome.

Arising from their recent Sydney meeting was a pledge to develop “ambitious but realistic” policies to add more than $US2 trillion to global gross domestic product over five years.

That pledge, if you take note of the realities described by the Club of Rome in its 1974 book “Limits to Growth”, is not only unsustainable, but wholly irresponsible.

The late systems analyst, author, environmental scientist and teacher, Donella Meadows, examined and explained the finitude of earth’s resources, considered present and likely usage, population growth, wrote about her findings and warned the world of difficult times ahead.

Meadows’ work was acclaimed by those aware of the world’s unfolding social and resource difficulties, but subjected to a barrage of criticism from many.

Ms Meadows penned the book in the 70s and although there was then an understanding of the damage caused to our atmosphere by fossil fuels it was not until the eighties the American scientist James Hansen spelt the complications of human activities linking it irrefutably to market-driven growth.

Mr Hockey, his fellow finance ministers and central bankers have, in signing up to boost world growth have simply worsened difficulties the world already faces.

The G20 pledge is populist in that it fits neatly with what has become human nature to have more, but today we know that “more” in its modern sense equates with a damaged climate, manifested as weather foreign to what most are familiar with and upon which humanity depends.

Rather than align themselves with the brutality of unfeeling growth, those who attend such events as the recent G20, need to be considering how nations understand and deal with the certainty of contraction and a world in which resources will become rarer and subsequently more expensive.

Rather than exhorting people to seek solutions to what ails them through growth, they need to work at understanding the “Limits to Growth” and lead a discussion about how people of the world can find contentment through living a more restrained life.

Such a conversation is contrary to the urgings of the market-driven system, but it is a necessary one for if we continue with business as usual and such things as the G20 Pledge, humanity’s grip on this rather slippery slope will be weakened even more.

The courage to address such ideas is in short supply for it demands a break with what exists and a willingness to take society in a fresh and safer direction; a challenge that is beyond most world leaders who do nought but muddy facts through the proselytizing of fallacies.

Darkened poker machines promote epiphany of how it should be

The darkened poker machines stood like tombstones in a cemetery.

The players stood silently in the eerie dusk-like light of the auditorium as the haunting sounds of the Last Post echoed around the room.

Screens dotted about told of the drama and alluded to the obvious cost of war and cast the minds of those silent poker players back to the chaos in which thousands were injured or died for Australia, freedom or whatever it was that ignited their passions.

The ninety second emotive package accompanied by a sombre, but authoritative voice designed to elicit understanding and sympathy for war, encouraged we recall conflicts past “lest we forget”.

Echoing around this momentary poker machine graveyard in an environment even the most adventurous thinkers among those who died could never have imagined was a story of war that elicited an emotionally shallow response that overlooked the real societal debt.

The obvious and blatant costs of war are easy to identify, for it is measured in the death and injury to thousands of military people, millions of civilians and immense damage to the infrastructure upon which we all depend.

However there is a cost we can’t see or measure; a cost that is embedded deep within societies; a cost that emerges generations later and although mistakenly believing we are inured to repeating earlier errors, we do exactly that and with renewed vigour set about to kill each other.

Ghosts past march across the screens as a sentinel to alert us of previous ills and quieten our primeval need to confront the other, but nationalistic hubris erupts from such displays and has the reverse effect enhancing our belief in militaristic solutions.

This year is the centenary of what was originally known as “The Great War”, but became known as the “First World War” when in 1939 the world was at war again in “World War Two” when humanity stooped to new depravities as we busied ourselves slaughtering each other.

Considered in geologic terms, humanity is still in the crib and although we need to understand our history, it borders on obscene to devote so much of our time, ingenuity, commitment and money to pinpoint a fleeting moment from a century ago.

Our flirtation with this twinkling in history only distorts and delays the growth of humanity to further understand that progress is a product of collaboration, cooperation and communication rather than conflict and violence that arises from the preservation of baseless, and therefore unimportant cultural beliefs.

The world’s annual military budget creeps towards $2000 billion (Australia’s was an indecent $26.2b last year) and rather than seek comfort through bigger military expenditure, we need to look elsewhere and it is not to be found in the preservation of memories from our modern past.

If there something beyond civilization - tribalism?

The idea that there is something better beyond civilization might be incomprehensible to most.

Mesopotamia is thought to be
 the cradle of civilization.

Civilization arose about 10 000 years ago, being midwifed by our first agricultural revolution, as people were then able to settle in groups and over time civilization  became the predominant and accepted manner through which people related.

Any objective observer taking even a cursory view of human society could see that what we have and what we call “civilization” is not working.

Fewer than 100 people have more wealth than half those on earth; that is about 3.5 billion people – the inequality that civilization has wrought is inexcusable.

Tribalism was supplanted by civilization, which for many is the epitome of how society should orchestrate its affairs, but it is hierarchical, while tribalism operates entirely differently.

Although obviously having a leader, a tribe favours no one, all are equal, and all are cared for from cradle to grave with values contrasting markedly with a hierarchical civilisation.

Some two million years ago homos-erectus evolved in Africa and from then until about the time of that first agricultural revolution, the predecessor of modern-man lived in tribes.

The shift some 10 000 years ago from tribal living to the much celebrated civilised living is not of itself the root of our present difficulties, rather it was the emergence of hierarchy and through that divisions among people and stratification of classes.

The hierarchical impetus brought on by civilization resulted in an autocracy peddled to the people as democracy, but it was simply an administrative process that enriched a few, created alarming inequality and left most of humanity with simple triviality, frivolity and frequently, damnable poverty.

Tribalism of ages past would obviously not work today, but some modern version adopted whenever and wherever possible to existing practices would provide some defence against the gluttonous behaviour and individualism of contemporary living.

Tribal members are of equal importance and with group survival depending upon individual wellbeing, everyone is cared for and treated with equal respect and the subsequent flow-on manifests itself in broad reverence for the tribe itself.

Those who choose to level the accusation of “utopianism” at the tribalism idea need to first think about the utopian drive of those who claim civilization to be the epitome of humanity.

Cheering the loudest for civilization are mostly those who by chance and exploitation are at the pointy end of society and stand with those who have ravaged earth’s riches, eating into the capital and leaving little for their progeny.

Civilization has produced some wondrous things; wonderful ideas, processes and products that have extended our lives, but equally destructive devices and ideas.

Tribalism is about creating resilient, resourceful and tightknit neighourhoods that share and have no need to plunder the earth’s finite capital.

A friend robbed of his vitality and optimism

Juris Greste is a friend.

Juris Greste with his wife, Lois.

“Good friend” would be stretch, but strangely it feels a little like that.

Acquaintance with Juris arose nearly a decade ago because of this column; not that he had read it, but a friend had and it was he who urged my involvement with the Melbourne-based Urban Design Forum.

Juris is a retired Brisbane-based urban designer, known to his Victorian counterparts and an infrequent visitor to forum meetings where his vitality and optimism was evident to all.

He is still those things, but the arrest in Cario and charging of his reporter son, Peter, who worked with the Al Jazeera news-service, has robbed him of some of that zest, rather, most of it.

Beyond the fact that Juris knows me, he has no obvious connection with Shepparton, except that he and his wife Lois have turned to the Federal Government, our government, to negotiate with Egyptian authorities for their son’s release.

Peter Greste.

Juris a dapper, articulate man, who is always smiling was seen last year at the Brisbane launch of the Urban Design Forum’s 25-year anniversary coffee table-size book featuring stories from those around Australia involved directly or peripherally in urban design, including Juris.

Charges against Peter are, according to Juris and Lois, “absurd” and to quote an ABC report: “To think or allege that Peter or his high-achieving colleagues would jeopardise their mid-life international careers by unethical or improper practices is completely preposterous," Mr Greste said.

Egyptian authorities are accusing Peter and his crew of two of meetings with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group the military-installed government has declared “terrorist”.

For most of us, the fortunes of a reporter in Egypt is just another of the countless stories that flood in from around the world about some unknown person in some obscure place that does not compute as personal precedence goes, naturally, to the daily dilemmas of living.

The 25-year Urban Design Forum coffee
 table book the Juris has contributed to.

The importance to Goulburn Valley people of illustrating their support for the likes of Peter Greste is understandable slim for it rates poorly compared to a pressing mortgage payment, job security, maybe your dog’s eaten rat poison or one of your kids are crook.

Should you care; should you push concern about Peter Greste through and above all those important parochial things? Yes.

It’s a tough call for he probably means little or nothing to most of us, but his treatment is further evidence of the weirdness of the world; a weirdness driven by perverse ideologies, zealots addicted to power and greed that can only be challenged and changed if people like you and me tell those who can change things.

Protest Peter’s detention; talk with our Member for Murray, Sharman Stone, and share your concerns with Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop.