Fidelity to values, ideals, beliefs, passions critical for wellbeing

Fidelity to your values, ideals, beliefs and passions is critical for wellbeing.

Sadly, I have been somewhat unfaithful to mine of late and that lack of loyalty is annoying, personally  hurtful, and it brings on an intellectual dissonance.

Yes, we owe to ourselves, family, friends and others, to be, and say, what we believe in.

Reflecting on my life, it was at its richest when surrounded by a warm sense of community, when it felt as if we were all in this together, when the aim was understood, when altruism prevailed and we were remote from the root values of the market-driven world.

However, seduced by the baubles and trinkets of the consumerist world, I forgot for some time the naturally attractive lessons found in the early 70’s book “Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered” by E. F. Schumacher.

Primed by Schumacher and his ilk, I fell into learning about climate change more than a decade ago and it was reaffirmed, after listening to and reading many books by the world’s sharpest thinkers, that small really is beautiful and, unless something hitherto unknown happens within a year or two, then a “small” and restrained way of living is that is open to us.

So let’s talk briefly about values, ideals, beliefs and passions, well, mine at least.

Our addiction to 20th Century development ideals, along with our dependence on what is a broken economic system that favours a few and disenfranchises most, while tearing at Earth’s essence leaves me intellectually struggling to understand why we can’t see the senselessness of our behaviour.

We have known, unequivocally, for nearly four decades that using fossil fuels as an energy source was wrong and yet even today, those able to make the necessary changes to renewable energy still procrastinate, equivocate and lack the requisite courage to kick open the door to give humanity just the slightest chance of finding its way out of this mess.

Plans to build a new Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) costing nearly $40 million are controversial, but it seems mostly about the cost and not with regard its environmentally offensive nature. 

Rather than an entirely new building, the City of Greater Shepparton should have turned to existing futuristic-like communications technology to allow the placement of administrative staff at existing buildings throughout the city, freeing up most of its headquarters building in Welsford St, Eastbank, for use as the new SAM.

Our legal processes are similar and so rather than forcing everyone to travel into Shepparton to see and feel the law at work, we should be taking the law to the people, that is we should have a virtual courthouse in every village throughout the district.

The energy we presently rely on for transport will become prohibitively expensive, and beyond that significantly disrupts Earth’s climate systems, human movement will revert to what it once was and local communities will be forced to become more self-sufficient.

Recently it fell to me to defend the idea of a super secondary school for Shepparton and although the consolidation of educational resources has clear benefits, it is an idea that offends beliefs that small is beautiful, a concept that we are going to have get much closer to and better understand as a disrupted climate system forces us to all live in a more localised way.

The new SAM at Shepparton's Victoria Park Lake.

Privately owned vehicles for personal transport, cars electric or otherwise, are problematic, as is air transport; profit at the expense of another’s wellbeing falls into the same purview; privatisation is about private gain at public expense; our taxation system is fundamentally unfair favouring the few and heaping the heaviest costs upon those least able to afford it and unable to pay for legal and financial advice to avoid their moral responsibility of paying tax; our electoral system is flawed favouring a homogenised class of people in our so-called classless society - sortition (choosing names out of hat) will resolve that; yes, work is important, but not so that we have little time for anything else meaning we need to accept artificial intelligence freeing us and enabling us the time to fulfil the promise that flickered during the Renaissance, that is the embrace the arts, literature, science and learning.

We are too rich and wealth equates with an energy use and a lifestyle beyond the Earth’s resources.

Climate change, that is human-induced changes to Earth’s climate system, makes all other concerns redundant and a certain personal calmness, and wellbeing comes from learning about what is happening and why, and then being a part of a positive response.

Tolerance is another of life's double edged swords

Tolerance is another of life’s double edged swords.

Swing the sword one way and life is enhanced, reverse it and swing again and all that is good about life is sliced and untethered.

The good sense applied here by
Joëlle Gergis contrasts with the
nonsense talked by two radio DJs.

A simple example of tolerance could be seen at Shepparton’s Victoria Park Lake.

An expanse of water in the city’s heart was irresistible to power boat owners whom, along with their skiers,  pretty much claimed the lake for some years as their own, and although many grumbled about a minority having almost exclusive use, they tolerated their behaviour.

That all changed a few years ago when the Millennial Drought brought with it distinct difficulties for the lake and in about 2009 significant works changed it to what we see today — a friendly expanse of water, suitable for a variety of passive pastimes with the lake now an integral part of the environment in which it sits.

That change has a different intent, is welcomed by many, maybe most, but still it demands a degree of tolerance from a few, mainly those who continue to champion the idea of power boats on the lake.

Another change to the lake and its environs is coming, well the prepartory works have already started, for the building a new Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) on the banks of the lake — a service station that epitomises the questionable fossil fuel industry is being removed and replaced by symbol of a changing culture in the city.

The new gallery is not welcomed by all and so now the tolerance boot is on the other foot; first is was those alarmed by the offence of power boats who were forced to acquiesce and now the quiet and often intangible beauty of art, along with the equally subtle beauty of the environment has a grasp on the city’s imagination.

For the past couple of centuries industrialisation and its sibling, consumerism, has transformed life on earth, frequently for the better, but often it’s quite the reverse. Some have championed what has been happening, others, rather, have simply tolerated it.

The idea of tolerance has been simmering for some time and as history illustrates it has been the root cause of endless societal disruption bringing endless difficulties and with the latest example being the military intervention in Syria, an action some applaud, some decry and most simply tolerate.

Joëlle Gergis (centre) at the launch of 'Sunburnt
 Coutry"with Professor David Karoly (he mentored
 Joëlle and lanched the book) with the Executive
 Publisher at MUP,  Sally Heath (far left) and the
 Dean of Science at University of Melbourne,
Professor Karen Day.

Recently, sitting in a coffee shop waiting for the late train back to Seymour after hearing Dr Joëlle Gergis (she’ll be in Shepparton in November) talk about her new book “Sunburnt Country: The history and future of climate change in Australia” in which the climate scientist uses plain language to explain the reality of climate change.

My coffee was accompanied by two fellows chatting on the radio about the delusions of those endorsing climate change science and talked with a confidence that camouflaged their deficit of knowledge and understanding of something quite unlike that ever seen before and which threatens the safety and stability of civilisation.

There was nothing I could do except tolerate the nonsense on the radio and tolerate it I did, but in doing that remembered the Edmund Burke quote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.

So, is to tolerate something doing nothing? Well, yes it is, but in some instances it is essential except in those moments when people pollute our environment and risk life as we know it.

Shepparton people know or care little about sea level rise

Shepparton people mostly know or care little about sea level rise.

Why? Well, it is geographically irrelevant as it has none, or almost no effect on the daily lives of people in the Goulburn Valley.

Most see it as situationally unimportant as the nearest ocean is about 200 km away and on the other side the Great Dividing Range, and as Shepparton is about 115 metres above sea level concerns about rising seas simply don’t compute.

And of course that is correct and so the ocean shoreline is something mostly preserved in the minds of Sheppartonians for holidays; sea level rise is most certainly not front of mind.

However, the behaviour of the world’s oceans is, interestingly, something we should be acutely curious about as our behaviour here, as remote as we might be from the world’s oceans, impacts, in turn on their behaviour, or more correctly the world’s ice sheets that hold sufficient fresh water to raise the levels of our oceans by more than 60 metres.

Many argue such massive melts and sea level rise are unlikely this century and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has suggested only about a metre by 2100, but scientist Jason Box who is studying ice melt in Greenland believes we will see two metres by the end of the century.

And again, that is irrelevant to most in the Goulburn Valley as two metres is wholly inconsequential to people here, or is it?

Well, yes, it is a concern, or should be. 

We can be distracted by many things when the discussion turns to sea level rise, but in essence it is connected directly to human behaviour; our behaviour right here in Shepparton and whether or not we remain locked into our energy-rich ways or do we argue for, and support structural changes  to our community, including such things as the embrace of renewable energy and a total rethink of how we move about the city, and so what our city looks like and how its infrastructure works.

Shepparton is strangely contradictory for it is in one sense modern and sophisticated and in another locked into values, ideals and habits of the mid-20th Century and it is our adherence to the latter that manifests itself as sea level rise.

Writing recently in The Guardian, Jeff Sparrow discussed the wonder of technology, something from which Shepparton his richly benefitted, and quoted author Elizabeth Kolbert, who said: “It may seem impossible to imagine, that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we’re now in the process of doing.”

That observation, Sparrow wrote, was made 13 years ago and the warnings from scientists, he added, have grown both more specific and desperate – and yet the march to destruction has only redoubled its pace. 

Hard to grasp, hard to get you head around? Of course it is, but understand it we must and to better do that, read Jeff Goodell’s book, “The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World.”

Sitting through an exhausting council meeting

Sitting through a recent meeting of the City of Greater Shepparton council without saying a word was exhausting.

Remaining mute as your heart breaks and you weep (metaphorically) is tough, damn tough when everything you know, have heard about from the world’s sharpest thinkers, and what you have read from philosophers, scientists and their ilk, some dead, but most still living, is not even considered when decisions are made about our city’s future.

The responsible men (and women) of our city may have worldviews and opinions about many things, but those thoughts and ideas are constrained by values, cultural and otherwise, that have solidified in modernity; the last two centuries or so when progressive thinking was about making things bigger and smaller, stronger (not necessarily longer laster), faster, slicker, and grounded in the belief that growth is the epitome of good.

However, the growth equation has always been fundamentally flawed - endless growth in a finite world is not only impossible but to pursue it with the enthusiasm that surreptitiously drives our council’s decisions flirts with irresponsibility.

There comes a time, and it is now, when someone, somewhere with influence must declare that the progress as it is commonly understood today is not what we want rather, we should be turning our attention, and our naturally innovative ways to creating and building a Greater Shepparton able to survive and thrive in a century  quite unlike anything experienced.

Many good things are happening in Shepparton, and have council’s imprimatur, such as solar farms and pressure on our State Government to improve our rail infrastructure, but all things, including our wonderful new Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) are coloured by the intent that they will add to the city’s growth.

To be fair, many see the new SAM as something that will elevate the city’s cultural climate, but frequently its supporters are forced, sadly, to justify its nearly $40 million cost as major plank in Shepparton’s financial future.

It’s equally sad, and disappointing when most everything that happens here, and everywhere else for that matter, has its success measured in fiscal terms (growth), when the truly important gauge of something’s value is less tangible, emanating from the heart; the elusive success that is about human happiness.

Most equate happiness with financial growth and the modern understanding of success, but repeated international studies have shown that happiness plateaus at quite a low-level of income, particularly once the basics of life are covered.

The City of Greater Shepparton's proposed new
 art gallery (SAM) at Victoria Park Lake.

Shepparton’s proposed ring-road was on the agenda at the recent meeting (many in the public gallery, armed with signs, came to hear that debate) and although controversial for some, fearing it will injury the amenity  of their homes near the suggested route, it is something we need to avoid, completely.

A ring-road is an integral part of the fossil-fuelled agenda and rather than entrenching it, even more, we need to be imagining ways in which we can create a community, a society, a way of life that further distances us from something that is taking us even closer to the abyss.

Industrial civilization, one that wants growth, profit and “more” is the antithesis of what we need and sitting silenced through a council meeting would be much more relaxing if discussions were free of the rigidity imposed by the status quo. 

We are either “Vogtians” or “Borlaugains”

Most in the Goulburn Valley are either “Vogtians” or “Borlaugains”.

That is, with a few exceptions, they have a vision for the rest of this century being rooted in either technological wizardry leading to growth or, for the “Vogtians”, a willingness to step away from the relentless idea of “more”.

Author Charles C. Mann alerted us to the work of Norman Borlaug and William Vogt in his book “The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Groundbreaking Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet”.

He wrote: “Prophets look at the world as finite, and people as constrained by their environment. Wizards see possibilities as inexhaustible, and humans as wily managers of the planet”.

Yes, we have many here as I personally know both prophets and wizards.

Mann continues: “One views growth and development as the lot and blessing of our species; others regard stability and preservation as our future and our goal. Wizards regard Earth as a toolbox, its contents freely available for use; Prophets think of the natural world as embodying an overarching order that should not casually be disturbed”.

The ideas and values of Borlaug prevailed personally from boyhood through to my early fifties when an almost sleeping penchant for what was public as opposed to private arose from its slumber slamming into my consciousness, waking, again, my Vogtian beliefs.

Author Charles Mann noted early in his book that the future of the world depended on science, and politicians being guided by science, and, of course, he was correct.

The Goulburn Valley is recognised as one of Australia’s food bowls and that niche has been carved out through adherence to ideas and values that reach back, and beyond Borlaug’s tireless efforts that led to what became known as the “green revolution”.

The Nobel Prize winner was relentless in his efforts to create seeds that given sufficient fertilizer and water would survive various diseases and other threats to thrive, producing bountiful crops.

It was his belief in science and its ability to feed the hungry that manifested what is known today as industrial farming; such farming has saved billions of lives, but in doing so has ruptured a nexus between humans and their environment, a connection William Vogt believed should never have been broken.

However, broken it is and now that fracture is manifesting itself as a disrupted climate system that many scientists and authors see as humanity’s greatest-ever challenge.  

And we don’t know what to do. We just don’t get it.

Adherence to Borlaug’s vision has enriched the world in many ways, and the Goulburn Valley has been among the beneficiaries, but now we find ourselves in a cul-de-sac; a dead-end street and we need to look to the likes of William Vogt, and science to find an exit and navigate out way clear of this difficulty, an escape no one alive today will experience as the changes to our climate are baked-in, and so are with us for hundreds of years, if not thousands.

Well, we really do know what to do, but those changes to our behaviour are so socially unacceptable and foreign to what we are accustomed that little will happen until it is too late, which it largely is already.

Vatican climate scientist, Veerabhadran “Ram” Ramanathan, recently noted that the fate of the world was no longer in the hands of the researchers and academics, “It’s now up to us,” he said.

The final word goes to Mann: “One (wizards) sees nature instrumentally, as a set of raw materials freely available for use; the other (prophets) believes each ecosystem has an inner integrity and meaning that should be preserved, even if it constrains human actions. The choices lead to radically different pictures of how to live. What looks like a dispute over practical matters is an argument of the heart.”

Was this serendipity or just life rolling along?

Was this serendipity (an unplanned coincidence) or just life rolling along?

Having just started to read “The Human Predicament: a candid guide to life’s big questions” by David Benatar, a friend from my youth phoned to say his 93-year-old mother had just died.

He was unsure of when the funeral would be, but at the risk of being considered rather sad or even disturbed, I looked forward to the rather solemn event in Echuca.

Benatar discussed, early in his book, the futility of life arguing that maybe it would have been best not to be born at all and so avoiding the pain, stress and difficulties experienced even by those who enjoy the best of lives.

My friend’s mother’s funeral was an example of all that pain and stress, certainly for those still living, but like most such end of life events it became almost a party as family, friends and acquaintances, many who had not seen each other for sometimes decades chatted, laughed and enjoyed that reconnection.

So, considering Benatar’s thesis, would it have been better for my friend’s mum never to have been born, well from my friend’s point of view, most certainly not as he wouldn’t be here.

This is a rather difficult and hugely troubling question that most would wrestle with for we have been born, we are here and so have a pointed vested interest and it’s almost impossible to imagine not existing and untangling what it is that makes up a life.

Death, the inevitable outcome of birth, would unquestionably be celebrated by our present coalition government as it is strangely about prosperity and slots in almost perfectly with its “jobs and growth” mantra as it, and birth, are expanding industries.

It seems right at this point to quote Benatar:

“Life is tough. It is full of striving and struggle; there is much suffering and then we die. It is entirely reasonable to want there to be some point to the entire saga.

And, “The bits of terrestrial meaning we can attain are important, for without them, our lives would be not only meaningless but also miserable and unbearable. It would be hard to get up each day and do the things that life necessitates in order to continue.”

So we all manufacture meaning for our lives for as American and as poet Henry Miller said: “Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning” and walking around Shepparton I pass bricks and mortar examples every day of the strident efforts of many to give their lives, and that of others, meaning, and along with that a reason and hope.

Considering Benatar’s thoughts about whether it would have been best had we not been born at all, I read through there prologue of Charles Mann’s new book (published just last month), “The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Groundbreaking Scientists and Their Conflicting Visions of the Future of Our Planet”.

Following the birth of his daughter, who, by the time she reached his age would be living in a different world, Mann wrote: “Like other parents, I want my children to be comfortable in their adult lives. But in the hospital parking lot, this suddenly seemed unlikely. Ten billion mouths, I thought. How can they possibly be fed? Twenty billion feet— how will they be shod? Ten billion bodies— how will they be accommodated? Is the world big enough, rich enough, for all these people to flourish? Or have I brought my children into a time of general collapse?”

Walking about Shepparton and enjoying the wonder of the city, I can only think of what the late U.S, author James Cabell Branch said: “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.” 

Climate change - taking the gloves off, carefully

It is time to take the gloves off, carefully.

Good advice and near endless research suggests it is unwise to “take the gloves off” as most people are more comforted and secure in living their lives within a cocoon of myths, fantasies, and wrapped in the warmth of the rhetorical political mumbo jumbo that rains down every day.

The former leader of Australia's Youth
 Climate Coalition, Anna Rose, was among
those who came to Shepparton in 2013.

“Don’t tell them the truth,” the advice runs, and “Don’t confront them with uncomfortable facts,” the argument continues , and, “Don’t say anything that will cause their pool of worries to overflow,” we’re further told.

The first serious attempt to give people in and around Shepparton a chance to better understand the realities of our changing world was orchestrated in 2013 when a clutch of knowledgeable people were brought here.

That trio of speakers attracted more than 600 people to the city’s Eastbank auditorium and in just a couple of hours those listening heard how our behaviour was taking the world down a path from which return would be difficult; adherence to what was would lead only to catastrophe.

What was espoused in Shepparton that night was the continuation of a story being told around the world and has since been echoed and reinforced at forums, seminars, lectures, and conferences from Mooroopna to  Manchester and Paris to Euroa.

A couple years ago, U.K communications specialist George Marshall came to Shepparton and reiterated the warning of confronting people with uncomfortable facts arguing that what people wanted was a metaphorical hug from a loving mother-like figure, with a gentle stroke of their brow and an assurance that all will be fine.

UK communication specialist brought his
arguments to Shepparton a few years ago.

Well, since George was here things have only worsened and we are beyond any soft and easy solutions as it seems the world, Australians and Americans in particular, has sleepwalked into a perfect storm from which escape will be difficult. 

That 2013 warning, as powerful and combustible as it was, dissipated within weeks and although a few may have changed their habits and behaviours, broadly people here and the city itself continue to live as this is still the 1970s and not early in a distinctly different, and dangerous, 21st Century. 

And so here we stand at a difficult and confronting time; a time when what we ache for is a story that all will be fine, that the richness of Australian life that has been a staple for most of our modern history will continue unabated and the promised jobs and growth will miraculously appear defying compounding realities.

That reassuring story is not, however, to be found.

Instead we hear the professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University and director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, Michael Mann, warning us via an article in The Washington Post , that climate change is a serious challenge, one that the evidence says we must tackle now, but one, the professor also warned, that can only be confronted if we avoid the paralysing doom and hopelessness stories. 

So, how do we avoid those stories? Learn more about the causes of climate change, understand how our behaviour worsens the dilemma, what we must do to ease the trouble and so ignite a new sense of hope, and speak up against anyone who obstructs climate mitigation.

Beyond that, we should listening to people like Filipino born Laurance L. Delino, from Munich’s Ludwig Maximillan University, who calls for the phasing out of fossil fuel-based passenger transport and its replacement with public transport, along with the increased cycling and walking and a reduction in the use of private cars.

America climate scientist Michael Mann is famous
for his "hockey stick" description of climate change.

Calling for wartime-like mobilisation in response to climate change, Delino notes that people are at their best in emergency situations, adding though that humans are generally hostile to any change in the absence of a perceptible driver - climate change is real, but in the minds of most its catastrophic consequences are distant and will be eased, if not erased completely, by technology. 

That is not true.

Former Echuca man, and education editor at The Age, Geoffrey Maslen, wrote in his newly released book, “Too Late”: “Clearly, the situation is dire. Yet the Australian government continues to act as if nothing terrible is about to happen”.

Political rhetoric will not solve the trouble; Paris promises will not provide an escape; but your behaviour and local action will help and so the City of Greater Shepparton council should be given licence by its ratepayers, that’s you and me, to reduce the city’s energy needs, build resilience through design and create a city able to thrive in a hotter and drier climate.