Shattering The Clock

In 1609 Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer, mathematician, and natural philosopher published Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy) in which he outlined the first two laws of planetary motion. It was a significant advance on how we understood the movement of the planets.

Four years earlier, in a letter to a friend, Kepler wrote, ‘My aim is to show that the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism, but to a clockwork.’ The metaphor of the cosmos as a clock was promoted at the time by many of his contemporaries.

In his Astronomia Nova he, no doubt, considered that he had achieved that aim.

Sadly he, and many other pioneers of the Scientific Revolution, by introducing this mechanistic metaphor into the world helped to entrench our perceived disconnect from nature. Nature was no longer an organism, but was now a mechanical, automated, and lifeless machine.

And, being mechanical and lifeless, nature could be exploited and open to another of the disturbing metaphors to come out of the Scientific Revolution – misogyny and rape. Francis Bacon, for instance, avowed that the scientific method allowed him to uncover ‘the secrets still locked in (nature’s) bosom… (so that) she can be forced out of her natural state and squeezed and moulded.’ Descartes too, was emboldened by this metaphor, asserting that science could ‘render ourselves the masters and possessors of nature.’

With such metaphors and the attendant worldviews, it is little wonder that today we are exploiting nature and extracting every little resource we can.

But, is the clock beginning to shatter?

The sciences of the 20^th and 21^st centuries are overturning the outlook of the Scientific Revolution of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Perhaps we could say that these sciences represent a Second Scientific Revolution. The sciences of ecology, quantum physics, biology, systems theory, and theories of Emergence, Chaos, and Complexity are all reasserting the cosmos as an organic wholeness.

Throughout the world there are groups of people, small communities, and especially indigenous societies challenging the mechanistic view of the world. Workshops, seminars, retreats, and vision quests are all being utilised to return to an organic outlook.

Although small, these enterprises and experiences are important. Our belief systems and worldviews are built upon the stories we tell ourselves and the metaphors we use. When we contest these, we open up to new, refreshing, possibilities, including the potential to return to an acknowledgement that we live in, and are part of, a divine organism.

All that is exciting. It reconnects us with a sense of wonder at the mysteriousness of life, the universe, and all it contains.

(The) Hidden Life of Trees - Book Review

(Note that this review is late in coming - this book was published nine years ago)

Go for a walk in a forest. When you get back home read The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.¹ The chances are high that the next time you go walking in that same forest the experience will be wholly different. You will see things you hadn’t noticed before. You will hear things you hadn’t heard before.

Chances are, too, that you will stop and want to linger. You may want to get closer to the trees and examine the bark. You might want to dig your fingers into the earth, or peer high into the canopy.

Not only will you see and hear things differently, after reading Wohllenben’s book you may also be able to visualise the vast network of roots, fungi, and mycelium that exists underground, out of sight.

Wohllenben’s book has certainly gained wide attention – it has sold more than three million copies worldwide and been translated into more than twenty languages.

Whilst it has gained an appreciative lay readership, it has not been without its critics in the scientific community. Some have criticised the book for its use of anthropomorphic language. For example, some of the book’s chapters are titled, Tree School, Community Housing Projects, Hibernation, Street Kids, Immigrants etc, all as epithets for aspects of forests and/or trees.

Although it is possible to understand this criticism, it is, in this reviewer’s mind, unfair, or at least misplaced. This book is undoubtedly written for the layperson, a person who may know little or nothing about the workings of forests. It is clearly not written as a scientific treatise. Had it been written in scientific, unemotional language it would not have been bought by three million readers.

Wohllenben outlines in the first few pages his intention in writing the book. He states, ‘This book is a lens to help you take a closer look at what you might have taken for granted. Slow down, breathe deep, and look around. What can you hear? What do you see? How do you feel?’ He’s upfront. This is written for those unused to analysing what is going on in a forest. It is written to evoke an emotional response. And – it works.

By writing in the way he does, using what we understand to be human feelings, behaviours, and functions, Wohllenben helps the reader associate with forests and trees. In one sense the criticism of anthropomorphism becomes a two-edged sword. Can we really say that trees do not have feelings, do not behave in ways that humans might, or that trees do not communicate with and look after one another? To say that they do not and try to write of trees and forests in neutral terms is itself an anthropocentric rendition. Many indigenous languages and cultures worldwide do not name trees, streams, mountains, and other living creatures in the third person – i.e. as it. For many, these entities are imbued with the same energies and sacred attributes as are humans.

In the final few pages Wohllenben addresses the divide between humans and non-humans. He states, ‘I, for one, welcome breaking down the moral barriers between animals and plants. When the capabilities of vegetative beings become known, and their emotional lives and needs are recognized, then the way we treat plants will gradually change as well.’   

Perhaps the sooner we come to appreciate trees and other entities in the same ways we value ourselves, the sooner we might desist in destroying nature and the planet in which we live.

So, my suggestion as reviewer, is to ignore any criticism you may have heard, go with the flow and recognise you in the trees and the trees in you.

For myself, as someone who had previously come across some of the concepts Wohllenben writes of, I found this book illuminating and enjoyable. I learnt a lot more about trees and forests than I knew before I read page 1. I learnt something of myself also.

The final words I will leave to Peter Wohllenben himself, they are also the final words he writes in the Acknowledgments section.

‘Only people who understand trees are capable of protecting them.’

Note:

1. Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, Black Inc., Collingwood VIC, Australia, 2016

Returning to an Island

Recently I re-read Island by Aldous Huxley.¹ It had been around five decades since I first read it.

Those five decades have now allowed me to gain a greater insight into what Huxley was writing about and alluding to.

Island was Huxley’s final novel and served as the counterpoint to his dystopian novel, Brave New World, published thirty years earlier. Could Huxley have written this when he was younger? Perhaps, like me as his reader, he had to be older to dream and appreciate possibilities?

Island is indeed a dream, but not an impossible one. Possibilities exist. The following quotation is at the heart of this novel, both figuratively and literally (on p 170-171 of 329 pages). The possibility described here will find a resonance with many readers, especially those attracted to the ideas of degrowth. The practical philosophy of the island of Pala is explained by one of the island’s elders – Dr Robert as;  

‘… we never allowed ourselves to produce more children than we could feed, clothe, house, and educate into something like full humanity. Not being over-populated, we have plenty. But although we have plenty, we’ve managed to resist the temptation that the West has now succumbed to – the temptation to over-consume. We don’t give ourselves coronaries by guzzling six times as much saturated fat as we need. We don’t hypnotise ourselves into believing that two television sets will make us twice as happy as one television set. And finally we don’t spend a quarter of the gross national product preparing for World War III or even World War’s baby brother, Local War MMMCCXXXIII. Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are over-consuming, the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster. Ignorance, militarism, and breeding, these three – and the greatest of these is breeding. No hope, not the slightest possibility, of solving the economic problem until that’s under control. As population rushes up, prosperity goes down… And as prosperity goes down, discontent and rebellion, political ruthlessness and one-party rule, nationalism and bellicosity begin to rise.’

Within a little over 200 words Huxley has depicted the possibility of a dream; at the same time rebuking the model that the West has been, and still is, implementing.

The key to Huxley’s dream seems to be restraint, the ability to resist temptation. Failure to do so results in huge problems. Is this not exactly what we see in the world today? Political ruthlessness, discontent, nationalism, bellicosity – at the level of individuals, societies, and states.

Island is worth reading, as a young person and then again at an older age. The novel answers some questions as well as throwing up some serious questions for consideration.

One of those questions was posed by Huxley himself upon reflecting upon his two novels – Brave New World and Island. It is a question that calls out for a response from each of us.

‘How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest number of other individuals, of (humanity’s) Final End?’

Note:

1. Aldous Huxley, Island, Granada Publishing, London, Toronto, Sydney, New York, 1962

No Will

Lithium mine

Last week’s blogpiece bemoaned our cultural focus on the future. During the intervening week I found myself guilty of that same error, although not a future of optimism.

In a response to an online post I stated, ‘Unplanned collapse is what will happen…’ Another commentator rightly pulled me up on that comment.

Unplanned collapse is not a future event or possibility. Collapse is already here, although some of us, like me, are not experiencing its full fury. A quote from science-fiction writer, William Gibson, is that, ‘The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.’ The word collapse can easily be substituted in that quote for the word future.

Collapse (environmental and social) is underway in many parts of the world. Inhabitants of Pacific islands are experiencing the effects of climate change. The island nation of Tuvalu, for example, is a tragic example. It is being subjected to rising sea levels and more frequent and more severe cyclones and storms. Cyclones further erode the shoreline of the nation’s islands, exacerbating sea level rise.

Elsewhere in the world we see social breakdown, with war being the most glaring example. The five most devastating warfare sites in the world in 2024 were the Ukrainian-Russian war, the Palestine-Israel war, and the civil wars in Myanmar, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Then there are the other instances. The ones that are out of sight, out of mind. Mostly they are out of sight because they are in countries the mainstream media are not interested in. They are out of mind because if we in the rich, industrialised, nations considered them they would disrupt our cosy, comfortable lifestyles. Mostly, too, these cases are ones that exist so that we can continue to live in a way that believes that collapse will occur in the future.

Let me explain and offer examples of such instances.

In the rich, industrialised, nations we have become aware of climate change and the forces generating it. As a result, we are keen to reduce carbon emissions. However, we only want to do so if it means we do not have to change our consumerist, exploitative, and extractive behaviours.

Yet, if we look closely, these behaviours continue at the expense of local communities (e.g., copper mining in Congo, and lithium mining in the Atacama Desert) and also local ecosystems (again, for example, lithium mining in the Atacama Desert).

The American ethnobotanist, Terence McKenna addressed this inclination towards an out of sight, out of mind outlook when he announced that;

‘The apocalypse is not something which is coming. The apocalypse has arrived in major portions of the planet and it’s only because we live within a bubble of incredible privilege and social insulation that we still have the luxury of anticipating the apocalypse.’

So, I guiltily acknowledge that when I write that “the collapse will happen,” then I am writing from a privileged view and from a position of insulation.

If I, and millions of others in the rich, industrialised nations, continue to live in a bubble (as McKenna refers to it) then we do so by consigning millions of others to suffer collapse right now, not in some anticipated future.

If We Can't Go Back...

Critics of modernity, and the current messy system we are in, often get taunted with the reproach that, “you can’t go back.” Maybe we can, maybe we can’t. Even if we had the means to do so, we may not have the will.

Not going back though, does not imply that we must go forward. Indeed, our westernised penchant for going forward (aka progress) may be one of the major concepts that have got us into this mess.

The idea that we must continually progress is rooted in the manner in which we think of time. Time, in the westernised worldview, is linear and moves from the past, conceptualised as behind us, to the future, conceptualised as in front of us, ahead of us.

Progress as a physical and metaphysical goal was deemed by many Enlightenment thinkers as desirable and almost inevitable. The view of many Enlightenment thinkers (such as Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Kant) was that human history tended towards freedom, equality, and greater well-being. Human progress is not only possible, it is inevitable according to this view.

It was a compelling idea and, in an age when the Dark Ages were still at the forefront of people’s memory, it was also a welcome and refreshing idea. Progress became one of the idée du jour of Enlightenment thinkers and permeated the minds of the general populace. So much did it pervade our minds that today it is considered the natural course of things. To question the idea of progress is tantamount to sacrilege.

Progress came to be synonymous with better, greater, improved, advanced, and superior. The current generation were better-off than the previous one. But then came the unsettling thought that the future was a better place to be than the present. With this realisation came the figure of speech that whipped post-war generations into a consumerist society – keeping up with the Jones’es.

Progress became coupled with improvement; progress meant improvement; improvement meant progress. Things must improve. Things must get better. The future is to be striven for at all costs. And one of the costs of all this striving was inadequate consideration of the consequences of new technology and infrastructure. In the post-war consumerism boom the word NEW! was one of the most oft used words of advertisers.

No consideration was given to the social, individual, and environmental consequences.

If we are paying attention to the state of the world then the environmental consequences of progress are all too apparent. We can see the consequences. They are not good.

What may not be so easy to see are the consequences of progress on our mental and psychological health. When we believe that the future is better than now then we can easily become dissatisfied with, and disappointed in, the present moment.

The ability to place our faith in improvement and betterment in a future time was explored in depth by Alvin Toffler and Adelaide Farrell (often unacknowledged) in 1970 in their book Future Shock.¹ In that book they outlined how the pace of change and our expectation of a better future was having an impact upon our psychological health. Toffler and Farrell described this as an ‘abrupt collision with the future.’ Since then, the pace of change has increased exponentially. Also, our expectations of the future solving the problems of today and resulting in a better world have also gained traction.

But it doesn’t happen.

Thinking that we are better off than were our ancestors leads us to want to avoid going back to the past. Thinking that the future will bring about improvement leads us to want to progress to that time as quickly as possible.

In this state of aversion for the past and attachment to the future, our present moment becomes homeless. We don’t reside there; yet it is in the present moment that our hearts and souls wish to dwell. The present is where we are most settled, it is where we become free of anxiety, depression, tension, and stress.

We may not be able to go back, but, for the sake of our health, we can stop striving to get ahead.

If we could do that, we might just find that the past was not so onerous as we think. We might even find that there are some things that we could go back to. We might even enjoy them. We might even improve our mental and psychological health.

Note:

1. Toffler, Alvin (and Farrell, Adelaide), Future Shock, Bantam, New York, 1970

Inequality Set In Stone

Code of Hammurabi
stele

One of the most famous pieces of writing on inequality is undoubtedly Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s essay, Discourse on the Origins of Social Inequality. Although seldom read these days (apart from philosophy and political science students) at the time of its publication in 1755 it was widely read. Its publication helped establish Rousseau as one of the leading European intellectuals of the time.

The essay was Rousseau’s entry into a nation-wide essay competition on the topic of ‘What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law?’ The title of Rousseau’s essay, and the question itself, expose an underlying feature of European society of the time. It was unequal. The question does not ask if inequality exists. It asks how inequality came into existence.

This blogpiece is not going to summarise Rousseau’s answer. Rather I intend tracing the roots of inequality back in time further than did Rousseau in his essay.

Let us return to the Babylonian Empire, and particularly the reign of King Hammurabi (ruling from c.1810 – c.1750 BCE). Writing had been invented in Mesopotamia 1,200 to 1,500 years before Hammurabi’s reign. Initially, the scripts of the time were used for accounting purposes; to record harvest quantities and the like. Over time writing became more developed and was used to record more and more, including stories.

Today, Hammurabi is best known for the Code of Hammurabi, a set of laws including ascribing penalties for various contraventions of the Code. The Code was inscribed upon a 2.25 m tall stone stele (found in 1901 in present day Iran) and is today considered to be an important precursor in the establishment of a legal code. However, you won’t find the stele in Iran today. The stele was unearthed by the French Archaeological Mission and transferred (stolen may be a more accurate term) to the Louvre in Paris.

Although the code of Hammurabi is known as a precursor to the establishment of a legal code, it is also noteworthy that the laws inscribed thereon indicate an inequality existing in Mesopotamia at that time – some 4,000 years ago.

The Code makes mention of various ‘classes’ of Babylonians. There is mention of superior men, common men, slaves, superior women, and common women. The penalties meted out to transgressors of the code depended upon the status, class, and gender, of both the victim and the perpetrator. Hence, it is easy to determine the relative worth of inhabitants by reading the penalties imposed. For example, if a superior man should blind the eye of another superior man, then the penalty is that his eye is blinded in return. However, if it is a commoner whose eye is blinded, then the superior man must pay 60 shekels of silver (and not lose his own eye.) The penalty imposed upon a superior man if he strikes a woman and causes her to miscarry is entirely dependent upon the class of the woman. If of superior class then the penalty is ten shekels of silver, if a commoner it is half that (five shekels) and if a slave then even less, just two shekels.¹ The difference between people was clearly marked out by Hammurabi and the Babylonians. Hence, on this basalt stele we can plainly read of the way in which people were thought of and treated as unequal, of different status and worth. The inequality of people had become codified and written down. Set in stone, if you will.

It is little wonder then, that some 3,500 years later, Rousseau was answering a question about how inequality came about, not if inequality existed.

The inequality that existed at the time of Hammurabi came to infuse the worldviews of the cultures and Empires that followed Hammurabi. It informed the Roman Empire. It informed the colonisation of the Americas. It informed the British Empire. It informed the European colonisation of Australia and New Zealand.

In many ways the inequality between people remains set in stone today. It is time we started chipping away at that stele.

Notes:

1. Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Vintage, London, 2011

Poets and Politicians

As I write this it has been two days since the Canadian election and in two days time the Australians go to the polls.

We have seemingly had elections and politicians for aeons. We have had definitions for politician ever since Samuel Johnson’s first edition of Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. In that first edition the second definition Johnson gave for politician was ‘A man of artifice; one of deep contrivance.’ Many would argue that the definition still adheres.

With antecedents in the Roman Republic and in England in the 13^th century, it is only since the 17^th century that electoral democracy began to become the standard form of government throughout the western world. Just two and a half centuries.

During these last two and a half centuries where has electoral (aka representative) democracy (and its attendant politicians) got us? Much of the research into politics has shown that political representation greatly favours affluent sectors of society to the detriment of the population as a whole. Hardly representative. When one looks at the make up of politicians who do become elected, in most cases world-wide they are from the wealthy elite. Very few are those we would meet whilst out walking the dog or pushing a baby in a pram. (Although we will find them queuing up to pat the dog or kiss the baby come election time.)

Furthermore, with politicians at the helm over the past two and a half centuries the world has become a lot messier. Environmentally it is in a mess. Socially and culturally, it is in a mess. Individually too, we are in a mess. Politicians do not appear to have the willingness to tackle much of this, and some even exacerbate the mess.

Yet, we continue to vote for politicians, we continue to vote for a flawed system. Whitmore, we continue to listen to them. We continue to allow politicians to speak on our behalf, notwithstanding that most do nothing of the sort.

So, who could we listen to instead?

The avant-garde filmmaker and poet Jonas Merkas once quipped that, ‘In the very end civilisations perish because they listen to their politicians and not their poets.’ Maybe he is correct.

Another artist, the science fiction author Ursula K. La Guin enlarged upon Merkas’ remark. The author of the very popular Earthsea fantasy series emphatically suggested that;

‘I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art.’

Merkas and La Guin could be onto something.

It may be as simple as William Blake reminding us of our connection to the cosmos: ‘To see a world in a grain of sand/ And heaven in a wild flower/ Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/ And eternity in an hour.’

Perhaps it is the Bard’s love sonnet that begins with, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Thou art more lovely and more temperate;/ Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,/ And summers lease hath all too short a date.’

Or Mary Oliver suggesting advising a quietude of mind: ‘Every day I see or I hear/ something that more or less/ kills me with delight.’

These and dozens of other poems and poets have us asking the simple question, as Mary Oliver does; ‘There’s only one question/ how to love this world.’

I doubt that this is a question politicians ask very often.

I hear them answer it very rarely. If at all.

I think I’ll go find a book of poetry to read while the Australian elections are on.

Where Did Our Selves Go?

Around one in eight people globally suffer from at least one form of mental health issue. Whether it be anxiety disorders, depression, PTSD, bi-polar disorder, or schizophrenia, the costs of mental health are estimated at $2-5 trillion per year, and expected to rise to over $6 trillion by 2030 (just five years away.)

Surely, such a crisis raises the question of: how did we come to this? How did our selves become so lost and confused that so many of us suffer these conditions? As Gabor Maté notes, ‘In the most health-obsessed society ever, all is not well.’¹

Quite simply, I would claim that this disjoint in our psyches is because we have come to perceive ourselves as being disconnected from nature and from each other. I recognise, of course, that this claim is highly simplistic, yet if you follow through the implications of each of these two disconnections the threads joining it all together become evident.

Disconnection from nature is tantamount to a loss of Earth as our collective home. Disconnection from each other isolates us from our community. Together, these two disconnections mean that we have lost contact with our human support systems and our place of identity, resulting in a psychic disruption that varies from person to person.

Is it any wonder then, that over the past few centuries, we have become more and more disconnected from our own selves? We are homeless and have little sense of belonging. Both these disconnections cannot fail but fill our psyches with a toxic concoction of conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, emotions, and worldviews that serve to disconnect us from who we are, from our true selves.

Our mental health statistics show this. Over the past 50 years mental health issues have been steadily worsening, with the most severe disorders being depression, specific phobias (extreme fears of objects or situations that pose little or no danger but make one feel anxious), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and alcohol abuse. Ominously, a 2023 study undertaken by researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of Queensland involving respondents from 29 countries concluded that, ‘by age 75 approximately half the population can expect to develop one or more of 13 mental disorders.’² For both men and women major depressive disorder was one of the most prevalent disorders. The next most prevalent was alcohol abuse for men and specific phobias for women.

This is a serious disconnection within and from ourselves.

What has happened to our selves? Where did our selves go?

It is highly likely that we left our selves behind when we allowed ourselves to disconnect from nature. We left our selves behind in the forests, the mountains, the rivers, and the myriad other natural habitats.

If this is so, then it is no surprise that spending time in natural settings helps to reduce mental health problems and to restore balance in our lives.

Over the past 40 years a conscious practice of spending time in natural settings for health benefit has been spreading around the globe. Japan can be credited as the birthplace of this practice, where it is known as shinrin-yoku. The term shinrin-yoku (literally Forest Bathing) was coined in 1982 by Tomohide Akiyama, who was Director of the Japanese Forest Agency at the time. Since the beginning of the 21^st century the science of forest bathing has built an impressive research base.

Amongst the benefits of forest bathing that this research has shown are: Increased relaxation of the body due to increased activity of the parasympathetic nervous system; Reduced stress of the body due to reduction of sympathetic nervous system activity; Reduction in blood pressure; Lowering of pulse rate. These health benefits allow forest bathing participants to feel a sense of comfort, feel calm, feel refreshed, less anxious, and an improvement in their emotional state.³

If such health benefits can be experienced by just an hour or two of forest bathing, imagine the benefits that might ensure from reconnecting more completely with nature?

Another, associated, health practice has also been slowly spreading. Green prescriptions first began being prescribed by doctors in New Zealand in the late 1990s. Green prescriptions are a medical prescription to spend time in nature. In New Zealand it is now possible to self-refer to a green prescription. A number of countries, including Canada, the UK, Korea, Finland, the US, and of course Japan, are utilising this form of “medication” regularly as part of those nation’s healthcare services.

Sadly, at the very time we are starting to re-discover the benefits of spending time in nature we are also busy chopping down our forest, polluting our riverways, and mining the tops and sides of our mountains.

If we are going to find our selves again then we have to act with nature in a reciprocal manner. We must stop chopping, polluting, and mining.

Notes:

1. Gabor Maté, with Daniel Maté, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness &healing in a Toxic Culture, Vermillion, London, 2022

2. Prof John McGrath et al., Age of onset and cumulative risk of mental disorders, The Lancet Psychiatry, 2023. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(23)00193-1/abstract  accessed 23 April 2025

3. Yoshifumi Miyazaki, The Japanese Art of Shinrin-Yoku, Timber Press, Portland, Oregon, 2018

AI and EI are Not Compatible

Chief Sealth (A man
with high EI)

AI (Artificial Intelligence) has its proponents and its detractors. Like most technology through the ages, there are benefits and drawbacks. I’ll go a bit further than that though. Throughout human history most technologies have had significantly more and greater drawbacks than have been the benefits.

A surface deep inspection or a cursory examination might induce one to dispute this claim. However, consider this example of the introduction of cell phones, in a blog from three years ago. Cell phones and their use have introduced problems of: depression, anxiety, cyber bullying, e-waste, increased electricity use, uptick in CO2 emissions, environmental consequences of mining, nomophobia (cell phone addiction), social isolation, and cognitive impairment.

AI is no different. Indeed, it is worse, as one of the purposes of AI is to optimise situations. The chance that AI will exacerbate every other single problem is highly likely. Yet, there is little or no discussion taking place around the likely consequences of AI. The proponents of AI are leading the charge, hailing the benefits, and drowning out the voices of those who wish to apply the cautionary principle.

I wish to highlight just one area of concern regarding AI – its environmental consequences.

The electricity and water usage of AI are both significant. In 2022 AI data centres were the 11^th biggest electricity consumers in the world. If they were a country, then they would rank just short of that of France.

Microsoft and Exxon Mobil have entered into a partnership in which Exxon plans to use Microsoft’s AI and claims that the use of this technology will enable them to increase production by 50,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day.

All of which contributes to CO₂ equivalent emissions.

Water use for cooling AI data centres is also sizeable. Researchers at Cornell University claim that the use of water for these centres has been kept a secret, and estimate that 4.2 – 6.6 billion cubic meters of water will be consumed by AI by 2027 – half the total usage of the United Kingdom.¹

A further environmental concern with AI is that of e-waste, with AI expecting to account for 12% of global e-waste by 2030.

AI at Odds with EI

When the environmental consequences of AI are considered we must conclude that Artificial Intelligence is incompatible with Environmental Intelligence (EI). A search for Environmental Intelligence will often land you on pages that speak of gathering information and data from the environment and then analysing the data gathered.

This is not how I intend using the term Environmental Intelligence (EI) here.

EI to my mind is better thought of as the intelligence innately found in nature and includes the intelligence with which we humans bring to our entanglement and inter-relationships with nature. Many have tried to capture this form of EI. One of the best is that of Chief Sealth (sometimes known as Chief Seattle) in a speech he gave to his tribal assembly in 1854. His speech is an excellent example of EI.

Many versions of this speech exist, all of which derive from second-hand sources, yet the underlying sentiment remains. This extract is from that of the film scriptwriter, Ted Perry, in 1970. I will not quote the whole speech (it is 5 pages long²); rather just two paragraphs that condense the ideas contained in Chief Sealth’s speech into the essential concepts.

‘This we know. The earth does not belong to humans; humans belong to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood that unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. Humans do not weave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.’

This understanding of EI is clearly at odds with that of AI.

The two forms of intelligence are incompatible.

Yet, I read some highly visible so-called environmentalists utilising AI in their writing. This is disappointing. When I know that these authors use AI how can I be sure that what I read is their own thoughts or that of an AI-generated chatbot? I can’t.

Furthermore, it has been said that the easiest way to overcome a problem is to stop participating in it.

Just stop using AI! It is incompatible with EI.

P.S. This blogpiece has not been AI generated.

Notes:

1. Penfeng Li, et al, Making AI Less "Thirsty": Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models, Cornell University, 26 March 2025. https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03271  accessed 16 April 2025

2. Chief Sealth speech cited in full in Seed, Macy, Fleming, Naess, Thinking Like A Mountain, New Society Publishers, Santa Cruz, CA, 1988, pp 67-73

Un-Reality TV

First, an apology to those readers expecting to read this week’s blog earlier than today. A cold kept me uninspired and unenthusiastic for much of this week. Now, on with the blog.

Plato's Cave

If you look up a word in a dictionary, you will usually find a definition and then a few examples of use of the word. If we look up the word oxymoron, we will find a definition such as this (from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary): ‘a combination of contradictory or incongruous words.’

Surely an example of oxymoron must be that of: Reality TV.

Not only is the term blatantly contradictory, but it also has harmful side-effects. Let us begin with its contradictory nature.

What is real and what is not real has been the subject of debate and conjecture within western thought since at least the times of Plato and his allegory of the cave in the 4^th century BCE. (Come to think of it, Plato’s allegory could be a very early precursor to Reality TV) However, most of us would agree that reality is what is tangible and exists in a sensory manner. Often reality is easier defined by what it is not. Reality is not imaginary, not something made up, not contrived, not fictitious. (I acknowledge that this short definition is debatable, but for the purposes of this blog I think it makes sense.)

Reality TV is not real. Reality TV programs are made up, they use contrived situations; then go and broadcast the program on TV which stimulates a very base level of imagination in our neocortex and thalamus areas of our brains.

Yet, between 60% and 70% (up to 80% in some places) of adults in western countries watch Reality TV!!

It is not simply that every night adults sit transfixed as if under the influence of Aldous Huxley’s drug – soma – in his 1932 dystopian novel, Brave New World. That state is bad enough, but Reality TV has some nasty effects. Without going into detail in each case, here are some of these harmful consequences.

• Many Reality TV shows seek to humiliate and exploit participants.
• Reality TV has a tendency to make someone “famous for being famous” – with otherwise no qualities of fame.
• Stand-offs and obscenities are often glamorised and elevated on Reality TV.
• Reality TV promotes materialism and a toxic individualism.
• Situations on Reality TV are contrived, although usually promoted as being spontaneous and unscripted.

What many viewers may not recognise is that Reality TV has been a vehicle for helping to normalise public surveillance. Reality TV intrudes, sometimes intimately, on the lives of participants in ways that would not normally be tolerated. With over 30 years’ worth of Reality TV having now been beamed into the homes of millions of viewers, this intrusion has become normalised, so that surveillance in the real world is similarly tolerated, accepted, and even welcomed.

If anyone knows the distinction between reality and non-reality, then an actor would be one of those people. Acting requires the ability to set aside one’s real life and step into the shoes of an unreal, fictional character.

The English actor, Gary Oldman, has done this many times in his distinguished career. He has played characters as diverse as Count Dracula, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sid Vicious, Sirius Black (in the Harry Potter series) and the spy George Smiley. In 2017 he won an Academy Award for Best Actor in the film Darkest Hour for his portrayal of Winston Churchill.

He knows the difference between TV and film acting, and the oxymoronic Reality TV. His caustic words bear musing on. ‘Reality TV to me is the museum of social decay.’

P.S.

Here is a question to ponder. If it had not been for the Reality TV program The Apprentice, in which Donald Trump appeared as the host, would he now be the President of the US? That show placed Trump directly in front of millions of American TV viewers and presented him as a successful and leading businessman (even though reality shows him not to be). Would the fateful words of that show – ‘You’re fired’ – not now be coming to haunt many of those same TV viewers?

At Work In The Ruins – Book Review

When I was a young lad my father would occasionally take me to “the tip” – the local refuse facility. There, we would sift through the rubble and ruined stuff discarded by local residents. (Trying to do this these days is not possible, because “tips” have been closed off due, presumably, to hygiene “science” – something Dougald Hine would possibly appreciate.)

Amongst those ruins I would search for, and often find, treasures and useful bits ’n pieces that could be transformed into a trolley. A trolley was a cart made of old planks of wood, discarded pram wheels, axles, and hinges. By way of a hand-held rope the trolley could be steered, usually down a hill, the steeper the better. I’m sure my mother despaired when I arrived home with scrapes and bruises after an afternoon of trolleying.

Something similar, although on a grander, global scale, is what Dougald Hine is writing about in At Work In The Ruins: Finding our place in the time of climate crises and other emergencies.¹ Hine searches for treasures amongst the discarded (or soon to be discarded) ruins of modernity.

Hine does this cleverly by posing a number of questions without fully answering any of them. And, nor should he. We cannot know the answers until we stumble upon them amongst the ruins.

But one thing is clear, and Hine states this on just the 3^rd page; ‘The way we talk about the trouble is making it worse.’ Pithy and crisp. The following 197 pages are Hine’s attempts at clarifying why this is so and some ideas for a different way of talking. One of the languages we have been using is that of science. Hine is clear that we need to use this language differently, not discard science will-nilly, but to recognise that ‘science can know many things; yet it cannot say, because it does not know, when enough is enough.’  

The point of departure for a new way of talking, according to Hine, is to admit that we are already amongst the ruins. Furthermore, he claims that ‘If hope exists, it lies on the far side of the admission of failure.’

Failure!!? Yes – failure. Writing about failure, and admitting to it, may turn off some readers. After all, one of the messages of modernity is failure is not an option, you cannot fail, you must not fail.

But, read on. There are many indications of this failure, two of which Hine points to; climate crises and covid. If I have any disappointment with this book, it is that Hine lingers too much on the covid pandemic as one of the indicators, spends a little time on climate crises, and hardly any time on the other emergencies, as promised in the subtitle of the book. To my understanding, it is the entanglement of all these emergencies that has brought us to the predicament we are in.

This disappointment aside, Hine’s book is an important read as it does provide us with a new vocabulary with which to talk about the troubles, predicament, and ruins we are in.

An example, and one well covered by Hine, of this new way of talking (and listening) is the way we talk about death. Hine addresses this in a lucid and useful manner. He quotes a critical care nurse working with those on the ’brink of death.’ The families of the dying tended to react in one of two ways: to become obsessed with vital signs and lab data, or to deny and avoid. There was a third, less common, path open to families that the nurse termed ‘the path of engaged surrender’ – a term reminiscent of Tara Brach’s radical acceptance.

Engaged surrender is the path Dougald Hine advocates as we are faced with the death of the ‘world as we know it, but not of the world.’ To help with this approach, Hine refers often to a colleague – Vanessa Machado de Oliviera, who’s incisive book Hospicing Modernity (see myreview here) can easily be read as a companion piece to At Work In The Ruins. To need to hospice modernity is one of the clear answers Hine gives to his questions.

Modernity, says Hine, has been on the Big Path for many years. This path leads only to a futile future. There is another path however, and Hine visualises this as ‘unpaved, hardly a path at all, and it will be made by those who walk it.’ Hine is under no illusion that this path will be chosen by many. Nor does he envisage that this path will be easy and pleasant for those who do walk it. He warns us: ‘Do not underestimate what such a choice may cost you.’

Getting hold of and reading At Work In The Ruins will be one of the lesser costs you may pay. I recommend it as one worth the price.

Notes:

1. Dougald Hine, At Work In The Ruins: Finding our place in the time of climate crises and other emergencies, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vermont, and London, UK, 2023

How Close Is The Future?

This blogpiece is a little more personal than most of those on this page. It is personal with respect to my musing on how much time I have left on this Earth and my relationship with that time.

Let me start with a personal observation.

As I get closer and closer to my death, I find that my thinking about the future becomes more acute, and more fearful. Let me explain.

I do not mean fearful for my own death, nor do I mean fearful for what any afterlife (or non-afterlife) may hold. None of that do I find fearful.

But, I do discover that as I have less and less existential future, the more concern I have for the future per se. Yet, when I had plenty of future ahead of me (say, in my 20s, 30s and even into my late 50s) I had little to concern me about the future. How is it, I ask myself, that as I get closer to my death, the more I feel a distress and unease about the future that is to occur after my death?

Partly, I suspect, the answer to this paradox can be found in the book Future Shock,¹ written by husband and wife team, Alvin Toffler and Adelaide Farrell (often unattributed), published in 1970.

The basic thesis of Future Shock is that too much change in a short period of time leads to psychological stress and anxiety. Toffler and Farrell noted that previous generations of humans had dealt with major change about once (or less) in their lifetimes. Yet, by the time of their writing, each generation was now experiencing significant change twice, or even thrice, during their lifetime.

We are now 55 years on from the publication of Future Shock. The pace of change has accelerated in that time, so that now the amount of change in a person’s lifetime is much greater. We are now facing an ‘abrupt collision with the future’ as Toffler and Farrell predicted in the book.

Is this what I am facing and noticing in my unease? Have I collided with the future?

Yes, but it is only a partial answer. A further aspect is my own involvement with the environmental movement. This is a movement that has shifted and morphed into various identities since the early 1970s when I first became involved.

When I first became involved with the environmental movement the environment was viewed (by me at least, and I suspect most others in the movement) exactly as the words etymology suggests: the environment is what surrounds me, it is outside of me and is the medium through which I pass.

However, as the years and decades passed by my understanding of environment and the nature of the world has shifted. Indeed, the word environment is no longer useful, as my perception now does not recognise a difference between me and not-me. This shift passed through a stage of “I am part of nature” to “I am nature.” That is a long way from the understanding of my youth.

Alongside this spatial shift I also experienced a temporal shift. My part in nature is not confined to my lifetime. I am part of the entire cosmos. The atoms that make up me today have been part of the universe for millennia, they have been part of humankind since the stone-age and before, they have been ingested by wolves, beavers, and many other animals, they have been spewed out of volcanoes 13 billion years ago. These atoms in my body will exist somewhere in the universe in another 13 billion years.

We have learnt a lot about the world since the 1970s. We have learnt a lot more about how intricately entangled it is. We have learnt a lot about how the feedback loops that have kept the Earth in homeostasis are breaking down and the system as a whole is collapsing.

None of this was I able to see, or foretell, in the 1970s when I was much younger. Then I had no sense of a collision with the future.

But now I do.

The collapsing future will not only impact humanity. It will, and already is, impacting the more-than-human life upon this planet. Extinction rates are presently anywhere from 100 times to 1,000 times the normal background rate.

So it is that, although I can appreciate my spatial and temporal entanglement with the cosmos, the closer come to my death, and the less future I have personally, the more unease I have for the future of those to come (human and other-than-human.)

Do any other readers of my cohort notice anything similar?

Note:

1. Alvin Toffler (and Adelaide Farrell) Future Shock, Bantam Books, New York, 1970

Miracle Of A Smile

Spike Millagan penned a delightful poem titled Smile. In the first line of this poem Spike declares that ‘smiling is infectious.’ (The first stanza of the poem is quoted at the end of this blogpiece.)

Infectious – yes. Miraculous also. How so? You may ask.

It is miraculous through language. The words smile and miracle are etymologically linked.

Both words derive from the Latin mirari meaning “to wonder at, to marvel, to be astonished.” From this verb comes the noun, miraculum, meaning “an object of wonder.”

Prior to the Latin, the Proto-Indo-European word smey (or smei) can be translated as smile, or laugh. It can also be translated as wonder.

Looking at these etymologies the connections between the words smile and miracle can easily be seen. Other common English words that share this etymology include; admire, mirror, mirage, and marvel.

Often the word miracle gets attached to events associated with divine intervention. However, the word miracle simply means an inexplicable event, an even that cannot be explained by natural or scientific laws. However, attributing (or explaining) the event to a supernatural, or divine, cause does not follow. That is a logical fallacy. A miracle is simply something to wonder at, to marvel at. Explanation is not required.

A more common use of the word miracle is that of a statistically unlikely event occurring. Instances of this use are such things as; someone surviving an air disaster, or emerging from a blazing building hardly scathed. A statistician may describe such an occurrence as “falling outside the third standard deviation from the mean.” In common parlance, it is much easier to say, “a miracle.”

Miracles, and so-called miracle-workers, have been with us for millennia. The Roman god Hercules, and the Egyptian goddess Isis, were both believed to have been able to perform miracles. The Greek philosopher, Pythagoras (in the 6^th century BCE) is said to have been able to accomplish miracles.

Of course, in western culture, and specifically within Christianity, Jesus is attributed with having the ability to perform miracles. Within other religions too, miracle-workers are proclaimed. Muhammad and Gautama Buddha are both said to have performed miracles.

But, let us return to smiling.

Science can describe how our facial muscles work to shape a smile upon our face. Science can also describe the neuronal messages in the brain of someone else perceiving the smile of the other person.

But, science cannot explain a smile and it cannot explain how it becomes infectious.

A smile is a miracle.

Smile (Poem by Spike Milligan - first stanza)

A smile is infectious

You catch it like the flu

When someone smiled at me today

I started smiling too.

Are You Sick Of The Rain Yet?

We have had a lot of rain recently where I live. One day, after about a week’s worth of rainy days I was walking with my umbrella up and encountered a neighbour. After greeting one another, my neighbour asked, “Are you sick of the rain yet?”

Under the circumstances this may seem a logical and innocuous question to ask. It is also rhetorical; it seeks to find a common sense of experience, and a shared desire for sunshine and fine weather.

As I continued walking I pondered the question, and found that below the question lay some potentially troubling human psychology. I was reminded of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths.

Before continuing, a quick note about the word noble. We may often think of noble as pertaining to someone of the aristocracy, such as a Baron, Duke, Duchess, or Baroness. The Pali word ariya (translated as noble), however, suggests notions of valuable, precious, and not ordinary. With this sense in mind, it is possible to recognise something in the Four Noble Truths that is not normally considered and is a precious insight.

Back to the rain and the question.

The Buddha’s First Noble Truth tells us that suffering exists. It is a simple statement of how something is, a bit like a doctor making a diagnosis. Again, we must be careful with translations. The Pali word dukkha is often translated as suffering. However, the fuller meaning of the word encompasses such feelings as, dissatisfaction, un-ease, discomfort, disquiet. With this in mind it is possible to recognise that dukkha is not the same as pain. Pain is unavoidable, it is an aspect of life. Suffering (or discomfort, dissatisfaction etc) is our response to that pain.

The First Noble Truth was implicit in my neighbour’s question. A feeling of discomfort was embedded within the question, and a desire for that discomfort to be alleviated.

It is this desire for alleviation where the Buddha’s next three Noble Truths attain their preciousness. Many of us get no further than the First Noble Truth – viz. expressing discomfort, dissatisfaction, or un-ease. Then, once expressed, we might try to wish the discomfort away, or maybe want someone else to fix the problem, or pray for a miracle. Very rarely do any of these approaches work.

The next three Noble Truths, however, tell us that there are causes of our dukkha, that there is a remedy, and that there is a path (or medication if you like) we can take to relieve ourselves of the dukkha. I do not intend going into a complete explanation of these Noble Truths. I will simply make the following observation.

When we recognise that our suffering (not our pain) is a state of mind then we can see that suffering is caused by one of two prime states – aversion towards something, or grasping for something. Both cause us to suffer. And this suffering, declares the Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield is ‘like a rope burn. We need to let go.’¹

Easy said, much harder to do. It is a practice that takes time to learn. We westerners, attuned to wanting quick results, find this difficult.

The Buddha was aware of this also and prescribed a path (the Fourth Noble Truth) that, if one travelled upon it, would allow us to let go. But, let us not delude ourselves. Letting go does not mean that the pain will go away, nor does it mean there is an end to suffering.

It does mean, however, that suffering no longer has a power over us.

Back to the rain again. The rain might have meant I got wet (a minor irritation of pain) resulting in my feeling discomfort. Yet, once I let go my aversion to getting wet then discomfort has no power over me.

I am reminded of a lovely story that illustrates this concept well.

Two people are going down the road in the rain. One is skipping along with a smile upon their face. The other is slouched over looking grumpy. The lesson here is that no matter which of these two approaches is taken, both get wet!

Notes:

1. Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart, Rider, London, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg, 2008