Happy Hour

In many countries of the world pubs, inns, and restaurants advertise a Happy Hour. Usually in the early evening, Happy Hour is marked by reduced prices for drinks in a marketing effort to get customers in at a time when the venue is quiet.

In Australia graduating High School students engage in what is known as Schoolies Week. This is a week following the end of final year exams. Sadly, this time can be marred by heavy drinking, drugs, and violence.

Both these cultural occasions may be poor substitutes for activities now lost from our westernised experience.

Thousands of years ago before we began to settle in large towns and villages, our community would have come together around a fire. We would have shared food, told stories, sung songs, and danced together. It would have been a time for rejoicing, laughing, and connecting. It would have been the time when stories of the hunt would have been told, or the location of a tree about to bear fruit was mentioned. Perhaps an Elder or the Shaman of the clan would have re-enacted the clan’s history.

Is this what Happy Hour tries to duplicate, but without understanding what it is being resurrected? Without true Elders and Shaman Happy Hour can only ever be a semblance of what has been.

So too, Schoolies Week is a pitiable surrogate for the coming-of-age rituals that once marked the transition from childhood to adulthood in our cultural past?

Yet there is a memory in these modern-day events. Although we may have lost and forgotten the ceremonies, rituals, and rites that marked our time many millennia ago, we instinctively know that something is missing.

How many other modern-day customs are an attempt to re-engage with something primally human? Yet, many of these modern customs have been stripped of their sacredness and their significance. Here are just a few that come to mind:

Childbirth. Once a ceremony and rite involving the women of the community it is now often confined to a sterile hospital setting and overseen by men.

Education. Once an ongoing aspect of life where one learnt throughout the day, and as things arose, in an outdoor setting. Nowadays, education is shut off inside classrooms and lasts only a limited number of years.

Elderhood. Once a respected role in a community, a true Elder held the sacred knowledge and wisdom of the clan. Today, very few true Elders remain, and we have substituted it with “Olders” who are then siphoned off to Old Folks Homes, away from the community.

If our bodies retain a memory of ancient rituals, ceremonies, and rites, then can we reach into the depths of our collective soul to regain the meaning and sacredness of them?

Just a thought to ponder.

Five Best Inventions

Coffee and art
combined

Last week’s blogpost was entitled Five Worst Inventions. So, this week I am offering my thoughts on the Five Best Inventions, lest I be accused of negativity. I did not go through as rigorous a process as last week; I came up with the five without previously determining the criteria by which I would decide. The only similarity with process was that I was walking on the beach again when I came up with these five.

What I found interesting when I arrived at my top five was that three of them related to our creative and artistic endeavours. That’s appropriate, I thought, because it is our creativity, and artistry that contributes hugely towards our sense of well-being and our pleasure in life. That last sentence may sound intuitively, and logically, correct, yet the connection has been studied by researchers. As an example, this study from Malaysia ‘demonstrates that creativity is beneficial to subjective well-being.’¹

Here are my contenders for Five Best Inventions, in no particular order.

Painting. One of the favourite activities of young children at home, in pre-school, or primary school is drawing. There seems to be something innate about the activity that young children are drawn to.

The earliest known example of a drawing/painting by a human is that of a red hand stencil in Maltravieso Cave in Spain and was made by a Neanderthal more than 64,000 years ago. The earliest known figurative paintings are in caves in Indonesia and Borneo and are dated at more than 40,000 years old.

All cultures appear to have invented painting in one form or another – whether on rock, on wood, or on our own bodies. Painting allows us to be creative and expressive, as well as being a medium for the communication of a thought, idea, or story.

Painting was possibly a precursor to carving which was initially etching like depictions upon rock – petroglyphs being the technical term. The oldest of these are found at Murujuga, Western Australia and are dated at 40,000 to 50,000 years old. The site was declared a World Heritage Site in July 2025.

Painting and carving have undergone many changes and evolved differently in different cultures. It has given us the elaborate masks of New Guinea, the beauty of the Sistine Chapel, and the intricacy of Māori wood and greenstone carvings.

Painting is a marvellous invention, and we don’t have to be children to continue to enjoy viewing it or creating it.

Writing. Writing may well have evolved from painting. Writing enables us to tell stories and keep accounts. In the last few millennia it has provided the means to some of the world’s great literature. In western cultures, would we have a Shakespeare, an Emily Brontë, or a Tolstoy if not for the invention of writing?

Sumerian is thought to be the oldest written language, dating from about 3400 BCE. Early writing from this culture was of a book-keeping style, and then the writing down of poems or sagely advice from one generation to the next. The world’s first written fictional story appears to be the Epic of Gilgamesh written probably about 2100 BCE and, in poetic form, tells the tales of a Sumerian king.

Today our reading options are immense; somewhere between one million and four million novels are published each year. All thanks to the invention of writing.

Drums. When we think of arts, then not only does painting, sculpture, and literature come to mind, but so too does music. The first musical instruments to be invented were undoubtedly percussion instruments. The first membranophone (a drum constructed using a stretched membrane) can be traced to China in the period from 5500 – 2350 BCE and using alligator skins. Because skins tend to degrade, earlier drums may well have been invented without leaving a trace in the archaeological record.

Drums and drumming greatly enhance one of our other (human) artistic forms – dance. Today, the variety of types of drums is immense. There are the drums of the symphony orchestra, conga drums, the many drums of Africa, and in our modern age the drum kit of rock bands.

Drums continue to beat out the rhythms of dancing, marching, and are used in various shamanic and in other ritualistic settings.

Bicycles. As a means to assist us getting around, the bicycle surely cannot be beaten. Its environmental impact is insignificant, and it enables us to keep fit.

In 1817 the Dandy horse was invented – a two-wheeled machine that could be sat upon, steered, and propelled by pushing along with the feet. The first bicycle to incorporate a mechanical crank drive and pedals came into being in the 1860s.

Today, there are more than one billion bicycles in the world. It is a popular form of transport and gave rise to the sport of cycling. The Tour de France cycling race (lasting three weeks) is considered to be the world’s biggest annual sporting event, and certainly the most watched cycling event.

Coffee. After water, coffee vies with tea for the second-most consumed beverage in the world. The number of cafés in the world reaches into the tens (or even hundreds) of thousands. Shanghai is believed to be the city with the highest number of cafés, with over 8,530 in 2024. Australia is home to 27,000 coffee cafés.

The exact date of the invention of the coffee drink is indeterminate. Legend tells of an Ethiopian goat-herder in the 6^th century, named Kaldi, noticing that his goats took a liking to the bean. By 1000 CE Arab traders were bringing the bean back and cultivating it. By boiling the beans they created a drink they called qahwa which meant that which prevents sleep. Qahwa appears to be where we get the word coffee from.

Today more than 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed every day globally. For many, coffee is one of the world’s most pleasurable inventions.

So, get on your bicycle, bike down to your local café for a coffee, perhaps write a letter or poem whilst there, draw or paint a picture of your surroundings, or listen to a busker playing the bongoes on the pavement outside the café. What could be better?

Notes:

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8305859/#sec15-ijerph-18-07244  accessed 21 October 2025

Five Worst Inventions

Berlin Wall

A few days ago I was taking my (almost) daily walk along the beach, allowing the water to wash around my feet, ankles, and calves. I listened to the waves lapping upon the shore and the sound of gulls flying overhead. The sounds and sights were pleasant and calming.

As I continued walking and paddling I noticed a man coming towards me holding a mobile phone in front of him, peering at it. When we passed I waved and offered a cheery “good morning.” There was no reaction, he continued on, not seeming to notice his surroundings or my greeting.

I thought to myself, mobile phones have to be one of the worst inventions we humans have ever made. For the rest of my walk I thought about that, and wondered what would be my “top five” worst inventions? What criteria would I use to make such a judgment?

By the end of my walk I had come up with these three criteria for deciding on the “top five” worst inventions of humankind: 1. That the invention had a negative impact upon the earth and our relationship with nature, 2. That the invention served to increase the separation between us and exacerbate our intolerance of one another, and 3. That the invention worsened our mental health and/or our sense of well-being.

With these criteria in mind, here are my “top five” worst inventions. Please note that these are subjective and you may not agree, and may have a different “top five.” Also, each of these inventions may have their benefits, but, as I see it, the harms are greater. What are my “top five”? In no particular order they are:

Fences. The purpose of a fence is to either keep someone or something in or keep someone or something out. Their main purpose is to divide. Archaeological evidence shows that the first fences, often made of earth mounds, stones, or wood, appeared about 10,000 to 5,000 BCE. They arose in conjunction with sedentary agriculture and functioned to keep predators and scavengers out of crops, or to keep domesticated animals in.

Eventually, because of the transition from hunter/gathering to sedentary living, fences became walls around villages, towns, and cities. They were erected to provide security from opposing groups of humans. They also became markers of a new human feature – the privatisation of land. Take a walk in the countryside these days and how many times do you see a sign on a fence that reads, Keep Out, Private Property?

Walls (simply more elaborate fences) are used commonly to separate and divide. In the last 100 years two of the most well known walls have been erected: the Warsaw ghetto wall erected in November 1940 used to imprison 460,000 Jews in an area of just 3.4 km², and; the Berlin Wall, erected in August 1961, which divided the city of Berlin and separated families, friends, and lovers. Even today, walls exist in many cities of the world, and their purpose is to divide also. Most of us do not even think of them – they go under the rubric of gated communities.

Fences serve to separate us. They also serve to maintain our dominance over domesticated animals.

Ploughs. Ploughs are also linked to our domestication of plants and crops. Ploughs allow us to turn a diverse area of land into mono-agriculture, which is dependent upon the addition of pesticides, fungicides, and artificial fertilisers to ensure crop production.

The first ploughs seem to be hand-held plough-like devices used by early Egyptians to clear rocky soil. By the 6^th millennium BCE oxen were being used to pull early ploughs in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

As time progressed, ploughs became mechanised and automated. Ploughs have enabled huge multinational agriculture companies to wreak havoc upon the land with mono-cultural cropping.

Ploughs and plowshares are often referred to as the goal of pacifist and peace movements worldwide. The phrase, ‘They shall beat their swords into plowshares’ comes from the Bible (Isaiah 2.4). A statue bearing this sentiment is on display in the United Nations Art Collection.

Yet, as Stephen Jenkinson caustically points out, ‘From the land’s point of view, there is no difference between swords and plows.’ ¹

Guns. The first guns were invented in China around 1000 AD, following the invention there of gunpowder in the ninth century. Guns spread throughout Eurasia during the 14^th century, with the word gun coming to us from the Old Norse word gunnidr meaning war-sword. Hence, guns have been associated with warfare and violence since their inception.

It would be hard to propose a more lethal means of killing another human being (or animal for that matter) than a gun. Since the 14^th century guns have morphed into; arquebuses, muskets, pistols, revolvers, machine guns, cannons, artillery, mortars, howitzers, tanks, and the modern-day drones that enable dissociated and anonymous killing.

The ultimate “gun” today is undoubtedly the nuclear warhead. There are well over 12,000 nuclear warheads in the world today, held by nine different countries. Russia and the USA hold the majority of these with more than 5,000 apiece.

Guns have worsened the divide between us.

Automobiles. I tossed up whether to identify this worst invention as the combustion engine or the automobile (utilising the combustion engine.) However, since there are now many vehicles that do not use the combustion engine as its automotive power, I opted for the automobile.

Whether the motive power is the combustion engine or an electric engine (or a combination of both) the automobile has had a terrible impact upon the environment of the Earth. Automobiles take up huge amounts of space in many of the cities of the world. The amount of land devoted to them (roads, streets, car parks) can be as much as 25% of the city’s area. The pollutants that automobiles emit are well known, but what may not be so well known is the weight of vehicles that contribute to the wear and tear of tyres. Some research suggests that tyre wear contributes 2,000 times more particulate pollution than the exhausts. EVs (electric vehicles) are not immune to this, indeed are worse, as the weight of an EV is significantly greater than that of a combustion engine vehicle.

In 2023 I coined the term autobesity to label the problems of automobiles. The blog is accessible here.

Mobile Phones. The mobile phone has only been available commercially since 1983 yet it has probably been responsible for an increase in social isolation, cyber bullying, teenage anxiety and depression, e-waste, environmental degradation, an increase in electricity usage, and a dumbing down of our cognitive abilities than any other such contraption.

When the inventor of the mobile phone, Martin Cooper, was testing out his invention he walked across a street whilst speaking on his phone. He later admitted to a friend that doing so was ‘probably the most dangerous thing I have ever done in my life.’ He is correct. A study in the US in 2009 found that 5,474 people had been killed because of the use of mobile phones in traffic. Repeated studies show that the use of mobile phones are responsible for 25% – 50% of all police-reported vehicle accidents.

I have covered this topic in greater depth in a blog available here.

The Worst Is Yet To Come

One invention that is currently underway could easily be the worst yet. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) has the potential to exacerbate all other problems, making them worse than they already are (if that is conceivable.)

The godfather of A.I., Geoffrey Hinton, has been warning us for a few years now. In a recent interview Hinton cautioned that ‘If you want to know what life is like when you’re not the apex intelligence, ask a chicken.’ A short (2 min) excerpt from the interview is here, a longer (21 min) clip is here.

Even though he recognises benefits of AI, Hinton warns that ‘unless we do something soon, we’re near the end.’ A chilling thought. The lessons from the other five worst inventions would suggest there may not be much hope of us doing something soon.  

Next week I will post my "Five Best Inventions" list.

Note:

1. Stephen Jenkinson, Come The Romans, on the CD Dark Roads, Orphan Wisdom, 2020

Choosing To Make A Difference (Vale: Jane Goodall)

Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, with orphan chimpanzee
at Tchimpounga Sanctuary.

Jane Goodall made a difference in the world. She also encouraged others to make a difference. Just six months before her death (on 1 October 2025), Jane Goodall was interviewed by Brad Falchuk for a Netflix series entitled ‘Famous Last Words.’ The premise of the series is to interview notable people and then publish the interview posthumously.

Jane Goodall is the interviewee in episode 1 of this series. In the interview Jane is asked about the message she would like to leave for those listening following her death. She responds clearly; ‘Every single day you live, you make a difference in the world, and you get to choose the difference that you make.’ A little later in the interview she reiterates this and adds, ‘You have the power within you to make a difference. Don’t give up.’

These words echo those she wrote in her acclaimed 2021 book The Book of Hope.

Jane Goodall did not just say these words – she lived them. She made a difference in the world with her life. Had it not been for Jane Goodall we possibly would not understand the world of chimpanzees and gorillas anywhere near as we do today. As a consequence of this understand it can be argued that we therefor understand more of ourselves, as Homo sapiens. Chimpanzees are, after all, our closest evolutionary cousins. We share about 98.8% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and bonobos.

Returning to Goodall’s encouragement to make a choice about the difference we make in the world. How do we make that choice, and what sort of choice should it be?

Earlier this year the world also lamented the passing of another notable woman with a similar message to those of Jane Goodall. Joanna Macy, like Jane Goodall, made a difference in the world. Her words address the question of what difference to make and how to choose.

‘You don’t need to do everything. Do what calls your heart. Effective action comes from love. It is unstoppable… We will never be able to build what we have not first cherished in our hearts.’

These two women, Jane and Joanna, are two of European culture’s true Elders. Both lived to reach their 90s, and both advised us to make a difference in the world. Furthermore, they both recommended what difference we make and how to make the choice.

For each of them, this advice can be encapsulated in just two words:

Love and Hope.

Find what is in your heart, they both advised, and then do not give up.

Let us not forget their words and their actions.