What Does The Sorcerer See?

"The Sorcerer"

Around 15,000 years ago someone painted upon the walls of a cave in France a puzzling image of a creature made up of part horse, part lion, part stag, part owl, bear feet and hands that look human. This famous cave art became known as The Sorcerer. The image is found in the Cave of the Trois Frères (Three Brothers) named after the three brothers (Max, Jacques, and Louis Begouën) who, along with their father, discovered the cave in 1912.

The Sorcerer (see graphic) was reproduced by Henri Breuil, who studied cave art and was well versed in archaeology, anthropology, and ethnology. Since Breuil’s rendition other scholars have questioned whether the antlers are truly part of the painting or just appear so because of the rock the painting is situated on. Alternatively, it may be that the paleolithic painter deliberately included cracks in the rock as part of the image.

The painting has been surmised to depict shamanic ritual and as evidence of a Horned God in paleolithic times.

If the Sorcerer was meant to depict a shaman when painted, then it would be unusual for it to have been so, as most paintings in the cave, and other caves in the area, do not depict humans at all, although human form does seem to exist in a few places, for instance in the form of a man-bison.

Thus, the painting is interpreted through the eyes of the beholder. When you look at the painting, what do you see? A shaman? The various animals? A blend of all the animals?

Perhaps the most striking facet that you see is the eyes.

The eyes are looking directly at you. They look out of the wall of the cave, straight at the viewer. The eyes are not looking at other animals or objects on the cave walls. They are looking clearly at us (the viewer). The painter is interacting with us.

Why?

What was the painter of The Sorcerer looking at through those eyes? Was the painter so immersed in the painting that they were painting as if they were The Sorcerer? Were they painting as if it was their own eyes looking out at us (now viewing the painting 15,000 years later)?

If so, then what were they looking at? What did they see?

We don’t know how long these caves had been hidden from human view since the time the art was painted.

Yet, eerily, and perhaps unnervingly, those eyes seem to peer across the centuries and regard the viewer with disdain. It is as if the paleolithic painter 15,000 years ago was peering at us, and asking, what have you done?

Since the painting of The Sorcerer global human population has exploded from an estimated 1 – 10 million people to 8.3 billion this year (2026). That is an increase of 8,000 to 80,000 percent!

Since the painting of The Sorcerer, woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, giant sloths, and cave bears have all gone extinct. Plant biomass has been halved, and wild mammals have been reduced by 85%. 15,000 years ago the Earth’s ecosystems were characterised by high density and a wide diversity. This density and diversity no longer exist, except in parts of Africa.

Is The Sorcerer scrutinising us with an accusatory look?

You be the judge. In this case, culpability may be in the eyes of the beholder.

Fierce Vulnerability – Book Review

What would it happen if our meditation cushions were taken out of the meditation hall and placed in the middle of a sit-in demonstration? What would happen if the blare of megaphones were replaced by Tibetan chimes? What if we listened instead of shouting?

Kazu Haga has asked himself these sorts of questions (and dozens more) of those who wish to change the world for the better. In his book, Fierce Vulnerability,¹ he offers these sorts of questions for the reader to ponder.

Kazu Haga is a trainer in nonviolence and restorative justice, and practices what he preaches. His work in these areas, along with his spiritual path, means that he is able to ask one of the most important questions that those seeking a better, healthier, and more socially just world need to be asking.

Simply put, that question is this: What would a movement that combines individual salvation with social direct action look like? Very few seem to be asking this sort of question, and Kazu Haga is one of only a handful who have attempted to pose it and offer some possible answers.

Yes, Haga does suggest some answers, but they may not be what the reader expects. Haga’s answers are closer to suggesting what to let go, rather than proposing new forms of organising.

Haga’s observations and proposals arise out of understandings and knowledge that was not generally known, let alone available, to previous generations of activists. Nor were these known to those seeking personal salvation. Furthermore, traditional styles of social activism are no longer sufficient in today’s world, because the crises facing us today are ones we have never had to face in our human journey before. Crises are no longer discreet; they are intimately entwined and entangled. So interconnected are the multitude of issues that solving one on its own may worsen another.

All this, says Haga, requires a much broader understanding of the personal, political, and planetary. We must, asserts Haga, let go of our sense of individuality and oppositional dualities.

Holding on to an us/them worldview is at odds with this entanglement and is at the heart of all that is destroying the planet, whether that be the “us” of one nation vs another nation, one person vs another, or humans vs non-humans.

Separation and isolation are at the core of trauma, a crucial element in Haga’s thesis. When most of us think of trauma we often think of acute trauma – i.e. an incident in one’s life that causes deep distress, but that is usually limited in time. We might, beyond this form of trauma, recognise chronic trauma – trauma that remains with the traumatised person indefinitely. However, Haga identifies at least six other manifestations of trauma: insidious, complex, indirect, vicarious, inter-generational, and collective.

In today’s world all of us can be exposed to any of these forms of trauma, whether we recognise it or not. This is why Haga tells us that those searching for personal salvation or enlightenment or those seeking social justice must recognise that what is needed is healing. Not opposition, and not self-absorption – but healing.

In turn, healing requires an ability to grieve. Many of us are traumatised because of loss of connection and belonging, whether we know it intellectually or not. Our bodies, however, do know, and that trauma gets displayed in mental and emotional ways, as well as collectively in warfare, xenophobia, misogyny, destruction of forests, or the extinction of species.

Haga introduces a useful model of how we show up in the world. Developed by a pioneer of adventure education, Karl Rohnke, the model outlines three zones; comfort, stretch, and panic zones. Most of our time is spent in our comfort zone, and this is where we breathe easily, are unstressed, can solve problems, and are deeply connected with others. Our stretch zone is where we get challenged and can grow. We get stretched, yet remain open to new information and perspectives. Every so often, however, we get pushed or pulled into a panic zone. In this zone, our evolutionary survival instincts kick in. We go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. In this zone, Haga (and Rohnke) tell us, we are unable to take in new information, and we are unwilling to listen to differing perspectives.

Traditional forms of activism often push or pull both activists and those opposed into this zone. In previous times these forms of activism have brought benefits and gains. However, today we are ‘trying to call forth a level of transformation we have never experienced,’ claims Haga. We need new forms of activism and new models, and the comfort-stretch-panic model is one of those. It is foundational to Kazu Haga’s notion of fierce vulnerability. It also helps to explain why traditional oppositional activist organising is insufficient for today’s world.

Haga does not fall into the trap of claiming that change happens through personal transformation on the one hand, or systemic change on the other. Both are necessary. In a chapter entitled Healing Is Not Enough he clearly articulates his thoughts.

‘The pain of collective violence isn’t felt in fancy retreat centers and workshop spaces. Those are places where we can build up our capacity to go into the places of hurt, but they’re not ultimately where the pain is felt.’

Yet, as he makes clear through the rest of the book, if we do not ‘build up our capacity’ then it is likely that we will be adding to the pain of the world rather than reducing it.

Throughout the book, Haga offers simple exercises that one can do (either alone or collectively) to train in the ideas he presents.

Fierce Vulnerability is a vital book that those seeking a better world should read. It may not provide you with all of the answers, but it will get you thinking about the crucial questions to be asking.

Notes:

1. Haga, Kazu, Fierce Vulnerability, Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, 2025

First, Do No Harm

Hippocrates

This phrase – First, do no harm – is a translation of the Latin Primum non nocere and is often thought to be part of the medical Hippocratic Oath. The phrase does not appear explicitly in the Hippocratic Oath. The Greek philosopher and physician, Hippocrates, writing in the 5^th – 4^th centuries BCE did include phrases that come close to the famous phrase. In his collection of works he exhorted physicians to ‘do good, or to do no harm.’ In early versions of the Hippocratic Oath he asked the physician to promise ‘to abstain from doing harm.’

While the precise source of the phrase, First, do no harm, is lost to history, students of bioethics will recognise it as a fundamental principle found throughout the world.

Although the phrase is primarily found in bioethics and perhaps hanging on the wall of your family doctor, the phrase could be applied to other areas of our lives, especially to environmental ethics.

If there is a primary and essential principle in how we behave towards the environment, that principle should be First, do no harm.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be applied. Two possible, inter-locking, reasons for this might be the following:

1. Much environmental harm takes place far from our gaze, so that the harm is out-of-sight and out-of-mind.
2. Our cultural conditioning tries to steer us clear of uncomfortable images and experiences, so that we often do not look beyond our immediate comfort and convenience.

The author and cultural critic, Vanessa Machado de Oliviera, summarises this second reason explicitly in her outstanding book, Hospicing Modernity. She writes that, ‘Modernity conditions us to … gravitate toward what validates our ego-logical desires for the 6 “Cs” of comfort, convenience, consumption, certainty, control, and coherence.’¹

When environmental harms are out-of-sight, out-of-mind then our ego-logical desires are satisfied and we do not have to face discomfort.

Perhaps two examples will help to clarify these ideas. The first example is straight-forward and the harm is out-of-sight after the product has been used. The second example is controversial and the harm is out-of-sight before the product is used.

Example 1: Plastic pollution. We all know that non-recycled plastic harms the environment. A lot of this plastic ends up in the oceans – out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Around 11-12 million tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans every year and the amount is growing. That’s approximately 2,000 garbage truckloads per day! Most of it is single-use packaging, abandoned fishing gear, or synthetic textiles.

One of the regions where a lot of plastic ends up is in what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the middle of the Pacific Ocean roughly twice the size of Texas, containing 1.8 trillion² pieces of plastic.

Plastic pollution is an ever-increasing problem. In 1950 about 2 million tonnes of plastic was produced. Nowadays more than 450 million tonnes are produced annually, and growing. In the first two decades of this century the amount of plastic produced per year more than doubled.

We use plastic for our convenience and comfort (as Machado notes) and then when finished with it is discarded and the harm to the oceans occurs away from our gaze.

Example 2: Electric Vehicles (EVs). This example is more controversial because many (even within the environmental movement) promote EVs as one of ways in which carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced, thus helping to “solve” the climate crisis.

However, the climate crisis is not the environmental crisis. Climate change is a symptom of the much broader environmental crisis. The production of EVs require the mining of rare earths and other elements, such as lithium and cobalt. The mining of these takes place well away from the gaze of those purchasing EVs.

Although out-of-sight and out-of-mind, the mining of these elements does major harm to the ecosystems in which the mines are located. Admittedly, the harm done on a world-wide scale may not be as significant as the harm wrought by carbon emissions.

But, that is not the point. The harm done to local ecosystems can be significant, and often is. The harm perpetuated is out-of-sight and out-of-mind and thus does not disturb our westernised comfort and/or convenience.

Just one of those elements – lithium – is mined mostly in sensitive ecosystems and on or near the lands of indigenous people.

The production of one tonne of lithium (enough for 100 batteries) requires approximately 2 million litres of water – water that is crucial to the ecosystem that it is extracted from. Chile holds more than 50% of the world’s deposits of lithium has seen up to 65% of the region’s water used for lithium extraction.

Zulema Mancilla, a member of an indigenous community living in northern Chile has been opposing lithium mining in the area and says that ‘We have serious problems with water’ because of mining companies. She goes on to say, ‘We will never be happy about people coming to pollute and extract the natural resources of our territory.’³

If flamingos could speak to us, they would no doubt concur with Mancilla. A 2022 study found that flamingos were slowly dying as a result of lithium mining in Chile.⁴

Whether in Chile, or elsewhere in the Lithium Triangle, or in the Australian outback, or Thacker Pass in Nevada, the extraction of lithium does immense harm to the flora and fauna of ecosystems, and greatly disrupts indigenous communities.

But, this harm is out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

Tragically too, the production of EVs has not decreased the amount of carbon emissions in the private vehicle sector. The only event to reduce emissions came in the form of the coronavirus, but following that emissions bounced back quickly, and are now at higher levels than before the pandemic.

The principle of First do no harm is not being applied.

If we truly do want to first do no harm, then we must cast our gaze much wider so that we are looking at what is out-of-sight. Plus, we must overcome our westernised, Euro-centric, desires for convenience and comfort. Other communities (both human and non-human) suffer harm because of these desires.

Notes:

1. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Hospicing Modernity, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2021

2. A trillion is 1,000 billion. Thus 1.8 trillion pieces is 1,800,000,000,000 pieces.

3. https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2026/02/resisting-age-lithium-right-healthy-environment-indigenous-territories-chile  accessed 18 March 2026

4. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/289/1970/20212388/79366/Climate-change-and-lithium-mining-influence  accessed 18 March 2026

The Air That I Breathe

In 1974 the British pop-rock group The Hollies released their last major hit. The song The Air That I Breathe reached number 2 on the UK singles chart and number 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. It charted high in many countries, including number 1 in New Zealand, the Netherlands, and South Africa.

Written by Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, the song was a love song declaring that all the singer needed was ‘the air that I breathe, and to love you.’

There can be no dispute that we all need the air that we breathe.

When the single was released the air that we breathe contained 330 parts per million (ppm) of CO₂ (carbon dioxide). This level (330ppm) was the highest level the Earth had experienced for at least 800,000 years. Around 320,000 years ago atmospheric carbon dioxide levels peaked at 300ppm, and then settled back to around 200ppm. Two more peaks, around 250,000 years ago and 120,000 years ago saw CO₂ levels reach approximately 280ppm.

Thus, at no time during the existence of us (Homo sapiens) upon the Earth had the atmosphere contained more than 300ppm of carbon dioxide.

Until the 20^th century! The proportion of CO₂ contained in the Earth’s atmosphere reached more than 300ppm in 1911 and continued to rise continuously thereafter.

By the time the Hollies were stating that ‘all that I need is the air that I breathe’ carbon dioxide levels were around 10% higher than at any time in the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens.

The levels were to go higher, and higher still.

Today (in March 2026), the proportion of CO₂ in the atmosphere is 430ppm. 100ppm greater than it was when the song was released. In just over fifty years – two generations!

That may not sound much. 430ppm is 0.043%. Not much, some may claim. And, only an increase of 0.01% between 1974 and 2026. What’s to get concerned about?

We could ask the same of arsenic. Our bodies require arsenic – in tiny quantities. Yet, a very tiny increase in that quantity and the arsenic in our bodies becomes toxic, even fatal. Tiny differences can have significant outcomes. As it is with arsenic in our bodies, so it is with carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Most of us know that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have a direct bearing on the Earth’s climate systems. We do get concerned about that, although there are still large numbers of sceptics.

We could also get concerned about how increasing CO₂ levels in the atmosphere have a direct impact upon our health.

A paper published in January this year stated that, ‘There is mounting experimental evidence that lifetime exposure to these increasing atmospheric CO₂ levels can negatively impact the normal physiology of organisms.’¹

In typical scientific caution, the authors noted that ‘directly assessing this in humans is very difficult.’

They did, however, warn that if trends in increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continued then our ‘blood bicarbonate levels could be at the limit of the accepted healthy range in half a century.’

Half a century. That is the same length of time that has elapsed since the Hollies sang that ‘all I need is the air that I breathe.’

There is little to no indication that the proportion of CO₂ in the atmosphere is likely to decrease within the next half a century.

Let us keep singing, ‘all I need is the air that I breathe.’

Politicians, captains of industry, economists, and others need to hear us singing this song.

 

Note:

1. Alexander Larcombe & Phil Bierwirth, Carbon dioxide overload, detected in human blood, suggests a potentially toxic atmosphere within 50 years, Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health, 13 January 2026. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5 accessed 8 March 2026

Terra Nullius and Abel

Cain murdering Abel. Painting by
Peter Rubens, 1600.

The claim that land could be taken for use by one people because it was classed as unoccupied has been used by many nations since the late 15^th century. Terra nullius is the term by which this is known. Terra being the Latin word for land, and nullius meaning of no one, or nobody’s. The term has been used notably by European colonisers to give legitimacy to their occupation, even though people were already living on the land.

The antecedents of the term and of European colonisation can be traced to a specific time, place, and almost to one person. The date is 14 June 1452, and the place is the Vatican. The person is Pope Nicholas V and his advisors. Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull (a public decree or similar document issued by a pope of the Catholic Church) known as the Dum Diversas. This bull authorised King Alfonso V of Portugal to conquer and subjugate ‘those rising against the Catholic faith…(namely) the Saracens and pagans’ in the Ottoman Empire. 

A further papal bull (Romanus Pontifex) in 1455 was full of praise for King Alfonso V’s victories and instructed him to capture all Saracens, Turks, and other non-Christians and place them into perpetual slavery. These two papal bulls later became the justification for the Atlantic slave trade.

Christopher Colombus, in attempting to find a route to China and India that did not have to contend with the Ottoman Empire, chanced instead upon the Americas. Colombus’ report back to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in Barcelona during March 1493 kick-started the so-called Age of Discovery (more accurately the Age of Colonisation and Conquest.) It also resulted in a flurry of new papal bulls by Pope Alexander VI which divided the newly ‘discovered’ lands between Portugal and the Catholic Monarchs of Spain (Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.)

Collectively these papal bulls became known as the Doctrine of Discovery. Essentially, they decreed that the Americas were open to “discovery” because the inhabitants were non-Christian and therefore of no significance in the European mind.

The fact that other peoples were already living on these lands did not, in the coloniser’s minds, constitute possession by them. More often than not the notion of res nullius (Latin, meaning nobody’s thing) was invoked, although some theologians at the time questioned this. The idea that lands could be possessed and occupied by colonisation, notwithstanding people already living there, became entrenched in the western mind. Res nullius morphed into terra nullius (nobody’s land) and was applied most famously by the colonisers of Australia, where (notwithstanding that they had been living on the continent for some 65,000 years or more) the indigenous people of Australia were not counted in censuses until 1971, following a referendum in 1967. It was not until 1992 that the notion of terra nullius was overturned by the Australian courts.

Even though res nullius and terra nullius were coined and used extensively from the late 15^th century onwards, the concept of nobody’s land is an age-old one. It can be found in the very first book of the Bible. Many Biblical passages refer to a wilderness and most of these references do indeed indicate land in which no-one else is living. However, there is one very famous story in the Bible in which nobody’s land is invoked notwithstanding others living there.

The story of Cain and Abel is one that many people know. Let us look into this story.

Cain and Abel are twin brothers, and the children of Adam and Eve, with Cain being the older. ‘Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground’ (Genesis 4.2). The Bible tells us that as grown men the brothers bring offerings ‘to the Lord.’ Cain brings fruit of the ground and Abel brings the firstborn of his flock and their fat. The Lord accepts Abel’s offering but not Cain’s. Genesis 4.5 tells us that ‘Cain was very angry and his countenance fell.’ Cain entices Abel into the fields and in a fit of envy kills him. We then read one of the most famous passages from the Bible in Genesis 4.9: ‘Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel, your brother?” He said, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper.”’

Let’s stop here and look beneath the surface. First, their names. Cain is a translation (via Greek) of the Hebrew qayin meaning to acquire, take, or possess something. Abel’s name derives from the Hebrew word havel meaning to be empty, as well as vapor, breath, and foolishness.  

As with many myths, allegories, and legends the characters in them tend to be representations of categories of people or their traits and behaviours. In this story Cain represents the agricultural societies of the Levant area, and Abel the nomadic herders to the south.

Read as allegory, the murder of Abel by Cain is a depiction of the agriculturally based settler cultures raiding and slaughtering the nomadic peoples so that they can acquire (there’s Cain’s name) more land to plant crops and feed a growing settler population. For those doing the raiding and slaughtering these lands were viewed as empty (there’s Abel’s name) and ripe for taking. The fact that people did inhabit the area simply meant that they had to be exterminated: they were, after all, simply nomads, roaming around an otherwise empty land.

Can we recognise the similarities between terra nullius and havel (Abel)? Both mean empty, owned by no-one.

Can we also see the arrogant superiority shown by the colonisers and the qayin (Cain)? Both mean to take and acquire unlawfully (in both cases.)

The sense of entitlement has been inherent within western/European cultures for centuries. The hundreds of indigenous and nature-based cultures who have lived as hunters, gatherers, and as nomads have suffered because of this sense of superiority and entitlement for centuries.

But I’m Dr Jekyll

Sometimes in conversations where the topic is that of some horrific, brutal, and/or cruel act, someone will declare that “it just shows the inhumanity of people,” or words to that effect. Statements such as this suggest that our human nature is basically nasty and brutish. It is a dismal verdict for the human race.

Statements like this one are tantamount to justifying the brutal acts; in fact, these statements come very close to defending them, on the basis that brutality is simply the base nature of the human race.

This miserable view of humanity’s innateness is akin to characterising humanity as Mr Hyde in the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.¹  Stevenson’s horror story, published in 1886, follows two characters (Jekyll and Hyde) through London streets and houses with one of them (Dr Jekyll) being of upright and gentlemanly manner, and the other (Edward Hyde) a murderer and person of low morals. As the story progresses, the reader comes to realise that the two are one-and-the-same. An elixir transforms the one into the other.

Yet, if the person pronouncing this morbid baseness is questioned about their own character, most are likely to say something like, ‘But I’m Dr Jekyll.’ The innate wickedness just attributed to the whole human species is rejected as not applying to them.

Both of course – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – are found in all of us. Thinking of oneself as a Dr Jekyll and not as Mr Hyde is an easy way to absolve oneself of any guilt, or participation in any of the atrocities of the world.

Stevenson was well aware of this tendency and its effect. In the final chapter of The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – titled Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case – Henry Jekyll maintains that,

‘It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered.’

“And thus his conscience slumbered” is an illuminating sentence. It tells us that if we can attribute nastiness to some other and not ourselves then we can slumber on in innocence and ignore the brutality that occurs in the world.

It was this slumber and innocence that Nazi war criminals claimed at the Nuremberg trials. Many argued that they were simply doing their job. Hannah Arendt, who wrote much about totalitarianism and Nazism attended some of those trials.

In particular Arendt attended the trial of Adolf Eichmann, an official in the Schutzstaffel (the SS) and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. She wrote a book - Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (published in 1963) – outlining her observations and analysis of Eichmann and others.

What Arendt found to be truly terrifying about Eichmann was that he was not psychopathic, he was a common man. Almost anyone could have become a war criminal. But Arendt does not offer this up as justification for Eichmann’s actions. She does not excuse him. He still had choice, even in a totalitarian state. The consequences of making that choice are political, she said, even if the person is powerless in that state.

Robert Louis Stevenson was writing about just such situations fifty years before the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.

Reading The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde one hundred and forty years after its first publication there are at least two major lessons we can take from it.

1. All of us can find a Dr Jekyll and a Mr Hyde inside us.
2. We must not allow our conscience to slumber.

 

Notes:

1. Stevenson, Robert Louis, The Stange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, p 60. Penguin Books, London, 2002. First published 1886.

Neighbour Jones

In 1913 a comic strip named Keeping up with the Joneses made its first appearance in newspapers in the USA. The strip depicted the McGinis family who were constantly trying to keep pace with the wealth, possessions, and status of their neighbours, the Joneses. Significantly, the Joneses were never shown in the strip, remaining inconspicuous.

The phrase – keeping up with the Joneses – became a catchy idiom throughout much of the westernised world. The Joneses became the standard that everyone should aspire to. If the Joneses bought a new television, then the McGinis family bought the same model.

The comic strip ended in 1940, but following the end of WW2 the phrase signified the rampant explosion of consumerism that characterised the 1950s.

This was deliberate. The economist, Victor Lebow, in 1955, wrote:

‘The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. …We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption.’¹

As the century moved on, consumerism became conspicuous consumption. As consumption rose the probability of increased dissatisfaction also rose if the Joneses were unable to be kept up with.

It wasn’t simply a case of consuming more though. In order to consume more, individuals and families had to gain more purchasing power; they had to work more, invest more, gain more education, and be seen more. For all that to happen they had to move.

They moved to cities. Between 1950 and 2020 the number of people living in urban areas rose from 20% to 55% of the world's population. That is an absolute increase from 500 million people in 1950 to 4.3 billion in 2020. A staggering increase.

The size of cities has grown ominously also. The largest city in the world in 1950 was New York with a population of approximately 12 million. In 2020 the largest city was Tokyo with a population of more than three times that – around 37 million.

The pressure to keep up with the Joneses in conjunction with increased urbanisation has had a devastating effect on the mental health and wellbeing of many people. Stress levels in particular have risen dramatically since WW2. So much so that stress is being labelled as the “health epidemic of the 21^st century.”

Our nervous system is actually composed of two systems that work conversely to each other. What is known as our sympathetic nervous system triggers our “fight or flight” response, and we experience a higher heart rate, dilated pupils, and focussed attention. Fight or flight is a stressful time. All through our evolutionary journey this stress was needed at times, but usually short lived. It could be labelled as acute stress.

Once the fight or flight event had passed and the acute stress was over, our parasympathetic nervous system took over and slowed heart rates, constricted pupils, and allowed our bodies to return to homeostasis (a state of equilibrium throughout the body.) These two systems worked well together for well over 95% of our species time on Earth.

Sadly though, the last few decades have seen stress levels become chronic, meaning that stress remains for a long period of time without abating. Our sympathetic nervous system remains on high alert, we become constantly, and continuously, subject to high levels of stress. Our parasympathetic nervous system has no opportunity to return us to that equilibrium point of rest and recuperation.

The main contributor, worldwide, to chronic stress is work. No longer are we human beings, we have become human doings. We have become constantly busy.

Chronic stress is implicated in a number of diseases and illnesses, amongst them: hypertension, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression, anxiety, autoimmune diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, cognitive decline, and Alzheimer’s disease. Makes you wonder why, as a culture, we put up with it, doesn’t it?

Keeping up with the Joneses, urban living and its associated stressors (light, air, water, and noise pollution) have combined to outstrip our capacity to adapt.

There appears to be no lessening of these trends either. If anything, they are worsening. No longer is keeping up with the Joneses sufficient, nowadays the mantra seems to be get ahead of the Joneses. There is no end in sight to urbanisation. Noise and light pollution are becoming unhealthier as each year passes.

To make matters even graver, those factors that are impacting our human stress in harmful ways are also stressing the natural world severely. The oceans, the forests, wild animals and plants, waterways, and the air are all showing signs of being unable to cope with the stress we are placing upon them. The Earth herself is showing signs of chronic stress.

Sadly, the loss of natural ecosystems steadily undermines and deprives us of the very features that we require for our health and function. For the past 200,000 – 300,000 years humans co-emerged and co-existed with all other life forms and non-life forms upon this planet. Our health and our ability to survive are one and the same as the health of the planet as a whole.

The simple message to us from nature would seem to be: slow down, rest, recuperate, get rid of stuff, forget about the Joneses.

In fact, remember that in the original cartoon strip, the McGinis family were shown, but the Jones family were never seen.

The Joneses are a phantom. Stop trying to keep up with a phantom.

Notes:

1. Journal of Retailing, Spring 1955

Totalitarianism Is Totalitarianism Is Totalitarianism

Recently I watched the film/doco Orwell: 2+2=5 which doesn’t stop at simply documenting Orwell’s life or his novels (the two most famous being 1984 and Animal Farm.) The film illustrates that the recent rise of totalitarianism in a number of countries are instances of exactly what Orwell was warning about in the writing of his novels. In discussing this film one person commented that there are a degrees of totalitarianism.

That comment reminded me of the 1913 poem by Gertrude Stein, Sacred Emily.

One of the lines in that poem is widely known and frequently cited. It reads,

‘A rose is a rose is a rose.

So too, I thought, is totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism is totalitarianism is totalitarianism.

There are no degrees. Just as murder is murder, totalitarianism is totalitarianism.

Okay, okay, I hear the retort. What about murder in the first degree, and murder in the second degree? What distinguishes one from the other? First-degree murder is pre-meditated, intentional and deliberate. Second-degree murder is unplanned, but still intentional. Second-degree murders are often those committed in the “heat of passion.” Both are murder.

Does such distinction apply to totalitarianism?

It would be hard to argue that totalitarianism is unplanned or that it occurs in a moment of heated passion.

But, what is totalitarianism? The term itself was coined in the early 1920s to describe Italian fascism under Mussolini. The word totalitarian derives from the Italian totalità meaning totally with the suffix arian being a reference to the word authoritarian. So, in essence, totalitarianism is total authoritarianism. It is a word of dominance, oppression, and tyranny. As a political ideology it has been studied many times by philosophers, political theorists, historians, and others. The most common features that these studies attribute to totalitarianism include:

• Centralised government and control of the State.
• A dictatorial approach.
• Requirement of subservience to the State.
• Use of State terrorism.
• State control of mass communication and monopoly of the media.
• Display of an overbearing arrogance to others, especially those deemed to be enemies of the State.
• A one-party State.
• A charismatic dictator who holds power for powers sake.

Not all these characteristics need be present to qualify a system as totalitarian. Absence of one or two of these does not make a system a second-degree or third-degree totalitarian one.

There are no degrees of totalitarianism.

One of those who undertook a lot of research into totalitarianism was Hannah Arendt. She noted that totalitarianism, and its charismatic leader, provided people with a simplistic and comforting worldview about complex social issues.

Another writer was Wilhelm Reich who wrote The Mass Psychology of Fascism in 1932 just as Hitler was coming to power and then updated it in 1944. Reich suggested that fascism arose out of patriarchal systems already existing in society. Patriarchy, Reich theorised, prepared children to obey and revere a harsh and dominant leader.

By fusing these two theories (Arendt’s comforting worldview, and Reich’s patriarchal roots) George Orwell composed his two classic novels: Animal Farm in 1945 and 1984 in 1949.

It would seem that Orwell’s warnings went unheeded, for totalitarianism seems to have been given a kick-start again in many parts of the world.

We cannot and must not allow totalitarianism to take root. If it does, it must be uprooted.

I began this blogpiece with a reference to a poem about roses. I will finish with another well-known quotation related to roses. This time from William Shakespeare and his play Romeo and Juliet:

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Applying this to totalitarianism:

Totalitarianism by any other name would smell as repugnant.

Reflecting On Refraction

A couple of days ago I was sitting at my favourite café early in the morning with a freshly brewed hot coffee in front of me. A light shower of rain began to fall. Within a minute or so a rainbow formed its arch across the sky. When I looked downwards at the creek that flows beside the café, I could see the rainbow reflected in the waters. (see photo)

The rainbow and its reflection in the water was a beautiful sight.

I was moved to reflect.

I recalled from my school days learning about the physics of how a rainbow is formed. Light is refracted, reflected, and dispersed into its constituent colours by the drops of rain. Most people know the colours of the rainbow from the initials: ROYGBIV. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. These are the classic seven colours of the rainbow. Most of us know that the section of the electro-magnetic spectrum that we see as light is made up of many more colours than these seven. It is though, these seven that we classically associate with a rainbow.

I reflected further.

The rainbow is a pleasing metaphor for life and its myriad forms. Individual lives do not exist in isolation. No matter what animal or plant you can think of in nature, it does not exist without interacting with other animals and plants around it. Together, all the various plants and animals combine in almost unimaginable complexity to co-create whole eco-systems.

Each eco-system supports and sustains all the plants and animals within it. Each plant and animal supports and sustains the eco-system.

We humans are part of these complex eco-systems. We are not isolated beings. Without the eco-systems we are part of we could not exist. We are like one of the colours of the rainbow.

Try to imagine a rainbow without one of its colours. Suppose the colour blue was missing. It would no longer be a rainbow, would it?

Sadly, much of humanity is acting (metaphorically) as if one or more of the colours of the rainbow do not matter. Species (and even genera) of plants and animals are being made extinct as an insane rate.

My reflection continued on.

If light is passed through a prism the entire visible spectrum of colours appears on the other side of the prism. The unity of light (what we call white light) is refracted and dispersed by the prism, and we see the diversity of colour contained in that unity. Unity creates diversity.

Now place another prism after the first prism. But invert it. Now pass the white light through the first prism and then the colour spectrum through the second. What happens?

The colour spectrum is returned to white light. Diversity creates unity.

It is a metaphor worth reflecting upon often, because it can be very easy to forget that everything in the world is co-created by everything else. Nothing arises or exists completely on its own. Nothing is independent of other things, although it may be unique (i.e. it may be the unique colour red in our metaphor).

Next time you see a rainbow think and reflect upon the diversity of life and how that creates the wondrous unity that life is.

Too Damn Close!

Readers who are also cyclists will relate to the parable I am about to write.

Imagine you are riding your bicycle along a road. Suddenly, a car passes by you very close. The car almost hits you. You feel the draft of slipstreaming and almost lose balance. Your heart jumps up a dozen beats. You think to yourself and may even shout it out at the receding driver of the car: ‘Too damn close!’

That’s the response I had a couple of days ago to reading the announcement by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in releasing the setting of the Doomsday Clock.

The Doomsday Clock has been set every year since 1947. Initially focussing upon the threat of nuclear annihilation the clock symbolically indicates how close the world has become over the previous year to existential obliteration, represented as midnight. Over the past 79 years other existential threats have been added to the assessment.

The clock’s first setting (in 1947) was placed at 7 minutes to midnight, in recognition of the threat of nuclear warfare following the dropping of nuclear bombs upon Japan in 1945.

In the time since its first rendition the Doomsday Clock has been placed furthest from midnight in 1991 (17 minutes to midnight) following the end of the Cold War and the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START.) Sadly, with increasing numbers of nuclear-armed nations and other tensions, the clock trended towards midnight so that by 2018 it was set at just 2 minutes to midnight.

Within just two years, with the realisation of the enormity of the threat of climate change and cyber-warfare, the clock was set (in 2020) at 100 seconds (1 minute and 40 seconds) to midnight.

The Doomsday Clock has remained at less than 2 minutes to midnight ever since. In 2023 and 2024 it was set at 90 seconds to midnight. Then last year (2025) the clock moved a further one second towards the fateful hour of midnight.

And this year?

The clock has been set at 85 seconds to midnight.

That is too damn close!

The clock has been set closer to midnight this year because of four threats: 1. Nuclear threats intensified and three regional conflicts (Russia-Ukraine, India-Pakistan, and Israel/US bombing Iranian nuclear facilities), threaten to intensify, 2. Climate change outlook has worsened, 3. Development of “mirror-life” carries with it catastrophic risk, 4. Accelerating evolution of artificial intelligence (AI).¹

Compounding these threats has been the rise of autocratic leadership throughout the world, especially within three of the world's superpowers. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announcement notes that, ‘Leaders of the United States, Russia, and China greatly vary in their autocratic leanings, but they all have approaches to international relations that favour grandiosity and competition over diplomacy and cooperation.’

Returning to the parable of the cyclist and the car.

One car may be a scare. The Doomsday Clock announcement, however, indicates that the cyclist is being closely passed by a procession of cars, anyone of which on their own could cause the cyclist serious harm. That is terrifying. All of them together gravely increases the danger to the cyclist.

The drivers of the cars seem to not notice.

We cyclists must call out:

Too damn close!

Notes:

1. The full announcement can be read here: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/#nav_menu

Winners and Losers: An Unhelpful Dualism

A few weeks ago I watched a clip of a hearing held in the US. There appears to be a fondness for these sorts of hearings in the USA where elected representatives question and grill government employees. During this particular hearing the elected representative was asking about the outcome of previous elections.

In what follows I will briefly summarise the essence of the encounter. However, I will refer only to Candidate A and Candidate B rather than the given names of the candidates for office. Also, the years of the election will only be referred to as yyxx. I have chosen to do this so that this blogpiece does not descend into the very dualism I hope to show as being unhelpful.

What follows is not a verbatim transcript of the encounter, but is very close to it (from memory):

Elected Representative to government employees: ‘Did Candidate A win the yyxx election?’

The government employees prevaricated and hesitated to answer the question with an affirmative or negative answer. When pressed again with the question ‘Did Candidate A win the yyxx election?’ they admitted that the candidate had obtained more votes than Candidate B.

The elected representative then asked a follow-up question: ‘Did Candidate B lose the yyxx election?’

To this question the government employees stubbornly refused to answer.

The questioner became visibly upset, possibly annoyed, and continued to ask, ‘Did Candidate B lose the yyxx election?’ At times verging on yelling the question out.

The government employees continued to not answer this question. They may have chosen to not answer the question because they were employees of one or other of Candidates A or B. Or, they may have chosen not to answer for ethical reasons. For whichever reason, it is to their credit that they did not choose to enter into such a dualistic question and answer debate.

As I listened to this exchange it occurred to me that the attribution of winners and losers in an election is one of the fundamental problems we have with modern-day politics. Not only is the culture of winners/losers a disturbing trend in politics, but more generally in society as a whole.

Politics should not be about winners and losers. Politics (in its truest sense – the means by which we make collective choices) should be a forum in which ideas are presented without animosity and an honest dialogue takes place with a collective (hopefully consensual) decision arrived at.

(I know that sounds utopian and has little place in modern political debate. But, it can be done within a democratic setting. I have written extensively on the theory and practice of sortition and will not cover it further here. Check out my sortition posts by using the Search box.)

Returning to the theme of winners and losers we can trace much of this back to dualistic thinking that gained widespread prominence in ancient Greece with philosophers such as Plato.

More recently the idea of winners/losers in social settings gained popularity from the late 19^th century onwards with the rise of Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is a now largely discredited set of theories that attempted to apply Darwin’s theories of natural selection to social settings. Thinkers, such as Herbert Spencer, Thomas Malthus, and Francis Galton (the founder of eugenics) misunderstood and misapplied the phrase ‘survival of the fittest,’¹ by suggesting that social arrangements meant that the wealthiest and most powerful should see their wealth and power increase at the expense of the poor and lower classes. Social Darwinism greatly promoted the winner/loser duality.

The mocking sobriquet of “loser” appears to have arisen in US student slang during the 1950s. Being labelled a loser suggested the person so labelled was a perpetual failure and deserving of being mocked, ridiculed, and ultimately, rejected. Such a label can be tremendously damaging to someone’s psyche, especially young people.

During the 1970s the field of sociobiology further encouraged the idea of winners and losers by emphasising a person’s genetic heritage, and largely ignoring social constructs of culture and environment.

The neo-liberalism of the 1980s/90s, promoted and championed in the US by President Ronald Reagan and in the UK by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (the Iron Lady) nearly endorsed the notion of winner as being the greatest worth a person could attain. Losers, on the other hand, could be dismissed and given no assistance in a civilisation where ‘There is no such thing as society’ as Margaret Thatcher so infamously announced.

The exchange referred to above between the elected Representative and the government employees is the outgrowth of these notions of humanity. Humanity is nothing more than a collection of individuals all in competitive struggles for resources, riches, fame, and power.

Sadly, the use of the term loser is increasing in our everyday speech. During the 1940s and 1950s the term was used only 0.4-0.5 times in every one million words spoken. During the 1960s usage began to climb and climbed rapidly from 1990 onwards, so that by 2018 the term loser was being used more than twice in every one million words used. That is a 500% increase in just one generation.  

Winners and losers is an unhelpful, and erroneous concept. It leads to low self-esteem, self-harm, aggression, xenophobia, hatred, and ultimately to war.

We should beware of anyone attempting to classify us or our societies as winners and losers.

Notes:

1. The phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ was not coined by Darwin. Nor did he use the term fittest in the sense of biggest, strongest, most powerful. See these blogpieces, here and here.

Smile – It Scares Them

Not far from where I live there is a sign on the side of the road. On the back of the sign someone has written: Smile – It scares them. When I first saw it, I smiled.

The words have a hint of truth about them, don’t they? Some people do seem to be scared of a smile on the face of others. Or, if not scared, perhaps a little intimidated, or nervous.

We live in a world where there is a growing rift between people and that shows up as fear, anxiety, or simply indifference. Occasionally this fear can escalate and erupt as violence and hatred. We saw that this week in Minnesota.¹

The fear that someone may exhibit though, should not dissuade us from continuing to smile. A smile, as Spike Milligan reminded us, can be infectious.²

Why would someone be scared of smiles? A number of possibilities present themselves, including:

• Our westernised culture emphasises success and achievement to a high degree. Seeing a smile can trigger feelings of failure by assuming that the smiling person is successful. The sense of shame inherent in the feeling of failure can be a scary thought.
• Many in our society associate happiness with risk. It can be a risky business to seek happiness. Thus, the smile of another can be scary.
• Happiness can be associated with good fortune and that, in turn, can trigger a judgement of injustice, especially if the good fortune is undeserved. In a world where the rift between rich and poor is growing rapidly, the association between happiness and good fortune can spark resentment and a desire to right the injustice.
• When someone is experiencing depression or other negative emotions witnessing a smile can be difficult. Many of us have heard the phrase, ‘Don’t worry, just get over it. Be happy.’ We also know just how unhelpful that can be. Indeed, such simplistic advice can worsen the feelings of those experiencing negative emotions.
• Within western culture the pursuit of individual happiness is considered to be one of the greatest goals in life. Yet, in many other cultures, other values (e.g. harmony, community, and loyalty) take precedence.

However, smiling may not necessarily indicate this individualised goal of happiness. Tibetans, for example, place higher emphasis on other values. Yet, one will be hard pressed to find a photograph of the Dalai Lama without a smile upon his face.

So, keep smiling, and try to not be scared.

Notes:

1. On 7 January 2026, Renee Good, an American citizen was shot and killed by a federal officer. The incident has been widely condemned as murder. Tellingly, immediately before she was shot, Renee said to the officer ‘I don’t hate you dude.’  The first words uttered by the officer following the shooting were, ‘F***ing bitch.’ This is an example of how smiling can scare someone escalating to violence and murder.

2. Spike Milligan, Smiling is Infectious. The opening lines of this poem are, ‘Smiling is infectious, you catch it like the flu’.