University of Unlearning

Al-Qarawayyin University 

Universities are institutions of higher learning and research. They are often the repository of centuries worth of accumulated knowledge. In fact, the world’s first University was established more than 1,100 years ago in Morocco. Al-Qarawayyin University was founded in 859 A.D. in the city of Fez, by a Tunisian-born woman, Fatima al-Fihri. The University exists to this day.

Fatima’s concept and vision was adopted later in Bologna, Italy where Catholic monks established the University of Bologna in 1088. Eight years later (in 1096) Oxford University was founded in England.

Over the following 1,000 years universities spread throughout the world with more than 25,000 now established.

Unsurprisingly, the pace of education has rapidly expanded during this time.

So too has the pace of technology, a direct result of accumulated knowledge. Similarly, the pace of the accumulation of knowledge has expanded, so much so that we can claim that “pace” itself has expanded. With that has come an accelerating pace of change – something that Alvin Toffler wrote of and warned of in 1970¹. Toffler and his co-author (his wife, Adelaide Farrell) defined Future Shock as a perception of ‘too much change in too short a period of time.’  Toffler died in 2016, and most likely was shocked by the acceleration of change that he had seen in the forty plus years of his life following the publication of Future Shock.

In such a world how can universities respond?

That question can be answered in a variety of ways. We could say that the vocational education (training) provided by many universities is out-of-date within just a few years. For example, one of my degrees conferred in the mid-1970s was in a vocational discipline. Before the turn of the century, technology had transformed that industry so much that my learning was no longer relevant.

The question can also be answered by noting that the research carried out in universities is instrumental in introducing new technologies to the world. Ironically, this research makes the previous knowledge obsolete, as my own example above alludes to.

We could also answer the question by noting that the process of learning itself helps to equip students with knowledge and skills that prepare them for the future.

Yet, the future is looking more and more bleak the more knowledge we gain of the workings of the world: its ecosystems, the dynamics of carbon, water, and other life cycles.

Humans have interfered in these ecosystems and cycles without fully understanding how they work and interact. Our universities have abetted this lack of knowledge through a number of means: e.g. by compartmentalising (and silo-ing) aspects of knowledge, by viewing the world in mechanical terms and analysing its parts, rather than the whole, by side-lining, and invalidating indigenous knowledge, by valuing some subjects (such as science, economics, commerce, medicine, law) over others (such as the arts and humanities.)

Yet today, some university subjects are discovering the knowledge of systems, inter-connections, and wholeness – e.g. ecology, systems analysis, quantum physics, meteorology, anthropology.

Yet, even these subjects are still bound to one of modernity’s projects – the accumulation of knowledge and learning.

We are still being future shocked, we are still exploiting and polluting the earth, we are still battling each other, we are still exterminating other-than-human species.

Perhaps it is time for a new University to be established.

We need an University of Unlearning.

Such a university won’t be able to guide us to un-know all the accumulated knowledge of centuries. Such a university won’t be able to help us un-learn skills.

Such a university may, however, assist us in unlearning the ways of being that we have learnt over many centuries.

I wonder what courses could be offered at a University of Unlearning? What would the introductory course of Unlearning 101 consist of?

Do you, dear reader, have any thoughts?

Notes:

1. Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, Random House, New York, 1970

Quantum Consciousness (Book Review)

When he was about 14 or 15 years old Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez made the astute observation that: “The biggest challenge we face is shifting human consciousness, not saving the planet. The planet does not need saving. We do.”¹

The young environmental and climate activist was right then, and still is. We need to shift human consciousness.

Peter Smith’s wonderful book, Quantum Consciousness, gives us a taste of what such shifted consciousness might look like, and how we might get there.

For Smith (and, I assume, Martinez,) consciousness is not simply a shift to becoming more conscious. Shifting quantum consciousness involves a complete overhaul and re-envisaging of what consciousness entails.

Smith utilises concepts from within quantum physics to elucidate and explain the realms of consciousness open to us – if we are willing to take the journey.

Quantum consciousness does not reside in our brain, Smith tells us. Indeed, consciousness is not even located within our bodies. We reside in consciousness. This idea is fundamental to Smith’s ideas and concepts.

Once this idea is recognised then the four key essences of quantum consciousness can be understood more clearly. Smith borrows four aspects from quantum physics and slightly re-words them for us non-physicists to understand. The Observer Effect becomes The Creator Effect, Non-locality becomes Everywhereness, Entanglement becomes Intanglement, and the Holographic Universe becomes Holographic Healing.

With these four key concepts in mind Smith takes us into the realms of: parallel lives, past lives, the power of beliefs, inter-connection, multi-verses, communication across distance and time, interdimensional consciousness, our role and place in nature, and other possibilities that many would dismiss as esoteric “nonsense.” Such dismissal is misplaced. It has been said that the mind is like a parachute – it only works when it is open.³ Quantum Consciousness shows us what possibilities exist, if we are open to them.

Smith is highly qualified to write this book. He has studied various forms of hypnotherapy and has been the President of the Michael Newton Institute for Life Between Lives Hypnotherapy – an institute with trained therapists in more than 40 countries around the world. He has many years experience in working with people in various states of consciousness, and utilises many of these cases to illustrate the concepts within his book.

Furthermore, Peter Smith’s writing style is straight-forward and easy to read. He expresses complex ideas in plain, uncomplicated, language. This makes it easy to grasp the concepts that otherwise might be difficult to understand.

This blog has a leaning towards a collective approach to how we live on this planet in a sustainable and amenable manner. Hence, I was delighted to read the final two chapters (Changing the Landscape of Planet Earth and, The Evolved Landscape of Planet Earth) wherein Smith addresses the links and correspondences between our individual consciousness and our collective consciousness, and how each helps the other to further evolve.

This is also a relatively short book (less than 200 pages) making it highly accessible to anyone wishing to gain further insight into what a shift in human consciousness might entail.

Notes:

1. Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez is the Youth Director of the environmental organisation Earth Guardians. In 2015, he and 20 other young people brought a lawsuit against the US government for failure to act against climate change. Although the court sympathised with the young people, the Court “Reluctantly (concluded) that this remedy (a government plan to phase out fossil fuels) is not within our constitutional powers.”

2. Peter Smith, Quantum Consciousness, Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury, Minnesota, 2019.

3. This quote is attributed to Frank Zappa, the enigmatic musician and composer.

Hospicing Modernity (Book Review)

How do you review (let alone, read) a book that spends 12 of the first 40 pages warning you off reading it? Yes, Hospicing Modernity, by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, is one such book.¹

Perhaps to do so you must borrow the traits of one of Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s grandmothers – determination, endurance, and confidence. It is fitting that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira titles the Preface to her book, My Grandmothers’ Gifts. One Grandmother comes from German heritage and the other Guarani (an indigenous people of South America.) So it is that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira is well placed between both worlds – the coloniser and the colonised – to write this book.

Vanessa Machado de Oliveira is right to make this buyer beware warning. This is not an easy book to read. Indeed, it is uncomfortable reading.

Little wonder. For, as Vanessa Machado de Oliveira tells us, “Modernity conditions us to avoid, escape, or want to be rescued from discomfort…”

(Before continuing, there is one further caveat that may be worth considering. If you are a reader who wishes to change the world, then after you have read this, you may want to do so in a totally different way than you were before reading it. That is, if you wish to change the world at all – you have been warned!)

So, let go of your desire for comfort, disregard what you thought of social/environmental change, and allow Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s experience, knowledge, and wisdom guide you through some thought experiments and exercises that will leave you questioning not only the system we are trapped within, but also your own self.

Modernity does trap us.

Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s gift to us in this book is to make the bars, the padlocks, and the security cameras, of this trap visible.

But, once visible, what do we do?

This is where the title of the book is significant. Consider a hospice. Most often it is a place in which those who are dying are cared for and supported through their dying. It is not a place for healing. So it is with modernity. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira warns us against wanting to fix, reform, or otherwise solve a set of problems. Modernity is a predicament, not a problem (nor even a set of problems.) Problems potentially have solutions. Predicaments do not, only an outcome – which we are unable to predict or plan for.

Indeed, trying to fix problems, and find solutions is, she says, part of the very nature of modernity itself.

Vanessa Machado de Oliveira suggests that modernity is in its dying stages and as such, the best we can do is to offer our hospicing skills. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Not so, as we are part and parcel of the very thing that is dying.

But Vanessa Machado de Oliveira does not leave us floundering or grasping at some forlorn hope. She counsels us that, “Whatever happens ‘then’ (the future) depends more on the quality of relationships in the ‘now’ than on the accuracy or appeal of images of the future that one projects as a way forward.”

The journey between the ‘now’ and the ‘then’ will be a difficult and uncomfortable one, and we will not even know where we will end up – or even, if we will end up. However, the  thought experiments and exercises that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira offers us throughout the book at least make the journey possible, albeit uncomfortable.

Get ready to overcome (if you can) the six C’s that Vanessa Machado de Oliveira associates with our ego-logical desires of modernity – comfort, convenience, consumption, certainty, control, and coherence.

Overcome also the warnings given early in the book and read this important addition to the understanding of our times.

Heed also one more warning the author imparts: “I cannot say ‘I hope you enjoy reading this book.’” It may change you though, or at least change the way you perceive modernity.

Note

1. Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 2021.

The Accusing Finger

I recently broke my collarbone, and so writing is a little painful. Thus, I have kept this week’s blog short. It is a simple quatrain.

I have noticed an increase in blaming, finger pointing, toxic individuality, and lack of responsibility over the past few years. This quatrain refers to that. With apologies to Omar Khayyám.¹

The accusing finger points; and having pointed

Stays put: nor all thy vain glory, nor thy hubris

Shall straighten it for thee to see

Nor all thy scorn shall understand e’en a grain of this.

Note

1. Omar Khayyám (1048 – 1131) was a mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, and poet. He is best known for his quatrains translated into English as The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyáam, by Edward Fitzgerald in the mid-1800s.

The Courage To Change

Sometime in the early 1930s Reinhold Niebuhr wrote a prayer, the first verse of which has come to be

Reinhold Niebuhr

known as the Serenity Prayer.  Niebuhr wrote:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Although Niebuhr’s prayer is couched in theological terms, the sentiment could easily help us clarify our social justice actions.

When I - a white, older-aged, male, residing in one of the world richest nations – consider what things I can change, these come to mind.

Racism is predominantly a system and a structure of providing white people benefits within society and largely excluding those of dark skin.  It has been built on the back of (often) brutal colonisation and a Eurocentric sense of superiority.  My ethnic background and heritage place me squarely in the position of being able to do something about that – to change it.

My age (I was born in the 1950s) means that I have grown up in an age of plenty, an age of exploitation of the earth, an age of increasing individualisation and entitlement.  When I look around at my cohort today I see little has changed.  My peers are still approaching the earth as if it is a big playground.  Meanwhile, the future of younger generations is being stolen from them, and the memory of past generations is being forgotten or placed in museums.  My age enables me to work to change this.

Sexism and misogyny are the outcome of a system that is patriarchal in nature.  Patriarchy is dominated by male thought, by male values, by male attitudes.  Those values and attitudes have: seen domestic abuse and violence at high levels, maintained an economic imbalance between the sexes, plundered the earth, given rise to authoritarianism, and even exploited some men (particularly gay men, black men, boys.)  As a man I have a responsibility to change this.

Inequality of wealth and income is one of the drivers of so many social ills.  Poverty, malnutrition, lack of access to clean water, homelessness, displaced peoples and migrants, various addictions, and poor health, can all be attributed to inequality.  In 2019 there were 2,153 billionaires (less than the number needed to fill the average cruise ship), yet these billionaires had more wealth than 4.6 billion people (60% of the world's population.)  The 22 richest men in the world own more wealth than all the women in Africa.¹  Even I (who have an income that is just a little above the Australian official poverty level) am wealthier than almost 90% of the world’s people.  As a resident of a rich nation I can do something to help change this.

There are many things in the world that I have little, or no, ability to change, even though I may find them disturbing, unjustified, or oppressive.  However, those I have just outlined I do have the ability to change, because I live within each of those enclaves and am supported by and benefit from them.  And that is where Niebuhr calls us to courage.

It is far more courageous to look at the systems I am part of and seek to change from within, than it is to point the finger elsewhere and say “you have to change.”

What if look but don’t see?

I suggest there is one more line to add to Niebuhr’s prayer.

The humility to listen to those in pain and suffering.

Note:

1. Statistics from:  Oxfam International, Time To Care: Unpaid and underpaid care work in the global inequality crisis, January 2020.

Lessons From Orienteering

We’ve lost our way.  All over the world we seem to be lost, or at least, confused about where to go and

how to get there.  We may even be uncertain how we got to where we are.

If we are looking for a world of greater biodiversity, peacefulness, and racial and sexual egalitarianism, then we have lost our way.  If we are searching for a world where all have their nutritional needs met, where access to clean water is available to all, and where we can ensure that future generations will be able to appreciate beauty, then we have lost our way.

We’ve lost sight of our social and environmental goals and are fumbling around trying to find our way back on track.  We’re going round and round in circles, following our own tracks, and repeating the same errors time and time again.

Orienteers know this scenario well.  Heading towards a defined point on a map an orienteer may suddenly find themselves unsure where they are.  What to do?  First – don’t panic.  Orienteers learn to re-locate.  Orienteers learn how to re-locate themselves on the map.

Two re-location techniques are: 1. Go back to where you last knew where you were, and 2. Find a high point and gain a wider point of view.  Both techniques may be of use to us in re-locating ourselves and finding our way back on track towards our social and environmental goals.

Go Back

Oftentimes one is confronted with the refrain that “we can’t go back.”  In terms of our technological inventions that may be true (or, may not.)  However, to “go back” in terms of our technology limits our thinking to one simply of utility.  We can go back to a former way of thinking; a form of thinking that those of us in western-styled culture have lost.  We can go back to a thinking that recognises that we are part of nature, not separate from nature.  We can go back to a thinking that understands community, cooperation, and mutuality.  We can go back to a thinking that realises that what we do has consequences.  We can go back to a thinking that admits to limits and concedes when enough is enough.

Gain A Higher Ground

When we get to higher ground we gain an overview, a wider picture.  We begin to see how things are inter-related.  We may even see, if we’re lucky, where we just were and where we need to get to, or at least, a prominent feature along the way.

When we take an overview in terms of our social and environmental goals we come to understand that all aspects of life are connected and inter-related.  We come to understand that the healing of the planet, the healing of our social relationships, and the healing of ourselves are all part of the same work.  Woking to save the planet is doomed if not connected to healing our damaged communities, and neither are obtainable if we do not heal our fractured selves.

Someone once said, “If you want to change anything, start everywhere.  If you want to change everything, start anywhere.”  When we gain higher ground and see the bigger picture, the veracity of that statement becomes unambiguous.

It’s Not Easy Going

Going back to a previous way of thinking, or taking a wider perspective does not, however, guarantee that the way ahead is any easier, or clearer.  The terrain is complex and simple solutions do not present themselves easily.

But, re-locating ourselves may be just what we need to do instead of blithely and furiously charging ahead with no idea of where we are headed, or where we have come from.

Tactical Mistake Made By Change Activists

Following on from last weeks blog post about tactics, there arises the question of what tactic to use with those groups who are directly opposed to your standpoint?

This post discusses one of the common tactics used, and suggests that the tactic is a big mistake.

The tactic?  Re-posting, or sharing a YouTube clip, a Facebook post etc., by your opponent in order to then discredit it.

Before explaining why this is a mistake, I’ll expand upon this tactic a little more so that it is clear what I mean.

Recently I came across an example of this.  A clip of a out-and-out climate denier was posted to a Facebook page.  From there, that clip was shared by other users.  Some of those who shared the clip did so because they disagreed with the climate denier, and made that clear in their re-posting or in their comments.

At first glance this may seem an appropriate tactic, or at least a benign one.  After all, climate denial is a position that is damaging to the planet, so needs to be challenged – doesn’t it?

Well, yes it does, but this particular tactic is a mistake.  Not only does it not change the attitude of the denier, it may intensify the denial, and may even spread the misinformation and lies to more deniers and potential deniers.

How so?

Most of us will have heard that Facebook and YouTube use algorithms for ranking content and that this then informs which posts people will see in their news feed, and in what order.

The Facebook algorithm uses various elements, one of which is the popularity of the post.

Guess how the “popularity” of the post is determined? 

Exactly: by the number of likes, comments, and shares that it gets.

So, each time a Facebook post is shared, its ranking goes up.

What’s more, once a post has been shared, the sharer has no control over who then re-shares that post nor how many times it is re-shared.

Returning to the example given earlier.  I went back to the original post about two weeks after it had been first put up.  The post had over 100 shares, and in the order of 300 likes.

There is no telling how many of those 100+ shares were then re-shared.

Hence, that post by a climate denier now has a higher ranking than when it was first posted.

D’uh!

Re-posting and sharing a post that we wish to criticise may assuage our anger, and may make it look as if we are promoting a different perspective, but tactically it often works to the benefit of the opponent.

Repeating a bad idea, even if to critique it, still shares the bad idea.

What Tactic Is Better?

Silence. 

We all know that silence is death for an idea.  If no-one is discussing an idea, then the idea goes no-where, it gains no traction, it has no chance to add to prejudice, misinformation or ignorance.

Hence, in our example, the best tactic of those who wish to diminish the idea of climate denial would be to completely ignore the climate denier.

The author of a book on building good habits has coined a law that summarises this idea very well.

“The number of people who believe an idea is directly proportional to the number of times it has been repeated during the last year – even if the idea is false.”¹

Let me emphasise those final six words – "even if the idea is false.”

In the area of social change tactics, we are far better employed disseminating good ideas rather than repeating bad ones.

Note:
1. James Clear, Atomic Habits, RockyHouse Publishing, 2018.  James Clear called this law after himself: Clear’s Law of Recurrence.

Something Has Come Up

A few days ago a friend rang to postpone a meeting we had planned.  “Something’s come up,” he said.  Following our telephone conversation I pondered that phrase: Something’s Come Up.

Things do, don’t they?  Come up, I mean.  No matter how precisely we plan, and attempt to control, our lives, things change.

Something Has Come Up is the flip side of the coin where the other side is the phrase, All Things Must Pass.  Things arise, things pass.  Understanding, and accepting that simple truth allows us to be content.  Knowing this, we can be content in the midst of happiness or sadness.

Misfortune arises and I react with sadness.  Yet, knowing that All Things Must Pass allows me to be content – knowing that the sadness will pass.

When I feel happy, even though All Things Must Pass and my happiness will subside, I can remain content.

In each of the above two paragraphs I could have substituted the phrase All Things Must Pass with the phrase Something Has Come Up.  My sadness will ease because something comes up.  My happiness will subside because something comes up.

Why do all things pass?  Why does something come up?

Simply because all things are connected.

The world is not a mechanistic machine in which events occur in a linear orderly fashion.  Our western-styled culture has adopted such a view over the past few centuries.  In doing so our approach has been to break things apart and study them in isolation, neglecting the wider context and the systems within which all things exist.  So, we have learnt more and more about less and less. 

Eastern and indigenous cultures, however, have understood the interconnectedness of things and that the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

Over the past hundred years or so aspects of western science have also begun to understand this holistic worldview.  Quantum Physics, Systems Theory, Complexity Theory, Chaos Theory, the science of Emergence, the Butterfly Effect, and many more theories and ideas are disrupting the long-held mechanistic view of the world.

Our social environment, by and large, seems to be lagging behind.  The ways in which we approach education, health, social services, commerce, energy, transport, policy-making, ad nauseum, cling to a mechanistic, piecemeal, linear approach.

By clinging to this approach we continue to think that by analysing situations in pieces, planning in a linear fashion, and thinking we have the mechanisms to fix problems, all we are doing is creating bigger and bigger messes.

We must begin to understand that we are part of an infinite, interconnected, co-existing, and co-creating universe.

That means seeing the two sides of the coin:

• All Things Must Pass
• Something Has Come Up

We're All In This Together

Eastern spirituality has known this for millennia.  Some aspects of western spirituality have also acknowledged it.  Since the beginning of the 20th century a few branches of science (notably quantum physics and Complexity science) have begun to understand it.  A few proponents of change have also expressed the idea.  Some within the social change movements have also spoken of it.  What is it?

It is this simple truth: we are all in this together.

We are all part and parcel of the same phenomenon.  We are not separate.  I am you am I, and together we are we.

Although this truth may be acknowledged, expressed and referred to, the full implications of its meaning and significance are still to be made manifest.  We (especially those of us living in western styled societies) remain locked into the myth of separation.  This myth proclaims that: I am separate from everyone else, and I am also separate from nature.  This idea of separation is a cultural myth – perhaps our deepest cultural myth.  Being such a deep cultural myth it informs everything we do, say or think.  And… we often don’t realise it.

If we were to fully accept our connectedness then we would realise that however we treat another person, or nature, then we treat ourselves the same way.  Thus, if we ridicule another, mock another, mistreat another, or do violence to another; then we ridicule, mock, mistreat, or do violence to ourselves.

We may not think we do so, but at a deep level, often unconscious, within ourselves we are doing so.  We become our thoughts.  There is a saying, often attributed to the Buddha, but in truth, lost in anonymity. However, it contains immense wisdom:

“The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And the habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its way with care;
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.
As the shadow follows the body,
As we think, so we become.”

When we fully accept the truth of these words and the notion of non-separation then we change who we are, we change our way of being, and in doing that, we change our way of acting.  Significantly too, we change the way we see others and the world.  We begin to see the world through an entirely different lens.

Instead of problems, we begin to see opportunities.  Instead of enemies, we begin to see people with the same needs, desires, hopes and dreams as us.  When we view the world in this way we find that the world begins to change. 

And, when we do that, we look at social change through entirely different eyes.  We realise that the only real change is in ourselves and in our everyday interactions with those around us, including those with whom we may have disagreements, even those we may have even thought of as enemies.


Yes, we are all in this together. 

What If Things Don't Work Out For The Good?

Those of us who work in the fields of community development, social justice, or environmental
advocacy do so because we want to change the world.  We want to change it for the better.  We want to get rid of inequality.  We want to rid the world of oppression.  We want to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

We want to act for good.

All actions, however, have unpredictable or uncertain outcomes.  We can never be sure of what is going to happen.

“Hang on,” I hear from various quarters, “we do know what will happen – we’ll bring about a better world.”

Therein lies our delusion.  Western notions of linearity, of cause-and-effect, of predictable outcomes, give rise to delusions of permanence and security.

Ever since the Age of Enlightenment (or Reason) we have come to believe that the world and everything in it is permanent.  Even change is permanent in the sense that change happens in a predictable, understandable, consistent, and controllable manner.  We have come to view change like a train moving along a railway track.  When the train comes to a junction we can flip the switch one way or another.  Flip it one way and the train continues along in the one direction.  Flip it another way and the train changes tracks and moves off in a different direction.  Our scientific approach was based on this assumption.  Eventually our cultural and social understandings took up this assumption also.  This consistent permanence provided us with the security of surety and certainty.

But, it is a myth; it is an unfounded assumption; it is a delusion.

The world does not work this way.  The train may end up as a wreck.  Indigenous cultures and eastern philosophies have known this for millennia.  Western science has come to realise this delusion over the past century or so, especially with the development of quantum physics, meteorology, and systems, chaos, and complexity theories.

Socially however, we have been slow to catch on.  We still tend to think that if we act for good then good will happen.  What if it doesn’t?  What if unwelcome, or harmful, outcomes arise because of our actions?

What do we do then?  Do we become despondent; do we collapse in despair; do we give up and withdraw?

No!  We continue to act, but accept that our actions may or may not have the outcomes we would like.  Alan Clements¹puts it well when he says,

“We must live with the anxiety of an unpredictable world, where the unthinkable often happens.”

We know that the world needs to change.  We know that there is injustice and oppression in the world.  We know that humans are contributing significantly to climate change.  We know that species are becoming extinct because of our actions.  We know that war forces families and whole communities to become refugees.  We know it must change.

So, notwithstanding that we know it must change, and we know that outcomes are unpredictable, we continue to act.

One person who knew that we must continue to act for good, no matter the outcomes, was Vaclav Havel, the last president of Czechoslovakia and then the first president of the Czech Republic.  Havel was a vocal critic of the communist regime, an advocate of direct democracy, an environmentalist and humanitarian as well as being a poet, philosopher and writer.  He was jailed numerous times by the secret police, before finally leading his country to a new phase.  In one of his books, he declared that,²

“Hope, in the deep and meaningful sense … is an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”

The key, then, to finding the justification for our action is in the act itself and not become attached to the outcome.  We learn to accept.  Acceptance in this sense means that we must transcend our ego.  We must go beyond an egocentric thinking that says “I can control the future.”  Another poet, T S Eliot, alluded to this letting go of attachment in his poem East Coker:³

“For us, there is only the trying.  The rest is not our business.”

Notes:
1. Alan Clements, Instinct For Freedom; finding liberation through living, Hodder, 2003
2. Vaclav Havel, Disturbing The Peace, Vintage Books, New York, first English edition 1990.

3. T S Eliot, East Coker (second poem in Four Quartets), first published 1940.

Gee – Twenty!

Last week I was in Brisbane, Australia, where the G20 summit is to take place on 15/16 November 2014.  G20 is the forum for leaders of 20 of the world’s major economies; 19 countries plus the European Union.  Six other nations have also been invited to attend in Brisbane.

So, in Brisbane 20+ of the most influential and powerful leaders of the world will be meeting.

Gee, I thought, if these leaders really put their minds to it, and they had the intention, then we could see some highly beneficial changes in the economic, social, environmental and cultural make-up of the world.

So, I put my mind to it and came up with 20 suggested changes that would be beneficial.  Here then is my Gee Twenty list.

1. A ban on further fossil fuel extraction and use.¹
2. Drastic reduction in spending on the military and weapons.
3. Redirecting of those savings in 2 above towards providing access to clean safe water for all.
4. A cap on salary levels, so that exorbitant differences in income are enormously reduced.
5. Investment in renewable energy systems.
6. Transference of investment in infrastructure that supports private vehicle use towards infrastructure that supports low impact and public transportation.
7. Stopping the destruction of rainforests and other threatened ecosystems.
8. Promotion of small-scale, local farming and agricultural activities in preference to large scale monocultural agribusiness.
9. Free education for all – education that stimulates creativity and critical thinking.
10. Promotion of restorative justice rather than retributive justice.
11. Transitioning from electoral representative democracy to a democracy based on sortition and participatory democracy.
12. Recognising that we already have enough and that continued economic growth is damaging to our environment and to our well-being.
13. Full recognition to the rights of self-determination of indigenous peoples.
14. Apologies and restitution to colonised people so that 13 above can be achieved.
15. Full and accurate disclosure on what goes into the food we eat and where it comes from – both fresh food and cooked food.
16. Research and promotion of programmes that look at nonviolence, forgiveness and other forms of resolving conflict.
17. Restriction on where and when advertising is permitted.
18. Greater access to mental health services.
19. Complete protection of endangered species.
20. Understanding that all the 19 suggestions above (and dozens more) are interconnected and that systems thinking is required.

There are dozens of other issues that could be added to the list and we will all have our favourites.  At a personal level, it matters little as to what and where we begin, but it is important to understand the interconnections and that no one issue is of greater importance than another.

Do you think the G20 leaders will take any notice of this?  I suspect not. 

Change must begin with us.  As has been quoted often

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Although attributed to Gandhi there is no evidence to suggest that it is a direct quote of his.  However, the sentiment is one that he would have endorsed, so long as it was clarified that he also advocated a collective approach – change is not simply a personal one.

1.  The Prime Minister of the host nation, Australia’s Tony Abbot, has removed any discussion about climate change from the agenda, claiming that he did not want the  agenda “cluttered” by subjects that would distract from economic growth.

It’s All A Bit Much

In 1850 it took 3 to 4 months to sail from the UK to New Zealand or Australia. By the time you reached the Antipodes you may well have had a letter written to send to relatives “back home”.  If you put that letter on the next ship leaving port, then it would be another 3 or 4 months before your uncle, aunt or cousin received communication from you.

By the late 19^th Century, with the introduction of steamships and the opening of the Suez Canal, travel from one side of the globe to the other had halved to 4 - 6 weeks. The completion of the trans-Tasman telegraph line in the late 1870s linked New Zealand telegraphically with the rest of the World.  A cross Pacific link was established in 1902.  With the use of “telegraph boys” these developments meant that it was possible to get a message from one side of the world to the other within a few days.

A century after sailing for 3 or 4 months, air flight became possible.  Travel time reduced considerably with a flight in 1961 taking 3 days with stops in Istanbul, Bombay, Singapore and Darwin.  By then it was possible to send a message to the other side of the World by telephone making basic communication almost instantaneous.  However, more substantial information (e.g. in the form of a book) still needed to be sent via air taking up to a week or two to arrive.

Airline speeds then quickened so that today (in the early part of the 21^st Century) getting from New Zealand or Australia to Europe is often less than a day’s travel. Communication speed though, has rocketed.  Email is only an instantaneous mouse-click away.  Even documents the size of books or bigger are readily transmitted around the World via Internet, often transmitted in a matter of seconds.
Thus, in1850 the speed of travel and the speed of communication were approximately a 1:1 ratio.  In the next century and a half speed of travel increased from 3 to 4 months to less than a day - a 12,000% increase.  Pretty impressive!  Not as impressive as communication though, with the speed of transmission getting faster by a staggering rate of 50,000,000% or more.  In just 150 years the ratio between travel and communication has gone from 1:1 to at least 1:4200.

In other words, we are now communicating substantially quicker than we are physically moving. Yep, the pace of life is faster - its all getting a bit much.  We’re being outstripped by communication.

Think too, of the amount of information that exists.  In 2007 there were 6,580 daily newspapers in the World.  Almost 800,000 new books are published each year.  Even if you were able to read one book a day, just to get through one year’s worth of books would take almost 30 lifetimes.  Even keeping up with the daily newspapers is beyond one person’s ability.  Then there are scientific papers and articles.  By the beginning of the 21^st Century almost 700,000 were being published per year, an increase of 300,000 in just 20 years.  And that’s just the printed medium.

The virtual medium, via the Internet, is even more information rich. Between 1995 and the middle of 2011 the number of registered domains on the Internet rose from a modest 15,000 to a staggering 350 million with 150,000 new URLs registered each day.

In 1970, Alvin Toffler coined the phrase “future shock” to describe our personal perception of all this as "too much change in too short a period of time".  And that was over 40 years ago!  Not only is life getting faster, it’s getting overwhelming.  None of us can cope!  And why should we?  One of the benefits of being gregarious for us humans is that we can cooperate and work together, pooling our knowledge, skills and experience.

If the speed of information communication has increased markedly and the amount of information is enormous, what does this mean for our collective means of decision-making and problem solving?
Firstly, it means that we can no longer assume that the mechanisms that we used in the 19^th and even the 20^th Century remain reliable.  Those mechanisms were based fundamentally on the idea that a few representatives could meet together, gather sufficient facts and opinions, discuss and deliberate and eventually arrive at conclusions that the rest of society (or the local community) would accept as good governance or management.



Not much diversity here!

But representation has increasingly been marked by homogeneity of backgrounds, experience and cultural understandings of our decision-makers.  This trend is in stark contrast to the need for greater diversity in order to cope with the demands of an increasing amount and quicker speed of information.

That is but one reason for the need to look for alternative collective decision-making models.  Later posts may address some of these other reasons.  For now though, one of the enticing possibilities for an alternative model is that of sortition.  Again though, an explanation of that model is for another post, although I have referred to the model in previous posts ("A Tick in the Box" and "Icelandic Example").

What is my purpose in posting this?  Simply that it is time we gave some thought to how we make decisions not just what decisions we need to make and what those decisions should be.
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