If We Can't Go Back...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it doesn’t happen.

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

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

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

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

Note:

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

Inequality Set In Stone

Code of Hammurabi
stele

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

Poets and Politicians

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, who could we listen to instead?

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

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

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

Merkas and La Guin could be onto something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where Did Our Selves Go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a serious disconnection within and from ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

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

AI and EI are Not Compatible

Chief Sealth (A man
with high EI)

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

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

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

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

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

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

All of which contributes to CO₂ equivalent emissions.

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

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

AI at Odds with EI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The two forms of intelligence are incompatible.

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

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

Just stop using AI! It is incompatible with EI.

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

Notes:

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

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

Un-Reality TV

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

Plato's Cave

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

P.S.

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

At Work In The Ruins – Book Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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