On Being Shown a Way to a Peaceful Global Civilisation

The great religious and philosophical influence in my life is the teachings and life of Baha’u’llah. Taking for himself the appellation, Manifestation of God, the fulfilment of the promise, Baha’u’llah’s life and teachings are of a consistent high-mindedness and ethic, that convinced me of the truth of the matter of His declaration and His mission.

His mission is expounded in over 100 volumes of letters, treatises and books, and include a book of laws (Kitab-i-Agdas), treatises on practical mysticism such as the Seven Valleys, and practical spirituality such as the Hidden Word, and a full exploration of His station in relation to the teachings and prophecies in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Kitab-i-Iqan).

As a number of hotspots of conflict around the world are uprooting millions of people, Baha’u’llah’s declared future and mission to the people might best be encapsulated by these exhortations:

“It is incumbent upon every man, in this Day, to hold fast unto whatsoever will promote the interests, and exalt the station, of all nations and just governments. Through each and every one of the verses which the Pen of the Most High hath revealed, the doors of love and unity have been unlocked and flung open to the face of men. We have erewhile declared — and Our Word is the truth — Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship. Whatsoever hath led the children of men to shun one another, and hath caused dissensions and divisions amongst them, hath, through the revelation of these words, been nullified and abolished…

Of old it hath been revealed: “Love of one’s country is an element of the Faith of God.” The Tongue of Grandeur hath, however, in the day of His manifestation proclaimed: “It is not his to boast who loveth his country, but it is his who loveth the world.” Through the power released by these exalted words He hath lent a fresh impulse, and set a new direction, to the birds of men’s hearts, and hath obliterated every trace of restriction and limitation from God’s holy Book.

” O people of Justice! Be as brilliant as the light, and as splendid as the fire that blazed in the Burning Bush. The brightness of the fire of your love will no doubt fuse and unify the contending peoples and kindreds of the earth, whilst the fierceness of the flame of enmity and hatred cannot but result in strife and ruin.” (Bahá’u’lláh, “Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh”, Passage XLIII)

An important aspect of Baha’u’llahs exhortation is in the realm of our Being. One of his tablets is dedicated to a list of how we are to be to realise the greater mission of the unity of humanity. He is a part of what He writes:

“Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy, a preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be unjust to no man, and show all meekness to all men….” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Passage CXXX)

On a personal note, I found over the course of a few decades of my adult life, that I seemed to have certain limitations to my development of the practical application of such virtues. I felt that I had, apart from the occasional outright failing, “hit a ceiling’. I felt that I had explorations in life and contributions that i could be making but which in some way I seemed lacking.

Nonetheless, in picking up the yoke of those contributions, especially in creativity, the arts, and theatre, I found an access, a gateway, to another world of human development – ontological coaching. This particular gateway lead me to the thinker, Werner Erhard and the offshoot of his work, the company now called Landmark Worldwide. The work I have participated in through Landmark including the Being a Leader Course in which I met and interacted with an ageing Werner, himself, has had a number of impacts:

i) a breakdown in regard to what i was unable to see regarding my own lack of integrity in the world;

ii) an simple, appreciative, caring acceptance of myself as cause in the matter of my lack of integrity and inauthenticity; and the real limitations of my mind that are a function of my genetical personality and a considerable number of physical and psychic assault events over the course of my upbringing; and

iii) An equally appreciative and exciting recognition of my capabilities and skills that were developed over many decades, including the lessons I learnt from what I failed or did not so well. From this recognition I could aspire to something bigger then who I wound up being that gave me a safer, more controlled, push through life, to participating more fully in the global landscape.

Werner Erhard’s most fabulous work since the 1970’s and the widespread impact of that work on millions of people, was influenced by his vast reading of philosophical and religious thought, a powerful epiphany, and conversations with other modern influencers of thought. In all that Erhard took on the philosopher of Martin Heidegger, a mid 20th century German existentialist, and member and sympathiser of the anti-jewish views of the Nazi Party during WWII and to the end of his life in 1976. Heidegger’s philosophical work and teaching at the University of Marburg in Germany in the 1920’s, inspired many students and fellow philosophers including Hannah Arendt, and the French existentialists such as Satre . By the 1960’s and 70’s Heidegger’s work was presented face value to the world without more than a nod to his Nazi history. The post mortem release of Heidegger’s diaries, showing his dedication to German National Socialism, has certainly un-nerved many who have come to appreciate his works on Being. As might be expected, the philosophical camp falls into those who reckon that Heideggers work can be separated from his Nazi attitudes, and those who reckon they must be entwined. One of the most recent explorations of Werner Erhards early mass coaching practice, “The Forum”, is Bruce Hyde and Steve Kopp’s book, “Speaking Being” ¹ that has an analysis of how Erhard’s work can be seen as a practice of the linguistic and existential philosophy of Heidegger,

I am personally of a kind who can sit with the work of another, regardless of their ideology, and see whether there is something I might find interesting, of wonder, or even true. For example could it be true that, as Heidegger says, there is a ‘throwness’ to human existence, a facticity, such that how existence show up to us is already informed (by ourselves) and is disclosed through our moods. In practice, from this type of view, it is only a short step to asking of anything we have an opinion and as such have an emotion or mood that comes along, “is (xxx) true”? However, developing my capacity for sitting with the diverse view has been also under Baha’u’llah’s encouragement, “Warn the beloved of the one true God, not to view with too critical an eye the sayings and writings of men. Let them rather approach such sayings and writings in a spirit of open-mindedness and loving sympathy.”² without which I may have maintained many of the cultural attitudes I was raised within, some of which are harmful in social practice to others.

While this can seem like a vicious circle of questioning the answer and never coming to a conclusion, indeed my experience is that there is a capacity for humans to holding the inquiry while also standing in an immediate working conclusion. This does require some deft cognitive ability and is not a strength of many people. For those of us for whom it is a strength, there is also an ethical response to also sit with other’s less complex opinions for as long as it requires. Under the practice of ‘consorting’, we might think of the action as providing a clearing or space of listening for anyone to express themselves fully and being ‘gotten’. While consorting is a moral exhortation of Baha’u’llah, “being gotten’ is new language designed by Erhard to express being able to authentically reflect a person’s expression back to them so they can see that indeed you ‘get’ what they are saying. Yet in asking why we do that, the existentialist would say, “in order to (achieve, consequence, avoid)” while Baha’u’llah would also say “for God”. Rather than “God” Erhard simply states, that “to be a leader (consequence) you will need to be given being by something bigger than yourself”. And the placeholder “God” if defined as what is ever unknown and unknowable, the fundamental essence of pre-existence, is as big as it gets.

On the other hand, in the world of action, Baha’u’llah is emphatic about the role of justice both as a personal response and attitude and a social and political response. “Justice and equity”, He writes, “are twin Guardians that watch over men. From them are revealed such blessed and perspicuous words as are the cause of the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations.” (Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, P23)

This brings me to Hannah Arendt, student and lover of Martin Heidegger, who fled to Paris in 1933 after arrest by the Ghestapo. Arendt was Heidegger’s friend to the end. In an interview about her book, “We can Change the World.”, Lyndsey Stonebridge, says Arendt understood that friendship was not transactional. Arendt laid out in a paper called “The Banality of Evil” that it takes a mass of a population to sign up to a progrom like the holocaust. And the people are not evil, they are just making ‘banal’ / ordinary choices given the sweep of a cultural message, and do not believe or see they are comitting a crime. She spoke of the holocaust as a crime against humanity on the body of the jewish people, not just one more anti-semitic progrom. Arendt was also influenced by Husserl who was fired by Heidegger because he was a jew. Yet fully from Husserl and Heiddeger we find a philosophy that can be a practical pathway to a greater human being, regardless that Heidegger himself fell into a narrow superstitious rut of it, perhaps in part to assuage himself of the existential nihilism he experienced as a lapsed catholic and an existentialist.

Werner Erhard, in noting this nihilistic quality in existentialism, discovered, and asks us all to discover, that nihilism is not to be battled, yet an inverse solution lies in moving through the nihilistic awareness of existensialism. To understand this, we must understand that nihilism is the idea that the world that humans understand is based in language, and particularly language that contextualised everything. If we take away the context, e.g. ‘a tree provides shade to humans’, we are left with ‘a tree’. It is the thing “tree” that exists, not any such meaning or context or purpose, we might apply. The existential provocation means that everything is meaningless. Werner Erhards, genius insight was that it is all empty and meaningless including empty and meaningless. Erhard in being able to express this, created a practice for building a ‘dasein’, a being as a clearing in which anything could show up, or could be created. In ‘getting’ that empty and meaningless is empty and meaningless, dasien (I-Me) can be a future that is really relationship(s) of my own choosing. Simultaneously, Erhard saw that all of our relationships were already of our own choosing. So instead of feeling we are choiceless or driven at times, of any of those choices we are driven by habit or upbringing, we can also move into the created future as our choices. In the clearing of empty and meaningless is empty and meaningless, all choices can be divested especially when they take on the complete attribute of meaninglessness. This is not to be mistaken with anything paranormal or super human. This is not about wishful thinking or fantasy. All invitations into a clearing can only be given as allowed by current states i.e relationships including those with ourselves e.g. our bodies and embodied states. In such clearing we can create a future for justice for the whole world, and see that future fully expressed in the world. Baha’u’llahs writings are replete with the created future of a global civilisation and the characteristics of humans and communities and governments required to see that future fully expressed.

In the life of Baha’u’llah and his son and successor, Abdu’l-Baha, certain religious and political authorities murdered many of their followers in Persia. While chastising these persons, they always invited said persons to correction of their moral behaviour. Indeed one such person, on accidentally meeting Abdul-Baha, did implore forgiveness and was accepted caringly and forgiven. This was an extraordinary act, overwhelming to witnesses who knew the suffering and who couldn’t quite grasp the response.

In this day of so many millions dispossessed by conflict, by so many who perform assault because they are provided political and even corporate approval, we must continue to chastise the bad players and the banal supporters, to step down, to reflect on their moral compromise, and to ask forgiveness. Some in the current conflict, like the Nazi leaders, will face war crimes tribunals. The rest like Heidegger will face a lifetime of tolerance. My hope is that the vast majority will face reconciliation and shame and be offered radical forgiveness. That is the only way to a peacful, just world. To those currently in authority I implore you take it.

1Speaking being, Bruce Hyde, Steve Kopp, Wiley 2019

2 Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, CLIV

EVERYONE is NON-BINARY

Professional intelligentsia are people whose work largely begins in words and ends in words. There is a major logical trap that anyone of the professional intelligentsia can fall into, as a tendency to get locked into a logical cycling related to unfounded premises, rather than explore external views, diverse sciences, or research via the question, “Is this true?”

There are two religious cases of how that can distort or stagnate the fundamental principles.

The first relates to the strange case of the Orthodox Jew who, on a sabbath, ran a few hundred metres to the house of a non-orthodox Jew to ask that man to come and put out a fire, but could not participate in putting out said fire themself. This non-orthodox Jew had the practice of leaving the front door open on the sabbath so an orthodox Jewish man could walk straight in because he couldn’t knock on the door. It was a simple practice of the non-orthodox Jew to contribute to these neighbours yet it could not be reciprocated on a sabbath. And that it is not held by an Orthodox Jew that the religious law, if designed for purification, is not equally relevant for non-orthodox jew, is also discordant although perhaps a function of believing that the non-orthodox Jew is impure already and can’t be made more impure. Of course Jesus tried to debunk this in his story of the Good Samaritan, but did not prevail with the Jewish teachers.

The second case relates to the fundamental Islamic schools of Iran and previously Persia. In such schools, the sciences are avoided, superstition prevails and the Koran, revealed in the pre-scientific era and which initially fostered the sciences well before the Europeans, now becomes bogged down in an anti-technological, extremely socially controlling structure. Eventually that bubble will burst as the desire of the people to extend their capabilities will add a pressure beyond the control of the Islamic Republican fascism.

Why is this related to the concept of a non-binary human being and the multiple genders theory of some of the western intelligentsia?

Firstly to show that possible serious even fascist-like or just stagnating impact of politically accepting the outcomes of intellectual work that begins and ends in words. Secondly to begin to unpack the absurdness of much of the argument for a multiple gender theory. Thirdly, to show that such multiple distinctions has only one real outcome, the distraction of people from realising their true selves and role in the world as given to service in the path of social unification and the advancement of civilisation as a whole. While the last requires a much more lengthy discussion, for purposes here, the importance of ‘given to service’ of humanity is the critical attribute through which active community engagement and conversation across diversity of thought, experience, and culture, without proselytising (demanding others align for fear of retribution), is essential.

I am using the term ‘non-binary’ as a focus of the discussion of absurdness of the multiple gender theory. Clarifying definitions, binary means requiring two different, opposing but synchronous elements that when operating together can create a novel outcome. Non-binary thereby means not having (all that). As individuals, human beings operate by internal binary systems that establish complex negative feedback loops that create everything from stabilising the sugar content in the blood to formulating theoretical mathematics. However, as individuals, human beings, themselves, are all non-binary. I am non-binary. There is just one of me, whole, complete and indivisible.

As non-binary, in gender terms I am male and masculine. When I get together with a procreation partner, we are binary and can and have created novel outcomes.

Now there are some pop psychologist types who have said to me, “but what about your feminine aspect?”. When I ask them what they mean, they have told me that things like nurturing, kindness, creativity, intuition, are feminine. And force, protection, labour and legal and technical thinking is masculine. This is just another absurdity avoiding that the reality is something more simple.

Taking the premise that there are human virtues or characteristics that make humans, human, such as loving kindness, courage, nurturing, protection, high-mindedness, patience, creativity, intuition, problem-solving, and empathy, then the simple reality is that both male and female genders, and masculine and feminine affects have all of the characteristics. Once we acknowledge that all of the human characteristics are present as both masculine and feminine affects then when we look we can see that the only difference is the manner and degree of expression of those characteristics. Most obviously, a female will mostly bond strongly with the growing foetus and neonatal child because of the upwelling of hormones such as oxytocin. Men often report a more significant bonding at the moment they first held their child. However, when we look at the issue of protection we see that the female is highly protective both through direct force, indirect force and negotiation just as males are with the variation relating to a stronger empathy on the part of females which causes a more defensive posture, and a stronger capability of males bringing personal force into negotiations which causes a proactive attacking posture but is a capability steadily loosing value.

The problem that many people have in relation to masculinity is in contextualising the male as controlling, aggressive, even murderous. It is difficult to come to terms with the naturality of masculinity through this contextual lense and so some have imagined that more feminine nature is required to dilute the masculine to make a peaceful world. While that is an applaudable goal, it is unnecessary and even further obscures the potential of the unmitigated masculine and feminine affects in the advancement of civilisation.

The problem with men, if there is one, is the cultural mode that has developed over the past 10,000 years of the male as soldier, fighter, and war fodder for alpha males, kings, emperors. Recontextualising ‘who men are’, we can view cultural history since homo-sapiens stepped out, as a slowly distorted system, boosted (as per the story of Cane and Able) with the development of agriculture and excess wealth over the last 10,000 years, and through the amplification of primate tribalism based on the command of the Alpha male. However there is historical evidence to suspect that this form of socio-political orientation was destructive both intra and inter tribally, preventing the stability of social groups necessary to develop technologies, and intellectual and spiritual pursuits, all necessary for an advanced civilisation.

It is religion that mitigated that amplification of the impact of the Alpha male and allowed stability for the development of civilisation and improving technologies. Nonetheless such masculinity continues to assert itself and we now know that these males have a particular brain structure that heightens control and manipulation and diminishes empathetic responses that we now call psychopathy. On the female side there is also a hierarchy with controlling matriarchs but these operate in a less forceful manner than the Alpha males. In general, subordinate males and females, the vast majority of the human population, are empathetic beings desiring belonging in family, community and a general social cohesion. These are they who are attracted to the notions of religion and spirituality, create new technologies and sciences, and master artisanships, and are the real heart and body and impetus of the advancement of civilisation.

The issue of masculinity and femininity lies only with the affect of the genderisation of male and female and not with any human characteristic as specific as either mascuiline and feminine.

Genderisation is the foetal developmental process of forming a male or female. This process relies on a sequence of biochemical developments with each phase of embryological development. And such biochemistry is formulated by the genetic combination that foetus has been given by the mother and father in.e the binary procreators. This cascade of biochemistry influences both the physical characteristics of the embryo, the phenotype, and the minute and generic structure of the brain. Both the brain and physical characteristics of each embryo is idiosyncratic to that individual. Evolutionary processes have, in the most minor animals, founded a contiguous neural to body sense, what can be called the embodiment of the individual. This embodiment that includes odours, sense of smell, visual range and colours, and physical format etc, has the value of even the most simple animals being able to distinguish between their own kind and others. For example some snakes are snake eaters. However snake eaters usually don’t eat their own kind of snake. Males of the salt water crocodiles that are 240 million years on the planet, will eat their own young that are protected by the female, suggesting that such primordial distinctions weren’t as consistent in the earlier phases of evolution. And perhaps indeed, these brain structures that offer protection and nurture for the juvenile, are primordial structures for empathy.

What we can see from evolution of animals is that there are only two successful ways to procreate: the most widespread is binary sex, and the other way is asexual and in animals like snails this means that they have both binary, male and female, reproductive organs and can engage in binary sex and asexual reproduction.

The embryological development of the brain and body is a synchronicity that creates, for the individual, an obvious sense, an embodiment, of gender. In language it is simple to term the individual with a penis, male; and the individual with a vagina, female. Such nomenclature is simple as it is accurate to the embodied state of the vast portion of the population. In a small number of cases, the brain development is out of affective synchrony with the reproductive organs such that the person grows feeling ‘wrong bodied’ rather than embodied. Indeed these cases prove the issue of the relevant brain structural development. When a male with dysmorphia say they are female, they are noting that there are two genders, the one defined by their body parts and the one defined by their brain structure but which there is a failure of the brain to embody the physical nature of the person. Brain structure wins over physicality in all cases as the brain, expecting to find for example, a female physicality and external sex characteristics will be forever discombobulated when finding these physical traits missing and even other traits not expected, insitu. Indeed, the only resolution for dysmorphia is to surgically correct the physicality as, while the female sense of the brain structure could, theoretically, be ablated, a male sense cannot be in any way transposed into a brain. The brain, itself, only has a structural qualia model for either male or female and never, so far as can be ascertained, both.

The case of homosexuality is quite different. Homosexuality is when the embodied brain appreciates its maleness or femaleness yet the erotic orientation of the brain has developed for the non binary rather than the binary procreator. This tells us only that the brain has structures and processes for distinct aspects of gender and erotic desire. So in the vast majority of people the structures and processes are contiguous and synchronous, creating an embodied effect that begins with admiration for the specific gendered self and later attraction from the binary procreator as an erotic orientation.

Within the human population, the expression of gender and sexual orientation is essentially idiosyncratic to each person. In otherwords, I am a specific male unlike all other males and my sexual proclivity is specific to me and none other. Even an effete male will be unlike all other males and females and not at all like any females. Likewise transgender women are unlike all embodied females and often evince an uncanniness of masculine affect. Similarly, eunuchs are unlike all mature males and females, yet are proclaimed males. In practice the expression of gender is either male or female. In sexual orientation the expression for humans is limited by erogenous organs (physical attribute), and erotic desire (brain attribute). Erotic desire is impacted by libido with a consistent variation between genetical males and females. Erotic desire is also impacted by the desire for novelty, also an idiosyncratic aspect of brain structure. Libido can also be quite low in otherwise physically robust, sexually intake people, creating a non-sexual affect.

Sexual expression is also mediated by social moral education and this is a necessary education in the cohesion of society, albeit in the past often imparted with little finesse. Nonetheless this cultural modeling about sexual expression should not be confused with anything to do with modeling gender. The inverse is actually true, that embodied gender is one of the most significant drivers of cultural formation. In the main, how culture deals with asynchronous behaviours to the vast consistency of men and women, such as homosexuality, transgender and any number of erotic variations, is a distinguishing feature between cultures as determined by the story of successful social life that each culutre formulates. In any case, gender itself remains consistently male or female, each individual non-binary and each procreator couple, binary. Homoerotic sexual partners are also technically binary just as a binary computer code might have two zeros or two ones adjacent. But as such, this sexual connection is non-procreative.

Some intelligentsia assert that gender is a cultural expression. Although there is vague hypothesis for this, there is no scientific evidence for this. Gender is, perhaps, the primary embodied aspect of a human life as founded in embryological development. There are only two genders. While gender predicts sexual desire, and drives reproduction and the survival of the species, it is by no means an absolute control, and this can also be seen in other animals. These variations are part of the nature of evolution itself and do not need to be particularly successful, and, so long as they are not particularly unsuccessful, the variations will continue to be expressed from generation to generation. Culture is mainly an expression of the embodied genderisation of human beings and how we come to deal with our binary procreating nature.

Justice Accountability and Forgiveness

It is the season of Christian Lent and the Baha’i Fast. The wonderfulness of the teachings of Jesus Christ has lead to one signal cultural message down through the ages: no one is taboo by culture, love and care for everyone you come across, and who abides by that forms a brotherhood and sisterhood, a community, a church.

Baha’u’llah, founder of the Baha’i Faith, pulled justice, the expression of true brotherhood through the larger socio-political lense, into the centre of a religious framing that includes the acknolwedgement that we are a global civilisation that requires integrative tools beyond that of the individual or the community.

Two qualities lie at the interface of the moral individual and the moral society: accountability and forgiveness.

Accountability is the voluntary open and honest exploration of one’s personal life. Given that the culture of accountability by which a society can go about its business in a secure and confident manner requires formal processes social process of accountability, all issues regarding the conquest and subjugation of another people, the takeover of lands, and the expression of this the enlightenment colonial powers performed on many generations after the first conquest, layers embodied trauma (psychic and physical) on those generation until the epigenetic qualities are ingrained in the lives of people living in a more supportive social environment.

Accountability and justice cannot be performed without recognising the true nature of the impact to the conquered people. Indeed I would argue that it is so difficult to outlive this trauma over generations, it is the one thing that has taken generation after generation to war for the past several thousand years. Only the very hard work of accountability can give the conqueror ease even as their descendants carry the trauma of their murders down through many generation afterwards, also living tortuously in our epigentics. Only a full and willing accountability provides a pathway out of our social traumatised behaviours.

When a full and willing accountability has been formally established, what some call a truth-telling, then two redemptive actions can be motivated: a recompense for the losses caused by conquerors (true justice); and, because the recompense can never be fully made for genocidal policies or slavery, the victims across time might resort to radical forgiveness for the shortfall. I would encourage the victims to forgive or at least play with forgiveness even if for the rest of life, for in that lies a path out of the malaise of victimhood to a true empowerment. However we need to be honest with ourselves that forgetfulness is forgiveness (not the other way around) and forgetfulness is only induced by being offered a full accounting of wrongs done against us and a full recompense where it is needed both individually and socially. Such social acts of social integration allows the perseverating mind to rest and turn to other more developmental, transformative and productive living.

Fundamental characteristics of a Society based on Equity

Magnus Hendrickson in Quillette argues for a contributive justice in social equity. I am in considerable agreement so my comments here are more to do with some of the transformations I see are required to mobilise society as a whole towards those ends:

1. Education should be founded on moral education i.e those characteristics that underline one’s opportunity to contribute to the community including a world view that we human beings are in the one boat, so to speak.
2. Education should be designed around the enactment of contribution / service from the earliest ages (3years) and enrolling both parents, teachers and others in the community contribution in action pedagogy required to facilitate the child’s and youth’s growth in contribution through their age related developmental stages.
3. Education teaches fundamental skills necessary to take part as a fully fledged member of society: reading, writing, basic mathematics.
4. Education provides access to advanced skills to realise the full potential contribution of the individual in society.
5. Education format design has 3 equal aspects: i) Basic through advanced learning of epistemologically objective subjects; II) progressive and community integrated service (experiential training) in family and community with specific responsibilities including team work and leadership; iii) development of the integrated individual with the ecology (human and natural) as might be facilitated through natural environmental access, agriculture, the arts, and trade skills including team work and leadership.
6. Economic models should be based in commons models e.g Henry George. In such modelling each human being is seen as having equal ‘ownership’ of the planets resources. Such ownership is as regulated by the elected government to realise that view, not as an economic equalisation of everyone but as a conservation of the commons for the long term future of the human optimal ecology. Within such modelling is required: i) an acknowledgement of the basic resources for every human being to participate fully in society e.g in today’s world not to have ready and reliable access to the internet is a poverty; II) economic behavioural modelling is enrolled to design economic policy including taxation that creates the appropriate incentives and disincentives that on one hand conserve the commons and on the other hand motivate the individual and business toward their optimal contribution, added-value, productivity, and legacy. Profit might be one incentive, status another – esp if being known as who-has-made-a-significant-difference to community. iii) Commons law (government regulation) aims to mange rent payable for access to resources (human and natural) on behalf of all constituents. In this way, who has more access to the commons returns some of the gains of that to the constituency as public services and infrastructures. In an economic sense the process provides incentive for individuals and businesses to realise innovations or higher value adding while amply recognising those people who provide untrained, technical or trade services i.e following a more rote skill training.
7. Government is founded on participatory democratic process at all levels, with education and election processes that amplifys the meritocracy of contribution or service to community, from local to national governance, not necessarily a meritocracy of the most profits or academic results, nor the most argumentative or trained political careerist. Although I would fully expect that people of strong intelligence and moral character some who also show acumen in business or science or arts or agriculture or social leadership.

Scarcity, Energy, Climate Solutions, and a New Civilisation

Andrew Nikiforuk of The Tyee, writes, “So, if our current civilization is to survive in any shape or form it needs to fundamentally rethink all energy spending, from how we harness it to what we use it for. As Michaux concludes in his number-crunching report, “replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the world’s most influential nations. What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds.”

Erin Remblance responds, “How we make that transition to lowered demand should be the most prominent discussion in our media, classrooms and households. Why is it nearly invisible?”

She goes on to note, “Years ago the great psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote a book about what happens to people in dehumanizing environments. Having survived two Nazi concentration camps, Bettelheim knew the subject well. Near the end of The Informed Heart, he offered this prescient observation. Jews who accepted the status quo and believed in business as usual perished. Those who did not believe in business as usual left before the Germans arrived, sailed to Russia or America or joined the resistance. Many survived. “Thus in the deepest sense the walk to the gas chamber was only the last consequence of a philosophy of business as usual,” wrote Bettelheim. It was “a last step in no longer defying the death instinct, which might also be called the principle of inertia.”

Now a widespread inertia prevents us from seizing control of our fate. We must do all we can to overcome that torpor. The implications are plain. Those communities that reject business as usual and cut their energy spending and all the materialist values that go with it, just might survive the long emergency and write a different ending to this story.

I have two responses to Erin’s points. They are my elaboration on the two key notions in her comments: Business as usual, and scarcity of energy.

I open talking about business as usual because seeing this clearly is the foundation of any transformation of civilisation, and technological and energy paradigm shift is pivotal in sweeping civilisation transformation along. (See particularly the copious and optimistic works of Jeremy Rifkin). What some have called ‘spiritual malaise’ and others “tranquilised obviousness”, business rarely is as usual, and if, like the history of European Jews, you punish a group regularly in small to harsh ways, I reckon they might just think the next bit of noise is just more of the same.

It does take quite a bit of training to be able to get up in the morning and take a fresh look at what’s happening, and that requires even putting yesterday in the past. It also requires being fully cognizant of our biases and mindsets. Anyone who says they don’t have any are doomed to play them out. What then do we hold to that gives us some predictive viability? First is cultivating an independence of thought, a detachment from the tribe whether professional, national, sub-cultural, or party as usual. And that is not antipathy, even the opposite, what others have called “indifferent love”. This stance supports an ability to: follow the evidence from several fields of science; hold doubt without discarding anything until resolved in evidence; and reviewing fully any arguments against. This ability for independent thought supports the interdependence of all independent thinkers for it is only in the recognition of true independent inquiry (search for truth) that a collective of thinkers can divine a greater magic.

This situation we find ourselves is a call to be so much more than we have ever been, so much more than we wound up being, individually and collectively. We will either rise to the call or we will fall. And whatever happens will be what happens. As the WWII holocaust found traction, Lydia Zamenhoff chose to go back to Poland from the USA in the face of immanent danger, she chose to support the last moments of her community and die with them. We don’t know how many hands she held but we do know she died with them. Those of us in the frontline of transforming this civilisation may well find ourselves in a future of ‘holding hands’. We must accept that this is one possible future.

In terms of policy, economics, and human behaviour, the basic economic reality of scarcity does work. Many people living in rural Australia grew up looking after water usage. If you have to make a meagre annual rainfall and a watertank last a year, you have watch usage like a hawk. On the other hand, if old people can’t afford heating in winter, they could die. Well, that’s a time honoured tradition. Australia has ineptly allowed gas companies to sell much of its gas, internationally, leading to scarcity and high prices for energy as we enter winter. I’m expecting an unusual winter death rate among the elderly this year. Feeding into an inflationary boom, those on more basic incomes can be expected to suffer housing dislocation. This in, perhaps, the wealthiest per capita nation on the planet.

Meanwhile the environmental impact of windfarms is already been felt and the next phase of renewable energy farms will not be given such an easy ride. The real difficulty is that we aren’t learning fast enough because, here in Australia, for the last 20 years 80% of our intellectual energy has been spent on arguing climate change denialism with our government. In the end, the example of the holocaust goes to one characteristic of modern politics so far – we are often very slow to the table. Timing being the essence, and we can’t escape the clear timing the IPCC have provided, we will damage our way out of this catastrophe. The question is, which is the lesser poison or the better trade off? Presumably the one that improves the chances of the ecosystem and human civilisation. There’s not much chop in voting for the view that 1 or 2 or 3 billion people can just suffer and die. There’s not much chop in loosing much more of the world’s ecosystems and species than we already have, because that will inevitably lead to the billions of people suffering and dying. The inextricableness of human development and a narrow range of climate and a particular variety of ecosystems, is conclusive. I support the work of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, the third and often overlooked leg of climate solutions. The scalability of technologies of removing CO2 from the atmosphere over the next decade is likely to have less impact and perhaps even a very positive total impact on ecosystems, than any other climate change solution, namely renewable energy development and population adaptation. To solve this crisis, to transform global civilisation so the next phase of human development is of a higher order of workability for people and ecosystems, we’ve got to work urgently together on all fronts, even if it means government ordered rationing.

The UK in WWII proved that a people faced by a single existential threat can adhere to austere rationing policies for several years. Even in the 1930’s the mathematical and nutritional knowledge was ample so that there were no cases on malnutrition in the UK during WWII. Today, we certainly have the capacity to design sophisticated systems for the allocation of energy, the development of renewables, the weaning from fossil fuels, and the equitable establishment of systems worldwide, together with an food security systems. What is still required is for nationalistic governments to get to the table put aside their extreme patriotisms for the future of humanity and the planetary ecosystems that support us.

We have a political choice: the easy choice or the hard choice. The easy choice is for all national governments to come to the table with good will to design global systems that will create both equity in resource access and as rapid a transition from fossil fuel energy as possible. The hard choice is to continue to bicker and terrorize each other.

Either choice will lead to the new civilisation, will lead to the transition off fossil fuels and to equitable distributions of resources. Even if making the hard choice, once a billion people have died and billions of others have suffered through the defensive and aggressive attitudes of extreme patriots, the billions of people of good will remaining,will see those extremists off. Such has been the way of history to date. Will this be the moment we will be able to put our past in the past and take the easy way, or will we insist that the past dictates our actions and only massive numbers of deaths will convince us that another model of governance and social organization is viable.?