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

World Peace will Give Us the Universe

I have no answer for the future except in peace and human collaboration and deep consultation. I do have a sense of the great possibility that emerges from such a future. .

There are signs from philosophy, psychology and brain sciences that the collective de-traumatised human experience, that might take several generations after complete peace breaks out, could create inventive power that itself is infinite or shall we say very very large.

This inventive power is based in the possibility of a state of human designated by the idea that, when we think of ‘who I am’, could it be that who I am is the showing / presence of everything and everyone in my experience. This leads to an idea of as complete reception of the world as it is, and, as all humans becoming competent and some masters of such receptivity, a ‘shared brain’. I intuit through this ability for collaborative engagement, the human future is infinite far beyond the sense that we think of as resource infiniteness.

I intuit that it is only under these conditions that certain breakthroughs will occur e.g. efficient and effective space flight and exploration. Such a breakthrough will establish access to a virtually unlimited resource, some of which aren’t even discovered.

On this planet however, the many necessary competent characteristics for every human being required to achieve a peaceful planet, will also provide the necessary applications to ecosystem details and flourishing while perfecting new more subtle energy technologies and resource farming. Going by the economic growth formula, this may also show a declining growth. The real question then is, if there is a flourishing ecosystem with a flourishing human planetary society but a declining economic growth, then maybe the whole model is transformed and we are not even using those measures to determine how we are doing.

There is in that future, a feedback loop between the new human way of thinking about ourselves and the ecosystem, even the solar or galactic ecosystem, and our exploration and population of the galaxy. Will we meet new friends? Will we finally determine whether we are already under observation. Will we be enrolled into a larger galactic civilisation with it’s own magical technologies. This is the stuff of science fiction but only so long as seems impossible. As breakthroughs in peace and global civilisation come about, we will notice something about ourselves as humans that will be magical to our current selves.

Australian Referendum 2023 – THE VOICE

Today I received the official Australian Government referendum booklet to insert chapter XI (9) into the constitution.
The proposed changes to the constitution will be to add:

“Chapter XI – Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Islander Peoples
129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
(i) there shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
(ii) the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
(iii) the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures. “

I encourage everyone to fully read this statement to really get clear what it says and what it doesn’t say. For example, get clear that we are talking about both Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders.
Ask as you read it, do I really know what each of these words and phrases and sentences refer? For example, do you know who a Torres Strait Islander is? Do you know who an aboriginal person is? Do you know what “make representations” means and what it doesn’t mean?

It is important for all readers to note that (iii) means that the Australian Government (parliament) has authority over the Voice and from government to government there is a possibility that the composition, power, functions, and procedures are changed in line with the policy position of the government of the day. I think it is reasonable to expect that a conservative government will tend towards marked limiting the powers of the Voice and even a labour government will tend to restraining the powers of the Voice. The actual functions and powers etc of the Voice may actually lie in the hands of the cross-benchers and greens. As I expect future elections to increase the independent ranks in the federal parliament, so the power of that group to impact the Voice will be considerable. Indeed, I wonder whether the Voice itself provides the platform for some First nations leaders to become well known across Australia and capable of being elected as independents in federal parliament.

The official referendum booklet comes with a fully sculptured argument for the YES and NO vote campaign.

The first thing I noticed after reading these campaigns is that they fall down into 2 classic social distinctions: i) the hopeful: those with an eye on a future that isn’t going to happen anyhow with all the hope that it will transform what appears broken in our society ; and ii) those with an eye on the risks that are being taken by going on a journey into that future that isn’t just the default future given by the current social and political framework.

I am, myself, a cautious person. However i am also a hopeful person. And while some people fall down fully as anti-risk and others fully as risk-taking, these two distinctions are not dichotomous. I prefer to have my cake and eat it. My, now, considerable experience of life (usually called being an old fart), has lead me to the conclusion that I can have my cake and eat it, that we as a society can have our cake and eat it. On one condition. Life requires effort. A good life requires extraordinary talent, education, research, and innovation. Democratic political life requires constant gardening by the population to both restrain the authoritarian’s power while ensuring we foster those extraordinary domains.

What does all this mean for the Voice? The Voice is a recognition that the Australian Government as currently constitutionalised since 1901 has failed and will continue to fail to bring First nations Peoples into a democratic process that works for them. It is a recognition that, in having a political system that fails First Nations peoples, also impacts mainstream society, especially by having us less democratic and more authoritarian than we say we value. The current response by the Qld Government to imprisoning 10 year olds (mostly indigenous children) in watch-houses is one such reach for authoritarianism in the face of far better practices to reduce juvenile crime. In other words, indigenous peoples, because they currently have no real power at the voting booth, are constantly being treated through an authoritarian lens rather than the lens of research and innovation, as befits a robust democratic society.

I expect the Voice will lead to all sorts of additional haggling in the policy arena. This will create some modelling for how our democracy might more fully develop to engage the population more fully into the future.

While there is no issue beyond the scope of the Voice, any well constituted representation will be savvy in the choice of their battles as per their cost-benefit analysis. In other words, we could leave the agenda of the Voice, to the Voice without feeling we need to hold a maternal or paternal nag over them. The parliament itself, of course, can apply a schedule for representations from the Voice such that it minimises delay in legislation. It would, of course, be of no use to ask for Parliament to use the same schedule for the political parties represented, and to limit the ability of parties to delay legislation on the table, or even getting on the table. In other words, certain politicians do seem to be arguing the issue of delay from a hypocritical stance.

The No vote has determined the Voice is more bureaucracy, and certainly I expect the institution to come with the relevant support required. Improvements to the main problems besetting first nations peoples does indeed require more public servants. It requires exactly the right amount of accountable administrative management. This is part of that extraordinariness I wrote above. The other big part of that extraordinariness is in the requirement for widespread expert social innovation services that have never been developed nor applied with any efficacy in Australia. It is my hope that the Voice will be a champion for social innovation as befits the best practice solutions for health and poverty. This is immanently doable but for the lack of political will.

The Voice is the possibility for restoring the failure of integrity with the original inhabitants of this land that occurred with the british colonisation and invasion of the lands, and the ongoing manipulations to ensure those peoples remain divested of the land. Such lack of integrity keeps Australia as a nation, in the doldrums of growth and development. We lag, not because of our incompetence to bring innovation to the table but because, in denying the indigenous peoples of Australia, we live in a world of denial. And more than any one area of denial, it is our denial of our own self worth that comes from failing to bring indigenous Australia fully into the national fold. When denial is our mantra, we deny ourselves a role in our own democracy, leaving ourselves to criticise from the sidelines, our own long time loosing team – Australia.

The Voice will not only be an amplification of the voice of first nations Australians and the possibility for bringing innovative solutions to bear, from developing productive and flourishing communities to vastly reducing prison numbers, the Voice will also become a lightning rod for every misconceived Government policy and every failure of mainstream communities to bring effort to bear in their own determination of unity. In this, I apologise to the First nations peoples and the leaders for, in supporting the Voice, bringing the additional grief you will be subjected. And in this, I promise to be in the public square making a reasonable argument for expectations and stalwart rejections of essential racists, political grandstanders and the socially indolent.

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.?

The Future is My Past, So Long as I Can Remember It.

The adage, whosever doesn’t know their history is doomed to repeat it, goes for our personal, social, economic, and political history.

People have said to me, “Why are you guilty about things that happened 100 or 200 years ago.” While guilty is the wrong word for what I feel, and shame is much closer, the clearer expression is that I am full cognizant of my circumstances in world society and the historical facts and influences behind those circumstances.

I am fully cognizant of the whispers that maybe my ancestor was a slave trader in the Queen Elizabeth 1st era or abouts. I am cognizant that this is not considered a point of ancestoral pride. I am cognizant that my grandfather and grandmother went from poor white labourer immigrants to Australia, arriving just prior to WWI and went on to become successful middle class farmers in North Queensland by WWII, setting the opportunity for the tertiary education of me and all my siblings (5 in all) albeit that with a lot of help from Gough Whitlam’s free university program of the 1970’s.

I am cognizant that my grandfather was able to avail himself of land in 1916, on which to breed maize for the fledgling DPI while first Nations people continued to move traditionally through the countryside. Their access to country being largely locked away, my family hardly noticed that the Government moved them onto a mission. I am cognizant that we didn’t deal honourably, and certainly not with a treaty or relevant recompense for moving into the land and utilising the resource in advantageous yet destructive ways.

While a certain shame lives on in my cognizance that I was brought up not to steal, a value I hold dearly to, today, in the face of that we stole. At the best we bought stolen goods, and some might argue because our grandparents world view blinded them to the facticity of this. While that may be so, the English and Australian frontier government had no doubt they colonised a previously occupied land and fought off defenders with vile means. in otherwords they invaded and stole another people’s land.

I accept my personal history in the world of pain of many peoples of this planet. I accept the political and social history that I was tied to, and am still tied to, both in ineptitude and advantage.

Image: Tom Clohosy Cole https://www.behance.net/gallery/72357419/Destination-Planet-Earth

I am committed to creating a new future for my descendants and the descendants of all the people of the world. My past is mostly complete, like a book whose last word has been written. To the extent the society and economy and political systems have not completed the past, my past is also not complete. Everytime someone asks my, “Why do you feel…”, I know that they are ignoring or downplaying the present as given by that history, that past. I know that if too many people downplay the past, the more likely we are as a society of repeating it. Indeed, right now, many government and business institutions have failed to apply equitable attitudes because they are avoiding how they are still prejudiced. Their failure to be cognizant of how prejudice built our institutions and economy, is their failure to recognise that they are simply repeating historical world view prejudices, albeit they might declare they are only evaluating objectively who is deserving and who is not. They are not able to see that both ‘objectively’ is ‘subjective and prejudiced’ and ‘deserving’ is also subjective and prejudiced’.

Now that I am complete with my past, it sits like a clear memory of where I came from, and shows a clear possibility of where I could go on. This future is a past / historically derived future, what some call the default future. On the other hand, the past derived future is not inevitable as it would be if I had not completed my past. Ignoring and downplaying our past, leads to the inevitable repeating of it, the default future.

I now create a future. Not like a prophecy. Rather as a promise, a possibility of which I will apply every effort until such time as the bell tolls or am otherwise reduced to incapacity or convinced of the folly of my view. I stand, live, in a world which all ecosystems and every human is flourishing. As I look back over my past, to today, I see, remember, sitting here writing this article. My whiteboard nearby has a schedule of activities for today. I see my preparation for the refugee farmers seminar in Uganda that I am chairing this afternoon by zoom. I see the gathering of networks of eco-agricultural organisations and consultants around the refugee regenerative agriculture project. I see that I am wondering what to do about that funding is lacking. I’m unclear what I did about that.

Why am I looking back from the future to create how it was made? Simple because my brain is just a pattern making machine. And it takes those patterns from the past. If I want to have a future that is not defaulted to the patterns of prejudice and other limitations that I have inherited, then I must resort to putting my created future and how it got made, in the past. In reality I am as much making a new timeline of past, for my brain to make new patterns with, as I am making a new future that doesn’t exist for my brain to acknowledge. When I make the new memories of what I did next, then I’ll be clear about the steps I and many others, took along the path to this most wonderful world my grandchildren and their children are living.