There’s Something About Economic DeGrowth

that occurs to me as a concept that has yet given to engaging with the reality of the planetary human society as it is.

And that is not to say this is an argument against the concept, rather a caution to the western thinkers who, as emergents of the capitalist state of play, are supporting it. I would not be so arrogant as to theorise it with the African refugees I work nor with the 30 million dislocated people in Africa.

A recent article by Mark Diesendorf, “Planned Degrowth is Needed” occurs to me as a flattening of the reality of planetary life. I welcome the work presented by the scholars in the book, “A Future Beyond Growth” but was left without a sense that this model has yet engaged with the whole planetary society.

At an ecological and evolutionary and energy viewpoint there is no ‘steady-state’. Things are either flourishing or dying, and when the ecology is at it’s best, there is great redundancy in its flourishing that is invigorated in that which dies. And over time ecological systems are altered by all sorts of ‘external’ inputs e.g an asteroid strike, a tilting magnetic north, etc.

The planet and 8 billion people must flourish to reach ‘steady state’. This does not occur to me as de-growth. It does occur to me as an incredible transformation of human society, and so far, such transformation is linked to massive suffering. To lead a half decent life in the modern technological era, 8 billion and soon 9 billion people need, comfortable liveable housing with the relevant levels of electricity and technology, efficient transport for people and goods, abundance of nutritious food, readily accessible nature spaces and trails, and all that means high quality governance and bureaucracy.

Moving the livelihoods of millions or even billions of of people to encourage the improved livelihoods of other billions is no easy feat. The population as a whole will be required to get on board a stoic and even austere world view. This is not about the population living ‘on the bread line’ rather this is about a population taking up temperance – forgoing alcohol and recreational drugs, and gambling. This is about governments regulating tax avoidance and black money out of existence by de-coupling from corporate and billionaire influences. And finally this is about governments ensuring that the de-coupling of industrialised bondage is supported so that all humans can access the half decent life for a long life. The question that will be with every government even considering this move will be – how then can we pay for it? This real question may well be answerable and I am perfectly dismayed that the de-growth advocacy does not shout “RESOURCE TAXATION!!!” from the rooftops. Unfortunately it seems it doesn’t even exist to them, so moving resources from billionaires to community and ecological restoration seems to be off the agenda.

I agree we should be building living models of community economics, indeed the kibbutz models of Israel show what is possible. And the key to the kibbutz success is the community value added chain which is that the small struggling innovative community has a relationship with the larger marketplace through wealthier merchants, not as a seller-buyer or borrower-banker, but as people invested in each other’s success. Yet so far the living models are barely big as a village and whether they are telling us how to work with the planetary population is doubtful.

Perhaps we can mitigate the suffering by building small living models all over the world, and maybe they will save some lives here and there. But ultimately the peaceful equity of the planet will only occur by acknowledging every living human is a shareholder of planetary flourishing whether natural or technological, and exacting appropriate resource tax for every endeavour, such that the recycling of wealth is back to communities to enable increasing capacity building through infrastructure and education.

DeGrowth? I think human flourishing will lead to real de-growth but the timeline is at least another century of hard political slog. Premature de-growth models imposed on populations will not necessarily lead to human flourishing. And so long as there is a failure of flourishing, there will be a slow atrophy of human society, that no amount of re-compense will solve.

3 Things to Transform

There are 3 things I’ve become very present to since the COVID 19 pandemic visited the world, that need transforming for human society to be flourishing in the next 50 and 200 years. A word on transformation. We cannot be transformed as ‘I’ individuals. Only relationships can be transformed. Once a relationship is transformed, we might indeed see that we are also, somehow, transformed. Therefore, in this list of three things, you will note that I am considering our relationship with, needs transforming. Another way of looking at this is to consider that, whatever this thing we call ‘I’ is, is nothing except our relationships.

Day of the Dead Celebration in Mexico.

1. Our relationship with death. COVID 19 has shown us to be very disturbed and disordered in the face of the possibility of the imminent death of ourselves, loved ones, or just other people. Our empathy for people who may have an (early) death, while touching for it’s reflection of our care for our fellows, took many of us out of the game of life. It seemed that once some people got the fear of death in their nostrils, all conversation about social, economic and other health needs, became a wrong thing. It was as if society was waiting quietly, to die. I have come away seeing that our fear of death and our desire to do away with death, and our belief that we can do away with death, is heavy within our modern culture. Indeed, when death is hidden from the population, such as the influenza virus, the several chronic diseases caused by lifestyle choices, and suicide, has a significant death toll every year, barely a whisper of it’s wrongness is heard. Even when most of the reported deaths to COVID 19 are elderly people, it is the spectre of the few deaths of younger people that particularly haunts the population, in ways that traffic accident deaths do not. Our fear of death doesn’t extend to our soldiers, or indigenous young adults and youth dying in custody or from suicide or chronic diseases related to a disenfranchised or abused life. Our fear of death drives our social and economic aspirations, the structure of institutions such as medicine, and our political priorities. Transformation would look like a society that not only has empathy for what is immanent about death but has a compassion for our fellow human who is at some distance from us in time and space. It requires a ruthless compassion that demands our brothers and sisters across the world have the foundations and support in life that fosters equity in life expectation. Transformation would also look like that avoiding death is not the most important thing in our lives, and that death itself, even at a young age, has an acceptability within a life that is flourishing across society. The transformation occurs at personal and social levels, and through that, impacts institutional and political expressions. At a personal level, transformation requires we engage in the inquiry with death and what it means for us. The inquiry would include: What about death am I afraid?; Who else am I afraid of dying? What else am I afraid of? and then, for each of these fears exposed, how and why is in the fear? It is important to avoid judging any authentic experience of fear that you can access. It is important to avoid trying to fix or change anything that you authentically experience of fear. It is also important to avoid finding a reason for your fear. There is no reason or rational decision that invites you to fear. Reason will always come after your fear, as a way to explain it, and it is likely to be pure fabrication.
2. Our relationship with the timescales of life. When we come to an appreciation that there are timescales beyond our meagre lifetimes and certainly beyond the next year of 5 years or ten years, that are going to be impacted, and can be extraordinarily impacted, by our lives, then we will see that we can get up to something that doesn’t make any sense at all, for our self interests. We can begin to live within being and acting according to something bigger than ourselves. This doesn’t mean that we are trying to be the stand-out person of the year. It does mean that we are doing a very big project. However it doesn’t mean that the very big project is all being done today. Recognising the larger timescale means that your project can be very big 100 years after you are dead. It means that you have reached forward 100 or 200 years and seen the world you would be immensely proud to have designed for others. From that future, you have walked back to your past, today, and see all the unfolding that occurred until you were sitting here reading these words. Done and dusted.
3. Our relationship with power. As the dominant species on the planet, for the planet to flourish for everything and ourselves, we must be fully cognizant of the impact of everything we do. From that cognizance, we must be in conversation with the whole global society and planet. Now that is absolutely impossible for an individual to directly do for themselves. Yet its essential character, demand we have a global society that is wholly in conversation with itself and the planet. This requires transforming the fixed world-view of who we are that we are a distinct thing called an individual to that we are the whole showing of the human society and planet for us. This paradoxical notion is not something to try to work out. It’s transformative power is exactly in that the model of reasoning and identity that we have designed our brain to carry, is not going to give you anything it doesn’t already ‘know’. This paradoxical notion creates the transformation of our relationship with power, by simply having it paradoxically as really. Our relationship with power also needs to take account of the impacted of psychopathy either in our social expression or the expression of others. By psychopathy, I mean the lack of empathy for others, given over to a complete self-interest. Psychopathy won’t be fixed. In any model of society, psychopaths are working out how their self-interest are best served. Indeed, many behaviourists, especially in economic theory, advise that seeing everyone as working from self-interest is the best way to design the incentives and disincentives of public policy, and the pedagogy for training young humans. The well-nurtured and trained psycopathy may well be able to bring a strength for ruthless compassion that holds to account the empathy in the immanent that govern most of our lives, to a stronger value of justice.

World Religion Day 2020

Today is World religion day 2020. I’m the MC for the devotional event in my small rural community in far north Australia. While it is a small community – the local government are has about 18,000 people – there are around 40 ethnic groups representing all the larger religions of the world. Here is my welcoming address.

Eckhart Tolle, in telling the story of his coming to meditation, said, “ There’s great freedom … in not compulsively interpreting other people, situations, and so on, not imposing thinking continuously on the world, which is so alive and so fresh and new at every moment… What we are talking about here is a state of alert attention to what is … where you rise above thinking to a large extent in your life, still being able to use it, but not being used by it.” Interview with Krista Tipppet On Being

Eckhart Tolle is famous for his books and courses on meditation. Meditation and mindfulness have been made popular and perhaps the single most common modern person’s access to the spiritual life. For many people, meditation is access to happiness. And, as we will hear in today’s readings, across the various religious traditions, meditation has a vital role not always connected to our personal happiness, but always connected to a view of the human being as a relationship to God and ourselves as more powerful than we ordinarily consider.

The image you are seeing on the screen is a composite of the Brandeberg Gate in Berlin – a hub a tourist activity from all around the world. Off to one side, hosted by a committee of all the religious organisations in Berlin, a number a little bigger than those of our religions, here – is a Room of Silence. Anyone can enter and stay as long as they want, in meditation, reflection or silent prayer. The past 200 years of Berlin since Napolean has been fraught with tyranny and wars. Only these last 30 years since the Berlin Wall came down could it be said that Berlin has had reprieve. It really looks like it might keep that way. However we cannot build a fully human planet with paying attention to how we are human. And meditation is a crucial element to being human.

This comment from the World Community of Christian Meditation Interfaith Program is very relevant to todays gathering. “Religion is becoming more, not less important in the world today. It is urgent that the deep changes taking place in religious consciousness across all faiths and in their relationships are connected to the contemplative power residing at the heart of all the great wisdom traditions.

Meditation opens us to the common ground of humanity – and the essential goodness of human nature. The differences between traditions and cultures are as important and enlightening as their similarities. Meditation establishes a spiritual friendship between the members and practitioners of all faiths and ensures that the differences do not become divisions or false justifications for intolerance or violence.

Punishment Doesn’t Work

On 8th March 2018, the Australian national broadcaster (ABC) ran this story of a father punishing his son for bullying by making him run to school. I am actually appreciative that this dad took a video of him driving behind the child and posting it, so that we can learn from it.
It and the supportive responses for it, does show the failure of most of society to understand the idea of consequence. This failure is not only why our child raising has created bullies and addicts but why prisons are overflowing with recidivists. Below is my take on it.

In the ABC article, bully experts like Dr Hannah Thomas, a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Queensland, said “punitive strategies like making the boy run were an attempt to teach the child to be accountable for their actions, but they didn’t always work.”They use shame, humiliation and guilt to try to motivate change in future behaviour,” she said.”This generally never changes behaviour in the long-term. It gives the child very limited opportunity to learn and acquire new skills — i.e. ways to interact in more positive and social ways with their peers.”Dr Thomas said these kinds of strategies can also have flow-on effects.”Children who are humiliated or shamed can internalise negative feelings about themselves that hinder their healthy development,” she said.”Children misbehave as they learn and develop. They need parents to be supportive when they make mistakes and to take a practical role in teaching their children how to behave more respectfully.”
What I see is that it gets down to consequences. There are two things to know about consequences: Punishment is not a consequence of someone’s action; and all actions come with unintended consequences.
Punishment is an indirect consequence of an action, and in many cases, that ‘indirectness’ is confounded by a complexity of agendas and motivations, often to the extent that it is of no consequence at all. If anything, punishment is often a pathway to a whole complexity of unintended consequences, the least of which is that the punished get that they are responsible for other’s distress and that they can be a different type of person in the world.
In this case there was a direct consequence to the boy’s bullying, he was put off the bus. The boy would have understood the relationship.
A consequence of the complaint to the parent was that the parent went into bullying mode. It seems Dad doesn’t have a conversational relationship with his son, probably an authoritarian one. His son is learning that authoritarian method, the being a three year old for the whole of your life, that is, of course, it is signified by bullying anyone as a control mechanism, a fabulous way to teach the next generation how to be a bully.
The consequence of the bullying mode by this parent is the boy being forced to run to school.
I have no problem the boy running to school. Great thing!
However, attached to that running to school is a punishment, is a bad idea!
This is where we have to get better at thinking through about unintended consequences. If we have learnt anything by listening to each other about why we find ourselves poorly motivated around some things as adults, it gets back to the unintended consequences of, sometimes, the most trivial thing a parent has done that has been completely misunderstood by the child. The consequence of establishing for your 10 year old son that running is what you do for punishment, when you do something wrong, can be that, later on in life, you run a lot and you do nothing wrong (even though you are really an A-1 tyrant), OR you do nothing wrong (you’re a nice guy) and you don’t run (you are fat, have a chronic disease by your 40s). Ultimately this boy is on a path to being either a bully for life or a failure to take-off.

The real issue though is of parenting. Parents who are in conversation with children from the time they are in the womb, parents who are self reflective in that conversation and can acknowledge with children where they messed up as well as taking a firm and clear stand with their children, parents who are up to something bigger than themselves and their family, in life, have children who aren’t bullies and grow up to be contributors to society.

Art of Movement 2

Here is a video clip of an impromptu contemporary to the music of orchestral didg player, William Barton.

The idea is to play with the immediacy of the music into movement. Video is a great way to review what is there and to see what is not there. My view on movement art is that, like all art, the genre and the betterment comes with persistent practice, review, and reflection. I add to my practice an attempt to see some new possibility in movement. I watch what others are doing to get ideas but don’t want to be limited by mimicry. The older dancer needs to take into account what the body can do on any day. Well, so do younger dancers, even if they can take more for granted. The dancer coming to dance as an older person also needs to recognise that the limitations have a lot to do with habits. Creativity and permission to be creative and expressive will allow new movement to occur.

Be safe. There is a whole lot of great movement that can be small and easy.