In a recent defence white paper issued by the Australian government certain assumptions were made that still go mostly unchallenged in today’s world. Without explicitly stating as much, the authors of the white paper imply that defence is unavoidable, that peace is best achieved through the use of armed force, that the budget for military expenditures is justifiable in the current global context, and that by spending money this way the state can guarantee security for its citizens.
There are flaws in these assumptions. Apart from the fact that not even the US, the only remaining military superpower, can adequately safeguard its own territory and population, it is surely time for some different views to be put – if only to curb the naïve infatuation with boys toys by grown men who spend billions of dollars each year on the means to destroy us and each other. We need to grow up.
The most grave contemporary issue we are facing is not terrorism, flu pandemics, the rise of China, or even poverty. It is one we have created ourselves through our affluence. Human-induced climate change is the most challenging crisis in human history and we should be acting wisely and immediately to adapt. There are two choices: we can disregard the warnings of hundreds of climate scientists and continue polluting the biosphere (ensuring a future essentially unfit for human habitation) or we can reign in consumption, green the economy, and redesign the way we go about our business.
The latter option, though preferred, is not straightforward. Massive investments in new technologies are needed as well as the political will to drastically curtail greenhouse gas emissions. More critical even than these measures, however, is the need for a shift in human thinking to a level from which we are better able to redesign our relationships - both to each other and to the Earth. If we cannot do this then we lose. Game over!
The beliefs and conventions that gave rise to our present situation thwart such a transition. While the majority believes it is natural to be divided, dissimilar, competitive and combative - beholden to gods and beings more powerful or wealthy than the rest of us – shifting to more integral forms of appreciation and cooperation will be denied us.
One such impediment is the ‘imagined community’ we call the nation state. A relatively recent invention, the state has become our principal framework for governance, so we look to the state to solve society’s problems. Regrettably the manner in which nations are conceived inevitably pits one state against another. Points of difference, rather than points of connection, are seized upon and accentuated.
But climate change is a global issue. A viable global ecosystem is not something we can confine within national borders. On the contrary its very complexity demands unprecedented collaboration, imagination and investment. And here the nation state just gets in the way; as do large gatherings of nation states that still instinctively protect their own vested interests.
No viable solutions to the many complex issues confronting us, including climate change, can emerge until nations and national leaders put aside their differences, overcoming their short-term parochial interests to inspire unified, purposeful change.
Since the tragic circumstances surrounding 9/11 the idea of using brute force, torture, terrorism and a host of covert operations rather than the rule of international law has utterly shattered the pretence of moral human ascendancy. More than that, it has greatly diminished the pursuit of a common purpose and, with it, the potential of a social accord to tackle our shared predicament.
Our inability to cast aside our seduction with controlling other people’s lives (often using preposterous rationalizations, fabricated rules and armed hostilities where deemed necessary) is a frame of reference to which we habitually return. By reaching first for a gun rather than dialogue our ability to pursue common goals is fast disappearing.
The dogged insistence of some governments (and most terrorist organizations) that they have an inalienable right to attack others, including innocent women and children, with increasingly destructive weaponry and through unspeakable atrocities, is simply further evidence of our civilization’s collapse.
At some stage in the recent past we lost the plot. By clinging to obsolete institutions, their mechanisms and the assumptions that may, just may, have given them some kind of credence in the shadowy recesses of our evolution, we distance ourselves even further from the possibility of being able to resolve today’s most critical issues - issues requiring more profound consideration, cooperative dialogue and collaborative design. Not more killing and certainly not what goes under the euphemism of defence.
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