The Hames Report

Not In My Backyard

“It’s great to be back home, even if it is only for a few days”. Finn had just arrived back from Shanghai, recently awarded the prestigious World’s Greenest City prize by the World Forum over previous winner Sorokovka, Chelyabinsk in Russia. Finn’s draft policy for boosting synthetic food production had been well received by most delegates to the Forum - at least from the Core, or what her mentor insists on referring to as the “orderly” nations.

“If I can just get this bio-industrial bill accepted, we’ll be able to bypass agriculture entirely. We’ll see how those organic food luddites like that!” Finn seemed delighted at the thought that most essential foodstuffs would now be grown in steel vats. “It’s far less destructive to animals and the environment… But I bet the diehard activists come up with the same old grounds for opposing it. ‘Save our Farms’. ‘Feed The World’. I can smell protest in the air even now.” 

“News on please Sarit” she instructed their wrist-based personal digital avatar. The flexible-filament wall screen lit up instantly. “Sarit, can you find out what the weather conditions will be in Jakarta next Friday”. If it’s too hot I’ll need to take my sensacoat. Jack, do you really think they’ll be another Islamic rebellion in Indonesia? Speaking at the annual Bioterror Conference is one thing; becoming a victim of the topic under discussion is something I’d really like to avoid!” 

She slumped wearily onto the couch next to Jack. The flight from Shanghai on the Boeing-Airbus 9e9 was only 4 hours but Finn was worn out from the accumulated effects of weeks of travel. She'd welcomed the excuse to return home for a few days. Jack just listened. He hadn’t said a word. Oh, he was happy to see Finn, of course, but couldn’t stop thinking about the bombing of the Three Gorges Dam in China. And the summons. The summons that had curtailed Finn’s trip and brought her home prematurely. The summons that had put his own life on hold. He had even been suspended from hawking. It was all so petty. And now he would need yet another retinal scan. Or a new retina implant, he mused, sarcastically! 

Unsurprisingly, WNN coverage was all about the bombing. Even in the US where the story was taking precedence over the continuing drugs wars in Mexico. “The latest estimate is 2 million people dead from the downstream floods and they’re expecting that to double in the next few days. Chinese delegates at the Forum were so distraught not knowing what had become of their friends and relatives.” 

Finn was relieved to be out of harm’s way for the time being. Working for the World Forum had become quite dangerous lately, even for an Australian in Australia. Jack’s life was leisurely in comparison. After all, he hardly ever stepped outside the apartment these days, except when he had to put in a show by attending the campus for some reason. She sighed deeply, wondering whether she should downshift now before it was too late. 

“OK. Let’s talk about this writ. Tell me again, what happened exactly?”Jack shifted uneasily. “I’d been tracking these two crakes. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just two young kids chroming by the side of the dome. I decided to kvetch them. Then, without any warning, I lost visuals. I’d assumed the interference was some glitch in the crake’s ID tags. We’ve been getting a lot of those recently as the smarter of them realize they can tweak the software to disguise their actual whereabouts. Sarit, insisting it was a militant hacking from some other community, shut down the communications hub. The next thing I knew, an ES patrol appeared at the door. They claimed they’d been monitoring me for hours and had proof I’d dishonored my pass by attempting to sabotage the microbionic recycling facilities in the Lower Murray and Gippsland. My knowledge access account at AUMT showed an unauthorised payment of $4,200 and… Well you know the rest. Someone either wants my identity badly or is trying to discredit me. The worst thing is the ES report source was from Sale. When I rang Lily to see if she knew who’d reported me she refused even to talk to me. She obviously knows something, but she’s not letting on.” 

Finn was lost in thought. In truth, she hadn’t heard a word Jack said. She loved Gippsland. In spite of increased ecotourism (brought by the high-speed Maglev train that stopped at Sale en route to Sydney) the intrusive spectacle of the odd wind farm, and the regimented artificiality of new-growth forests, this area had retained much of its former beauty. 

The World Forum’s Conservation Orders of 2018 (a momentous political victory for global grey power, which had provoked outrage from Australian youths domiciled in the bioregions) at least ensured the area maintained its priceless heritage value. Rainfall was now programmed to fall only at night, soil quality was excellent and air-borne toxins non-existent. Local flora and fauna had been nurtured to the extent that rare species of fern, once close to extinction, now grew abundantly. 

A handful of traditional farms, carefully air-insulated to avoid the spread of harmful diseases, tinted the land a deep, lush green, broken only by the occasional ironbark and herds of grazing cattle. In truth, to the casual observer at least, it looked much as it had fifty years ago. 

At one stage Finn had thought about moving to Gippsland so that Jack could be closer to his sister. But he adored city life. There was also the allopathic medicine ideology to put up with. Sale had a reputation for being reactionary, especially in comparison with the Lower Murray bioregion, for example, where regenerative medicine was practiced by every community. Besides, they were all so emotional about astrodynamic crops at Sale. Their NIMBY politics frowned upon any new forms of genetic science. 

Still, the thought of reviving her earlier interest in advanced molecular food blueprints was appealing to them both. Especially now that unique designer molecules could splice ingestible microsensors onto protein-enriched plants and program them to seek out and remedy malignancies in the human body. There would be quite a market for that surely? Nor would she exactly object to living in one of the fashionable nanotube yurts that changed colour, texture and shape to suit one’s mood. They were fast becoming a feature of the Sale community. And she was quite fashion-conscious, after all. For a scientist. 

“You haven’t been listening to a thing I’ve been saying, have you?” Jack was more agitated than she’d ever known him. “If someone steals my identity for this kind of bullshit they can just as easily use it for more serious stuff. That old nuclear plant in Richmond for example…” 

“What’s that got to do with anything?” 

“I mean the pebble-bed they’ve got there. It’s just asking for trouble. Any bloody cyber terrorist could hack their way into those primitive computer systems they still use. Stealing my ID is bad enough but if they had been clever enough to use cloning technology I’d have been well and truly stuffed. Especially if they were able to re-code my movements to prove I was doing something that I wasn’t! Not even the Citizen’s Monitoring Program would be of any use to me. You know their evidence doesn’t stand up in court. The courts just rely on the state-based monitoring systems these days and they’re as unreliable as my grandfather’s weather predictions. Finn, I’d be in permanent detention. I could even end up in Tasmania of all places.” 

“Calm down Jack. We don’t know the real situation yet. It’s probably just a temporary security glitch... Anyway, you told me on the Holonet just the other day that the Richmond bioregion had decided to decommission the pebble-bed so they could get a tax break on the use of new fusion power technology?” 

“There, that’s exactly what I mean. They’re only interested in their own selfish ends. Fancy installing an untried system like magnetic fusion in such a built-up area! They’re seriously unhinged, these politicians.” 

“At least you agree with Bart and Lily there.” By now Finn was getting a little annoyed by Jack’s heated outburst. She’d seen it all before, of course, and knew that arguing with him wouldn’t help once he started on one of his hobby horses. Besides, she shared this particular conviction with a passion. She understood the need to improve material environmental affluence across the country, not least in Aboriginal settlements still denied the kind of amenities enjoyed by the rest of the population. 

She recognised, too, the futility of imposing economic and political demarcations on physical phenomena. The natural environment certainly couldn’t be partitioned in this fashion. Landscapes didn’t just change when you crossed from one region into another – or at least, not without substantive human intervention. Why would the community at Albury for example, decide on a particular policy for maintaining optimum irrigation practices and clean rivers when neighbouring Rutherglen’s community implemented an opposing one? Wasn’t this a form of local lunacy? Surely landscapes needed systemic planning and management? 

It was this holistic belief that compelled Finn to work for the World Forum, just as it put her at odds with the majority of Australian citizens who accepted bioregional autonomy as a matter of fact. Jack and Finn also resented communities that appeared hell bent on behaving as if bioengineering went against “God’s will” – especially when they were quite comfortable for anyone in possession of an ownership license, whether tenant or land owner, to do as they liked with scarce natural resources. “What stupidity is that?” Jack would often rave at such obvious double standards. 

"Take those farmers in the Uluru bioregion. Do you realise that 85 per cent of the water supply there goes to agriculture? They’re still using traditional European methods to grow high-hydration crops like cotton and rice, squandering vast amounts of the stuff to create a swampland in the middle of the bloody desert. All paid for by federal farm subsidies. I tell you, our politicians just don’t have a clue. After last year’s outbreak of cholera there you’d think they’d know better.” 

“Now you’re even beginning to sound like Bart! In any case the cholera outbreak was three years ago and I can’t imagine it ever happening again. Besides, some of the uniquely Australian agricultural developments up there have seen some remarkable breakthroughs. They’ve benefited people in arid environments all around the world, especially in New Mesopotamia and Africa. We’re leaders in new agricultural practices Jack. You know that. You can’t halt progress.” 

“Yes, and the rest of the world still think we’re theirs for the taking, don’t they? Look at the thousands of immigrants who arrive on our doorstep every month just to escape the ice storms that are making life a misery in the Democratic States of Europe. We’ve got more Europeans than Asians in the country these days!” 

“You’re such a racist Jack. Here, drink this kiwi-cooler. That should help calm you down.” 

Jack frowned. “They could use my ID up there too, you know Finn. You’ve only to look at how they treat convicted bioterrorists these days. What if…” 

Jack’s words trailed into stammers then silence as he sipped the drink Finn had prepared. He sunk into the well-worn comfort of his couch. 

“In order to prove my innocence we’ve got to find out who’s behind this ES report. If it’s Lily I want to know why. What could I have done that my own sister would want to frame me?”

“Oh come on Jack. Get real. For one thing, she can’t see past New Life. That article in Grassroots made all of them really arrogant. And the request for help from Sicily hasn’t helped. Your relationship has been none too good ever since you openly declared your opposition to astrodynamic crops. She’d do anything to make you recant – even if it meant convincing the Sydney community to buy all its food from Sale. I wouldn’t trust Lily as far as I can spit!” 

Finn was not usually as forthright as this. Jack was taken aback by her dismissive remarks about Lily. But she was right. Their relationship was indeed strained. 

“Well if it is her that’s causing me this pain I’m not going to take it lying down. New Life members are welcome to practice their voodoo if that’s what they really want. But not in my backyard, they don’t! 

Holonet on please Satri. Get me Lily. I want to speak with her again.”

 

 

 

 

Just Breathing...

Breathe In...

I have never felt the urge not to change. The impetus to ‘stay put’ or to ‘play safe’ is foreign to my nature. In truth, it offends me. Curiosity - about new ideas, people and places - is deeply ingrained within my spirit. Even to the extent of letting intuition prevail in circumstances where logic would most certainly caution otherwise.

For this reason I’ve always found joy in learning. Excitement from the frisson one feels from shifting contexts, fresh environments and novel perspectives provides pleasure beyond words. A pleasure matched only by the deep, intimate sense of love that arises between friends and family.

This degree of translucence, I feel, creates a disposition in which it becomes far easier to explore and remain open to life’s most fundamental questions. Questions like, why is poverty so difficult to expunge from the world when human beings have learned to perform so many other miracles? What factors, buried deep within the human psyche, cause us to be so intolerant of beliefs that happen to differ from our own set of embedded misconceptions? Why do nations so readily resort to menace, oppression and violence in order to get their own way? And how can we possibly claim to be civilized when we are so eager to unleash such hostilities on our fellow beings? These questions, and others even more profound, pester and perplex me to this day.

But it started long ago. Perhaps as I left Dartington for the last time, or quite possibly before that, when I was preparing to take the longest solo journey of my young life...

I was just eight years old when my parents put me in the care of a nursing sister on board a P&O liner bound for Britain. Sister Maggie was immaculately turned out in a starched white uniform with grey piping. A rather homely woman in her early thirties, Maggie’s ginger freckles and soft, lilting drawl, I realised only later, betrayed a proud Irish ancestry. She greeted us with a smile, bent down to shake my outstretched hand, wiped tears away with a linen handkerchief and quickly ushered us below decks to unpack. My mother hovered like a bumblebee trying to busy herself while making trivial conversation. I’d no time to feel sorry for myself, there was so much to do before I was escorted back on deck to watch the final preparations for departure.

My parents were now standing on the quay – waving continually like everyone else, though I doubt they could actually see me. I was mesmerised by the frantic activities below me. At the time, the whole of Europe seemed to be arriving on Australian shores. Watching this horde of humanity spill onto the docks intrigued me. Why had they come here? What fears filled their hearts that they could so readily abandon the land of their birth? What dark motives compelled such dangerous undertakings, I recall wondering, as I watched my own past recede into the distance?

I arrived in Britain some weeks later, my stomach still churning from the ocean’s crestless wave.  Dank air, diesel stench and the groan of distant foghorns punctuated our entry into the port of Southampton. The sun had shut up shop that particular morning. I was alone in a strange grey land. A land that thought itself the centre of the universe I was to learn much later.

Everything I cherished was now half a world away. I felt I’d been abandoned to some cruel archaic fate; the kind portrayed in Greek myths. Numb and anxious, I found the city both deafening and putrid. Was the rest of England this small and grimy? With hardly any space to breathe, the horizon collapsed in on me. How I longed for the blistering heat and vast emptiness of the Australian landscape. The contrast between what I had known and my present situation could hardly have been more stark. What kind of life could I possibly begin here? What did the future hold in store?

Little by little, I fathomed my station. First as a cathedral chorister and then as a boarder at one of England’s most illustrious public schools, I submitted to rites of passage as ancient almost as the land; a ‘wild colonial boy’ with sun-bleached blonde hair trying vainly to adapt to a world where respect for God, Queen and Empire was vital. My own unique experiences accounted for nothing here. On the contrary, I had simply to sit back, listen, absorb and recite the facts put before me with such certainty.

Then, as if from nowhere, misgivings surfaced. I no longer remember the precise situation, except that my voice had just broken. But I do remember the moment: reclining on one elbow on the Sussex downland, staring out to sea at the shimmering horizon, trying vainly to recall the scent of peppermint gums and the raucous screech of cockatoos. It was one month before my thirteenth birthday that I knew the world for what it was; ambiguous, tentative, unpredictable, essentially unknowable and evolving in a myriad ways with every second that passed. I gasped loudly enough to disturb a thrush foraging nearby. The epiphany astonished me. Yet it was strangely liberating, too.

It dawned on me that everything I had been taught was a lie. Or, at least, it had the semblance of an untruth hidden somewhere deeply within it. Reality itself was a rather pathetic sham. By no means absolute, nor even universal; it was a relative construct, utterly dependent upon circumstance. Knowledge, too, was inconstant. Like ignorance, its alter ego appeared to have had very little to do with intelligence. On the contrary, it depended on fairly tenuous representations of memories that morphed upon each remembering.

Ironically, the most treacherous knowledge of all was that most valued by society. In vogue, yet somehow artless and innately capricious, it was incessantly in my face, obscuring alternatives, taunting me with an infantile need for facts and figures that were uncomplicated, fixed, and that could be passed on easily from one person to the next, like some tedious chain letter. Real mindfulness, I figured, was far more illusive. Pluralistic, forever shifting, spiritual even, relying not merely on cognition but on feelings and reflections. And a silent inner calm…

In spite of the indignation expressed by certain of my teachers, who demanded respect by virtue of their (assumed) intellectual superiority, I realised that my own experience of the world did matter. Much more so than even the most amenable of them were prepared to admit. Most of the ‘truths’ they had carefully constructed during my schooling unravelled in an instant. I was alone once more. Yet intoxicated. I felt renewed purpose and energy. For the first time since arriving in Britain I sensed a satisfying wholeness - a belonging and an identity that was truly mine. Best of all, I had a new world to explore. And a voice. A unique voice.

I spent many hours during that long, scorching summer, alone with my thoughts in the slabbing heat, lazing on the cliffs above Cuckmere Haven, trying to make sense of all manner of things, from the smallest beetle crawling over my book, to the ribbon-like estuary curling through the meadows far below me to the sea.

One thing was clear to me, then as now: without a more-or-less continuous stream of new ideas, cultures, experiences and situations to explore, my response to life’s most important questions would most likely result in a rigid, overly-simplistic, regurgitation of other people’s truths. I would become like many of my teachers, my mind closed shut to any possibility other than the unambiguous, the unchallenged, or the mundane. Any sign of appreciation for the exotic or outlandish would be brought to a premature halt; relegated to parochial musings and farcical rationalisations. What a scary thought! I decided there and then that I would live an extraordinary life. A pioneering life of imaginative play but with the soul of a poet.

Medicine, music, computer science, travel, academia, writing, business, management, films, consulting, foresight, and yet more travel, unravelled in the space of a sigh. With the benefit of hindsight, these traces of a life in progress proclaim a coherent design and a certain continuity, perhaps even inevitability. Infused with new learning I’m convinced this reservoir of ideas, skills and behaviours will continue to resonate in the years ahead.

Yet nothing was planned anywhere near as meticulously as might seem to the casual observer.  On the contrary, I’m acutely conscious of the many unplanned twists and turns, together with the unforseen consequences of certain decisions. Crises that were momentous occasions now appear more measured and benign. Time has ironed out the bumps and given them a lucidity they did not previously possess.

Travel, too, has enabled different understandings and alternative interpretations, without which life would have been the poorer. More significantly, though, it has been wisdom and insights gained from those along the way that changed my mind and helped forge the resilience underpinning the pioneer’s lonely path.

I’ve always been alert to possibilities, of course, and never held back from striding, at times imprudently, into the unknown. Always the heretic, I’ve tried to retain the wide-eyed innocence of that eight year old boy standing on the docks at Southampton. I’ve invariably used instinct where logic was recommended; taken paths others have shunned; felt certitude only occasionally and never when expressing views that were obvious to me yet puzzled others.  Above all I’ve learned to listen with my mind but also with an open heart.

A stronger sense of purpose now guides my way and, as always, the principles I’ve clung to for the past half century and more. Embracing emergence, uncertainty and diversity; seeking mindfulness through reflection, meditation and empathy with my fellows; and remaining generous of spirit in every situation. These are the values I stick to; the things I’m still passionate about.

I am conscious of the past, present and future as coexistent, like the single point on a map. Glancing back while gazing forward allows me to “be” present in every moment with greater intent and integrity. Extending beyond the here and now I am conscious of the expanded now of ‘being in the world’ that is the braid of my life’s work.

Perhaps all of this explains why I am thrilled to discover my potential still unfolding; to sense future paths firming as my comprehension grows; to appreciate the abundance, richness, reciprocity and vitality arising from deeper, more caring relationships. Perhaps this is what it takes to learn from the future as it emerges. Perhaps this is the purest way to transcend ego in the pursuit of a more ethnocentric weltanschauung. Perhaps, too, this is really what it means to compose a life worth living. And yet isn’t this what all of us are now being called to do?

 Breathe Out...

Awakening to the more obvious symptoms of planetary distress (physically measurable factors such as rising temperatures coupled with the increasing incidence of devastating fires, floods and droughts) as well as less evident signs of civilizational collapse (substantiated by the degree to which technological overkill and the machinery of industrial economics collude to escalate conflict, terror and torture in the manufacture of corporate wealth) compel us to take a stand. To search for something quite different.

But what? And how, when the issues confronting us appear so appallingly overwhelming? I believe the answers are quite simple. It is just the journey of getting there that is difficult.

The Earth has given us food and clean water in abundance. It has sustained an astonishing diversity of life while contending, more recently, with humanity’s insatiable desire for growth, development and more of everything. But with a human population now in the billions it is overstretched beyond belief and we dispensed with the Operations Manual long ago!

Natural limits are being reached at such a speed and with such unrelenting force that it is almost impossible to imagine anything other than future ruin and devastation on a scale as yet unprecedented. None of us wants to dwell on this, which explains why so many of us deny that it is happening. We cannot deal with the existential nature of this predicament. But we must face facts. Dissent is no longer an option. Our home is suffering from an excess of human ingenuity, greed and, yes, over-achievement. The human species has been far too successful for its own good.

Indeed success, so often equated with progress, is the reason we abandoned self-sufficiency. Even now we still have not learned what is sufficient for our needs. The human population, now standing at around 6.7 billion people, continue to plunder the environment in ways that are totally out of kilter with what nature is able to sustain or that can be morally justified. We feel that in our bones. Indeed it is this pathological sensitivity that causes us so much pain and distress. And we can expect that grief to intensify until we find ways of letting go of what is dying and allow that which is struggling to be born to manifest.

In spite of the dire warnings from those who want to return to business as usual, the question of prosperity has never been in doubt. Generating sufficient wealth, today and for future generations, is entirely within our grasp. It can be set in motion today with today’s knowledge and continued tomorrow with tomorrow’s technologies. This new wealth will place a value on nature just as it changes the nature of value. But it could well exceed all the conventional wealth accrued throughout history.

Tomorrow’s wealth will not be created in the old ways, however, nor will it be distributed so unfairly. We know those to be dead ends: costly, morally bankrupt, noxious to life and thus untenable. Nor can universal affluence be achieved in a single “giant leap for mankind”. Societal resilience is not a goal but rather an uninterrupted process of adaptation and transformation, of relentlessly resolving new dilemmas and ongoing issues, and of continuously developing the intellectual and resource capacity to do so. Consequently the future viability of our civilisation will require constant attention and adequate resourcing.

But what will adequate resourcing (to create a resilient and viable civilisation) actually entail? The total cost to the US of engaging in World War II was about $4 trillion in inflation adjusted dollars. With that amount of cash, intelligently deployed, we could design a world almost free of conflict and injustice, where every man, woman and child has sufficient food and water for their needs, where education is available to all, and where the Earth remains fecund and abundant. Why it only took ten years and $300 million of research to wipe smallpox from the face of the Earth - and this was a disease that killed three times more people than the total death toll from all the wars of the last century. Or, looking at this another way, the price we paid to conquer humanity's greatest foe would not even cover a 24-hour day of Iraqi combat operations. Just imagine what we could do with $4 trillion! 

$4 trillion is a vast amount of money. It is beyond comprehension. Yet it happens to be the amount the US government spent on bailing out Wall Street corruption and incompetence during the recent financial crisis. Note that this money was not used to install the semblance of democracy in a rogue state, destabilize an ‘unfriendly’ regime, continue the long list of crimes perpetrated by US governments in the farce of freedom, nor even to create any kind of lasting tangible worth for US citizens. On the contrary, it was used for something arguably far more damaging in the long term: the continued subsidization of debt-fuelled consumption that tethers each and every one of us to a past that is killing the planet, destroying our quality of life and trapping the deprived in a state of poverty.

Examples of this kind, of which there are an increasing number, serve only to highlight a tragic fact: the true crisis of our times is that of consciousness – particularly consciousness among our so-called leaders. Investing such massive amounts in order to maintain the illusion of progress, thereby sustaining a “rich world” paradigm that is so obviously in its death throes, depicts a depth of ignorance that is breathtaking.

Surely conscious leaders would have invested more intelligently, recognizing their collective responsibilities and choosing more radical, life-affirming alternatives to that offered by more and more debt-fuelled consumption. Conscious leaders would surely recognize that it is greed, extravagance and wastefulness that has brought the global financial system, as well as our natural ecosystems, to the brink of collapse.

Defusing the consumption explosion gives all of us the chance for a better life, especially future generations. But for that to happen quickly enough massive global investments need to be channeled into five critical domains.

Firstly we need to assure the functionality of new global governance institutions - if not to replace the nation state then at least to ensure that collaboration among nations is paramount and that the wealth of the commons is protected. This degree of cooperation will only be forthcoming when we agree upon a unifying vision for humanity implemented with a generosity of spirit and intent sufficient to counteract competitive practices and vested industrial interests.

Secondly we need to start using smarter, more benign, technologies. These will allow us to design, grow, build, manufacture and distribute goods in alignment with nature and its proven solutions. Of course our approach to intellectual property requires urgent reform but we also need to become far more aware of the democratic technologies that exist, that are not bound by patent, and that can be used to solve today’s problems.

Thirdly we must find ways to decouple society’s underlying narrative from the negative litany of bad news perpetrated in the corporate media. The aim must simply be to create an intentional mythology for our civilisation based upon our symbiotic relationships with each other and to the Earth.

Fourthly we must create a global economic system that elevates and protects the wealth of the commons, thus optimising the health of the whole system rather than the excessive wealth of individuals and corporations.

Finally we must put an end to the grand illusion that war is worth the cost. Portrayed as idealism by some and sheer madness by others, eliminating war and neutralising the impulse for conflict would allow us to divert precious resources and attention into issues such as global warming and the sustainability of our life-critical systems such as the oceans, the soil and the air upon which we all rely.

Of course for all of these strategies we need more conscious leaders.

Breathe in…

 

From Here to Where

Shrewd futurists scour the past as well as investigating the possible in their never-ending search for clues and insights into the present. In terms of the social order our forebears so diligently created, that which manifests today, the past happens to be the most enlightening of these three domains.

For many of us the reality that is the ‘human condition’ emanates from a bizarre blend of primitive superstitions and visionary ideas, reckless deeds and astonishing inventions – all nurtured by a cultural complexity that is awe-inspiring and beyond understanding.

Those that are able to embrace such expansive epistemological variety, yet can also acknowledge the ominous shadows of an unintended dystopia in the storm clouds threatening almost everything we take for granted are, as yet, relatively uncommon. But at a time of universal disquiet these philosophers and scientists are the myth-makers, people to whom we can confidently turn for coherence and hope.

Indeed we ignore their wisdom at our peril, for they proclaim compelling possibilities combined with the means for averting potential catastrophe in a new story for humanity. Their narrative is inspiring simply because it is one of societal renewal – a metamorphosis from the appalling detritus of denial and dysfunction that crashes in on us daily. Not content merely to punctuate circumstances, these individual are the intentional leaders of a new ‘Gaian’ age.

Life, death and rebirth (metamorphosis or resurrection) are entangled in myth as well as in the flesh. This life cycle is at the core of living systems. It is how evolution, so astonishing and intricate, is designed to work. It is the ultimate truth from which there is no evident escape – even today when science is at the point of creating life itself.

Alas such elementary laws of nature are not easily accepted by a materially-focused, highly competitive, corporatized world pushing the seductive power of more and more possessions and where competition for scarce resources (driven by envy or greed, depending upon one’s circumstances) pervades almost all human activity. Such distinctive traits pave the way to ruin simply because they set us apart, divorcing us from each other and from the natural world. We now know that is folly. The industrial paradigm to which we have been in thrall for at least the past two centuries is broken – shattered by its own unconstrained success.

Yet it is not because we have become disconnected from nature, nor that we pursue our existing industrial dogma in such an unrelenting manner, that a new actuality will be born. Nor is it because our values have become warped by unsustainable practices or that our stories currently express such overwhelming despair. While entrenched ecological ignorance has undoubtedly accelerated the inequity, poverty, injustice and environmental degradation we see all around us, an explosion of industrial production (coupled with the legalization of publicly traded companies) in the late nineteenth century, yielded the extraordinary wealth and lavish lifestyles that many of us enjoy today.

And so the truth is far more inconspicuous: our current culture of reckless profligacy must perish because a new reality, a unique planetary culture, is wanting to be born. It is inevitable. It will not be stopped. The pillars of our civilization are tottering under the stresses of unconstrained consumption and are starting to fall, just as others before them have fallen.

Most noticeably the great engine of consumer-driven capitalism, in which the developed world has cocooned itself for over 250 years, has lost its moral conviction as well as its balance. Based on debt-laden monetocracies, over-stretched beyond its designated limits, on the verge of looting assets that belong to us all (the air we breathe, our identities and our individual DNA, for example) and, one suspects, intentionally distorted to exclude certain ‘externalities’ in order to better serve the interests of an increasingly wealthy group of corporations and individuals, the globalised economy is unraveling. No longer can it properly function to provide for the seven billion people inhabiting this planet. In effect the financial system, as currently conceived, is flat-lining.

Of course this proposition is an affront to the hero-leaders of yesteryear and deeply insulting to their neo-liberal economic ways. After all they have staked their reputations and their fortunes in sustaining vast industrial empires to keep this industrial machine running. They need us to keep buying their goods, smoking their cigarettes, eating their fast food, fueling our vehicles with their gas, heating our homes with their electricity and killing each other with their weapons and their drugs. What is more they pay governments and marketing firms obscene sums of money to ensure that it stays that way.

In the context of sustaining the current indust-reality then, it comes as no surprise that the spin doctors and lawyers are out in force, paid to pour scorn on any suggestion of reform or renewal and dismissing every line of reasoning for whole-system change on a scale ranging from ‘meaningless’ to ‘irrational’.

For most industrial-age leaders even the prospect of re-designing aspects of our society to make it fairer and more sustainable is appalling for they are only able to detect a downside to them personally. Why? Because their egos are bound up with the zero-sum games they play every day, where there are only winners and losers, and where other factors do not enter into their sense of what is right and wrong. Striding the world’s stage in the glare of publicity and propaganda, they take huge risks and relish the cut and thrust of competition. But let’s be quite clear: these people, so constantly in the news and held up as paragons of business and corporate management, practice leadership as an extreme sport and they are a dying breed.

Accepting even a modicum of the need for eco-social renewal, particularly in eliminating the extreme economic apartheid that divides the world’s rich and poor, could precipitate existential trauma in many of our old-style leaders. For such a frame-changing idea flies in the face of everything they know, identify with and value. Moreover it implies deep-seated changes to everything they take for granted, including the privatization of assets that should be owned by us all in trust for future generations.

But while that might be a terrifying idea for some, for most of us it contains the possibility for treading more lightly on this Earth, renewing hope, and restoring wisdom in our relationships with each other and with all living beings. So let’s bring it on!

If we cannot avoid the inevitable collapse of our consumer culture’s life-critical systems we can at least learn to avert potential disaster by embracing the opportunity to invent something far better and durable.

For the most part genuine transformation is not even on the agenda. Admittedly phrases such as transformational change and conscious leadership are on the lips of many, assuming pride of place within the elite vocabulary of the bureaucracy and in situations ranging from coaching and organization development to political reform and even community engagement! But in most cases this is a sham; we shy away from any deeper implications, desperately clinging on to what we know even when that is clearly dysfunctional.

Likewise, terms like transition, resilience, reform, mitigation, adaptation and even revolution are now bandied around the corridors of power as the most fashionable phrases to be heard uttering. Unfortunately their meaning is still framed within an overriding, unchallenged, almost condescending conviction that US-EU-centric models, systems and institutions (particularly in terms of governance, business and the economy) somehow represent the pinnacle of human achievement. Consequently such words are used, more often than not, to bolster and restore functionality to the existing system where assumptions and beliefs remain untouched. For example many, otherwise well-meaning politicians, seem to believe that the solution to poverty is to create even more consumers. But current patterns of excessive human production and consumption are precisely the cause of so many of today’s problems. There are too many of us consuming too much too fast. 

This kind of linear ‘cause-and-effect’ thinking traps us all in a perilous mindset; engendering an inability to imagine that things can be anything other than what they are today, or were in ‘the good old days’. And so it is that our elected officials, ensnared in a web of pathogenic symptoms indicating a complex predicament they cannot fully comprehend, act without mindful intent, moral recalibration, or even a more profound knowledge of the system they are so desperately trying to safeguard.

All such efforts will ultimately fail but, ironically, often after creating the illusion that things are slowly beginning to return to normal. At the moment, however, it appears we cannot stomach the thought of letting go of old assumptions and frameworks and surrendering to what is happening. It is simply too scary. In any case we are so paralyzed by the unspeakable vastness of the problems confronting us.

As history illustrates over and over again, attempting to prop up old paradigms in this way, rather than boldly encouraging their demise and relying on our ingenuity to create better futures, delays the inevitable. It also perpetuates untenable practices, thus creating even worse conditions and making the cost of rectifying them even greater. In effect defensive behaviors of this nature simply prolong the crises that lead to renewal. Such conservative hostility towards whole-system change is precisely what we are witnessing from governments and large multinationals in ‘smokestack’ industries all over the world. Consider the following...

After successive waves of economic, socio-political, cultural and technological globalization dating back 600 years or so, humanity finds itself poised on the brink of planetary integration. This dynamic condition (let us call it ‘globalism’) is a natural consequence of our hyper-connected world and neo-nomadic jet-set existence and it lets loose myriad new possibilities for eliminating many of the problems that have beleaguered our civilization.

But globalism also shines a clinical spotlight on distinct system failures that may be about to cascade out of our control. Probably because of the media’s obsession with bad news as well as a burgeoning public consciousness, leaders of every persuasion are focusing on the distressing issue of climate change. But issues like global heating, the loss of biodiversity, ocean acidity and the pollution of the oceans, for example, are really only signs of a more alarming and deep-rooted collapse of the natural environment. We can learn from this – if we have a mind to...

Ecologists have long observed the critical role of ‘hub species’ in different environments. For example, white-footed mice and their counterparts in other terrestrial communities, are considered a ‘hub species’ because they are central to a web of interactions with various predators, prey, competitors, parasites, and pathogens. If a ‘hub species’ declines or becomes extinct the entire ecosystem becomes more vulnerable to collapse.

We can extend the analogy of ‘hub species’ to human society. Humanity has become dependent upon a number of life-critical ‘hub’ systems - namely the economy, energy and the environment. There is growing evidence that these particular systems will collapse if we continue to ignore scientific data staring us in the face. As currently configured they are not viable. Functionality has been sucked out of them by excess consumption and an escalating global population.

Regrettably we are not yet sufficiently astute to take seriously key linkages connecting these three systems. Even less are we inclined to probe into their underlying deeper structure in the search for clues as to their inherent flaws.

This failure to think holistically, to consider the complex unfolding of numerous consequences (intended and unintended) in an appreciation of emergence, is the reason we are overwhelmed. Instead of looking at our society’s entire nervous system we have become preoccupied with the warning signs within each autonomous system (such as a global credit squeeze in the global economy, for example) rather than with identifying a set of ‘acupuncture points’ that could release an entirely new energy for whole-system renewal, resilience and prosperity.

Possibly the greatest challenge to whole-system (or civilizational) renewal is the hard-wired nature of specific beliefs and mindsets. In the developed world we have allowed ourselves to be so conditioned by free-market thinking that existing levels of affluence are often considered to be a minimum standard of what is acceptable. In the developing world, too, citizens either aspire to a similar quality of life as that enjoyed in the West (almost as a god-given right) or take hostile exception to the fact that anyone should enjoy such lifestyles when so many do not even have access to clean drinking water and healthy food. Whether right or wrong, such ingrained beliefs only serve humanity’s propensity for greed and further embed anti-cooperative behaviors.

As a new reality takes hold, assisted by entire communities responding to a deeply felt collective impulse for more meaningful relationships; smarter, less toxic practices; socio-political regulations that liberate rather than encumber human aspirations and compassion; wiser use of resources; and a desire to design with rather than against nature, old style hero-leaders will need to decide whether to mount a last stand (potentially bloody yet ultimately futile), watch helplessly as nostalgia for the past evaporates around them, or learn to step into new epistemologies to help others in creating the new.

Human genius, imagination and indestructible spirit have already given birth to an amazing treasure trove of knowledge, artifacts, merchandise, products, methodologies and institutions. Right now these abundance is mostly only accessible to the privileged among us. At a time when over two billion people around the world still subsist on less than two dollars a day the time to share our wealth with those less fortunate than ourselves is long overdue. Goals that fall short of this do us an injustice. We are better than that.

The path towards a ‘Gaian’ paradigm, in which we rise above the inequities and injustices of the industrial age, necessarily entails finding better ways to expand the means for generating prosperity and sharing the value accrued from human imagination (in its broadest sense) across all sectors of society; fairly, with compassion and regardless of status, ethnicity, education, location, or other arbitrary divisions. For that to happen we must find ways to transcend egos, for only then will we be sufficiently open to see ethnocentric possibilities and awaken to the conscious fulfillment of our true potential.

Human beings have created so much to celebrate, to marvel at, and to hold onto as we forge a new world out of our collective dreams and aspirations now that the age of individual genius has past. I am confident that by simply re-framing our thinking around questions like, "What kind of a world do we want?" the ensuing conversations will help us shift towards a future that is far more viable than that which currently threatens.

Indeed changing the dominant conversation in society (by changing our thinking in quite fundamental ways) has to be a major part of any solution. Which is why so many conventional institutions, with their focus on restoring the current capitalist system, its power relationships and intentions, in a more or less unchanged state, continue to delay the inevitable.

If a crisis of leadership was responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves today, it is likely to be a leadership epiphany which allows us to reunite as a species and to thrive and prosper once again.

Authoritative leadership in a Gaian world, however, will be unlike the extreme sports practiced by the famed hero-leaders of our immediate past. Leadership must become a selfless act, a collaborative process for improving one or more aspects of the human condition. Within the arc of leadership influence and accountability, restoring systemic functionality and vitality will be paramount. That will demand an ability to visualize, design and enact adaptive systems which, in turn, will require us to see the world as a single, living organism within which we are all intimately connected.

Wiser design, inspired by nature’s own solutions will follow, making many of our traditional tools redundant and our solutions primitive by comparison. Innovation will occur across networks.

Collaborative enterprise, innovation and entrepreneurship will occur on a scale that is unimaginable today. And, all the time, we will be averting potential disasters by growing the intelligence to navigate any conditions in a world where, once again, we can proudly tell of a unified human family and the extraordinary resolve of our species to survive, to thrive and to prosper.

This article was commissioned by Kosmos journal in the US and will appear in the Autumn-Winter 2009 issue