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…