She'll Be Right
It really only struck me a few days ago how hopeless our situation actually is but how that fact could work in our favour. I was having a late breakfast in our condo in Bangkok, scanning the pages of the Melbourne Age, The Straits Times, and the Washington Post. I had just spent the past 20 minutes on a live cross to Asia First in Singapore speaking about ASEAN legitimacy vis-a-vis the military brutality in Myanmar, and the intensely vitriolic nature of anti-Chinese propaganda now coming from the US.
I am not sure whether I turned to the newspapers as light relief or to confirm my own biases. In any case I found almost every article, editorial, and advertisement reinforced normalcy. Some of my deepest concerns about the future were not being contradicted - just rationalized and reframed as a part of a pattern that could not possibly ruffle feathers or cause excess anxiety. Mass vaccinations will quell the pandemic and reinstate economic rationality. International travel will resume soon. We should get used to the idea of Taiwan being invaded by Beijing. The Tatmadaw has every right to restore democracy but should stop killing Burmese citizens. Most nations are on target to meet their Paris COP21 climate commitments. There is deep systemic racism within the Minneapolis Police Department but that does not mean every officer is a racist. Guns do not kill - people do. And so on...
These euphemistic rationalizations, along with continuous reframing, go some way to explain the predicament we are in. The stories we tell each other are enmeshed within an ethos of business-as-usual. We are convinced that everything will turn out to be fine in the end. There is no cause for concern. Common sense will prevail, and if that does not happen then human ingenuity will come to the rescue.
We do not take kindly to imposed change. The thought of extinction is ridiculed or dismissed as inconceivable. Disruption caused by change of any kind inevitably sets off warning bells. It signifies loss, inviting dread and resistance. The thought of calling a temporary halt to our own economic growth so that people a world away might benefit from a slightly higher quality of life, for example, is greeted with stunned bewilderment. As a species we are parochial, selfish, and driven by material greed. But I cannot help but believe that is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Preferring to hide in ignorance or history, where answers were always found to the problems of the day (even though many of them were shortsighted, unwise, and barbaric) we continue to patch up the present as best we can, preoccupied by the repetitive and delusional routines from which we take comfort - all the while hoping 'she’ll be right'.[i]
Commentators tell us to remain optimistic, ignoring massive failures of imagination as well as the emotional gridlock in which we seem wedged. My own critics constantly advise me not to harp on the bad news, or to be so negative. This will only repel your audience. People need to hear good news, they insist, concerned about my state of mind. But what if business-as-usual, and even good news, which is there if we know where to look, just gets in the way of hearing the truths we most need to hear? What if our insistence on normalcy is impeding the decisive actions we must take concerning the really, really, intolerably bad news?
The truth that hardly anyone dares utter is an unthinkable and unlivable reality. Our society is leaderless and in a state of collapse - precipitated by a predatory disregard for nature and the doctrine of separatism. This is probably most evident in the abusive and divisive ways we treat each other. We are one family. Almost everything we cherish is under threat. Yet still we seem unable to escape the urge to menace each other in ways that lead to self-destruction.
It is possible there is no way out of the mess we have made of the environment. The oceans could be devoid of life by 2045. Top soils, depleted by fertilizers and insecticides that have destroyed most pollinators, might soon be incapable of providing food for 8 billion people. The heat caused by excessive greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may well result in large parts of the earth becoming uninhabitable by the end of the next century.
Although there is a plethora of solutions available, we are not deploying them at the scale and speed necessary to avoid catastrophe. Admonished to prepare for the worst by many leading scientists, we are not even up to that task.
In these circumstances it is difficult to refrain from deriding others, attacking the motives of politicians and multinational corporations, drawing attention to their lies and insincerity, and calling out their banality, incompetence, or lack of foresight for the situation in which we now find ourselves. But hate and contempt are a part of the problem. Attacking others might fill us with a false sense of self-importance. But it is pretentious and ultimately can make matters far worse.
We need all our energy to focus on how to get out of this mess. Censuring incumbent leaders for lacking the wisdom we ourselves might not be able to muster if we stood in their shoes is misguided and akin to the vituperative murmurings of madmen. Nor should any individual be blamed for 'common cause' variations in failing systems. We are all complicit - having shaped a world-system driven by toxic neoliberalism and a self-destructive defensive narrative.
If we are to step back and look objectively at the causes for our contemporary predicament we can identify systemic flaws embedded within that worldview. Sadly, as has been pointed out to me on several occasions, some of these flaws - like the impulse to compete, for example - are ingrained. To which my response is emphatic. If it really is in our nature to seek conflict before amity, and we find it impossible to change as a consequence, then our fate will, and deserves to be, the eradication of our species from the planet.
Right now, making this point on the evening television news would invite outrage - stirring up apprehension in those who cannot bring themselves to face such an outlandish proposition. It would be irresponsible, too, given that the recent research refutes such Darwinian simplicity. Besides, the media’s propensity to coat everything with sweetness, glossing over anything that smacks of existentialism, would result in such a topic being normalized for a mass audience by being placed amidst reviews from the latest Marvel movie, or accompanying zany remarks by a celebrity accepting an Oscar.
Although some of the drivers of human behaviour etched into our shared worldview could constructively evolve into others, love and unity replacing hate and division for example, it is not simply these factors that are at fault, but the seminal beliefs in an overarching narrative we use to construct our most life-critical systems, and that then reify those particular values.
The most insidious of these is materialism - explicitly the cycle of desire and consumption to which we are all addicted and succumb each day.
In 1945 the planet felt empty. Only 2 billion humans inhabited Earth. In the space of 75 years the population burgeoned to 7.8 billion people – all seeking a better quality of life under the auspices of free market or state-endorsed capitalism. Unbelievable stress was put on systems essential for our mutual well-being and prosperity. Not designed to cope with such numbers they began to fail. At first we barely noticed, distracted by our newly-acquired affluence and seduced by the power that wealth brings.
Unaware of potential consequences we were urged to follow the credo of economic growth. And we did – buying new goods and seeking novelty as though our lives depended on it. Our compulsion became pervasive. We threw away stuff with causal nonchalance as easy credit and inbuilt obsolescence conspired to replace the old with the new. Materialism spread to become a global faith more potent and universal than any religion.
Almost without noticing things started to go awry. As the promise of greater joy or happiness following the purchase of new goods did not materialize we became disillusioned. Aided and abetted by the ability of the media to generate outrage we sought and found easy targets for our disappointment. We blamed others for our predicament. Possibly they did not look like us. Perhaps they prayed to different gods, dressed differently, had different coloured skin, or simply spoke an unfamiliar language. But the insidious nature of loathing quickly became corrosive.
Fear turned to apprehension in the minds of individuals. Anxiety and depression followed. Eager to conceal our mental fragility we resorted to extra medication, junk food, alcohol – along with more financial debt. We tried everything, but nothing seemed to make us happy.
This cycle is perpetuated today through manipulative marketing. Our apprehension, envy and anxiety can be cured, we are told, just by purchasing more and more stuff. Wealth will make us happy again. Happier than before. The reality is that more spending led to increased pressure on systems that were already in a state of collapse, making them even less able than before to provide us with what we want and expect.
Thus, the cycle of desire and consumption was born. It intoxicates the human mind, deceiving us into believing that materialism must be the solution, whereas it is actually the problem and there are no solutions in sight. It is also the reason we cannot blame individuals for our plight. That course gets us nowhere and exacerbates the cycle, making our exit even more difficult.
There are other equally destructive cycles that follow a similar course, inviting us into similar traps. Unending conflict and war leading to the further fracturing of humanity. An obsession with unrestrained economic growth resulting in environmental destruction. The tacit pact that permits wealth to transition into power and that ultimately results in a few individuals owning most of the world’s productive capacity.
None of these cycles are sustainable. They can all be traced back to a source narrative of self-righteous hubris that animates them. It is this narrative, this worldview, that must change. We can do the easy stuff now. We can change the relations between inputs, events and outcomes. We can conduct small experiments and prototype a range of alternatives. We can, with great effort and persistence, put aside our prejudices, stepping into different design ontologies to craft systems that work as effectively for village farmers in the developing world as bankers on Wall Street or shareholders in our wealthiest nations.
But in order for these new systems to endure they will need to be generative and restorative. That is impossible if we are unable to step into new epistemologies of understanding and to reframe what it means to be human. For that to happen humans need to take a giant leap of consciousness: to see ourselves for who we are in order to see the world differently. Creating a generation with a generative collective consciousness is the next step in human evolution. But as I keep pointing out, and being shouted down, such a leap of consciousness depends upon human nature changing its most fundamental impulses.
This is the greatest challenge of our time. At this point anything else is a distraction. I am told repeatedly that it cannot be done. That human nature is what it is...
But please do not ask me to inspire hope or to be an optimist every time I get up to speak or write an article. Do not plead with me to look on the bright side or to ignore science. I prefer to face the truth – even if that truth is an intensely heavy burden. That said, I still believe we will eventually come to our senses. I do have faith in the young generation. And I do believe we will be wise enough to survive our own success. But not tomorrow. Pain and catastrophe will come before we feel compelled to act.
[i] She'll be right is a frequently used idiom in Australian culture expressing the belief that whatever is wrong will right itself in time. The term is also used to refer to a situation or object which is not perfect but is good enough to fulfil its purpose.