Tip of the Iceberg
Most conversations in the popular press are insubstantial ‘tips with no icebergs’ - shaped by assumptions of which we are not conscious. Often they do not even probe beneath a surface skating on outrage and fear to reveal patterns that might help to shift the dialogue.
This is why most of us remain trapped in the belief that the new AUKUS Pact is all about nuclear-powered submarines - in other words that vessels that exist only on the drawing board, have yet to be approved by US Congress, and cannot be delivered until the late 2030s, is the only way of dealing with what has been described as an imminent security threat from a nation (i.e. China) that does not habitually attack other nations like the US clearly does. The logic does not stack up.
Significantly, what is left unknown and unsaid in any ensuing dialogue can be more important than what is actually confirmed. But that would not attract our attention. The vast majority of ordinary people these days are into vicarious thrills. They want to be entertained - even if the amusement is that of an inevitable war between two empires. Give us a scandal such as one or two celebrities behaving badly, or a cadre of naughty boys in Parliament’s playground and we are in bliss. Who wants to be bothered by images of starving children in Somalia, Xi Jinping's latest thoughts, or the methane emergency? Reality is too uncomfortable for words - which is why television producers now use this term to mean the exact opposite. Besides we cannot do anything about it, can we?
Well, yes actually. But it requires those in the conversation to shift from the innate desire they have to focus on solving discrete problems in order to embrace altogether deeper levels of thinking. A higher level of consciousness, if you like. It means appreciating that while we may see the tip of an iceberg, because it is clearly visible, the most important elements are hidden under the surface.
Understanding what really lies ‘under the surface’ in a world of complexity, ambiguous causal relationships, interdependencies, uncertain trajectories, and evolving dynamics requires new ways of sensing and making sense of what we can see, and that which we cannot see without a bit of hard work. It requires that we move beyond inherited assumptions, and imaginative fictions to find new ways of interrogating the truth.
With all the challenging issues besetting our world today, whether it be climate change, global terrorism, evolving geopolitical alliances, the proliferation of nuclear weapons or endemic poverty in the third world, it is time to move to alternative epistemological frameworks from which to view the brambles of entanglement connecting the whole. Only then are we likely to see the truth and come up with different answers.
In 1972, the scientist James Lovelock published a ground breaking theory which he called the Gaia Hypothesis. In this episteme he challenged us to see our planet as a single, self-regulating living system, a notion that was strange and uncongenial to practitioners of conventional wisdom at the time.
Unfamiliar ways of looking at familiar problems invariably arouse emotional opposition far beyond rational argument. So it was with Lovelock’s thesis. Many scientists were hostile, some abusive, openly declaring their opposition to such a fanciful theory. But without the Gaian metaphor we would be less inclined to see the reality of global warming for what it is. In other words Lovelock’s work moved us onto a higher level of consciousness from which it was possible to reconceive our true conditions and move beyond current delusions.
Perhaps, like Lovelock, we need to discover alternative frameworks from which to view the issues worrying us today. Perhaps we should try to shift our thinking to an altogether higher plane in order to comprehend what goes on below the surface of our conversations. Perhaps it is time to challenge and reconceptualise many of the things we hold constant and believe to be true – notions like aid, waste, poverty, welfare and even government. Perhaps it is time to ask different questions for which we cannot pretend to know the answers.
If we are unable to move beyond current models there is little hope that we will create anything other than what we have today. And that appears to be increasingly toxic and destructive. Any takers?