Category: Communication

The book! Part Four: Faith in goodness.

“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.” So said the Dalai Lama.

In the previous chapter, Compassion for self, I quoted Professor Neff saying that in her view self-compassion consisted of three elements: self-kindness, recognition of our common humanity and mindfulness.

That second element, the recognition of our common humanity, provides a wonderful link from that chapter across to this one. For one very simple reason: The reason being that people are generally good. Now I’m not going to throw statistics around, even if I had them to hand, to support my proposition; that there are more good people in the world than not. For the very straightforward reason that I have enjoyed a wide range of wonderful experiences from many; friends and strangers alike. Backed up from my experience of having been around for a while (I’m way the wrong side of 50!), from having travelled extensively in the last forty years, from having lived in four countries over those same forty years, and from having very, very few letdowns from others over that time.

But there’s more. From those many friends and acquaintances over those forty years, again in many parts of the world, I have found it extremely rare to hear of someone speak of knowing another person who they believed was intrinsically nasty.

So, reflecting that this chapter is called faith in goodness, that my experiences support and affirm a faith in the widespread goodness of people, that us human beings are fundamentally loving and good, and will help and care for each other when given the chance, it is easy to see this faith under the banner of another word: trust. Trust in human beings being fundamentally good! (And to make it clear as to where I am coming from, I use the word faith not with any religious or spiritual connotations.)

Now it is time to be firm with myself and remember that this is a chapter in a section of the book about change: change in thoughts and deeds. It is not a chapter about goodness in and of itself, however commendable such a chapter might be.

What is the link, therefore, between goodness and change? Put better, what is the power of goodness in bringing about change?

I guess one way of answering that question is to remind ourselves that whatever we believe about the local circumstances, our local world in which we live, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we trust that those around us are fundamentally good and we offer goodness out to those around us then we all create a local zone of peace.

Ergo, by extension, if we really want to create a global world of peace, and who would eschew that dream, we truly have to believe that it is possible. Not only possible, we have to believe in the certainty that simply by impacting another person’s life in a positive way, thence, just one person at a time, that one other person becomes a stone of change spreading ripples of peace across the waters of the world.

Margaret Wheatley, the author of a number of books on the human condition, offers in an essay Relying on Human Goodness, this pertinent view: “Noticing our beliefs about human goodness is not a philosophical inquiry. Our beliefs are critical influences for what we do in the world. They lead us either to action or retreat.”

In other words, what we believe, how we see ourselves, holds real power of change. Those critical influences in Margaret Wheatley’s words. Such is the importance of our faith in goodness as being an agent of change.

The other fundamental message that comes out from Margaret Wheatley’s essay is that, “Oppression never occurs between equals. Tyranny always arises from the belief that some people are more human than others. There is no other way to justify inhumane treatment, except to assume that the pain inflicted on the oppressed is not the same as ours.”

The old saying of only treating others as you would wish yourself to be treated sums it up: perfectly!

So why oh why does the reality of the human condition, almost as far back as one can look, seem so ghastly at times? Maybe, just maybe, because we only get to hear of all the things that are wrong and that this has been a weakness of mankind since time immemorial.

For one core reason, one ancient truth, one very significant challenge to seeing goodness in all directions. I am referring to the fact that bad news sells! As in spreads like wildfire!

It’s common knowledge that since the days of early man, our survival has depended on great sensitivity to danger. We instinctively pick up on danger, on any danger, on anything that we interpret, often half-consciously, as threatening to us and our loved ones. And these are times when we seem to be faced with a plethora of ‘threats’ to us and our loved ones and our immediate community.

The news media; TV, newspapers, radio and, now the internet, offer us on an almost hourly basis torrents of evidence of the harm, the great harm, that some people seem so easily to do to other people. So many examples of anger, distrust, deceit, greed, ethnic hatred, frequent genocide, terrorism and violence, apparently committed daily in the world. Of the 196 independent countries (The figure varies depending on the reference source being used, but the number is within the range of 189 to 196) or so in the world, sixty-four are at war. Nearly a third of all the countries on this planet are at war (and don’t even start to think of the hundreds of militias, guerrillas and separatist groups involved in fighting!).

Thus it would be so easy to despair, to turn inwards and metaphorically hug oneself in a dark corner, to allow oneself to become more withdrawn and distrustful than ever, to let our worst natures prevail, but a strong, resolute faith in goodness prevents that. Indeed, the more we see examples, primarily from the world’s media, of the worst in mankind, the more essential it is to believe, to have trust, to have faith, in the goodness of people.

To hold in one’s heart, like a glowing beacon of hope, all those wonderful aspects of our fellow humans. The creativity, the caring, the generosity, the open-heartedness and the love; yes the love. Behaviours that are exhibited on a daily basis. Just look around at your friends and neighbours, notice the people you come across in your daily lives, often complete strangers, and you will see so many who, just like you, are offering goodness, being friendly, trying to be useful to others; metaphorically, leaving a clean wake.

So spread the word. For your faith in goodness will bring about the change all of humanity needs.

The book! Part Four: Compassion for self.

That one can not truly love another until you love yourself is a truism that is well-known.

If only it was that simple!

As an earlier chapter, The process of change, illustrated, albeit in a anecdotal manner, loving who one is rests fundamentally on knowing who one is and that, for a sizeable chunk of people, I don’t doubt, is a significant journey of self-awareness.

Stepping lightly over that last sentence, for this section is about change in thoughts and deeds, and focussing on the title to this specific chapter, compassion for self, leads one to pause and ask two questions: exactly what do we mean by self-compassion, and how is self-compassion different to self-esteem?

To be perfectly honest, until I started thinking about the answers to those questions, the differences between self-esteem and self-compassion had previously never occurred to me in the many (too many) years of my life. Yet another surprise that has been visited upon me as a result of writing this book!

But, of course, as soon as one thinks about it, there is a difference between self-esteem and self-compassion! Almost as though the former is an outward-looking perspective of oneself and the latter is the diametric opposite; an inward-looking perspective

Or as Kristin Neff, an associate professor in human development and culture at the University of Texas, Austin, puts it in an article published online by the The Greater Good Science Center, University of California:

Most of us are incredibly hard on ourselves when we finally admit some flaw or shortcoming: “I’m not good enough. I’m worthless.”

And of course, the goalposts for what counts as “good enough” seem always to remain out of reach. No matter how well we do, someone else always seems to be doing it better. The result of this line of thinking is sobering: Millions of people need to take pharmaceuticals every day just to cope with daily life. Insecurity, anxiety, and depression are incredibly common in our society, and much of this is due to self-judgment, to beating ourselves up when we feel we aren’t winning in the game of life.

So if self-esteem is the judgement or evaluation of oneself, self-judgment in other words, and may only be measured, by definition, through comparing oneself to others, then what is self-compassion?

An article published in February, 2011 by Tara Parker-Pope of The New York Times offers an insight that isn’t immediately obvious to one. It opens:

Do you treat yourself as well as you treat your friends and family?

That simple question is the basis for a burgeoning new area of psychological research called self-compassion — how kindly people view themselves. People who find it easy to be supportive and understanding to others, it turns out, often score surprisingly low on self-compassion tests, berating themselves for perceived failures like being overweight or not exercising.

Tara Parker-Pope then refers to Professor Kristin Neff; as follows:

But Kristin Neff, a pioneer in the field, says self-compassion is not to be confused with self-indulgence or lower standards.
“I found in my research that the biggest reason people aren’t more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they’ll become self-indulgent,” said Dr. Neff, an associate professor of human development at the University of Texas at Austin. “They believe self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.”

Fear of becoming self-indulgent restrains people from being more self-compassionate! I find that counter-intuitive but readily admit that it had never crossed my mind. The article then continues:

Imagine your reaction to a child struggling in school or eating too much junk food. Many parents would offer support, like tutoring or making an effort to find healthful foods the child will enjoy. But when adults find themselves in a similar situation — struggling at work, or overeating and gaining weight — many fall into a cycle of self-criticism and negativity. That leaves them feeling even less motivated to change.

“Self-compassion is really conducive to motivation,” Dr. Neff said. “The reason you don’t let your children eat five big tubs of ice cream is because you care about them. With self-compassion, if you care about yourself, you do what’s healthy for you rather than what’s harmful to you.”

Now that started to make sense to me. Still, if at this point in my learning journey I had been challenged to define precisely what I understood by self-compassion, I would have been bound to display some lingering uncertainties.

Therefore, how does one understand self-compassion in a clear and easily understood manner? Thank goodness for more guidance from the good Professor Neff. Back to that article published by the University of California.

As I’ve defined it, self-compassion entails three core components. First, it requires self-kindness, that we be gentle and understanding with ourselves rather than harshly critical and judgmental. Second, it requires recognition of our common humanity, feeling connected with others in the experience of life rather than feeling isolated and alienated by our suffering. Third, it requires mindfulness — that we hold our experience in balanced awareness, rather than ignoring our pain or exaggerating it. We must achieve and combine these three essential elements in order to be truly self-compassionate.

Self-kindness, recognition of our common humanity and mindfulness. Wow! What a trio of wonderful components.

I took a writing break at this point and went across to our living-room where some of our dogs were larking around. To my eyes, the group of five dogs, from old man Pharaoh, he of the front cover, down to young Oliver of less than a year old, were displaying kindness for themselves, an obvious recognition of their common doggyness and what seemed to me as mindfulness!

Then when I returned to ‘the book’, I couldn’t resist Kristin Neff’s concluding words from the above-mentioned article:

An island of calm

Taken together, this research suggests that self-compassion provides an island of calm, a refuge from the stormy seas of endless positive and negative self-judgment, so that we can finally stop asking, “Am I as good as they are? Am I good enough?” By tapping into our inner wellsprings of kindness, acknowledging the shared nature of our imperfect human condition, we can start to feel more secure, accepted, and alive.

It does take work to break the self-criticizing habits of a lifetime, but at the end of the day, you are only being asked to relax, allow life to be as it is, and open your heart to yourself. It’s easier than you might think, and it could change your life.

Relax, allow life to be as it is, and open your heart to yourself.

Those words should be framed and hung on the walls of every house in the land.

For they provide passionate reasons for changing how we think and, inevitably, how we act.

Smart dogs!

A video courtesy of Dognition.

In my research travels across the internet, yesterday I came across this piece that had been aired on CBS back on October 5th.

I came to the video clip after visiting the home page of Dognition, a company that offers a way of learning how your dog sees the world through your dog’s eyes.

Despite the clip only being eight minutes long, it offers incredible evidence of the benefits, to man and dog, of the shared evolution of both species over thousands of years.

Not going to say any more because I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of what is presented.

So, here’s the video.

Published on Oct 7, 2014
Anderson Cooper meets Chaser, a dog who can identify over a thousand toys, and the scientists who are studying the brain of man’s best friend.

Love to get any comments from you.

Picture parade seventy-one

The second set of wonderful dog pictures from neighbours, Jim and Janet, on the theme of parenthood!

oooo

The third, and final, set in a week’s time.

You all take care of yourself, and of your pets!

No apologies for airing this advertisement!

Because it’s wonderful – just pure joy.

The official advertisement for the Fiat 500X (already viewed over 4.9 million times!)

Thanks Dan for sending it on to me.

The book! Part Four: Of change in thoughts and deeds

Setting the scene

Well done for getting through Part Three: Mankind in the 21st century, and a number of the challenges of our present times! I don’t mean that to come over in a flippant manner but it must have been tough reading; it certainly was tough writing for this scribe! Then again, from way back yonder from my days of selling during the 70s and 80s, comes that old saw about not being able to embrace a new idea if one doesn’t really understand the issues, as in the strengths and weaknesses, of the existing situation.

Change is a fascinating subject and one that even the briefest trawl through the internet reveals a wealth of material. But the theme of change here in Part Four is about change at an individual level and not anything to do with organisations; let alone countries. And as such, in terms of how we understand the need for change as individuals, it seemed pertinent to offer this personal anecdote as a way of setting the scene.

You will recall that in Part One – Man and Dog, there was a chapter headed Unsettled times. In that chapter I wrote about learning that my previous wife informed me that she was having an affair with another man, this revelation taking place on December 20th, 2006, fifty years to the day of my father’s death on December 20th, 1956.
I also mentioned that earlier on in 2006 I had started mentoring a Jon Lavin as he was going through a major transition in his counselling practice. Jon was living a few miles from where I was living in South Devon and was, and still is, a psychotherapist, or to put it more accurately, a UKCP accredited therapist and NLP Practitioner.

Thus in a state of some emotional turmoil, I rang Jon early on in 2007 and asked if I might be his client! Jon was initially reluctant to agree to that, simply because he and I had started developing a relationship in another context, within a completely different perspective, as in me coaching him in the ways of developing his own business. As Jon made clear, he was worried that our existing relationship might get in the way of a very different relationship; one where I was trying to understand the catastrophe that had just taken place in my private life.

I was pretty insistent on wanting, needing, to see Jon; as you might imagine. Thankfully, Jon did agree after giving it some thought but on the strict understanding that if he was concerned about how the counselling relationship was progressing that I had to agree, agree before we started our sessions, that he had the right to terminate the relationship. Of course, I agreed. Without a moment’s hesitation.

Thus Jon and I started my personal counselling relationship soon after.

Naturally, Jon wanted to learn more about my emotional background and gently, when it felt right, asked me to explain the circumstances of my father’s death back in 1956. That was easy for me for the memories of that time had never dimmed.

That I had turned twelve back in November, 1956 and had started that previous September at my new secondary school; Preston Manor Grammar School. At the time of my birthday in November, 1956, I was only vaguely conscious of my father having been ill for a while. Not ill for months and months but bedridden for a few weeks. My father was fifty-five years old and had always been a gentle, caring father to me and my younger sister, Elizabeth.

Then just a few weeks further on, on the evening of the 19th December, when I was tucked up in bed, next door to my parent’s bedroom, my mother came into my bedroom to say goodnight to me; a perfectly ordinary and routine event. But on this particular evening, there was an unmistakeable sadness about her and rather than promptly coming up to me and kissing me goodnight, she sat down on the edge of my bed, just where my knees were under the sheet and bedspread.

I could still recall so clearly Mum giving a deep sigh, a sigh that seemed to confirm what I feared and, somehow, knew in my heart: that his illness might be serious. Mum turning and reaching out with her right hand so that she could hold my right arm that lay on top of the bedspread. “Paul, you do know that your father is not very well, not very well at all. I’m sorry to tell you that he may not live for very much longer.” Words that have never left me.

Mum then leaning forward, kissing me goodnight, and leaving my bedroom, turning the light out as she closed the door. Me falling asleep within moments of the closing of that bedroom door.

My father died that same night: my mother calling the doctor who attended, confirmed the death, issued the death certificate and arranged for my father’s body to be removed from our home.

It all taking place before daybreak. It all taking place as I slept on.

In the morning, my father was no longer part of my life.

As one could easily imagine, the following days were surreal, yet all of my life I have had no recollection of any emotions at all.

Going back to the death of my father, it was thought that my father’s funeral, a cremation, would be too upsetting for me and my sister so we didn’t attend the funeral.

The only other recollection from those times was being teased and bullied at my new school, the one that I had started a few months previously, because I was prone to bouts of crying. I also recall that one day in the playground, surrounded by a group of jeering and taunting boys, I had snapped and gone for the ring leader in a wild frenzied physical attack. Both he and I receive the cane from the headmaster but at least the teasing was brought to an end.

So all of this was spoken of to Jon in those early days of 2007!

Jon gently explored my feelings, wondering what were my emotional echoes from over fifty years ago. I’m not sure I voiced anything particularly revealing.

Then, in a change of tack, he asked me how my own son might have felt if he, my son, had endured the same tragedy at the same age and experienced the death of me, his father, in a similar fashion, and, in addition, not been able to go to the funeral.

It was a straightforward question but one that had me disappearing into my own inner thoughts for some time, Jon sitting quietly in his armchair just next to me, me only half aware that time seemed to have come to a halt. As if for the first time in my life since that dreadful day in 1956 I had the courage to listen to my deep inner voice, to sense my most inner feelings.

I stuttered, “My son would be angry, angry that one of the key events in the life of any person, the death of a parent, no more than that, the death of a son’s father, no that’s still not right; the death of his father, had been denied him.”

Jon looked at me, in a way that seemed to connect with me very strongly. Then he quietly asked, “What other feelings might you expect your son possibly to have?”

Again, another long silence, and then I said, feeling strongly that something very important was about to happen: “He would feel left out. Overlooked. Denied the experience of something irreplaceably important. He would feel emotional rejection; in spades!”

As those last words, quietly and clearly, left my lips, the most incredible sensation overtook me, both without and within me, encompassing me totally, the awareness that for the first time in my life, with me now sixty-three-years old, something that had been emotionally and psychologically hidden from me for fifty-one years, was now out in the open.

The clear knowledge that the circumstances surrounding my father’s death and my subsequent decline in my school performance had left me with a long-term psychological ‘dysfunction’; a certainty that I had been emotionally rejected way back in the Winter of 1956-57. A certainty, for sure, yet an understanding of myself that, hitherto, had been out of sight of my conscious mind, hidden deep inside of me, until this moment, this precious moment, in time.

Jon remained still and quiet as I continued to turn over in my mind this inner discovery. The realisation that, incredibly, for fifty years, my emotional response to my father’s death had remained totally out of my consciousness yet, nonetheless, had influenced me in very real and tangible ways; ways both negatively and positively that came to me almost immediately.

That the negative influence was that I was drawn to any woman who offered me love and affection and, therefore, I was emotionally unable to understand, to judge as it were, whether she had the potential to be a match as a life-long partner, however good a person she might be. I was doing anything to avoid emotional rejection!

The positive influence was that I tried very hard to please others (still do) so as to avoid their rejection, and had successful careers in selling for IBM UK, later starting and building a successful business in the early days of personal computing and, then, when my company was sold in 1986 becoming a freelance journalist and business coach.

So it took a chance association with Jon in those early weeks of 2007 to make me understand a fundamental lesson, one that had its roots fifty years previously, back in those early weeks of 1957. The lesson that we may only fully embrace change when we fully know just who we are. In other words, if there’s the tiniest voice inside you telling you that there may be some hidden nooks and crannies within you, psychologically and emotionally speaking, then some time spent with the appropriate ‘mentor’ will be the best investment you ever made.

There was a second reward from that self-awareness that arose in 2007. Namely, that in the December of that year, while the guest of dear Californian friends, enjoying a Christmas vacation in their holiday home in San Carlos, Mexico, I met Jean. Jean had been married to an American, Ben, for many years, latterly the two of them living permanently in San Carlos. Ben had died in 2005. Jean was born an Englishwoman, born in Dagenham in Essex. I had been born in Acton, North London. As the crow flies, the distance from Dagenham to Acton is twenty-three miles.

Jean and I met on December 15th, 2007. I was now emotionally unencumbered and able to give my full love to her and receive her full love for me. Jean and I were married in Payson, Arizona on November 20th, 2010. Now we live in a rural part of Oregon with our dogs and horses. It is a life together that is everything that any man could ever dream of.

The power of change!

oooo

It is only right for me to mention that the above is entirely my own work and while it is my best recollection of a series of true events, the chapter has not been previously seen or endorsed by Jon.

The beauty of flight.

Not, perhaps, in quite the way you might be anticipating!

A couple of weeks ago, I forwarded an item to my son, an airline Captain for some years now, that I read on the Big Think website. It was an item called The Accidental Beauty of Flight Paths.

The Accidental Beauty of Flight Paths
by FRANK JACOBS NOVEMBER 5, 2014

There is more between heaven and earth than bird migrations and weather fronts. These maps capture the poetic beauty of something utterly mundane and usually invisible: the flight patterns of the planes that bring us from airport A to airport B.

We live in the age of mass air travel. At any given moment, there are about 10,000 commercial planes airborne, carrying an estimated half a million passengers across the skies. We also live in the era of Big Data. Which means that the movements of those thousands of planes can be followed in real time on websites such as Plane Finder and Flightradar24.

London and the pretty holding patterns around its airports: Heathrow (LHR), Gatwick (LGW), City (LCY), Luton (LTN), Stansted (STN) and Southend-on-Sea (SEN).

You can read the full article here.

Alex, my son, then replied with a link to this item on the UK NATS website: Take a guided tour around UK airspace.

The skies above the UK have been brought to life like never before in a video showing a day of air traffic in less than three minutes.

Created from actual radar data showing over 7,000 flights, the video graphically illustrates the daily task facing air traffic controllers and the airspace features that help make it all work.

It finishes with an overview of the structure of UK airspace, highlighting the major air routes and showing how this ‘invisible infrastructure’ helps underpin the entire operation.

Matt Mills, NATS Head of Digital Communications, said: “We’ve made data visualisations in the past, but we wanted to now take people on a deeper journey into what makes UK airspace work and some of its important features.

Airspace might be the invisible infrastructure, but it is every bit as important as the airports and runways on the ground.”

Created by air traffic management company, NATS, the video takes viewers on a unique tour of some of the key features of UK airspace – from the four holding stacks over London and the military training zones above Wales, to the helicopters delivering people and vital supplies to the North Sea oil and gas rigs.

It is a fascinating video.

Never looking backwards!

“They didn’t bring us here to change the past!”

That quote is from the film Interstellar. Last Thursday, Jean and me, with our neighbours Dordie and Bill, went into Grants Pass to watch the film. Speaking for myself, even after three days have passed, I still haven’t settled on a clear opinion of the film. Don’t get me wrong, it was a magnificent production and held one’s attention for every minute of the three-hour performance.

All of which is a preamble for an insightful essay from George Monbiot published on November 11th and republished here with George’s kind permission.

ooOOoo

Better Dead Than Different

Our visions of the future are defined, like the film Interstellar, by technological optimism and political defeatism.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 12th November 2014

“It’s like we’ve forgotten who we are,” the hero of Interstellar complains. “Explorers, pioneers, not caretakers … We’re not meant to save the world. We’re meant to leave it.” It could be the epigraph of our age.

Don’t get me wrong. Interstellar is a magnificent film, true to the richest traditions of science fiction, visually and auditorally astounding. See past the necessary silliness and you will find a moving exploration of parenthood, separation and ageing. It is also a classic exposition of two of the great themes of our age: technological optimism and political defeatism.

The Earth and its inhabitants are facing planetary catastrophe, caused by “six billion people, and every one of them trying to have it all”, which weirdly translates into a succession of blights, trashing the world’s crops and sucking the oxygen out of the atmosphere. (When your major receipts are in the US, you can’t afford to earn the hatred of the broadcast media by mentioning climate change. The blight, an obvious substitute, has probably averted millions of dollars of lost takings).

The civilisational collapse at the start of the film is intercut with interviews with veterans of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Their worn faces prefigure the themes of ageing and loss. But they also remind us inadvertently of a world of political agency. Great follies were committed but big, brave things were done to put them right: think of the New Deal and the Civilian Conservation Corps (1). That world is almost as different from our own as the planets visited by Interstellar’s astronauts.

They leave the Earth to find a place to which humans can escape or, if that fails, one in which a cargo of frozen embryos can be deposited. It takes an effort, when you emerge, to remember that such fantasies are taken seriously by millions of adults, who consider them a realistic alternative to addressing the problems we face on Earth.

NASA runs a website devoted to the idea (2). It claims that gigantic spaceships, “could be wonderful places to live; about the size of a California beach town and endowed with weightless recreation, fantastic views, freedom, elbow-room in spades, and great wealth.” Of course, no one could leave, except to enter another spaceship, and the slightest malfunction would cause instant annihilation. But “settlements in earth orbit will have one of the most stunning views in our solar system – the living, ever-changing Earth.” We can look back and remember how beautiful it was.

And then there’s the money to be made. “Space colonization is, at its core, a real estate business. … Those that colonize space will control vast lands, enormous amounts of electrical power, and nearly unlimited material resources. [This] will create wealth beyond our wildest imagination and wield power – hopefully for good rather than for ill.”(3) In other words, we would leave not only the Earth behind but also ourselves.

That’s a common characteristic of such fantasies: their lack of imagination. Wild flights of technological fancy are accompanied by a stolid incapacity to picture the inner life of those who might inhabit such systems. People who would consider the idea of living in the Gobi Desert intolerable – where, an estate agent might point out, there is oxygen, radiation-screening, atmospheric pressure and 1g of gravity – rhapsodise about living on Mars. People who imagine that human life on Earth will end because of power and greed and oppression imagine we will escape these forces in pressure vessels controlled by technicians, in which we would be trapped like tadpoles in a jamjar.

If space colonisation is impossible today, when Richard Branson, for all his billions, cannot even propel people safely past the atmosphere(4), how will it look in a world that has fallen so far into disaster that leaving it for a lifeless, airless lump of rock would be perceived as a good option? We’d be lucky in these circumstances to possess the wherewithal to make bricks.

Only by understanding this as a religious impulse can we avoid the conclusion that those who gleefully await this future are insane. Just as it is easier to pray for life after death than it is to confront oppression, this fantasy permits us to escape the complexities of life on Earth for a starlit wonderland beyond politics. In Interstellar, as in many other versions of the story, space is heaven, overseen by a benign Technology, peopled by delivering angels with oxygen tanks.

Space colonisation is an extreme version of a common belief: that it is easier to adapt to our problems than to solve them. Earlier this year, the economist Andrew Lilico argued in the Telegraph(5) that we can’t afford to prevent escalating climate change, so instead we must learn to live with it. He was challenged on Twitter to explain how people in the tropics might adapt to a world in which four degrees of global warming had taken place. He replied: “I imagine tropics adapt to 4C world by being wastelands with few folk living in them. Why’s that not an option?”(6)

Re-reading his article in the light of this comment, I realised that it hinged on the word “we”. When the headline maintained that “We have failed to prevent global warming, so we must adapt to it” (7), the “we” referred in these instances to different people. We in the rich world can brook no taxation to encourage green energy, or regulation to discourage the consumption of fossil fuels. We cannot adapt even to an extra penny of tax. But the other “we”, which turns out to mean “they” – the people of the tropics – can and must adapt to the loss of their homes, their land and their lives, as entire regions become wastelands. Why is that not an option?

The lives of the poor appear unimaginable to people in his position, like the lives of those who might move to another planet or a space station. So reducing the amount of energy we consume and replacing fossil fuels with other sources, simple and cheap as these are by comparison to all other options, is inconceivable and outrageous, while the mass abandonment of much of the inhabited surface of the world is a realistic and reasonable request. “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger”, David Hume noted (8), and here we see his contemplation reified.

But at least Andrew Lilico could explain what he meant, by contrast to most of those who talk breezily about adapting to climate breakdown. Relocating cities to higher ground? Moving roads and railways, diverting rivers, depopulating nations, leaving the planet? Never mind the details. Technology, our interstellar god, will sort it out, some day, somehow.

George: this is a formula for the deferment of hard choices to an ever-receding neverland of life after planetary death.

No wonder it is popular.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.cityprojectca.org/blog/archives/5392

2. http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov

3. http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/

4. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/01/sir-richard-branson-space-tourism-project-doubt

5. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10644867/We-have-failed-to-prevent-global-warming-so-we-must-adapt-to-it.html

6. http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/james-blog/2337458/climate-adaptation-lobby-is-reckless-dangerous-and-partly-right

7. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10644867/We-have-failed-to-prevent-global-warming-so-we-must-adapt-to-it.html

8. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/h/hume/david/h92t/B2.3.3.html

ooOOoo

Do go and see Interstellar!

Picture parade seventy.

First set of wonderful dog pictures from neighbours, Jim and Janet!

This is what being a loving parent is all about!

oooo

Difficult to pick a favourite!

Happy Sunday everyone! (And Happy Birthday to my dear sister, Eleanor, who lives in South Africa!)

Saturday sayings!

Courtesy of Bob Derham from back across the ‘pond’.

Sure you will love these just as much as Jean and I did!

ooOOoo

APHORISM: A SHORT, POINTED SENTENCE EXPRESSING A WISE OR CLEVER OBSERVATION, OR A GENERAL TRUTH.

The nicest thing about the future is … that it always starts tomorrow.
Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make him wag his tail.
If you don’t have a sense of humor, you probably don’t have any sense at all.
Seat-belts are not as confining as wheelchairs.
A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you’re in deep water.
How come it takes so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night?
Business conventions are important … because they demonstrate how many people a company can operate without.
Why is it that at class reunions you feel younger than everyone else looks?
Scratch a cat …. and you’ll have a permanent job.
No one has more driving ambition than the teenage boy who wants to buy a car.
There are no new sins; the old ones just get more publicity.
There are worse things than getting a call for a wrong number at 4 a.m. – like, it could be the right number.
No one ever says “It’s only a game” when their team is winning.
I’ve reached the age where ‘happy hour’ is a nap.
Be careful about reading the fine print … there’s no way you’re going to like it.
The trouble with bucket seats is that not everybody has the same size bucket.
Do you realize that, in about 40 years, we’ll have thousands of old ladies running around with tattoos – and rap music will be the Golden Oldies!
Money can’t buy happiness – but somehow it’s more comfortable to cry in a Rolls Royce than in an old banger.
After 60, if you don’t wake up aching in every joint, you’re probably dead..
Always be yourself because the people that matter don’t mind …. and the ones that mind don’t matter.
Life isn’t tied with a bow … but it’s still a gift.

and REMEMBER …”POLITICIANS AND NAPPIES SHOULD BE CHANGED OFTEN AND FOR THE SAME REASON.”

ooOOoo

Have a wonderful week-end!

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Better Dead Than Different

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