Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Seven ways to be wise in our time and place

THERE HAS COME a time when it is clear that many Australian citizens have lost sight of the essential nature of things. Where our patterns of thought and behaviour – our everyday social ‘norms’ – are inevitably leading us to an apocalyptical future of deprivation and long-lasting ruin.

In the hills and valleys of Tasmania I see a merger of humans with machine. Where minds have become twisted and adapted to the dreadful logic and form of industrial tools. The vast destruction of our native forests and the attendant poisoning of our natural environment, the overfished seas, and the now vast weed-and-vermin-filled lands of absentee corporate owners, are merely the physical manifestations of a system of laws and inherent structural rules that have trespassed way beyond human ‘morals’ or concerns for community.

It is an automatic momentum that denies recognition of nature and natural processes.
The moving out of our self-imposed subjugation will not require the piling up of facts. Rather it will require the simple anticipation of consequences. To be wise in our time is to: Read more here.

1 comment:

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

There has long been a push from various observers and critics, some of them even academic economists, to move to some sort of "green accounting." Alternative such systems have even been set up, and there are folks keeping track of such things and even reporting them here and there. However, no government has adopted such an approach officially, and so we continue to be stuck officially with conventional GDP and all that it entails.

There has also recently been talking of incorporating "happiness" into officialy accounts. One nation actually does so, tiny Bhutan. France's president Sarkozy has been mumbling about it also, but I suspect that this will not go very far either.