Monday 25 March 2013

Human change, climate change

Another day, another political crisis in Australia. What is becoming clear is that the uncertainty that has been playing out for months in Canberra, the farcical machinations and media frenzy, are fuelling a growing sense of despair in the community.
As someone who pays attention to the news, I could be swept up in the media wash of events as they happen blow-by-blow, but I’m interested in going deeper to see what patterns or truths lie underneath.
To me the current volatility in Australian politics, perhaps unprecedented at federal and state levels, mirrors the volatility and shakiness of other societal systems and institutions. If the strength of an institution is measured by popular faith in it, few in Australia are not in trouble. Disillusionment, cynicism and outright hostility are commonly expressed not just at the state of politics, but the economic system, the media, large corporations like banks and mining companies, the legal and health systems.
More broadly, there is a global volatility that is unsettling the foundations of much that has held certain for a long time. Take the ongoing crises of capitalism and the dire economic circumstances of countries in Europe; or the Catholic Church with its urgent need for reform and reinvention.
And then there’s the rapidly changing and uncertain state of the Earth’s climate. In the currently dominant Western worldview, which emerged out of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, humanity sees itself as separate from, and masters over, nature. Yet the development of science has led to conclusions that, in fact, the planet is an interconnected web of systems and relations and no single strand of life is truly separate from any other. What happens in one part of the globe is related to, and in turn affects, what is going on somewhere far away. What one species does has ramifications for many others.
The volatility in human societies and global climate change are not coincidental forces. They are related by the simple fact that humans are a species on planet Earth and as such reflect and affect the whole. It’s a measure of our present culture’s narrow vision that we only see the largest impacts of climate change like extreme weather, droughts, bushfires and the like – the mundane reality is that as the planet changes, so do we. Our societies change, our institutions change, our psychology changes, our way of life and our way of seeing ourselves and the world changes. It’s merely a commonsense observation that if humans are not separate, we are subject to change on many levels.
One of the great potentials of change for us, I believe, is that very recognition of belonging to and being part of the Earth, its life and cycles. The old Western worldview which crowned humanity as independent and superior to all other creation has to give way to something much more humble and nuanced. And, indeed, change is already afoot: there is a growing view of humans as stewards or guardians of life and its diversity. This perspective appears in the most recent documentaries of David Attenborough and seems to be increasingly informing conservation work across the globe. While I welcome it, I think it’s an intermediate step to something else, that being a holistic, earth-centred paradigm in which we experience ourselves as one with nature. This can only come about with a spiritual awakening.
The recent summer in Australia was the hottest since records began. In some towns in the interior the temperature stayed above 40 degrees Celsius for weeks, while Sydney and Hobart had their hottest days ever. Heat produces flux and movement, and is the catalyst for transformation. The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus saw “fire” as the primal element behind all change, an instrument serving the divine Logos.
Perhaps this country, becoming hotter year by year, allows us a privileged position to see and take part in transformation. Maybe this will be the cauldron in which the ingredients for the new paradigm properly cohere. Whatever happens in coming years and decades, we are in for a period of heightened volatility and change.

Sunday 17 March 2013

Sine qua non

Poetry, like other art forms, gives expression to the intangible, that which moves below the surface of individual and collective consciousness. Here is my latest contribution: 



Sine qua non
(an essential condition or requirement)


Still life with pomegranates, bay leaves and durian

Still life with couscous and quince

Still life with rambutan and raspberries

Still life with buttered crumpet and bees wax

Still life with pheasant and firefly

Still life with cumquats and corpse

Still life with tattooed arm and torso

Still life with castanets and cattle prod

Still life with ant and ant eater

Still life with scorpion and march fly

Still life with bouquet and zeitgeist

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Gentrification and hip culture

I once preferred to pass through Preston rather than stop there for any reason.

A working-class suburb in Melbourne’s north that matured after World War II, by the 1990s its High Street had a tired and beaten feel, its life sucked out by the growth of shopping centres and the movement of many of the original families to newer areas.

As a reporter on a local newspaper north of Preston, I would use High Street as a through-way, driving to wherever I was going to cover a story. Garages, brick churches, milk bars and shoe shops flashed past; fruit shops and bakeries that seemed perpetually empty, migrant community clubs with heavy locked doors.

Last week I had lunch with a friend in Preston, the first time I had been there in years. I’d heard about the spread of gentrification to this patch about 8 kilometres north of the city, but the change nevertheless surprised me. Cafes are not just the sign of all that is hip and trendy, but also all that is real and dynamic. In the 21st entury, without a cafe a neighbourhood seemingly has no right to exist. The people who matter don’t produce anything material any more – when not in an office or at home they are in a cafe. And there the coffee springs were: scattered among the old working-class shops in High Street like bright, young heads in a cabbage field. 

I’m ambivalent about the development. There is no question that the area has new life, and new people have moved in thanks to the rapid construction of apartment buildings. I’m also drawn to the hip culture of cafes, funky boutiques, micro-breweries, pop-up design markets and the like, certainly in preference to blandness or chain-store commercialisation. But, in the admirable quest for quality and creativity that seems embedded in this gentrified culture, there are some issues.

The first, as I see it, is that of conformity. Quality needs diversity if it is not to atrophy and die over time – there is a certain look, certain group habits and trends that solidify once a culture is established. The people in that culture start to look the same, think the same, eat the same ... and indeed High St, Preston, is beginning to resemble a number of other places in inner Melbourne, its residents eating organic food, sporting tattoos on their arms, riding certain types of bicycle with certain styles of helmet etc.  It’s true that groups are groups and develop habits – humans are at one level herd animals – but quality and creativity demand the spark of individuality be kept alive, not extinguished by a sinking into the mass. I think there is still much to be understood in the differences and common ground between individual and mass consciousness (and unconsciousness) and what influences both. The test will be if we can create communities where people of diverse ages, nationalities, interests and occupations thrive under a unifying umbrella of acceptance and oneness.

The second issue relates to money. Whatever the claims to cutting-edge style, creativity or environmental sustainability, gentrification is driven by wealth and exclusivity. When the cafe culture comes to town, the existing (poorer) tenants move out – this has largely been the pattern so far. It is capitalism at work, colonising where it can to “add value” to what is there. This process is entirely arbitrary and not intrinsically linked to any moral values; it appears wherever money can be created. It is then no surprise that class politics is absent in the gentrified culture – those who benefit from it are unlikely to question its foundations. Yet capitalism is a hard taskmaster, and even the relatively privileged are increasingly forced to work harder and longer hours to maintain standards of living. The challenge, in my opinion, is to create spaces and forms where the emphasis is on real, living values like community, ecology and solidarity and where monetary wealth, business and profits are not central.

Indeed there is a pureness to the spirit of quality and creativity, as it inspires individuals and groups, which is aligned with generosity and mutuality, as opposed to grasping and serving private ends. Over time this spirit can soften and transform a culture dominated by acquisitiveness and the market. While recognising the demands upon us of society as it is, we need to turn to this spirit, be moved by it, and reach out and remake the world.