Do We Really Learn from our Mistakes?

Years ago, I read that the military expenditures of the world for a single year would be sufficient to provide clean and safe drinking water for the whole world's people - for the future as well as the present.

Now, I read that…
Between now and 2030 the average annual cost of combating global climate change will cost about 1.6% of global GDP. This is not an insignificant investment, but it is less than two-thirds of global military spending.

And so the story goes on.

We spend huge amounts of money to protect our privilege from others by force and in doing so contribute to our own downfall through a professed inability to 'afford' to combat a known disaster in the making.

And that disaster affects all the world's people - ourselves but especially those who are the most marginal and vulnerable.
When they come knocking at our door to say "let us in, for you have made our homes places we can no longer live", what will our response be?
I suspect it will be the same denial as for climate change itself, that we 'cannot afford' to help.

What then will our response be when they knock harder, with force, or are set to overwhelm us with sheer numbers?
On past performance, it will be to arm against them…to protect our way of life.

Oh, but perhaps we might have thought to to protect our way of life earlier and more constructively, by making small concessions to allow others to continue their way of life.

Love, Hate and Destruction

Today is St Valentine's Day with all its connotations of love. How sad, then, that it is also the anniversary of the fatwah on Salman Rushdie. I have never read the Satanic Verses but I understand that the passages found so offensive were actually part of a nightmare experienced by one of the characters so could equally be interpreted as being anathema to that character and by extension to the author.

But once the battle lines are drawn so clearly they become more than lines in the sand and cannot be brushed away or washed away as the tides do to our castles on the beach.

But even those things we so cherish that we must see them as indestructible will fall, one day, to the elements. And in doing so they will support new life. The question for us is do we want that new life to include mankind, for surely the way we are going right now suggests the world would be better without us.

Tilting at Windmills?

I recently mentioned the (probably apocryphal) ancient Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times" to a friend, who asked me of its origins. After some research, I'm still not sure, but I was 'interested' to find that Bobby Kennedy had used it in 1966:

There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged -- will ultimately judge himself -- on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

But he was really talking about those things that we allow to stop us making a difference in the world: futility, expediency, timidity, and comfort.

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man.

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course if we must act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspiration, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs… It is not realistic or hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values.

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change.

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education.

I'm sure that we have all succumbed to all these at some time in our lives. And when I think about that, I realise that these were the times when I felt bad - about myself, about other people, about the world. These were the times when I wanted credit for what I had done, rather than simply valuing my having achieved something.

I think, then, of the times spent tilting at windmills, attempting the impossible - sometimes simply putting a thought out there in the hope that someone else would pick it up and make it their own. I have lost count of the times this has worked. There is truly nothing as powerful as an idea that someone has been convinced is their own.

That probably goes for the views I have written here, as well.

Draining Away The Colour…

I recently came across this in a book:
Now he could see through the glass into the tidy garden just beyond, and a table under a tree, with chairs around it. He had a picture of tea set out there on a summer's day, and children running through the grass, laughing. The England he and so many others had fought for. Bleak now in winter, cold and quiet. As if war, not the seasons, had drained away the colour and the reality.

This book had no pretensions to be profound or great literature, but I found this short passage very powerful.

How many times have we had our visions destroyed by the negativity of another? For many of us certainly far too often.

And yet if we look beyond the negativity of those others, we often see a void - a lack of vision and a lack of understanding that must be debilitating for them as well.

The good news is that such negativity, like the winter, will pass - and your vision can bloom again in the Spring. So next time someone tries to destroy your vision, just let it pass in the knowledge that your time will come.

In God's Name?

At this time of year, in a nominally Christian country, it is hard to escape the observations about commercialisation of Christmas. I suspect, however, that commercialisation of a religious festival is the least of our problems.

A timely reminder of the dangers of organised religion (as distinct from faith or spirituality) came my way today in the form of a 'special report' from the UK journal, The Economist. In a far-reaching and by no means antagonistic review of 'religion and public life', The Economist demonstrates the extent to which religion is used as 'justification' for violence.

Source: The Economist, November 1st, 2007

John Lennon's great song Imagine dreams of how life would be with"no countries" and "no religion, too", but is less clear that any sectarian 'cause' can bring the same results. And there can be 'godless religions' too - communism and nazism,for example, in the 20th century). It's the "I'm right" (or more likely "I need to be right" - some people find it very threatening to realise that they might not have a monopoly on 'truth') so "You must be wrong". Patriotism can easily become as bigoted as religious zeal - and, of course, when the two are merged the effects are compounded.

I find another, less well-known, song from around the same time, a much more powerful commentary, not limited to countries or religion - Abraham, Martin and John (written by Richard Holler; recorded by Dion):

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
You know, I just looked around and he's gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked around and he's gone.

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked 'round and he's gone.

Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, and it's a-gonna be one day ...

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walk up over the hill,
With Abraham, Martin and John.

What is this life ...

...if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare (William Henry Davies, 1871 - 1940).

Do you ever think how crazy your life has become - how difficult it is to find time just to 'stand and stare'.

An old story relates that the Gods debated as to where to hide their wealth of wisdom and spiritual power. They finally settled on hiding it deep within Man himself. They knew he would look for it everywhere across the planet except there!

Thus, if you wish to make progress in anything - spiritual, material, or even financial - the place to start is to go within. This is where the Inner Genius lies, the Higher Self, the Power of God. Spend time with yourself in contemplation. Wait upon that inner voice. Do not bring your preconceptions with you. Allow what comes to be virgin-born.

How different this teaching is to that of the world; even of the spiritual authorities. The Church will tell you that spiritual growth comes through regular attendance, good works, holy communion and other outward forms. The business world will tell you to attend more seminars, read up on presentation techniques, and jump onto the latest trend.

However, the wise person knows that inner victory must always precede outer. There are no shortcuts. The way of silence is tougher. It takes time and patience. It is out of sorts with the ways of the world, which is precisely its power. You may not even know how to begin or what to expect. Just begin. Schedule regular time for it. All questions will be answered in time. By You!

Asoka Selvarajah

You don't have to become a Trappist monk to discover the value of silence. Just take a little time away from the distractions of 'too much to do' and 'too little time'. And while you're about it, give some thought to how much time you spend earning the money to pay for those things that appear to save you time - take that into account and it is little surprise that it is often actually quicker to travel by bicycle than to drive a car. And in the right environment (where you aren't surrounded by all those other people desperately trying to get from A to B with minimum observation or understanding of what lies between), you can experience some of that silence without having to worry about how much the next litre of petrol is going to cost you.

On the shoulders of giants

Albert Einstein wrote

From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others... for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day, I realize how much my outer and inner life is built upon the labors of people, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.

This is not original - in 1159, John of Salisbury wrote:

Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.

Most often, this has been interpreted in almost a physical-determinist sense - that we benefit from the discoveries and recorded knowledge of those who have gone before.

Whilst this is true, perhaps there is more than this. Is it possible that what we, individually and collectively, do leaves behind traces that influence the present and the future. Rupert Sheldrake has developed a theory of morphic fields and morphic resonance, which leads to a vision of a living, developing universe with its own inherent memory - and has backed it up with scientific experiments. His books, including A New Science of Life and The Presence of the Past are well worth reading and should at least give food for thought that what we do has consequences that we will never be aware of.

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The unexamined life is not worth living (Socrates)

When the same quotation comes at you from multiple sources in the space of a couple of days, it's worth taking a closer look. When Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, I doubt that he meant that we should spend our time agonising about everything that we do. I prefer to think that he meant that it is important actually to be aware of what we do and why we do it.

Thoreau put it rather differently, when he said that:

Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

If we insist on 'knowing' the answer to something, we will fail. But if we simply open ourselves to awareness from whatever source, the answer will often present itself. How often has any of us had that experience of finally 'giving up' on a problem only to have the solution come to us the next time we were relaxed and unworried - the proverbial 'it came to me in the shower'.

Of course, it is easier said than done - but when I wake in the night with a problem running out of control in my mind I can at least tell myself that the answer will come in its own good time, not at my bidding, so I might just as well go back to sleep or, failing that, do something completely different - like writing this blog. However, it isn't the middle of the night here at the moment.

Purple Haze

I am very fortunate to live across the road from a really great park - it might be half a world away from England, but it has the feel of St James' Park in London (including having a large lake in the middle) on a slightly smaller scale. The lakes dry up in the summer now, as a result of declining rainfall - the new Australian Government promised $2million, in the recent Australian election campaign, to find a way of keeping water in the lakes - that's how important Hyde Park is (that's Perth's HP not London's one!) The trees are magnificent - London Plane trees around the lake, some huge Australian fig trees and, most spectacular at this time of year, avenues of Jacaranda trees. The Jacarandas aren't native to Australia, but they thrive in Perth. Sitting under that purple haze creates a totally different feeling from anywhere else in the park - and all without the pharmaceutical aids that Jimi Hendrix supposedly used to create his personal Purple Haze in 1967.

...and then there's Lewis Carroll

Alice came to a fork in the road.
"Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know", Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter".