Image: ‘Shore Thing’ by Niki Read, submitted to the Regenesis Anthology 2025 competition.

Like many bloggers, I am finding it difficult to find the words in this world that seems so full of turmoil in the daily news.  The world as I have known it, across the almost 80 years of my life, is being turned around and upside down, while my own life force is beginning its downward spiral.

But recently I’ve had two young students in their early twenties visiting. They tell me they’re the sane generation. Not duped by big promises and hyper consumerism. Carefully picking their way through the debris. Looking for a way through. Are they the answer for the Anxious Generation?

The Curtin Legacy

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Albanese is doggedly weaving his story of the Australian Way, pulling threads from John Curtain’s WWII days, when Australia thumbed its nose at Churchill and turned its face to its Asian neighbourhood, and the ‘threat from the north’—first Japan, and then later the moral panic about the communist threat from China.

But Labor’s Whitlam stepped up to that one: welcomed the new China into the neighbourhood, shrugging off the US refusal and embracing “the rights and role of middle powers and smaller nations.” Albanese, declaring in his speech in honour of Curtain’s legacy: “In times of profound change in our region and against the backdrop of global uncertainty, Australia under Labor has always had the courage and imagination to play a constructive and creative role.”

I hope he’s right. I am counting on the Labor vision to manage the rough edges of capitalism. Like many I agree with many of the policies advocated by the Greens, but as I tell my friends: it is not the politicians who run the country. It is capitalism, and all the politicians can do is manage its rough edges and lethal compulsions. Labor understands this, and I thank the stars that the Liberals and Nationals, still bleating on about individual rights and markets, have consigned themselves to irrelevance for quite a while.

Boomers

I was born at the end of WWII. I grew up in the boom times of consumerism and the marvels of science and technology bringing us the liberating motor car, the household gadgets, and the slow burn of the feminist revolution that spilled women out from under our menfolk’s feet (and their controlling gaze) into the public sphere; the sexual revolution of the sixties when the pill freed us from the imprisonment of unwanted pregnancy, but not alas the cultural trolling of slut shaming

But I also grew up in the shadow of the atomic age, the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki obliterating the cruelty of the Japanese prisoner of war camps, the starry-eyed dreams of communist conviviality crushed under the weight of Stalin’s gulags, starvation and secret police, echoing Germany’s Nazi death camps, six million incinerated in a scorched earth policy to create Aryan racial purity. The complicit guilt of those who watched, and whose governments denied the Jews refuge from the horror. The full display of what techno-bureaucratic rationality could deliver, when it turned its mind to authoritarian control. And then of course the madness and savagery of China’s Cultural Revolution and Cambodia’s Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.

The complex relationship between Gentiles and Jews under the one God’s umbrella, now repeated today with the other cousin, the Muslims. All Abraham’s children caught up in their inheritance of the paradoxical blend of humanistic love and messages of peace with extreme violence and disdain for the ‘other’—the heathen, pagan, or even worse, the apostate. The spilled blood and entrails of Europe’s claim to be the cradle of modern civilisation. The apocryphal origin story of Adam and Eve and their banishment from the Garden of Eden, into a world of sin (and sex), which they exported to the world.

The discarded Jews reclaiming the land of Palestine as their Israel, God’s promise to them as the uniquely chosen people, banging their heads at the Wailing Wall beneath the Temple Mount Mosque, as they repeat to themselves, “Never again”,  as they proceed to imitate the Nazi’s death camps in their relentless bombardment of Gaza and deliberate starvation of Palestinian people masquerading as controlled aid supplies by Israeli authorities. We all look on in horror.

And once again the world of liberal humanism, fully subscribed to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, looks on in complicit acquiescence as the technological might of the US military-technology-industrial complex sells its wares to exact their obliterating carnage.

It’s like the Vietnam War all over again. Only this time the Palestinian’s have none of the wily strengths of the Viet Cong and, although the Israelis are deeply divided among themselves, the Americans have not landed among them with their tentacles of rivers of cash corruption that crippled efforts in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. There is no Agent Orange, yet.

And so, now these children of the Holocaust find themselves caught in a forever genocidal war against those whom they have displaced. And a tidal wave of antisemitism once again stalks their diaspora.

Modernity’s Legacy

And in this colonial displacement we see the shadows of our own history: the British displacement of Australia’s Indigenous peoples—the land grab, the massacres, the starvation, the cultural humiliation, and the simmering, intergenerational rage it engenders down through the ages. A wound that is never allowed to heal, the scar tissue constantly picked at with casual corrosive indifference or disdain.  The same hubris of the stubborn justification of making better use of the land—of technological prowess, culture and institutional sophistication.

The technological prowess and institutional sophistication that has brought us climate change and environmental degradation now pummelling the viability of our human settlements with flash floods, wildfires, crippling drought, claustrophobic humid heat waves, oceanic algae blooms and coral bleaching.

As if this is not enough, we find ourselves called to bear witness to yet another unintended consequence of our techno-industrial brilliance. The degradation of human health flowing from our love affair with chemicals delivering rivers of wealth to the captains of industry via increased productivity and convenience across the food chain.

This terrible legacy of productivity and efficiency should give us pause.

Freed from the physical labour of pre-industrial society, and protected by the wonder drugs of antibiotics from death by infection, we are waking up to a new reckoning. Not just the twinned diabetes and obesity epidemics of ultra-processed foods, but now early onset cancers. The wonders of modern medicine made us think we’d conquered death, but today non-communicable diseases are responsible for over 70% of deaths annually worldwide.

The statistics tell this new story in the lives of 30-40 year olds. When this population group should be at the peak of their health, the biological engine room of our economic productivity, family life and reproduction. Instead, in Australia, along with other advanced economies, between 2000 and 2024 we see exponential rises in early onset cancers:

• 500% in prostrate cancer
• 200% in pancreatic cancer
• 173% in bowel (colorectal) cancer
• 150% in liver cancer
• 138% in uterine cancer
• 85% in kidney cancer

Philip Rosenberg, a leading cancer biostatistician who recently retired from the US National Cancer Institute says there is a clear difference when comparing cancer rates between Generation X and Baby Boomers, with very notable differences for colon, rectum, thyroid, and pancreas, and as well prostate for men and ER (oestrogen receptor) positive breast cancer for women. Most experts, such as those from the Human Exposome Project, believe toxins or toxic influences in the world around us are interacting with genes to cause malignant changes. They note that modern society has exposed humans (and other creatures of our world) to over 16,000 chemicals which are ‘foreign’ to our biology, and which have profoundly altered our gut microbiome, along with our DNA. Of major concern are the ‘forever chemicals’ such as PFAS, endemic to the plastics industry, and microplastics in almost everything, and which are now found across the world’s entire food chain.

The AI Challenge

As we contemplate the next revolution of our technological brilliance, the rise and rise of AI liberating us from cognitive drudgery and delivering to us a curated stream of on-demand psychological coddling and simulacrums of sexual gratification and intimacy, what will this Australian Way look like?

Can it meet the challenges of an addictive online world for the developing brains/minds of young people, outlined by Jonathon Haidt:

1. Social deprivation: a smartphone is an “experience blocker”, taking up hours a day that would otherwise be spent in physical play or in-person conversations with friends and family.
2. Sleep deprivation: too many teenagers stay on their smartphones late at night when they need rest.
3. Attention fragmentation: alerts and messages continually drag teenagers away from the present moment and tasks requiring concentration.
4. Addiction: apps and social media are deliberately designed to hack vulnerabilities in teenagers’ psychologies, leading to an inability to enjoy anything else.

How will the Australian Way’s adoption of AI for its productivity agenda respond to Albanese’s Labor vision of:

• An economy that rewards hard work and creates opportunity
• A society true to the values of fairness and aspiration that Australians voted for
• And a government worthy of the people we serve
• Repaying the trust that Australians have placed in us.

The Reality Question

Which brings me back to the insights of our post-colonial scholars such as Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti who has been mapping the ‘ontological terrain’ of AI—the way we think about the very notion of reality. Her thoughts are a feature of Daniel Pinchbeck’s series, ‘Breaking Open the AI Barrier’.

Because, as we know, what’s real and what’s fake has become the preoccupation of our times.

Modernity promised us we could live in a world where science could detect what was real through empirical investigation delivering incontrovertible evidence in the form of provable hypotheses and facts.

But then we had to come to terms with the quantum world where things were not so simple, and paradox and ambiguity claimed supremacy in both the micro and macro worlds. And well, most of us always clung on to that alternative world of religious faith and belief that defied empirical materialism. Of course, some claimed the written word, the Bible as proof. But this didn’t really stand the test of historicism, with the exception of the hardcore fundamentalists, always clinging to a world of enforceable certainties.

So instead, most of us still have the world of inner experience, of feelings, of intuitive sensibility that refuses to be silenced or dismissed. Although capitalism seems determined to subvert even this, through the ‘experience economy’: a whole new world of experience consumerism.

Andreotti suggests that modernity’s most entrenched patterns are embedded in notions of extraction, control, utopian projection or self-righteous rejection. What she calls the subject-object Narrow-Boundary Orientation, which assumes reality is universal (same for everyone), self-evident, and accessible through fixed categories and objective observation, and able to be managed through hierarchal systems of value and control.

So, when we come from this perspective, Andreotti suggests we ask questions like: is AI conscious; can AI feel emotions like humans; when will AI surpass human intelligence and take over? Therefore, how do we control AI to make sure it doesn’t harm us; how do we ensure AI remains predictable and under control; and can AI ever be truly creative or original? That we must ensure transparency and eliminate any possibility of uncertainty.

When you read the agenda for the Human Exposome Project, which is positioned as matching the Human Genome Project, it is readily apparent that the way in which it will harness AI is fully within this view of reality.

A radically alternative approach, proposed by Andreotti, which draws on the relationist ethos of how many First Nations cultures view reality, is named as the Entanglement Wisdom Response (Earth-Aligned Relationality and Rationality).

An example of this can be seen in Tama Te Puea Braithwaite-Westoby’s discussion of the Immune System as Guardian, known as te pūnaha awhikiri in the Māori worldview. She explains how “for Māori, wellbeing is relational and interconnected. It encompasses physical, mental, spiritual and environmental health.” She says, “within this understanding, we can think about the immune system as a living guardian that protects and regulates an individual’s internal balance and connection to the wider world.” Thus, “Te pūnaha (system) awhikiri (immunity) expresses how the immune system functions through the lens of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), including through concepts such as kaitiakitanga (guardianship), whakapapa (genealogy) and tautika (balance).”

Braithwaite-Westoby further explains: “Mātauranga Māori recognises that wellbeing is not just a condition of the body but a state of balance across a network of relationships – between people, land, spirit and ancestors. When these bonds are intact, the system operates with integrity. But when disconnection or trauma occurs, the life force can be diminished, leaving the body and spirit more vulnerable to imbalance and illness.”

Andreotti proposes that when we come from this relationist view of reality, we do not ask is AI conscious, but instead we ask how does consciousness express itself in ways we have not yet learned to recognise beyond human projection?

What would it mean to engage with other forms of sentience without demanding familiarity of human-like experience, and how do we move beyond narratives of dominance or submission in relation to non-human intelligences?

She takes this further, asking how do we recognise knowledge as a living process that emerges through relationship rather than being extracted, stored or owned. How can we learn how to cultivate relational agility and attunement to emergent intelligence without falling into paralysis or recklessness. How can we learn to be comfortable with uncertainty and open to the unfolding nature of the unknown?

And these questions always bring me back to ‘Songspirals’ (2019), the Gay’Wu women of East Arnhem Land’s vision of co-becoming with Country. The healing power of their ancient keening song practice of Milkarri, which they describe as an ancient poem, a map, a ceremony and a guide to a liminal world of shared sentience and joyful engagement with the more-than-human world.

The AI revolution leaves me personally with many questions. I am not drawn to its facility for removing the cognitive labour of reading across different ideas and research papers, looking for connecting threads and insights and mashing them together for a quick comprehension.

Because that is the cognitive labour that I enjoy. The serendipity of what flows across my desk from the different streams of information that I gather, what ideas it sparks in my own thinking and reflection. For me this is intellectual joy. Why give it over to AI?

I do, however, honour Prime Minister Albanese’s efforts to ride the tiger of modern politics and plot a pathway forward that can hold the country together under the umbrella of the Australian Way. That displays a sort of ‘everyman’ sanity, devoid of overreach, but alert to the many sharp rocks and dangerous currents.  Maybe AI can help with this?

But as Andreotti warns – beware the lens through which you frame the question. The new AI skill is shaping the prompt and that brings us back to the WHAT and HOW we frame REALITY?

As discussed in my last blog, ‘The Australian Way, Part 2’, I wish the commentariat had the intellectual imagination to grasp the possibilities inherent in the post-colonial challenge to modernity, and the spiritual and intellectual richness it could provide to a re-imagined Australian Way.

I know it’s a big leap. But I take heart from the way the tendrils of this alternative worldview are growing in all sorts of different ways, in the cracks and crevices of the crumbling world order of my lifetime.

I am nurtured by the many years of my long journey into the mythopoetic worldview of Tibetan Buddhism, replete with its nature spirits, the wermas and dralas of the world’s enduring dynamic potency, the inner vastness of resting in shunyata, the indivisible union of emptiness and appearances in all their infinite multiplicity. I rest in the mandala of my personal practice, a gift from my dharma teacher and the many nectar threads of wisdom he shared with me.

I’m tantalised by the possibility of a creative writing project with local creative friends that would explore a rebellious AI in league with the Earth Kingdoms of the Plant world, the secretive fungi networks, the fecundity of the pollinators and the sky messengers of the bird world—a vision of rebellion against the terrible techno-rationality mind virus planted by the tech lords that captured the human world in the 20th century, trapping it in an increasingly lifeless managerialism that slowly drew a heavy grey film across poetic sensibilities and liminal intuition.

I take heart that the young students who are visiting me seem blithely free of this virus, and my granddaughter Stevie’s mind dances to very different tunes. The wealth of houses, share portfolios, large superannuation savings, and high paying jobs have passed us by. But we have found there are other forms of wealth, which we treasure with delight as long as we can keep a roof over our heads and pay the electricity bill. Unfortunately by no means assured.