AND YET

This post is a response to  world where traditional sources of hope and aspiration in our modern world of intensifying consumerism, frustrated rage and anxiety, are no longer available to most of us. And the promises of our political leaders no longer ring true. We long for authenticity but fall prey to the seductions of vulgarity that cut through the smiling niceties of polite hypocrisy. It is a response to the anguish of our children and their children as they face into the challenges of the 21st century Collapse—the Rupture of the post WWII world order that promised so much. The humanitarian liberalism and freedoms of democracy. The social justice and equality of communism. The end of patriarchy and women’s emancipation. The global communitarianism of social media connection.

In this moment, is it still possible to face the gathering darkness and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?
(Barry Lopez, “Love in a Time of Terror”, quoted in Roshi Susan Murphy “A Fire Runs Through All Things” (2023).

THE END OF PROGRESS

In his recent talk at the Australia Institute, Yanis Varoufakis repeated the warning of many: when people lose hope that things can get better, they look for someone to blame. When prosperity and improved living standards are promised, but not delivered, unmet expectations turn to grievance.  This is the soil that breeds fascism, the lethal yearning for a strong leader who will ‘make things right again’, for salvation from the sense of failure that we can no longer meet the goals society has set for our sense of self-respect.

For a society that has been brought up on the belief in Progress: on the capacity of human ingenuity to deliver ever increasing control over nature to produce higher living standards of material wealth, health and wellbeing for each generation, the harsh reality that this dream can no longer be fulfilled is difficult to bear.

—That climate change due to global warming is not something for which there is a ready tech-fix, or something we can ‘wish away’ as a bad dream or ‘fake news’;

—That environmental degradation due to industrialised mono-agriculture, mining extraction, clear-felling of forests, damming of rivers and intensive irrigation, cannot be overcome with another tech-fix;

—That a global order underpinned by the United Nations and US financial and military supremacy as a reliable agent of democratic political norms has collapsed into a new disorder of ‘gangster morality’. A form of nihilism, which sanctifies force and the will of the leader over any commitment to truth, science, civility or reasoned norms. As even the Liberal politician Andrew Hastie, a veteran of wars, notes: in terms of Iran, Trump acted as an “apex opportunist”. There is a new world order, he said, and to think otherwise is to live in a “fantasy land”.

This is the soil that is breeding the rise and rise of the manosphere among Gen Z, the generation of “Lost Boys’, who are rejecting ideas of gender equality, and looking for the assertion of traditional patriarchal values that validate male control over women in both the private and public sphere.  In the online world of manosphere conversations, this is the new story that Trump was able to weaponise in his MAGA movement. Kate Scott, in her article on this phenomena explains:

Young men are told their personal setbacks are not the result of a weakening worldwide economy or personal failings, but rather the consequence of a society that has become too “soft”. They hear that the push for gender equality has made traditional masculinity a thing of the past – that men are being ignored, emasculated and left behind.

As the political and cultural landscape continues to evolve, understanding this phenomenon isn’t just a matter of curiosity, but a key to addressing the needs of a generation still trying to find its place in a confusing world.

RECLAMATION

Reclamation is not just about environmental repair. It is about our inner spiritual repair. To prosper in this new world order of gangster morality, we have to redefine the meaning of Progress. Not in the materialist terms of more and more consumption. Not in the mercantilist terms of more productivity via human displacement with algorithmic capitalism, but in a new relationship with the Earth.  In our highly urbanised world, mediated by screens and defined by consumerism, we have lost our sense of deep connection to our home, Mother Earth.  But as the ancients have warned us, whether in Greek mythology or Aboriginal songlines, the ‘gods’ have enshrined wise limits on human power. If human beings, through hubris, cross the line, the furies or the goddess Nemesis will intervene to restore the world to balance.

The story of hope in today’s world must follow the rupture, not just with the global rules-based order under Pax Americana, but rupture with progress as materialist consumption and techno-fascism over the natural world.

It is to reclaim our spiritual connection with the natural world and a sense of inner contentment and simple pleasure in community connections and creative expression. Not as a search for fame and professional success, but as the expressiveness of the innate creativity we see in children—in poetry, story-telling, tactile crafts and visual arts, dance, music and performance.

PERSPECTIVE

As Albert Camus warned, in the wake of WWII and its legacy of Nazism and fascism:

In a war of all against all, the thing is to command the high ground to denounce others, before they can turn on you. The only values in this “fallen” worldview are strength, cunning and the will to power. The step into political fascism only requires identification with a “strong leader” who emerges in times of social unrest and who promises to redress followers’ grievances, by singling out “others” to blame and mercilessly weeding them out.

While Albanese and Carney in the emergent Middle Powers strategy cling to the possibility of a reformed new world order built on humanitarian values, no such order is evident in the current Middle East war, where there are no heroes and lots of collateral damage.

A genocidal Israel in alliance with a Gangster US, and its proxy neo-colonies in the Gulf Oil States, with their gross displays of soaring material wealth, is set against the fundamentalist tyranny of an Islamic theocratic state and its murderous Revolutionary Guard, and ISIS inspired insurgents.

As Iran seems determined to underline, the world’s global economy will be the collateral damage that will impact all of us. Forget about political arguments about falling ‘standards of living’. In such a world, deprived of morality, the rich and powerful seek to shore up their privilege, while the rest of us are left to fare as best as we can.

THE POLITICAL RESPONSE

The Australia’s government tries to talk up our economic growth potential as a critical minerals superpower in the new AI world, and shore up our standard of living against inflation woes by delivering more and more access to bulk-billed medicare, cheaper medicines, reductions to student debt.

The Opposition parties talk about collapsed productivity, the need to reduce government spending and focus culture wars on immigrants and Australian citizen ISIS brides and their children, trapped in the Syrian war zone, and continue to live in a fantasy land of cheap fossil fuel energy, just there for the taking—climate change be damned.

And so, more and more of us, turn away from the daily news cycle and retreat into fantasy fiction, podcasts, binge watching old movies. Anything to escape the assault on our yearning for truth, hope and clarity in the face of a world gone rogue.

HOPE

There is a fundamental difference between ‘hope’ and ‘aspiration’.  The idea of ‘hope’ is having a positive attitude to life. It has a spiritual dimension, and goes well beyond material goods and worldly success in careers and business. It is linked to that quality of inner resilience that helps us get through difficult times—setbacks due to our own mistakes or circumstances beyond our control. It is filled with the tone of nurturance, not blame.

Christianity, through the story of Jesus and his practice of limitless love, mercy and inclusiveness of social outcasts has long offered such nurturance to those going through difficult times, or born into difficult situations. And yet this quality of inclusive mercy and nurturance has been too easily lost in the culture wars of moral panic (homophobia, transgender issues, racial displacement), and in the pernicious impact of the ‘prosperity doctrine’ that links worldly success to being in God’s favour.

Buddhism offers a radically different approach to hope. Instead, it advocates the development of inner contentment, declaring that while we cannot control many circumstances in our lives, we can control our attitude towards them. Hope (desire/expectations) and Fear (anger/anxiety) are regarded as the enemies of such inner contentment, trapping us in discontentment, frustration and anxiety. Instead, it suggests we seek freedom from such hope and fear:

• Hope for gain and fear of loss
• Hope for fame and fear of blame/infamy
• Hope for success and fear of failure
• Hope for happiness and fear of suffering

That we cultivate an attitude of equanimity and fearlessness, based on an understanding of the impermanent and interdependent nature of all experience, and the direct experience of our own inner capacity for clarity and compassion in the face of life’s challenges.

ASPIRATION

Aspiration, on the other hand, in modern society is intimately linked to the promise of success, of upward social mobility, of economic reward and improved status, of improved living standards in material terms—income, housing, discretionary spending. The glow of pride that comes with how you see yourself in the mirrored reflection of others. It has spiritual links to the ‘prosperity doctrine’ of Protestant Christianity whereby ‘success’ is a sign of being in God’s favour, while ‘failure’ is a sign of not only worldly failure, but moral failure.

This is the dilemma facing politicians who focus on the story of ‘aspiration’ and improved living standards via the old formula of tax cuts (keep more of what you earn), rewarding individual enterprise (private profit), producing rental housing for those who can’t afford to buy by harnessing private investment through tax incentives (negative gearing and capital gains tax reduction) and reducing government spending by privatising services (child care, aged care, education, disability support) and outsourcing the work of public administration and policy development to private consultancy firms.

This is the recipe provided by the neo-liberal economics that remains the stock-in-trade of today’s Liberal Party as put forward by the new Shadow Treasurer, Tim Wilson. The AI Revolution currently sweeping the globe promises to be the next iteration of this failed economic philosophy in search of mythical ‘productivity’ to allow the dream of Progress and improved Living Standards to continue with its hollow messaging.

While the privileged continue to sprout this nonsense, the rest of us know it is hollow. Whether this breeds the rage of false promises, or the wisdom of reframing our idea of aspiration and meaning from material consumption and career success to one of a renewed sense of spiritual connection to place and community, is the real test of today’s leadership, at all levels of the body politic.

The Vietnamese Buddhist leader, Thich Nhat Hanh left us with a simple daily practice of appreciation: a smile of greeting, a breeze on a hot day, the shade of a tree, the dance of clouds in the sky, the morning song of birds, laughter of children, the delicious taste of clear water, a hot shower, a warm and nourishing meal.

REGAINING OUR INNER SOVEREIGNTY

The habit of such a daily practice of appreciation becomes ever more important in a world of algorithmic capitalism, where our attention is harvested by social media algorithms to drive advertising revenue, and AI chatbots now invade our psychic interiority as new ‘on-demand’ friends, therapists and even lovers. Offering a ‘safe’ sense of intimacy with others, but which is but a narcissistic mirror of our yearnings, and which will be harvested by algorithmic capitalism for someone else’s profit. Love and intimacy available as a ‘subscription service’ offered at a reasonable price by Silicon Valley.

In his interview with Shayla Love, Michael Pollan says: “I read a pretty striking statistic in the New York Times, that 72% of teenagers are turning to AI for companionship. We’re reading about people falling in love with chatbots, people using them as therapists, people using them as friends, kids who come home from school and they want to tell their chatbot about what happened during the day before they tell their parents.”

In his book, “A World Appears”, Pollan argues that in this world of algorithmic capitalism taking over our live and gangster morality taking over the world, we must increasingly guard our minds and reclaim the sovereignty of our own inner interiority—our world of dreams, feelings, rumination, reflection. 

To detach from our interdependency with an algorithmically mediated reality and all the emotions it stirs, and regain our sense of interdependency with the natural world—of trees, flowers, flowing river waters, the sound and flight of birds, the small nocturnal creatures who inhabit our forests, the insects who turn our soil and pollinate our plants, the rich array of sea creatures in our oceans, the whisper of wind in the trees. The dance of clouds in the day sky, and the sparkle of stars in the night sky.