Putting it all together 16 June, ‘2021
Today’s news includes the conclusion of the Climate Change Committee that the country is ‘Shockingly unprepared’ for the effects of climate change even though Councils are taking some steps. Sound familiar?
As with the pandemic, plenty of planning leads to few steps actually being taken until the h full force of the problem is upon us.
That may be due to a mixture of human nature and institutional inertia. And yet there is a bigger question?
Why can we not examine the way we live and the adjustments we need to make if we are to live in harmony with our environment rather than continue to see the goal as finding new means, usually increasingly technological, to go on living as we are?
And to go on living as we are with little or no regard to what our environment is telling us?
Does our way of living, whilst ticking lots of boxes in terms of what we have come to expect, actually represent what is best for us? Does our environment mirror back to us a measure of the answer to that which we are unable or unwilling to fully look at?
What ails the environment, what inflicts pain and loss upon it, sooner or later and more or less directly comes back to us.
Can there be any doubt about it?
And yet how much notice do we still take of this? How much are we prepared to meet the message being brought to us, so as to be able also to properly respond to it?
Everywhere you hear the word ‘resilience’.
It is so much the buzzword at the moment, whether in relation to the human being or the environment.
There is recognition of the need to work with natural processes in order to achieve resilience but equally too little recognition or willingness to embrace what this really means, especially when it comes to an impact on our lifestyle.
You cannot build resilience and create inner resourcefulness of a deep and lasting kind, one which also brings about the necessary changes, by using chemicals to avoid the challenge coming from the environment. That is not to meet and digest the message and the means by which the message is delivered. It is rather a means to avoid it, certainly as a fully embodied process if not a more abstract idea. The latter prefers a product over a process but this does not build resilience. Not in the terms spoken of, or needed, here.
This applies to both climate change and the pandemic and both require a fully articulated response to the question ‘What ails thee?’ We could do much more to meet this question honestly however we choose to respond to it.
But this examination would also require a coming together of all points of view.
And at present this is happening but little in all walks of life.
And yet I believe it represents at some deeper level our most earnest desire, however obscured this is by other factors. As such it needs to find its forums for expression and its forms for implementation; it’s articulation in every respect, so that the individual and the community can find their expression and mutual reflection. We will not find fully fashioned solutions anywhere else.
This is what our social, political, economic, physical and human environments are all calling for. When are we going to wake up to it?
The thing that joins everything together on this web site, the golden thread, is the idea of consensus. This means building up a sense of what a situation needs from a sharing of perspectives rather than having them compete. And everything flows from that.
Systems and situations, things and beings, are more than mechanisms. They require more the human dimension. And they require metamorphosis as much as management.
Consensus is not only what is needed. It is, more than we always realise, what is desired. But it needs to be properly understood. It is more than compromise (in all its many forms) and it is not the same as the working of the collective mind. It is also less about opinion and persuasion as observation and objective appreciation.
Consensus does not deny specific expertise but it contextualises it. And it emphasises individual experience. When these experiences are combined they form a path of research, albeit of a qualitative rather than a quantitative kind, and a means toward a tailored response.
So this combining of perspectives yields knowledge and know how. And this is an important corollary to specific expertise.
And again these are not competing. Each have their own time and place and they need to find their accommodation. As with everything else, it’s not about one or the other but both.
So that again is an overarching theme. And in politics, it means something quite specific. It means advancing beyond the Party system. This is what the times in which we live require and deep down it’s what each of us desire.
The preferring of old institutions to these new developments is not only a brake on progress but a tarnishing element.
The new is beckoning.
We will not flourish by resisting it. It’s the path to greater and better representation but it also requires participation.
Without that something less progressive and more singular will fill the void.
Within the plurality each must find their own voice within the common voice.
Otherwise more regressive approaches will be reinvigorated.
What we are talking about is the new social contract and we are even now in the process of fashioning it, or we are trying to be. It is still coming towards us and we are less than fully able to recognise it. Yet we can be aware of its stirring within us.
In an emergency it may be felt there is less need for consensus. But in fact even more of it is expressed. It’s just that it takes on another form. Either the government will do more to engineer our consent, perhaps by emphasizing the risk and persuading us of the need for the prescribed measures to be exercised, or by a natural or engineered enhancement of our willingness to acquiesce. So we will allow more and expect less.
We will accept what is necessary in order to defeat a common enemy and feel the unity in the sense of common purpose this engenders. So these are exceptional times but the desire for consensus does not disappear; it just takes on another form. And if anything it is in that form only more evident. Just look at the willingness to comply and ask what underlies that.
The danger with a mobilisation against a common enemy however, even if it is built on acquiescence, is that it produces a forced consensus rather than a genuine one. It is infused into the population rather than emanating from it. And it offers the one solution as the only one. It is unable or unwilling to see beyond that. And so you have a narrative which emphasises social responsibility on the one basis whilst overlooking the best path to the resilience championed so much on the other. To have a heightened appreciation of that, you need a consensus built on the bringing together of many voices, not the dominance of one emanating from a single and central place.
This also means recognizing the ongoing relevance of the male and female or masculine and feminine aspects. They have not become superseded just because individuals now have more of both within themselves. In this sense human beings are becoming more hermaphrodite. But the combining of the male and female aspects is still essential and indispensable for human creativity.
So, what do we have? To name but a few, consensus not the collective mind, metamorphosis as much if not more or not just management, organisms not just mechanisms, and the social creativity and innovation which the coming together of masculine and feminine requires. Without that, more progressive solutions will not be found; they will be too sterile.
All of this requires a working with, not against. The needs of the earth and the needs of humanity are aligned at this time. Can we be equally aligned with our responses? And can these represent human development within relationship - to the earth, to one another, and to oneself as an individual? These all need to be working together, not going their separate ways, especially at a time of crisis. A false consensus will not then mask a real one.
This will also be about building the peace (which is more than and different to ‘keeping the peace’) whilst elevating, not supressing, the individual. And about sovereignty in relation to community which has also become a preoccupation of recent political debate. The answer to that will not be found either in broad solutions or personal bias but only in consensus.
The above may be seen as an introduction to or a summary of what is contained elsewhere on this web site. To be sure it is still more selective than comprehensive in terms of visiting all the topics. But it emphasises resilience, consensus and relationship and these are the main things, together with working with, not against, what the environment throws at us.
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