The continuation of earthly conditions that allows human flourishing rests with us

The preservation of earthly conditions that have allowed humanity to flourish rest with the present stewards the earth (that is you and I) living a more restrained life.

The earthly conditions that allowed
 humans to flourish will only continue
if all of us have a hand in helping
 reach the appropriate solution.

Our addiction to the hedonistic good life comes with costs that are beyond the fiscal; ever since we understood how to derive energy from “ancient sunlight” (fossil fuels) we began to pay with our atmosphere, the foundation of life on earth.

The technological advances of humanity in the last two or three centuries have been wonderful and should be celebrated, but with care and consideration.

The accumulation of human learning has been wonderful, but now the trick, the real trick, the life and death trick, is to learn and understand how to apply that learning.

Human learning has been exponential and that has allowed food security for many leading to an equally exponential growth in population and the demands upon the earth’s resources, particularly from those in the developed world, have exceeded earth’s capabilities.

Many world leaders operate on the “crash through or crash” philosophy seemingly convinced that the latter will only eventuate is the neoliberals are not given free rein.

Those same neoliberals, and the growth at all costs supporters, are oblivious to, or are psychologically unable to cope with the fact that we live in a finite world.

Probably decades ago, our “learnings” should have enabled us to understand earth’s finitude and though that accepted and worked toward creating a more restrained way of living; a way that was not dominated and controlled by the accumulation of a human construct, that being money.

A vastly more important value in life, a value that is not a human construct, is that of relationships; relationships that can be honed and developed from the creation of strong local neighbourhoods within communities, largely ignoring that accumulation and growth at any cost paradigm presently promoted with vigour by the neoliberals.

 The Four-Hour Work Day might seem an impossible dream, but in the early 1990s the Internet and its associated benefits, seemed little more than a dream, but without it today’s business world would grind to a halt.

Landing a man on the moon once seemed like a dream and now it is simply history.

Maybe you could argue about the impossibility of the Four-Hour Work Day but as convincing as that might be it is an argument to which the world will pay no heed.

Unless we can understand the importance of us living a more restrained life, the world is going to produce an argument to which we will have no retort.

 

The idea of disenfranchisement by stealth

The idea of disenfranchisement by stealth is, as ever, on the front foot and subsequently democracy is in retreat.

Consider an evening’s television programming and the retreat become of democracy becomes obvious as does the erosion of enfranchisement.

The entertainment of most commercial television programming is exactly that – “entertainment” and never does it disturb a person’s thinking and cause them to wonder about how and why their country is being governed.

It is a malign influence and is counter to exactly the intent of Socrates who said “That the unexamined life is not worth living”.

Watching television, or being involved in much of contemporary media offers, forestalls the idea that we should critically examine anything, rather simply give ourselves over to the hedonistic life; a life in which consumption is king.

The idea of the Four-Hour Work Day will evolve from the endless examination of what it is we do; a return to true democracy in which people involve themselves in a civil society; work to ensure democracy is truly about one vote, one person and not one dollar, one vote; and realise that what is presently foisted upon us under the guise of democracy is really totalitarianism by the wealthy.

The barbarians are at the gate and rather than being prepared to subdue us with weapons of mass destruction they will use finance of mass destruction.

The Four-Hour Work Day is not about money; rather it is about putting people ahead of profit and as it works its subtle magic to rescue us from a life of slavery to the cause of the corporations, it will also play a key role in helping counteract the damage humans have caused to earth’s atmosphere.

The Four-Hour Work Day will dramatically reduce our use of energy, our use of fossil fuels, but what will in fact be a quieter life by today’s standards, will really socially richer; richer to a level we don’t yet understand.

 

Conventional thinking versus revolutionary thinking

Albert Einstein - the thinking that brought
us here, will not take us into the future.

Continuing with business as usual is similar to maintaining the status quo, needing only conventional thinking.

Switching to and understanding how we could be fulfilled and content by working fewer hours, demands revolutionary thinking.

Such innovative thinking begins with the abandonment of cherished, but seriously dated concepts and then their replacement with something new; something that sits comfortably with our evolving world.

Agile, athletic and energetic thinking will help us understand the advantages of that new paradigm; a paradigm that without option we have to theoretically, politically and practically understand, and adopt, because of the damage we have inflicted on the equilibrium of our climate.

Fulfilment in life for all thrives more on co-operation than competition and as Thomas H. Greco writes in “The End of Money and the Future of Civilization”  ….”to recognize that we all have fundamental interests in common; and to organize and co-ordinate our actions to achieve common goals”.

Working a four-hour day is about common goals and co-operation, but it is a concept that is unquestionably beyond the comprehension of most and being wholly disruptive it will end, without question, life as we know it.

Disturbing as that might sound it is in fact a good thing for life as it is abounds with inequity; an inequity resulting from a globalized economy being forced upon on a world-society still fundamentally driven by localism.

We have a globalized economy – money travels uninhibited by national borders, but even in the relatively economically tiny Australia we, in Tony Abbott’s words, “must turn back the boats”, illustrating resistance to a globalized civilization.

The growth mandate of the globalized economy clearly puts profit ahead of people and even a cursory look at world circumstances illustrates that many have been brutalized and plunged into poverty through pursuit of that tumour-like ideal.

Greco's book explains
the difference between
co-operation and
competition.

That unrelenting quest for growth is exactly what has brought us to this position and that causes me to think of Albert Einstein’s observation that the thinking that has led to this will not be adequate to take us beyond it.

Considering Greco’s observation about the importance of co-operation ahead of competition and Einstein’s suggestion that we need to refresh and invigorate our thinking, it appears obvious, at least to me, that we must willingly surrender many of modern life’s trappings.

Many draw their optimism from technology and human ingenuity pointing to our magical modern life as justification of their faith, but embedded in that conviction is a disturbing indifference to the science on which that celebrated technology and equally acclaimed ingenuity depend.

Most everything we enjoy in our modern world depends on science and yet we ignore that science at our peril; a science that unequivocally declares that we, because of our behaviour, have wounded earth’s atmosphere.