Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The Perversion of 'Be the Change'


“Be the change that you wish to see in the world,” Gandhi famously advised. The words once evoked some kind of a response in me, a wonder and excitement of possibilities. Now I feel they conjure up nothing more than a hackneyed truism, an overused and abused and essentially meaningless call to irrelevant individualism. What happened? What does the way we understand this phrase tell us about the Western cultural psyche and its approach to social change?

We live in a swirling maelstrom of forces pushing us to be atomised, selfish individuals, to feel a sense of lack, to try and assuage that lack through mindless hedonism and consumerism, to be disempowered, fragmented, lonely little egos, scrabbling for a sense of well-being and connection. Many people can see that the castles we have built are not serving us or the more-than-human world. Many people know that changes must and will occur. But the ravenous capitalist machine, the physical expression of our self-obsessed individualism, likes nothing better than to co-opt challenges and pervert them into an extension of itself. Look at punk, now a selection of union jack/safety pin consumer identity markers, look at those branches of feminism that collapsed into advocating for women to have equal right to fuck over the world. Radical challenges get swallowed whole by a capitalist machine more concerned with looking inevitable than it is with actually working.

"Be the change" was never supposed to refer to changing minute and irrelevant details about your physical life. Changing to a mung-bean only diet and sleeping on a mattress of wool from only the most enlightened alpacas may give a smug sense of superiority over your fellow humans, but it is just another fragmented, individualistic and pointless gesture that really achieves sweet fuck all. I mean, go for it by all means if you just simply like doing those things, but don't then hold those gestures up to yourself or others as evidence of moral superiority or greater effectiveness as an agent of change. For a start, not everyone can afford such gestures, and so gushing about toilet cleaner made from the joyful tears of dolphins, sustainably harvested during dolphin therapy sessions, basically becomes a way of crowing about having more money than other people. Any conditional criteria for worthiness as a human will fall into this, because materially our society is so hugely unequal and unjust. And for myself at least, such moves always had a profound instability to them: the uneasy sense that if my validation was coming from not flying/being vegan/wearing hemp underwear/etc then if these things ceased or ceased to be recognised, I would once again be an unvalidated, needy and separate self.
Physical gestures are not something to build a sense of self from, and trying to do is just another iteration of capitalist consumerism, appropriating anything and everything into the gaping void of my own gnawing inadequacy. That is the mentality of infinite growth, and it is the mentality of the ego. It is not the mentality of life, which is always already sufficient and enough.

The irony is that by perpetuating these same thought patterns and ways of being, even if our actions seem different from the norm, we don't bring any change at all, only the same dull round of earth destroying hypocrisy. People always seem so sad and surprised to learn that a giant new windfarm has destroyed 400 hectares forest causing a vast mudslide that wipes out a village, or that westerners eating quinoa has screwed over the grain as a Bolivian staple to the point where the locals who grow it cannot afford it any more and are forced to less nutritious alternatives. We really thought physical changes were going to change the world. But it's the same thinking, and so it's the same results in different garments.

Be the change has come to mean "do the change, and judge others who don't". The western culture is obsessed with doing, and not very interested at all in being. I can see this in the way we denigrate those without a job, the way I have had to learn how to relax and do nothing without feeling guilty, the way we chase busy busy busy, anything to avoid feeling and just being. We love cats even through they really don't do much at all, why can't we do the same with human beings?

This isn't actually surprising - it is just what the neo-liberal capitalist mindset and machine does: it takes radical challenges and perverts them. 'Be the change' is a genuinely radical challenge: it calls on all of us to abandon the competitive, self-serving, narcissistic, neurotic and miserable patterns of culture and thought we have been socially conditioned into and made our own. It recognises that our problems are not merely physical: they are emotional, cultural and spiritual, and the physical woes are only the most bloody obvious symptoms of a way of being that is profoundly disconnected from the world and life that we are all inescapably and joyfully part of. It calls for an end to power and control as the go-to methods of living.

Only by recognising the capitalist impulse to corrupt and absorb, an impulse within all of us, can we stay true to the potential of the original phrase. To be the change we must reorient our relationship with everything around us, we must step back into feeling like part of the world, and fall in love with life. Only then will our actions be able to express the kind of profound change we do truly need. We don't have to do this, but why wouldn't you?

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Subantarctic Marine Reserves - Great, But Don't Get Schmoozed.

 New marine reserves - we must really care about NZ's subantarctic islands. But do we really?

So Nick Smith, our conservation Minister, has just announced 435,000 hectares of marine reserves around the subantarctic islands. Hooray, great news, you may think, but don't be fooled. Straight away I've seen/heard people talking about how this is so great. Yes, it is, but beware: by passing on the "good news" you are also playing your part in the government's spin machine.

They had a hell of a trip down: the navy boat HMNZS Wellington, with the Minister, DOC staff, navy kids, Sam and Gareth Morgan, and Metservice people was forced to turn back from a storm described as 'hell on earth'... 16 metre waves and gusts up to 90 knots (166kph)...eek! Even allowing for the usual nautical exaggeration that would be really, really full on. There's a reason there's an old saying - Below 40 degrees south there is no law. Below 50 degrees there is no god. The captain said it was the worst sea he'd ever sailed in and admitted to having been afraid.

To give you an idea, this is about a 3 or 4 metre swell from the high aft deck of the 45m Spirit of NZ:

Multiply that by 4... Eek! So I was curious, why is the Minister braving these (not unusual for that patch of ocean) conditions? I'd heard rumours about setting up a climate monitoring station (great, let's spend money on better instruments to watch humans change the climate rather than on stopping changing the climate) and that may well still be a thing.

But this announcement about the marine reserves makes the trip make more sense. This government has come under increasing criticism for its 'drill it, mine it, frack it' ideology, inaction on climate change, and general mood of not giving a fuck about the natural world we depend upon. People's dissatisfaction is showing with, among other things, the growing momentum of the oil free movement. But now along comes election year, and the blokes in charge are a bit worried about their image, and someone has had the genius idea that we can announce vast tracts of distant ocean as marine reserve and look really, really, ridiculously environmentally caring.

I have no problem with making marine reserves in the subantarctics. But before you celebrate, consider how much impact these reserves are really going to have. Are any existing activities drastically going to change down there? And what else is going on that might endanger these places?

I sailed to Campbell Island last year and Nick Smith is right in saying that this place, along with the Auckland and Bounty Islands, is "one of the most pristine places on earth". It is one of the most amazing and precious places I have ever been lucky enough to visit. I sailed there on Tiama to pick up 6 scientists and bring them back to Bluff - our steel hulled sailboat is the prime mode of transport for scientists working on the subantartic islands. We happened to be anchored in harbour for one glorious day and I had a chance to explore part of the island, meeting sealions, albatross chicks like giant fluffy skittles, giant megaherb plants, and so many more wonders.

Approaching Cambell Island at dusk, the cliffs lined with albatrosses (white dots on the green bits)


So many sealions swimming around the boat like pasta on the boil, and lolloping around on land like big dog-slugs. A little bit scary when they run at you...


Tiama at anchor in Perseverence Harbour, Campbell Island

Albatross chick - these guys are HUGE! They just sit there waiting for food for so many months - I would get very bored.

Nick Smith goes on to say that "these marine reserves are about keeping them that way"(ie pristine). "The marine reserve status that takes effect today means there can be no fishing, no mining, no petroleum exploration and no marine farming in these waters." That sounds great. But check out Campbell Island. This is one of the approx 3 buildings on the island, in a place where everything is carry in, carry out, you need to vacuum your bags before going ashore to check for seeds, and the animals are completely unafraid of humans because they've hardly ever seen any.

A built-up area on campbell island. #densitydonewell.

The activities mentioned by Nick Smith - fishing, mining, marine farming etc aren't happening here, at all, and no-one has anything like that planned. So it seems to me making the reserves is a nice idea, but it's not a heroic act of change - in fact it will have approximately zero impact.

But what WILL have a huge and drastic effect on these islands is the very programme of fossil fuel exploration that this announcement seems designed to distract us from. At the same time as the gvmt is ostensibly protecting these precious islands, Energy Minister Simon Bridges is travelling around the world trying to schmooze foreign oil companies to come and drill right next to these same islands, in the super deep, super rough waters of the great south basin.

(islands in approximate locations. The cream patch shows areas designated for exploratory drilling)

Does someone need to sit these ministers down together and let them know that water moves around? Do you think being tossed by 16 metre waves might have given Nick Smith the sense that this patch of water in particular, moves around quite a lot? It is crazy to talk about protecting these islands while subsidising the fossil fuel industry in NZ by $46 million a year (WWF report 2013, link below) and actively encouraging them to stick drills into the seabed's belly within spill range of these islands.

We don't have the equipment to deal with a spill a few miles from the complacent waters of Tauranga - we certainly can't handle one here. If Nick Smith was genuine about protecting these pristine islands, he would take a strong stand against deep sea oil, which threatens both the islands directly through the danger of spills, and us all through the challenge of our climate crisis. Beware you're not inadvertantly helping with this sugar coated PR game.

some links:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11212495 (marine reserves article)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/9760669/Hell-storm-sends-Kiwi-expedition-packing

http://www.wwf.org.nz/?10762/New-report-exposes-Government-hypocrisy-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies

learn more about the subantarctics -
http://www.ourfarsouth.org/

Friday, January 3, 2014

Mind Over Oily Matter


How Risk Really Works: A Play
[setting: a board room table. There may be cigars.]

Man 1: ok folks, the good news is we've struck more black gold and the select company here are all invited to invest.
Man 2: gosh dang that sounds great – but what's the risk here? We're a bit snowed under being bled dry for a teensy paint accident about half a million years ago – those environmental protection agency folks sure know how to hold a grudge. Worse than my wife, haw haw.
Man 1: well, it's pretty risky – in fact you know what, I think we'll cause everything to go horribly wrong and we'll have a giant spill that we'll be unable to cap that will spill 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean, wreaking havoc with ecosystems and human health for the foreseeable future. How does that sound folks?
Man 2: oh. Well that don't sound too good. But shucks, sure we'll invest – it would be rude not to!
Man 3: why not – count us in!

*****

In Joseph Conrad's Typhoon, the hubristic Captain MacWhirr steers his ship and all aboard towards disaster because he refuses to deviate from his course in the face of an encroaching storm. His name gives it away: he is mechanically determined to transcend the watery element and drive full steam ahead through the maelstrom. Conrad punishes this disconnected hubris with the typhoon of the title, as the ocean that the captain can only see as a vacant and passive background reveals its active agency.

Every good captain that I have ever trusted my soul to aboard a boat, large or small, knows that the sailors are not in control of the voyage. The ocean is in control of the voyage, and we will make our course and destination when our aims align with the whims of the water. The sea is not malevolent, just as it is not beneficent: it is sublimely impersonal. The beauty and the danger come from the fact that it really doesn't give a shit about our vessel. We can prepare; we can carry sea anchors and storm sails and liferafts and EPIRBS and radios and rosaries, but we are not the only parties controlling the outcome of every voyage, and the qualities I most admire in good sailors are flexibility and humility – not to be found in egotists like MacWhirr. Being response-able means having the ability to respond, both materially and in terms of humility and creativity.

In other words, the best sailors I know respect the sea, in all its moods. There is a hyper-masculine, clichéd character who is all too common, who goes to sea seeking to master the ocean, to dominate the vagaries of the wind and tide and control the uncontrollable. He doesn't usually have a sailboat. He has a two-storey white shiny monstrosity called "SeaRenity" or "Well Hung". This is the attitude that gets you into trouble when a squall stirs the water into unexpected revolt. There's no partnership with the wind or the water, just ego versus elements. There is no ability to respond, because there is very little respect.

This is the attitude I see in Key, Bridges et al's refusal to countenance the possibility of a spill from deep water drilling. I see a hubristic arrogance that expects to be able to rewrite the risk statistics simply by concealing them. They seem to imagine that the 1 in 30 deep sea wells which spill were prefixed by the conversation above, planning their disasters. Noone plans to have a spill, and to pretend that all that is required to prevent one is assurances with clenched teeth that nothing could possibly go wrong is the attitude that will fail to be prepared if one were to occur. It's MacWhirr again: bloody minded arrogance, unimaginative, inflexible, and inside, very frightened.

It is this obsession with control that scares me – that takes humans as the lead character, money as the key motive, and all else is background and resource, permitted to exist purely in terms of what it can give us in capital gain. I don't think it's possible to make the ocean play this game. It doesn't know the rules. I wouldn't sail with these captains – I think they're out of their depth.


ps – anyone looking for some long term investment opportunities? http://www.thestreet.com/story/12197676/1/time-to-buy-anadarko.html