Category: Truth

On 15 April 2016 the so-called “Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015″ was “Lapsed at prorogation” and the current status on the bill is (thankfully, at this stage) “Not proceeding”. I’m not sure whether this is a permanent status, or whether they just ran out of time and will return to the bill later… 

When I see the word “fairer” associated with this bill I can’t help worry about the extent that we are living in an Orwellian Australia in which “discrimination is fair“, “slavery is freedom“, and “lies are truth“.

We seem to be stepping closer and closer to the world of 1984, a world in which “war is peace” and “ignorance is strength”…

I mean, in what sense is this bill “fair”??

The bill proposed to withdraw the current paid parental leave for women whose employers also pay parental leave – meaning that mothers can afford to spend less time with their newborn.

This has been proposed by the same Government that, at the time of their election, pledged to extend government-paid parental leave to 6-months.

When releasing the bill back in 2015 the Government had the hide to call mothers “double dippers” for claiming parental leave from both the Government and employers (hence spending longer with their newborn) – as per the current parental leave policy that Labor set up to incentivise employers to offer extended parental leave for mothers.

Granted I have a personal interest in this particular bill not going ahead… I’m due to give birth (!) soon before the proposed bill would begin. If my baby is a week late and the bill has been passed I will lose spending an additional 3-4 months with my newborn…

Perhaps the Government’s new leader Malcolm Turnbull cares more about true fairness to let this bill go through. I cannot find any coverage of the “not proceeding” status in the media. I’m not sure is a sign that it will pop up in the next couple of weeks and be passed or whether they hope that they see the bill as a big mistake and are hoping to forget about it in the lead up to their election…

Language like this – calling something that blatantly furthers gender injustice “fair” – reflects an Orwellian trend that is pervasively working its way through Western culture.

“Liberty” used to mean freedom of people from slavery, but now seems to mean freedom for corporations to exploit people without interference from governments.

The freedom of speech our democracy prides itself on is slipping away as journalists are fired for expressing their personal opinions outside of work (e.g. Scott Macintyre over Anzac tweets), academics are ostracised for speaking truth against power (be it a PhD student questioning the safety and efficacy of vaccinations, an academic standing up against the demolition of Palestinian homes and schools in the West Bank, or fighting to host His Holiness the Dalai Lama when money from China is against it), and citizens face Draconian laws (up to $10,000 or two years in prison for “obstructing” business operations) for peacefully protesting to protect the environment?

Rather than protecting citizen privacy, the Governments and corporations are allowed privacy while citizens are stripped of it. At what point does a society say: no more?

Politicians seem to get away with saying one thing, and doing another. At what point does a society stand up against their short-minded knee-jerk policies that have led to 40km school zones on major highways, curfews and prohibitions on selling shots at small bars and pubs (and yet allows major casinos 24 hour licences, thanks to the big money behind it), and that increases police power on peaceful protestors?

As Hugh de Kretser, executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, puts it: “We need to call out regression like the NSW anti-protest legislation for what it is. We need to recognise the cumulative democratic harm being inflicted by particular environment, counter-terrorism or refugee policies. Ultimately, if we truly care about protecting our democratic rights and freedoms, we need to guarantee them in an enforceable national Human Rights Charter.” 

What does a society have to do to secure a Government that puts the common good of its citizens before the profit of corporations?

Is it about time that Australia had a Bill of Rights?

My PhD is essentially an exercise in communicating and examining the potential for an  alternative worldview to the mechanistic materialism offered by process philosophy to contribute to addressing structural forms of violence and working toward peace.

Process philosophy is too rarely taught in university philosophy as the current fashion there is divided between analytical or postmodern navel gazing. Yet process philosophy contains deeply enlightening ideas for anyone’s search for wisdom – which is what philosophy is supposed to be about.

Process philosophy offers a new lens through which you can see the world not as comprised of many separate “things” that impose cause and effect on each other (this is the materialist worldview). Instead process philosophy provides a way of seeing the world as comprised of “events” or “processes”.

In my research I’m trying to map out where this worldview sits in the real world, and what kind of impact it can have in bringing about a more peaceful and ecologically harmonious world system.

What is this process worldview? Further to replacing things with events, which sounds terribly abstract, what does it mean to see the world as process?

This short introduction by Jonathan Cobb (grandson of famous process philosopher John Cobb Jr), who I met at the Seizing an Alternative: Towards Ecological Civilization conference mid-2015, may be a good place to start:

How would seeing your “self” not as separate from other people and your environment, but as a web of relationships in ever-changing process, impact on your experience of being a self?

How can seeing other people as changing processes to whom you are in relationship with, impact your attitude toward that person?

How can seeing social, religious, political and economic institutions, as processes that are forever changing, impact your experience of these institutions?

So long as these questions are in words they will feel abstract. The big challenge that I (and other process thinkers face) is how to communicate these ideas in a world in which they seem so foreign?

How do you challenge the deep assumptions of the dominant mechanistic materialist worldview, when no one even realises that they see the world in this way?

When it seems so blatantly obvious that a table is a “thing” that is separate from me, how does one come to see that this view is tied up in language and in a view of the world that has arisen historically and is not the only way one can see the table? Is it really possible to see the table as an event? Yes!

The table has a life – it was formed out of materials that were once produced by nature, it exists for some time in its current form, and it will one day transform into something else, decompose, or be buried as waste. As the table exists in front of you it exists in relationship with you, and in relationship with everything else in the room in which it is placed. At a quantum level the table is a pattern of vibrations existing as a series of events in relationship with to the vibrations of the book or glass, the light waves, the air, the floor and so on. All of this exists in a geographical space, and within a period of time. All of this is being experienced by you in a united moment of experience—as a whole. So, one can see a table as a relational event, rather than a thing.

Is this just a matter of abstract academic wordplay, or is there a deeper significance in the difference between substance and process perspectives? Personally I see something important in this distinction, and like process thinkers I believe this is fundamental to some of the problems in the world today.

Whitehead sees all temporal objects as comprised of series of moments, “occasions of experience”. These occasions of experience combine to make YOU – as a process, in relationship with everything and everyone around you, for a certain period of time and in a series of geological places. The point that Whitehead makes is that the things that look like things, can only temporarily be called things, they are primarily events.

Such a view makes sense of the latest in physical sciences that show that matter is energy, essentially comprised of vibrations, and those vibrations are essentially relationships to other vibrations.

I do not know that I exist because I can think, as Descartes posed, but I exist because I am in relationship with other events that exist. I comprehend these relationships in a series of experiences.

What difference does this make, to see the world as comprised of events rather than things? It may sound abstract and meaningless but in fact this shift in lens CHANGES EVERYTHING!

You see, our Western culture is based on things. Our economy is based on money and the exchange of commodities. Our legal system is based on entities that are separate, the policies of governments assume a separation of people from their environments, our social practices assume that we are unchanging static entities, our universities and education teach in subjects and disciplines as if they are all separate from each other.

We prioritise what we can put numbers on, what we can quantify, measure, weigh. A process lens still counts and measures, but it does so in the context of a broader framework of real life processes: emotions, environments, relationships, happiness… A process lens evaluates and constructs laws, policies, institutions and practices in their context, evaluates them in connection to each other, with a big picture and long-term perspective in mind.

For example, the transport authority in Sydney might consider restricting the 40km school zones to suburban streets, rather than including them on busy highways (this really exists!) that adds to the time people spend in cars rather than with their families, with the traffic adding to anxieties.

Legal and political systems would seek to address the root causes of problems not just the superficial solutions, e.g. by putting in place rules that force:

• fossil fuel corporations to invest their profits in the development of green energy solutions (it might piss a few shareholders off, but it is in their own long-term interests as a human being who wishes to live with clean air, water, food, and with environmental systems that sustain life)
• all corporations to develop their products and services to be 100% renewable and recyclable, leaving the planet better off for human consumption (like ants leave their environment better off for their being there)
• governments to implement a universal minimum income (even if this increased costs of production the long-term, it would help to stabilise population and keep the economy within environmental limits in the long-term)
• encourage a return to small rather than industrial farming, animals would be given space to roam and cruelty to animals ceased (as they are approached with empathy, as fellow living beings in this world), and people would adjust their diets to consume the servings of animal meat they need rather than the cultural norm in the West of daily meat
• agriculture would no longer be allowed to mono-crop with the sole aim of short-term profit, but would be required to plant variety of seeds to maintain the richness and long-term health of the soil, and the nutrition and diversity of our foods (e.g. a variety of decent apples would return to the shelves)
• governments would no longer be able to accept donations (from corporations, lobby groups or private interests) but would be provided a set budget out of the tax income for sharing their policy plans
• provisions would be put in place to ensure a free media, not owned and manipulated by the interests of the most wealthy people on the planet

A process lens is to see the world as alive (rather than dead), comprised of organisms with purpose (as opposed to purposeless matter), and a world in which we are participants in the creating of the future (as opposed to tiny pre-determined cogs in a giant machine).

As I study Whitehead and other process philosophers I will try to expand on Cobb’s enlightening cartoon and this introduction to further explain what the world looks like through this lens, how this can benefit your personal experience of the world, and how the shift in decision-making that may result can contribute to bringing about a better world.

Want know more without waiting for my next ad hoc blog entry? Here are some fantastic sites from professional process philosophers and the process philosophical community:

• http://www.processphilosophy.org/
• http://www.pandopopulus.com/
• http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/

On my walk this morning:

–       I realised that truth, reality, and illusion, are completely relative and self created

–       the truth of a religion is truth for that person, it is made real by the stories that are told, and because each moment is in a way timeless, these truths are eternally real

–       yet when truths are examined from different layers, from groups, from societies, from species, from planets, different truths, realities and illusions are illuminated.

–       the Truth is in the Whole, which no part within can ever know.

–       because each person is defining their views in relation to the views of people around them, and each generation is defining their views in relation to the generations around them, it is possible to miss big chunks of data that haven’t yet been noticed. We repeat cycles of the past without knowing we are doing so. We evolve in a historical setting, often without recognising the evolution. We do not realise that our knowledge of the world and way of being in the world is dependent upon this historical context.

–       we have no way to truly relate to different ways of being, eg for a Western person to understand Eastern or Indigenous ways of being in the world is very difficult. We interpret others’ ideas outside their contexts. We act as if everything is static. In the now, in this very moment, it is static. Yet in time everything is always changing, is always in process.

–       we are missing something. I can’t put my finger on what it is.

–       Nāgārjuna wrote about “The Middle Way”. This is something I want to read more about. A middle way looks at the two extremes – for example the ideas that everything is real and everything is illusion, and negotiates the two in dialogue to see everything is both real and illusion. Yet even in this there can be something missing. I don’t know what I’m getting at.

–       in time things get more complex – like a tree branching out and branching out again; the ends become more numerous and plural; yet all come from the same single source

–       the scariest thing is how the nicer the ideology – the more conducive to interconnection, to long-term sustainability and peace – the more likely the people with that ideology have been to be exploited. Western invasion of Indigenous and Eastern lands.

–       Western left-brain dominated ideologies of separate and conquer, has successfully separated and conquered.  Right-brain connectivity and holistic being has been trampled. The freedom of short-term pleasure-driven egos to take what they can from the world, has left us in the ugliest of all situations for the long-term future of the Earth community. It needs to be reversed.

–       we need to use the left-side of our brain for planning and actioning a future in defined by the right-side brain’s vision of unity.