The Hames Report

In Free Fall....

Our civilization feels like its in free fall. Much of what we have previously taken for granted now appears to be broken as old operating strategies refuse to work any more. Just as humanity is waking up to the limits imposed by nature on what it can and can not do, so an impasse has been reached in our ability to deal with critical issues in a collective manner - that is as a species.

Over the coming decade we will face a cascade of massively disruptive crises that will feed on each other economically and ecologically. Many of these are going to disable institutional power players, opening up new space for alternative socio-economic, governance, and technological models to embed. As that happens, collaboration on an unprecedented scale will be needed to transition the human family into a world-system that is at once more viable, resilient and nurturing.

In that respect it is useful to examine two probable scenarios. The first presupposes enlightened and effective leadership from at least a fraction of today's political and business elite. This is problematic for three reasons. Those responsible for generating the problems we face are unlikely to be part of the solution. The new leadership will require a level of consciousness and altruism sufficient to rise above perceived self-interest and ego. Much will depend on the trust 'we the people' have in those leaders. If today's dynamics are anything to go by that, in itself, will be a real hurdle.

The second focuses attention on local resilience but accomplished in ways where the resulting innovation flows are accessible universally – for example through open source design, commons, and peer-to-peer communities. Again this is problematic. By and large the general public is insufficiently motivated, informed and proficient in taking responsibility for anything assumed to be the function of government. Federal governments do not easily relinquish power. And in any case grassroots organizations tend to be far better dealing with local issues and are not geared up to cooperate on a global scale, at least without additional resources and layers of governance.

Clearly elements of both scenarios are critical to success. Both must be framed within different logics of possibility and desirability.

I find it fascinating that all the hype in the business-government axis of the dominant world-system right now - from the online World Economic Forum, to the new Biden administration in the US, and even unusually explicit statements from Presidents Putin and Xi, for example, is all about societal transitions, great resets, transformations, a zeitgeist shift to stakeholder capitalism, new normals, and green, green, green!

Frankly it is a little too hard to take these New Year's resolutions as anything more than a new wave of money-making gambits. Just as previous initiatives - B Corps, conscious capitalism, the triple bottom line and various other "social impact" agendas - at the end of the day little more than catchphrases, but so readily taken up by the corporate crowd, anything that makes business sense, tunes into the public mood, and balances purpose and profit, is a gotcha deal. I can believe some of the heartfelt declarations. But good intentions only get us so far. It is actions that we now await with bated breath. We must see what structural changes actually eventuate, and how rapidly these gain traction. And we must pray this is not just another cynical exercise of rearranging the deckchairs once again - because that, dear reader, is all we have seen so far.

My cynicism can be traced to five factors that appear to be impeding civilizational renewal in terms of a substantive societal metamorphosis. They have nothing to do with technology, infrastructure or investment capital, and very little to do with politics. In fact all five of these factors are relatively intangible. What they do have in common is an affiliation with the cultural and psychological spaces within which we typically respond to shifting and uncertain conditions.

Very simply stated these factors are (i) the separation of ideas and social relations and sense of exceptionalism that results from the false premise of detachment; (ii) treating other people and species as objects to be manipulated; (iii) obsolete mindsets; (iv) the obtrusiveness of competitive conduct within and across all human activities; and (v) the fragmentation of endeavours. Let us examine each of these in turn.

As the umbilical bond human beings have with each other expands and extends, both through travel and unbounded online platforms, we have become more attuned to comprehending Homo sapiens as a global “community of mind” - as an experiential phenomenon on at least one level. Global communications networks, along with our capacity to observe events and natural disasters as they happen, have allowed us to feel members of a cohesive human family. We feel the pain of others in distress.

At the same time, the world has splintered into diverse factions. Starting originally with nations, then followed by myriad communities, groups and tribes - right down to the sovereign individual - this pluriversal mix of distinct, often opposing, values, customs, myths, languages and activities, lacks any shared worldview conveying a desirable common future.

Shards of information depicting who we are, what matters to us, and what qualities we emphasize, in terms of what we believe it means to be human, slam into each other to reveal a schizophrenic state, in which coming to terms with the remorse we suffer from wreaking so much misery on our fellow beings becomes almost unbearable. The only way we have been able to shield ourselves from, or avoid, such emotional distress, is through the pretense of separation - an artificially-imposed detachment from others and from other species that is not simply unhealthy but a delusion.

Coupled to this is the toolkit we have derived to fathom out all manner of ills, and to which we turn when it comes to making sense of tangible events and issues - or our world-system. Here, critical issues facing humankind are becoming decoupled from each other in our forensic analysis of them. We no longer discern the entanglement. Topics are separate in our minds. In first seeking that which separates one idea from another we fail to discern and appreciate the crucial connecting tissues.

When it comes to issues like climate change, the production of clean energy, or state-sponsored terrorism, for example, we continue to apply linear thinking (usually with greater enthusiasm than before, and even in the knowledge that our solutions are not working and cannot possibly work) yet stop striving to design a different world where such symptoms (of a system in stress) could not endure. There are a few fundamental reasons for this.

Myopia is very significant in this regard. We tend to become blind to the obvious – the things that really matter. The warning signs of a system in distress are there to be seen, but only by those possessing sufficient bandwidth or acuity to perceive them as such. We are more commonly deceived and distracted by the many thousands of iterations of a few seminal messages - smudging clarity and meaning into inconsequence. This “consensus illusion” often deceives us into believing we are operating with additional information when, in fact, we are becoming indoctrinated with much less. If that were not alarming enough, many vital signs are not appearing on our radar screens because they are either imperceptible to us culturally or are showing up only at the intersection of our understandings.

With few exceptions we are no longer in the habit of seeking evidence in the shadows. We have a habit of following the spotlight, wherever it points. This is why it is so easy for unscrupulous politicians to distract us by responding only to questions they want to answer. Even if we were looking in the right places we lack the tools to bring into sharp focus what we might see there. In other words the territory has changed but our maps and reasoning have not kept pace. We have all become so busy interpreting what is going on from our own, deeply embedded, meaning structures that we have become oblivious to viable alternatives.

Most people find it almost impossible to grasp the more complex nature of change. Consequently modern society, along with elected representatives, is out of its depth - deficient in the capacity to make sense of what is going on at anything more than a very superficial level. Worse still, as hype around our most critical issues escalates, our ability to confront matters is overwhelmed by a belief that such a thing cannot possibly be happening to us. It is simply too much to bear.

The result is that collective cognition shuts down, or diverts to less existential matters like sporting events, celebrity gossip and other diversions. This is becoming known as apocalypse fatigue. People suffering from this condition feel helpless to do anything about the issues confronting them. They would much rather ignore any threat to their own existence by acting as if it isn’t true, shrug their shoulders in despair, and turn away from reality simply because it is too dreadful to contemplate. Ultimately there is only one question that really matters. Whatever happens over the next few decades the wealthy will survive. The three billion or so people who are not so fortunate will be wiped out. Do we really care? If so, what should we be doing about it.

The Occidental mind, unlike Sinic, Indic, Ubuntu or even Islamic mindsets, is a rational device. It responds best to deductive logic, which it values over all other methods of knowing. Accordingly, those of us raised in the West have been conditioned into building and dissecting structures one piece at a time. We have been taught to analyze and measure critical dimensions before applying problem-solving techniques to re-engineer these parts. Using this logic results in solutions ranging from the brilliant to the commonplace.

Method, though, remains consistent - dependent upon ranking and resources. So one or more parts of a structure - those perceived to be the weakest links - are improved, while other parts are ignored. When we see a deterioration in different parts of the structure we switch our attention to those elements and ignore the parts we were working on. While we in the West have become very adept at this kind of structural reductionism we have neglected to develop similar expertise in the design of viable and enduring systems. Our greatest weakness, however, is in applying deductive logic to every challenge facing us. By excluding alternative ways of knowing, including indigenous wisdom, we are requiring all other cultures to engage through the lens and morphology of the Occidental mind should they wish to participate in their own survival.

Overload is yet another problem. We are assailed by all kinds of information every hour of our waking lives. It has been known for some time that too much information causes a condition known as sensory overload. This produces disorientation and a lack of responsiveness, as well as lowering our ability to make accurate predictions. Not only does this make it much more difficult for us to comprehend and communicate the complex patterns we discern in systems, constructing effective, enduring solutions, is even more problematic when we are exhausted by the very information that might have the solution embedded within it.

We have developed a highly refined sense of shifting the blame. It is not my problem is a conditioned reflex acquired through our instruction-based, rather than inquiry-based, educational methods. As we are herded into careers, social memes, and classes, we develop a highly refined sense of what is in our purview. We seek public sector solutions to our wantonly excessive consumption. We rely upon government intervention when our sick and aging need care. We look to the police for community relations. We look to the clergy for morality. Regardless of evidence showing a lack of cognitive alignment within our collective transmuted accountability, the notion of someone else should remains our dominant modus operandi. 

Then, when these systems fail, we animate them with our personal projections of an accountability that they never accepted in our opening premise. By focusing on the role of leaders and obsessing on artefacts of hierarchical structure we have lost our moorings on citizenship and personal responsibility within community. In reality we are the problems we project on others. But then we, too, are the capacity to solve the same.

In spite of the highly controlled machinery of denial, misinformation and propaganda a growing minority genuinely comprehend the seriousness of our predicament. A few are even trying to do something about it. But having a partial sense of circumstances beyond our control has also encouraged society’s communicators to go to town in ways that exploit our growing sense of angst and that are detrimental to longer-term planetary solutions.

Some have leapt on discrete issues to push their own frenzied (often negative, cynical and commercial) self-interest. As a consequence most memes expressing the evolving human condition are conveyed via a strange mix of edgy fear coupled to competitive dogma - rather than from any sense of hope, inspiration and abundance. It must be said that some recent strategies by celebrity politicians and well-meaning activists have also unintentionally contributed to an overwhelming feeling of helplessness that has humanity in a vice-like grip.

Most of the seeds responsible for today’s rampant damage across so many sectors of society were sown during the industrial revolution. Those seeds stemmed from a type of thinking that was uniquely Occidental in its embrace of growth and innovation. This was ultimately responsible for the triumph of Western neoliberal economies of course. It has only been over the past few decades that it culminated in the hugely exploitative mechanisms of production we are experiencing today – variants of the capitalist ethos that have become driven by greed and are designed to promote the acquisition of wealth above any other goal.

Developing states, including China, Singapore and Dubai, have started to emulate this model, or a hybrid lookalike. Today, because of the exponential demand for food, water, energy and goods from the almost eight billion people who live on this planet, a perfect storm of economic and social flaws inherent within the original design is about to break. In spite of this, all relevant societal memes are still predicated on the erroneous notion that Occidental worldviews and values hold the key to civilizational renewal. This is hubris and narcissism at its most evil.

Western views of progress already border on the irrelevant in almost all non-Western traditions. Future solutions to the civilizational problem must of necessity integrate and transcend all current worldviews if they are to be effective. That means giving an appropriate voice to those cultures, along with credence to alternative economic and social modes of development.

The political inertia we see does not spring from apathy or any lack of a desire to change. Again the problem can be found in our thinking. In this case the notion of competition (and the prevalence of competitive behaviour) traps us in circumstances where it is expected that we fight others in order to safeguard our own parochial interests. Thus the lack of any real political leadership is first and foremost the result of us succumbing to an obsolete economic paradigm with its associated suite of constraints concerned with preserving the national interest.

The fact is we are beholden to mechanisms, from the nation state to the G20 and even the United Nations, that effectively hinder collaboration on a planetary scale.

Conventional wisdom maintains that we are fundamentally competitive social beings. Most biological evidence points to the contrary. But this is part of the paradigm we must shatter in order for the communal needs and interests we all share to shine through.

If the lack of a unified vision or platform for change is a serious issue then the splintering of any strategic focus and alignment are huge contributing factors to a demoralizing diffusion and dilution of energy. Currently there are myriad discrete and well-meaning initiatives, strategies, campaigns, movements and media all vying for our attention and funding across a range of theatres. Such diversity is overwhelming and a distraction in its own right. There is also far too much talk and not nearly enough inspired leadership for action attached to these ventures.

The key will be to find strategic acupuncture points that liberate new energy flows, concentrating and embedding entrepreneurial passion and relevant innovations within the evolving world-system. A critical element in this regard will be investment capital for renewal. The injection of capital and resources from business and high net worth individuals is still channelled overwhelmingly into old ‘sunset’ industries and interests – including the servicing of war and conflict which is a highly profitable business.

Two things must change. First entirely new business models must be invented from within alternative ontological frames. These must challenge prevalent assumptions governing investment, value and profitable exchange, ultimately making it more attractive to invest in things like renewable energy, regenerative agriculture, mutual enterprises, charitable agencies and alternative governance mechanisms.

Secondly, however inconceivable or idealistic it might seem, we must wean ourselves off military combat. Peace is a prerequisite for societal renewal. We cannot create peace by practising warfare.

So there is our dilemma. For the first time in history we are faced not with a simple problem requiring a simple solution, but with a fiercely diabolical condition – a world-system so immensely and dynamically complex that even the most sophisticated and advanced reductionist thinking, coupled to rational data, and a host of incredible technological breakthroughs, are still totally inadequate to correct the unintended consequences of our original defective design.

Yet we insist on using old tools and thinking to combat this enemy. It is not the planet that is at risk but our civilization.

Dancing Dragon

For at least as long as I can remember, pundits in the West have been predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese miracle. If the speed of reform is not sufficient, then the unintended impacts of the one child policy will surely do the job. If it is not the numerous non-performing loans in the banking sector that are sowing the seeds of destruction, then it is bound to be President Xi's militaristic aspirations.

Depending on which expert you listen to, the list of possible hurdles - not necessarily invalid in terms of their individual gravity - goes on and on. And it is certainly true that China faces enormous threats to its future stability on a variety of fronts. But such factors are invariably distorted by the erroneous fictions we apply in a desperate effort to provide lucid reasons for why such collapse is inevitable. Myths like Chinese workers are good at counterfeit manufacturing but unskilled at innovation. Or, (I love this one) productivity in Chinese industry can never match Western efficiencies. Rapid and disruptive change of the kind China has undertaken is unsustainable – sooner or later the entire experiment must collapse, just as it did in the Soviet Union. Up-and-coming entrepreneurs leave China for the West where there are more opportunities…

To anyone with even a basic inkling of life in contemporary China these statements are deceptively false. Sweeping assertions containing shards of the truth. Loud firecrackers accompany the dance of the red dragon: a dance that has already reshaped markets, competition, trade and politics, pulled millions out of poverty, and defied the primacy of the Occidental worldview. For most of us the dance itself remains an exotic mystery.

Of course each of the aforementioned issues, as well as other widely acknowledged problems - such as escalating labour costs, the private property bubble, an aging population, and the drag of state-owned enterprises on the economy - could all bring adversity to China. But the simple fact is none of these factors have had the kind of seismic impact some of us expected and, let us admit it, secretly hoped for. Nor are any of them likely to bring China to its knees – now or in the immediate future.

My confidence that this is the case, a point that will doubtless be disputed by those who think they know better, or pretend to have a more informed slant on current affairs, is based upon a simple conviction: when the hordes of China-watchers tell us what is happening in China (and why) they rely on official versions of tightly-scripted public utterances, which are themselves open to misinterpretation.

By and large our observations are filtered through an Occidental lens that diffuses the reality. This also applies to some Western correspondents living in China, witnesses who fail to engage unreservedly in the communal socialist experience. Furthermore, upon closer scrutiny, many of the more dire predictions aimed at China are a mixture of ignorance, wishful thinking and a failure to comprehend three important tenets:

1. There is absolutely no compelling reason for China to copy the West’s most favoured models and practices in order to grow and prosper. All other things being equal, neither market capitalism nor democratic governance are innately better, or more virtuous, than state-supported capitalism and a unicameral system of government. Both can be degraded, or sustain their integrity. Both can benefit citizens, or destroy the social fabric of the society. Both can be gamed for individual gain.

2. Free market capitalism particularly, at least as currently practiced in the West, is never free and far from perfect. As its detrimental impacts and unwanted side-effects become more and more costly in human terms it is hardly surprising that the Chinese leadership should overtly try to avoid the more obvious traps they see playing out in the West as best they can.

3. Forging a uniquely hybrid path of state-supported capitalism, underpinned by a mercantilist approach to trade, as best illustrated by the Belt & Road initiative, is strategically shrewd - especially given China’s unique history, culture and Confucian ethos.

So within the context of China’s re-emergence onto the world stage it could be argued that the best chance of continued success will come from China doing what it has done for the past quarter century or more – at least since Deng Xiaoping opened the country to international competition following his visits to Singapore in 1978, and the USA the following year. After all, the record of social progress since then has been remarkable.

But these three tenets may also give us a clue as to an emerging factor that could be of concern. Indeed it could very well signal an inner erosion of confidence that eventually brings down the Chinese empire – or at least causes it to change tack dramatically.

This wild card concerns (i) a palpable rivalry between the princelings - the close-knit web of sons and daughters of revolutionary heroes who have slowly gained political kudos in China, (ii) the enormous affluence of this group in comparison to ordinary Chinese workers, and (iii) the intensifying social coercion, along with instruments of surveillance, being deployed by Xi Jinping in his efforts both to engrave his personal brand into the archives of the Chinese Communist Party, and to control a populace of some 1.4 billion people, dispersed over a landmass covering roughly one-fourteenth of the total land area of Earth.

Ironically this situation reflects a similar trend in the West where the disparity between a small minority of individuals and corporations with extreme wealth, and those who have very little by comparison, is a concern. Plug into those circumstances a penchant for increasingly authoritarian policies from the incumbent elite, and you have a highly volatile situation where a social revolution, an economic meltdown, or both, becomes feasible. This possibility was most evident recently with intensifying divisions opening up in the US followed by the storming of the Capitol. Socially the US is still very much on a knife edge. Meanwhile the Biden administration intends ramping up pressure on China over trade, human rights, and the situation in Hong Kong and Taiwan, rather than back off as was commonly expected.

Meanwhile on the Chinese mainland, the rot and the potential damage inflicted by any form of social unrest or civilian protests will most likely go far deeper, particularly since dynastic putrefaction and decline, after years of unfolding public scandals, and the recent antitrust push from China's Central Bank against the likes of Alibaba, have become common gossip on the street. If leaders lose their control over the prevailing memes in society, anything becomes possible.

Since taking over the leadership of the Party in November 2012 President Xi Jinping has repeatedly warned that corruption and decay have become so corrosive that they now threaten the Party and the state. He has criticized China's bureaucracy, hoping to curb the previously ubiquitous extravagance. Yet even today, claims are circulating about the fortunes that have already been amassed by members of Xi’s own family.

In 2013 such a story dominated the front pages. Bo Xilai, the former popular mayor of Dalian and one of the Party’s most favoured princelings, fell spectacularly from grace. The disclosures surrounding Bo’s inner circle, where mass torture was condoned and multimillion dollar favours were meted out as a matter of course, revealed a culture of ruthless fraud and duplicity few had imagined.

The case opened a Pandora’s box, effectively blowing the lid on the families of other leading Maoist revolutionaries and Politburo members (including that of the venerable Wen Jiabao) who, it is alleged, have used their status and abuse of official power to grow vast business empires and amass personal fortunes.

At this stage the long-term political fallout is hard to estimate. Bo himself was found guilty of corruption, stripped of all his assets and sentenced to life imprisonment. His downfall elicited strong reactions among the Chinese public and with commentators across the political spectrum. But as wealth becomes more and more concentrated in a small elite, the potential threat is amplified by the rise of a large, increasingly vocal internet community, that have no problems finding inventive ways to get around the firewalls of the state censors. 

Many people conveniently forget that Chairman Mao Zedong had declared the only way to break free from the dynastic cycles that characterized Chinese history until then was through 'democratic' reform. That was in 1945. What Mao did not count on was how the children of the so-called Eight Immortals, the founders of the communist revolution, could foul things up so spectacularly.

By exploiting the trust of the state and gaining unlimited access to high-level political connections, the princelings are reaping vast rewards from China’s explosive growth. In an outcome that would shock Deng Xiaoping, the divide between the rich and the poor once again echos the pre-Communist era, further delaying badly needed reforms to curb state control that is often used merely to mask underlying inefficiencies.

Massive change to the political underpinnings of China could be in the offing as a result of these scandals, although the trigger could equally be economic or militaristic.

No rapidly-industrializing economies have been able to avert a financial crash at some stage in their history. I would not expect China to be an exception, in spite of its sheer pragmatism. The cause could be any of a number of factors. Yet the one element the Chinese leadership is most loath to confront is the sight of Party officials becoming modern-day Rockefellers at the expense of the people. Deng once proclaimed that 'to become wealthy is glorious' although I suspect it unlikely he was giving his blessing to current corrupt practices that have the potential to subvert the entire socialist order.

It would never have occurred to Deng that generating wealth could cause a rift in the social fabric of the nation sufficient to be China’s undoing. But when you follow the money trail it’s hard not to see that as a distinct possibility.

Meanwhile the more likely scenario for modern China is a continued escalation of economic and military power to rival that of past empires - including the US.

Totalitarian Tiptoe

My generation was not taken by surprise. There was no sudden shock. It happened so slowly, and with such little fuss – accumulating fictions secreted under the surface of normality. Well under the radar of any collective consciousness.

The manner in which it occurred, too, was unlike anything we had been told to expect. There was plenty of chatter on social media of course – the usual muddle of algorithmically-curated content, sheer speculation, state propaganda and fear-driven gossip. I am speaking of the creeping totalitarianism that has us in its grip.

The world had been falling into a form of technocratic totalitarianism since the final years of the 20^th century when, old and exhausted, Western empires lost all sense of moral authority. Yet even during my years as an intern with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, I did not fully appreciate what was going on, or that my life could never return to the éclat of my youth.

Initial signs came and went without too many people noticing – apart from spikes of fear and finger-pointing that splattered across the next few decades. Other than that, it was like being in a hall of constantly turning distorting mirrors. Not one image reflected reality. The central narrative, comprising constantly shifting lies and fabricated half-truths, was shaped by those in power for their own ends. Naturally we were not to know that. We were too busy living in fear and being compliant.

The pandemic of 2031 caused not by nature, nor genetic modifications to a known virus, but by an unfamiliar pathogen leaking from the melting glacial ice in Tibet, was alarming enough. Unlike the 2020 coronavirus outbreak though, scientists were much better primed. Remedies were available within a few months and some governments proposed vaccinating the entire populace.

While it lasted, this plague provided an almost identical smokescreen to that of the corona virus fraud perpetrated years before, for an escalation in totalitarian activities. Bolder, and more explicit than previously, several celebrity politicians disappeared without trace, while martial law imposed across many regions provoked far less of an outcry. But then an event occurred which sent shockwaves through the community. At the peak of the emergency, the nuclear drone attack on Taiwan from an unknown source put the entire world on edge.

At home, a flurry of short anti-Chinese documentaries, professing to disclose new information concerning the treatment of religious groups had been aired on the deep web before being instantly banned by the regime. The film-makers were denied social credits needed in order for them to operate and their movements were restricted. I am still unsure what personal fate befell them. Nothing further was heard of them. As far as I am aware nobody dared complain or ask what had happened. It was more prudent to remain silent; to pretend that everything was as it should be. The material was dismissed as nonsense by the regime and subsequently glossed over by state media. Life went back to a humdrum banality.

There were no massive street demonstrations nor obvious public outrage. Mind you there was no dearth of new products in the shops either as businesses that had survived the economic dramas of the 20’s and early 30’s continued to churn out novelty goods and product upgrades as though there would be no tomorrow. Most people sat in silence, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, and saying nothing that could precipitate trouble. I too turned a blind eye, as civil rights I had enjoyed and taken for granted vanished in full view.

Public consent continued much as before. But something uncommon was festering below the facade of monotonous officialdom. A subliminal canker that would not take much to burst into an open wound.

What little civil disobedience there had been sprung in the main from young people trying to make their voices heard, crying out against censorship and other tyrannies. Their campaigns frequently turned violent but were dealt with by the private militias who were able to predict their every move. Comprehensive monitoring of the events, using state-of-the-art surveillance tools, assured minimal disruption to civic life.

After 2028, once 5G cellular networks had become ubiquitous, ramped up to 60 gigahertz, and connected to the Earth Now satellite system, observation was an embedded immersive experience. In spite of disquiet from some scientists, nothing substantial had emerged from the inquiries set up to establish whether electromagnetic radiation could adversely impact human health. Accordingly, there was not a single square-inch of the inhabited environment that remained hidden from view.

Coupled with the vogue for embedded devices and security patches, offered as gifts to every citizen in developing nations after the compulsory vaccination program developed by GAVI and the Serum Institute of India was complete, such security measures brought peace of mind to many people. Even though privacy was surrendered, we were constantly informed it had been overvalued while benefits to the community far outweighed its demise. Initial statistics were certainly convincing. Petty crime plummeted, traffic congestion eased, people with pre-existing medical conditions were alerted to the possibility of a stroke or heart attack well ahead of time, pollution subsided, and women reported feeling much safer when walking alone after dark.

Insurgency was now out of the question - or so leaders of the regime imagined. Everything and everyone could be seen at all times. There was nowhere to hide. The tiniest signs of insurrection could be monitored by the regime. Everything except the final uprising that is. They didn’t see that coming.

Deeper social currents ebbed and flowed subcutaneously. But the anticipatory tools used by the police were targeted at gross violations of the law. They only saw what they were looking for. And they certainly were not looking for any signs of sedition. Their mastery had created a neo-feudal world in which the elite prospered while most citizens were consigned to serfdom. Very few individuals succeeded in avoiding this trap. One of them was my father.

He had been one of the most prominent critics of the regime and their despotism. The media had branded him an uninformed renegade, disparaging his work and trashing his reputation. Dubbed a latter-day Cassandra by some, he knew what was to come, yet never deviated one moment from speaking truth to power.

His status directly affected me. I was identified as the son of a heretic – an intentional stain on my character which, much more than my Asperger’s condition, or the quantum patch stamped on my arm that holds all my personal details, remains an impediment to all that I try to become and accomplish. My travel is constrained, as are the web sites I can visit, movies I can watch, and books I can read. I can only meet with friends selected for me – friends that are approved by the regime. Software in my belt traces my every movement, likes and dislikes, how I spend my coins, what food I eat, and what decisions I make. Even my most commonplace thoughts, dreams and hopes, are known to the state guardians. But all that was about to change.

Yesterday evening, 31^st December 2049, was unlike any other New Year celebration I could recall in my 38 years. With international travel restricted since the great 2021-23 depression, and my personal ration of just two international trips expiring, I could only visit Australia to see my brothers and sisters one more time. This was the day I had been waiting for so patiently.

This was New Year’s Day. in the year 2050. It was to be my final excursion before mandatory cryogenic hibernation. But on this occasion, I had no intention of obeying the regime’s laws. I was about to join the uprising.

As I awoke to the sweltering heat of yet another day, a day that would be unlike most others, it was only proper that I should recall the portents and those who, like my father, had struggled to caution those of us who listened that all was not as it seemed. It was not that he believed in conspiracy theories. Quite the opposite. He showed me how shards of truth can be found in most conspiracy theories, while the many interposed conjectural leaps, scrambled alongside misinformation, invariably lead to conclusions that make no sense. His fascination with data-driven evidence, pointed to patterns in the complexity that could only be construed in a few ways. And he refused to ignore or turn his back on that fact.

Since Bangkok was abandoned to the ocean’s tides, and the capital relocated to Ayutthaya, I have lived in the far northeast, in the city of Sakon Nakhon where my parents built our home among the rice fields. Arriving into Sakon Nakhon’s airport is always an ordeal these days. In spite of fast transit times, the biometric security systems spying on you from the moment you exit the plane to the moment you leave the terminal invariably give one a feeling of profound unease. The sense of being constantly watched is inescapable – even in Australia.

Melbourne, the city I love most and where I first went to school so many years ago, is now an uncongenial place - partly due to the congested old trams that still rattle their way around the metropolis, the innumerable climate refugees who struggle to speak the language and even understand the customs, empty shopping malls and sporting arenas, and the growing civil disobedience of ethnic gangs. But mostly it suffers from the heavy-handed policing apparatus that suffocates any form of spontaneity for which we Australians were once justly proud.

For someone like myself, Thai by birth but an Australian citizen by descent, it is unappealing. A police state where my movements are monitored, and every aspect of my life controlled. It is a sad irony that Australians now view China with such envy, given the relative freedoms Chinese citizens enjoy compared to Australians. The tables have indeed turned.

The wonderful wizard of Oz was an old man hidden behind a curtain constantly needing to turn a wheel in order for his illusion of authority to remain intact. He lacked any real control. It was deceit. His capacity to create fear in those that served him arose from a fantasy. A myth through which everyone wrongly assumed he must be all-powerful to achieve the things he did. Actually, he was just an ordinary middle-aged man, operating machinery and speaking into a megaphone. Behind the curtain of today’s unhinged world are a few middle-aged men turning wheels and speaking into megaphones provided by Lachlan Murdoch and his father before him.

Today, more than 5 billion or more people will refuse to acquiesce to power. No longer will we genuflect to exploitation and injustice. After that early pandemic 30 years ago, the loss of liberty and basic rights continued more or less indefinitely. Governments held on to their new powers of control while billionaires capitalized on the confusion and fear. Normalization of government-imposed quarantine and other freedom of movement restrictions rapidly followed, ending up where we find ourselves today.

Like everyone else joining today’s uprising I have signed my last will and testament. I erased the quantum patch on my arm so that it is impossible for the regime to track me. Masks have been issued and the digital infrastructure hacked in such a way that my thoughts are now an inaccurate simulation of the truth.

I sense real freedom for the first time in many years. I have said my goodbyes. For the sake of the future of humanity I hope my sacrifice is not in vain.

A Collision of Worldviews

In October 2019 I was invited to speak at a private function in Shanghai - a city where I always feel among friends. The audience was a mix of party and city bureaucrats, senior academics, journalists and entrepreneurs, including one of the founders of Tik Tok. My talk was supposed to focus on the future of China within Asia. Given the luxury of three hours for our conversation however, it was inevitable that I would veer off track and follow my usual habit of provocation, particularly when asked to comment on the escalating trade war with the US.

At the subsequent dinner, where I was guest of honour, I was somewhat taken aback when a high-ranking party official challenged my views as being too lenient on the impacts of Chinese domestic policy, and my criticism of the US far too harsh. This was from a person I know well, who trusts my analysis, is intensely self-critical, and is daily enmeshed in high-level dialogues.

I left the reception that night feeling bemused. Was I allowing prejudice to colour my analysis? Were my predictions about the most likely outcomes of the trade war way off the mark when  identical views, rigorously researched and similarly expressed just weeks before to a very well-informed group in Los Angeles, met with unreserved agreement?

It got me thinking.... Events slithering on the surface of our awareness are often misleading, as are the semiotics of images embedded within ideologically-constructed narratives. Not only that but objective analysis is made far more complicated today by the propensity to broadcast fake news. It is simple to persuade people to believe one thing when they are actually viewing something different. Thus, most people will be easily convinced they are seeing indisputable proof of Chinese abuses of Uighur Muslims if they are shown video footage, repeatedly told it is that, and are inherently inclined to believe anti-China narratives. It is impossible to know the truth in these circumstances without access to the source documents and validation that these have not been tampered with or altered. In fact it is easier to believe the pervasive narrative originating from those we know personally, or are told we can trust.

As I suggested recently, in a piece called Nothing Is What It Seems, not everything we read, see or hear can be believed. I returned from Shanghai determined to interrogate my personal biases far more methodically in the future before making any more predictions about China-US relationships.

The clash of civilizations was a thesis proposed by the American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in a 1992 lecture. His research concluded that contradictory cultural and religious factors would become the most likely source of conflict between the superpowers in the post-Cold War era.

At the time this seemed unlikely. Other scholars took issue with Huntington's conclusions, mainly because they ran counter to the official narrative and information at the time. Today's tectonic power shifts, buffeted by additional disruptive factors, are generating an implicit crisis in which Huntington's thesis deserves to be re-examined.

At a surface level, this crisis is exemplified in the deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Washington over trade and human rights, as both nations jostle for global hegemony and the ownership of radically new digital technologies. On this basis alone Huntington's research would probably assume an imminent confrontation between the predominantly theological world-system set within occidental cosmology, as typified by Cartesian logic, scientific realism, and free market neoliberalism, and a secular sinic culture interpreted around Confucian ideals by successive Chinese leaders. I do not for one minute think it is as simple as that, although surface events are certainly a factor. I am far more concerned with what lies hidden under the surface of our perceptions.

In many respects US perceptions today are strangely unchanged from those expressed during the cold-war with the Soviet Union. Rules of exceptionalism and righteousness, and the fervent synthesis of a desire-faith on the part of the US that economic and military power puts them in a paramount position to protect the world from those who would seek to destroy democracy, still stand. At first tacit, but increasingly bellicose, this strategy has underpinned American foreign policy for at least the past 75 years.

The cold-war between the US and Soviet empires was one of ideology, mostly aggravated by speculative intolerance. Since then, ideology has been the unifying motivation behind every conflict involving the US - from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq, Yemen, and the numerous proxy conflicts being fought today.

But in spite of the continued preservation of conjectural inaccuracies from many observers in the West, fueled by the propaganda from Western media, China has no ideology to speak of, no religion, and certainly no official moral code that would accord with occidental beliefs. It does have an ancient past, however, in which dynastic values and familial modes of relating are inculcated.

Whereas in my experience Chinese views about the West are relatively discerning, Western views about China are quite often distorted, driven by a broad anti-China sentiment than by any kind of pragmatic analysis. China is no more socialist today than the Pope is agnostic, only slightly more militaristic than Belgium, Spain, or Canada, and no more ambitious for its civic society than almost every developed nation.

Nor is it particularly helpful to dwell on respective military capabilities - though that remains a fixation for mostly uninformed commentators. Since the US was founded in 1776, it has been at war for 214 out of the 235 years of its existence - on various fronts for the past six decades. During that time, in spite of its inability to actually win any conflict it started, the US has built up an arsenal of conventional and nuclear weapons larger than any other country, spends more on its armed forces than China, Russia, France and England combined, and maintains nearly 800 military bases in over 70 countries and territories abroad.

Putting aside recent incursions along the long-disputed Galwan Valley border with India - an opportunity to exert new tactics provided by the COVID-19 smokescreen - Chinese territorial ambitions are very limited by comparison. Patiently playing a lengthy waiting game, Chinese goals have been achieved by relatively peaceful means, and without the benefit of Hollywood movies to reinforce soft diplomacy.

Surprisingly though, neither the US or China are among the most militarized. While China is currently ranked 87th in global rankings, the US barely makes it into the top 30 of militarized nations. That prize goes to other countries like Israel, Singapore, South Korea and Russia.

So, if it is no longer ideology or military competition, what are the real points of provocation between these two great nations? Is it as Huntington imagined? The answer is embedded in diverging civilisational models - one advocating a distributed market economy based upon individualism, the other pursuing a centralized model of state capitalism aimed at benefitting the whole of society. Closer scrutiny reveals flaws in both models. The collapse of neoliberal economics is happening in full view in countries like the US and Britain, whereas weaknesses in the autocratic Chinese model are less visible because of strict state media controls. But that does not mean they do not exist.

Occasionally perceived differences do conceal some unanticipated correspondences. While authoritarianism exists in both China and the US, for example, there are significant variations. In China it has been used to advance self-confidence and social harmony, marred in part by the CCP's approach to ethnic minorities, on the back of a highly submissive communitarian culture. In the US, where it masquerades as a devotion to entrepreneurship and individual liberties, it has led to increasing division, hatred, corruption, and gun-toting craziness.

In technology, too, there are more similarities than not. Surveillance, for example, operates in both the US and China. In the US, like almost every other activity, it is applied to the creation of wealth. Many of our perceptions and choices are shaped by algorithmically-curated marketing which nudges us in directions favoured by those who employ the programmers who write the code. This leads to misinformation, a dumbing down of society, and belief bubbles that help fortify current prejudices.

In China, AI-enabled surveillance technologies are used to monitor and manage the society. Facial recognition is able to dispense social credits for good behaviour, facilitate improved traffic flows, and eliminate petty street crime. While most people in the West are concerned to depict such realities as being lifted from an Orwellian nightmare, for most Chinese citizens this policy imparts a feeling of public security and safety.

Since the era of Deng Xiaoping the Chinese leadership have abided by the dual approach of engaging in international openness while policing domestic subservience to the state. Due to this policy China has imported remarkable amounts of knowledge, mainly through a diaspora of students who choose to study in the West but return to live in China generally unmoved by liberal values. In this way China has become affluent while remaining impervious to Western influence - its guiding principles unaffected by overt criticism. US strategy, on the other hand, is invariably captivated by financial opportunities - methodically exporting manufacturing and jobs to China, doing deals whenever a few cents could be saved, yet always in the realisation there were no vexing health and safety constraints to deal with. These two approaches depict a clear divide between the quest for societal progress and the pursuit of financial liberalism.

The sharing of power works as long as certain key factors remain stable. Most importantly an understanding of how hegemonic power works to sustain mutual interests is crucial. If or when an hegemonic power becomes overly confident, convinced of the stability and durability of its hegemony, they risk losing it. The US is teetering on the edge of that cusp today.

Mutual tolerance and trust are imperatives in this regard of course. Although the US and China are still joined at the hip economically speaking, and it is in their best interests to preserve amity, dual threats have emerged that could threaten this equilibrium - particularly given how quickly perceptions in the field of international relations can morph in a bizarre fashion.

First, even though global superiority is still feigned, the occidental world-system is becoming unhinged, a bureaucratic mess of competing interests that constantly patches up the present, lacks a long-term vision, is hostage to corporate capital, and destroyed any moral authority it might have had on 6th and 9th August 1945. The presidency of Donald Trump and the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exploited cracks in Western society, have merely accelerated this collapse.

Second, the rise of Xi Jinping must be put into the context of a fragile global environment. Sensing an opportunity to immortalize his celebrity, President Xi has maneuvered himself into a paramount position of authority, stifled dissent within the party, and set a course for the nation to benefit from the disruption and turbulence that will characterize the coming decade. Convinced China can prevail against any odds, a legacy of patience has fallen to precipitous action. This raises the stakes with the US and could yet become a massive miscalculation.

Although the US appears to be on the brink of civil conflict, its economic and military strength is not to be trifled with. History demonstrates that empires often strike out wildly in their death throes, and US views regarding China's expansionism extend far beyond the ultra right-wing hawks in the Republican party. The Pentagon has elaborate plans for a nuclear war with China, and with evangelical fanatics like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in charge, we must assume that preparations for such a war are already taking place.

The next three years could be an incendiary period if China persists on its current trajectory. Many countries are trying to hedge, but the scope for neutrality is narrowing. Meanwhile any ability to navigate between the US and China is becoming harder each day. Sooner or later they will be forced to take sides. Regrettably, rival power blocs were a late 20th century experiment can will not work in today's context.

Allowing for the fact that a democracy of humanity, rather than a jumble of competing states, exists in a fantasy between wishful thinking and an empty promise, and assuming capitalism can be reformed and democracy purged of its corruption, a wiser move from the West would be to embrace China's traditional aspirations while denying President Xi his more perverse demands kindled by delusions of self-glory.

For that to happen the US and its allies must avoid regarding today's situation as a replay of the cold-war with the Soviet Union. They would need to rediscover their civilisational impulse, be more open to a distributed world order, drop their demands for an economic decoupling while eliminating all belligerent rhetoric against China, and help to craft a narrative that makes peace between all nations not just possible but the most compelling proposition.

In the meantime China will need to reconsider its political ploys in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Taiwan and the South China Sea, so that US-China rivalry does not continue to escalate.

We are fast approaching a geopolitical inflection point. It began when Donald Trump decided to launch a popularity contest against China without fathoming out a strategy for managing the fallout. It is estimated that around 20 percent of the world population would be willing to join an anti-China alliance. But the rest are not. Emerging markets in particular do not consider this a practical proposition.

Should the US try to inhibit China’s legitimate rise, or China seek to build an exclusive sphere of influence across Asia, the two countries would further deepen the global divide and begin a sequence of altercations that could last decades or end in disaster for humanity as a whole.

As the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci correctly stated when reflecting on a previous interregnum: The old world is dying, and a new one struggling to be born. Now is the time for monsters.

Nothing is What it Seems

Nothing is what it seems, which is why I routinely interrogate my every thought and belief. To be capable of seeing the truth we must first shed all of the accrued garbage within our minds. And in my case, there is much to discard, as will no doubt be evident from what follows...

The narratives upon which we rely to make sense of the world are fast crumbling. It is almost impossible to determine the current status and trajectory of the human story. Now more than ever, we are aware that our civilisation is in trouble, and on a number of fronts. But it is difficult to comprehend what is actually going on. There are three main reasons for this:

1. An incumbent elite, individuals of affluence and influence who own the media, content curation and data analysis firms, smokestack legacy corporations, a few politicians and, in some cases, the judiciary - are manipulating how we make sense of everything that is happening in our world to their own advantage.
2. A combination of surveillance and curated content is used to manipulate instincts and social behaviour. This smudges perceptions, blinding us to the realities of our situation to such an extent that it is impossible to get a reliable bearing on just where we are.
3. Everything we took to be constant is in a state of flux and uncertainty. One outcome is that we, the general public, serfs in the grand scheme of wealth creation and socio-political game-playing, have not yet realised that our trust in this powerful elite is ill-advised and unwarranted - that we are being callously gamed.

If we did fathom out what was going on at a deeply metaphysical level, the ensuing outrage would be sufficient to fuel rebellion. I can imagine people all around the world rising up in defiance of authority, using the sheer strength of numbers to overthrow the established order in fury at such a grievous deception.

We take no action because we are confused - still trusting those with power or wealth to act in our favour and on our behalf. Instead, we remain cocooned in a comatose state of indigence and naïve lethargy.

To be fair most wealthy individuals, along with those in positions of power, probably believe they are helping to build a better society and might be confused by any criticism levelled at them. More often than not they are convinced their wealth gives them the right to influence elected officials and government policy, that the fortune they acquire is thoroughly deserved, and that it will eventually trickle down to the rest of us in the form of jobs, increased economic activity, greater inclusiveness, and philanthropic largesse. This “trickle-down” theory originally started as a joke by humorist Will Rogers. Today it expresses a naïve faith in the virtue of those wielding economic power and in the workings of the prevailing economic system, although it has never been confirmed by the evidence.

Not having yet caught up with these facts it should come as no surprise that the more affluent members of society continue to agitate for tax cuts to assist economic growth – even though in practice these policies perpetuate inequality and intensify the inherently oppressive nature of economic stratification. 

The apparatus of oppression in ostensibly democratic societies includes the weaponization of fear, threats of unemployment and privation, unprovoked discrimination, the need to comply with officialdom, pointless work, and differing forms of propaganda - much of it xenophobic in tone. While these instruments have been commonly used to repress freedom of thought and insurgency, mostly covertly, the brazen use of strong-arm policing tactics is becoming the preferred approach as a more sentient public reacts to authoritarian abuse by state actors.  

Naturally this automatically exposes the intentions of those in authority to continue their exploitation, larceny, coercion, cheating and deception, all the while engaging in disastrous environmental destruction, the stockpiling of armaments, and waging endless wars for no valid reason other than to preserve and expand their power.

How can we allow this to endure when it threatens individual health and wellbeing as well as the survival of the human family? Is it because we lack the will or capability to confront power? Or is it because we have been so utterly misled that we no longer see any valid alternative? I suspect it is a combination of both factors.

The former makes sense in terms of the monotony and drudgery we are willing to accept in return for money, without which even the basic necessities of life, such as housing, warmth, food, health, learning, information, and even respect, are unobtainable. The latter amplifies this dilemma by ensuring that the mainstream narrative is based on scarcity and competition.

Maintaining the illusion of austerity and struggle is vital – as is allegiance to the status quo. This is feasible by managing the information used to sustain the narrative. In contemporary society the control of such propaganda is most commonly exercised through the ownership of mass media, funding research projects and think-tanks, advocating censorship, or purchasing the loyalty of shady politicians.

The results are undeniably impressive yet - ominous. For example, we are told that we live in a free society where anything is possible for those who work hard. We are assured that life is getting better for most people around the world and that Western aid is responsible for that. We are taught to be loyal and to view other cultures with suspicion. We are cautioned that those who do not share our values are a threat to our way of life. And we are then cajoled into embracing conflict as the most natural reaction to that threat. From the cradle to the grave we are persuaded to believe wealth matters far more than health and wellbeing, and that striving for greater affluence is the most virtuous of goals. Furthermore, we are constantly reminded that compliance with these beliefs is an accurate metric of normalcy.

These are all deceptions of one kind or another. But is there any escape from this noise and all the organized racket that dominates our waking hours? How can we find the mental space and peace of mind to evaluate the endless string of stories we tell ourselves, and each other, about what is happening in the world more dispassionately – searching for empirical evidence rather than the self-opinionated articles of faith from Google graduates? How can we ensure that the lies are impossible to suppress?

Perhaps this is already happening. Certainly, the dominant narrative is breaking down in ways that are startlingly unexpected - yet exhilarating. Old ways of understanding what is going on are not working, which is why we are confused. Trust in the most venerable of our institutions is in a nosedive, often with good reason. Confidence in the mass media, too, is at rock-bottom. Meanwhile we are fast reaching the limits at which we can cope intellectually and emotionally with the changes we ourselves have initiated and are also feeling helpless to control the tools we are unleashing.

Few can deny this is an opportune moment for a fundamental re-envisioning of society and a rebalancing of the world order. The case for a thorough forensic examination of our shared worldview - the civilisational model upon which all human activity is predicated - and the subsequent crafting of a new narrative that makes better sense of the human condition, is compelling. For the first time, armed with hindsight, and using the extraordinary technologies we have fashioned, we have an opportunity to construct a new society from first principles.

Whatever the future holds for our species, the COVID-19 experience and the year 2020 will be permanently etched into our consciousness. The wildly impulsive responses we have taken to this plague which, for some countries, has resulted in the suspension of all economic activity; the anxiety, fear, bewilderment, and emotional turmoil generated from social distancing and lockdown restrictions; mixed responses to the epidemiological and medical science; and the proliferation of conspiracy theories and increasing numbers of individuals who refuse to comply with laws aimed at halting the spread of the disease, is seeing to that.

Hidden within the news of increasing infections, deaths, and morbidity rates, however, new possibilities are surfacing. An outbreak of compassion and collaboration between nations and across time-zones, occasioned by our interconnectedness, is proliferating. Within the stillness offered by the disease is an hiatus sufficient for us to take stock of our purpose and direction, giving us a chance to reflect deeply on what matters, and to decide if we want to go back to a grasping, iniquitous, everyone-for-themselves culture, within which even the survival of other species depend on the whimsical decisions of imaginary constructs - such as the nation state, Google, Facebook, and the World Bank - or invent something entirely distinctive.

Our collective future must surely result from a process of cooperative design. A future that is more desirable and sustainable than anything we have experienced thus far can be generated by a combination of new tools and practices driven by a totally new mindset guided, too, by a comprehensive appreciation of history and of our limitations.

For that process to lead anywhere other than back to detrimental economic conditions and toxic habits, we will need to reprogram the socio-genetic code that strands us on an island where we are complicit in seeing and interpreting the world, and our role in it, as comprising:

• the biosphere as an infinite cache of physical reserves available for extraction to the highest bidders
• people as little more than objects to be instructed, traded, coerced and exploited within the system of industrial production.
• a cutthroat quest for scarce material assets in which there will inevitably be winners and losers

If we are able to take such a giant leap of consciousness, and that is by no means guaranteed, we might then be open to repairing the harm we have inflicted upon each other from a range of tenets we still take for granted and that are so destructive. Such as, for example:

• the accrual of material artifacts and financial wealth is the pinnacle of human ambition
• the sub-optimal design of our most life-critical systems is legitimate and unavoidable
• that in-built obsolescence and other ways to swindle customers is justified in order for a business to remain profitable
• that some human beings are inherently inferior and less deserving than others
• that people must labour to earn a living even when such work is pointless, and when machines are capable of taking on tedious routine tasks
• that personal data is not a human right and can therefore be legitimately owned and sold by a company irrespective of an individual’s wishes
• that government budget surpluses are a sign of good economic management
• that competition is the natural order while empathy, cooperation and tolerance are signs of frailty deserving of exclusion and derision
• that the power wielded by nation states as autonomous sovereign entities gives them the permission to do exactly as they please regardless of any negative environmental and human impacts

A new society is possible based upon precepts that are viable, aligned to changing realities, and are wise, engaging, culturally respectful and morally responsible. It only requires us to jettison what is no longer working for humanity as a whole, and to re-imagine new ways of being in balance with nature’s laws.

For example, we could become less focused on individual rights and more concerned with appreciating, respecting and preserving the human family as a whole. Less obsessed with rebooting the economy than reevaluating and renewing our morals. Less about reverting to business-as-usual stereotypes than reinventing obsolete commercial principles. Less about harvesting profits from scarcity than spreading and sharing the abundance we see all around us. Less about nationalistic protectionism and more about enlightened globalisation and mutual support.

These shifts represent a more informed balance between the state, representing collective enterprise, and the citizen accepting individual responsibility but balanced by a civic duty to hold the state and our most venerated institutions to account.

There are signs that such shifts could already be occurring - that our collective consciousness is going up by degrees and that we are awakening to the reality previously hidden in full view. For example, spontaneous collaboration can be observed in the many ways we are adapting to new lockdown protocols.

Although the fabric of international commerce is founded upon competitive rivalries, with new products protected by patent law, the urgency and unfamiliarity underpinning the current pandemic, together with the degree to which we are all connected these days, is resulting in cooperation between scientists and nations, and rapid, real-time, collaboration across time-zones, which is unprecedented. Within 90 days of the coronavirus outbreak, an extraordinary 250 therapies were in various stages of development. In a month or so, we are likely to have over 40 or more different cures and vaccines that are already in clinical trials. Companies are reinventing themselves, offering new services, and anticipating volatility in the demand for their products. Some countries are sending medical supplies and staff to assist life-saving efforts.

Clearly, we cannot expect this new ethos to continue, nor to become anywhere close to being business-as-usual, if we are constantly looking over our shoulders and wanting the world to be the same as it used to be. Nostalgia for the past is deceptively alluring. But a liar nonetheless. And while we must provide for ourselves and our families, we also need to work for the greater good if we are to stay in balance with nature.

In the case of a coronavirus vaccine, the next step in our dance towards a regenerative and cooperative consciousness might be to circumvent Big Pharma companies profiting from the research altogether, ensuring treatments are made available to everyone as commons-owned assets. That modest act would signal our intention not to keep serving the vested interests of an industrial age mindset and habits.

We can do the same with education. By shifting away from the 180-year old production-line philosophy, with its emphasis on outmoded standards and pedagogy, and by reinventing learning from the point of view and pace of the individual student and their context, we can avoid returning to the physical familiarity and comforts of the school campus. Much the same can be claimed for other critical systems, including public health, work design, urban planning and public transportation, construction, logistics, journalism, governance, energy generation and distribution, automotive, real estate and agriculture.

We know that societal systems like these cannot change from within given the gravitational pull of the existing paradigm. Although the practical impacts from implementation are always disconcerting, and can continue to reverberate for years, the only considered input needed is a shift of mindset – from one of scarcity to abundance and from rivalry to cooperation. Indeed, this is inevitably the crux of the issue when any kind of transformative change is proposed.

It is why paradigmatic change relies on novelty rather than the tweaking of the current system. It is why disruptive innovation evolves from the edge rather than the current centre of gravity. And it is why it is always easier to create a new model that makes the old one obsolete than to exert effort trying to expunge the existing paradigm. So, let us start by reframing possibility in a shift from the scarcity mindset to one of abundance.

Scarcity and rivalry are ingrained within contemporary praxis. They both start with constraints, while abundance and cooperation offer new opportunities. Scarcity and rivalry encourage zero-sum thinking, whereas abundance is about plenitude and sufficiency. Scarcity and rivalry market secrecy and unethical behaviour as competitive advantage, whereas cooperation and abundance champion partnerships for the greater good. Licenses and patents are examples of scarcity thinking. Open source, commons, and peer-to-peer approaches are abundance in action.

A word of caution if I may. There will always be companies that disrupt the competition as well as entire industries, but that do not live up to any higher moral aim. AirBNB, Uber, and Netflix are cases of how disruptive innovation can result from the clever exploitation and leverage of abundance. None of them, I hope, would claim to make the world a better place for greater numbers of people. Why? Because their underlying values and calculations are still dominated by aggressive competition with the singular aim of market growth and profitability.

There are many lessons to be learned from the disruptions we are experiencing from COVID-19 of course. Live a simpler life. Do not take from the earth what you do not need. Shift from a competitive to a collaborative lifestyle. Work from home when you can. Understand that front-end schooling is not a substitute for life-long learning. Trust only what you can validate. Grow and buy goods locally. Save energy wherever possible. Reduce, reuse, and recycle whatever you can to avoid waste. Democratize the economy. Engage with others around what really matters.

There are many others of course that make going back to what used to be business-as-usual a travesty to anybody other than those vested interests that were happy to feed off our naivety.

While the way ahead is uncertain, reverse gear is not an option. Whichever path we choose we are bound to encounter transitional problems. And, as always, in order for our sense of moral community to expand and endure, the more difficult challenge will be to ensure the lessons of the past are not forgotten, and that new behaviours are sustained and cherished.

With climate change, a continuing loss of biodiversity, new pandemics, economic upheavals, geo-political tensions, mass migrations, and the rise of neo-fascist regimes, we have mounting emergencies to deal with, in addition to the substantial changes required to tame tribalism, predatory practices, prejudice, injustice and discrimination.

This will cost money. Lots of money. In order for our reserves to exceed the current rate of consumption, instead of the other way around, we will need to reimagine the fundamentals of our economies so that all life is ascribed inherent value, and measures like Gross Domestic Product [GDP] are seen for what they are – relics of another era. We have witnesses how some nations can be flush with funds, while descending into disrepair and despair because that money is earned by destroying everything that is genuinely meaningful - from jobs to trust, relationships, health and wellbeing, happiness, personal savings, and freedom.

Only when we can imagine a different kind of economics will we be inclined to allocate the estimated $20-30 trillion that will be needed to combat the perfect storm of existential crises facing us today. Only when we have a different kind of politics will we be able to heal rifts across artificially-created social divides. Only when we develop metrics that focus on well-being, wholeness, mutuality, reciprocity, kindness and reconciliation, in contrast to things that are broken, fragmented or disintegrating, will we be able to truly understand the measure of our success as a species.  And only when we can envisage a different social order will we be free to comprehend the human condition, reconcile our differences peacefully, communicate openly, and generate a more inclusive and expansive understanding of human purpose.

In the end we will only be able to reassemble the brittle husk of our humanity by facing our most dire threats together. Using surveillance, the force or arms, or decrees from those in provisional authority will not hack it. Ultimately, we will adopt cooperation and abundance as the basic elements in a new narrative for the alternative is to perish as a civilised society.

Litanies

1. Memories

Old age brings certain gifts, as long as we are open to receiving them. For me, one of these gifts is sudden and unexpected recollections from a past fast-receding from temporal view. Now and again, yet increasingly with each passing week, shards of memories long forgotten break surface with astounding precision. I am able to watch my past self with wrapt fascination. The pattern is always the same. A sound, scent, or some other sensation triggers a hiatus in what I happen to be doing. Nebulous mists clear to reveal vaguely familiar shapes before intimate details mob me and stop me in my tracks.

I had such an experience yesterday while watching a new movie. Greyhound tells the story of an inexperienced World War II US Navy captain, played by Tom Hanks, who must protect an Allied convoy of supply ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean while being stalked by Nazi U-boat wolfpacks. Towards the end of the movie Tom Hanks sinks to his knees, giving thanks to his God that he and his crew survived the ordeal. Instantly I realised what I was viewing was a mirror of a long-buried childhood experience.

Having embraced Buddhism at the age of 13, casting aside the doctrine in which I had been raised, I had also inadvertently purged most memories relating to that time. Only now I remembered...

Each evening as a child my mother taught me to pray on my knees to her Christian God. A kindly soul by all accounts, but one who stubbornly refused to make himself known to me. Nonetheless from the age of eight, whether at home or in the school dormitory, I knelt and prayed. My petition was simple, and it was the same each evening. God, look after mummy. Make me a good boy. And if you see my daddy please tell him that I love him. Amen.

At that stage, you see, all I knew was that my father had suddenly vanished from my life. As my solitary idol, he left a vacuum that could never be filled. I would not discover the truth of what happened to him for another 37 years - after I received a letter. A hand-written note, barely legible in an unschooled scrawl. A note from a stranger. My father. In the note an awkwardly expressed affection, along with an intimation he would like to see me.

The note arrived too late. I would not see my father again. There was no grieving at the news of his death. I had been through that torment decades before. There was no pain left. But the instant I realised how I used to pray so dutifully every day was shockingly poignant.

How did that daily ritual affect me? What good did my prayers do? Did they bring relief and comfort to my sorrow? Or did they simply prolong ingrained uncertainties? What bearing did the routine have on my state of mind and emotional development? Was it to blame for how I feel today about the covert menace of religious righteousness?

2. Righteous

I do not know. I cannot answer these questions. But there is another point to all of this. As a Buddhist, I try to live by tenets resonating from the spiritual praxis acquired throughout my life – particularly through grief. For me, this means tolerating those whose attitudes do not accord with mine – even when they detest me and everything I value. Humility. Doing what I can to be a worthy ancestor. Showing compassion for those who struggle. Mindful reflection preceding action. And a deep love for the sacredness of life. Not bad values to live by, and undoubtedly shared with many others.

Most importantly though, these tenets have taught me not to impose my beliefs on others. My credo is as simple as that childhood prayer. In spite of our heritage, acquired status, and superfluous titles, nobody enters this world any more or less inferior than anyone else. We are all born into conditions over which we have no control and very little influence. The only significant disparities between a monarch and a pauper are the inheritance of wealth, the delusions arising from that accident of birth, and deference shown by minions who hope to profit from their fawning behaviour.

What we are able to accomplish during our brief time here differs only inconsequentially. Expecting nothing in return for an act of kindness, offered in a spirit of generosity by a poor person towards a stranger, or from a child to an elder, is worth far more than a truckload of philanthropic dollars distributed by billionaires who want to feel good, look good and, if possible, get a tax break.

Eventually, we are all condemned to an end-game over which there can be no appeal. I have no right to judge others when I cannot read their story, feel their suffering, appreciate their circumstances, or truly put myself in their shoes. To do so is old-style hubris.

3. Hubris

Yet business schools still happily churn out old-style managers who are constantly told to apply such hubris – based upon a plethora of conflicting excuses for why others should heed their wisdom and in the warped belief that their status bestows upon them the right to motivate others - or to inflict penalties when those they aim to inspire are insufficiently enthused.

Likewise, organisations managed by armies of freshly-minted MBAs still incorrectly assume that controlling people is as easy as applying statistical methods and software development routines to improve processes and manage projects. This is the industrial-military method applied uncritically. Indeed, even the most recent management fads are bound up with these mechanistic derivatives.

The imposition of pointless, mind-numbing, often humiliating work today is the result of such hubris, together with the continued fragmentation of knowledge that occurs when we continue to compartmentalize organisations for reasons of efficiency and control.

Up to 30 percent of all work can be sorted into categories where it is impossible to find adequate explanations for its existence. In fact, many jobs seem to be designed purely to keep us busy doing something. Anything!

And while technology has advanced to the extent that many jobs are superfluous, and a 15-hour working week is certainly feasible and has been proven beneficial in any number of experiments, the puritanical work ethos that demands we labour for 40 hours or more seems to be ingrained. The result is a plague of pointless drudgery in an ocean of unrelenting tedium.

4. Tedium

It is hardly surprising that such drudgery would lead to high levels of staff disengagement. The managerial feudalism that persists in so many corporations puts people off work and generates mental health problems. According to Gallup, only 13 percent of all employees find their work engaging. Meaningless work, inadequate resources, a chronic misuse of talent, and a lack of trust in management are the major causes of this disenchantment.

But if we examine the 20 percent who are actively disengaged, one major factor stares us in the face: it is the obstacles self-motivated and creative individuals face when taking the initiative, experimenting, or attempting to dispense with age-old protocols they know to be hindering productivity.

Irrespective of the industry, market, location, or size of the company hubris, together with the delusions of control or power arising from such vanity, invariably stand in the way of exceptional performance. Traditionally managed organisations will have none of this of course. Boards and senior executives operating within the mainstream corporate power structures get far too much pay, preening attention, and other incentives to contemplate changing their command and control mindsets.

Believe it or not, even when agile, adaptive, or navigational approaches are regularly used by the most shrewd and forward-looking enterprises, an unhealthy preoccupation with targets, critical success factors, performance indicators, and appraisals, as well as a host of other teeming distractions, can deter collaboration, hijack the learning metabolism, and compromise the productivity potential of the entire enterprise.

It is not difficult to eliminate tedium from any enterprise – assuming a flat structure where talented, self-motivated individuals can take risks, collaborate, and experiment. Indeed, many entrepreneurial startups are able to rapidly scale-up using liquid structures where the dynamic flows of information and activities, lightning-fast decisions, peripatetic teams, and fractal leadership, interact transparently.

Working for companies like Valve, Zappos, Tik Tok, Atlassian, Canva, Legal Monkeys, or Aurecon, for example, is intrinsically inspiring. In these open environments, purpose and passion drive effort while management simply morphs into collaboration. Work becomes a fearless, fluid adventure, where no one is there to tell you what to do or to reprimand you when you make a mistake. Of course, you might not think it sensible to inflict this kind of open structure in companies demanding the precise coordination of complex activities, such as an international airline, for example. But to impose management orthodoxies in organisations like those above would be an act of sheer folly.

5. Folly

The British physicist Steven Hawking asserted that greed and stupidity would be the downfall of humanity. Although I am hesitant to contradict such a proposition, I venture to suggest that love and compassion are the two things that might yet save us. Nevertheless, even that small step will require us to see things differently, accept new ways of relating to each other and nature, and develop a new moral consciousness.

Actually, the more haunting question for me is whether or not we Sapiens are wise enough to survive our own undeniable ingenuity and ability to endure. This was the question that provoked the founding of the Centre for the Future. It is a question that continues to preoccupy me.

Examples of extreme stupidity are all around us of course, but none more so than in the indefensible ways we choose to relate to each other and to nature.

Individuals can be very smart – such defines the spirit of entrepreneurship. And most entrepreneurs consult widely in order to scale their ideas collaboratively. But when even the most intelligent people get together in board rooms and parliaments, any collective wisdom we might have assumed can vanish in a confusion of ego, dogma, risk aversion, and a tendency to rebrand what is known rather than venturing into new realms of inquiry.

Part of our collective stupidity today derives from an innate self-confidence. Today this is boosted by our unprecedented capability, via social media, to connect with and to hear what everyone else is thinking. This coupling can lead us into situations where it is easy to assume our opinions are equally valid to others - even when it is not based on verifiable evidence. For example, you might establish your views about climate change on scientific data from a panel of experts, whereas I have simply adopted the opinion of a celebrity I happened to see on television who gave me the impression he knew what he was talking about.

When emotionally amplified, this coupling of confidence with connectivity can also give rise to situations in which we are either offended or outraged. That too is a problem because both emotions open us up to easy manipulation and there are always unscrupulous people ready to take advantage of that.

Certainly, it is the case that stupid, outraged, or easily offended individuals are far more convinced of the accuracy of their views than smarter people who tend to sustain doubts and uncertainties. Moreover, because of our predilection for educating by fragmenting knowledge to fit highly specialized work structures, rather than the other way around, we have created conditions that amply demonstrate the hazards inherent in allowing this to continue.

Take science, for example, which is one of the best ways we have of understanding the world in which we live. Science is inevitably provisional, as is truth. Yet stupid people seek certainty in science. Once having found their truth, they then latch onto it with unwavering passion.

This penchant many of us have developed for trusting our instincts over objective data partially explains why incumbent plutocrats find the conception of a world where conflict, wars, and other forms of violence exist, utterly acceptable. In their world, it is legitimate to bully the weak, rob the poor, threaten those with whom they disagree, and assassinate those whom they fear.

As for ordinary citizens like us, we have meekly tolerated this state of affairs. It endures because of our apathy. We stand idly by, paying no attention to constant warnings that the breakdown of our climate and the unravelling of so many natural ecosystems must be treated as a global emergency. We continue to elect corrupt and uncaring officials who stigmatize and stereotype the homeless and the poor as parasites and workers as lesser mortals. And all the time we put up with this, cocooning ourselves in a zone of delusion where our ultimate purpose is to own more and more stuff we do not really want.

In effect, we are all contributing to a world in which the gradual emaciation of any moral or spiritual imperative is becoming normalized.

6. Normal

Normalcy is in the news – as is talk of the “new” normal – whatever that might mean in what is already looming as a decade of disruption. Most public attention at the moment is focused on the current pandemic and speculation concerning a “post-pandemic” world. Given the likelihood of further, potentially highly virulent outbreaks, from known and new viruses, I would have thought it highly imprudent to frame the short-term future in terms of a post-anything world!

Although the universal public response to COVID-19, rather than the virus itself, has led to the most fundamental socio-economic crisis experienced by our generation, it is still unclear as to what extent we will be able to carry on with life as usual - least of all what we should take with us, and leave behind, from that period prior to the outbreak when so many of our life-critical systems were already beginning to stutter and fail.

What the coronavirus is doing in such spectacular fashion is to reveal the deep fault-lines and systemic fragility existing in the world we have carefully crafted. It is as though nature has given us this virus as a dress rehearsal for what we might expect going forward – the chance to bring a regenerative consciousness to bear on human activities.

Human brains possess a great deal of plasticity, so there is little doubt we can adapt to new circumstances once the fog has cleared, as long as conditions on the planet remain conducive to life. But too many of the current batch of politicians and industry leaders, eager to see a return to business-as-usual, remain trapped in the mental coordinates of a world that no longer exists. They yearn to return to the comfort of a familiar past, over which they assumed they had control.

The truth is becoming clearer each day that passes. The longer the current crisis persists, and much depends in that regard on how soon we acquire herd immunity or an effective vaccine can be invented, the greater the likelihood we will underestimate the damage being done to the social fabric of society and, as a consequence, the degree to which massive change will be required. Then again, if it is bad for more affluent societies, the potential collapse of all economic activity will be catastrophic for the least-developed, most vulnerable nations.

Critical questions, too, concern the nature of the emerging world order. Will we see the unravelling of financial and trade globalisation? Will national interests dominate? How will the international community treat an increasingly formidable yet intrinsically problematic China and a deeply divided US at the point of civil conflict? Will economic integration be a fading dream as the relatively free movement of people across national borders ceases?

And what about business? Will retail malls, the daily commute into the city office, the law firm, the schoolyard, and the university campus fade into the memory? If so will innovation be unleashed in sufficient amounts to replace these institutions and generate the dramatic improvements in productivity where it is actually needed? I must admit this speculation of massive change and its consequences is making me feel nostalgic for the world we might be leaving behind...

7. Nostalgia

Nothing is permanent of course. As we have seen, even science is ephemeral. Nostalgia is also a seductive liar. Attachment to the material world and old habits such as those briefly mentioned above are ultimately of little consequence. In the end, though, the manner in which we are able to deal with our various attachments shapes and defines us.

These days my attachment to material objects is declining in alignment with my pursuit of a more peaceful, less hectic, existence. Of course, that quest has been accelerated by the current pandemic. Even in this remote part of Thailand, it is impossible to escape the aura of fear that has us in its grasp. Here though I am surrounded by my art and music. To lose these would be a great sacrifice. My MacBook, too, has become the repository of ideas, feelings, and projects stretching back over two decades. I would not want to lose it. But if I did I would cope.

In terms of affiliation, the affection I feel for humanity and for this planet our home, grows stronger and more resolute each day, while a committed detachment from the deeds of greedy, powerful, individuals, and the ways in which they have designed systems for their own benefit, at least gives me the courage to do the work I do.

I think back on those memories of my childhood with growing affection. Even those that are cocooned in sadness and grief, like the loss of my father.

What I have found exceedingly difficult to deal with is my attachment to these memories along with some highly personal artifacts from the past. Many years ago, an entire collection of my music, which had been recorded over a period of seven years, and which had been left in trust with one of my children, disappeared. There were no copies. After the initial anger had subsided, and I managed to work through the grief and sense of personal loss, I felt as though a part of me had been rubbed out, leaving only a fading, blurred daguerreotype.

More recently I discovered several hand-written letters dating back half a century, were missing from an antique Chinese chest in which I keep original scores and other assorted memorabilia. There was a pen and ink letter from the poet Ted Hughes, for example, responding to my setting of his poems Eros and King of Carrion, from this book Hawk in the Rain, which had received its premiere at the Edinburgh Festival. And another very brief note from my teacher Nadia Boulanger to my mother, assuring her of my talent.

Such bits and pieces are irreplaceable. The sense of loss inevitably cuts deep, even when they remain intact in the memory and are assuaged through the lens of Buddhist practice.

Buddhism teaches us not to become too attached to things. Indeed, one of the four noble truths in Buddhist scriptures asserts desire and attachment to be the sources of so much dissatisfaction and suffering. I must confess that I still find this a difficult precept to live by and a dilemma I have constantly wrestled with. Most material possessions I found easy enough to discard. I never owned property until I was 70 years old, for example, though my fondness for books, contemporary art, and music scores provides me with the greatest joy imaginable. Old age certainly brings gifts in its wake. As long as we are still open to receiving them.

 

Naturally Speaking

In natural systems, physical matter flows in cycles. Nutrients from one form of life become food for another. Organisms live and die, eventually returning to the soil or the sea where the cycle starts again. 

During the industrial revolution, we invented a different modus operandi. Industrialised, or mechanised production, was an innovative, rational response, to an escalating population requiring sufficient quantities of food, and whose labour, in exchange for wages, allowed workers to buy goods from the new factories springing up at the time. This was the birth of the first phase of capitalism. 

In simplest terms, the same system persists today. But now we can appreciate the unanticipated consequences of its impact across a number of socio-economic spheres - particularly as it pertains to the ethos of ownership and organising in contemporary society. 

1. Making & Growing

Chemical, mechanical, and electrical means are consistently applied to the mass production and distribution of products, as well as the cultivation of food and food-stock for farm animals. But mechanised production is linear and extractive. It generates a great deal of waste, too, as raw materials are taken from the Earth and processed into food or used to manufacture goods. 

When we finish using any product we expect to throw what is left away. But there is no such thing as away – everything we do not want or become weary of owning, habitually ends up as refuse or waste.

While organic material like food decays quickly, most other forms of waste contain toxins and synthetic substances that decompose very slowly, continuing to contaminate and clog up the oceans and the rivers, the landfills, and the sewers, for decades if not centuries. 

It does not have to be like that. Biomimicry encourages the copying of complex patterns in nature - creating industrial ecosystems that are regenerative and restorative by design. Instead of creating waste in the process of using raw materials, natural systems reuse and recycle resources over and over again. If there is any waste, it is inconsequential. 

This is not a new idea. After all nature itself has been doing it this way for millions of years. It is not even a novel idea in terms of industry and agriculture. With additive 3D printing or so-called desk-top manufacturing, it is easy to fabricate products ranging from human organs to entire buildings with such precision that no surplus is left over. 

Likewise using regenerative farming methods, it is possible for local farmers to eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilisers, and herbicides, in the process of restoring soils, increasing yields, producing crops that are more nutritious than was previously the case with large-scale agribusiness methods, and encouraging insects and other forms of life to flourish.

A distinctly contemporary issue in this regard is the problem of electronic waste. Higher consumption rates of electrical devices, as well as shorter life-cycles driven by planned obsolescence, are contributing to a rapid buildup of electronic waste. At least 44.5 million metric tons of unwanted electronic debris - including battery-powered or plug-tethered devices such as laptops, smartphones, and televisions - accumulate in waste dumps each year. By 2030, that is projected to grow to around 74.7 million tons. Electronic waste often contains plastics, hazardous materials in smartphones, such as cadmium and mercury, and refrigerant chemicals, like chlorofluorocarbons, that can leach into water catchments. 

Little of this waste is recycled, although electronic debris represents a potential urban mine, containing valuable metals such as iron, copper, and gold, that can be recovered. The value of this e-waste was estimated at around $57 billion in 2019, only $10 billion of which was recycled. Where are the entrepreneurs when you really need them? Hidden away in the bowels of our corporations perhaps...

2. Relating & Organising 

Following the industrial revolution, the automated factory became the standard model for organising almost everything - from school classrooms, clubs, and prisons to corporations. Within this template hierarchies of individuals and teams ensured that processes could be standardised, and efficiency pursued at all levels of the establishment.

In the world of business, this quickly led to employees being used as human resources, to be mined primarily for their manual labour and latterly for their knowledge. A totally new industry appeared out of nowhere to manage these frequently impulsive and recalcitrant resources, and to impose at least the illusion of orderliness.

When measurements were instituted, in the form of cultural climate surveys, executives began to rue the fact that no structure imposed on workers appeared ideal. Most were suboptimal in some form, while some even caused staff to become actively disengaged.

Initially, the proposed band-aid was a mixture of sanctions and rewards. Metrics of every kind littered the industrial management landscape - from goals and objectives to key performance indicators, process efficiency dashboards, and retention targets. 

Gradually, smarter enterprises realised that organisations could do better by emulating nature – especially in terms of cycles, information flows, and aesthetics. Liquid forms of organising were adopted as a way of designing work to be more intrinsically motivating. Pointless work was eliminated. As the workplace became more flexible, recruits were invited to contribute to the overall goals of the enterprise as they saw fit, finding ways to shape the culture rather than being required to fit into a pre-existing "founders" mould.

Many large corporations still resist this way of organising of course. The myth of top-down control remains pervasive in organisations that assume restrictive practices are best, instruct staff to leave their individuality at the door each day, and impose a variety of controls and performance indicators on their staff in a constant battle to get ahead of the competition. 

3. Owning & Earning

The field that most owes its credentials to arcane theories is surely economics. At its core, the idea of exchange within an economic framework is quite straightforward. But, as with industrialized production and organisational design, we managed to complicate matters by intervening clumsily in what should be a simple set of transactions. 

By establishing discrete institutions to handle differing roles, introducing astute ideas like credit and debt, adding layers of complexity via tax and investment laws, and allowing the invention of impenetrable financial instruments, like derivatives and credit default swaps, for example, which few people really understand, we have managed to turn the economy into a factory-like global casino. This has trapped us in a prison where we are prevented from imagining anything better. Even the least radical ideas are pronounced contrary to the ethos of free markets, too expensive or counterproductive. 

Meanwhile, instead of growing the resilience needed to provide solutions in the face of major societal shocks, like the current pandemic for example, or the massive problems we will encounter as a result of global heating, economic orthodoxy insists on skipping from controlling inflation to maintaining price stability in a myopic dance of detailed fixation.

It is not as though innovative ideas for dealing with the new realities are impossible to find.  Beginning with Sweden’s Riksbank in 1668, central banks and their monetary policy tools have been available as lenders of last resort for centuries - specifically to provide financial markets with the liquidity needed in times of crisis. 

Nowadays it is not hard to imagine the fiscal equivalent – state-funded employers of last resort. Imagine this as a job-guarantee program, comprising a living wage and benefits package. Because there is always work to be done, it would become instantly available to anyone who wanted a job but was unable to find work in the private and government sectors. Especially in times of crisis. Such a scheme could be expected to eliminate unemployment and its associated cost burden, bolster self-esteem and mental health, and provide additional care and protection for local communities and the environment.

Likewise, a Carbon Bad Bank, established by the state to acquire and reassign stranded carbon assets from large fossil fuel corporations, thus leaving them with clean balance sheets for investing in renewables and associated products, is surely another idea whose time has come if we are truly serious about the rapid decarbonisation of the economy.

These few examples clearly illustrate how the crisis of imagination besetting us today can be overcome. But we need to move beyond the cognitive and emotional thresholds that keep us tethered to obsolete ideas or trapped in dispensable ideological compartments.

Nature can show us better ways. Nature is complex - meaning it is abundantly resilient, and its patterns easily replicated. Our tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be can be remedied by accessing complexity, designing our most life-critical systems in cycles and flows, using organising principles that are open and fluid, and thus avoiding the hierarchies and imposed artificiality of the industrial era and its practices.

My Pact with the Devil

For us billionaires it was always about playing and winning. Winning is the main game. And money - that goes without saying. While winning is our passion, money is our addiction. An adrenalin hit. We are good at winning, which is very fortunate for you. Although most of us inherited our wealth, you profited from how we used our capital to stimulate growth. Naturally our drive and acumen worked in your favour too. Let’s face it - you had an easy ride on the back of our generosity.

We discovered way back in the dark ages how we could win and keep on winning. The idea was astonishing in its simplicity. Those of us born into wealth very quickly worked out that the best way to control you, the earning classes, was to keep you happy. By producing all the material needs you could possibly want, and promising you even more, we lulled you into a false sense of bliss. I don’t wish to be rude, but the rest was a walk in the park.

By convincing you that you were free to live your dreams, most of you felt no need to object to those things my lot craved – like power and affluence. You overlooked our misdeeds - including tax avoidance practices we felt compelled to use now and again, and dodgy investments in media, weapons trading, drugs and gambling. Some very smart marketing campaigns even convinced you that we shared the same goals and were all in this for the same things. With hindsight that was a masterstroke.

It was how we got you toiling so assiduously while demanding more and more stuff you didn’t actually need or want. Increasing productivity became your goal, and capitalism the means of achieving it, simply because we told you this would fulfill your every desire. After that you were so distracted - busy looking to wherever we pointed - that nobody thought to challenge the illusion.

It didn’t occur to you that we were spinning a yarn to get us what we wanted. We knew trickle-down economics could not possibly work. But that was irrelevant as long as you believed us, and were able to wait patiently for your situation to improve, which you did. Similarly, the sum total of human activities cannot be compressed into a single measure. Think about how ridiculous that is. Yet you embraced the totally implausible notion of GDP being a suitable gauge of both wealth and wellbeing. You were easily hoodwinked.

It was not always that simple of course. Especially when smart-arse radicals like Karl Marx and Mao Zedong advocated more socialist views, pacifists like Gandhi opted for peaceful civil disobedience, and reformists like Mikhail Gorbachev threw a spanner in the works. It became even more difficult when some of you noticed our methods were crooked, our products made you sick, and that the economic arrangements we had so carefully devised and ingrained within your psyche, actively prevented you from becoming as wealthy as us.

But we managed it. We played upon your naivety, ignored or snuffed out your pathetic protests, surfed the zeitgeist with the help of our media baron friends, and kept repeating the false mantras of capitalism, like endless growth, for example, over and over again until anyone who deviated from the official narrative was regarded as a fool or a heretic.

In the end we won. Our system was adopted en masse, the world over. Even in the most unlikely of countries like China. The ruse was to make our takeover look like a seemingly benevolent and beneficial model of statism, while rejecting and stoking fear in people’s minds about alternatives. Any alternatives!

It is true that a few of you, led by activist Naomi Klein, academics such as Shoshana Zuboff, and progressive philanthropists like Tom Steyer, have been keen to point out flaws in democracy, together with capitalism’s more predatory nature. Cries for reform were something we have had to refute on an ongoing basis. Capitalism tricks people into slavery by lauding comfort, security, safety and the illusion of freedom, followers of Klein liked to claim. They were correct of course. Thankfully you failed to act on such assertions. The revolution was in your hands after all. But why would you incite rebellion when we kept telling you the economy was booming and almost everyone was deceived into believing us?

Over decades of testing, developing and refining the economic model, we had learned one very important fact. Societies are mostly comprised of compliant, idle, yet decent individuals like you, who are unmoved by political deceit and corporate fraud. As long as you are safe and secure in your immoderate comfort you do not care about government policy - or much else come to think of it. Indeed, you far prefer the certitude of psychological shackles over the stress that comes from real autonomy.

Once we had worked that out a variety of dubious tactics helped advance our cause. By adopting the manipulative advertising of Edward Bernays we persuaded you to buy stuff you did not want. By persuading you to trust us, and to turn a blind eye to the anomalies inherent within representative politics, we were able to bend democracy to service our needs rather than yours. By acquiring the support of influential economists, buying a few self-serving politicians, backing the state with our wealth and declaring that state sovereign (by forcing people to consent to its law and order, no matter how perverse, unjust, or violent that law and order might be) we were able to grow our considerable wealth and power, unconstrained by those of you who might have had the gumption to bring us down.

That was how we won. And over the past decade we have begun to wallow in the luxuries true wealth affords. Tax as an optional extra. Trust funds, think-tanks, family offices and PR advisers that further our own interests. Private extravagances, and a lifestyle a majority of people like you cannot begin to imagine. We are the mega-wealthy. The one per cent. And we own the world.

Do not be tempted to tell us we have it all figured out though, or that we have all bases covered. On the contrary, we failed to notice one vital factor that could soon be our undoing: the unforeseen consequences of our growing affluence.

In spite of our private jets, ocean-going yachts, and lifestyles that eclipse yours many times, we did not pay attention to the inferences of a world in which the gap between the cream of society, of which I am a part, and the vast majority of citizens like you, was widening into a chasm. Deceived by our own propaganda, but blind to your true circumstances, only now are a few of us beginning to fathom out how economic inequality could threaten everything we have created.

As you can imagine all of this came as something of a surprise - so quarantined had we become from the reality of a shared existence. Working tirelessly on feathering our own nests often meant letting our relationships with family dwindle. We missed out on a lot of fun you take for granted. We hurt just like you. We are racked with self-doubt just like you. Our kids still get sick. We don’t have any real friends and we suffer anxiety and feel sad - just like you.

The biggest shock derives from the fact that having more money, faster cars and bigger homes, has not made us happier than you. So please do not tell me we had it all worked out. Only now are we starting to appreciate that no amount of money can prevent us from becoming old and dying. Worse still, the world we built is facing unprecedented challenges on so many levels. If I sound fearful it is because I am.

Until recently we deliberately tried to maintain the very delicate balance between production, consumption and wealth creation. We have been resisting any kind of adaptation to new realities, pumping trillions of dollars into maintaining the status quo instead. This has kept the major banks and large corporations afloat. It also bailed out high-net-worth individuals like me. Sadly, these self-serving tactics have done nothing to help you, or to change your fragile situation. Within the context of the current pandemic the economy will continue to contract leaving many more of you high and dry.

In the past I would not have given this a further thought. But now it is not tenable. The world of finance has become disconnected from reality to such an extent that we are all part of a worldwide financial casino. For now, I am on the winning side. But tomorrow could well see me lose everything that brought me pleasure. The financial instruments I have used to increase my wealth are perfect for those wanting to bring on a financial end-of-the-world scenario. And that is exactly what they seem to be doing.

Of course, I can hang on longer than you will be able to. I have my own bunker and can hole-up until the dust settles if the 5 billion or more poor people on the planet should ever decide to bring my dream run to an end through revolution.

But what then? I confess I had not thought that far ahead – I employed others to do that for me, but they only asked me about cash flow, the balance sheet, investments. If I manage to cling on and survive, with my considerable wealth all but gone, and the financial world I used to inhabit consigned to history, what then? If others see how I helped hasten the destruction of our civilisation with my self-serving attitudes and noxious products, in what stead will I be held with a reputation in tatters?

The future of wealthy people like me is by no means assured. Like power, material wealth can be fleeting. If you are able to survive the coming crises of geopolitical upheaval, socio-economic disruption, and a heating climate, people like you might even be in a better position than me. You are the makers - the true creators. There can be no viable future without ordinary men and women like you. I, on the other hand? I am one of the takers. My fortune was built on stealing the future from your children while extracting your goodwill, labour, and gullibility. That makes me expendable in tomorrow’s world. I am sorry I did not understand that before today.

How can you ever forgive me? More pertinently, after everything I have done, and consciously not done, how can you believe this confession now? Will you leave me behind, or take me with you as you fashion a world without such inequities? It is possible that only my children and their successors will know the answer to that question.

Fear of the Light

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light ~ Plato

Honest, sensitive, overpowering. His words leapt off the page - etched into my lingering anxieties about the immediate future of humanity, set against the canker which continues to gnaw away at the souls of old empires –actual and imagined.

This particular Facebook comment was posted by a friend in California. A loving family man, smart, a designer of some note. A true visionary. But what struck me was the sense of intense gloom from a human being whom I know to be so unfailingly optimistic about almost everything.

There’s only one dominant emotion in the world today and that is fear, he said. What’s next is my own fear. What do I say to my boys and their sister? What can I do as a father in a storm this big?  How do I protect them from hate and the growing risk in front of them?

The despair which triggered such sombre reflections from my friend was the senseless death of George Floyd on a street in Minneapolis by police officer Derek Chauvin.

Today America is fuming with anger. There is a sense of apprehension as people take to the streets and turn on each other yet again. In the past year 1,014 people have been shot dead by police in America. African Americans are killed at a lopsided rate in comparison to other groups. In most of these cases, the police are not charged with any wrongdoing.

It is time to face the facts. Deeply ingrained racism still fuels hatred in this deeply-divided nation. After decades of growing inequality and conflict it is clear that racial justice does not exist in what is essentially a police state – one failing to live up to its own self-conceit. This is a state that still deludedly sees itself as exemplary - yet has become nothing more than a playground bully. A physically intimidating brute with the mind of a narcissist and less courage than the fictional lion on the yellowbrick road..

But my rage extends much further than that. Although America’s descent might offer us a glimpse of our own fate, focusing the spotlight purely on the US or its eccentric President is a distraction. My rage reaches past any one nation, beyond the fraternity of universally-ineffectual leaders, into the deepest recesses of the human condition we have so casually crafted and a citizenry lobotomised by money and materialism.

I am outraged by the persecution and suppression of people based on the colour of their skin, their gender, or religious beliefs. I am outraged by the apocalyptic terror stalking our world, obliterating the simplest of freedoms to which all human beings are entitled. I am outraged at the alleged duplicity levelled at countries like China when those screaming their abuse from the rooftops are poisoned by even worse prejudice and ignorance. And I am outraged by opposition to the slightest of changes to the neoliberal world order from an entrenched global coalition of the military, financial, surveillance, and corporate elite.

I am also infuriated at the way fear has been weaponized by the media, then seized upon by governments to engender dread in a virus, however deadly it may or may not turn out to be, so that societal control and manipulation can be instituted with so little effort.

In the worst case I could find of state-endorsed suppression by fear, Indonesian officials forced social distancing violators to recite verses from the Koran, stay in "haunted" houses and submit to public shaming on social media. Around 340,000 troops across two dozen cities were deployed to oversee enforcement of measures aimed at halting transmission of the disease. But provincial leaders bolstered even these draconian efforts with their own intense crusades. Police in western Bengkulu province, for example, forced offenders to wear placards with pledges to wear masks and keep their distance from others in the future. Images of the wrongdoers were then uploaded to social media to maximise the impact from public shaming. Is this what we have come to as a human family?

In the spring of 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, Martin Luther King gave his first major speech on the Vietnam War. In speaking out about the conflict in southeast Asia, the civil rights leader shared his conviction that there comes a time when silence is betrayal. So I write this piece motivated by the need to stand up to bullying, and obliged to speak out rather than to remain silent.

Now is the time to ask a fundamental question: How can any leader, indeed how can any person of moral integrity, remain silent when almost every life-critical system in our society is plagued by racial and gender biases - from healthcare to education, and philanthropy?

As the COVID-19 panic has us cowering in our homes, avoiding routine physical contact, risking hypoxia from the prolonged wearing of masks, increasingly suspicious of others, of authorities, and fearful of tomorrow, it seems the arc of humanity, so long curving towards greater justice and equality, is suddenly trending in another direction. Optimism is fading. Loneliness, anxiety, domestic violence and depression are rampant. And now rioting. In this eclipse, will progress towards a more just society stall?

The greatest fear however emanates from those who fear change itself. A gulf is opening up between those who own the means of production and the billions of under-privileged serfs in that system. The present pandemic has only served to underscore the many flaws endemic within the globalised edifice we refer to as human civilisation.

Common people see a light ahead – a rare chance for regenerative revelations to realize greater economic and social justice. The elite among us fear this light. Though irrational, any kind of societal awakening is a risk and thus labelled communism or a socialist plot. It is a sure sign that control is slowly slipping through their fingers. Their fear is symbolized by notions such as a revitalised commons, cooperative or mutual management structures, permaculture, local currencies, peer-to-peer enterprise, decarbonisation of the economy, and low or zero economic growth. Ideas like these are anathema to the ruling plutocracy. Worse still, they are brusquely dismissed without the kind of analysis that would normally be undertaken.

Not all, but many business owners together with government policy makers, want society to return to normal. They see the COVID-19 purely as a nuisance - an interruption to the economy and to business-as-usual. Most people, however, have caught a glimpse of life that vanished years ago: quiet streets, sunny skies in place of smog and clear water in the streams, more time at home with the family, a chance to read a book, take the dog for a walk on the common, or potter around in the garden perhaps. These people do not want to return to business-as-usual. They favour hitting the reset button – although they mostly know what they do not want rather than appreciating with any great clarity what the new era could look like.

For the time being, however, they prefer this new quality of life to the old one with its daily commute, traffic jams on the freeway, waste and pollution, pointless competition, and the suffocating addiction of buying stuff they do not need. They want to explore life-affirming activities instead of the uninterrupted, monotonous, meaningless slog for material wealth.

So now we have a problem which goes to the core of who we are as humans. Those who have done well from the way things were before may not possess the inclination, nor the creative imagination, to see any advantages in the alternative reality we welcome. They want to keep intact the world they knew – a world that brought them such comfort and delivered so much.

But nobody can be left behind. Consequently there is much work to be done if we are to escape the gravitational pull of materialism in order to create a more bountiful future for all. That means we can no longer hide in the intermediate spaces of apathy and silence. We must stand against past inequities, pointing out greed, self-serving policies and flaws within those systems that no longer serve us all...

A mindful uprising is needed. Peaceful civil disobedience might need to be actioned. We can say no to pointless work, for example. We can refuse to buy goods manufactured with slave labour. We can end our reliance on plastics, and ban toxic substances. We can stop investing in old smokestack industries. Why many of us can even grow our own fruit and vegetables. There are so many life-affirming actions we can take with relative ease.

Naturally, finding viable pathways through our dazed and unstable world will not be easy, particularly while greed and the politics of money continue to define what is important or not, human wellbeing is sacrificed on the altar of economic growth, fewer and fewer of us get to own the means of production, and our passion for perpetual war endures.

Over the past seven or more decades we have been seduced by advertising claiming to cure all our ills. In response we have demanded novelty, celebrated powerful men as they indulged in crimes against society, ignored the cries of nature to curb the use of fossil fuels and chemicals, entertained ourselves with social trivia as opposed to engaging with social movements, and turned from the spiritual to the secular.

But all that is past if we want it to be. So let us speak out. Let us not fear the light. Instead, let us break the silence of complicity. Let us speak with humility, confident in our faith that a better world for more people is achievable. This is our time. Let us act now.

The Fool on the Hill

The Fool on the Hill is a song by the Beatles which appeared on their 1967 album Magical Mystery Tour. The words describe the titular "fool" - a solitary figure who is not understood or appreciated by others, although on some counts he appears to be wiser than his detractors.

These lyrics have resonated poignantly with me over the past few months. They gave me a level of comfort in times when I was about to give up, and strength to carry on as I sought to remain emotionally detached from a situation I had never previously experienced. Hatred.

Even as a child, when I was disliked and bullied by most of my peers, I did not suffer to the extent that I have over the past few weeks. I have been labelled a quack. Accused of treachery and dishonesty. Members of my family have been threatened with physical violence if I do not desist from speaking my mind. One Facebook “friend” even suggested he would “knife” me as soon as I returned to Australia.

I was naïve to believe that my investigation would matter that much. In wanting to get to the crux of the situation in which we now find ourselves, simply so as to be able to communicate the truth as excavated from a residue of lies, half-truths, and deliberate obfuscations, I found that most people only want to march in lockstep behind the official story. They do not want anyone to point out the inconsistencies in that story – least of all to proclaim it a sham.

At least I now understand why the Nazis came to prominence in pre-war Germany, how the general public remained ignorant of the holocaust, and why nobody - not a single journalist, artist, or leading community figure - spoke out against the politically-contrived narrative.

Since early January I have worked intensively, though not exclusively, to separate facts from fiction regarding the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the ensuing pandemic. My aim was simple: to set aside personal opinion and inbuilt biases as much as I could in order to examine medical and epidemiological evidence. I wanted to make sense of messaging from various media outlets, sort through conflicting views and explanations, and study the unprecedented fear this crisis unleashed around the world. Only then would I be able to fully grasp the complete picture.

So I spoke with medical experts in order to access a diverse range of views, including three healthcare professionals in Wuhan – the assumed source of the outbreak. I listened to hours of recorded conversations with some of the world’s most highly qualified epidemiologists and immunologists. I viewed numerous video clips exploring the pandemic from diverse vantage points, including several that have now been removed from media channels like YouTube.

Because of my extensive network of contacts in China I was able to interrogate many officials and academics to gauge the temperature of local feelings. I used AI to surface and analyze hundreds of online papers, studies, statistics and reports, including the discredited and wildly inaccurate Imperial College modelling undertaken by Neil Ferguson that led to the assumed imperative for urban and countrywide lockdowns. And I posed question after question to trusted sources around the world until I was exhausted...

Midway through my inquiry, on Monday 30^th April to be precise, I was invited to talk about the pandemic on Channel 9’s Today Extra breakfast show in Australia. By now I had reached some degree of clarity regarding several contentious issues. I realised that wildly diverse opinions, based on equally specious assumptions, were replacing reasoned argument in most of the public discourse taking place.

I decided to speak my mind, that with the assent of a producer who was only too aware of my notoriety, even though it was evident that my findings deviated considerably from the official narrative most people had already accepted without challenge.

Of course, just because a story is accepted as factual by a majority of people, does not make it the truth. My research, even at that stage, indicated we were being sold a pack of ambiguities wrapped up in propaganda. Nothing I have learned since has convinced me otherwise.

My top 23 points are not contentious when weighed against triangulated evidence. Although research is still continuing in attempts to understand the unique characteristics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus each point below can be scientifically validated to an extent that is compelling - or otherwise has been standard clinical practice with proven results over several decades:

1. Given what we already knew about the coronavirus family – a coronavirus detection technology was patented in the US in November 2003 - we could have been far better prepared for an outbreak of this nature. Being better prepared does not mean having access to a vaccine. It means identifying those most likely to fall sick, isolating them, and ensuring they have access to adequate care and treatment.
2. Millions of viruses exist and are necessary for the evolution of life. Conveyed by trans-continental air currents, they proliferate rapidly, constantly mutating to infect animals and birds - which can then spread to humans. Humans are hosts to numerous bacteria and viruses, most of which are benign.
3. It is mostly unhelpful to use the semiotics of war or combat in the context of identifying and treating viral infections as it transmits fear too easily among groups reliant upon accurate information from subject experts.
4. It is still too early to know conclusively how or when the initial outbreak occurred. This is one of the reasons the international community has called for a review. However, the consensus among those studying the spread of the virus locates its probable origin to Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China.
5. We can say, more or less conclusively, that the virus was not synthesized in the Wuhan Institute of Virology - a biosafety Level 4 laboratory in mainland China, nor accidentally released from that laboratory as some have vigorously claimed.
6. The SARS-CoV-2 pathogen might have been brought to the Huanan wet market by an already infected person but that is also considered unlikely. Gene sequencing analysis strongly suggests the virus originated in bats and was transferred to humans through a yet-unidentified intermediary species, probably a scaly anteater.
7. It is generally accepted within the scientific community that the existence of zoonotic viruses is inevitable, and will continue to infect humans, while the slaughter of other species for food continues – regardless of whether the killing is done in industrial abbatoirs or wet markets.
8. Because of the way viruses typically spread and then subside we know that the most effective way of treating most viral outbreaks in the past was by way of herd immunity.
9. In December 2019 and early January 2020 the optimal strategy would have been to test, quarantine, and treat those most susceptible to infection by COVID-19 - including the elderly and patients with pre-existing respiratory conditions like asthma, and cystic fibrosis, for example. Untried emergency strategies only became necessary when that initial opportunity was missed.
10. A mixture of vitamins C, D, and Zinc with small doses of low-cost, readily available, chloroquine (used to treat malaria successfully for the past seven decades) has been effective in treating infections in some cases of COVID-19.*
11. China recently approved the use of the antiviral drug favilavir - initially developed to treat inflammation in the nose and throat – to treat symptoms of COVID-19. Although the results of this study have yet to be released, anecdotal evidence suggests the drug was effective in treating COVID-19 symptoms in a clinical trial of 70 people.
12. COVID-19 is not simply a respiratory disease. It is capable of attacking the whole body resulting in blood clots, pulmonary embolisms, strokes, multi-system organ failure, and heart inflammation.
13. Some treatments originally prescribed for COVID-19 (based upon experience with the original SARS outbreak) actually make infections worse. Intubation, for example, can lead to more deaths than should otherwise be the case. Although clinicians are still scrambling to find answers to this problem it seems as though COVID-19 causes a type of lung damage which differs from that normally seen in patients suffering acute respiratory distress.
14. While the most obvious symptoms of infection are classic respiratory symptoms - fever, pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome, immune complications such as a loss of tissue oxygen, seems to indicate that hypoxia is also present. Thus the presence of air pollution could be a contributing factor in determining those most at risk.
15. There is still no vaccine available for those contracting SARS, which occurred 17 years ago. It is therefore unlikely we will find a vaccine for COVID-19 unless, that is, there is a lot of money to be made for some individuals and corporations through, for example, government-mandated vaccination programs. Although this claim nudges close to a conspiracy theory it warrants monitoring closely given recent authoritarian activities.
16. Conventional medical wisdom cautions against many of the tactics being mandated by governments – particularly the wearing of masks and the strategy of social distancing. There is little scientific evidence to show that medical face masks, or other forms of facial protective gear alone, are effective in keeping healthy individuals from inhaling infectious particles.
17. A lockdown or stay-at-home order was initiated in Wuhan province on 23^rd January 2020. Following that original decision many other governments followed suit, even though the only available “evidence” at the time was a flawed and highly inaccurate model from Imperial College London, which predicted millions of deaths in the UK without widespread mandatory isolation.
18. There is no scientific evidence to prove the strategy of quarantine prevents the spread of a virus in healthy populations with adequate hygiene and access to a good sanitary public infrastructure.
19. The practice of quarantine began during the 14th century in an effort to protect coastal cities from the importation and spread of plague epidemics. While some countries still maintain quarantine stations to isolate those suffering from communicable diseases like cholera or tuberculosis, never before have we quarantined healthy populations.
20. The WHO confirmed that many deaths being recorded are from those dying with COVID-19 not necessarily fromCOVID-19. In spite of figures being published daily by the press, we do not have accurate data about the number of infections, morbidity rate, or deaths directly attributed to COVID-19.
21. It is impossible to compare the statistics released by different countries who are using different strategies to cope with the disease. Factors such as population density, levels of air pollution, relative age of the community, and cultural factors all come into play. This is why it is futile to suggest that “success” in one territory (as in keeping numbers of deaths low) should be adopted by others. In Sweden, for example, though some claim the number of deaths proves the strategy of herd immunity did not work, the average age of COVID-19 related deaths is more or less equivalent to average life expectancy in that country.
22. While some governments have been forced to backtrack on their orthodox ideological positions, with the conservative coalition in Australia, for example, subsidizing workers and small business during this time, it is undeniable that nefarious activities continue unabated, using the pandemic as a smokescreen. The $6.2 trillion coronavirus bailout in the US is a euphemism for the massive transfer of wealth from workers to banks and large corporations. China is using the distraction to legislate matters in its favour with Hong Kong.
23. As democratic governments enact increasingly authoritarian agendas in the name of security and public health, fortunes are being invested opportunistically in the race to find a vaccine for COVID-19. This is partly based on the gamble that fear will persist for the foreseeable future and that many governments will enforce mandatory wholesale vaccination.

These 23 points really only précis a fairly superficial examination of surface data in what has become a unique universal experience. Together they represent a litany of arbitrary and purposeful decisions, trends and events, which have shaped our response to the COVID-19 disease. At a deeper level of inquiry they could well anticipate the future course we take. If that turns out to be the case I find it alarming for several reasons.

Too much of the official narrative is based on fiction and a lack of real scientific evidence of what has and is working in this situation. Assumptions are running wild. Some factors, like the number of infections and deaths, seem to have been inflated and embellished in order to be used for commercial gain, or to justify government edicts.

There is no doubt that the politics of fear has allowed governments to assume an authoritarian stance which would normally cause outrage in less compliant societies.

From out of the shadows of the official narrative an alternative tale is emerging. And with each new theme the plot thickens. I should caution this is not so much conspiracy, nor is it centrally organized by some secret and affluent illuminati. However I do interpret the situation we are encountering as an opportunity by some to further embed their control, wealth and power.

As numbers of trustworthy sources have testified - from David Martin in the US to Dolores Cahill in Ireland, in addition to those disparaged for their much-publicized counterclaims and predilections, like Judy Mikovits and Zac Bush – a lot of what we are being told simply does not make sense. Unless, that is, alternative motives are steering overt behaviours as well as the reporting of events.

In the US, for example, we now know that the declaration of a state of emergency by some state governors and city mayors was not within their legal authority to call, given that it was based on a conviction rather than validated evidence of a clear and present danger to the community. Not only did these officials overstep the mark, their actions may well have been unconstitutional. Agencies ranging from the CDC to the WHO also perpetuated confusion.

Meanwhile publicly-elected officials stand accused of profound negligence by misinterpreting the facts, and not telling or distorting the truth, while instilling fear and dread. As a result the global economy is in tatters. Defects within globalisation, such as the extended web of supply chains and the ethos of just-in-time inventories, have been exposed for their vulnerability.

Many countries are already in a recession with high levels of unemployment, small businesses going to the wall, and even larger companies, such as Hertz, Virgin Australia, Nordstrom, Thai International, and Best Buy, for example, already in administration or preparing to file for bankruptcy.

Even given the shocking nature of our predicament, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Below the churning surface, undercurrents of unprecedented volatility and potential destablization are converging. While the world deals with the consequences of inconsistent antiphons to the very idea of a pandemic, a rare surge in the metabolism of human awareness has injected new meaning into a future characterized less by economic growth and industrial production than health and wellbeing. This great pause we are encountering has allowed us a glimpse into a world we thought long past. This has left many of us with a distinct impression that a return to business-as-usual would be a retrograde, damaging step.

Meanwhile, the imminent energy crisis, high levels of debt, continuing US-China tensions, a rapid collapse in consumer confidence, disposable income, and trust in the established order, rising social discontent, unresolved issues of corruption and incompetence, and the ongoing shut-down of a broad swathe of small enterprises, will all contribute to a further upsurge of default rates and bankruptcies. Another chance to look in the rearview mirror and take a deep breath.

It is possible we are reaching a bifurcation point in societal vitality. Whether we see some form of community reprisal following such delusions and apparent recklessness, or greater levels of social conformity in an environment of dread and misgiving, depends on several unknowable factors.

There is a slight possibility we are sowing the seeds of a quiescent revolution. How officialdom and our dominant power structures deal with that possibility over the next decade will likely shape the fate of our civilisation.

* [1] It is possible that people on ACE inhibitors such as statins and prescriptions for blood pressure would need to temporarily change medication during treatment to avoid additional cardiac problems