Australia Day ramblings, plus My Actifit Report Card: January 26 2020

A lot of people blog because articulating their thinking through writing helps them to better understand their own thoughts. Today these ramblings are for that purpose.

Today (January 26th) is ‘Australia Day’. This day marks the anniversary of British colonisation of Australia (1788). A lot of people call it ‘Invasion Day’. Although I can’t bring myself to call it that, I definitely have mixed feelings about it, especially in light of things I’ve been seeing, hearing, reading and thinking recently.

Before I go too deep, here’s a picture of Harry’s Cafe de Wheels, where we went for lunch today (walked there - @actifit).

Harry’s is famous for its pies — especially the signature ‘Tiger’ pie, which has a choice of filling (I had steak and mushroom), but always with mashed potato and mushy peas on top. Here’s me with my pie.

The pastry was nice, but the meat was a bit gristly. Pies are considered a stereotypical ‘Aussie’ food, so of course I felt very ‘Strayan’ eating it!

Australia Day through the lens of The Sovereign Individual

I’ve recently been reading a book called The Sovereign Individual. This book was written in the late 90s and it predicts what governments, nation-states, money, technology, etc will look like in the near future. I became interested in reading this book because a lot of smart people I follow on social media (especially in the crypto space) recommended it as an interesting read given that we are now living in the authors’ future. A lot of the authors’ predictions are based on comparing causes and effects of past transitions from the hunter-gatherer era to the agricultural era to the industrial era with the political and economical landscape of the present day (what they call the information age). In the information age, they argue, governments will evolve to treat us more like ‘customers’ (‘sovereign individuals’) than ‘citizens’. Citizens exist to serve governments, whereas governments exist to serve customers. When governments exist to serve customers, they compete with one another for customers so naturally their level of service will improve. Customers will choose their governments the way people choose religions.

Clearly we are a long way from the authors’ view of the future. However, the upshot of it is it that if this does play out, the concepts of nation-states and nationalism will fade away. After all, the idea of nation-states are essentially just ‘stories’ we buy into. I’ve borrowed this idea from Sapiens in which the author claims that the main thing that sets us (humans, aka Sapiens) apart from our ancestors is our ability to make up elaborate stories like religion, nations, money, governments, ownership of land, etc and then to buy into them.

So this Australia Day I am feeling a little less proud as an Australian and am thinking of Aboriginal Australians whose cultures and histories were given no respect by white Australians and whose respect and knowledge for the land was completely ignored.

Australia Day through the lens of Deep adaptation

For the past few weeks I’ve felt like I can’t escape the climate change debate. When I see and hear something a lot and it piques my interest, I fixate on it and it seems that everything I see and hear is about that thing. Climate change (and everything else associated with this loaded term - renewable energy, waste management, circular economies, meat consumption, food ‘mileage’, water usage, etc) is that thing for me now. The funny thing is that I feel like this is just the beginning - we’ve barely scratched the surface. In Australia this summer the big story is bushfires and how the government will act in response. It feels like a real blame culture. A lot of people seem to believe there is one person or one cause responsible and refuse to accept any responsibility themselves, but in my opinion it is a lot more complicated than that. I think the best thing individuals can do is accept that we all play a part and change our own behaviours - slowly, one at a time.

Just yesterday I heard about a very dark academic paper published in 2018 called ‘Deep adaptation’ by Jem Bendell. Maybe I’ve been living under a rock because it seems that it was a big deal last year (actually when we were doing the multi-day Overland Track hike recently I realised that I probably have been living under a rock because I felt a bit out of the loop with a lot of the conversations the other hikers were having, which lead me to some reading when I got home). Bendell argues that we have passed the point of no return and introduces a framework to help us come to terms with the collapse of society as we know it at the hands of climate change and make better decisions for today - the 4Rs. The 4Rs are resilience, relinquishment, restoration and reconciliation (which he added later) - resilience asks us to continue to do the things which have a positive impact on modern society; relinquishment refers to letting go of practices that are harmful; restoration refers to taking practices from history that will help us today and bringing them back; reconciliation asks us to make peace with others to lessen suffering. Wow!!

Anyways, these ramblings are getting a bit off-topic - Australia Day through the lens of Deep adaptation. Whatever the day is supposed to be, we need to look at ourselves first. Maybe Doomsday is inevitable but - Australians all - fix what you can control. Change your behaviour (I’ll save the details for the behaviours I’m trying to change for 2020 for another post). Connect with the people close to you. Start local. Stop blaming.

TLDR: I am feeling very philosophical this Australia Day :-)

Beer (bought these at the end of my 4.07 kms run this evening - @actifit) whilst watching Ash Barty play in the Australian Open helped me feel more Aussie!

Daily Activity,Running