Arrogance on thin ice - The ignorant led by the blind

Many of us live in a busy, self centered world, struggling to make ends meet, often oblivious about the big picture, because it doesn't seem to matter or concern us. We each try to thrive, subconsciously one-upping the Joneses, many a times in terms of unbalanced material possessions (compared to knowledge & wisdom) although our largely preconditioned minds may not realize the extent that we have traveled off course, mind wise.

As the world becomes more competitive, resources more scarce, to thrive means to specialise to a large extent, sometimes at the expense of losing sight of the bigger picture. You see, every benefit, when taken to the extreme, becomes a dis-benefit. That results in the inevitable creation of folks in power who thrive in their silos, influenced by even more powerful silos called Special Interest Lobbying Organisations (SILOs), choosing easy solutions (in the name of economics, growth and jobs) based upon popularity & knowledge of a single jigsaw, cumulatively, to our species's slow but sure detriment. As we specialise further, being human, many inevitably lose sight of the bigger picture.

There is a growing portion of people who have totally no idea where the food they eat and the oxygen they breathe come from. Some don't even have the time to care about the quality of the food (it's too hard for them) and what it takes to produce good food. And yet, many of similar vein are the people in power, who decide to increase the population by 20% for increased tax revenues that disappears into a system of inefficiencies, increase the city’s boundaries without corresponding increase in sustainable services, save jobs in polluting industries instead of the harder route of redesigning them, ally with climate change skeptics and listens to those 10% being represented as 50% by mainstream sensationalist media (where 90% of scientists present urgent irrefutable facts). Other short term thinking examples are "leaders" calling for cancellation of desalination plants because we had 3 months of continuous rain, because the opinion polls say so. Can we rely on those leaders and lobbyist groups to make sound longer term and big picture decisions to take our people forward? Should we blame them or blame ourselves for being ignorant or not having the guts to stand up and take action?

Despite the “achievements” that we make; airborne transportation, wireless communications, ability to solve “complex” mathematics, our "advances" pale in comparison to the majesty and complexity of mother nature. Whenever a natural weather change happens, Melbourne’s rail infrastructure grinds to a halt. Mother Nature bestows us with water after 20 years of drought and not only do we not see it coming in Queensland, we had no way to conserve them. At a single flick of her finger, proud humanity is sent reeling, reminding us of how fragile we really are and how ignorant and unprepared we are for mother nature’s wrath.

Much of humanity all over the so called developed world seems to focus on one key element; quantity and growth. Quantity over quality, growth in numbers versus quality of life for every individual. How do we stop being a numbers game that poor leaders play? Or maybe we are not in a developed world anymore. This could be time for a new category: "Declining" nations (in that basket is largely Europe, US and perhaps Australia?, looking at how things are regressing in multiple areas and the quality of our leadership)

In our blind race to one-up each other in terms of size of nations, outgrowing other countries with poorly conceived measure of success, we rape and pillage the environment which we claim to understand, often not understanding the longer term ramifications and deeper issues. Feeding growth hormones to cattle to generate more beef and milk. Mass producing eggs with antibiotics and hormonal injections, not understanding it's actually cost to human health. Proliferating aluminium foils with industry sponsored and biased scientific evidences to allow the “industry” to continue. Letting profits, shareholders, lobbies, personal interests and politics precede basic human regard & respect for science, quality of goods and preservation of the environment that gives us life. All this, and more, often veiled with the feign of job creation and short sighted stability.

The blind arrogant focus on quantity rather than quality, combined with the SILOs and poor unbalanced education machinery, results in the creation of mentally defective leaders and followers alike. Isn't this the blind leading the blind, in its ultimate form?  

It’s high time, to go back to basics. 

Get reminded of where our dinner tonight comes from. How did we clean the air we breathed today? Have we thought beyond the surface of what we ate? Should our leaders today stay in their position in power if they are more concerned about politics than doing a great job? If nothing is done, we are surely going on a slow motion course for destruction, just like the cute little ignorant frog in cold water being put to the boil slowly. The earth and other organisms will still be there, but not us, in the near future.

And as of all great things and charity, it starts at home, right in our very own backyard. Challenge ourselves to be able to supplement part of our diet with rich, wholesome, flavorsome organic vegetables, herbs and fruits, which can be plucked fresh from the garden. The garden is our fresh food market and also the pharmacy, if we know how.

It is not merely planting a seed, giving it water and sun then collecting the harvest.

Firstly, if the foundations are not right for instance the soil type, the seed would not grow. If the method of growth is not understood, it will die due to lack or excess of sun. If natural predators are not understood, seedlings will be gone by the next morning.

This may daunting at first sight, but every difficulty teaches us something that we have lost that we shouldn’t.

For example, the appreciation of the skills and risks involved in growing food teaches us appreciation of the food we eat, and appreciation is the first step in attaining contentment. The continuous trying and learning to get the plants to healthy maturity teaches us to be resilient individuals, to not give up upon first failure. The eating of ripened tomatoes by possums and birds teaches us that even success has its threats and need to be continuously managed (and "enemies" understood). The inter relationships between companion plants, the plants and soil, temperature, light and water enables us to have a big picture thinking and view the garden as a live and continuously interacting system. As you can see, the very simple decision to grow part of our own food presents us with benefits beyond what we can fathom. And that is just, the beginning . .

The grandest tree in the forest has leaves reaching hundreds of feet up into the air, scraping the frontiers of higher knowledge. But all this happens because it has strong roots. As we advance in science and technology, we must never forget and always be humbled by the fact that we are indeed a very vulnerable species in the biggest scheme of things. When we stuff up on the fundamentals, eventually, earth will still be there with its other living creatives, but we may not be.