Whereas our common past, out of Africa, saw a global diaspora of humankind, our common future depends on a global coming together and consensus, resulting in a more equitable distribution of the Earth’s largesse. When Africa, which gave us the wealth of life, has that debt returned, the world will have come of age.
We must have an expansionary vision, one that captures the imagination and diversity of the whole community, one which befits a nation which has moved beyond the basics of literacy and numeracy and which wants to develop a learning culture, to affirm its democratic traditions and give expression to the diversity and vibrance of its community through its public education system. Putting optimism for everyone back into Australia’s future depends on it.
Power and money are not the only measure of who we truly are.
With a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the Iraq war, the US and Australia could ensure every starving, sunken-eyed child on the planet could be well fed, have clean water and sanitation and a local school to go to.
There is a spiritual side to our connection with the planet. And in this material world, that’s anathema. It is somewhat worrying. What I say… it makes life. It gives us fulfilment. It makes us whole human beings. And without it, we make mistakes. And, boy, are the leaders of the world making mistakes at the moment
The reality is that if we in this rich, lucky quarter of the planet cannot make a stand for the 30 million other species we share this planet with, let alone our own species, then who can?
A billion billion frigid prisms
wait ahead
as his unfelt frozen feet
are lifted ever more slowly
through the numbing blizzard’s blackness
falling ever more leaden
ever freer
deeper
ever nearer never
like a clock’s tick slowing
in a locked room’s unheard emptiness.
When sleep shuts off
the winter gale
with its freezing rain
and hail that clatters
on the iron
then silence wakes me
to a still
a softest quiet
I smile to myself
knowing through the night
it’s snowing.
Wilderness has become one of the world's fastest disappearing resources, and it is non-renewable. Yet unlike oil, gold or woodchips, it is essential to the wellbeing of humanity. We are made of it and fashioned by it?our psychological beings resonate with it.
We are all born bonded to nature; that’s why we put depictions of flowers and forests, rather than bulldozers or log piles, on our walls.