After almost thirty years of mostly on though occasionally off marijuana use, I decided finally to quit. I had forgotten why I had started in the first place, but mostly I had to quit smoking. The idea was to handle first one addiction followed shortly thereafter by the nicotine addiction.
Some years ago I had had an intense though destructive love affair with cocaine, managing in the absence of any other available help to get clean by myself; alone and on my own. Anyone who has lived with or near a cocaine addiction will know that that was not fun at all, and so with the idea of finding some support in my planned endeavour to get clean of marijuana I looked around for Narcotics Anonymous.
Argument around the reasons why, the relative good or otherwise and prevalence of drug culture is beyond the scope of this article. The fact is that anything you might want or need is available anywhere in practically all towns in this country, even in towns considerably smaller than this one.
If you don't believe this ask your kids.
Inherent in the nature of the society we have created for ourselves and our offspring is the fact that an ever-growing market for the best that Afghanistan, Colombia, and points beyond have to offer is part and parcel of our suburbs and neighbourhoods. To think anything otherwise is to delude ourselves.
Our society as it stands today is the creation of ourselves and those who have gone before us. Denialist thinking to the contrary seems only to be the preserve of the deeply religious, perhaps as a result of the idea that blame can often conveniently be placed upon an entity other than ourselves.
It is understandable, but anybody living with heart, mind and eye even slightly open will admit that drugs are a significant part of our lives, and will agree also that the culture will not simply go away, whether by enthusiastic application of either prayer, law-enforcement or both.
The existence of the drug culture in some form or other is as old as civilisation itself, and it would appear that until civilisation changes fundamentally the drug culture will continue to remain with us. It is for the best that we accept that fact quickly that we can sooner realise that passing judgement on those afflicted with some addiction or other is pointless and short-sighted, not least because we are almost all addicted to something or other.
Addictions are as many as they are various - anger, money, sex, pornography, gambling, lying, shopping, stealing, work, religion, speed, risk, danger, junk food, health food, debt, television, exercise, computer games.
And drugs- caffeine, sugar, nicotine, alcohol, prescription meds, painkillers, coke, weed, heroin, solvents.
Addictions are everywhere, addicts are all around us.
Unfortunately society tends to regard narcotic addicts in a manner different to other addicts, and because of this stigma there is frequently a need for the treatment of narcotic addictions to be a little different to the treatment of other addictions.
Narcotics Anonymous is not unlike Alcoholics Anonymous.
A similar 12 -step programme is followed, the same 'Hi, I am Whomever, I am an addict' format applies to their meetings.
Key to the success of Narcotics Anonymous, as with Alcoholics Anonymous, is a system by which someone undertakes on a reciprocal basis to keep in touch with and keep an eye on the recovering addict.
Another key is anonymity.
No-one is interested in who or what you might or might not be outside of the meetings – within the meetings everyone is the same, an addict in one of the stages of recovery. To an addict this anonimity can be powerfully attractive, even mandatory. NA has much to offer.
A search of the local telephone directory revealed no number for Narcotics Anonymous.
Not surprising really – the management of a chapter can imaginably be quite a fluid thing as peoples' lives take on different forms at different stages of recovery.
I called a local supermarket-type pharmacy for an NA contact number, surprised to find that the lady I was eventually put through to did not have the slightest clue what I was talking about! Not only did she not know what I was talking about, but she thought I was a prank caller trying to have a laugh at her expense! The more I tried to explain that NA was like AA but for narcotics addicts, the more abrubt, obtuse and rude she became! Perhaps she had a 'secret' of her own?
In the end I cannot remember who hung up on whom, but I do remember thinking that that particular store must do a significant trade in OTC medications. In return for the right to sell such substances in among our communities surely we ought to be able to insist that some sort of trained counsellor be available instore at all times?
A call to a second, almost as large pharmacy rendered no better a result!
Again, the hostility with which my call was handled made me pity the desperate 13-year old attempting to get help for whatever addiction they might suddenly find themselves confronted with.
The pharmacy happily sells diet pills and painkillers that so many people find themselves in trouble with, surely they ought to have a pair of sympathetic ears on the floor?
The silly old biddy at the third pahrmacy made little effort to keep the scornful disdain from her voice, demanding to know where I worked before she would answer any questions!
I realised that a chapter of NA most likely did not exist in this particular little town and continuing to search for it would be nothing more than a fruitless, frustrating exercise. None of the people who should have known about it had ever heard of it.
It remained to discover what other options, if any, might be available.
Further enquiries led to the door of The South African National Council for Drug and Alcohol Abuse, where an earnest and very well-meaning woman set about trying to help me, prescribing me an assortment of medicaments and offering counselling of a sort. For a fee.
My reaction to the prescription of drugs was less than zealous – one of the dangers of addiction is the swapping of one addiction for another. It happens all too easily, and can take any one of a number of forms. In the past I had unintentionally exchanged a drug addiction for a church addiction, and having had that experience made me less than happy to start tossing pills down my throat.
My GP could see the danger and we chose not to fill the prescription.
A tonic and a multivitamin were fortunately the only medications necessary in the end.
The counselling was well-intentioned but for me difficult to take seriously. The counsellor lacked credibility as far as I was concerned, and I could not help feeling that the real objective behind the counselling process was for me to get saved and get religious. I don't have anything against religion as such, and it can be an innoccuous enough addiction. My plan was to get free of addictions, and I had done religion before and found it unsatisfactory anyway.
The chance of finding significantly greater long-term satisfaction in a second religious addiction seemed remote.
Then the morality of my primary relationship was called into question. I decided I was not going to start justifying why my partner and I were reluctant to get 'married' Then the attendance of my incidentally drug-free partner became a condition to the continuation of the counselling.
I decided to stop wasting everyone's time and withdrew from the counselling process.
Overall, my experience of the counselling was that it seemed a little too narrow-minded and overtly Christian in substance to be of much use to anyone except those with a Christian background or predilection therefor.
There were also forms to fill out along the way, and no substantively good enough explanation given for this. Again my thoughts went out to someone who might really want to or need to remain anonymous. This particular programme was not an option for them, especially in view of the fact that addicts frequently have issues around trusting non-addicts.
The bill for several hundred rands that has been sent to me every month since has, as a test, remained unpaid thus far. Some credit is due to SANCA for not handing the matter over to a lawyer as yet, though I do wonder where non-payment would ultimately lead to, and how long anonymity would be maintained under those circumstances?
There is very little to attract any of the addicts I have ever known to this SANCA programme.
To think that all addicts are simply crying out for spiritual salvation is to be as deluded as someone who refuses to see that addicts are synonymous with our society.
All of this means that in this particular town with its pretensions to being known as a city, anyone who for whatever reason wants to remain anonymous whilst battling an addiction or trying to become drug free, will most likely have to go it alone.
Is it not obvious why drug culture will always be a part of this society? Football stadiums we can build, social programmes that deliver are a bit of a tall order.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
The hydrogen bubble...
The ultimate 'Green' high?
Frequently these days one hears talk of using hydrogen as an energy source. Manufacturers of large, expensive luxury cars have almost without exception shown off their miracles of R&D; cars that run on either straight hydrogen or hybrids that are fuelled by conventional fossil fuels with the added feature of being able to run on hydrogen in high-density urban conditions.
Hydrogen is clean burning, which in these times of Global Warming and Ozone depletion is a benefit hard to mark as insignificant. In essence, from the exhaust of an engine burning pure hydrogen come only heat and water. Hydrogen is all around us in many forms and seems logically be easily isolated for fuel use by electrolytically seperating it from oxygen in water molecules. Water covers 70% of the earth. The ultimate idea of fuelling our machinery by simply pouring water into the tank is alluring, especially when coupled to the idea that nothing but water is exhausted – how very close to energy Nirvana can we get; water in, water out? The apparent pinnacle of 'green', the idea attracts like perpetual motion.
Unfortunately, and surely because of this allure, the notion of a hydrogen-fuelled economy is given considerable attention. It seems many are misinformed and view hydrogen as the fuel of the future, the saviour of mankind and his insatiable appetite for more and more of everything.
The hope that our technological mastery will solve yet another of our problems has sprung forth, resulting in the belief that high science and hydrogen will combine to ensure that life as we know it will continue and all will live happily ever after.
The reality of hydrogen as a fuel source is far removed from this Utopian ideal.
What it is and where we get it.
Primarily, hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source.
Something like a battery, it needs to be created, charged and then not expected to deliver anything like the same quantity of energy as went into it. This kind of energy sinkhole can best be described as a nett loss, from start to finish and everywhere inbetween.
Close to 95% of all the suitably pure hydrogen available to us today is made from fossil fuels. Crude oil, natural gas and coal are however the self-same compounds that we will soon have to live without. In large measure, it is our over-utilisation of those same compounds that first prompted us to look at hydrogen as fuel.
The processes that are employed to isolate hydrogen atoms from fossil fuels average out at a efficiency of somewhere around 70%, implying that some 30% of the energy contained within the fossil fuel source was wasted in the hydrogen extraction process, excluding the energy it took to extract and transport the fossil fuel to refinery.
Only about 5% of available hydrogen is extracted from water by electrolysis, for applications where the hydrogen is required to be extremely pure. The reason that so little of the world's available hydrogen is created by this means is because it is a very energy intensive way of extracting hydrogen. Most of the electricity we use is generated in oil, gas or coal fired power plants that are at best around 50% efficient. Additionally, the process of electrolysis is only around 70% energy efficient, so in total the extraction of hydrogen from water by electrolysis is only about 35% energy efficient.
At the same time, though hydrogen is clean burning, the processes used in its manufacture certainly are not.
Coal releases large amounts of the number 1 greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the process of hydrogen extraction, so the low-carbon benefits from burning hydrogen are more than offset by the high-carbon cost in creating the same hydrogen from coal.
Extraction of hydrogen from crude oil will never be feasible because of the greater value that oil has as a fuel on its own. Similarly, the additional value of fossil fuels as sources of fertilizers and plastics will forever make them more valuable for other purposes than simply as a source of hydrogen.
So the actual source of hydrogen as a viable fuel is as yet undetermined. Fossil fuels are simply too valuable to waste both as feedstock in the production of hydrogen and as fuel to power the process of electrolysis.
Additionally, hydrogen is the lowest energy dense fuel on earth. This means that in its natural state at room temperature and pressure, it would require about 3000 litres of hydrogen to return the same amount of energy as a litre of petrol. So in order to gain some measurable benefit from using hydrogen as a fuel in a motor car, we are required to compress hydrogen by means of a multi-stage compression process that costs another 10% to 15% of its ultimate energy yield.
Alternatively we can, at a cost of some 30% of ultimate energy yield, liquefy the hydrogen. The problem with this option is keeping the liquid at approximately minus 200 degrees Centigrade. In a car this is not easy, as it can at times be difficult simply keeping the interior at a comfortable 20 degrees Centigrade!
At this stage hydrogen has already lost much of its initial appeal as the ultimate 'green' fuel.
Keeping and storing it.
An interesting formula looks like this.
A realistic consumption figure for a hydrogen vehicle is something like 90 km per kg of hydrogen.
A 3kg tank, with attendant insulation, cooling and able to withstand the required pressures will weigh in the region of half a ton. With this the car will be able to cover some 270 km.
Imagine a half ton pick-up, loaded to its suspension stops with gear and fuel – and unable to travel from Johannesburg to Nelspruit.
Greater compression of the fuel in order to cram more into the tank implies higher pressures, implying in turn greater weight and cost.
Fuel cells are exorbitantly expensive, as well as being heavy. A metal hydride fuel cell system yielding 5 kg of hydrogen would still weigh over 300 kg and cost over a million dollars! It would have a working life of about 1000 hours only and still offer a very limited range.
Low temperatures, high pressures and the lowest ignition point of any fuel makes the transportation and storage of bulk hydrogen extemely difficult. A leak can be ignited by an electrical storm miles away, and low temperatures and pressures make for brittle, crack-prone pipes and seals; altogether an engineers nightmare.
A forty ton hydrogen delivery vehicle would typically carry some half a ton of hydrogen, enough for less than two hundred cars to refuel.The energy required to power this truck on a delivery of about 250 km would be in the order of 20% of the usable hydrogen it carries.
Again, because of the low temperatures and high pressures involved, transportation by pipeline would require a pipeline prohibitively expensive to build and maintain.
Bursting the bubble.
The fundamental problem with hydrogen thus is its energy expense of extraction, storage and utilisation, in return for a relatively low energy yield.
As an alternative fuel it represents an energy nett loss in that it costs significantly more energy to use than it releases.
The notion of a hydrogen-based economy really only serves to illustrate in greater detail the intricacies of our addiction to petroleum and its attributes, making the overcoming of our petro-dependance all the more daunting a task.
Physics will always show the hydrogen economy to be nothing less than a bottomless black hole of diminishing return upon increasing input. Pursuit of a hydrogen fuelled economy is misleading our attention away from what remains the most important challenge facing us as a species; the drastic reduction of our dependence upon and consumption of fossil fuels. This is the real challenge that will soon have to be taken up by every single inhabitant of this planet, as prices of fossil fuels continue to climb to levels unimaginable ten years ago.
There remains on earth arguably insufficient available fossil fuel energy to finance the luxury of making sizeable disbursements in time, money and energy on erroneous and ill-informed approaches to solving the energy problems that will soon beset us.
Collective efforts and energies would be better spent on finding other, more innovative ways to help us move away from a hydrocarbon based economy.
Frequently these days one hears talk of using hydrogen as an energy source. Manufacturers of large, expensive luxury cars have almost without exception shown off their miracles of R&D; cars that run on either straight hydrogen or hybrids that are fuelled by conventional fossil fuels with the added feature of being able to run on hydrogen in high-density urban conditions.
Hydrogen is clean burning, which in these times of Global Warming and Ozone depletion is a benefit hard to mark as insignificant. In essence, from the exhaust of an engine burning pure hydrogen come only heat and water. Hydrogen is all around us in many forms and seems logically be easily isolated for fuel use by electrolytically seperating it from oxygen in water molecules. Water covers 70% of the earth. The ultimate idea of fuelling our machinery by simply pouring water into the tank is alluring, especially when coupled to the idea that nothing but water is exhausted – how very close to energy Nirvana can we get; water in, water out? The apparent pinnacle of 'green', the idea attracts like perpetual motion.
Unfortunately, and surely because of this allure, the notion of a hydrogen-fuelled economy is given considerable attention. It seems many are misinformed and view hydrogen as the fuel of the future, the saviour of mankind and his insatiable appetite for more and more of everything.
The hope that our technological mastery will solve yet another of our problems has sprung forth, resulting in the belief that high science and hydrogen will combine to ensure that life as we know it will continue and all will live happily ever after.
The reality of hydrogen as a fuel source is far removed from this Utopian ideal.
What it is and where we get it.
Primarily, hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source.
Something like a battery, it needs to be created, charged and then not expected to deliver anything like the same quantity of energy as went into it. This kind of energy sinkhole can best be described as a nett loss, from start to finish and everywhere inbetween.
Close to 95% of all the suitably pure hydrogen available to us today is made from fossil fuels. Crude oil, natural gas and coal are however the self-same compounds that we will soon have to live without. In large measure, it is our over-utilisation of those same compounds that first prompted us to look at hydrogen as fuel.
The processes that are employed to isolate hydrogen atoms from fossil fuels average out at a efficiency of somewhere around 70%, implying that some 30% of the energy contained within the fossil fuel source was wasted in the hydrogen extraction process, excluding the energy it took to extract and transport the fossil fuel to refinery.
Only about 5% of available hydrogen is extracted from water by electrolysis, for applications where the hydrogen is required to be extremely pure. The reason that so little of the world's available hydrogen is created by this means is because it is a very energy intensive way of extracting hydrogen. Most of the electricity we use is generated in oil, gas or coal fired power plants that are at best around 50% efficient. Additionally, the process of electrolysis is only around 70% energy efficient, so in total the extraction of hydrogen from water by electrolysis is only about 35% energy efficient.
At the same time, though hydrogen is clean burning, the processes used in its manufacture certainly are not.
Coal releases large amounts of the number 1 greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the process of hydrogen extraction, so the low-carbon benefits from burning hydrogen are more than offset by the high-carbon cost in creating the same hydrogen from coal.
Extraction of hydrogen from crude oil will never be feasible because of the greater value that oil has as a fuel on its own. Similarly, the additional value of fossil fuels as sources of fertilizers and plastics will forever make them more valuable for other purposes than simply as a source of hydrogen.
So the actual source of hydrogen as a viable fuel is as yet undetermined. Fossil fuels are simply too valuable to waste both as feedstock in the production of hydrogen and as fuel to power the process of electrolysis.
Additionally, hydrogen is the lowest energy dense fuel on earth. This means that in its natural state at room temperature and pressure, it would require about 3000 litres of hydrogen to return the same amount of energy as a litre of petrol. So in order to gain some measurable benefit from using hydrogen as a fuel in a motor car, we are required to compress hydrogen by means of a multi-stage compression process that costs another 10% to 15% of its ultimate energy yield.
Alternatively we can, at a cost of some 30% of ultimate energy yield, liquefy the hydrogen. The problem with this option is keeping the liquid at approximately minus 200 degrees Centigrade. In a car this is not easy, as it can at times be difficult simply keeping the interior at a comfortable 20 degrees Centigrade!
At this stage hydrogen has already lost much of its initial appeal as the ultimate 'green' fuel.
Keeping and storing it.
An interesting formula looks like this.
A realistic consumption figure for a hydrogen vehicle is something like 90 km per kg of hydrogen.
A 3kg tank, with attendant insulation, cooling and able to withstand the required pressures will weigh in the region of half a ton. With this the car will be able to cover some 270 km.
Imagine a half ton pick-up, loaded to its suspension stops with gear and fuel – and unable to travel from Johannesburg to Nelspruit.
Greater compression of the fuel in order to cram more into the tank implies higher pressures, implying in turn greater weight and cost.
Fuel cells are exorbitantly expensive, as well as being heavy. A metal hydride fuel cell system yielding 5 kg of hydrogen would still weigh over 300 kg and cost over a million dollars! It would have a working life of about 1000 hours only and still offer a very limited range.
Low temperatures, high pressures and the lowest ignition point of any fuel makes the transportation and storage of bulk hydrogen extemely difficult. A leak can be ignited by an electrical storm miles away, and low temperatures and pressures make for brittle, crack-prone pipes and seals; altogether an engineers nightmare.
A forty ton hydrogen delivery vehicle would typically carry some half a ton of hydrogen, enough for less than two hundred cars to refuel.The energy required to power this truck on a delivery of about 250 km would be in the order of 20% of the usable hydrogen it carries.
Again, because of the low temperatures and high pressures involved, transportation by pipeline would require a pipeline prohibitively expensive to build and maintain.
Bursting the bubble.
The fundamental problem with hydrogen thus is its energy expense of extraction, storage and utilisation, in return for a relatively low energy yield.
As an alternative fuel it represents an energy nett loss in that it costs significantly more energy to use than it releases.
The notion of a hydrogen-based economy really only serves to illustrate in greater detail the intricacies of our addiction to petroleum and its attributes, making the overcoming of our petro-dependance all the more daunting a task.
Physics will always show the hydrogen economy to be nothing less than a bottomless black hole of diminishing return upon increasing input. Pursuit of a hydrogen fuelled economy is misleading our attention away from what remains the most important challenge facing us as a species; the drastic reduction of our dependence upon and consumption of fossil fuels. This is the real challenge that will soon have to be taken up by every single inhabitant of this planet, as prices of fossil fuels continue to climb to levels unimaginable ten years ago.
There remains on earth arguably insufficient available fossil fuel energy to finance the luxury of making sizeable disbursements in time, money and energy on erroneous and ill-informed approaches to solving the energy problems that will soon beset us.
Collective efforts and energies would be better spent on finding other, more innovative ways to help us move away from a hydrocarbon based economy.
Turn it off!
I was glad to be home to see it.
He came from his room, a mini flashlight clutched to his mouth, vaguely singing along with Bonnie Raitt on the TV.
Robbie Robertson was the soundtrack to his birth, to date the most intense time he and I have had in a jacuzzi. I was wondering if he had made some great, mystical, musically collaborative cosmic connection: Bonnie Raitt, John Hiatt, The Band, Robbie Robertson, or perhaps the reverse?
I was trying to imagine exactly what he might have been thinking when for the first time, two-year-old GabeBabe imitated TV.
Who was he imagining himself to be? Mick Jagger? Bono?
Britney Wolfowitz?
Suddenly, he became a gangster.
He pulled his bright red beanie over his head, staggered out the door and fell over the step. Dharma the Jack Russel hit him like a bullet and kept him nailed to the floor until backup arrived.
We had so happily lived without TV for several years, but we had recently capitulated and for better or worse now had a TV in the front room. Was its insiduous effect beginning to already have an effect, I wondered?
Later when LaPrincessa suggested that the microphone scene might be from his real world, I had to concede that she was most probably correct; we have musician friends. He has seen many vocalists in his few years.
“As for the gangster” she said, rolling her eyes at me, “that could have its origin in the innocence of first realising that sometimes you can see without apparently being seen. Maybe you have been watching too much TV?”
Candy-apple red knitted wool as camo netting! I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself...
Admittedly, Britney and the Gangster had more than likely come from my own TV-addled imagination.
There had been rather a lot of TV lately, but since CWC was over I was quite happy for the box to be dead.
Too much bad light...
An interesting book I read about 25 years ago was “Five Arguments for the Elimination of Television” by Gerry Mander, all thanks to the College Library and Cape Provincial Administration.
I came across a .pdf synopsis of it somewwwhere more recently, and found his arguments to be as valid now as they were then, if not more so.
One such argument made mention of the inability to critically filter high volumes of incoming information. It is a real issue. The brain recieves far more data than it can ever process. Simultaneous audio and video is too much to critically process at one time. Irritation soon follows.
Regaining a sense of calm requires a shutdown of the thinking part of the brain, in effect making the brain a simple sponge for absorbing uncritically whatever the sponsors of the signal want us to absorb.
Like lambs to the slaughter we go, but armed with the name of the right mint sauce to sweeten the ride.
In the very early days of television in this country, there were test patterns and programming of a hideous sort; all Carike Kreuzenkamp and Ge Korsten.
Then came television advertising.
The first TV ad in South Africa used a cowboy to sell frozen burger patties, surely an unwitting yet ominous portent of the level to which our collective brains would ultimately descend; a frozen splodge of over-processed fat, cereal and sweepings off the abattoir floor hypnotically mesmerised by endless gunplay.
I understood then that the idea of advertising was to pay for better programming for the benefit of the viewers. Around the time TV advertising began we got Dallas.
Nowadays it seems as if the programming is chosen purely as a vehicle to attract viewers for the benefit of the advertisers; Big Brother as Judas Goat, sms's charged at R5.
And still we have Dallas.
TV is somehow always here, there and everywhere.
It lurks behind a multitude of tensions, witness how many remotes get chewed by dogs.
TV forms a backtrack to every milestone, for families and for the entire species.
What would 9/11 have been without CNN?
Its massive black eye stares darkly at the room in silent begging for someone to switch it on and give it life and colour, that it too might be a part of the conversation. When we dumbly aquiesce it feigns conviviality with monosyllabic grunts, tweaky shrieks and canned laughter, destroying repartee and giving us “oh... my.... Gaaaawd...!” in its place.
Why else could we possibly need an Oprah to talk for us to us, if only to remind us that we are after all human and being human is not only the best part of being here on this planet, but perhaps the most important part.
When you do not have TV, there is no argument.
People read, play, practise, teach. Remember hobbies? Conversations with real listening? Chess?
Down here are G7 and F# , up there are Betelgeuse and The Great Nebula. Big Brother is Dan.
Without TV one realises there is never a real need for whatever the minds behind demand creation decide should be on special, and an adequate mint sauce can probably be made with chopped fresh mint, vinegar and sugar.
Cricket commentary is available ball-by-ball on FM, and decent news broadcasts available on BBC-Africa on AM.
There is no need to miss out on anything important, least of all each other.
When you do not have TV, watching TV means going to some high ground nearby to watch whole suburbs flicker and flash in synchronised dull blue like different sections of a great orchestra, whilst car thieves conspirationally nod silent greetings as they pass.
That is really watching TV!
As real stars endlessly twinkle their timeless, silent witness to our collective histories in the celestial heavens above, a civilisation hides itself in figurative darkness below, contentedly watching fake pretenders over-enthusiastically endorsing all the useless accoutrements to a plastic heaven here on Earth.
You too can have it all right now, if you just call the number on the screen.
But that's not all...
It is as simple and ridiculous as that. How long yet before we can, in agreement, be rid of it?
He came from his room, a mini flashlight clutched to his mouth, vaguely singing along with Bonnie Raitt on the TV.
Robbie Robertson was the soundtrack to his birth, to date the most intense time he and I have had in a jacuzzi. I was wondering if he had made some great, mystical, musically collaborative cosmic connection: Bonnie Raitt, John Hiatt, The Band, Robbie Robertson, or perhaps the reverse?
I was trying to imagine exactly what he might have been thinking when for the first time, two-year-old GabeBabe imitated TV.
Who was he imagining himself to be? Mick Jagger? Bono?
Britney Wolfowitz?
Suddenly, he became a gangster.
He pulled his bright red beanie over his head, staggered out the door and fell over the step. Dharma the Jack Russel hit him like a bullet and kept him nailed to the floor until backup arrived.
We had so happily lived without TV for several years, but we had recently capitulated and for better or worse now had a TV in the front room. Was its insiduous effect beginning to already have an effect, I wondered?
Later when LaPrincessa suggested that the microphone scene might be from his real world, I had to concede that she was most probably correct; we have musician friends. He has seen many vocalists in his few years.
“As for the gangster” she said, rolling her eyes at me, “that could have its origin in the innocence of first realising that sometimes you can see without apparently being seen. Maybe you have been watching too much TV?”
Candy-apple red knitted wool as camo netting! I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself...
Admittedly, Britney and the Gangster had more than likely come from my own TV-addled imagination.
There had been rather a lot of TV lately, but since CWC was over I was quite happy for the box to be dead.
Too much bad light...
An interesting book I read about 25 years ago was “Five Arguments for the Elimination of Television” by Gerry Mander, all thanks to the College Library and Cape Provincial Administration.
I came across a .pdf synopsis of it somewwwhere more recently, and found his arguments to be as valid now as they were then, if not more so.
One such argument made mention of the inability to critically filter high volumes of incoming information. It is a real issue. The brain recieves far more data than it can ever process. Simultaneous audio and video is too much to critically process at one time. Irritation soon follows.
Regaining a sense of calm requires a shutdown of the thinking part of the brain, in effect making the brain a simple sponge for absorbing uncritically whatever the sponsors of the signal want us to absorb.
Like lambs to the slaughter we go, but armed with the name of the right mint sauce to sweeten the ride.
In the very early days of television in this country, there were test patterns and programming of a hideous sort; all Carike Kreuzenkamp and Ge Korsten.
Then came television advertising.
The first TV ad in South Africa used a cowboy to sell frozen burger patties, surely an unwitting yet ominous portent of the level to which our collective brains would ultimately descend; a frozen splodge of over-processed fat, cereal and sweepings off the abattoir floor hypnotically mesmerised by endless gunplay.
I understood then that the idea of advertising was to pay for better programming for the benefit of the viewers. Around the time TV advertising began we got Dallas.
Nowadays it seems as if the programming is chosen purely as a vehicle to attract viewers for the benefit of the advertisers; Big Brother as Judas Goat, sms's charged at R5.
And still we have Dallas.
TV is somehow always here, there and everywhere.
It lurks behind a multitude of tensions, witness how many remotes get chewed by dogs.
TV forms a backtrack to every milestone, for families and for the entire species.
What would 9/11 have been without CNN?
Its massive black eye stares darkly at the room in silent begging for someone to switch it on and give it life and colour, that it too might be a part of the conversation. When we dumbly aquiesce it feigns conviviality with monosyllabic grunts, tweaky shrieks and canned laughter, destroying repartee and giving us “oh... my.... Gaaaawd...!” in its place.
Why else could we possibly need an Oprah to talk for us to us, if only to remind us that we are after all human and being human is not only the best part of being here on this planet, but perhaps the most important part.
When you do not have TV, there is no argument.
People read, play, practise, teach. Remember hobbies? Conversations with real listening? Chess?
Down here are G7 and F# , up there are Betelgeuse and The Great Nebula. Big Brother is Dan.
Without TV one realises there is never a real need for whatever the minds behind demand creation decide should be on special, and an adequate mint sauce can probably be made with chopped fresh mint, vinegar and sugar.
Cricket commentary is available ball-by-ball on FM, and decent news broadcasts available on BBC-Africa on AM.
There is no need to miss out on anything important, least of all each other.
When you do not have TV, watching TV means going to some high ground nearby to watch whole suburbs flicker and flash in synchronised dull blue like different sections of a great orchestra, whilst car thieves conspirationally nod silent greetings as they pass.
That is really watching TV!
As real stars endlessly twinkle their timeless, silent witness to our collective histories in the celestial heavens above, a civilisation hides itself in figurative darkness below, contentedly watching fake pretenders over-enthusiastically endorsing all the useless accoutrements to a plastic heaven here on Earth.
You too can have it all right now, if you just call the number on the screen.
But that's not all...
It is as simple and ridiculous as that. How long yet before we can, in agreement, be rid of it?
Conversations with dogs.
I have never met a cat that couldn't calm me
by walking slowly past my chair.
Rod Mckuen.
How does a Jack Russel know to disappear the exact moment you begin thinking of bathing it?
How does any dog know to start yapping and bouncing like a rubber band man the same moment you first think of a walk?
Precisely what transpired one night between Xai-xai our cat and our sick baby? The cat softly leaped onto the bed of the screaming, squalling infant, touched noses then went outside to vomit in the flowerbed. Immediately and for the first time in some ten hours the baby fell silent and went to sleep.
We had left the wilderness earlier than planned to get help for the sick child. Whatever happened between them, it led us to change our minds about taking the child to hospital.
Instead we went to bed and slept through until morning. The following day went on as if nothing had ever been wrong in the first place.
What is it about our domestic animals that 'connects' us to them? Do they really know what we are thinking and feeling, and could that be reciprocated?
The science of Quantum Physics has nailed a new set of colours to the mast of modern living – thought is energy, as is everything else in our Universe. All is simply boundless, limitless energy constantly moving in and out of shape and form – never lost or created, always was and always will be.
Modern science is continually finding more and more evidence that proves that we are all just fields of energy moving within other larger fields of energy, all connected by energy.
None of this is really new knowledge however.
Historically, most Ancient cultures had observed that humans were simply a part of Nature, integrated with and connected to a Greater Whole. Native Americans would ask for prey before even commencing the hunt, then take the time to thank their Gods for success before finally thanking the Spirit of the prey for surrendering to death, that they might live.
Aboriginal Australians on desert walkabout 'become water' to find water.
African oral tradition clearly teaches that what Western languages call instinct is really knowledge, and that all of creation is joined and linked.
It seems there is much that we as humans might have have forgotten in our quest to have dominion over the Earth. Could communicating with animals be one such forgotten ability? Is it possible to connect with animals living or dead, seen or unseen – can we know what they are thinking or feeling or remembering? Can they 'tell' us things that we don't know?
It was with these and other similar questions that I recently joined fifteen other people on a two day Animal Communication workshop with Wynter Worstholme, a South African recently returned from some years in Europe and the UK. Trained and taught over years by a sangoma, various mentors and healers and most significantly by animals themselves, she is a reminder that there is invariably much more to things on this glorious Earth than can be seen by the naked, human eye.
First, understand that I am no 'light worker'. I belong to no coven. I light incense only because it smells interesting and makes me think of distant places, Zanzibar or Khandahar. I have little to no knowledge of Reiki, dowsing or clairvoyance. I have never seen an aura.
What I have learned over forty years is that much of what my generation had been led to believe was education was really designed more to ensure that things in the world remained as they were, rather than changed for the better.
Wynter operates from the standpoint that it is fear that runs society, that fills the waking hours of too many people, and fear that gets between people and animals. By replacing that fear with love we can re-open the pathways and re-connect with our animal co-inhabitants. Drawing an analogy with radio, she explained that love is the frequency into which the Universe in tuned, except we humans have re-tuned ourselves to a frequency of fear and thus fail to establish a connection. By retuning to love, we re-connect with all that is around us.
The obvious progression of that theory extends to a contemplation of just how badly the fear and negativity so prevalent in the world must affect the animals that share the planet with us. We know that animals love unconditionally, it is precisely that which allows them to continue to interact and operate among humans even after having been horribly mistreated. One wonders how our conditional kind of love affects them?
To illustrate how animals are able to sense our real thoughts and feelings Wynter described how clans of the Masai tribe in East Central Africa still today use dogs for the early diagnosis of illness in tribe members. She drew our attention to the Pollsmoor Cat Project where the unconditional love offered by animals was being used to successfully reduce the incidence of anti-social behaviour within the confines of a prison. As the line extracted from the Rod McKuen verse above illustrates, animals do have a calming and de-stressing effect on our world and in our lives.
Another example of someone who has taken the time to develop alternative modalities of communication with animals is Monty Roberts – the original horse whisperer. The more he remained still and in an attitude of love and respect, the more horses revealed and taught him about their forms of communication and interaction.
From her theory that we have been conditioned by fear and negativity to the point of no longer being able to communicate with animals, Wynter took us through a meditation the intention of which was to connect with our animal spirit guides. These guiding spirits can best be described as an energy that would have attached to ourselves at an early stage in life, the purpose of which is to assist us to connect with the animal world. Owls, eagles and cats are some of the more common guides, though amongst the group there were lions, crows and buffalo as well!
Wynter explained that key to communicating with animals is the ability to visualise the desired outcome we seek, as animals are able to receive and interpret the visual images we see in our imaginations. This would explain how problem animals often respond so well to a strange, unbiased handler who has no 'recorded picture' of the particular problem, and so is not by thought 'pre-programming' the animal to misbehave.
With a caution that this was really a learned skill and not to be too disappointed if we failed, we were let loose on a trio of unsuspecting dogs.
After asking permission to interact and mentally explaining our intentions to the three dogs, we enthusiastically set about finding out from them their histories, their likes and dislikes, their percieved purposes and their complaints if any.
It was certainly interesting.
There were tales of abandonment, the suicide of a previous owner, the indignity of too infrequent trips to the parlour, of love for particular children and frisbees. It was fascinating, especially when the owner of the dogs then checked and corroborated the information. There were some inaccuracies, definitely. There were also some surprising revelations, the details of which could only have been imparted by the animals themselves. I had to admit to having being impressed.
It is obvious that such interactions could be emotionally very intense, and so one's intentions might need serious examination before making the connection with the animal, particularly with regards to the place and state of the ego. On the other hand however, it is also clear that animals have a great understanding and tolerance of our many foibles.
At a later stage of the workshop Wynter assisted us to connect with animals who have passed on. To my great joy and surprise, I was reminded by the spirit of my late and very Great Dane of a sort of breath swapping activity we used to do. I had honestly not thought about the activity since she died many years ago, and was most pleased to learn that it was something that she used to particularly enjoy doing! I was very moved by that paticular experience, I have to admit.
In discussions about missing animals, Wynter told of using pictures to connect with animals who had disappeared, explaining that a generally light, joyous and peaceful energy usually denoted that the animal had died, whilst any pain or sadness usually meant that the animal was still alive. When connecting with missing animals, situations are understandably highly charged with emotion and trauma. Owners can be desperate, and animals perhaps unwilling to be found, unwilling to return home. There are naturally many instances where sounds, smells and sights can be used as excellent clues to locate missing animals, with the animals themselves able to explain injuries and problems facing them.
At the end of the weekend, I had to ask myself if I were convinced.
Had I really communicated with an animal?
The answer was unequivocally yes, without a shadow of doubt.
At a stage of the workshop participants were working with photos of animals that they had brought with them in lieu of the animals themselves. I hadn't brought a photo with me, so Wynter gave me a picture of her cat Sunshine, at that time about 1800km away in Cape Town.
She suggested a few questions to ask Sunshine; favourite food, layout of her house etc.
Sunshine showed me tinned mussels and showed me around her house.
Wynter verified the layout of the house as I described it, right down to the whereabouts of the sunniest spot, although the pale bark of the tree outside was not that of a plane tree but of a gum. In mitigation I must state that Sunshine never drew my attention to the tree as such, I simply noticed it off to one side at a slight distance.
The mussels from the flat rectangular tins were not something that Wynter ever gave Sunshine.
It took a while and a bit of thought for Wynter to remember that tinned mussels were a favoured treat of her fiancee, invariably shared with Sunshine, and unseen by the cat since his return overseas!
Yes, I am absolutely convinced.
There is still more of critical importance left to learn than has yet been learned, about matters and processes more relevant to the world today and tomorrow than there is time left to devote to their learning.
Can we really afford to close our minds to anything anymore? Like many of us, you might also fall beautifully and soundly asleep at the mention of the word 'meditation'. There is however much happening all around us in the world which, though invisible and thus difficult to understand, is no less real than that which we can see and thus easily understand.
Animal communication is real, and thanks are due to both Wynter Worstholme and Sunshine for letting me see just how real!
by walking slowly past my chair.
Rod Mckuen.
How does a Jack Russel know to disappear the exact moment you begin thinking of bathing it?
How does any dog know to start yapping and bouncing like a rubber band man the same moment you first think of a walk?
Precisely what transpired one night between Xai-xai our cat and our sick baby? The cat softly leaped onto the bed of the screaming, squalling infant, touched noses then went outside to vomit in the flowerbed. Immediately and for the first time in some ten hours the baby fell silent and went to sleep.
We had left the wilderness earlier than planned to get help for the sick child. Whatever happened between them, it led us to change our minds about taking the child to hospital.
Instead we went to bed and slept through until morning. The following day went on as if nothing had ever been wrong in the first place.
What is it about our domestic animals that 'connects' us to them? Do they really know what we are thinking and feeling, and could that be reciprocated?
The science of Quantum Physics has nailed a new set of colours to the mast of modern living – thought is energy, as is everything else in our Universe. All is simply boundless, limitless energy constantly moving in and out of shape and form – never lost or created, always was and always will be.
Modern science is continually finding more and more evidence that proves that we are all just fields of energy moving within other larger fields of energy, all connected by energy.
None of this is really new knowledge however.
Historically, most Ancient cultures had observed that humans were simply a part of Nature, integrated with and connected to a Greater Whole. Native Americans would ask for prey before even commencing the hunt, then take the time to thank their Gods for success before finally thanking the Spirit of the prey for surrendering to death, that they might live.
Aboriginal Australians on desert walkabout 'become water' to find water.
African oral tradition clearly teaches that what Western languages call instinct is really knowledge, and that all of creation is joined and linked.
It seems there is much that we as humans might have have forgotten in our quest to have dominion over the Earth. Could communicating with animals be one such forgotten ability? Is it possible to connect with animals living or dead, seen or unseen – can we know what they are thinking or feeling or remembering? Can they 'tell' us things that we don't know?
It was with these and other similar questions that I recently joined fifteen other people on a two day Animal Communication workshop with Wynter Worstholme, a South African recently returned from some years in Europe and the UK. Trained and taught over years by a sangoma, various mentors and healers and most significantly by animals themselves, she is a reminder that there is invariably much more to things on this glorious Earth than can be seen by the naked, human eye.
First, understand that I am no 'light worker'. I belong to no coven. I light incense only because it smells interesting and makes me think of distant places, Zanzibar or Khandahar. I have little to no knowledge of Reiki, dowsing or clairvoyance. I have never seen an aura.
What I have learned over forty years is that much of what my generation had been led to believe was education was really designed more to ensure that things in the world remained as they were, rather than changed for the better.
Wynter operates from the standpoint that it is fear that runs society, that fills the waking hours of too many people, and fear that gets between people and animals. By replacing that fear with love we can re-open the pathways and re-connect with our animal co-inhabitants. Drawing an analogy with radio, she explained that love is the frequency into which the Universe in tuned, except we humans have re-tuned ourselves to a frequency of fear and thus fail to establish a connection. By retuning to love, we re-connect with all that is around us.
The obvious progression of that theory extends to a contemplation of just how badly the fear and negativity so prevalent in the world must affect the animals that share the planet with us. We know that animals love unconditionally, it is precisely that which allows them to continue to interact and operate among humans even after having been horribly mistreated. One wonders how our conditional kind of love affects them?
To illustrate how animals are able to sense our real thoughts and feelings Wynter described how clans of the Masai tribe in East Central Africa still today use dogs for the early diagnosis of illness in tribe members. She drew our attention to the Pollsmoor Cat Project where the unconditional love offered by animals was being used to successfully reduce the incidence of anti-social behaviour within the confines of a prison. As the line extracted from the Rod McKuen verse above illustrates, animals do have a calming and de-stressing effect on our world and in our lives.
Another example of someone who has taken the time to develop alternative modalities of communication with animals is Monty Roberts – the original horse whisperer. The more he remained still and in an attitude of love and respect, the more horses revealed and taught him about their forms of communication and interaction.
From her theory that we have been conditioned by fear and negativity to the point of no longer being able to communicate with animals, Wynter took us through a meditation the intention of which was to connect with our animal spirit guides. These guiding spirits can best be described as an energy that would have attached to ourselves at an early stage in life, the purpose of which is to assist us to connect with the animal world. Owls, eagles and cats are some of the more common guides, though amongst the group there were lions, crows and buffalo as well!
Wynter explained that key to communicating with animals is the ability to visualise the desired outcome we seek, as animals are able to receive and interpret the visual images we see in our imaginations. This would explain how problem animals often respond so well to a strange, unbiased handler who has no 'recorded picture' of the particular problem, and so is not by thought 'pre-programming' the animal to misbehave.
With a caution that this was really a learned skill and not to be too disappointed if we failed, we were let loose on a trio of unsuspecting dogs.
After asking permission to interact and mentally explaining our intentions to the three dogs, we enthusiastically set about finding out from them their histories, their likes and dislikes, their percieved purposes and their complaints if any.
It was certainly interesting.
There were tales of abandonment, the suicide of a previous owner, the indignity of too infrequent trips to the parlour, of love for particular children and frisbees. It was fascinating, especially when the owner of the dogs then checked and corroborated the information. There were some inaccuracies, definitely. There were also some surprising revelations, the details of which could only have been imparted by the animals themselves. I had to admit to having being impressed.
It is obvious that such interactions could be emotionally very intense, and so one's intentions might need serious examination before making the connection with the animal, particularly with regards to the place and state of the ego. On the other hand however, it is also clear that animals have a great understanding and tolerance of our many foibles.
At a later stage of the workshop Wynter assisted us to connect with animals who have passed on. To my great joy and surprise, I was reminded by the spirit of my late and very Great Dane of a sort of breath swapping activity we used to do. I had honestly not thought about the activity since she died many years ago, and was most pleased to learn that it was something that she used to particularly enjoy doing! I was very moved by that paticular experience, I have to admit.
In discussions about missing animals, Wynter told of using pictures to connect with animals who had disappeared, explaining that a generally light, joyous and peaceful energy usually denoted that the animal had died, whilst any pain or sadness usually meant that the animal was still alive. When connecting with missing animals, situations are understandably highly charged with emotion and trauma. Owners can be desperate, and animals perhaps unwilling to be found, unwilling to return home. There are naturally many instances where sounds, smells and sights can be used as excellent clues to locate missing animals, with the animals themselves able to explain injuries and problems facing them.
At the end of the weekend, I had to ask myself if I were convinced.
Had I really communicated with an animal?
The answer was unequivocally yes, without a shadow of doubt.
At a stage of the workshop participants were working with photos of animals that they had brought with them in lieu of the animals themselves. I hadn't brought a photo with me, so Wynter gave me a picture of her cat Sunshine, at that time about 1800km away in Cape Town.
She suggested a few questions to ask Sunshine; favourite food, layout of her house etc.
Sunshine showed me tinned mussels and showed me around her house.
Wynter verified the layout of the house as I described it, right down to the whereabouts of the sunniest spot, although the pale bark of the tree outside was not that of a plane tree but of a gum. In mitigation I must state that Sunshine never drew my attention to the tree as such, I simply noticed it off to one side at a slight distance.
The mussels from the flat rectangular tins were not something that Wynter ever gave Sunshine.
It took a while and a bit of thought for Wynter to remember that tinned mussels were a favoured treat of her fiancee, invariably shared with Sunshine, and unseen by the cat since his return overseas!
Yes, I am absolutely convinced.
There is still more of critical importance left to learn than has yet been learned, about matters and processes more relevant to the world today and tomorrow than there is time left to devote to their learning.
Can we really afford to close our minds to anything anymore? Like many of us, you might also fall beautifully and soundly asleep at the mention of the word 'meditation'. There is however much happening all around us in the world which, though invisible and thus difficult to understand, is no less real than that which we can see and thus easily understand.
Animal communication is real, and thanks are due to both Wynter Worstholme and Sunshine for letting me see just how real!
It's bin' awhile.....
Where it's at....
I do realise that a blog is supposed to be updated daily. Living in rural Africa presents a few obstacles to the simple idea of updating daily, however.
I don't live in as town or in a city.
I stay on a small farm some ten kilometres from a small town.
Out where I live there are no DSL or broadband. There is barely terrestrial telephone – we haven't had a connection for the past 15 weeks after about 3 kilometres of copper cable was stolen one dark night. Believe it or believe it not, but there are people here that steal copper cable wherever they find it, to sell for scrap to unscrupulous scrap merchants.
There is very expensive satellite broadband available as well as theoretical wireless broadband and 3G, although the latter signal strength is not really sufficient to support 3G. They are apparently working on the installation of some sort of booster tower to make 3G available in the region. When that eventually happens will be anyone's guess....
What all this means is that when a trip to town becomes necessary for sufficient good reason, then such a trip is made. A stop at the internet cafe is then made. I am hoping that as my writing career becomes more rewarding trips to town will occur more frequently. As soon as possible I intend getting the 3G connection - and then a daily update will become the done thing.
In the interim however I will be preparing things and then uploading them as and when I get to the internet cafe.
The theft of copper cable is big business out here – miles and miles of it every year....
Our landline has been up and running a total of about 5 months in the last 12. No sooner is the cable replaced than it gets ripped off again. On top of all that, our only telecomms service provider as far as terrestrial is concerned is a monopolistic giant, the proud supplier of the second most expensive broadband in the world. So it goes....
Crime out here is a bit of an issue – I am busy with a piece detailing some of our more recent experiences as far as crime is concerned. It is more of a rant really – you will get the whole picture once I upload it.
I know that in most places the idea of high crime implies more intense policing. Well, not out here. It simply doesn't work that way. This is Africa....
Our National Commissioner of Police is currently under investigation for some uncomfortably close ties to a seething mass of organised crime – from India to the US. The suspicions are that he is up to his neck in narcotics, car smuggling – you name it. Of course, being almost a third world country means that irrespective of his guilt or innocence, he is unlikely to be censured in any significant way. The rest of the force is demoralised, underpaid, undertrained and really battling to make a difference in a country awash with crime.
The fun out here never ends, let me tell you....
I don't pay attention to the local media – the national broadcaster is state owned, and in the same way as it used to be manipulated and controlled by the previous regime it is being operated by the current one. Not much has really changed as far as that is concerned. Television is either by satellite/subscription, or by courtesy of the state operated channels 1, 2 or 3. There is another privately owned channel, but its offerings are no better than those of the State. It's news broadcasts are however 'independent', a good thing because they at least seem unafraid to hammer the State about crime.
There are a few independent radio channels, but they operate under limitations of transmitter power and are thus extremely regional in nature. They are actually called community radio stations – pretty boring after a while. So we have a Worldspace satellite reciever, something like Sirius, and can get BBC, CNN, NPR, Channel Islam, and quite a few other news channels, plus a mulitude of other channels from comedy to World music.
So I listen to WorldZone, Flava, Riff, BOB, Maestro, Orbit, VirginUK and Voyager for music. BBC-World, Channel Islam, CNN and BBC-Africa for news, NPR and a few others for general interest.
I am not a Muslim but I enjoy Channel Islam for its alternative viewpoint which in may instances coincides quite nicely with my own, particularly as far as Global economic and political machination is concerned. I find that the mainstream news channels tend to present a rather biased view.
Perhaps my tendency to always look for alternative views and news comes from having grown up under the impression that Nelson Mandela and his compadres were terrorists, thanks to the state-imposed regulation of information prevalent at the time. Understand something here, at the time we weren't supposed to mention his name – he was banned.
It was illegal to have a picture of him or to quote him.
Later I realised that one man's terrorist is invariably another man's freedom fighter and that Madiba was a fine man, one of the finest our civilisation will ever know. I guess somehow I determined not to let that misinformation thing happen to me again.
There were weird and scary goings on at the time – the brainwashing was intense at every level from Church to school – I could as easily have ended up killing 20 or 30 so-called 'terrorists' under the auspices of 'kill or be killed' as I could have gotten drunk. It was like that. That I didn't was purely a function of the fact that my father had grown up on farms among black people and that his father had apparently had a less-than lily-white concubine for years!
There was a time he told me to think for myself as far as rascsim was concerned, and I can also remember him warning me against getting sucked into the military thing at a time when my school was conditioning me into a sort of gung-ho trigger-happy white supremacist. Most of my schoolmates went off to 'do their bit' for the country – knocking off SWAPO and ANC cadres was the goal. Somehow I was fed just enough information to keep out of trouble. Joining the liberation movement, had I even known of it as such, was beyond comprehension. When once approached to join the ANC, I remember being warned that my father would almost certainly lose his job as a result. Big things to consider.........
I am more grateful than you can imagine that I was able to serve out my conscription without falling into the trap of blind patriotism.
My father also mentioned several times around the mid-'80's that there would almost certainly come a day of reckoning in South Africa when servicemen would have to answer for the actions they took on behalf of the apartheid government. I think that was pretty farsighted of him, because in the mid- '80's the Truth and Reconciliation commission of the post-apartheid years was inconcievably far away.
I guess that is why the happenings of the past few years have worried me so much – I really think that time will show the War on Terror to be an embarrasment to the people of the US and elsewhere – off you go Tony Blair and don't bother us again....
I only hope that the followers of Islam are as forgiving as the oppressed of South Africa were.
South Africa – we will no doubt talk about this country quite a bit in the future. I want to make clear my position on my country.
I love this place, it is my country. I consider myself an African. I would stay here forever if I could. However, I want to emigrate and will if I can.
The reason for wanting to emigrate is not about inadequate education for my kids, though it is a concern. I can teach them myself.
It is not about the economics and the lack of opportunity available to my family and I because we happen to be 'white'.
It is about the crime, the violent crime – killing someone for a mobile phone or less. It is a form of terrorism that from the times of Robespierre was invariably perpetrated upon the citizens of a country by the controlling power of that country. Now it's just another way of getting what you want without having to pay for it.
We have frequently discussed this point in my home – if given the choice, would we prefer to live in a real Third World country, where ordinary supplies are say 250 kilometres away and only purchased once every six months if ever, where infrastructure is non-existent and amenities and utilities unavailable but where there is no crime?
Or would we prefer to stay where we are?
Unequivocally, we would move to Congo-Brazzaville or Laos tomorrow to live on rice and walk everywhere, rather than stay in this bedlam of violence, savagery and criminal craziness. Unfortunately, much of Africa is at the moment under the cosh of some form of low-level war or lawlessness, otherwise we would have left here for another African state long ago. I plan to share some of the horror stories from Africa at some stage with you, but I promise to balance it with tales of the beautiful people that make it such a lovely place as well.
Which brings me more-or-less to where I started from.
Here are a few of the bits and pieces I have put out this past week – enjoy them! Or not, whatever you prefer...
Peace to you and yours, in our time. But only if we want it badly enough, I guess...
I do realise that a blog is supposed to be updated daily. Living in rural Africa presents a few obstacles to the simple idea of updating daily, however.
I don't live in as town or in a city.
I stay on a small farm some ten kilometres from a small town.
Out where I live there are no DSL or broadband. There is barely terrestrial telephone – we haven't had a connection for the past 15 weeks after about 3 kilometres of copper cable was stolen one dark night. Believe it or believe it not, but there are people here that steal copper cable wherever they find it, to sell for scrap to unscrupulous scrap merchants.
There is very expensive satellite broadband available as well as theoretical wireless broadband and 3G, although the latter signal strength is not really sufficient to support 3G. They are apparently working on the installation of some sort of booster tower to make 3G available in the region. When that eventually happens will be anyone's guess....
What all this means is that when a trip to town becomes necessary for sufficient good reason, then such a trip is made. A stop at the internet cafe is then made. I am hoping that as my writing career becomes more rewarding trips to town will occur more frequently. As soon as possible I intend getting the 3G connection - and then a daily update will become the done thing.
In the interim however I will be preparing things and then uploading them as and when I get to the internet cafe.
The theft of copper cable is big business out here – miles and miles of it every year....
Our landline has been up and running a total of about 5 months in the last 12. No sooner is the cable replaced than it gets ripped off again. On top of all that, our only telecomms service provider as far as terrestrial is concerned is a monopolistic giant, the proud supplier of the second most expensive broadband in the world. So it goes....
Crime out here is a bit of an issue – I am busy with a piece detailing some of our more recent experiences as far as crime is concerned. It is more of a rant really – you will get the whole picture once I upload it.
I know that in most places the idea of high crime implies more intense policing. Well, not out here. It simply doesn't work that way. This is Africa....
Our National Commissioner of Police is currently under investigation for some uncomfortably close ties to a seething mass of organised crime – from India to the US. The suspicions are that he is up to his neck in narcotics, car smuggling – you name it. Of course, being almost a third world country means that irrespective of his guilt or innocence, he is unlikely to be censured in any significant way. The rest of the force is demoralised, underpaid, undertrained and really battling to make a difference in a country awash with crime.
The fun out here never ends, let me tell you....
I don't pay attention to the local media – the national broadcaster is state owned, and in the same way as it used to be manipulated and controlled by the previous regime it is being operated by the current one. Not much has really changed as far as that is concerned. Television is either by satellite/subscription, or by courtesy of the state operated channels 1, 2 or 3. There is another privately owned channel, but its offerings are no better than those of the State. It's news broadcasts are however 'independent', a good thing because they at least seem unafraid to hammer the State about crime.
There are a few independent radio channels, but they operate under limitations of transmitter power and are thus extremely regional in nature. They are actually called community radio stations – pretty boring after a while. So we have a Worldspace satellite reciever, something like Sirius, and can get BBC, CNN, NPR, Channel Islam, and quite a few other news channels, plus a mulitude of other channels from comedy to World music.
So I listen to WorldZone, Flava, Riff, BOB, Maestro, Orbit, VirginUK and Voyager for music. BBC-World, Channel Islam, CNN and BBC-Africa for news, NPR and a few others for general interest.
I am not a Muslim but I enjoy Channel Islam for its alternative viewpoint which in may instances coincides quite nicely with my own, particularly as far as Global economic and political machination is concerned. I find that the mainstream news channels tend to present a rather biased view.
Perhaps my tendency to always look for alternative views and news comes from having grown up under the impression that Nelson Mandela and his compadres were terrorists, thanks to the state-imposed regulation of information prevalent at the time. Understand something here, at the time we weren't supposed to mention his name – he was banned.
It was illegal to have a picture of him or to quote him.
Later I realised that one man's terrorist is invariably another man's freedom fighter and that Madiba was a fine man, one of the finest our civilisation will ever know. I guess somehow I determined not to let that misinformation thing happen to me again.
There were weird and scary goings on at the time – the brainwashing was intense at every level from Church to school – I could as easily have ended up killing 20 or 30 so-called 'terrorists' under the auspices of 'kill or be killed' as I could have gotten drunk. It was like that. That I didn't was purely a function of the fact that my father had grown up on farms among black people and that his father had apparently had a less-than lily-white concubine for years!
There was a time he told me to think for myself as far as rascsim was concerned, and I can also remember him warning me against getting sucked into the military thing at a time when my school was conditioning me into a sort of gung-ho trigger-happy white supremacist. Most of my schoolmates went off to 'do their bit' for the country – knocking off SWAPO and ANC cadres was the goal. Somehow I was fed just enough information to keep out of trouble. Joining the liberation movement, had I even known of it as such, was beyond comprehension. When once approached to join the ANC, I remember being warned that my father would almost certainly lose his job as a result. Big things to consider.........
I am more grateful than you can imagine that I was able to serve out my conscription without falling into the trap of blind patriotism.
My father also mentioned several times around the mid-'80's that there would almost certainly come a day of reckoning in South Africa when servicemen would have to answer for the actions they took on behalf of the apartheid government. I think that was pretty farsighted of him, because in the mid- '80's the Truth and Reconciliation commission of the post-apartheid years was inconcievably far away.
I guess that is why the happenings of the past few years have worried me so much – I really think that time will show the War on Terror to be an embarrasment to the people of the US and elsewhere – off you go Tony Blair and don't bother us again....
I only hope that the followers of Islam are as forgiving as the oppressed of South Africa were.
South Africa – we will no doubt talk about this country quite a bit in the future. I want to make clear my position on my country.
I love this place, it is my country. I consider myself an African. I would stay here forever if I could. However, I want to emigrate and will if I can.
The reason for wanting to emigrate is not about inadequate education for my kids, though it is a concern. I can teach them myself.
It is not about the economics and the lack of opportunity available to my family and I because we happen to be 'white'.
It is about the crime, the violent crime – killing someone for a mobile phone or less. It is a form of terrorism that from the times of Robespierre was invariably perpetrated upon the citizens of a country by the controlling power of that country. Now it's just another way of getting what you want without having to pay for it.
We have frequently discussed this point in my home – if given the choice, would we prefer to live in a real Third World country, where ordinary supplies are say 250 kilometres away and only purchased once every six months if ever, where infrastructure is non-existent and amenities and utilities unavailable but where there is no crime?
Or would we prefer to stay where we are?
Unequivocally, we would move to Congo-Brazzaville or Laos tomorrow to live on rice and walk everywhere, rather than stay in this bedlam of violence, savagery and criminal craziness. Unfortunately, much of Africa is at the moment under the cosh of some form of low-level war or lawlessness, otherwise we would have left here for another African state long ago. I plan to share some of the horror stories from Africa at some stage with you, but I promise to balance it with tales of the beautiful people that make it such a lovely place as well.
Which brings me more-or-less to where I started from.
Here are a few of the bits and pieces I have put out this past week – enjoy them! Or not, whatever you prefer...
Peace to you and yours, in our time. But only if we want it badly enough, I guess...
Friday, May 11, 2007
So this is how it all ends...
not with a bang but with a blog.
What an absurd world - whilst several million Africans struggle to make their less-than-a-dollar-a-day lives measurably less miserable and despairing, others of us decide to tell the world about our latest acquisitions and intentions.
And now I have joined up.....
But it need not be all fluff.
I think that any blog ought to subscribe to a few basic principles - it must naturally be reflective of the thoughts and values of the blogger, it must be honest, it must be entertaining to at least the blogger's dog and it must not be taken too seriously.
So this is how this came about...
I had finally woken to the fact that my continued earning of a less-than spectacular salary had become totally dependent upon the monthly consumption of something like a half million litres of diesel, perhaps more.
As Global Warming, the depletion of resources and the politics of PeakOil began simultaneously to redefine my ways of thinking and being, such gluttinous consumption was an anathema.
The nature of the Company and its' ever-shifting, always shiny-new goalposts had started to clash with the nature of the Man.
I fed and housed myself and my family by working as a transport broker, an arch-middleman in an industry that is unfortunately a necessary evil. Transport broking in South Africa exists by default more than by good design. Globally are many examples where the transport industry operates very well without brokers, and for good reason.
A transport broker creates nothing, builds nothing and contributes little, all the while attempting to get a hand in the pocket of everyone he does business with, taking multiple slices of everyone's pie in exchange for the dubious pleasure of knowing him. I earned my living by exploiting information, people and cheap energy. In the process I indirectly caused incalculable damage to our roads, our environment, as well as to the long term energy outlook of the very children I sought to provide for.
I had taken to misquoting JFK, asking myself not 'what is my cost to company, but what is the company's cost to me?'
What would my continued operating in this field of endeavour cost me, my family and then theirs after them? At what point would our descendants curse my generation for our collective irresponsibility and continued over-consumption of what we knew to be very finite resources?
Why did want so badly to believe that that point would only occur after I had departed this Earth?
Such were the questions I was asking myself.
It is true that I was not being forced to look at things that way. There was no gun being held to my head.
But what else was I to think? The information had been given to me, the thoughts had come to me. I could not pretend to myself otherwise.
It goes without saying that I became an increasingly troublesome number in what is a very large organisation, one whose core business is increasing the already significant wealth of a single man. He is a nice enough fellow, a man who has been able to accumulate vast sums of cash and hugely valuable assets in his lifetime. Such is the path he has chosen and I give him full credit for pursuing it well.
I was however unconvinced that I could willingly and indefinitely compromise myself by giving my life in this particular sphere of service to him.
It became increasingly difficult to maintain some sort of space between what I thought and what I said, not always a good platform from which to conduct our sort of business. All too often I was the purveyor of exactly that which my colleagues, associates and clients did not want to hear.
Most times I resisted and contained myself; some things are more easily let by than others, but nothing looked like it was ever going to get any easier. This was the reality I was pointedly making for myself, and I knew it.
Talents such as an understanding of English grammar and playing bass guitar, an understanding of the theories of Quantum Physics, PeakOil and Applied Thermodynamics; these are all very good in themselves but are not highly sought-after in the Jobs pages. In terms of skills that would make me valuable in some area of endeavour I might want to be a part of there seemed few options. At the same time I am blessed with many more dependants and responsibilities than I remember ever wishing for when I was a younger man, all of which simply goes to prove the theory that life is what happens to you whilst you are lying passed out in the azaleas.
Many times I asked myself, “ now what?”
Looking forward from where I was, a whole lot more of the same-old same-old did not look like a life of joy lived with purpose.
If I imagined myself in five or ten years, there was no overriding sense of having made full use of the time between now and then.
Once I even tried to imagine myself standing at my own grave attempting to find out if the latter date worried or excited me!
I was in effect wasting most of the talent, opportunity and potential I was born with.
This living I made kept us all fed, clothed and comfortable. I did a bit for the community, a bit for the impoverished, a bit for the environment. I could afford to keep a good, fat cushion between us, that being my family and I, and the extremely harsh and frightening realities of life in South Africa in 2007. In theory, it was all good.
So why couldn't the ethical and moral issues that sprang from the earning of my paycheck be pushed to the back of my mind and blotted out somehow? Couldn't my own objections be overcome in one way or another, as had happened so many times before in life? Surely someone else could bear the cost if I could simply find a way to justify it to myself?
Unfortunately, and without wanting to seem ungrateful, I had to say no.
Some of our parents were born to achieve so more than they did. The life they provided for us was for them a compromise, one that carried with it a heavy price in terms of merely sporadic parcels of joy, crushingly minimal job satisfaction and the desperate sadness of a hundred unfulfilled dreams. Post-war austerity and economic hardship saw to it that many simply took what they could get. They kept their noses to the grindstone and kept their heads down. We are grateful to them for having raised us in a way that now allows us the vision to see their own sense of having settled for less than all that might have been possible, but how harshly have some of us judged them for that in the past?
Is it not surprising that some of us see the approach of the same condition now, in our own lives?
How do we break the cycle? How do we ensure that our own children grow up to be people of authenticity, living true to themselves and their ideals, maximizing their opportunities and potentialities?
And how do we make sure that they know that the truth they carve into our gravestones are true, to us?
How do we identify exactly what sort of life we might love to live? How do we identify exactly what it is that we might want both personally and professionally, and how do we align those things with our core values and ethics as 'human beings'. How do we ensure that the things we commit ourselves to are going to bring us more in terms of joy, abundance, balance and intimacy?
I needed help to identify a new path to a new destination closer to wherever my goals might lie, and away from the nowhere of where I found myself.
I needed help to identify and set goals that I would really want to achieve, from someone who would require me to do more than I would have done on my own. I needed this someone to provide me with whatever tools, resources and support I might find necessary to achieve more than I had recently been achieving.
From time to time I would see the advertisements of coaches – Life Coaches, Consciousness Coaches.
It began to occur to me that if Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Roger Federer found it useful to maintain some form of relationship with a coach, then how much more beneficial would having a coach be to an ordinary person like myself?
Not necessarily a coach to iron out a swing or serve, but a coach to perhaps iron out the roadmap a little, a provider of the guidance an ordinary person would need to create an extraordinary life.
I imagined such coaching to be something close to a partnership with someone who believed in me and my latent possibilities, who would point out to me those things I could not see for myself. I wanted help with narrowing the distance between where I found myself and where I thought I might rather wish to be. The precise location of the latter where I was not even sure of.
I wanted someone who would focus on the present, with an eye aiming squarely on the future. I had no desire to dig into the past.
I wanted someone who would help me to define the actions that would bring about my desired results, assisting me to make better decisions and helping me to maintain focus on my desired outcomes.
I wanted someone who would expect of me my best at all times, and in my interests alone. Not for the benefit of the Company or the bank or the Government, but for me alone.
It took a while, but I have found such a coach, a Professional Life Coach. Her business is called New Leaf Coaching.
Her business card bears the tagline “Inspiring Conscious Growth”.
Over time she has assisted me to pinpoint where I go wrong. She has helped me identify the self-sabotaging patterns I kept close to me like old friends, those resident fears and self-defeating beliefs that operate in the shadowy underworld of my subconscious, secretive agents of spectacular under-achievement and interminable procrastination.
Together, we worked on constructive conclusions about my life, over time developing in me an awareness and consciousness that will focus on creating the life I choose to live, in the future, consciously.
A life without fear. What very, very big words those are.
Through our sessions together, meeting weekly or fortnightly, she explained to me how personal integrity impeccably maintained with oneself is the only effective means to counteract the saboteur of fear, creating and maintaining a relentless rebellion against the rebel within.
By decreasing my need to be led by others and by being in service to my commitment to myself I expect to overcome the habits of years of giving in to thinking and feeling, habits of external power and power over others. Habits of anger and control, of subservience or dominance.
I quickly realised that this would not be an easy or comfortable journey. She expects nothing less than my best. There is always homework. Melody is forthright, direct and lets me get away with very little. Getting challenged right out of my comfortable little area of complaint can be uncomfortable, but I actually expected it no other way.
I wanted to look forward to a life a little more authentic, closer to and more congruent with my beliefs and values than the one I had been living.
How could I possibly go back?
One of the first things Melody told me was that success in life comes in direct proportion to our levels of integrity, both personally and professionally. Thus my misquoted JFK was not really very far from the reality of 'what is avoiding this truth really costing me?'
For a time I had erroneously believed that living a life with integrity and according to an easily defined set of ethically and environmentally acceptable principles might actually be of value to the organisation, to the Company. Exactly how I was not clear, but this is a post-9/11, climate change-aware global village we are living in, after all. There had to be a place for an honest guy, surely?
Through relentless self-questioning I eventually realised that the Company is too heavily invested in a world of limitless resources and us-and-them boundaries to consider the value of retaining what amounted to an activist in its employ.
I had previously sent factual, informative e-mails to certain key management personnel detailing the facts behind the coming PeakOil scenario. Containing graphs, tables and historical facts, I thought they would have been of intense interest to the management of a diesel-fuelled outfit like the Company. I made mention of the fact that when my interest in this subject was first sparked the oil price was a mere $38 per barrel, adding that price was knocking around $80 a barrel as I was sending the messages. The intervening timespan had been a little over two years.
I mentioned the knock-on effects of a restructuring and recomissioning of the rail network, mentioned the scrutiny internationally of factors like food miles and carbon footprints. I even discussed in some detail alternative fuel sources, debunking the myths of hydrogen and nuclear.
I asked simple questions – how would our business look at a diesel price of R15 per litre? At R20 per litre? At an oil price of $100 per barrel?
Everything right down to the mailinglist had been designed to avoid creating any sort of panic. The purpose was to spark discussion and thinking.
At a scheduled bosberaad the oil price issue and its possible ramifications to our business were to have been discussed. It may or may not have been discussed, however the returning resolution was that we and our business would always be around, in pretty much the same form as we currently inhabit. There was nothing much to worry about. And that was the last word on the subject.
Nothing happened which gave me any reason to hope or believe that there was some sort of plan for the future taking shape anywhere within the organisation. I was told it would be business as usual.
My desktop became a picture of a small, half-starved and desperately frightened-looking Iraqi boy, scrappily clothed in tattered rags but plaintively offering a cigarette pack to a passing US armoured troop carrier; a tiny figure tentative and frightened, silently screaming his plea for mercy, peace and compassion.
I had chosen the desktop to remind me of exactly who was paying the price for us to earn enough to live so well.
When my very religious boss forwarded to me a religous chain e-mail inferring a certain passage in the Koran taught that a great Eagle was going to descend upon the people of Islam and basically wipe the earth with them, thereby justifying the current happenings in Iraq, the compulsion to respond was more powerful than my strength to resist it.
From an English Qu'ran I was able to correct the actual quotation, which by the way said something very different, as well as give some historical background to the circumstances surrounding the quotation. I sent it back to him.
I had, in effect, stated my position. I had drawn a line.
The occasion of the Annual Salary Review saw the questioning doggedly plodding down familiar pathways paved with corporate jargon to a point at which my boss directly asked what exactly motivated me.
I remember fearfully wondering how best to answer that without being truthful enough to lose my job.
Then something let go inside me. I remembered Mohandas Ghandi having said “become the change so that the change can occur.”
I had no reason to fear being honest. I knew it would most likely cost me, in the short term at least.
As if on cue, somewhere in my mind I heard 'what is avoiding this truth costing me?'
I spoke frankly.
I admited that I saw little future for myself within the Company, that I saw little future for the Company itself in its current guise, that I felt my personal integrity was being compromised by the exploitative way we earned our revenues, that the company was costing me more on that level than than I felt I was costing the company in currency terms.
I made it very clear that I needed to be making a difference with my time, and not by making one rich man richer than he already was or could ever need to be. I was, to quote the latest management guff that the Company was fond of bandying about, nothing less than totally candid.
The 'Brutal Facts' was the catch-phrase, I think.
I remember wondering how many of these management guru buzzwords are actually acted upon and become part of the culture of the organisation, and how many remain merely words on a Powerpoint presentation?
I was past caring.
I countered the accusation that I was not, by nature, a team player with the reminder that I played on what must be the ultimate 'team' – a better-than-most, regularly performing popular band! I made it clear that I was happy to play on any team as long as the purpose of the team was contributing to the greater good. I tried to draw parallels between musical collaboration and a possible management style, but there was nothing to be gained by any further discussion. Besides, I was certainly beyond trying to convince anyone to let me keep my job!
I was urged to resign, as expected. I had been coached for the possibility.
The only sticky bits were around whether or not I wanted to be paid out in one lump sum or in instalments.
The e-mail that was sent out announcing my resignation said I was leaving because I felt a need to make more of a difference in the world.
Already things were looking up! It seemed a decent enough way to be remembered.
I felt this an acceptable starting point from which to re-invent myself as a freelance writer and speaker on topics around the coming energy crisis, how mankind might survive the next 100 years and why we might be better off for being forced to change our ways.
In the backyard I am constructing a small biodiesel processing plant.
My self-esteem is intact, my conscience clear; my integrity is whole.
And that 3200-odd words ought to keep any reader busy thoughout lunch!
What an absurd world - whilst several million Africans struggle to make their less-than-a-dollar-a-day lives measurably less miserable and despairing, others of us decide to tell the world about our latest acquisitions and intentions.
And now I have joined up.....
But it need not be all fluff.
I think that any blog ought to subscribe to a few basic principles - it must naturally be reflective of the thoughts and values of the blogger, it must be honest, it must be entertaining to at least the blogger's dog and it must not be taken too seriously.
So this is how this came about...
I had finally woken to the fact that my continued earning of a less-than spectacular salary had become totally dependent upon the monthly consumption of something like a half million litres of diesel, perhaps more.
As Global Warming, the depletion of resources and the politics of PeakOil began simultaneously to redefine my ways of thinking and being, such gluttinous consumption was an anathema.
The nature of the Company and its' ever-shifting, always shiny-new goalposts had started to clash with the nature of the Man.
I fed and housed myself and my family by working as a transport broker, an arch-middleman in an industry that is unfortunately a necessary evil. Transport broking in South Africa exists by default more than by good design. Globally are many examples where the transport industry operates very well without brokers, and for good reason.
A transport broker creates nothing, builds nothing and contributes little, all the while attempting to get a hand in the pocket of everyone he does business with, taking multiple slices of everyone's pie in exchange for the dubious pleasure of knowing him. I earned my living by exploiting information, people and cheap energy. In the process I indirectly caused incalculable damage to our roads, our environment, as well as to the long term energy outlook of the very children I sought to provide for.
I had taken to misquoting JFK, asking myself not 'what is my cost to company, but what is the company's cost to me?'
What would my continued operating in this field of endeavour cost me, my family and then theirs after them? At what point would our descendants curse my generation for our collective irresponsibility and continued over-consumption of what we knew to be very finite resources?
Why did want so badly to believe that that point would only occur after I had departed this Earth?
Such were the questions I was asking myself.
It is true that I was not being forced to look at things that way. There was no gun being held to my head.
But what else was I to think? The information had been given to me, the thoughts had come to me. I could not pretend to myself otherwise.
It goes without saying that I became an increasingly troublesome number in what is a very large organisation, one whose core business is increasing the already significant wealth of a single man. He is a nice enough fellow, a man who has been able to accumulate vast sums of cash and hugely valuable assets in his lifetime. Such is the path he has chosen and I give him full credit for pursuing it well.
I was however unconvinced that I could willingly and indefinitely compromise myself by giving my life in this particular sphere of service to him.
It became increasingly difficult to maintain some sort of space between what I thought and what I said, not always a good platform from which to conduct our sort of business. All too often I was the purveyor of exactly that which my colleagues, associates and clients did not want to hear.
Most times I resisted and contained myself; some things are more easily let by than others, but nothing looked like it was ever going to get any easier. This was the reality I was pointedly making for myself, and I knew it.
Talents such as an understanding of English grammar and playing bass guitar, an understanding of the theories of Quantum Physics, PeakOil and Applied Thermodynamics; these are all very good in themselves but are not highly sought-after in the Jobs pages. In terms of skills that would make me valuable in some area of endeavour I might want to be a part of there seemed few options. At the same time I am blessed with many more dependants and responsibilities than I remember ever wishing for when I was a younger man, all of which simply goes to prove the theory that life is what happens to you whilst you are lying passed out in the azaleas.
Many times I asked myself, “ now what?”
Looking forward from where I was, a whole lot more of the same-old same-old did not look like a life of joy lived with purpose.
If I imagined myself in five or ten years, there was no overriding sense of having made full use of the time between now and then.
Once I even tried to imagine myself standing at my own grave attempting to find out if the latter date worried or excited me!
I was in effect wasting most of the talent, opportunity and potential I was born with.
This living I made kept us all fed, clothed and comfortable. I did a bit for the community, a bit for the impoverished, a bit for the environment. I could afford to keep a good, fat cushion between us, that being my family and I, and the extremely harsh and frightening realities of life in South Africa in 2007. In theory, it was all good.
So why couldn't the ethical and moral issues that sprang from the earning of my paycheck be pushed to the back of my mind and blotted out somehow? Couldn't my own objections be overcome in one way or another, as had happened so many times before in life? Surely someone else could bear the cost if I could simply find a way to justify it to myself?
Unfortunately, and without wanting to seem ungrateful, I had to say no.
Some of our parents were born to achieve so more than they did. The life they provided for us was for them a compromise, one that carried with it a heavy price in terms of merely sporadic parcels of joy, crushingly minimal job satisfaction and the desperate sadness of a hundred unfulfilled dreams. Post-war austerity and economic hardship saw to it that many simply took what they could get. They kept their noses to the grindstone and kept their heads down. We are grateful to them for having raised us in a way that now allows us the vision to see their own sense of having settled for less than all that might have been possible, but how harshly have some of us judged them for that in the past?
Is it not surprising that some of us see the approach of the same condition now, in our own lives?
How do we break the cycle? How do we ensure that our own children grow up to be people of authenticity, living true to themselves and their ideals, maximizing their opportunities and potentialities?
And how do we make sure that they know that the truth they carve into our gravestones are true, to us?
How do we identify exactly what sort of life we might love to live? How do we identify exactly what it is that we might want both personally and professionally, and how do we align those things with our core values and ethics as 'human beings'. How do we ensure that the things we commit ourselves to are going to bring us more in terms of joy, abundance, balance and intimacy?
I needed help to identify a new path to a new destination closer to wherever my goals might lie, and away from the nowhere of where I found myself.
I needed help to identify and set goals that I would really want to achieve, from someone who would require me to do more than I would have done on my own. I needed this someone to provide me with whatever tools, resources and support I might find necessary to achieve more than I had recently been achieving.
From time to time I would see the advertisements of coaches – Life Coaches, Consciousness Coaches.
It began to occur to me that if Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Roger Federer found it useful to maintain some form of relationship with a coach, then how much more beneficial would having a coach be to an ordinary person like myself?
Not necessarily a coach to iron out a swing or serve, but a coach to perhaps iron out the roadmap a little, a provider of the guidance an ordinary person would need to create an extraordinary life.
I imagined such coaching to be something close to a partnership with someone who believed in me and my latent possibilities, who would point out to me those things I could not see for myself. I wanted help with narrowing the distance between where I found myself and where I thought I might rather wish to be. The precise location of the latter where I was not even sure of.
I wanted someone who would focus on the present, with an eye aiming squarely on the future. I had no desire to dig into the past.
I wanted someone who would help me to define the actions that would bring about my desired results, assisting me to make better decisions and helping me to maintain focus on my desired outcomes.
I wanted someone who would expect of me my best at all times, and in my interests alone. Not for the benefit of the Company or the bank or the Government, but for me alone.
It took a while, but I have found such a coach, a Professional Life Coach. Her business is called New Leaf Coaching.
Her business card bears the tagline “Inspiring Conscious Growth”.
Over time she has assisted me to pinpoint where I go wrong. She has helped me identify the self-sabotaging patterns I kept close to me like old friends, those resident fears and self-defeating beliefs that operate in the shadowy underworld of my subconscious, secretive agents of spectacular under-achievement and interminable procrastination.
Together, we worked on constructive conclusions about my life, over time developing in me an awareness and consciousness that will focus on creating the life I choose to live, in the future, consciously.
A life without fear. What very, very big words those are.
Through our sessions together, meeting weekly or fortnightly, she explained to me how personal integrity impeccably maintained with oneself is the only effective means to counteract the saboteur of fear, creating and maintaining a relentless rebellion against the rebel within.
By decreasing my need to be led by others and by being in service to my commitment to myself I expect to overcome the habits of years of giving in to thinking and feeling, habits of external power and power over others. Habits of anger and control, of subservience or dominance.
I quickly realised that this would not be an easy or comfortable journey. She expects nothing less than my best. There is always homework. Melody is forthright, direct and lets me get away with very little. Getting challenged right out of my comfortable little area of complaint can be uncomfortable, but I actually expected it no other way.
I wanted to look forward to a life a little more authentic, closer to and more congruent with my beliefs and values than the one I had been living.
How could I possibly go back?
One of the first things Melody told me was that success in life comes in direct proportion to our levels of integrity, both personally and professionally. Thus my misquoted JFK was not really very far from the reality of 'what is avoiding this truth really costing me?'
For a time I had erroneously believed that living a life with integrity and according to an easily defined set of ethically and environmentally acceptable principles might actually be of value to the organisation, to the Company. Exactly how I was not clear, but this is a post-9/11, climate change-aware global village we are living in, after all. There had to be a place for an honest guy, surely?
Through relentless self-questioning I eventually realised that the Company is too heavily invested in a world of limitless resources and us-and-them boundaries to consider the value of retaining what amounted to an activist in its employ.
I had previously sent factual, informative e-mails to certain key management personnel detailing the facts behind the coming PeakOil scenario. Containing graphs, tables and historical facts, I thought they would have been of intense interest to the management of a diesel-fuelled outfit like the Company. I made mention of the fact that when my interest in this subject was first sparked the oil price was a mere $38 per barrel, adding that price was knocking around $80 a barrel as I was sending the messages. The intervening timespan had been a little over two years.
I mentioned the knock-on effects of a restructuring and recomissioning of the rail network, mentioned the scrutiny internationally of factors like food miles and carbon footprints. I even discussed in some detail alternative fuel sources, debunking the myths of hydrogen and nuclear.
I asked simple questions – how would our business look at a diesel price of R15 per litre? At R20 per litre? At an oil price of $100 per barrel?
Everything right down to the mailinglist had been designed to avoid creating any sort of panic. The purpose was to spark discussion and thinking.
At a scheduled bosberaad the oil price issue and its possible ramifications to our business were to have been discussed. It may or may not have been discussed, however the returning resolution was that we and our business would always be around, in pretty much the same form as we currently inhabit. There was nothing much to worry about. And that was the last word on the subject.
Nothing happened which gave me any reason to hope or believe that there was some sort of plan for the future taking shape anywhere within the organisation. I was told it would be business as usual.
My desktop became a picture of a small, half-starved and desperately frightened-looking Iraqi boy, scrappily clothed in tattered rags but plaintively offering a cigarette pack to a passing US armoured troop carrier; a tiny figure tentative and frightened, silently screaming his plea for mercy, peace and compassion.
I had chosen the desktop to remind me of exactly who was paying the price for us to earn enough to live so well.
When my very religious boss forwarded to me a religous chain e-mail inferring a certain passage in the Koran taught that a great Eagle was going to descend upon the people of Islam and basically wipe the earth with them, thereby justifying the current happenings in Iraq, the compulsion to respond was more powerful than my strength to resist it.
From an English Qu'ran I was able to correct the actual quotation, which by the way said something very different, as well as give some historical background to the circumstances surrounding the quotation. I sent it back to him.
I had, in effect, stated my position. I had drawn a line.
The occasion of the Annual Salary Review saw the questioning doggedly plodding down familiar pathways paved with corporate jargon to a point at which my boss directly asked what exactly motivated me.
I remember fearfully wondering how best to answer that without being truthful enough to lose my job.
Then something let go inside me. I remembered Mohandas Ghandi having said “become the change so that the change can occur.”
I had no reason to fear being honest. I knew it would most likely cost me, in the short term at least.
As if on cue, somewhere in my mind I heard 'what is avoiding this truth costing me?'
I spoke frankly.
I admited that I saw little future for myself within the Company, that I saw little future for the Company itself in its current guise, that I felt my personal integrity was being compromised by the exploitative way we earned our revenues, that the company was costing me more on that level than than I felt I was costing the company in currency terms.
I made it very clear that I needed to be making a difference with my time, and not by making one rich man richer than he already was or could ever need to be. I was, to quote the latest management guff that the Company was fond of bandying about, nothing less than totally candid.
The 'Brutal Facts' was the catch-phrase, I think.
I remember wondering how many of these management guru buzzwords are actually acted upon and become part of the culture of the organisation, and how many remain merely words on a Powerpoint presentation?
I was past caring.
I countered the accusation that I was not, by nature, a team player with the reminder that I played on what must be the ultimate 'team' – a better-than-most, regularly performing popular band! I made it clear that I was happy to play on any team as long as the purpose of the team was contributing to the greater good. I tried to draw parallels between musical collaboration and a possible management style, but there was nothing to be gained by any further discussion. Besides, I was certainly beyond trying to convince anyone to let me keep my job!
I was urged to resign, as expected. I had been coached for the possibility.
The only sticky bits were around whether or not I wanted to be paid out in one lump sum or in instalments.
The e-mail that was sent out announcing my resignation said I was leaving because I felt a need to make more of a difference in the world.
Already things were looking up! It seemed a decent enough way to be remembered.
I felt this an acceptable starting point from which to re-invent myself as a freelance writer and speaker on topics around the coming energy crisis, how mankind might survive the next 100 years and why we might be better off for being forced to change our ways.
In the backyard I am constructing a small biodiesel processing plant.
My self-esteem is intact, my conscience clear; my integrity is whole.
And that 3200-odd words ought to keep any reader busy thoughout lunch!
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