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Kids – it’s never OK to kill them

Posted in Uncategorized on July 24, 2025| 2 Comments »

In some ways, I can’t believe I’m actually writing this, but there are so many stories around just now of children being killed. Almost every day we hear of children being blown to pieces in Gaza, of children being deliberately starved to death. We hear of children killed in wars and conflicts around the world, and, the truth is, we always have.

Recently the case of 800 bodies and children thrown into an unmarked “grave” in Ireland has come to the fore….a story of nuns who discarded the ones who died in their care. How many stories are there of children abused, beaten, humiliated or sexually exploited in so-called “childrens’ homes”? Many of those stories are historic, but, surely, it’s unlikely all that abuse and killing has stopped?

I’ve also read a few articles recently about how “we” have lost our moral compass. With politicians, and those in positions of power, deliberately lying, never held to account, with their corruption and money-grabbing exploitation of their positions, and with all the dreadful violence perpetrated on children (and adults, of course) in Gaza, with voices of dissent shut down. There’s apparently an epidemic of shoplifting but there aren’t enough police to even bother to attend the shops, or pursue the criminals, despite the fact there seem to be plenty of police available to arrest people for standing quietly on the street holding placards. Moral compass?

Sure, there’s never been a time in history where children haven’t been abused and killed. Sure, there’s never been warfare that didn’t destroy the lives of innocent men, women and children. But it never was OK, and it sure isn’t OK now.

Can we agree? Can we agree that it is NEVER OK to kill children?

And if we can agree that, can we condemn those who do it?

Can we agree that it is NEVER OK to abuse children or to make them suffer?

And if we can agree that, can we condemn those who do it?

That would be a good first step on the path to discovering a moral compass. Maybe if we could do that, we could then start to apply the same standards to all other human beings. Now that would be something!

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The tyranny of the quantifiable

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Rebecca Solnit, in her “No straight road takes you there”, quotes the environmental writer, Chip Ward, as referring to “the tyranny of the quantifiable”.

There’s an obsession with numbers in our world. From measurements to statistics, there is a determination to quantify every aspect of life. Yet, Life, itself, is not quantifiable. Neither is Love, Beauty, Goodness, Happiness, Self esteem or self worth, despite the attempts by psychologists to attribute numbers and scales to any invisible phenomena.

This is an issue I had to deal with every day of my working life, because neither “health”, nor the most troublesome of symptoms such as pain, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, itch or breathlessness, can be observed objectively and be measured. Many people used proxies to measure the invisible – scales, such as “from 0 to 10, where 0 is the least troublesome and 10 the most, what number would apply to your “X” today”?

I remember the story of a dentist who ran a facial pain clinic. He insisted that every patient begin the consultation by telling him a figure from 0 to 10 related to how much pain they were experiencing. If they started to describe their symptoms, he’d interrupt, and insist “The next thing to come out of your mouth should be a number”. His successor in the clinic was baffled when the first patients would sit down and rather than say “hello” or start to describe their symptoms, they would say “7”, or “5”, or whatever. The old chief had trained them so well! “The tyranny of the quantifiable” indeed!

But let me return to health, because we all seek that, and doctors, surely, would hope to improve the health of their patients. But health, as Gadamer describes so vividly, in his “Enigma of Health” essays, is not visible, and not quantifiable. Rather, it’s pathology which makes an appearance….in the form of a rash, a swelling, an irregular heart beat, or a restriction of function. When the pathology recedes, health reappears….the painful hand becomes unnoticeable again.

The experiences which make every day seem worthwhile are equally, not quantifiable. Wonder, awe, joy, love, happiness, a sense of connection, of being understood, a feeling of belonging. We can’t measure those with a smart watch, a smart phone, or a fancy scanner.

That’s why our individual stories are so important. Only you can describe what you are experiencing, and only your story helps you make sense of your life. The counter-balance to the tyranny of the quantifiable is appreciation of, and the telling of, our encounters with wonder, joy, love and connection with others.

Your story is unique, and, together, we create a world worth living in by sharing our stories and co-creating the ones which we value the most.

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The delusion of separateness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 5, 2025| 1 Comment »

I get it.

As you stand, alone, gazing out to the vast expanse of the sea, it’s easy to think you are separate. Separate from everyone else, separate from other creatures, standing on the outside, looking in, at this world you find yourself in.

But, that’s an illusion.

We are not separate. We don’t exist apart from Nature. We don’t survive all by ourselves. We are not disconnected.

Yet, this sense of being separate lies at the heart of so much dysfunction and trouble in this world. We have created a system of society, of politics and economics, on the foundations of this delusion. The idea that by encouraging selfishness, actions and choices which put our own interests, not just above those of all others, but with no thought whatsoever to consequences, we can create a healthy, thriving life, is just crazy.

So, why do we live this way? Why do we support the idea that we can consume more and more of the Earth (what we call “resources”) forever and forever? We live in a finite planet. What we burn and destroy won’t come back. The species we eliminate won’t come back. We can argue about timescales, but the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” report, published decades ago, was, essentially, correct. Unlimited growth in a finite world is going to hit the buffers one day, maybe not in our lifetime, but in the lifetime of our grandchildren, or our grandchildren’s grandchildren.

Should we care about our grandchildren’s grandchildren?

I think we should.

Why do we support the idea that a tiny minority of the people in the world should be allowed to grab as much of it as they can? Why do we have billionaires? Does it matter what they do? Does inequality matter? A question which won’t even occur to the narcissist.

Iain McGilchrist’s thesis about our brain asymmetry helps me understand. It rings true and it helps me to see that if we use our left hemisphere excessively, and, as if it is disconnected from our right hemisphere, then we are going to experience the world as if everything is disconnected. Our reductionism and selfishness will narrow our view so much that we’ll fail to see that we, and everything else on this planet, are intimately, inevitably, interconnected.

We are embedded in this world. We exist, for a brief time, in a vast web of relationships. We are the individual waves which appear on the surface of the sea, then dissolve, back into it.

Can we learn to take a longer view? Can we begin to act as if our grandchildren, and their grandchildren matter? Can we make choices which take into account the ripples and effects of those choices, and the effects they have on others, on our environment, on the world in which we belong?

I watched a short video last night which promoted the part of the world where I live, Nouvelle Aquitaine. One phrase they used really struck me – “Vous êtes unique, nous sommes unis” – You are unique, we are united. It’d be good to live that way, owning and respecting our own uniqueness, and that of all others, and feeling connected, deeply knowing, that we are all one.

What do you think? Can we develop and share a different vision for our lives and our world? A vision more consistent with the use of both our cerebral hemispheres, a connected world of embedded lives, where everything we do has consequences, for ourselves, for our loved ones, for others? Can we learn to see the bigger picture, the longer timescale, a better way to live?

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The limits of utility

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

In his “A Sand County Almanac”, Aldo Leopold writes…..

The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: “What good is it?” If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

Now, this language, from the late 1940s is too mechanical for my liking, but, actually it’s still not uncommon today. We humans are not machines. Plants are not machines. No living organism on the planet is “machine-like”. As a result of the dominance of left hemisphere thinking, reductionism, for all its results and benefits, has blinded us to reality.

A human being cannot be reduced, cannot be broken into separate, isolated parts, without, at best, ignoring the consequences of changes in the whole body which come about from changes in a part, and, at worst, without killing the individual human being. Reductionism can only ever be a stage on a journey towards an understanding. The reductionist work of the left hemisphere needs to be integrated back into the holistic perspective of the right in order to understand the connections and consequences.

The same can be said of any living form. There isn’t a plant, an animal, or any other living creature which can be fully understood except by exploring their relationships and connections with the world in which they live.

One of the most unfortunate consequences of reductionism (I don’t know if it results from it, or simply accompanies it), is a focus on utility. What use is this? What use is this plant? What use is this creature? What use is this person? Utility can, or should, only be considered as one aspect, one perspective. We know this instinctively, don’t we? We wouldn’t reduce a loved one to an assessment of their “usefulness”, unless we were suffering from some kind of psychopathy. So why do we allow that to happen when we create businesses and factories? Industrial capitalism has a tendency to reduce human beings to “human capital”, or “Human Resources”, to be weighed, assessed, and judged, only on the criteria of utility. If they aren’t useful towards to the goal of increasing profits, then they are “useless”. A sad, miserable way to view the world.

What’s the utility of music? What’s the utility of art? Of gardens, of beauty, of poetry, of stories? What’s the utility of love, compassion and care? What’s the utility of joy, of wonder, awe and happiness?

Do people think that way?

Actually, it’s not uncommon to find that they do. Have you read anything that tells you about how gardening is “therapeutic”, of how music can improve “your mental health”, of how sharing a meal with a loved one can be “good for your health”?

The thing is, a good life, a life worth living, is full of activities and experiences which we pursue, not for their utility but for joy, for love, and because they touch our souls. Don’t wait for “science” to “prove” that music is beneficial to your neurones, to your immune system, or your hormones. Don’t wait for “science” to “prove” that a walk in the forest modulates your immune system, or stimulates your vagus nerve. Live for the everyday moments of wonder, joy, love and delight. One day, “science” will catch up, and tell you what you already know…..music, nature, poetry, caring relationships, love, wonder and joy are all “good for you”.

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Growth

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

We hear a lot about growth these days. The Labour government in the UK seems to think achieving economic growth is the answer to all our problems, and, frankly, every other capitalist country agrees. Perhaps that’s because capitalism as a system requires continuous growth to exist.

But the thing is, when I was a teenager I read the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth”. That scientific report caused quite a stir since it came out but then the usual suspects mounted their attacks and derided it, so, not much has happened since then. Well, I say not much, but we do have Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, and also the de-growth movement. What I mean is the world has failed to respond remotely adequately to climate change, several governments are rowing back their “green” targets, and Trump and co are all in for “drill, baby, drill” and abandoning environmental protections. So, it doesn’t look good.

However, I come back to a point I’ve made elsewhere – growth of what, and for whom? Because the logic on which “Limits to Growth” was based is still sound. We live on a finite planet, so even if we use technologies to make “better” or “more efficient” use of physical “resources” (by which they mean the natural world), at some point, if every country “grows” every year ad infinitum, at some point, there is going to be nothing left to extract. We just can’t keep grabbing more and more and from the planet, creating more and more pollution, killing off species after species, and expect to have a planet our grandchildren’s grandchildren can thrive on. It just doesn’t make sense.

What is growing? Well, CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s growing. Microplastics in our brains. That’s growing. Insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, I-don’t-know-what-icides, in our water, our food, our bodies, even in our babies before they are born. And the wealth of the wealthiest people on the planet. That’s growing. Maybe we haven’t reached peak inequality yet, but we sure aren’t going to reach the point where really rich people think “OK, I’ve got enough. I don’t need any more than this”.

The planet, Nature, Gaia, grows. But she grows without creating waste or pollution. We see her growth in evolution, and in the history or evolution we see a growth in diversity of species. We see a growth in the interconnectedness of environments, biospheres and individual living creatures. Nature doesn’t grow exponentially in a straight line. It grows in a vast interconnected web of feedback systems, in competition and collaboration with all the other parts of that web. It grows in cycles. Cycles of seasons. Cycles of birth, development, reproduction, maturity and death.

What does healthy growth look like in a human being? Development, maturation, increased skills, abilities, knowledge and intelligence (not artificial intelligence, but the real intelligences of the mental, emotional and social kind). Are our societies doing well at fostering that in their populations? I mean, for ALL the people in their countries? Not so much, huh?

We’re going to have to take on board the basic insights of the “Limits to Growth” scientists, and to create a better system that makes better choices about what it wants to grow. Aren’t we?

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What do the DEI haters want? UEI?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I’m not sure I was aware of the term “DEI” before it became a fairly recent political issue, led by the current US regime who seem to really, really hate it. I had to look it up to find out what the three letters stood for – Diversity, Equality and Inclusion.

Seriously? Which bit do the haters not like? Diversity? Well, this is a diverse planet. It’s diversity of all the species and lifeforms which has enabled evolution and life as we know it to develop. Loss of species, or loss of “biodiversity” breaks the complex bonds and relationships between the elements of the biosphere – that includes us, we humans. It disrupts food chains, impacting on animals, plants, and, in fact, all forms of life – that includes us. A loss of diversity is just that – a loss. Maybe it’s the Equality bit they don’t like? After all, our current economic and political model of society is extremely successful at one thing in particular – increasing inequality. So maybe that’s the aim? Maybe they see equality as just a bad thing. Maybe they don’t like that other people, and other life forms, should be valued as much as they value themselves? I don’t know. Or maybe it’s the Inclusion bit they hate. Maybe they don’t like certain people to be included. Maybe they’d rather certain people were kept on the outside – not allowed into a country, or into the education system, the health care system, or into work. Again, I don’t know.

So, I started to wonder what kind of society these anti-DEI people envisage? What do they hope for? Is it the opposite of DEI? What is the opposite of DEI?

Maybe it’s UEI.

UEI?

Yep, the direct opposites of each of the elements of DEI – in other words – Uniformity, Exclusion and Inequality.

What would society look like if we built it on those three values, uniformity, exclusion and inequality? It would probably be very prescriptive, authoritarian even, because the reality is that every individual is different, and human being are a species of diverse members, so to achieve uniformity there would need to be an enormous amount of coercion, persuasion, pressure, propaganda, even force. Have you looked at what appears on social media recently? Have you watched any mainstream media recently? Have you heard the stories about immigrants, and how “they are not like us”? If we had a society built on exclusion, then there would always be minority groups who were kept on the outside, some people who didn’t receive the same justice as others, some who were prevented from taking up opportunities offered to the “included”. And if we had a society based on inequality? There would be a very small number of people who held the by far greatest amount of wealth and power, and a very large number who possessed very little of either.

Wait a minute…..isn’t that the kind of society we have now? One based on Uniformity, Exclusion and Inequality? Corporations pursue monopolies, borders are getting harder to cross, blame is cast on “the other”, and financialised capitalism is leading to ever greater concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority (and, no, it doesn’t “trickle down”)

What do you think? Do the principles of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion appeal to you? Or are you more a Uniformity, Exclusion and Inequality kind of person?

I think, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, in fact, even if you are new to it, and you see the title of “heroes not zombies” and read what I mean by that – that we should live a conscious life, a mindful life, celebrating uniqueness and diversity and freedom, not one of unconscious coerced conformity – then you’ll know I’m likely to be a supporter of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion.

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Givers and takers

Posted in Uncategorized on May 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Aldo Leopold writes, in “A Sand County Almanac”….

When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: he could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: he could chop it down.

This got me thinking about the balance between givers and takers in our society, and how we reward them. Our “modern” system is called capitalism, and it appears to be based on extraction….extraction of minerals from the ground, of plants and animals from the soil, and of profit from the labour of others. Alongside this massive extraction, it destroys….eliminates whole species, so reducing diversity, turns centuries old rich soil into dust bowls, and heats up the whole planet, as we pollute the air, the water and the soil with chemicals, microplastics and poisons. This is all about taking.

What do we give? What do we give to the soil, the water, the air? What do we give to the plants, the other creatures with whom we share this little planet? What do we give to each other?

Shouldn’t we give the greatest rewards to the carers, the growers, the creators? To those who nurture….babies, children, adults, other animals and plants? To those who nurture the soil, the water and the air? Instead of giving the greatest rewards to those who grab, extract, consume and destroy?

Is it beyond the wit of “Homo sapiens” to come with such a system?

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#AGiftFromGaia

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Prussian Asparagus

Lizard tongue orchid

Poppy

Selfheal

Star of Persia

These are all plants which I’ve discovered in my garden this month. I didn’t plant any of them. They just appeared, clearly their seeds having been borne here by birds, wind, or other creatures. Every single one of them is a delight. Every one of them stimulates my favourite “emerveillement du quotidien” (my everyday wonder). Every single one of them has stopped me in my tracks, to gaze, admire and contemplate not just their beauty, but the incredible, unpredictable nature of Nature.

And in every case, there are several of them. There are a number of these plants, either close together, or in quite different parts of the garden.

I first saw “Selfheal” when it appeared by the forest and spread across the grass as I was recovering from an operation the year before last. I didn’t know what it was, but it gave me a real boost to discover its name and its ancient uses (I didn’t actually swallow any of it, however!).

The poppy is also a medicinal plant, and the ones which have appeared “from nowhere” this year are the tallest poppies I’ve ever seen. (I haven’t swallowed any of that either!)

Apparently the “Prussian asparagus” is edible, but there are only about six of them, so I’m letting them be, in the hope that they will seed and spread further.

Several of the “Lizard tongue orchid” plants have appeared together in a clump at the edge of the forest, and I found a “Bee orchid” in the front plot. Every orchid I’ve ever encountered strikes me as a wondrous plant. They all appear to me as astonishingly beautiful.

So, with the beauty, the wonder, the science and the symbolism of these plants, I really feel blessed. I’m going to share the photos on social media using a hashtag of #AGiftFromGaia – maybe you’d like to do the same.

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Kinship and wonder

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I’m really enjoying reading Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac”, published in 1949. He was a naturalist who bought a farm in Wisconsin and this little book is full of beautiful observations and reflections. Read this extract –

We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.

Fabulous.

But it could have been written yesterday.

How much progress have we made with this understanding and knowledge in the last, over seventy years, since he wrote these words? How’s it going with our “sense of kinship with fellow-creatures”? Maybe there are individuals, and even groups of individuals, who feel this strongly, but where is it in the politics and economics of any country? Which political party, or politician, has risen to power on the back of a promotion of our “sense of kinship with fellow-creatures”? Heavens, they can’t even have a sense of kinship with children dying in war, famine or poverty. They can’t even have a sense of kinship with people who were born on some other patch of land, other than the one they, themselves, were born on. But, I think it’s still something we should aspire to. It’s still something we should call for. Not just kinship with children everywhere, but with our “fellow-creatures” too. The loss of species threatens the very survival of our own species. Industrial farming techniques produce poor quality food to shipped into factories and, not just processed, but “ultra processed”, something we are learning causes inflammation in our bodies, triggers chronic diseases, and, I read today, even pushes microplastics into our brains.

“a sense of wonder over the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise”……..I am firm believer in the power of wonder. I haven’t the slightest doubt that it contributes to the experience of a better life, of a better today, of a better present. If we had more wonder, we might be more humble, we might be more careful, we might fall in love more, we might understand more, we might care more.

These are values I think we can build better lives on, values we can create better societies from……let’s have more “kinship”, more “wonder”, and more desire to “live and let live”.

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What the geese know

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I’m reading “A Sand County Almanac”, by Aldo Leopold, published back in 1949. It’s a delightful series of small essays on Nature, conservation and life on a farm in Wisconsin. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to the proclamations of today’s politicians, and a wholly different set of values, and seem to see the natural world as something to be plundered.

Early in the book, Leopold muses about the return of the geese from their winter migration. And he says this – “It is an irony of history that the great powers should have discovered the unity of nations at Cairo in 1943. The geese of the world have had that notion for a longer time, and each March they stake their lives on its essential truth”

Isn’t it amazing that the “essential truth” is we all share this one small planet, and that borders are totally artificial phenomena created by human beings to either try to grab a part of geography, or to exert power over others, creating a basic feeling of “us and them”. There are those who are included within a border, and there are those who are not – “aliens”, “foreigners”, “migrants” – any title other than fellow human beings.

Life moves around planet Earth.

We see it clearly in migrating creatures, not least the birds who spend part of the year in one hemisphere and part in another. But we only have to look back over a pretty short period of human history to see that we humans too, migrate. There have been great waves of migration in the past (not least to America from Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries) and constant flows in between. Yet the powers that be seem to promote the us and them idea and think people should be judged and treated differently according to where they happened to have been born, or where their parents happened to have been born.

I think this is a kind of madness. It’s a delusion to think we can divide the human species up into all these separate, invented categories, and cruel to treat others according to where they, or their parents, happened to have been born. Who chooses where they want to be born?

I’ve long thought the problems of our modern societies are not caused by migration, but by greed, selfishness and inequality. Until we reverse the current trend of the rich getting richer while life becomes harder and less secure for the rest, politicians will seek “others” to blame – and, to often, those “others” are those who “were not born here”. Targeting those “aliens” or “foreigners” is a convenient way for keeping the Public attention away from those who are really causing the problems – the elites who grab and hoard more and more wealth, and are in the process of passing it on to their children through inheritance, enabling the next generations of the rich to become even richer, without having to do a single thing to do so.

This current system isn’t working. It’s not good for families. It’s not good for society. It’s not good for Nature. It’s not good for the planet. So who is it good for? Well, I think we know. But the trouble this, those profiting from it are a tiny minority of the human beings sharing this one little planet.

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