A farm is not a factory, and a factory is never a farm

We sing a song about eggs in my house, usually on a Sunday morning when we are cooking what we call a nosh-up – a big family cooked brekky with all the trimmings. The catchy little number is from a kids show called Play School, and the words that ring around the kitchen go something like:

They’re round all around and they’re bigger at the bottom. They’re smaller at the top, and we’re glad we’ve got’em, and they’re egg shaped, ‘cause they’re eggs! Things with wings, and fins and legs, they lay eggs…

except the eggs that we are dealing with are only from the things with wings, and it is getting harder and harder to feel glad about it.

The humble egg. Pariah of the 1970’s, back in vogue in a big way today - especially the free range organic feel good variety in the environmentally friendly packaging.

You know the ones, happy healthy chicken sitting atop a red tractor or standing in a field of green, blue sky, sun shining, glossy feathers, and pointy beak. The brands that euphemistically pop words into their name like ‘farm’ and ‘happy’ and ‘family’….if you have read this blog before, you’ll know where this is going….but let us first take a look at what this is all about.

In Australia, the following classifications are supposed to attach to commercially sold eggs so you, in theory at least, know what you are spending your hard earned on:

CAGE

These birds are continuously housed in cages in a shed, with a minimum ‘floor’ space of 550 sq cm per bird - ‘floor’ meaning the bottom of a wire cage. The space is about a sheet of A4 paper. Beak-trimming is permitted because the birds are so jammed they can peck each other, leading to outbreaks of cannibalism. Beak trimming is done when the chickens are newly hatched and without the use of an anesthetic.

They don’t mess about on the packaging and accept that you understand they are the cheapest eggs for a reason.

BARN

The birds are continuously housed indoors but free to ‘roam’ within the shed, which may have several levels. Stocking capacity not to exceed 14 birds a square metre, or 715 sq cm per bird – what an improvement on the cage ones. Again, beak-trimming is permitted.

Mind you, I have an image in my head of what a barn looks like, and it is a big red timber thing in the American mid-west. Not a huge steel shed with 20,000 birds jammed in, huge fans at either end and electric lighting to keep’em laying.

FREE RANGE (Egg Corporation and Primary Industries standing committee - Australia)

These ones are housed in sheds with access to an outdoor range. The stocking capacity in the shed is the same as in a barn - not to exceed 14 birds a square metre - with no more that 1500 birds a hectare, and yep, you guessed it, beak-trimming permitted.

Access in this case means that the chickens could go outside if they understood what that meant, but by the time the access is granted, they are pretty well used to getting food and water from the machines that pump it out, and, well, why would you go outside? Through a hole in the wall?

FREE RANGE (Free Range Egg and Poultry Association of Australia - FREPAA)

These lucky birds have unrestricted access to free-range run during daylight hours, and the stocking capacity within the housing shed is not to exceed seven birds a sq m. (about three sheets of A4) with a maximum of 750 birds a hectare (although the Egg Corporation would like this to be increased to 20,000 birds a hectare! Nice one, Egg Corp). Beak-trimming is prohibited, as deemed unnecessary if above housing conditions are adhered to, that is, the birds aren’t so jammed that they get aggressive.

OK, they are the definitions of what you might buy, but it seems that it is still a case of caveat emptor when it comes to the conscious consumption of free-range eggs.

The main reason for this wonderful state of affairs is that there is no legally enforceable definition of the term ‘free range’ in Australia. The FREPAA code of practice outlined above is just that, an unenforceable code of practice. In fact, it has been suggested that the increase in demand for free range eggs, and the subsequent increase in their availability on our supermarket shelves simply can’t be matched with any increases in free range producers, free range chickens, or indeed, and logically free range eggs! Great isn’t it? You can call your eggs free range to tap the market, and to hell with the consumer. Let the market decide indeed!

So, over the Christmas break, this little conscious consumer and his little conscious consumer elves will be turning the abandoned cubby in the corner of the backyard into (can you guess?!) our own little free range egg facility. We will feed them our scraps, let them out to clean up the bugs in the garden, use their poo and old straw on the veggie patch, and wake up to inquisitive happy clucks of a couple of Isa Browns.

All on our little block, all five kilometers from the CBD and all organic free-range and all because we choose to.

Then when we sing and dance around the kitchen in our pj’s on a nosh-up Sunday morning, we can be as glad as we like that we’ve got’em, because the round all around little numbers in the pan will be as free range as you can get. Conscious consumption at its most basic!

Now…..I wonder what would our local Council guys would say about us getting a pig….

This issue has been recently discussed in the mainstream Australian media at http://www.theage.com.au/national/free-to-roam--on-a4-sheet-20111205-1ofl0.html. The result of the Federal Court case can be seen here http://www.theage.com.au/environment/animals/100k-fine-over-freetoroam-claim-20120123-1qd6y.html with the ACCC winning the case against the misleading term 'free to roam'. Go the ACCC! 
...and wait, there's more. As of november 2012, the ACCC looks like rejecting the Egg Corp Free Range definition to mean up to 20,000 birds an acre, see http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-02/accc-rejects-free-range-definition/4349634

To quote a global game changer - "Just Do It"

Major shifts in consumption that have been successful include the removal of lead from petrol, the banning of CFCs in aerosols, the regulation of the use of DDT and other super toxic pesticides, labelling of foods to show use by dates, added chemicals, flavours and preservatives and reducing rates of smoking while raising the acceptance that smoking greatly increases the risk of certain cancers.

What do all of these have in common?

Well for starters, they all had the backing of the scientific community as being very important for the long term health of people and the environment in which we have to live. Links were made, the science developed, was peer reviewed and accepted as more likely than not and acted on.

Next, none of these changes really impacted on big oil, coal mining or the notion that economic growth should be the driving imperative of every single person on the planet.

The problem now is that the latest scientifically backed peer-reviewed actions that need to happen to improve the lot of us all into the future are aimed squarely at the really big players in the world markets – big oil and mining – and they don’t like it. It is also the case that many people are finally starting to question the economic growth model that is fucking up every little nook and cranny on the planet and the high priests of endless growth really don’t like that!

In the same way that the makers of the carcinogenic pesticides that were destroying the farmland they were applied to for decades to come fought the science with everything they could muster (look at some of the outrageous claims made against Rachel Carson after her book Silent Spring suggested the need for urgent investigation into the dangers of certain pesticides), and big tobacco questioned the links between tobacco smoking and cancer right up to the bitter end, the big mining interests here and abroad will fund the pseudo-science of denial in relation to anthropogenic climate change and will fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo for as long as they can.

You see, the difference now is that the fight is not about taking the lead out of petrol, or listing additives in food so as to increase consumer choices, or taking a cautious approach to pesticide use. These things, and the other successful campaigns above, did not attempt to shut an industry down. They simply put further restrictions or requirements into play that let the industry keep on keeping on while accepting that the science was highlighting health concerns and regulators were adjusting the playing field accordingly.

Petrol producers could keep producing petrol, just not leaded petrol. Big oil keeps going, everyone is happy.  Chemical producers could keep operating as successfully as ever, but not in regards to wanton manufacture and use of DDT and food manufacturers could keep adding whatever they want within reason to their product, just list it so consumers can decide if they want to purchase it or not.

The same could be said of the current explosion in free-range and organic as consumer choices. No one is shutting anything down, chickens and cows, pigs and grains and fruit and vegetables all keep on keeping on, the mining industry (including big oil) keeps providing the raw material for the power, the transport, the fertilizers and the feed, the storage and the physical infrastructure and everyone is happy. All hail the false economy.

But this time it is different. This time it is about taking the blow torch to mining and oil, as the two biggest producers of carbon, and hence the two of the biggest producers of inputs into anthropogenic climate change. Like with DDT and tobacco, the industry denies and questions way past the acceptance of the science by the vast majority of actual real life dyed in the wool experts on the subject, and funds campaigns and lobbies and creates doubt where there doesn’t really seem to be any anymore.

But it isn’t just oil and coal and mining. The big issue, the real elephant in the room is the current economic model that puts growth way ahead of everything else. It drives the mining and resources booms across the globe. It drives the manufacture of totally pointless crap from non-renewable resources, it drives the production of bigger and bigger houses and stuff to fill them and power to heat and cool them, it drives environmental degradation, it drives ever increasing rates of ‘western’ diseases (like cancer, mental illness, heart disease, hypertension and obesity) it drives consumption generally and it is driving our little rock and everything that clings to its very thin and vulnerable surface into a ditch.

Meanwhile, governments across the globe will avoid the elephant in the room of economic growth equals J-curve suicide, and carry on with business as usual until Paul Gilding’s Great Disruption has the people on the streets belatedly demanding that ‘someone’ do ‘something’. But here’s the rub, we are the ‘someone’, and until there is a critical mass large enough to force a change, the ‘something’ that we all know has to happen will, like the elephant in the room, continue to hide until it is way too late.

So, maybe ‘someone’ (like you) needs to do ‘something’ (like right now) like write a letter to your local member, local newspaper or relevant federal minister. Give it a go, because if enough someones actually do something, it adds up to the change that is so undeniably necessary.

The science of building a rocket is rocket science - this is not...

OK. This is pretty basic stuff. Follow the logic and reap the rewards!

1. Take your lunch to work. The average city lunch in Australia will set you back $10, even if you didn’t mean to spend that.  $50 a week! Yikes. Better to make a sandwich or bring some leftovers and drink good old fashioned water from the tap.

2. On that note – drink water from the tap! Buying water is the stupidest thing in the world to do if you live in a western country. Bad for the environment and your hip pocket. May as well pay for the air you breathe. Don’t gasp, won’t be long before some brainiac starts selling air and some knuckleheads will buy it.

3. And don’t buy take away coffee. Make it yourself. How hard is it? $3 a cup minimum to buy, and some jokers out there are having three bought cups a day. $10 on coffee? Spare me! I’ll take a mug of instant that I bring in myself thanks. Even one coffee a day is $3. $15 a week. Add it to the $50 - $65 already!

4. Right, now get off the booze. New research has shown that alcohol is a class one carcinogen – that is, it gives you cancer as well as a hang-over. Yay. It is also a great source of empty calories, and increases your appetite as well so you eat snacks that you wouldn’t eat otherwise. Double weight gain. What great stuff….a bottle of wine a day will set you back $10 - $20, and many couples will share a bottle between every night easily. But if your favourite drink is beer or mixed drinks, work it out, I reckon you’ll be surprised if you are a drinker, just how much you actually spend. Let’s be conservative and say $10 a day averaged out to take into account the weekends and the ones at a pub/club/bar/lunch out with the girls, so, $70 a week. Add it to the total - $65 plus $70 = $135.

There you go. Four really easy things to do to save around $135 a week of your net salary (that is, after you have paid your taxes!). How much is that a year? About seven grand!! In cash!!

What could you do with seven thousand dollars extra in your pocket every year? Pay it off your mortgage? Go on a holiday? Get rid of a credit card debt?

This very simple exercise shows how a lot of people who cry poor, and class themselves as good old Aussie battlers are just whining consumptives with poor spending habits who could do with a good dose of financial introspection.

Add quitting smoking, not buying takeaway (it’s crap anyway), catching the bus to work, having one car not two if that is relevant, cancelling an unused gym membership (come on, be honest…) and the savings are significantly increased.

The next step is to put that otherwise wasted cash somewhere you can actually see it grow. Every week you don’t buy a coffee put $15 in that account. Don’t buy lunch, put $50 in there. You see how it goes, and you’ll soon see some serious saving results. It is just getting into the new habit, and out of the old ones.

For one, I will not be suckered anymore by the rubbish “lifestyle” that is chasing my money every minute of every day. They are my hard earned dollars, and I will consciously decide where they go, and reap the financial rewards of my conscious consumption!

Here endeth the lesson.

Just keep digging...

Thank goodness that Australia is still baulking at the obvious and digging up our coal and iron ore at a faster and faster rate! It really is such a relief to know that our wide brown land is being scraped and picked at and sold off to the highest bidder, and that it seems those highest bidders are China and India. Phew! Now I can sleep at night, restful and at peace in the knowledge that our future is certain, spaceship earth is in good hands, and my grandchildren won’t dance on my grave singing “You bloody idiot, your generation were a pack of complete wankers!”.

It doesn’t matter pound of carbon that the coal and iron ore will eventually run out. Nor does it matter a pinch of topsoil that there will be a moment when it looks like things are going horribly wrong. It is all good news, and all part of an obvious plan on the part of our mining industry to ensure our future survival. Thank you big mining companies, keep digging and digging (some would say raping and pillaging, but shame on them!) and supplying the entropic finite goodies to those big hungry economies so they can keep developing and developing and developing. Let’s face it, as these big multinational do gooders obviously know, without us selling China and India billions of tonnes of Australia we would all be in very big trouble.

And once the goodies run out, and there is nothing left, and the wonderfully forward thinking magnates have done their job, we can only hope that the hole that is left in the middle of our insignificant pile of dirt is so deep that it actually reaches all the way to China, just like in the old jokes. Then we can poke our heads out of the sand, and buy back some of our boring old iron ore in new and improved sustainable products! Photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, electric cars with really fast charge batteries, even intellectual know how on how to run a sustainable and renewable economy that would not have been possible to develop if not for the generosity of the folks turning the top gears of our incredible two speed economy.

In the interim, before we deliver the punch line to the big global joke we are playing on these developing nations (wink, wink) we don’t even need to bother with investing in all that renewable energy sustainable economy green forward thinking rubbish. Boring in the extreme, and complicated, too, apparently - not that we need to concern ourselves with such rot. They will do all the hard yards, and we will just ride on their sustainability wave and Hang 10 on the empty barrel that was crude oil.  

What a ride! The future is bright! Just keep digging…

Mea Culpa

I am sorry. Apparently climate change and all the associated problems we have in the world today are my fault! Mea culpa.

I did think for a moment that perhaps it was the big business interests that are doing the damage, but no, it is all me. So, sorry about that, but at least the big polluters are off the hook.

I shouldn’t have gotten ahead of myself, and viewed things so simplistically. I was trying to convince myself of the folly of pursuing endless growth and profits over the long term survival. More stupidly, I was under the misapprehension that a dirty great coal fired power generator might not be such a good idea, and that perhaps the big polluters could get really serious about shutting that sort of stuff down and just head in the right direction of sustainability. Meanwhile, there I was, just making the situation worse! If only I had known this earlier!

How do I know this? Well, I saw it on the TV. I see it on the TV all the time. What I should do to save the planet. I can make a difference, you see. Little old me, one person, not the big companies, or the massive polluters, or the huge carbon intensive industries, but me.

I have now seen the light, though, and will do my best to change my ways. I’ll put in power saving light bulbs (to help save money AND the planet!! Yippee!), run my aircon at 24 degrees Celsius (to help save money AND the planet!), keep my tires at a good inflation (to use a fraction less petrol and save money AND the planet!), etc, etc. Of course, the electricity I am using will still come from a dirty unsustainable producer, but is that their fault? I am the one buying it in the first place, right? I can choose not to use electricity at all, not use petrol at all, only associate with ‘green’ organisations! And because if I don’t, it is completely and utterly and undeniably my fault that there are even organisations out there that continue to do things the bad old way. And when I do this stuff, and make the little changes that can save me money AND the planet, well, I feel for the big guys, because my actions are going to have such a massive impact that they will have to change their ways!

Cognitive Dissonance verses the Conscious Dissident

The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back

seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will

be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems — the problems of

life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.

John Maynard Keynes 1883 - 1946

At the heart of it, we all know that the system we embrace in our daily lives is one that is completely and utterly unsustainable and when you really stop and think about it, indefensible. Everyone apart from the absolute die hard economic true believers(including those poor souls afflicted with a serious case of cognitive dissonance![1]) understand the basic truth that resources are finite, and their exponential use by an exponentially growing population is not going to last.

The economist and thinker Herman Daly had it right when he put forward the idea of a steady state economy to combat the neo-liberal view of big is best and endless growth is necessary for the survival and advance of the human species. This is his simple concept, laid down in three easy to remember points:

1.      Limit the use of all resources to rates that ultimately result in levels of waste that can be absorbed by the ecosystem.

2.      Exploit renewable resources at rates that do not exceed the ability of the ecosystem to regenerate the resources.

3.      Deplete non-renewable resources at rates that, as far as possible, do not exceed the rate of development of renewable substitutes.

Not exactly rocket science is it? Take the time to read it again and absorb it, and you should see the obvious sense in the approach. In fact, it is so obvious that it seems tantamount to a very slow assisted suicide not to take it on board (with futurists now predicting that conflicts will eventually revolve, not around the current resources like oil and coal, but the absolute basics like food and water, it gives you pause for thought - or at least it should!).

But why is the system so completely devoid of serious conversation about such an obvious problem? It is so frustrating to any vaguely intelligent person who stops to think about it, and taking my experiences as an example, it appears to be something that my friends want to talk about but rarely get the chance to (possibly for fear of being ridiculed or worse, branded a greenie!). It is really interesting the amount of people I would never expect to give this topic a second glance really getting into it, with a ready formed set of ideas pouring out of their head, giving rise to the realisation that they have been mulling it over all by themselves for some time. People actually do want to have the conversation, but the media, the advertising industry, the overt pressure from those proselytising the benefits of endless growth don’t give the average person much pause for thought. What is more, the general response from the mass (commercial) media and its followers is that anyone daring to rock the boat must be a communist or getting ready to go out late one night for a good ol’ fashioned bout of sedition! Pass the flaming torch of critical thought, boys, and let’s release some carbon!

So where to from there? It is pretty clear to me that the most important way forward is that most basic of enterprises and rights – education! Educate your kids about the issues. Kids will think things through and really get the concepts, rather than wasting time self flagellating over the self induced pressures of over consumption like adults do. But first, you need to educate yourself, do a bit of research at best, a bit of soul searching if nothing else, and get some ideas going in your head about what is going on. There is no shortage of material out there – Australia’s Australian of the Year Tim Flannery is an interesting place to start (his latest book ‘Here on Earth’ is a really good introduction to the issues and will lead you on to other thinkers if you take some notes) as is Clive Hamilton’s ‘Requiem for a Species’, or E F Schumacher’s ‘Small is Beautiful’, the main point is educate yourself![2].

Educate yourself to the real cost of things, educate yourself to take notice of what is going on around you in city food halls, in supermarkets, in the halls of government policy on issues concerning sustainability and population. It is pretty scary stuff, and the easiest response is to switch off and just not think about it.

And therein lies the problem, doesn’t it?

The irony of time poor people being so caught up in the daily grind that there is no time to think about why they are so time poor isn’t lost on this little black duck.  The econocrats will spruik the benefits of endless growth till the cows come home, and the masses will soak it up, crank up the consumption merry-go-round and wonder why things aren’t working like the TV ad’s promised.

So, here’s the deal. Be a sceptic, a non-believer, and question everything that you hear about growth. Take a logical view of things, educate yourself as to what is really going on and what is likely to happen in the medium term if things keep going the way they are. It may be that you decide that it is all too hard and thanks anyway you will stick with the system as it stands thank-you very much, or it may be that you realise how incredibly difficult it is to rock the fiscal boat but decide to have a bit of a crack anyway on a personal level.

At the end of the day, the decision is yours to make, so go for it, but remember that at the end of the day, if you don’t educate yourself to inform the process, well, you’re not really making a decision at all.

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[1] Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology, and for more interesting info Google one of the most famous cases studied by LEO FESTINGER. Interesting stuff.

[2] I have slowly developed my own little library of thought provoking literature, and will include a reading list as part of this blog – but be aware that I have a particular view of the world which is still developing the more I read and research, and as a result some may think my reading list is biased but that is kind of the point. You can make up your own mind, but please do the research and back up your own opinion (if only to yourself!).

Since when did critical consumption make one an iconoclast?

iconoclast –

one who is characterized by attacking established beliefs or institutions

I guess that trying to live a life with a point of difference is the thing for me.

Everyone can, and does it seems, buy into the crap of the old cliché of working in a job you don’t enjoy, to earn a level of income you don’t really need except to buy stuff you don’t want, to impress people you don’t like or oft times even know. It is supporting the economic and environmental ponzi scheme of this society that just makes no sense. A few people do it differently, they slow down, get their consciousness back, become critical thinkers and more importantly, conscious consumers, and the rest of us either love them or hate/fear/ridicule them for being different.

I have found when doing things differently and being a visibly conscious consumer so many people are really so highly offended by it, as it challenges them on a primal/societal level in this country. They know deep down that the whole system is crap, but by being confronted with someone who is deliberately baulking it they react defensively to shore up their own choices. It’s like the old joke that the only difference between people with tattoos and without tattoos, is that people who have tattoos aren’t offended by people who don’t. By example, if I am not drinking alcohol on a given day for whatever reason, I really don’t care if other people do, it is just that I think they are doing it out of habit, rather than a conscious decision. People get quickly offended by it, as if I am suggesting by not drinking that I am better than them and they are hopeless alcoholics, but I don’t think that. I just make a conscious choice that’s all. Like a vegan, or a vegetarian, or a married person in a monogamous relationship. It is interesting that a random stranger can be offended by my choices, rather than having enough confidence in their own that they don’t have to justify themselves by attacking me.

Same with people who pursue financial gain as an end in itself.

I really couldn’t be bothered, as it will all be to nought anyway and we all end up in the ground in the end. It is so hard though, because the socially acceptable sense of self worth comes from consumption.

It’s nothing new, “keeping up with the Joneses” has been a saying over the ages, but it is only so in industrialized nations. Don’t get me wrong. No-one wants to go back to the dark ages, oh no, so don’t get me wrong, I like air conditioning on a stinking hot Queensland day, and being able to open my fridge and get a cold drink (alcoholic or otherwise), or microwave some leftovers for a quick meal. What I don’t like is that the power I use comes from 1^st generation coal fired power stations, and unless I pay a big premium, the left over chicken I am re-heating was factory farmed. It just seems so basic that most people, given a choice (or maybe, not given a choice) would surely accept a different paradigm.

We all know the system is unsustainable, we all know we need to use renewable power, we all know factory farming of living animals is abhorrent (not to mention potentially dangerous to our health), and we all know it is better for everyone if we source our foodstuffs locally where possible, and yet to do all this requires an effort that most people couldn’t be bothered with because it takes time, a bit more money, and most importantly to my mind, a conscious decision.

And that, my friends, is what it really comes down to. Making a conscious decision. About something that actually matters. Not merely deciding what size burger, drink and fries to shove in, but stopping and thinking about whether you actually want to shove it in in the first place! Taking the time to think about the real cost of that cheap “food” (or as Michael Pollan would call it “food like substance”) you are about to subject your internal organs to.

Are people really so time poor that bad food is the only option, or is it just plain laziness? I believe that if people actually knew what goes into putting fast food on their plate or to have it poked through the drive through window, would that knowledge make them stop and think? It isn’t hard to work it out, just visit any pro-vegetarian website and it will list the environmental and social costs of producing the amount of meat that is consumed by the average non-thinker in this or any country, or of the food miles and associated carbon footprint it takes to bring “fast” food to your door. This isn’t a rant about the evils or otherwise of fast food, or alcohol or anything else. Nor is it a rant about the benefits or otherwise of a particular eating choice, but it is most definitely a rant about the general apathy that allows the big business interests that control these industries to control people’s spending patterns and ongoing health. The apathetic, lazy, uneducated, who gives a toss, it tastes good brigade are so addicted to their own ridiculously manipulated consumption patterns that it would take a dictatorship devoted to health and wellbeing to break the mould.  Bit of an irony there.

So what would it take to help people think again? Is it even possible?

With the mantra of let the market decide is too firmly entrenched, no government in its right mind would risk the wrath of voters by suggesting that the system they govern is flawed in the long term (or short term if you believe the worst case scenario) or that things need to radically change.

The arguments are all too obvious – I want to put cheap food on my plate, I have a right to make choices regarding what I or my children eat/do/watch on TV, etc, and I couldn’t agree more, but the issue here is not the right to make a choice but the knowledge and skills to make sure it is a truly informed one. Big business will defend its patch and argue jobs and taxes and contribution to GDP, governments argue freedom of choice and think jobs, taxes and GDP, people will argue jobs and price and freedom of choice. Great, but let’s at least give people the skills and education to critically assess whether what they are doing actually coincides with how they want to live their lives, how they want their children to live their lives and what sort of world they want their grandchildren and great grandchildren to live in.

Of course, that is never going to wash, because that would mean actually stopping and, shock horror, thinking! There is no way that is going to happen while people are obsessed with consumption and so insecure that they base who they are and how they feel on how they consume and what they perceive others think of them. Easier not to think, do what you’ve always done and get what you have always got (that is, debt, long term illness, an environment that will not be able to keep providing the means for the “growth” our governments crave).

So, despair like me when you walk down the street and see the grossly obese (let’s be honest here, and call them fat) person of whatever nationality, age or gender drinking soft drink and eating junk food. I am guessing they don’t like being fat. I am guessing they want to be healthy and feel good about themselves, but the cycle just perpetuates because to baulk and fight and rally against the vested interests is just too hard to contemplate for someone without the skills to take it on.

I’m guessing there is a general consensus out there that everyone has a right to be healthy and happy, to love and be loved, to have something good to look forward to, to feel worthy, have friends and live a long life, but no-one is teaching the masses the skills to think critically and be strong enough to resist and fight off the bullshit factor. Letting the market decide is fine it seems as long as the market (that is, you and me) keeps deciding to consume, but woe betide a market that decides to pull its collective head in and get serious about adopting a critical thinking spending pattern. That is a market that leads to headlines trumpeting falls in consumer confidence, poor quarterly performance of big business, the adverse effect on that holiest of fiscal Holy Grails the GDP. What a load of hypercritical tripe that it is OK to let the market decide, but whatever you do, just don’t educate the end user to make real decisions based on forethought, the facts and long term issues like health and wellbeing (physical, mental, financial, environmental I’m for them all!).

God help us if that ever happened!!

Livin' la Vida Local (or To Tree or not to Tree, that is the question...)

As I sit here in a typical food court, in a typical capital city, watching the endless array of humanity bustling past, revelling in my anonymity and my rather exotic Japanese lunch, I have taken a moment to reflect on one of life’s little con jobs – the Tree Change!

This particular rant has its beginnings some three years ago, but more immediately brought on by my darling wife arriving home last night, to tell me that a friend of hers had confided a deep desire to embark on a tree change. This married mother of two, living well in a nice Brisbane suburb, kids happily ensconced in the local educational facility, she and hubby working non-stressful jobs that pay well, this capital city propertied middle class lady, was seriously considering chucking it all away to chase a rural idyll of a country homestead, a veggie patch, some curious chooks, and the life of a country lady. Advice to wife…tell said friend she is mad! Crazy! Bonkers!

This sort of rural idyll is the one promoted by the always and typically horsey looking  (as in the ride them, not look like them!) female editors of glossy magazines devoted to articles extolling the virtues of “My life in the country..”. A word of caution re these puffed up profiteroles that profit from the dreams of the somehow inferior and downtrodden city dweller – they exist to make advertising revenue! Look at the back pages. Ads everywhere. Skim through the rag – ads everywhere. Ads for country knits jumpers and styles that you wouldn’t really wear, not even at the local country show unless you wanted to look like a complete city try hard. Read the articles, and read between the lines. Who are they aimed at really? How many husbands and fathers get more than a passing mention? How many have moved from the Sydney north shore with a bucket full of cash and a transportable high income, and yes, high pressure job that follows to support the “lifestyle”? ‘Judith, and her husband, a Sydney architect…’ Does the husband get a name or a photo in the spread. No way. He is at work. Same old stuff, different scenery, with some added chores for hubby for good measure. A life of rustic charm, worthy of a film or book deal? Making cheese with the locals, and enjoying a glass of the regional red on the ol’ verandah of the ol’ homestead? Sound enticing? Think again….

Think again, and again, and again. And think carefully. Just what are you going to do in this rural idyll? What are the social indicators? “The what?”, the social indicators will show you what sort of place it is to live in. What is the unemployment like? What do people do? The level of education up to your standard or are you happy to spend the day talking about the weather and the price of apples? How about the schools for the kids? Is there a high school? Visited My School and checked it out? And how far away from a good tertiary education are you? Happy to stay at home without the kids while they go to University or TAFE or College? You sitting in the big ol’ house, doing all the chores, feeding the kids chooks, tending the veggie garden, wandering past the empty bedrooms while the twenty somethings are back in the city, dumbfounded as to why you could possible have left all the action in the first place? Like a latte? So where are you going to go to get one, and are you going to be able to enjoy it without someone recognising you and trying to pin you down about this or that or whatever. Think hard and long….no such thing as anonymity in a country town! It is like an episode of Home and Away with a much worse looking cast…

Think about how it will be when the gloss wears off, when the same old routine creeps back in - “same stuff, different scenery”. Yes, it is great to get away, yes it is nice to see new places and cultures, even in your own back yard, but it is nice to get home too.

Perhaps it might be best to keep the rural idyll in its place. Maybe you can tweak your current existence to find what it is you’re trying to chase anyway.

You want to wander the pretty garden to the sound of your very own clucking inquisitive chooks? So get gardening and get some chooks! The home grown veggies from your very own veggie patch? Get on with it then!. A slow down to a more relaxed lifestyle? Ahhh, that’s what it is all about really isn’t it? Well, do it. What makes anyone think it is going to be easier by uprooting the family and moving to a regional outpost, as pretty and picturesque as it might be for a one week holiday, is beyond reason. Negotiate more flexible working hours. Change your job. Make a decision to spend more time with your kids. Think about it long and hard. If you don’t like the idea of looking after chooks, and putting in the hard work a decent veggie garden takes in your suburban block, what makes you think it is going to be any easier in the sticks, ‘cause it won’t be.

And if you still think you want to give it a go, remember this, once you are out of the city, cashed up or not, you will not, not ‘might not’, but WILL not be able to buy back into the type of inner suburban block you might be in now. City prices rise and rise and rise, bubble or no. Regional prices can drop like a rock at the whiff of a drought, bushfire or a downturn in the commodity prices. A downturn in the what? Commodity prices – get used to talking about them. Regional communities exist on the back of regional industries, that is, commodities, and people talk about them as if there livelihood depends on it, because it does. Yours might not but theirs will. Can you handle the groundhog day of conversing with the neighbours about the price of stone fruit at the same time of the year, year after year after year? Maybe take six months off and rent your place out and try before you buy. Really try though. Be a critical thinker and don’t be blinded by the sunset over the mountains. Maybe look into an investment holiday house in your little piece of paradise. If it isn’t worth investing there, you are thinking of investing yourself there because…..?