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Tag: paradigm
The answer is a big fat no.
Societal pressures, the obsession with photoshopped and filtered images and smartphone addictions are seemingly driving us “crazy”. To my eyes rejecting a way of living which makes us miserable is in fact sanity. If people are being shoe-horned into a broken society no wonder they are unhappy.
I worked in pastoral care for a while and if I was still doing it and read this article from the Independent below, I would be pretty damn concerned. This suggests that 1 in 4 youngsters are estimated to have a mental health problem. Can the purveyors of SSRIs keep up with the demand?
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It comes as recent NHS figures showed that 25 per cent of 17- to 19-year-olds are now estimated to have a mental health problem – up from 17 per cent last year.
In an interview with The Independent, Ms Cordery warned: “I was talking to a [NHS trust] chief executive the other day who was telling me their sense that what’s happened to mental health over the last few years – in terms of people suffering with these conditions and disorders – is like a parallel pandemic. I would agree with that assessment.”
“We’ve really got to address the significant, unmet need for mental health care”.
Mental health issues “flew under the radar” as the NHS battled the Covid pandemic, she suggested, and since then there has been a rise in the numbers requiring help and accessing services.
“And those are just the ones we know about,” Ms Cordery said. “The situation we have to worry about is the people who haven’t come forward for care.”
She also warned the problem could worsen as the cost of living crisis risks exacerbating mental health problems.
The crisis is predicted to have two consequences. The first is a rise in the number of people who experience mental health problems for the first time, while the second is that some who already suffer will find their mental health decline.
Rosena Allin-Khan, shadow mental health minister, said: “Demand for mental health treatment continues to grow, with many patients, including children, languishing for days in emergency departments, waiting for a mental health bed.
“The government simply doesn’t have a handle on the crisis. Without access to timely treatment, mental illnesses only worsen.”
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Is there really a mental health problem or do we need an entirely new societal paradigm? If 25 % are deemed as having a mental health problem, who is doing the deeming? What are the metrics?
What happens when 51% have a mental health problem? Who will be in charge then?
Earlier this year we had Truss chanting the free market growth mantra. That went down like a lead balloon for the markets. The trickle down effect sounds like the aftermath of a risky fart when one has diarrhoea.
It is all so very old and dated.
The argument that a pay review body is “fair” to the unions is a manipulative attempt at spin and misdirection.
Patrician: we have set it out so that everyone gets a “fair” share. Now settle down and be a good pleb…
Plebian: yes, massah, thank you for being so kind and magnanimous.
It is a bit Orwellian. “All pigs are equal; some pigs are more equal than others, don’t you know old chap.”
Fact It is impossible to sustain infinite economic growth on a planet of finite resource. The growth paradigm is illogical and unsustainable. This is particularly so as resource will need to be redirected to mitigate the destruction incoming due to climate change.
A good way to address the so-called mental health problem is to admit that the current societal paradigm has stopped functioning, it is broken and not fit for purpose.
It needs replacing but I don’t know with what as yet.
Stopping trying to shoe-horn people into the old ways is a good starter for ten.
As you may have guessed it has been raining here today. I have nipped out between showers to do the out of doors chores.
If Britishvolt folds and Renault/Nissan relocate because of Brexit induced difficulty, the UK is up the proverbial Sierra creek in a barbed wire canoe without a paddle, when it comes to Lithium batteries.
What worked and could be relied on prior to Brexit has been put at risk because of Brexit. So, the UK has changed its EU member paradigm a little and the consequences continue to unfold as they will do for decades.
COP 27 is at Sharm-el-Sheikh this month. It was pretty hot there in August 2003 when I went on a dive vacation. The average high in November is 27˚C with a record high of 37˚C. There are some swanky hotels there. When I went, on my own, I ended up having a few beers with some of the numerous Russians who were there. They seemed to enjoy a good piss up. There was a terrorist attack there and from time to time there is a shark attack, in the bay where I did my underwater navigation task.
As Greta says greenwashing is the new de rigueur trend in governmental and corporate public relations hyper-spin. Everyone needs a green fairy-tale to hand out to the punters with their logo.
From what I can see the rationale behind trying to limit global warming is to insist that the old socio-economic paradigm can be sustained and global warming slowed. People seem to be adamant about this.
It is the I can have my cake and eat it too catch 22 paradigm. It involves a lot of finger crossing and burying of head in the sand.
With the upcoming winter of discontent, 2050 looks a long way away with the repo man at the door.
The war in Ukraine has turned very attritional, and compassion fatigue may be setting in. I suspect that things will get ever more difficult in Ukraine. Russia has people from Siberia…
I am no economist but this paradigm of continuous growth lies aback all the fiscal models of government and taxation. People have become accustomed to all the luxuries they can afford and now expect. People { even those on benefits} expect wide screen TVs and smartphones with space telescope quality CCD cameras. The idea is get electric cars and grid charging infrastructure. It is not to reduce travel nor the speed of travel. Bigger batteries, mean more weight, means more power needed for same velocity.
Growth is not infinitely sustainable on a planet of finite resource. Sooner or later there has to be the big crunch. Everybody crosses their fingers hoping that the bubble will not burst.
Everybody else should do something about climate change, it is their fault, not mine.
Nobody is mentioning reduction in consumption as a climate change solution. But it is so obvious. Stop or significantly reduce consuming, reuse and there is less carbon dioxide in the air. I am not an anti-phone fascist but nobody needs a new ‘phone every two years, just to show off with. Nor do we need frequent shiny new cars. We don’t have to take Instagram multi-megapixel photos in the Maldives. Therefore, we don’t need giga-server farms with energy gobbling air-conditioning.
Unless a new paradigm emerges, the growth mantra will clash with the flood defence mantra. We must not drown. We must not drown.
Something big is going to have to give.
This year we have learned how fragile our dependency of fossil fuels makes us. Soon we shall have a Lithium dependence too.
How long will humanity cling to the old paradigm of continuous economic growth before it is forced by nature to change its ways? How long will hedonistic acquisitional materialism be the driver and aim of human desires? We locust beings are damaging our home.
Who is going to win the debate about finite resource, humanity or the planet?
I’ll kick this off with two quotes from today’s Guardian. I can do this because I was wearing “Save the Rainforest” T-shirts in the eighties.
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“The fact that 3 billion people use less energy, on an annual per capita basis, than a standard American refrigerator gives you an idea of how far away from global equity and climate justice we currently are.”
Greta Thunberg
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“They say we must be able to compromise. As if the Paris agreement were not already the world’s biggest compromise. A compromise that has already locked in unimaginable amounts of suffering for the most affected people and areas. I say: “No more.” I say: “Stand your ground.” Our so-called leaders still think they can bargain with physics and negotiate with the laws of nature. They speak to flowers and forests in the language of US dollars and short-term economics. They hold up their quarterly income reports to impress the wild animals. They read stock-market analysis to the waves of the ocean, like fools.
We are approaching a precipice. And I would strongly suggest that those of us who have not yet been greenwashed out of our senses stand our ground. Do not let them drag us another inch closer to the edge. Not one inch. Right here, right now, is where we draw the line.”
Greta Thunberg
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‘Clean up public life’
While the science and technology for saving the planet is challenging, it is not the bottleneck. But to deal with these complex systemic challenges requires high-quality, clear decision making. At the moment, that process is largely disabled by hidden agendas, dishonesty and greed. So my planet-saving idea is to cultivate and insist on much higher standards of honesty and compassion among our political and business decision-makers. Without it, nothing will work.
Mike Berners-Lee, author
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Elsewhere in this blog I have mentioned Atlantis. Nobody has found convincing physical plane evidence for it. Yet it remains a metaphor for what may happen to our current civilisation. I seem to have read that we have enough ice on the planet to raise the sea level 65m. At an elevation of 130m we should not be covered by sea. The financial “heart” of the city of London would be inundated.
I have been inside the Rhone glacier and looked down on Konkordia Platz from Jungfraujoch. It is a UNESCO world heritage site. It is breath-taking.
My generation might be the last to be able to make such a claim.
Elsewhere I have suggested that a nuclear winter is a solution for global warming, we are closer to that now than we have been for fifty years. There is a prime minister in the UK who is obsessed by “growth”. I have said factually that growth is not sustainable on a planet of finite resource. Sooner or later “growth” will and must cease. It is simple logic.
This old economic paradigm and black magic greed mantra must end.
Is being greedy, acquistional, sequestering resources from other people and being arrogant, growth? If so, it is malignant. Will crossing your fingers, and burying you head in the sand, avert climate disaster? No. Is ravaging the planet like a swarm of locusts, growth?
Some people have a funny idea about what growth means.
I doubt that humanity has the will, to back off on consumption. It may need to be forced, by events, to do this.
I feel that many have been hypnotised by mobile ‘phones and great deals on data. So, they take needless high pixel number fatuous selfie after selfie, which they store on the power hungry servers around the globe. We melt more sand for silicon than we actually “need” because people “need” the newest, grooviest ‘phone. We must invent more shit to flog so that the economy can “grow”.
We do not need to send spaceships to Mars, or the moon.
We do not need so many airmiles now we have the internet.
We do not need to go on a cruise liner the size of an aircraft carrier bedecked with photo ready infinity pools.
We do not need to fly to the Maldives even though they may not be around for much longer.
We do not need perfect green beans from Kenya in January.
There is a tendency to justify this kind of excess. People argue the toss to promote their own agendas. I do not think that politicians are serious about climate crisis, especially now there is this bizarre wave of “popularist” politicians. Sociopaths can get elected to high office.
We have had truly biblical floods in Pakistan.
If the ice melts, the sun does not get reflected, the rate of increase in temperature goes up. When things go nonlinear, they can get very chaotic sharply.
I’ll wager things will have to get truly bad, catastrophic even, before humans will have sufficient will to address what changes need to be made. People can be very slow and unwilling learners.
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have one’s cake and eat it too
idiom
Definition of have one’s cake and eat it too
: to have or enjoy the good parts of something without having or dealing with the bad parts They seem to think they can have their cake and eat it too by having excellent schools for their son without paying high taxes.
“Paradigm: a philosophical and theoretical framework of a scientific school or discipline within which theories, laws, and generalizations and the experiments performed in support of them are formulated.”
Who knows if Einstein actually said those things in the previous post? Stuff found on the internet is not necessarily factual.
The gist of what that quote says is true. Often, we can make problems be-cause of our manner of thinking. Our thinking causes the problem. We cannot therefore use the same thinking to undo the problem. There is no solution from within the paradigm, a paradigm shift will not help. Only a complete change of paradigm can enable a solution.
I’ll make a statement.
People rarely include the notion of karmic consequence in the “decisions” they make.
If they want something they “justify” their desire from within the paradigmatic view of what they believe they deserve or are entitled to. People can find a whole host of dodgy reasons when they wish to. Karmic consequence is not a conscious part of the common mundane paradigm.
A recent example of karmic consequence is the so-called “partygate”. The consequences rippled out from a rather silly and ill-considered set of actions. The mind-set which imagined that no rules were broken was paraded for consumption and was found wanting by many who were not in the Westminster bubble / paradigm. The erstwhile prime minister was not able to wing his way out of this one.
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A cornerstone of modern interaction is conditional relationship by transaction. “If you do this for me, I will do that for you.” “If you don’t do this for me, there will be bad consequences for you.”
This can result in the abuse of power; it can be explicit or implicit. Hence, we have things like the casting couch. If you give me a BJ, you will get a part in the film / a better chance of promotion.
There is a fine line between mutual cooperation and corruption.
“If you invite me to give a high profile invited lecture, I will return the favour in due course.” Is mild.
People who play the back scratching game, understand the rules and operate in the paradigm of “favours”. There is nearly always an expectation of something in return. “What is in it for me?”
This paradigm is based in imagined gain for self over whole. It is the paradigm of self-advancement and not self-less-ness. Self comes first. ME, ME, ME.
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In my paradigm there is the notion of karmic consequence. Once karma starts to ripple out it cannot be stopped and one cannot negotiate with karma, nor can one buy karma off. Karma does not have a back to scratch.
In the paradigm of people who like to negotiate everyone has a price, a desire, which can be leveraged. This paradigm is held by many as an operational framework for life upon the physical plane. How many people have signed NDAs for an enhanced severance cash pay-out?
I have suggested in this blog that the paradigm of acquisitional materialistic hedonism based on economic “growth” is unsustainable upon a planet of finite resource. There is an inevitability of conflict as availability of resource dwindles. Question my logic? If people cannot look to the whole as opposed to the self, this too creates an unsustainable planetary tension between the haves and the have nots. People think it is clever to take. In the long term that cannot be sustained. It is not really all that clever.
We have to change from a local me / we to a truly global, us. We are in it together…
The new paradigm must be The One Life, The One Humanity a complete re-orientation away from selfish greed and self-advancement. These are primitive and archaic behaviours.
There are some things which the human mind is unwilling to accept or at least accept fully, because to truly accept these things changes everything. People in general prefer some comforting “version” of reality over reality itself. I have said in this blog that in my opinion humanity will not reach its current climate change targets for 2050 unless something truly dramatic and/or devastating happens which acts as an alarm call which cannot be put on snooze.
In my opinion the economic paradigm of aquisitional materialistic hedonism under the mantra of economic growth is not sustainable upon a planet of finite resource. The logic in this statement is true.
The bank of England is predicting recession, one of the Tory candidates is saying that economic growth will solve all the problems on the red national balance sheet. There is no obvious way to get people to accept the truth that growth is in the longer term unsustainable, it is an unacceptable truth within the context of the current economic paradigm. People must at one level know this truth but then they forget about it and chant the mantra of growth.
I have often wondered if GDP growth is a little like exam grade inflation. People don’t get smarter, teachers don’t improve vastly, people learn how to play the increasingly predictable exam game. There was already dumbing down when I worked in a university. Prices goes up, GDP growth ensues. It is real growth or an artificial thing? What is growth calibrated against?
In the previous post about context and juxtaposition, I hinted at a possible truth which deviates from those that other people might have of me. That putative truth suggests that I am some kind of reincarnated Buddhist monk / priest. I am guessing that this possible truth would be very hard to swallow for a large number of people who may have interacted with me. Implicit in it are some strong karmic implications for people who have been a bit of a Jeremy towards me. It also suggests that although they may be adamant about what their interactions have meant, they have gotten entirely the wrong end of the stick. They may not be able to accept this from within their own paradigm of “reality”. To appreciate would require work and learning which is not their main interest in life. They may be too busy to lend it even the most fleeting of passing thoughts. Who even donates a turd?
I joke that I am a geek-yogi superposition state, therefore a quantum yogi. I am bilingual, in that I can speak concrete science and esoteric thought.
Many at best pay lip service to the notion of reincarnation. Some still imagine Pearly Gates and Hellfire. Most are caught up in the pass times of modern existence. There are a lot of displacement activities and much escapism.
Logically the only way one gets to find out with 100% surety about what happens after death is to die. At brain death consciousness either ceases or it carries on without any corporeal apparatus. Ladies and gentlemen faites vos jeux, place your bets. Everyone is certain that they are going to die, but few prepare for it whilst they can still significantly alter their orientation towards life. When there is little left on the clock one cannot alter the deeds of a life, there is not sufficient time to rebalance, it is too late.
I have been “told” that I am never coming back here as a human being, this makes me a non-returner within that context.
So what?
Many people say things for effect. We can hear what others say and then discount it, even forget hearing it. Our confirmation biases are often rigid and far reaching, though we might never accept this. Biased, moi? Anything which does not fit with our confirmation bias is discounted in a neo-Pavlovian way. It does not even get considered.
Is this statement about not coming back, my imagination, something that I am saying for effect or is it an unacceptable truth; a truth that is hard to accept from within your paradigm or a truth which is hard to accept because it has implications. I know several people who might take this statement at face value and go, ok no big deal. Others might think that I am a whacko nut job.
It is not my problem; I am not coming back.
I have a version of some events which suggests that various people are deep in the karmic do-do. There is no way on earth that these people would accept this. They are adamantly convinced that they are right and thoroughly justified in their actions and in the manner in which they construct their version of “reality”. To even accept as a working hypothesis that my version has any merit, would be to start to reorient themselves towards their “reality” paradigm, this would be destabilising for their view of the world. It would be, therefore, unacceptable because the acceptance changes the perception of everything.
Sometimes the penny refuses to drop, and people demonstrate their magical powers of telekinesis to keep said penny in the air, they are like Magneto, so to speak.
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Have you ever found it difficult to accept something which was/is true?
Did you ever break any rules about having office parties during lock down?
What makes a truth unacceptable to you?
Is aquisitional materialistic hedonism working?
Perhaps it is for some but last year in the UK there were 8,300,000 people taking some form of antidepressant, that figure is 12% of the total population and was on the up. Some figures I have found for France suggest that the antidepressant percentage is 9.7% but the anti-anxiolytic figure was a whopping 17.4%. I did wonder why the French kept banging on about being anxious.
That is a large number of people who are not happy bunnies.
Prescriptions for children and the elderly are probably down from this figure, so it might suggest that something like 1 in 5 adults had a prescription, in the UK, for antidepressants and well more than 1 in five in France had one for anti-anxiolytics.
This means on average, if you know five people, one of them is being treated for mental “illness”. The illness density per capita is higher in teens and young adults.
What do we do?
Try to persuade them the society as it currently is works and give them some pills? Or do we accept that the modern way of living simply is not working for a fair tranche of the population.
People are not taking climate change seriously; they are not addressing the so-called mental health crisis. I’ll wager as the cost of living crisis worsens the number of prescriptions for pills will get even higher.
There is this “sticking plaster” mentality. “Let’s deal with the effects and not go to the cause…”
Something has got to change and radically so.
If the younger people are being peddled Love Island which is all about vanity and shagging, they are not being given a balanced approach to living. All this obsession with image and appearance, is not conducive to inner peace.
Unfortunately change from within the paradigm of economic “growth” and aquisitional materialistic hedonism is unlikely. There must be a vast paradigm shift or even destruction of paradigm, sooner or later. Humans will not make this shift willingly; they will look for more and more sticking plasters and pray for silver bullet cures.
Future generations, if there are any, will think, “They knew this was happening and they did nothing? They fiddled with each other while the planet burned!”
It is unlikely that I have more than twenty years left on the clock. I won’t get to see if the “agreed” targets are met by 2050. I will wager that they will not be.
Just when will humanity understand the difference between more and enough?
This is the crux and the solution and is simplicity in itself. It is so obvious, but people in general do not want to shift in that direction…
More is the cause of the climate crisis. The paradigm of unlimited growth in a finite ecosystem is obviously and ultimately untenable. Yet economists keep banging on about growth; it is deeply illogical. The mantra of “growth” is the mantra of excessive consumption. People don’t phrase it that way, consume, consume, consume does not sound as nice as grow. It is a legerdemain.
Is aquisitional materialistic hedonism working?
NO
Within the paradigm of Materialistic Hedonistic Consumerism there is no space for “enough” apart from in a most fleeting temporal moment. In general people want more. Someone will always be better have a bigger house, a better trophy wife, more postnominals and higher kudos.
The economy in this paradigm is supposed to grow so that the paradigm, blessed be its name, can be sustained. This implies a continuous extension of demand. A global “enough” cannot therefore exist if there is to be economic growth. I don’t know where this mantra of “must grow, must grow” came from. It is not very sensible in the context of finite planetary resource, is it?
If you are not satisfied, then by definition you have not had enough {satis} and are therefore dissatisfied. The level of dissatisfaction varies from person to person. Some are natural Scrooges, some Eeyores and some are like Midas. There is a lot of envy and comparison mind is pandemic. People are forever comparing themselves to some rubric, some fantasy world.
Some like to self-flagellate with their thoughts and criticisms.
There is often a mental barrier.
“When I get my chair at Cambridge, then I will be happy…”
I might say no you won’t. You will be working your arse off!!
I’ll make a postulate here:
Comparison mind is a major cause of global dissatisfaction and suffering.
“Mummy he got one more sweetie than me. It is not fair!!”
I’ll do a little exercise of comparison mind.
I live on a low income, I am in my late fifties, with poor health and a background level of arthritic pain, my wife has an incurable disease, I am socially isolated, I am lacking in kudos and have little or no physical plane power. I have no ambition.
Now think of 40-50 words which describe your life. Make it succinct.
In your opinion who is likely to be more dissatisfied with their lot, you or me?
What was the basis of your comparison?
Which assumptions did you make?
When Will You Be Satisfied?
If I understand it correctly the report into the shenanigans at #10 Downing Street had some comments about getting away with it {phew}.
Many people share this “getting away with it” mentality, which means I guess, that they have not been held to account by the law or other human beings. They do not believe in karma or sin. Just so long as they are not punished in a mundane sense for their misdemeanour, they are happy and will do the same kind of dodgy stuff over an over. They are more concerned by what other human beings think, say and do than what the universe makes of their actions. Even those who give a passing nod to the notions of sin and karma, bend the “rules” when it suits them. They might have a knee trembler with their aide outside their office, distort statements so that they are spun to look better, fiddle their expenses and exaggerate beyond measure.
People who allege themselves Christian forget about the notions of Sodom and Gomorrah and the wrath of God. I am pretty sure that someone from a hundred years ago witnessing “acceptable” behaviour now would be utterly shocked. Friends with benefits? Notches on bed posts…
Has the one humanity, as a whole, broken its moral compass so that it is a slave to temptation, immediacy and convenience?
In a large part I think that the answer to this is yes.
The government of a nation is but a mirror of its populace. All empires fall into decline and it looks to me that the untied kingdom {possible word choice error suggests MS Word} does not yet realise that this is what is happening.
I have a hypothesis:
Humanity exists in two types, those that care for and give a shit about others and those who are only in it for themselves, the greedy and needy self-centred.
What do you think about this hypothesis? Is it accurate?
Those in the latter classing often pretend to give a shit about others so as to advance their needs and their agendas. They may bribe them with a tax windfall.
Competitive materialistic hedonism is the prime cause of global warming. Humanity can try to get away with it and marginally alter behaviours and come up with ingenious ways to have its cake and eat it. The fact remains that the resources of this planet are finite. We cannot have more and more people wanting more and more unnecessary stuff.
But nobody says that. It argues we will be carbon neutral; we will try to keep global warming to some man-made target. Humanity is dealing with the effects and not the cause.
Competitive materialistic hedonism has karmic significance both for humanity and the planet.
We have to change our ways…
Changing the way we live is the surest way to slow climate change. But to question humanity’s insatiable desire for stuff, toys, holidays and gluttonous consumption is never going to be a vote winner!!
That is until after the next truly massive disincarnation event. The disasters when they come will have to be truly significant for humanity to wake up and smell the coffee.
I wonder how massive these events must be in order to drag humanity’s attention away from Netflix, party gate and the Heard/Depp trial?
Phew, if we build a few more windfarms, a couple more nuclear power plants we will get away with it. We can get to keep our materialistic hedonism way of life, stuff our faces and shag ourselves senseless while Rome burns.
The prime cause of global warming is competitive materialistic hedonism. This self-satisfying paradigm has karmic implications which include meteorological disasters, wars over fossil fuels and potentially mass extinction of flora and fauna.
We are so clever at inventing ways to minimise damage that we fail to see that which is directly under our nose. We put our heads in the sand so that we can get to keep our vampiric behaviours bleeding the earth to death.
Homo sapiens??
It is so simple…but nobody wants to say it.
Traou an Dour 
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