Blogging at the end of the world

That's what it feels like. The country I live in is on fire, the apocalypse is with us. A thousand homes burnt to the ground. Communities that have lived on edge for week after week after week, and summer is only about a third of the way through. An optimistic eight more weeks to go. Even in comparatively well-watered Melbourne, I still have some water in the tank, but not much. Usually at this stage of the year, it's pretty much full.

I'm not entirely sure how to make sense of this world anymore, so I'm using this blog as therapy.

If you listen to the news, which nowadays I generally try not to, you end up with the impression that the only thing of any importance is "the economy", but I'm left completely unsure what that is anymore.

When I was a baby economics student, back in the early 1990s, there was a bit of a link between a growing economy - GDP per capita - and the quality of lives people led. Countries with higher GDP were happier, the people lived longer, the standard of education was higher. But even then, these figures bore little scrutiny if applied over time. The happiest times in the West were, apparently, the '50s and '60s.

Now, I don't buy this wholesale. The entire 1950s female lifestyle thing has little to recommend it - I've never been a big fan on antidepressants, and if that's what it took to make sure women were happy, it is an odd sort of happiness. And I can't imagine it was much fun to be gay, or black, or anything other than a straight, white bloke. In Malaysia, we were still trying to build both our own country and the UK up from the devastation of the Second World War, with the UK taking the bulk of our income for their own needs.

But I suspect that there is still some truth in the stats. Some. There was a belief in the better world being built, either by capitalism or communism. There was a sense of purpose and optimism and it wasn't all tied in to the purchase of stuff. Stuff's great, but we now seem to live to acquire, rather than acquiring to live. And we all know, we know, that this is meaningless. So we buy our way to happiness through paid-for meditation and self-help courses, or self-realisation courses.

I'm only a generation away from hungry. But I'm worried that it's a generation in both directions. We urgently need to role in the addiction to stuff, and the money that buys the stuff, and the addiction to the belief that the GDP defines how well lives are lived.

And thus endeth today's lesson. I am slowing down and reflecting, I am refilling my reserves, and next week, I will breathe deep and steel myself for the battles to come this year and this decade. I hope that we are up to the task. Good luck, and much love, my friends.

Why we need to get over these elections

I understand the boycott campaign, and in better times, might even support them. These elections are not presenting us with a choice of good and better, but worse and worst. At least, let’s hope that this is as bad as a political option can get: Maybe Barisan still has some surprises up its electoral sleeves. Yet, I will be casting my vote. Not just because I have a candidate I can get behind standing in my electorate, not because for the first time in my life I’ll be able to contribute to a woman getting in to Parliament, but because these elections are going to decide whether we can just get over elections and get on with the task of building a politically aware electorate. There is no hope for that under BN. If you had any doubts of this beforehand, the dual farces of the fake news act and the redelineation exercise should have exorcised them.

It seems highly unlikely, but if the current Opposition wins, then we can finally get over that issue, the “can we get rid of BN” issue, and start looking at the more interesting stuff.

Like local elections. Anybody else notice that Pakatan Harapan seem to have dropped these from their manifesto? The ability to appoint councillors is a key power for the state government, it’s a system of patronage and gives those in place real powers. It’s easy to see why Pakatan Harapan have dropped it. We need to put pressure on them to reinstate, because local elections and local government are the power-house of a democracy, it’s where citizens are able to see how their vote directly impacts their lives. Decisions on zoning may sound dull, but if it’s about whether your pet is legitimate or not, they literally strike much closer to home. Decisions on parks, and advertising, on stalls and shops. Local councils is where we live, quite literally.

But what starts locally grows. There is an intoxicating power that comes from being able to control your own life, what the Founding Fathers referred to as public happiness. A friend told me it even has the power to extend your life: Power, real power, over your life tends to make you live longer, she said. Thomas Jefferson strove to bring power down to the smallest possible level, the ward. Democracy wasn’t just about choosing representatives, it was about generating political power at multiple levels, empowering each person to take control of the community decisions that affected their lives. And if they could experience this close to home, they’d be active in keeping an eye on what happened at a state, federal and international level. His views on public happiness were largely developed too late to influence the US Constitution, and writers from Tocqueville to Arendt have warned about the consequences, which were are now seeing blazoned across the White House in the 24-hour-tweet fiasco that is Donald Trump.

We need local elections, because until we have them, we will not have anything beyond a sham of democracy. And we need a strong, thriving democracy to face the challenges of the next fifty years.

We all know about climate change. It seems like something distant and far away to most people. It’s not. The impact of climate change, probably even if we do cut to zero emissions and start drawing carbon down tomorrow, are going to be massive. Because we’ve already started unlocking stores of methane and other greenhouse gases that have been locked away in permafrost, which is now melting.

Climate change means two things. We need to move to a zero carbon economy with urgency. But given our small population, and our geography, even more urgently we need to think about how we deal with a warming globe. Most Malaysians live on a peninsula. That means we are surrounded by water on three sides. Few people live in the interior of West Malaysia, we’re fairly well concentrated on the coast, and the same is true for Sabah and Sarawak: around 60% of the population. By 2050,  sea levels are predicted by conservative (small c) scientists to rise just under 60 cm. Rice production is expected to fall, by up to 30%. Malaria is set to increase as temperatures rise, and other health impacts are uncertain.

So far, the government’s response has been to see this as an investment opportunity. Malaysia punches far above its weight in terms of solar panel and LED light production. But in terms of building resilience, pushing unpopular but necessary changes to our lifestyle, there is no leadership. On either side of the political fence. Both sides keep our political minds focused on the comparatively minor issue of who wins the election. And until BN is evicted from power, it is the only question in Malaysian politics.

We need to get over it. We need a new government. Not just because of corruption. Not because we need a new set of cronies. But because we need to get over the question of whether government can be changed by the people, whether it is possible to make government scared of us, rather than the other way round.

There are real issues looming on the horizon. They will test our coherence and patience as a nation. With a race-based coalition, that premises its power on the idea that our interests are defined by our ethnicity, not our common Malaysian heritage, we cannot possible meet the challenges the coming decades offer. We will splinter along the lines fostered by those in power who benefit from us being Malay, Chinese, Indian first, Malaysian last. Those who want us to define ourselves by religion, against others.

I don’t have much hope in Harapan. But I’m not hopeless enough to think there is an alternative.

Keep on smoking....

That would be the advice to a cancer patient if current discussions on 'energy policy' are any indication.

Today there has been a large fracas on gas shortages, with worries about what changes to policy could mean for future investment in gas. The underlying assumption being that Australia needs future investment in gas.

I was listening, as I often do, to Jon Faine on the radio. He interviewed a colleague in Canberra about the implications and the options. But not once did either journalist mention climate change when discussing energy options.

This seems to be a persistent blind spot. Jon Faine, and colleagues in the ABC, seem to agree that climate change is real, that there is a scientific consensus on the issue, but they don't seem to think that this means that something has to be done. This isn't about politics, it isn't about radical positions, it is at the very least what needs to be done to protect the global economy (which is far more important than the people in that economy, obviously).

Climate change is a cross-cutting issue. It affects refugees, it affects women, it affects food security and energy security and jobs and health. Yet it is never mentioned in relation to any of these things, at least not on the ABC.

As you can tell, this is starting to annoy me. But it's more than that. It is an example of how media framing is preventing us from recognising the scale of this issue. This is the biggest problem the world faces right now, and yet most of the world's media are fiddling as the world burns.

As readers, as viewers, as human beings with a stake in the future, please urge your local, national and international media of choice to not just pay lip service to the reality of climate change, but look at how you might change your programming if the future of the people on this planet actually mattered.

PS This was supposed to be an uplifting happy post for International Women's Day. I got distracted.

The urgency of climate action

Too many headlines today indicated that we are not just living in a present that is driven by fossil fuels, but we're still investing in a future driven by fossil fuels. I sometimes wonder if bankers and politicians think that their children will be living in a different world than ours, if they are living in a different world from us, where the reality they can buy is reality, and it insulates them from the need for clean air, from a livable atmosphere, rising sea levels and thirsty koalas.

Which means there's an even greater need for action from people not blinded by rhetoric and money to make change happen.

One of the things I'm trying to do is work with my local climate action group, and I'm fortunate enough to be in an area where there is a FANTASTIC group doing amazing work. They're working hard on getting signatures for the Climate Emergency Declaration; are working to persuade politicians that there is a climate emergency; and providing voters with clear information about climate-friendly candidates in local, state and federal elections here in Victoria.

But perhaps one of the most important things is that they're helping disseminate ideas about what can be done on a local level, by local councils, by local governments, by communities, to those who can make changes.

In some ways, the need for change is comparatively clear cut from an Australian perspective. From a Malaysian one, when we talk about the need for change, there are so many urgent items on the agenda, that climate change seems to be, well, not insignificant, but we need to do so much other stuff FIRST before we can put it on the agenda.

The problem is that time is not on our side. Climate change is already causing changes in Malaysia's water supply, in the seasons. The prognosis is not good, and we need talk about climate resilience and cutting Malaysian emissions; working to reforest our landscapes.

But we can't wait for leaders to emerge who will create these changes, we can't wait for the systems to catch up with the problems, we need to create the solutions, and put them into action, leaving the 'leaders' to catch up. Interested? I'm hoping to post links in posts over the next few days on how communities can drive change :). Here's one file to start...

Morality

This week I have been told by one of my children what a bad person I am. More worryingly, I've been told by an adult who I have been trying to assist sort out her affairs for just over a year, what a bad person I am.

So I have been thinking, quite a bit, on what I think about the nature of good and evil, and what makes a person 'bad', or not. I'm not really interested in discussing whether Trump, for example, is the new evil, whether physical violence is wrong, but more in the banal everyday acts where people we might think of as 'good' contribute to clearly bad things.

The archetype of this is the average citizen of Nazi Germany. I have recently been reading a book on women journalists and writers who worked in Germany from 1900-1950, and the one I found most fascinating was the literature reviewer who wrote the New York Times, and in an underspoken way worked around the Third Reich, reviewing writers who were banned and talking to her American audience about a Germany that was being demolished before her wavering eyes. She certainly seems to me to be skirting around that line of allowing evil to happen, despite an apparent commitment to the pre-Reich days and writers, not drawing attention to the exceptional nature of the Nazi regime, pretending it wasn't really there.

I feel that there's a lot of this around today, that it is hard not to be part of it. We all know that there is really no such thing as cheap clothes, that someone somewhere pays the cost, and it is the cost of wasted lives attached to sewing machines in shoddy warehouses that might collapse or burn, the cost of cotton grown in fields and harvested by slave labour, and conditions of environmental degradation. We all know this. And yet, it is so easy to go and buy a cheap t-shirt, to buy a cheap t-shirt over the more expensive.

And even if we buy the more expensive t-shirt, is that doing the right thing? Are we being deceived by fair trade labels or taking jobs away from those most in need, and giving them to comparatively privileged Western factory workers?

Vegetarians are criticised, because they are taking food from poor farmers and inadvertently killing intelligent mice; vegans are culturally insensitive. And making ethical purchasing choices is the purview of privilege, and makes no difference so WHY BOTHER?

Some of these, particularly the last, are valid criticisms of trying to live ethically in a world that values money and consumption above all else, but I think they are important facets of trying to change that world starting with ourselves.

But changing our individual consumption patterns isn't going to make real changes to the planet unless we work on social changes too, on changing and re-imagining the world we live in, the world we share together.

And here I'm kind of stumped. I know how to get involved in big things, I can write letters and sign petitions and visit politicians, but none of that seems to get to the heart of the problem, which is imagining a better world and sharing and building that vision in the communities in which we live.

I'm currently exploring other people's ideas on this, from a local co-op that I'm part of (with the family) to reading and listening to new ideas. But I'd like to build something that will appeal to my (literal) neighbours, to my family and friends, and not just those who already recognise that this world isn't working.

So this is an invitation to the conversation, and perhaps a hope that it will help me learn more about how to be a better person.

On leaders and followers

The Citizen's Declaration is a fine document. I agree with almost everything that it contains. Some people worked hard to amend the original document so that it was in line with more progressive aims, and they did a good job at that. But I'm worried.

One of the reasons Malaysia is in the mess it is in today is because we place inordinate value on leaders, on trusting our leaders. There was trust in, belief in, the idea that politicians may be creaming a bit off here and there, but in general, they were ruling in our interests. There was no need for oversight, or scrutiny, because we could trust them.

The decision to hand over the leadership of the movement for the Citizen's Declaration to Mahathir seems to be share the same premise. If we bring Mahathir in, we bring in his 'followers', and that way, we can institute change. It is too easy. Change requires far more work than that.

But what sort of change would that entail? Swapping Najib for Mukhriz seems the most plausible scenario, and what does that mean? Will those followers rise up and demand democratic change, or will they follow blindly?

We need to do away with leaders, because we need to do away with followers. If the democratic movement in Malaysia is relying on someone who has begrudgingly signed onto democratic reform, and they are relying on him to bring along his followers, then we have a problem. Because what we need, for democratic reform, is that the 'followers', the rakyat demand of their leaders, do this or we will be done with you.

If the democratic movement allows itself leaders, rather than spokespeople, allows itself demagogues, then it is not a democratic movement. Let Mahathir join the people's movement, let him be part of a tidal wave of citizens demanding reform and resignation. But let's not make him a figurehead, a leader, when he cannot even mouth the slogans of reform.

Let's change those followers, work with them. If we're serious about this, those are the barricades that need to be stormed. Instead of bringing Mahathir and his followers into the fold, let's transform his followers into independent citizens determined to determine a future of their own, not follow an old man's demising dreaming.

What do I want from democracy?

More responses to my reading of Chantal Mouffe, valid for both Australia and Malaysia...

I want a political system that looks to the future, not to the past. That stops subsidising private transport, but guarantees free health-care for all, not just citizens or permanent residents. Citizens aren't the only ones paying taxes, and a sick migrant can infect a dozen healthy citizens. It's false economy to pretend we have a cordon sanitaire around those with rights and those without. That doesn't subsidise private education, or violent education, or racist inhumane education, and invests in sustainable and renewable energy, particularly for the poorest in society. It eases the transition away from coal, petrol and gas for miners, not for bosses. Perhaps a start would be a commitment to solar or hydro energy in remote communities, and helping people within the communities learn how to install and maintain systems, creating jobs and improving the sustainability of lifestyles even on a low income. A commitment to solar and heat exchange for public housing (and a commitment to public housing).

I want a government that works towards a four-day week, and prioritises small business who put money back into the community over transnational corporations who provide crap jobs. We produce more than we need, there is no reason why a minority can suck up all that wealth, while those at the bottom fight over fewer and fewer low-paid jobs, where production is mechanised. Perhaps this can be done through incentives to model co-operatives, ones that might provide a real challenge to the monopolies of some of the larger sectors.

I want a government that is concerned about the supply chain, because the world is inter-connected. Rather than funding either a massive aid budget or overseas military adventures, let's look at getting large companies to invest in their supply chain. Maybe a tax, or incentives for those over a certain profit margin. This could be related to the move to a four-day week.... Money could be spent on health and safety in factories overseas, and that could be translated into tax credits in Australia. Likewise on the sourcing of goods – a sustainable supply chain moves you into a different tax bracket. Let's try and think up imaginative solutions.

This is only possible if we reform democracy – Mouffe's main point in what I'm reading now – so that it incorporates politics once more, rather than just government. We need to think about, and demand, what we want – and force politicians to listen.

The point of stating this isn't to provoke agreement, but to provoke thought – another political system is possible. There are a lot of people trying to show how it can be done, in Syria for instance. Do we have to wait until people are so disillusioned with democracy that they abandon it entirely before we look at why?