A wicked book

I've been reading the work of Mike Hulme and his great book Why We Disagree About Climate Change recently. It a refreshing look at the issue of climate change in a way that avoids unhelpful terminology such as climate change denier, skeptic or believer. He tries to see climate change, not just as a scientific issue, but also a social one. The very fact that this book feels so fresh when talking about a topic that is massively published on is a testament to his abilities as a writer.

One thing that he mentions though, and that got me thinking again about the connections between spirituality and Geography is the way he tries to call climate change a 'wicked' problem.

He calls a wicked problem one that defies 'rational and optimal solutions'. These problems have a number of different characteristics. They are unique, have no analogy or no example to learn from. Wicked problems are also very slippery, difficult for us to get our heads around. They have numerous causes and we have no way of knowing what effect our proposed solutions might have.

So far, so good. I can readily transpose these factors onto climate change and see the links. What interests me though, is the connotations that the term wickedness brings with it. I would assume that the moral and religious norms that comes with language like wickedness and evil, would be so outdated today. It's not just that going around calling problems wicked is not politically correct, it also seems like binary thinking, dividing the world up into good and evil.

But I think Hulme may have a point. Climate change as an issue is so multidisciplinary, no one person can possibly understand it all. It relies on communication and trust in order to hold your view on the matter together - whatever view that is.

Climate change may well be a geographical issue, but it's one that can't be looked at without it's spiritual dimensions. Our moral responsibilities can not only be seen more clearly when we name the issue for it's wickedness, rather than explaining it away with formulas and graphs. The issue obviously needs the full skill set to get to grips with, but the neglected psycho-spiritual dimensions to environmental issues I think can be seen in sharper focus with Hulme's language. Our abstraction from nature, lack of feedback loops in our habits of consumption and desire for things to be faster, bigger and more comfortable can all be seen in the light of their wicked effects. A wicked read.

From the preface to Leaves of Grass

This is what you should do: Love the earth and sun and animals,

despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks,

stand up for the stupid and crazy,

devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants,

argue not concerning God,

have patience and indulgence toward the people,

re-examine all you have been told in school or church

or any book,

dismiss what insults your very soul,

and your flesh shall become a great poem.

Walt Whitman

Air Condition

Much of my reading recently has danced around the concept of ‘Air Condition’, developed by Peter Sloterdijk. His point is that our current age is better understood, not seeing it as Modernity, or the condition of Postmodernity, rather the Human Condition – since the first World War – is one of Air Condition. Basically, the condition of being aware of air (or any other such unrealized sustainer) and the following impulse to control the supply of it. Air Conditioning.

He sees the inauguration, the heralder of the age of Air Condition, in the first use of Gas in Modern warfare. The gassing at Ypres, in April 1915.

It was then that that which we take for granted and exists in the background, the air we breath, dramatically takes centre stage, is the only thing worth having in the foreground. When the air we breath is threatened, even if we've never considered it before, becomes the only thing worth seeking. The irony - if it weren’t so tragic – is that it’s only when life comes under its most testing threat, is when those who suffered in that attack came to view their utter dependence on that which they had taken for granted their whole lives.

Much like the proverbial fish who swims it’s whole life without want nor need to know what water is, suddenly (if fish could do such) has an existential angst to return to the state of water immersion where life is possible.

I’ve written previously about Bourdieu and how humans necessary for life, allow certain aspects of our existence and livelihood to become screened out of existence – to slip into the doxic realm. An occasion like that at Ypres is one where those taken-for-granted assumptions become all too real, where we become aware of our Air Condition.

Sloterdijk, and guys like Bruno Latour, who liberally quote his theories, use this to point to the increasing realization of our dependence on more than just air. Our connection to the natural realm, through farming practices, walking, song, even breathing, is becoming far more realisiable, as we shut ourselves off in boxes, in our air conditioned cells. When that which we depend on becomes threatened, the desire to control tends to be not so far behind. Of course the air we depend on need not just be material sustenance, but also cultural, social and spiritual.

As humans run up against all manner of different 21^st century barriers - environmental, spiritual, cultural - the increasingly unsustainable nature of our existence can come to be seen as choke our supply of ‘air’.

To live in the age of air condition is to be aware that that which we took for granted – living in harmony with the earth, others and ourselves – is slipping from view. Again the irony, if only it weren’t so tragic, is that it’s only as we are on the cusp of loosing our air that we become aware of just how utterly, in our Air Condition, we are dependent we are upon it.

Original (Carbon) Sin?

As the world careers full-pelt towards ecocide, is the potential solution a return to that most controversial Christian belief - Original Sin?

That's the startling conclusion of the latest 'blog post by George Monbiot here. What's interesting here is not so much that the man who's previously described himself as an 'Evangelical Agnostic' has recanted, repented and turned towards orthodox Christian faith. I don't think for a minute that's not what's going on here. But there is something curious in his declaration. Effective and enduring environmental action, simply cannot be done by incentives and persuasion alone. There needs to be a deeper, some might say spiritual, impulse.

Our whole society is geared up to consume more, and the incentives for a greener, more equitable life are neither economic or rational. The current incentives for the environmental good life are more for those who are attracted to 'do gooder' sensibilities, or those who are fond of fringe lifestyles anyway. Of course, there are those who have a genuine sense of fairness and desire to do the right thing. I do think though that it's desire, not reason that draws people into environmental actions.

That seems to be Monbiot's point here too. That we can have all the education and awareness raising we want, but people will carry on being selfish - that's just what we do. Particularly when the scales are tipped in favour of the unethical choice most often. (It's often cheeper and easier to fly than drive, take the car in place of public transport, etc.) In order to alter our unsustainable, harmful lifestyles we do need something akin to a conversion experience. A harmful lifestyle incidentally that most of us didn't choose, or just blindly stumbled into. The parallels between this and Original Sin I find fascinating.

Interestingly, in another news story this week, the law has now put environmental beliefs on a par with religious ones. I think the more equitable lifestyle does require a taming of greedy instincts that desire more, more, more. It's paramount that we learn how to tame these soon, collectively. If religious thinkers have for years wrestled with how to salve matters of the soul (which greed no doubt is), then it makes sense to have them on board in dealing with these issues. Likewise, a Christianity searching for contemporary relevance could do far worse than direct it's efforts towards being an effective agent for environmental justice.

Original (Carbon) Sin? Maybe it's not such a bad doctrine after all.

A Call to Responsibility

This last week, I've had a conversation with some colleagues about academics and writers who write, think and talk about Climate Change for their career, and yet who also fly to give talks, papers and attend conferences for their work.

The problem was presented as if these writers are attempting to go and do some good. One person talked about flying to a Climate Change conference, yet was delayed due to a Plane Stupid action at the airport. This person was incredulous that they had been delayed. 'I was actually going [abroad] to make a difference' she declared. I have mixed reactions to this.

It is admirable that she wants to DO something about Climate Change, and all its' consequences. Even if that involved participating in some structural injustice that would continue apace whether or not she partook in said flight. I couldn't formulate a specific - or coherent - response at the time, yet this statement left me with disquiet. I spoke for a bit about the relationship between the message and the median, how the manner in which you convey a certain statement ought to be part of that statement. How a message is delivered changes that message, however subtly.

I also mentioned how a problem can't be solved with the same thinking that started, or caused, it. That old Einstein chestnut.

However, I wasn't entirely convinced by my responses. I want to avoid utilitarianism, but there must conceivably be a situation where to commit an immoral (sinful even) or harmful action may be the least worst thing we could do. For now, I'm going to content myself that these are matters for the soul. (Which is not to say our individual soul.) These exterior actions are reflective of our interior, or moral, wrangling.

Particularly with regard to Carbon emissions, so deeply harmful to the least well off, the poor and marginalised, we are completely complicit. What do we do that doesn't in some way contribute to the problem? This complicity ought to drive us inward, to reflect, chew and wrestle with what the best use of our skills, time and resources is the most alive way to be.

Perhaps this is a get out of jail free card to the problem? Everyone to themselves, no meta-morals to promote or defend. Perhaps it is.

But if taken seriously, this call to be responsible (the ability to respond rightly) for our actions, the way we go about our lives could be the most profoundly challenging thing we'll ever do.

Riffing on Methodism and Environmentalism

The Church, and Methodism in particular, has long been active on matters of social and environmental justice. We have heard Jesus’ message of good news to the poor. We understand that being Christian means getting involved and making scarifies of our time, money and other resources to help bring heaven into earth. However climate change is an issue that calls for a slightly different approach.

We still need prayers, time and awareness but to combat climate change we need to look inward to our patterns and habits, we need to look at our own souls.

Let’s take an example like the genocide in Darfur. This is widely held to be caused by an increasingly unpredictable climate, caused by our greedy lifestyles. The Christian response has been – and still is - to pray more, to give more, to write to politicians more and to send mission teams. All this is important, but what’s missing is that the primary cause of a problem like Darfur, is not in Sudan, but here. It’s caused by our carbon emissions. In fact, you could go one step further and say it’s caused in our hearts, by our greed and consumption, what Christians call sin.

Human-caused climate change may be a new problem, but its central cause isn’t – a lack of humility. We all, in the UK, need to use less of the precious resources we find in creation. This is so different to the culture of more, bigger and faster we are increasingly a part of.

It is our unseen, unquestioned life practices that are causing flooding in Bangladesh, hurricanes in New Orleans, and droughts that lead to war in Darfur. We don’t see the links, partly because it’s too uncomfortable. In order to act effectively on an issue like climate change: the church doesn’t need to do more, it needs to do less. We need to slow down, rekindle community and stop assuming we have a divine right to fly, drive and consume food from all over the world.

This is difficult, challenging stuff. It’s not easy to look at the things we enjoy and face the loss of giving them up. Fortunately, Jesus is again one step ahead of us. He’s provided us with a community – the church. This is to keep each other in check, to challenge each other too. Let’s get the Methodist circuit involved in this, making a difference, while also being the church we are called to be.

Humility

Originally I chose the title of this 'blog as a way of expressing my fascination with the endless connections between spirituality and geography that exist. Between the universal and the particular, the interior and the exterior, heaven and earth - or space and place if you like.

Whilst reading this morning, I think I've come across yet one more connector - that of humility. Humility is a key spiritual discipline, one that is found across many different traditions and faiths.

However, it is not just a spiritual word. Its root, comes from the Latin, humus, meaning soil or earth. So being rooted, placed, geographically aware and connected is a key component of the grounded nature of humility.

I remember hearing about how in the Hebrew tradition the word for Adam (representing humanity as a whole) comes from admah meaning ground. We are literally of the ground, any attempt to claim more than this origin is hubristic and deluded. A good test for what true humility is then, just like good geography and spirituality, is that it ought to bring us down to earth.

For me, this indicates that in order to be fully human, we need to get back to our roots, and our earthen nature. Geographically, becoming more spatially literate, and engaging with the world around us, is a natural follow-on from awakening spiritually. Likewise delving deeper into one's soul, learning to be truly ourselves, and cultivating spiritual practices like reflection, silence and community inevitably leads to engagement with our place in the world.

Crossing the Border

I'm heading back to Scotland tomorrow, on the train. As ever, I think of crossing the border and some of the turns of phrase in this. from my favourite poet, McCaig:

Crossing the Border
(Rings on a Tree, 1968)

I sit with my back to the engine, watching
the landscape pouring away out of my eyes.
I think I know where I'm going and have
some choice in the matter.

I think, too, that this was a country
of bog-trotters, moss-troopers,
fired ricks and roof-trees in the black night — glinting
on tossed horns and red blades.
I think of lives
bubbling into the harsh grass.

What difference now?
I sit with my back to the future, watching
time pouring away into the past. I sit, being helplessly
lugged backwards
through the Debatable Lands of history, listening
to the execrations, the scattered cries, the
falling of roof-trees
in the lamentable dark.

Anti-syzygy

I got a text from my cousin the other day (a first year undergraduate) simply asking 'What's the difference between ontology and epistemology?' Well, as you can perhaps imagine, I was a wee bit surprised. I managed to spout some waffle about being and knowledge and the difference between continental and analytic methodologies in the reply. I'm not sure it went over all that well via text.

Why would I be so taken by this? Certainly not because of the question's author (a very bright wee thing she is). Neither do I think I'd be so taken aback had I read the question in a book, newspaper, e-mail, or 'blog even. I don't know about you, but the texts I generally send and receive are along the lines of 'fancy a pint?', 'am running late, be there in 5 mins' or some other such pithy banalities.

Texting is a medium I don't use for anything even approaching high-brow, cerebral thought. It's one of the reasons why, when these 'news' programmes ask us to 'txt in with your opinion', or 'send us your pictures' strikes me as undoubted dumbing down. It's what Charlie Brooker calls 'turning on the idiot magnet'. Perhaps that's why this text so challenged me. A shard of light entering a technology I continually associate with the mundane.

Marshall McClune tells us the median is the message, and to a certain extend I agree, but when such a everyday, playful median plays host to something so profound, deep and important, sometimes the oxymoronity (if that's a word, or anti-syzygy, which certainly isn't) can jolt us into thinking about something that wee bit deeper. Maybe like how on Maundy Thursday one can be aware anew of the sheer incongruity that everyday, banal bread can play host to such profound invested meaning.

It's also why I wanted to wirte this 'blog post. Yesterday I saw on the Guaridan webshite, the video recording of the police brutality at the G20 protests in London. Such user content, a mobile 'phone camera, recording abuse of power in supposidly a bastion of freedom, enlightenment, etc. Well, you can see my point before I make it...

If you've read this far, check out these links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/apr/07/g20-police-assault-video

&

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Tomlinson-Case/

Thoughts

After writing a rather long e-mail just now, I did what I ought to do a lot more often and proofread. I was struck by the number of times I was writing 'I think', rather than 'I believe' or 'I feel'.

Perhaps it is easier to 'think' in text, but I've started to do it far more often when I'm talking to.

Is this proof that the university has finally snared me? Caught me and colonised my language with it's obsession with logical, linear, causal ways of thinking?

I'm not sure there's anything wrong, at heart, with thinking and I certainly value critically wrestling though anything that we unthinkingly accept without question. I guess, I'm just aware that 'thinking' type speech or typed text tends to be very much from memory, what I've read/heard somewhere else, rather than speaking from within me through presence.

I'd far rather cultivate the ability to effectively and creatively communicate what lies below the surface in me. Maybe it says much about my weaknesses that I associate cerebral understanding as the impediment to this.

Story of Stuff

Although I came across this a wee while ago now - I recently had cause to rewatch it. I'm not sure I know of a better, more concise explanation/exploration of these issues: -

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

I've been reading about technologies recently and how they subtly influence and frame our lives and experience of our lives. It's scary stuff to become more aware of it. That so much of not just what we see and learn, but also how we see and learn is influenced by various technologies that go almost totally unnoticed in our daily lives. Here's a quote to exemplify:

"The normally invisible quality of working infrastructure becomes visible when it breaks: the server is down, the bridge washes out, there is a power blackout" (From Graham/Marvin: Splintering Urbanism)

I think this emphasises it very well. That what we really rely on, and become so dependent without even knowing it, can only be appreciated when it is taken away.

The reason I posted it here is I immediately drew a connection between that and the spiritual, nebulous, liminal underpinning to our lives. Often is is only when these are challenged or threatened that we can become aware of what we normally don't even notice, even though we completely rely on them for the very way we exist and may be totally unaware of it.

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but there seems to me another connection between the way technologies infuse the way we experience and the way the spiritual underpins.

Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience

This excellent wee book by Liz Shove has had my mind a-whirring recently. In it she talks about the way we consume energy. It's a much wider definition of consumption than I'm used to, more than just what we buy, also what we use.

She claims that we don't actually consume energy, or anything else (washing machines, air conditioning, fridges) rather what we consume is one of comfort, cleanliness or convenience (or some combination of these). What we think we consume is just the means of our acquiring and using one of these three C's. More than that she claims that global standards of C, C & C are converging towards some global norm, and also that as this happens demand for evermore comfort, cleanliness and convenience is being ratcheted up.

It's a very persuasive argument. She talks at length, for example, about the change we have undergone in impressions of what is the suitable level of cleaning we need to have, to be socially acceptable. How this has changed from an annual bath, to the Sunday bathtime, to now having a daily shower been seen as the 'norm'. This obviously has great impact on our demand of environmentally significant resources, in this case water and the energy needed to heat it.

It's a very useful book for me, when thinking about how do we shift away from the very Carbon intensive lifestyle that we in the UK lead. What we need to focus on, is not the surface levels of consumption, fridges etc. Rather it is the deeper underlying need of comfort, cleanliness and convenience that we, as social creatures, desire.

As our demand for these is increasing (not least because demand is being created for it in us through advertising, marketing, etc.) what is needed is either some way to achieve the same levels of comfort, cleanliness or convenience without demanding so much of our environment, or some way to step-out of such escalating demand we see in our society, which Shove doesn't mention.

There are no answers here, but there is a full analysis of many of the deeper, tacit factors in our gross over consumption. For that Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience is well worth a read.

doxic and heterodox

I've been reading an excellent book, Comfort, Cleanliness & Convenience, which has a wealth of concepts and ideas surrounding how our energy practices - the habits and behaviours associated with the way we use and consume energy - can change and come about.

One interesting passage reflects on how might deeply ingrained routines come to be challenged and altered. This is of interest to me not just in terms of people changing their use of energy to a less environmentally demanding habit, but also other habits we just unquestioningly go along with. It doesn't have to be just religious experiences that alter our behaviour to a more healthy alternative.

Shove - in C, C & C - uses Bourdieu to offer one explanation as to how this comes about. Bourdieu describes two realms. One - the doxic - is unconscious, where we take-for-granted and exist in habits and common sense. The other - the heterodox - is where rules and ways of conducting oneself are explicit, contested and manipulated.

The argument is that for us to radically alter our behaviours the doxic realm is brought into the realm of the heterodox, where our unconscious thoughts, beliefs and biographies (the things that make us act the way we do) can be seen more explicitly and then challenged and, perhaps, altered. before they then slip back into the doxic realm, becoming again unquestioned habit.

There is no mention as to how this may be done, either through psychoanalysis, meditation, shamanism or some other deep soul searching. What is interesting though, is in the quest to alter our blind practices of using energy that we habitually follow. It appears here that any change (or transition) to energy practices that are less environmentally problematic, cannot be done through more information, or new technology alone. The change rather, needs to come about at a deeper, doxic, spiritual even, level.

Something to think about.

Derrida (again)

"One shouldn't complicate things for the pleasure of complicating, but one should also never simplify or pretend to be sure of such simplicity where there is none. If things were simple, word would have gotten round"
~ Derrida (1989)

Adam's article

A friend has had an article published in the latest issue of Resurgence. It's a good read, concerning many of the issues I want to focus more on in my PhD.

http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article2757-Where-Spirit-Lies.html

It's encouraging too to see someone who's done the same course as me getting published. Maybe, if I keep putting the effort in, my writing will get as good as this one day!

Casimir Pulaski Day

My brother sent me this link today & it has been refreshed plenty of times as I sit here and attempt to type PhD notes.

Although we occasionally have our musical differences my bro and I, he's spot on with this recommendation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGEMx3TKxNc&feature=related

How would Derrida understand ‘sustainability’?

At first glace, a silly question. What on earth does deconstruction, or dead French philosophers who spent their lives in literary theory or in the post-structuralist stratospheric cerebral world, have to do with that most vogue of political touchstone issues - the green.

Maybe it is a silly question, but it is one I believe there is mileage in. Although, I haven’t found anything that Derrida has written specifically on this topic, can we seek to apply the principles of deconstruction to sustainability? Or can we ensure that deconstruction is sustainable?

Again and again in deconstruction, we run up against a brick wall, Derrida repeatedly reminds us of the folly of principles. That as soon as anything becomes anywhere close to a principle, a standard, belief, a law even. That is that very point at which deconstruction becomes, or ought to become active. Taking root, seeking to disturb and dislodge prior assumptions and universals.

Probably the best book I've yet read on deconstruction is (not by Derrida for sure!) Jack Caputo's Deconstruction in a Nutshell. In he attempts to explain what deconstruction is in a nutshell (duh!), before realising that deconstruction is all about nuts and the breaking of nutshells to get to the nuts.

So, even if we could pithely define what deconstruction is all about, that definition would then need a whole deconstruction to act upon it. It seems that undefinability is built into the very concept.

Into the fray, we have sustainability, a concept we also have yet to define.

It’s a rather widely used term these days. The anthropologist Malkowski talked about the ‘phatic’ meaning of words. For a word to become phatic, it is over used so often, and use in so many different contexts, that it loses all point of referent in meaning. The word becomes phatic, essentially rendered meaningless. Granted this, sustainability is generally used to connote some variable on the ability to sustain. To keen going, to hold up. In environmental terms, it basically refers to ‘how much we can get away with’. To keep society going, whilst always questioning where we need to question and reappraise the demands we exert on our surrounding environment.

So, both terms 'sustainability' and 'deconstruction' are equally hard to define, but for different reasons. Maybe we can begin to broadly see the connection between the two concepts?

But is this so in practice? Are the issues linked in the realm of the tangible? Well, no. So much of sustainability, and Green activism is about principles, and ways of carrying out ones actions in accordance with some higher authority. Zizek’s point here is perhaps useful to bear in mind. He talks of the transition from religion to ecology as the ultimate arbiter of our morals/decisions. Where in Derrida’s writings he heralds the return of the transcendent (the waiting, messianic and ‘to come’, the hote even), can we then talk of the sustainability being such a transcendent/other in our decisions, or ability to act?

Sustainability is that which seeks to sustain. To keep up with. To carry on society, without undermining the natural basis upon which that is built.

One of Derrida’s lesser known points about deconstruction is that it is life-affirming. It seeks to unsettle and dislodge laws and precepts that can become stifling and staid. Life, as we all know, requires, nae implies, movement. Death, is that condition at which no further movement is possible. Sustainability likewise, seeks to keep ‘on the move’, to enable the conditions under which life can live in full abundance, both across space and time. So sustainability, like deconstruction, seeks to keep institutions, societies and people fully alive. They both seek to unsettle that which can stifle life.

Both are also concerned with continuation. They’re much more Trotskyite than Leninist, if you'll pardon a wee far left analogy. The act of deconstruction is certainly not ‘once and for all’, neither also is that of sustainability. Both are ongoing processes, daily slogs, where one is called to wake up, shake up to the realisation that we have far more agency that we though possible, and that life to the full is a readily graspable option. Although, also recognising that once that is grasped, we need to go through the whole deconstructing/sustainablising process all over again. Trotsky over Lenin, continual revolution.

Deconstructing sustainability

Or, sustainable deconstruction.

Following on from some interest in playing around with some ideas concerning Derrida & sustainability, below is an extract from a talk I gave this week having some fun with the concepts.

Enjoy!

Easter Oratorio

Here's a verse from the Tom Wright written Easter Oratorio that I always find helpful when life gets a wee bit busy, or I feel like things get a wee bit overwhelming, like it's done this week:

The sea is too deep
The heaven's too high
I cannot swim
I cannot fly;
I must stay here
I must stay here
Here where I know
How I can know
Here where I know
What I can know

Khazzoom-Brooks!

Following on from the last post, someone has brought to my attention the existance of the Khazzoom-Brooks postulate. As far as I can understand this points out one of the irrational behaviours that humans show. When referring to energy efficiency, the more efficient the system becomes, the more folk begin to use said system. Obviously this has implications for the Carbon output into the atmosphere.

For instance, if the car we drive becomes more fuel efficient, that is is goes the same distance for less fuel, it is going to save the driver money. The driver, realising the money they've saved is now more likely to go on extra journeys that they wouldn't have before because of this. Indeed, the Khazzoom-Brooks postulate states that the driver will now use their car so much more that they end up being responsible for more Carbon than before the new technology was in place. If we apply the same principle to heating of the home, energy generation, etc. we can see that the more efficient we become the more we actually consume, producing more carbon than before.

So, yesterday I was saying that technology may not be the answer. Today, with the Kazzoom-Brooks postulate, it looks as if technology might actually cause us to produce yet more carbon.

Unsustainable sustainability

I've been thinking recently about the way 'sustainability' is conceived in the media, or amongst conversations I've been having with vaguely eco-minded folk. This is a huge area, and one that encompasses so many different areas (recycling, consumption, ethical consuming – if that isn't an oxymoron). Mainly though, the focus is on energy. We talk about creating far greater renewable energy sources of power. What this doesn't solve though, is the fact that sustainable energy creation just isn't sustainable, at least not on the levels we currently consume energy/electricity. Even the most up to date solar panel, for instance will use many rare elements. Hypothetically, if all our energy were to be created in this way, well, I doubt it could - given the scarcity of many of the earth's resources needed in the building of the solar panels (to take but one example – there are similar unsustainable aspects to building wind turbines, wave stations…).

Sustainable energy generation is unsustainable. Certainly at current levels of technology, and this brings me to my second point: technology in the media is blamed as the cause of our current eco-crisis. The focus is usually put on the coal-fired power station, the poorly insulated home or the travel taken by the goods we consume. Heat, warmth, light and food, we in the rich West, all experience these to a far greater extent, and with far easier access than ever before. Technology has made this possible and technology takes the blame. Whither technology is to blame or is not, I'm unsure. What I am critical of here though, is that technology, while on the one hand being blamed, both for our abstraction from the natural, and our poorly managed over-consumption, is also being heralded as the cure. A panacea for our ills. What we need is more wind-farms, greater energy efficiency, to fast track better technology for our solar panels. But, if technology is the problem, how can it be the cure?

What this puts me in mind of, is old Jacques Derrida. When advocating constant humility, and also being aware of the precautionary principle – he pointed out how utterly impossible it was for any of us to understand anything in the world, or even another person. He stated that "the condition of the possibility, is also, that very same condition of impossibility." That is, the thing that brings me closer to understanding something is also the very impediment to understanding that something fully. So, I see on a map a particular place. However, the map is not the place, and the very description or representation can often act as an impediment to fully 'grasping' a place in all its glory. Likewise, God. When God is revealed in the world, we get closer to understanding the ineffable. Yet what is ineffable will ultimately be unappreciated when put in the small box of one own revelation. Neither of these examples is saying the attempt to understand is futile. But what it does recognise is that we must continually shed our preconceptions, even those that have brought us great understanding if we want to get closer to whatever it is we want to understand. There's the old stories of high-school Physics students having to shed previous analogies conceiving of the ways atoms move, in order to progress and learn yet more complex subatomic details. I think this is the sort of thing Derrida was getting at.

How does this link in with what went before? Well, technology has been both the cause and potential salvation to our current environmental crisis. I don't want to say that new technologies can't play their part, but a major part of what need to be done to aid the UK's society into one that's more sustainable has to be a realisation that technology won't save us. We might have to shed our old way of thinking, which has brought us so far, if we want to understand more fully our role in this world, this environment.

Sustainability can be sustainable but, to paraphrase Einstein, not by using the same thinking that created the problem.

The Moon in Lleyn

The last quarter of the moon
of Jesus gives way
to the dark; the serpent
digests the egg. Here
on my knees in this stone
church, that is full only
of the silent congregation
of shadows and the sea's
sound, it is easy to believe
that Yeats was right. Just as though
choirs had not sung, shells
have swallowed them; the tide laps
at the Bible; the bell fetches
no people to the brittle miracle
of the bread. The sand is waiting
for the running back ofthe grains
in the wall into its blond
glass. Religion is over, and
what will emerge from the body
of the new moon, no one
can say.
But a voice sounds
in my ear: Why so fast,
mortal? These very seas
are baptised. The parish
has a saint's name time cannot
unfrock. In cities that
have outgrown their promise people
are becoming pilgrims
again, if not to this place,
then to the recreation of it
in their own spirit. You must remain
kneeling. Even as the moon
making its way through the earth's
cumbersome shadow, prayer, too,
has its phases.


R S Thomas

Quo vadis

I've never been one for New Year's resolutions. There is something however about taking time to reflect, think back and look forward. Right now it's this poem, rather than 2009 that's making me do this.


Directions

In this desert of language
we find ourselves in,
with a signpost with
the word God worn away,
and the distance.

Pity the simpleton,
with his mouth open crying
"How far is it to God?"
And the wise acre says
"Where you were, friend"

You know that smile,
glossy as the machine
that thinks it has
outpaced belief.
I'm one of those,

who sees from the arms
open to embrace the future,
the shadow of the cross
fall on the smoothest of surfaces,
causing me to stumble.


- RS Thomas