Saluting my friend Randall Falkenberg

I met Randall 48 years ago, in 1963, at Rhodes University, when we both began our theological training for the Methodist ministry. Those were heady days! The country was still reeling from Sharpeville, Steve Biko had launched the Black Conscious Movement, and some very courageous people were writing about secularity and the ‘death of god’. John F Kennedy’s assassination was imminent. America was preparing to put a man on the moon.

We clicked instantly, though in some ways we could not have been more different. Randall was as tall as I was short; he was comfortable with maths, accounting and logic whereas I was all fingers and thumbs. And he could play a better game of table tennis than I could! He got Firsts, I often didn’t. He could join the dots and see the connections. In one final examination we were to attempt three questions - he combined his answers into one; and got another First! He majored in Philosophy, I in Social Anthropology. We arrived at Rhodes at a time when good teaching was valued, and robust debate was encouraged. We arrived with our faith unquestioned and our lives unexamined. The university proved to be a stern testing ground; we met our first atheists, we got to know good people who were not Christians, and we had our first taste of the politics of opposition.

We broke the rules of the Methodist Church decreeing that theological students should stay out of student politics, stood for the SRC and won. And so we were thrown into the deep end of student politics at a time when South Africa was becoming more and more oppressive. We studied together, talked long into the night, laughed a lot, pined for our fiancés, saw many movies, and ate many toasted sandwiches. Our undergraduate years cemented a lifelong friendship. They were truly formative years for us and determined somewhat the trajectory of our respective lives from then on.

Six years ago, Randall and I began a ‘writing project’ which we initially called our “secular spirituality” project. Over the intervening years since Rhodes we had both come to question and ultimately reject Christianity, whilst remaining indebted to the Church for the ethical grounding we had received. We had also begun, in our different contexts, to practice a secular spirituality that was meaningful for us. Could we write something that would describe what this journey was about? As Randall put it, could we write something that would “provide a perspective on what spirituality means in a secular world”? And so, for the past six years, we have met and talked, we have reminisced, we have debated issues robustly, enjoyed good food and wine, and laughed a lot.

The “secular spirituality” writing project never got done. But we are both the richer for the experience. And perhaps, dear friend, I shall try to write up some of our cherished insights - with you as my interlocutor. No promises, mind. 

But what I can do is to open up our discussions somewhat to give you a sense of the insights and values that Randall cherished. Some of you will know that for years he wrote a regular feature for the Greyton newspaper called “Insight Stories” and later he published some of these in his blog called “falkenbergsfolly”. Well, Randall was himself an ‘insight story’. And what I want to do now is draw some insights from his life, in his own words where possible…

First insight. There is a long and honourable tradition, called Naturalism, stretching back at least to the Greeks that rejects belief in the supernatural or in Supreme Beings. “The known and experienced universe is complex, wondrous, mysterious and enchanting enough on its own. It doesn’t require any super-natural explanation”, according to Randall. His own naturalism was robust and rigorous; he was quick to spot attempts to smuggle in a supernatural explanation for something that science could explain. Indeed, one of his favourite scientists was Carl Sagan who said that because humans are so gullible they need to be equipped with a ‘baloney detection kit’. “We all need to develop a healthy scepticism to sniff out the hogwash that society tries to get us to accept”, he said. Randall certainly used the tools of sceptical thinking. Here are some that come to mind. Look for independent confirmation of ‘facts’ before you accept them. Encourage debate and listen to all points of view before making up your mind. Don’t trust arguments from authority. Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified. Be sceptical of claims that are untestable…

Second insight. We urgently need to develop our ‘ecological intelligence.’ The phrase is Ian McCallum’s; ecological intelligence is a subject Randall dealt with recently in one of his blogs. He believed passionately that we take responsibility for what he called “Planet Earth”. He read and appreciated James Lovelock’s work and understood the power of the Gaia metaphor to describe our fragile and precarious earth system that is now so much at risk. Citing McCallum and Irvin Lazlo, Randall believed we need to develop a blend of science and soul to tackle the problems that beset us. “We need science to enable us to understand past and present reality, and we need a new spirituality that inspires us to do whatever it takes to be co-creators of a viable new world”. Whenever I heard Randy warming to the subject of his beloved planet earth I was reminded of the saying, “We did not inherit the earth; we borrowed it from our children”. What we are seeking is a secular spirituality that leads to care for the world. Randall practised what he preached, in more ways than one. He loved nature, was a keen bird watcher and could pick out one of the Big Five in the bush with the best of them. He loved to walk in the mountains encompassing Greyton where he now lies. He cherished his time at the Bush House.

Third insight: Celebrate important ‘rites of passage’. Randall believed that we should celebrate life’s significant transitions with ceremony. He pioneered the writing of such ceremonies, set in a secular spirituality key. Indeed, Randall will have conducted a ceremony for some of you to mark the birth of your child, your marriage, or the memorial for the death of a person you loved. He wrote these ceremonies with great empathy for the particular circumstances, and he led them beautifully. Over the next while these ceremonies will be published on his blog. Draw on them, modify them to suit your circumstances; he meant them to be used.

Fourth insight: Develop your imagination! Randall read widely and deeply appreciated the impact of science and technology on our lives. He understood science to be the primary “reality generating mechanism” of our time. To borrow a phrase from Matt Ridley, Randall was a “rational optimist” despite the overwhelming pessimism that prevails today. But there was another, well developed, side of Randall. He had a big heart, a powerful imagination and a great feeling for myth, metaphor and symbol. “Imagination”, he believed, “is essentially the suspension of everyday limitations from our thinking in order to enrich experience.” We should cultivate the art of imagination; get in touch with our creative selves. Science and rationality can take us so far; for the rest we need myth, metaphor and symbol.  Speaking of myth, he said, “Mythology is an art form that points beyond history to what is timeless in human existence. A myth is ‘true’ only if it is effective in giving us new insight into the meaning of life and not because it gives us any factual information.”

I must end. I think it was Kierkegaard, commenting on the marriage of a confirmed bachelor, who said: “Every man needs someone to whom he can explain himself”. Our friendship was like that! Over the years from our student days on we have been able to share with each other the deepest and most intimate things. The Greeks have a special word for this kind of love between friends- philia -‘love as rejoicing in each other’. What a gift!

Thanks Mate! I will miss texting you when watching rugby or cricket. I will miss our conversations. I am the richer for knowing you. I celebrate your life! I celebrate the values you stood for!

Jimmy Leatt

A life well lived

On Monday, 18th April, 2011, Randall suffered a heart attack while exploring the beauty of the Serengeti with Joan (his life partner of over 50 years) and four special friends. He died while being airlifted to Nairobi hospital. On Easter Sunday, his family buried his ashes on top of the hill overlooking his beloved home of Greyton.

Randall was a spiritual and ethical giant, and his blog was an exciting way for him to share his wisdom and insights. Unfortunately, before he could share all his thinking with us, his life has been cut short. However, he had written a number of unpublished essays that we will publish on his blog (for those who are interested). We will also publish a selection of the ceremonies he wrote and led for members of his family, and for many special friends. These include wedding ceremonies, naming ceremonies, and easter and christmas meditations. Please feel free to use these in your own personal and family lives - Randall would be honoured and delighted.

We will all miss Randall terribly. He has touched so many of our lives, and offered us such an inspiring yet tangible role model. We hope his insights prove valuable to you in the coming months and years.

Discover Your Creative Self!

For the past few weeks I have tried to distil the insights of leading scientists, thinkers and philosophers. This month it’s an artist, a world class teacher of practical creativity. Julia Cameron has written 30 books, fiction and non-fiction, many of them on creativity, 2 of them novels, 4 of them poetry books, 7 plays and a movie script. And the focus of nearly all of her creative energy is to help people, all people and not just the talented few, to discover or recover their creativity.

A number of people reading this piece will know her work well, especially her international best seller The Artist’s Way. I have used her suggestions over a period exceeding ten years and found them to be remarkably helpful. So, let me tell you about three of her major insights which she describes as the essential tools to enable everyone to discover, in ever more depth, that they have a creative centre. Her insights are deceptively simple; but if practiced with diligence and discipline, they are highly effective. And like truly great red wine, over time these practices result in rewarding complexity.

First Tool: Morning Pages. Tolstoy said: The best thoughts most often come in the morning after waking, while still in bed or while walking. Julia Cameron takes this very seriously and asks of all her students that they faithfully write three pages of stream-of-consciousness thoughts before the day begins. She is quite prescriptive about it: buy a spiral bound exercise book, use a good pen (a good ballpoint is fine) and write down your thoughts in longhand. Don’t use a computer!

Anything and everything is fuel for morning pages. So, whatever pops into your head, write it down. Even if it starts out as a “to do” list for the day, plus some immediate worries about so-and-so’s tone of voice or whether the current dog food is the right one for your wonder dog. Julia says: “You may complain, whine, grumble or grieve. You may hope, celebrate, plan or plot. Nothing is too small or too large to be included in morning pages. Everything is grist for the creative mill”

As the discipline of writing three pages every morning takes hold, you will find your ability to jot down your feelings, anxieties, angers, joys, dreams and desires increases noticeably. The process will take you 30 to 45 minutes. Many busy people set their alarms 30 minutes earlier in the morning so that they can fit in their morning pages. She thinks of morning pages as a potent form of meditation for hyperactive Westerners. And I agree. They render us present to the moment, and help to harness our wildly wandering minds.

The purpose is not to produce anything for publication. It is to get your thoughts onto paper so you can consider them. You may look back at what you have written and think: gosh, that was pretty well put! Or you may read stuff that makes you blush either at the emotional content or at the pathetic manner in which you have expressed yourself. It doesn’t matter! Morning pages are for your eyes only. And whether your creativity is most comfortable with words or paints or clay or cloth or wood, morning pages will reward you richly either as an emerging artist or an established one.

Second Tool: The Artist’s Date.  This is a date with your inner artist, your inner creative child (we all have one!). Julia Cameron recommends that once a week we take ourselves off on an excursion committed to nurturing our creative consciousness. If morning pages are “assigned work”, the artist’s date is “assigned play”. Doing morning pages you are sending – notifying yourself and the universe of your dreams, dissatisfactions and hopes. Going on an artist’s date you are receiving – opening yourself to insight, inspiration and new images to fill the well of your imagination.

And she insists that the date is undertaken and executed solo. If you really want to explore your creative side it is essential that you spend time alone. And have fun! Joan and I try to go on a fun outing to Hermanus, Stanford, Somerset West, or Stellenbosch once a week. While we love having fun together, our visits often include an artist’s date when for part of the visit we push off alone and do our own thing. For myself, I find time spent browsing (and inevitably buying) in a good book shop or a good wine shop are fun activities that increase my creative consciousness.

Third Tool: Weekly Walk. Julia has written a book titled Walking in this World. In it she develops her third essential discipline for discovering or recovering our creativity. She recommends that city dwellers try for three short 20 minute walks per week, plus one longer 45 minute walk. In Greyton, where we live surrounded by mountains, it is possible to walk every morning or afternoon plus a longer hike once or twice a week.

The magic of this simple tool is that it encourages the essential unity of body and mind. Walking soothes the soles and heals the soul. Given this opportunity of getting in touch with your inner self, walking through your problems and focusing on solutions, it is surprising how few people walk. The beauty and interest of your particular environment whether rural or urban should beckon regular exploration.

There are probably a number of people who you know who will attest to the real benefits of following this discipline: morning pages, artist’s date and weekly walks. Think about it for yourself if you are not yet one of them.

Randall Falkenberg

Smart Thinking in Crazy Times?

Most problems and issues that we face are complex and multi-faceted. Simple, straightforward solutions are seldom sufficient. And when we get into conflict answers are seldom easy and mostly muddled! Is there a way of thinking about local, national and global craziness that is clearer and smarter than most of our standard approaches? I think there is.

Ian Mitroff is a professor at the University of Southern California where he heads up the Centre for Crisis Management. He suggests that all problems display four perspectives. And all four must be considered if we are to arrive at satisfactory solutions to the complex problems that beset us in these crazy times. The four perspectives are: 1) Technical/Scientific 2) Personal/Social 3) Context/System and 4) Ethical/Spiritual. They will become clearer with the example below.

Instead of choosing the current craziness of no-fly zones in Libya and who is in charge of what, (UN, NATO or the Coalition) to illustrate Mitroff’s method, let’s have something closer to home: a typical suburban issue, a relatively simple dispute between neighbours. And let’s say that the dispute is about the noise level of the classical music played by one of the neighbours, which he loves to play really LOUD to accompany cooking his Sunday lunch. This drives his next-door neighbours crazy. Their preference is to have a quiet Sunday morning listening to the church service on the radio and then reading the Sunday papers before going out to one of the restaurants for lunch. Clearly a “classical” conflict!

Now hopefully the quiet neighbours will discuss their problem with the musical maestro and the parties involved will amicably resolve the conflict. But what if one of them decides to treat the entire matter in a technical, scientific, right/wrong manner and “go the legal route?”

All disputes have a technical/scientific perspective. Some or other regulation will usually apply to an aspect of the dispute.  So, whatever the final outcome, the parties will need to take cognisance of a technical/scientific aspect to their problem. Sadly, most people too, too often only think of the technical or scientific perspective! However, there are always three other perspectives to consider, and if no attention is paid to them a purely technical, scientific solution is likely to make matters worse than before.

So instead of just calling in the police to measure the decibels at which the offending classical CD’s are being played, the neighbours also need to consider the personal/social perspective to the problem. When the police arrive with their decibel measuring equipment it is highly likely that personal relationships between next-door neighbours will deteriorate into acrimonious accusation and counter-accusation. In such circumstances the ability to hear the other side usually flies out the window. And when other friends and neighbours of both parties take sides, the wider social ramifications of the conflict click in and could poison the entire neighbourhood vibe. But that’s not all, there’s more!

Every problem, conflict or crisis is always part of a larger context or system. So, the noisy neighbour problem is a sub-set of many broader issues such as noise pollution, cultural clashes and diversity, local and national values and norms, constitutional rights and duties and eventually even broad human rights. Each of these wider contexts deserves some discussion and clarification prior to any precipitous actions on the part of the battling neighbours. And yes, there’s still more to be taken into account!  

There is an ethical/spiritual perspective to every problem. Even though your neighbour is driving you bonkers, have you considered whether anything that you may have done or may be doing is adding fuel to the fire? In the light of this conflict what is the right thing to do? What is right for the longer-term well being of your irritating neighbour, yourself, the immediate neighbourhood, your suburb, your city and all its people?

Perhaps we can learn something from practical academics like Mitroff. Can we think smart in the crazy conflicts that beset us? I certainly think that I can certainly improve my approach to problems, issues, conflicts and crises by trying to consider all four perspectives that Mitroff suggests. And I suspect that this approach might help all of us avoid some of the horrendous mistakes we are apt to make in the heat of crazy conflict moments.

Randall Falkenberg

Black Swans and the Perils of Prediction

This week’s world-class thinker is Nassim Nicholas Taleb. “NNT”, as he calls himself, was born and raised by a highly political Greek Orthodox family in Lebanon, but studied in the USA and Europe. He now lives in the USA and is visiting professor at various universities and Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty at Massachusetts University. NNT is an incredibly interesting human being. Fortune selected his second book Fooled by Randomness as one of the “smartest books of all time”. He has a formidable brain, thankfully tempered by a fine sense of humour: for example “My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say ‘I don’t know...”

He writes that before the discovery of Australia, Europeans thought that all swans were white, and it would have been considered completely unreasonable to imagine swans of any other colour. The first sighting of a black swan in Australia, where they are quite common, shattered that notion. This leads to his first, big insight!

First insight: “Black Swans” are highly improbable events that have a huge positive or negative impact on our lives. (while it is almost impossible to predict them, we can be alert to recognize positive or negative Black Swans once they have occurred). Taleb is fascinated by rare, unpredictable yet pivotal events that shape our world far more than the myriad of mediocre happenings that occur regularly. And a troublesome characteristic of these enormously important Black Swan events is that they are virtually unpredictable.

Examples of Black Swans are: the rise of the internet and its impact within a relatively short slice of time; the invention of Google and how it has changed the lives of everyone who uses it; the revolutionary upheavals of recent times in North Africa; the Japanese Tsunami. We are still (hopefully) recovering from the recent crash in world markets. And although the next crash of world markets will surely come, who knows precisely what combination of events will precipitate the disaster – it’s an unpredictable Black Swan. (Here his advice is always to be conservative with 85% of your assets and to speculate wildly with 15%, looking for the massive returns that a positive Black Swan can bring).

What would constitute a South African Black Swan? The technically correct answer would be “who knows?” Looking back, the negotiated settlement between the ruling Nationalist Government and the once banned and exiled ANC was clearly a positive Black Swan. What would constitute an American Black Swan? The assassination of Barack Obama by the crazies in the Republican right wing with Sarah Palin sweeping into office? Clearly a bad Black Swan. Perhaps a possible global Black Swan that would severely impact our lives is if the oil price hit and stayed at something like $150 to $200 a barrel! Improbable but not impossible, a typical Black Swan!

Second insight: Inventions and discoveries usually owe more to luck and randomness than to carefully planned research. Many of the discoveries that have had a huge impact on our culture were accidents discovered while people were looking for something else. For example, Penicillin was just some mold inhibiting the growth of another lab culture; despite massive expenditure on cancer research, chemotherapy was discovered as a side-effect of mustard gas in warfare (people who were exposed to it had very low white blood cell counts). And look at one of today’s big pharmaceutical money spinners, Viagra – it was devised to treat heart disease and hypertension before it rose to other heights.

Luck and randomness also play a huge part in the success of the stars in all spheres. Bill Gates is not a business genius; he was tinkering around with creating some operating software for IBM’s Personal Computers and was lucky enough to negotiate a deal at the right time with the ailing giant that resulted in him being rewarded out of all proportion to his effort. But this brings us to the third insight.

Third insight: random tinkering is the true path to success! We need more uninhibited, aggressive, proud tinkering! What Taleb is arguing for is this: most economists are too bathed in enlightenment-style cause-and-effect to realize the effects of wild randomness. Tightly planned and narrowly lived lives and businesses and organisations are highly unlikely to reach the dizzy heights of success that can be achieved by those who constantly try new things, slightly different things, those who tinker with what is to produce what might be. Taleb chides us to make our own luck: we can be scared and worried about the future, or we can look at it as a collection of happy surprises that lie just outside the path of our imagination.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an eye-opening thinker, one who teases our intelligence. He awakens us to the Black Swans, more prevalent than we suspect, that lie hidden at the edges of the tiny and tranquil ponds of our daily lives.

Randall Falkenberg

Good and Bad Reasons for Believing Things

Richard Dawkins is one of the world’s famous scientists. He is a world class thinker who “kicked the hornets’ nest” with his 2004 book The God Delusion. But Dawkins is not only an anti-theist. He is also one of the leading exponents of evolution and his recent 2009 book The Greatest Show on Earth is the clearest and most comprehensive presentation available of the overwhelming evidence supporting Darwin’s great theory. I shall in future weeks be writing a few pieces on Dawkins and Evolution. But first I want to refer to a letter he wrote to his daughter Juliet when she turned ten. In it he explained his thinking on good and bad reasons for believing anything.

It’s a brilliant letter in which he offers Juliet a simple but powerful way of dealing with the many things that she will be told by all sorts of people throughout her life. As a grandfather of four precious granddaughters, it’s a message that I would like to pass on to my fabulous four as well as to readers of this blog.

Dawkins’ good reason for discovering and believing what is true about the planet and the universe is to look for evidence to support what is being asserted. The best evidence is what we learn by direct observation. But often, like detectives, we have to gather evidence from a number of sources to see where it all points. The bottom line is that evidence provides the best reason for believing something to be true. So he advises young Juliet: “next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: What kind of evidence is there for that? And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say”

He also warns Juliet about three bad reasons for believing anything. They are ‘tradition’, ‘authority’ and ‘revelation’.

Tradition means beliefs handed down through generations from grandparents to parents to children. Tradition can stretch back over hundreds of years. For example, Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Jesus, didn’t die but was lifted bodily into heaven. Other groups, Christian and Secular, disagree, claiming that Mary died like everyone else. This belief about Mary being bodily lifted into heaven (called “The Assumption”) appears to have originated about 600 years after Jesus’ time and was made official Catholic belief only in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. Dawkins encourages everyone, including the Catholics, to ask for the evidence that supports such a belief – and not to accept it or any other tradition simply because it’s a tradition that has been taken seriously over a long period.

Authority is the second bad reason for believing something to be true. Because the headmaster says so doesn’t make it so! Because Muammar Gaddafi or even Nelson Mandela says something is the case, their authority does not make it true. It needs to be tested, backed by evidence and sound, logically reasoning. So, we should not accept anything as the truth, just because it is spoken by an important person. In addition, because the Bible (or the Koran or whatever other text) says something is true does not make it true. Truth always needs evidence and solid arguments to back it up rather than conferred or claimed authority. In short, Dawkins is advising his daughter not to accept what is claimed as the truth either on the authority of the person making the claim or on the authority of a written claim to truth. Such people and such writings may indeed contain the truth about our world, but that truth always needs rational and evidential support.

What Dawkins and most of the great scientists and philosophers seem to be saying is: “do not rely on any authority to back your stance; instead, search for evidence to support your position and follow the path of reason before energising your proposals with the passion needed to make them happen!”

Revelation  is the third bad reason for believing anything. “Revelation” is the claim that some or other divinity, spirit or ancestor has communicated a truth to you. In South African history the Xhosa prophetess, Nongqawuse believed that the spirits of three ancestors revealed to her that the Xhosa people should destroy their crops and kill their cattle, both being their source of food and wealth. In return, she had been promised that the spirits would sweep the British settlers into the sea; replenish the granaries and fill the kraals with more beautiful and healthier cattle. Sadly, Paramount Chief Sarhili believed her and ordered the cattle killing frenzy that destroyed between 300 000 and 400 000 and led to a serious famine. What evidence was there that the truth revealed to her was indeed true? What is the evidence to support the so-called revelations of the three main monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam? Asking for evidence and sound logic is essential in any discussions about the truth of the many religions of humankind! It is also essential in weighing up the truth of the myriad superstitions and bizarre beliefs that abound in modern society.

I reckon that the insights that Richard Dawkins shares with his daughter Juliet in his letter to her some years back are really inspiring and they can be summarised, more or less in his own words, like this: the universe and our life in it is so wonderful and awe-inspiring, our discovery of its treasures so exciting and ongoing that a readiness to believe without enquiry everything that is presented to us by tradition, authority or revelation is a sad and ultimately dangerous disengagement from reality.    

Randall Falkenberg

How Ecologically Intelligent are we?

This week’s reflection is based on the insights of a few thinkers, rather than just one. Some while back I read a book by a remarkable South African Ian McCallum. His book, Ecological Intelligence, inspired this article. Ian was the fullback of the Springbok rugby team in ’68 & 69; he is also a medical doctor, a Jungian psychiatrist, a naturalist and a published poet. He lives in Cape Town.

McCallum argues that we can only understand ourselves as a species if we understand our evolutionary past and how we remain intimately connected with the whole evolving web of life on the planet. We are an integral part of the phenomenon of life, and as conscious beings we are inescapably responsible for caring for our environment and our fellow creatures. We are the gardeners, the zoo keepers. He quotes poet Antonio Machado to make the point. Read this poem aloud, and then read it again.

The wind, one brilliant day, called

to my soul with an odour of jasmine.

“In return for the odour of my jasmine,

I’d like the odour of your roses”

“I have no roses; all the flowers

in my garden are dead.”

“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals

and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

The wind left. And I wept. And my soul said to me:

“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

There are obviously many people researching and writing about ecology and climate change and I could have also drawn on their insights. For example, I can recommend George Monbiot’s book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning. And James Lovelock’s passionate scientific missives like The Vanishing Face of Gaia – A Final Warning. But for this short piece I have chosen to stick with just two main thinkers whose message is clear and crisp: Ian McCallum and Ervin Laszlo.

Ervin Laszlo was formerly a Professor of Philosophy, Systems Science and Future Studies. He now, like many of us, lives in a small country village – his is in Tuscany, lucky blighter. He is founder and President of The Club of Budapest, an international think tank. In his latest book, The Chaos Point – the world at the crossroads, he sees the current ecological, social and economic trends that frame life on earth as essentially unsustainable. Our profligate consumer lifestyles, cavalier disregard for our physical and biological environment, and our addiction to violence and war are all reaching a tipping point beyond which there may be no turning back.

But, according to Laszlo we do still have a choice: trends are not destiny, they can be changed. There is still time for concerned groups of people to pull together and form associations and networks that pursue the objectives of peace, simplicity of lifestyles and the sustainability of the environment. To help birth such a new society Laszlo and McCallum both say we need a blend of science and soul. We need science to enable us to understand our past and present reality and we need a new spirituality that inspires us to do whatever it takes to be co-creators of a viable new world.

Laszlo says there are four things we can all do today: shed obsolete beliefs; adopt a new morality; envision the world as we would like to see it; and evolve our consciousness. Here is a brief elucidation of these insightful gems:

• Obsolete beliefs: Stop believing that nature is inexhaustible; that everything is reversible; that technology can solve all our problems. Shed these obsolete conceptions!
• A new morality: Gandhi’s “Live more simply, so others can simply live” offers an alternative to the rampant consumerism of the “developed” world
• Dream a new world: he says start with your town, village or neighbourhood. Ask yourself and your community: what is preventing your space from being one
• That is safe for everyone
• Where nobody is marginalised, hungry, unemployed and with no voice
• Where local officials are honest, informed and represent the best interests of all the community
• Evolve your consciousness: Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt the power of a small group of people to change the world. Nothing else ever has!” And Gandhi (again) insisted that we should “be the change you want to see in the world”. We need to become hyper-aware and conscious of our potential and our responsibility.

Given these challenging insights we can all be extremely grateful for those committed citizens who breathe spirit and science into our conservation oriented organisations and institutions. Eco-activists, investigative journalists and ad hoc issue-based ecological formations often need our full support and participation. Is it not crucial that we take immediate action to ramp up our ecological intelligence. And shouldn’t we be continually challenging our thinking and our lifestyles in these globally unsettled times? As commander Piers Sellers of a recent Space Shuttle mission told ABC News: “I think that we all are mindful, while we’re flying around and around this one little Earth, that this is all we have. This is humanity’s home…”

Randall Falkenberg