Made in China – the Yin-yang of world peace

Posted on July 11, 2022 by malpagaia

China having become the world factory is why most products appearing in stores and households throughout the world have the label ‘Made in China’ attached to them. In recent decades products made in China have progressed from originally being associated with relatively poorer quality mass produced cheaper products, to those that now include high quality products such as smart phones, autonomous self drive electric vehicles, high speed trains, silicon chips, a functional three person space station and – not least, a modern land, sea and air defence force.

Being a practitioner of an Earth-based spiritual practice known as ‘PaGaian Cosmology’ – a seasonal celebration of the relatedness of Earth, Sun and Moon; China’s re-emergence as a major power on the contemporary world stage is no surprise to me, my daily practice enables me to readily relate to some of the more organic, down to earth features of Chinese cosmology, culture and ways of being. My spiritual practice occasionally finds me reflecting the origin of the ‘Yin-Yang’ symbol found within Chinese cosmology; if one measures the shadow a pole projects at midday, from the winter Solstice onwards, this shadow will become shorter every day, until, at the time of the Summer Solstice when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, the shadow will be the shortest. Afterwards the shadow will again increase gradually until the cycle is completed in the next Winter Solstice. If the increases in the shadow’s length are plotted in a circle because this is a cyclic, ever repeating phenomenon and the period of increased darkness that begins in summer is coloured, the image produced is that of the well known black and white ‘Yin-Yang’ symbol.

Within Chinese cosmology, the Yin-Yang dynamic is thought of as complementary (rather than opposing) natural forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. Such observation and thinking is a good example of our human capacity to synthesise the phenomenon of opposites that take place throughout cosmic creativity. Take for example one of our most profound discoveries cum inventions electricity; in the context of electric charge, it was discovered that planet Earth itself was found to be at the same natural potential everywhere, hence a reference point was given the name ‘earth’ or ‘ground’ because it is known to be an infinitely constant source of equal amounts of positive and negative charge.

From my personal PaGaian perspective, having this quality and depth of ancient cultural heritage to draw on is what better enables Chinese leaders past and present to synthesise the political, social and economic dynamics that we humans have been immersed in for millennia – for better and for worse. Hence for example, contemporary China’s ability to synthesise the political, economic and social dynamics of communism, capitalism and socialism and – so far at least, produce a form of socio-economic governance and productivity that is working relatively better than most if not all other forms. This is a most unlikely consideration let alone successful outcome within the relatively dualistic cosmologies and ideologies of the West, where the political and social dynamics of capitalism, communism and socialism are inevitably seen as a choice to be made between incompatible opposites.

We have plenty of historic evidence that being a major power on the world stage is not new to China. During the 13th Century Marco Polo was greatly influenced by Chinese culture; later during the 17th and 18th Century the so-called ‘Age of Enlightenment’, European philosophers regarded ‘Chinoiserie’ as a force to be reckoned with, a time when the likes of Voltaire and Leibnitz believed that China had perfected ‘moral science’, and that Chinese statecraft was a model for the West to emulate if it too wanted to develop into an enlightened civilization. Adam Smith described China as “one of the richest, best cultivated, most industrious, nations on earth”. Unfortunately at the time, the rulers of Japan and the West saw Chinese civilisation and culture differently; mainly from their imperialist, profit driven perspective. The Chinese system of meritocratic government was deeply troubling to an 18th Century Western ruling elite built on stratified class privilege, to them a civilization without hereditary aristocrats was unfathomable; to some considerable extent this is still the case in our 21st Century. Hence over the past 200 years China and its people have been forced to make a huge sacrifice to overcome invasion and great adversity to once again become a valuable exemplar of how a high standard of statecraft is now being ‘Made in China’.

An important tradition underlying the governance of modern China is that of ‘seeking truth from facts’. The fact that the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has overcome centuries of adversity to now be consistently improving the livelihood of about 20% of the world population reveals a pertinent truth about ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’; namely that for the past three decades at least, it works. Knowing how to make socialism and capitalism work for and improve the livelihood of a population of 1.4 billion> people over a period of decades is no mean feat, knowing if it could work just as well indefinitely for 7 billion> people is therefor also well worth considering.

China’s productive force and market economy has progressed at a relatively rapid pace – compared to the rest of the world, to arrive in 2022 at a point where it is the world’s second largest economy, already having become the world’s largest purchasing power and is predicted to become the world’s largest economy overall within this decade. Be this as it may, China now has more to offer the world than the advanced mass production of goods and services; modern China is demonstrating to the world how a socio-economic form of governance and productivity can place sufficient emphasis on meeting the social and cultural needs of a massive wide spread and diverse population, while growing its economy at home and abroad, within the context of a global capitalism. Over the past three decades ‘Made in China’ has been developing a new socio-economic form of governance and productivity, formerly referred to by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) as ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’. This relatively new brand of socialism is unique to China and is often referred to by President Xi Jinping as being the ‘early stage’ of a socialism for ‘the new era’.

However, what Xi Jinping refers to as ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is not without its risks; as a result of consistently applying the tenets of Marxist theory to their long term planning, the CPC knows only too well that there is no escaping the power and contradictory effects of capitalism; this is especially so while synthesising capitalism and socialism in order to develop China’s productive force which in effect has morphed into being a hybrid socialist/capitalist market economy. For this hybrid system to continue working for the PRC capitalism in China will need to remain strictly subordinate to socialism. If the power of capitalism is allowed to have its way with China then the CPC/PRC will end up with something more like a Capitalism with Chinese characteristics and their goal of achieving a modern socialist state by 2049, enjoying moderate prosperity in all respects could become difficult or impossible to reach. The negative effects of the power of capitalism are already evident within modern China, namely the emergence of billionaires and their obscene levels of privately owned wealth – including among senior Party leaders, monopoly capitalism in the private sector, social inequality between regional rural and urban populations, major real estate bankruptcies and the inevitable rumblings of class antagonisms.

It is worth noting here how and why the CPC subordinates capitalism to socialism; capitalism is such a great force that not even Marx’s ‘Capital’ could fully describe its complexity, nor could he have foreseen the power and influence of a fully computerised, globalised so called ‘monopoly capitalism’. Decades later however, Deng Xiaoping had the benefit of seeing for himself the power of capitalism and its potential for lifting China out of poverty. Known as the ‘Architect of Modern China’ Deng enabled what is known as a ‘Dual-track economy’ an economic system in which the government controls key sectors of the economy, while allowing private enterprise limited control over other sectors on a so called periphery of the economy. This has led to what the CPC refers to as a Socialist Market Economy (SME), based on state owned institutions such as banks, insurance, transport, education, energy, health and agricultural land etc; at the core of China’s overall market economy. The CPC maintains that despite the co-existence of private capitalists and entrepreneurs together with public and collective enterprise, China is not a capitalist country because the party retains control over the direction of the country, maintaining its course of socialist development. To date, capitalism remains strictly subordinate to socialism in China. If the rest of the world is going to reduce extreme poverty the way China has during the past decade, it too will need to subordinate (rather than try in vain to replace) capitalism to socialism.

As Deng Xiaoping put it in 1987, “only the socialist system can eradicate poverty”.

Domestically the extent to which the CPC/PRC upholds the political principle of democratic centralism – now also referred to as ‘whole process people’s democracy’, retains control over the great adversarial power of monopoly capitalism – thereby minimising social inequality and class antagonism; will determine whether or not the CPC can avoid economic collapse and the risk of being overthrown by the Chinese people and their army – the PLA.

Be this as it may, the collapsing of a neo-liberal political order throughout the world, combined with the negative impacts of climate change, a devastating global pandemic, and war in Europe, geopolitical tension is increasing among most if not all the so called major powers.

China and Russia recently issued a joint statement, saying that the two countries stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions and that they intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose colour revolutions, and will increase cooperation in the above-mentioned areas. A Sino-Russian alliance that focuses on trade, developing their respective domestic economies strengthening the informal BRICS alliance and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – especially now with Latin American states such as Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela benefitting from the BRI, while ensuring that they are capable of defending their aligned sovereign borders against an increasingly belligerent U.S. led NATO, QUAD and AUKUS alliance; now looks like being the only viable deterrent against war between the so called major powers.

The main difference cum contest between a U.S. dominated neoliberal world order and China’s relatively authoritarian single party governance is their respective foundational ideology; Neoliberalism is more of a top down god given theocratic ideology with a strong emphasis on individualism and state protection of privately owned property and wealth; Chinese governance is more of an organic bottom up ideology that places more emphasis on public ownership and the collective good rather than than the individual good. In the context of democracy, U.S. dominated neoliberalism no longer resembles Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 definition being ‘governance of the people, by the people for the people’; whereas China’s Marx/Lennin inspired ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ publicly advocates and demonstrates Lincoln’s definition of democracy.

Generally speaking China’s relatively authoritarian centralist single party form of governance and productivity is – almost by definition, more disciplined and efficient than Western neoliberal multi party forms of governance and thereby more capable of synthesising otherwise opposing economic and social dynamics; including and especially those within China itself and more importantly throughout an emerging new multipolar world order. It may well be that nothing less than the project for world peace and development is also now being; ‘Made in China’.

malpaTaffy

Southern Summer 2022.

Ngayuku puli tjukurpa – Uluru.

Posted on July 3, 2022 by malpagaia

My story stone.

Story telling.

For better and for worse, todays information sharing technology makes it so much more evident that the human race is primarily a story telling species, everything we do and say, all our thinking and behaviour is almost entirely influenced by the stories going on between our ears, be they fact or fiction, be they well intended or otherwise, stories are our primary and most influential source of information. So, it is with this grand philosophical premise in mind that I offer you My Uluru story – Ngayuku puli tjukurpa, this by way of celebrating NAIDOC 2022, here on the traditional land of the Wakka Wakka people (S.E. Queensland Australia).

This is a story of how I was literally re-minded by such a remarkable place – Uluru, and its indigenous custodians – the Anangu, about the importance of our relationship to place and family – walytja or kin. Thanks to its indigenous Anangu custodians, over millennia the landscape and rock formations of Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park has invoked stories cum lessons that I believe are of potential value for the whole human race, especially now that our relatively advanced information sharing technology is being deliberately used in so many subtle and not so subtle ways to divide and separated us from our sense of place, from each other and all too often, from reality.

‘Uluru-Kata Tjua National Park, an isolated tiny patch in Australia’s vast arid zone at the very centre of the continent, is the symbol for a special, almost intangible quality of the continent’s interior but also for the co-operative human spirit. It is one of the most remarkable places on earth. From the start I was determined to find out as much as I could about it’.

Uluru Looking After Uluru Kata-Tjuta ~ The Anangu Way

Stanley Breeden 1994.

Life among the Anangu.

From 1990 until 1995, it was my privilege to have lived and worked with the indigenous Anangu of Central Australia (Northern Territory) at Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park and then from 1995 until 1998 on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands (South Australia). Uluru Kata-Tjuta is a World Heritage Area National Park, listed for both its natural and cultural values. During my time there I had the rare opportunity of being able to work closely with its Anangu custodians while re-nominating the park for World Heritage Area listing based on its cultural values, it was already WHA listed based on its natural values. During the same 1990-95 period, Anangu and Piranpa park staff along with various professional consultants and builders worked on the design and construction of the Uluru Cultural Centre. The early 1990s was when the award winning author of natural history Stanley Breeden was given permission from Anangu to produce a book about the park, particularly about the nature of the park, its flora and fauna, but also about the Anangu and Piranpa – whitefellas, who were working together to manage Uluru ‘the Anangu way’. This too was a most valuable opportunity for Stanley and us Piranpa park staff to learn more about the depth of knowing about and relatedness to their place that Anangu possessed.

‘We commend this book to you, and affirm its accuracy and value. We Anangu are strongly committed to our culture, and we believe this book shares in our commitment’

Tony Tjamiwa – Traditional Owner in forward to the book –

Uluru Looking After Uluru Kata-Tjuta ~ The Anangu Way

(Stanley Breeden 1994).

I believe I can safely say that for most if not all park staff the period 1990-95 was a particularly valuable period to have been living and working at Uluru, it was a time when the Anangu traditional owners were settling into the management of their sacred land which had been formally and conditionally returned to them by the Australian Commonwealth Government in 1985. The condition of return being that the park would immediately be leased back to the Commonwealth for 99 years. Nevertheless, the following decade was a particularly productive period during which the leadership of tjilpi – senior Anangu man, Tony Tjamiwa and his Piranpa liaison officer Jon Willis enabled Anangu to become more confident, assertive, capable and generous in expressing the more public and appropriate for sharing components of their Tjukur(pa) – their Lore. This was also a significant period when a new emphasis on sharing Anangu Tjukur(pa) and culture was in effect a maturing of the relatively early days of ‘joint management’, that is the management of the park by both the Australian Nature Conservation Agency and the parks Anangu traditional owners.

In addition to the above mentioned more prominent projects, several less publicised park management initiatives took place during this period, including placing a new emphasis on Pitjantjara language classes for us Piranpa staff. These classes were conducted by Anangu rangers and the few Piranpa staff such as Julian Barry and Jon Willis who were fluent speakers of the Pitjantjatjara language. As a result of these Anangu led language classes a healthy number of Piranpa rangers – mostly female I might add, became fluent Pitjantjara speakers, this too contributed significantly to the maturing of joint management. Another similar initiative was that of an Anangu led basic cultural training course cum certificate designed to enable visiting and local tour operators – particularly bus drivers most of whom until then were making up their own stories about the park and Anangu, to gain a more appropriate and approved understanding of the park and how it was now being managed, ‘the Anangu way’. While some bus drivers initially balked at the idea, at the end of such training sessions most of them had enjoyed their face to face interaction with Anangu and their better understanding of Anangu culture.

Back in 1994 I was highly motivated by Stanley Breeden’s chapter thirteen entitled ‘To climb or not to climb’ in which he writes –

‘Anangu find the compulsion to climb, to conquer, Uluru incomprehensible and also think that it shows disrespect by strangers for another people’s land.. They want people to understand Anangu and Uluru Kata-Tjuta. Understanding is everything. Once people understand, Anangu are convinced mutual respect will follow.

Tjamiwa expresses it.. We want tourists to learn about our place, to listen to us Anangu, not just look at the sunset and climb the rock..’

Nganana tatinja wia – we never climb, the Anangu traditional owners of Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park reluctantly tolerated people being allowed to climb Uluru. Unfortunately, even though Anangu had made it very clear how they felt about the climb, the pressure from the tourist industry and to a lesser extent the Piranpa agency involved in joint management of the park continued to resist its closure for too long a period. For some years in my role as the senior Piranpa staff member, I advocated for the closure of the climb having made various unsuccessful submissions to my supervisors in Darwin and Canberra. On reflection, my persistence over this issue cost me too much lost sleep and a few casual friendships. However, about 25 years later on Sunday 26th Oct 2019 Anangu and probably millions of us Piranpa celebrated the closure of the climb at Uluru.

From my relatively well informed perspective – albeit decades later and from afar, the closure of the climb at Uluru in 2019 was a well overdue move in the context of managing the park ‘the Anangu way’. Uluru is now being respected and protected in a way that better reflects its universal significance as a sacred site.

‘It is directly and tangibly associated with events, living traditions, ideas and beliefs of outstanding universal significance, and it is a potent example of imbuing the landscape with the values and creative powers of cultural history through the phenomenon of sacred sites.’

Renomination of Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park

Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories 1994

On reflection I often think about the eight years I spent in Central Australia with my then partner Marian Hill as a kind of pilgrimage. Our original intention was to experience what we thought might be ‘the real Australia’ rather than the sanitised version were were both immersed in an urbanised Victoria. Nowadays I do reflect on my time with Anangu in Central Australia as a pilgrimage into a time and place that gradually changed my mind, for the better and for ever.

Finding my own story stone.

My partner and I lived along with other Piranpa and the more permanent Anangu residents at a place called Mutitjulu, a small community within the park and just a few kilometres from the base of Uluru. Much of my recreation time was spent roaming and exploring the surrounding landscape and rock formations of Uluru and Kata-Tjuta. On one such occasion I stumbled upon what would eventually become my most influential symbolic story stone. Only after many visits and spending much contemplative time at its resting place did I eventually become sensitive enough to receive and relate to this stone as ‘ngayuku puli tjukurpa’ – my story stone. It is rectangular in shape with proportion similar to that of a standard matchbox and I estimated its weight to be close to a metric ton, far too heavy to have been moved by human hands. Therefor, I imagined it to have been shaken from its place of origin at a time when our Earth Mother – Gaia, was rumbling deep within her great Southern belly, probably in response to some powerful tectonic force. Since then and probably for millennia, it has rested on just two of its diagonally opposite edges, exposing itself to be observed, felt and related to through each of its six rustic faces. Almost three decades later my story stone continues to inspire me to imagine, study and write about the significance of relating to place at both the personal and cosmic levels. During such periods of contemplation I can imagine how the first Anangu hunters and gatherers, who having evidently produced some nearby cave art, received this impressive looking stone in their own unique indigenous way.

Once I felt comfortable about relating to my story stone in this way, it marked the beginning of the most creative personal journey of my adult life, a journey that released me from decades of entrapment in relatively ordinary, dominant states of consciousness, a journey that eventually reminded me of a time and place – Penarth, Wales 1944-50 the first five years of my life, when like many a young Anangu, I too was being nurtured by my mother to enjoy and cultivate our relationship with place, Self, other and all-that-is. The storying and importance of relatedness in general and relationship with family or kin in particular was literally brought home to me when a group of mapla tjilpi – friendly senior Anangu men, realised I had not been home to visit my kin for about 26 years – since leaving Wales in 1967, they thought I must be a bit sick in the head. Not long after this friendly shame job cum wake up call I returned home to Wales where I enjoyed relating to my family members – including young ones whom I had never met, in what for me was a new and healthier way. At the time I was in effect being reminded about and grown up by Anangu to the importance of my own Welsh place, heritage and kin.

‘Bob’s admiration for Anangu takes a somewhat different direction from that of the other Piranpa I spoke to.. He continues: “..I’m pretty sure that my upbringing had something to do with it. My mother was a very nice and gentle person who was close to nature, and she influenced me..”

Uluru – Looking after Uluru-Kata Tjuta~The Anangu Way (1994: p183)

Life back in mainstream Australia.

My story stone, and I are now physically separated by about 3,000 kilometres of mostly Australian desert landscape, to and from a place where it rests safely inside a small cave at the base of the northern face of Uluru in Central Australia. Nevertheless, since the year 2000 my story stone continues to inspire me to embark on exciting, new spiritual and political journeys.

One particularly influential story that came to me while living and working among the Anangu of Central Australia is about how and why it was not likely or even possible for Anangu men or women to form a centralised group within their tribe or community for the purpose of having power and control over the rest of the community. Prior to being colonised by European invaders who had already perfected such a practice, Ananguku tjukurpa – lore, their way of being and relatedness to place and other – including the other than human beings within their place, was such that there were no words in their Pitjantjatjara language that could so much as give rise to thoughts of power and control over each other, let alone the more extreme thoughts of forming a centralised group for such a purpose. Moreover, the initiation of young adolescent Anangu boys and girls into adulthood was particularly important for maintaining the level of maturity and cooperation that was essential for such indigenous hunter gatherer communities to thrive.

Such an extreme contrast between the forms of community, economy and productivity being practiced by the Anangu of Central Australia – prior to being invaded and divided, with that being practiced by their European invaders is a most pertinent and valuable story, not just for contemporary Australians but for the whole human race. Traditional Anangu society was a relatively free, cooperative and egalitarian society, when compared to their European invaders who were of a society that was deliberatively divided, unequal and mostly imprisoned. The indigenous Anangu of Central Australia had no need for standing armies, gunships or police forces, their relatedness to place and each other was demonstrably more mature, sophisticated and peaceful than that of their invaders. Unfortunately and maybe inevitably, in more recent times some Anangu leaders – usually men, have adopted their European coloniser’s practice of centralised power and control with a bit too much relish.

Not long after returning to live in main stream Australia, my Uluru experience aroused in me a new curiosity that soon had me doing some relevant academic study. In an effort to try and make some sense of what for me was an obvious and annoying lack of understanding and empathy toward the socio-economic circumstances of indigenous Australians among Australians in general, I enrolled to do a Social Ecology Masters degree at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). During my time at UWS I met another like minded story teller, Glenys Livingstone with her own emerging story, ‘PaGaian Cosmology – A Re-inventing of Earth based Goddess religion’. Glenys and I both graduated on the same day in 2003, Glenys gaining her Doctoral degree and me my Masters degree with a distinction. Several decades later we are still just as passionate about our storytelling together as we were on the day we met.

Since the year 2000, Glenys and I have been much inspired by the teachings of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme both of whom authored ‘Canticles to the Cosmos’ 1990 and ‘The Universe Story’ 1994. Both of these works together with our ongoing practice of seasonal celebrations that are mostly informed and inspired by ‘PaGaian Cosmology’ 2005, – (the book form of Glenys’ doctoral thesis), have enabled us to deepen our appreciation of planet Earth’s biosphere as being an awesome creative event. ‘Canticles to the Cosmos’ is based on Thomas Berry’s twelve principles of a ‘functional cosmology’, principle number twelve convinced me that if we are to develop our full personal and human potential, we will need the emergence of something close to what Thomas describes as –

an ‘Ecozoic era of Earth development’, an era during which we ‘activate the inter communion of all the living and non living components of the Earth community..’

Such was my new found appreciation and experience of creativity and beauty throughout an otherwise increasingly troubled world, that it soon prompted me to search for a compatible political story. I had almost given up on my search and politics in general when I came across this particular passage –

“In this world, at this point, no political revolution is sustainable if it is not also a spiritual revolution – a complete ontological birth of new beings out of old. Equally, no spiritual activity deserves respect if it is not at the same time a politically responsible, i.e; responsive, activity… The only meaningful political direction left now is synonymous with the only meaningful spiritual direction left now: towards the conscious re-fusion of the spirit and the flesh… This time it will be a global consciousness of our global oneness, and it will realize itself on a very sophisticated technological stage; with perhaps a total merger of psychic and electronic activity.”

Barbara Mor – ‘The Great Cosmic Mother’ 1987.

The above quote inspired me to revive and pursue the cultivation of my spiritual, social and political consciousness, to a point where I am now convinced that providing we take better care of the land that supports and unites us, wherever and whoever we are; providing we take better care of our sacred centre(s) – our Self places eg; The Uluru Declaration (a story) from the heart of Australia, we might yet enable the manifestation of Thomas Berry’s ‘Ecozoic era’.

Tjilpi Tony Jamiwa taught me how best to understand stories using the Anangu-ku principle of ‘ngapartji-ngapartji’, a particularly valuable indigenous story; like an onion, you can peal away the layers of such Anangu storying to reveal deeper and stronger meanings. For example, the outer layers of this story reveal a relatively simple ethic of reciprocity or fair exchange, then deeper it maybe that of the ‘golden rule’- doing unto others as they would do unto you. Closer to the core of this Anangu story reveals a more empathetic relationship whereby we do unto others what they would have us do unto them, a more organic understanding that has no need to distinguish between receiving and giving; an understanding whereby giving and receiving are one and the same thing.

Until this day, learning from the place and people of Uluru enables me to continue cultivating a more balanced sense of place and relatedness, it is also enabling in me a deeper spiritual, social and political consciousness than I otherwise might have.

Some of my story telling places

Ngayuku puli tjukurpa – My story stone

Robert (Taffy) Seaborne

Winter 2022

Southern Hemisphere.

China: re-emerging as a modern exemplar of statecraft.

Posted on January 11, 2022 by malpagaia

Voltaire and Leibnitz believed that China had perfected ‘moral science’, and that Chinese statecraft was a model for the West to emulate if it wanted to develop into an enlightened civilization. Unfortunately at the time, the ruling elites of Japan and the West saw Chinese civilisation differently; from their imperialist, profit driven perspective. Hence over the past 200 years China and its people having made huge sacrifices to overcome great adversity is once again becoming a valuable exemplar of statecraft. My storying of contemporary China is that of a place and people morphing into what I refer to as a ‘Middle Kin-dom on Earth’; a re-emerging more down to earth ‘motherland’, a stronger, more unified, smarter, safer and thereby happier people than they ever were during a ‘Middle Kingdom under heaven’; albeit much admired by great European philosophers, a relatively advanced and less aggressive 18th century Chinese civilisation was always vulnerable to being invaded and plundered by foreign imperialist rulers. The Chinese system of meritocratic government was and still is deeply troubling to a ruling elite built on stratified class privilege. A civilization without hereditary aristocrats was unfathomable and terrifying to the 18th century Western ruling class.

An important tradition underlying the governance of modern China is that of ‘seeking truth from facts’. The fact that the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has overcome centuries of adversity to now be consistently improving the livelihood of about 20% of the world population reveals a pertinent truth about ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’; namely that it works. Knowing how to make socialism work for a population of 1.4 billion> people over decades is no mean feat, knowing if it could work just as well indefinitely for 7 billion> people is well worth considering. Why? Because –

The beautiful planet on which all humans live is experiencing a tremendous crisis, one caused by humanity itself. Confronted by this level of change, and other difficulties and problems hindering development and governance, there is an urgent need for human society to seek out a new philosophy and make the international system and order fairer and more reasonable. The CPC has proposed building a global community of shared future, with the goal of creating an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity’.

(The CPC – ‘Mission and Contributions’ 2021)

The – ‘global community’ – should take serious note of the CPC’s proposal, especially where it refers to – ‘an urgent need for human society to seek out a new philosophy and make the international system and order fairer and more reasonable’. – The existing dominant philosophy and world order is designed first and foremost to maintain the privately owned wealth, power and influence of a minority ruling elite, which it does by exploiting the vast majority of – ‘human society’ – using an inherently unfair and unreasonable – ‘international system’ – driven by capitalism.

A minority ruling elite dominates human society and will stop at nothing to defend their privately owned wealth, power and influence over world affairs and the rest of human society. Imperialism, conquest, colonisation and the exploitation of nature and human labour is how todays ruling elite came into being and it is how this ruling elite will do its utmost to maintain its domination over human society.

The above CPC proposal is a profound summary of what is now at stake and what is required if human society as a whole is ever going to achieve – ‘a global community of shared future, with the goal of creating an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity’. – The CPC and the PRC is in the early stages of its own brand of socialism, a brand that could in theory at least help other nation states aspiring to participate in – ‘a global community of shared future’. The CPC/PRC has deliberately chosen to enter into trading partnerships with other nation states, particularly the so called developing nation states. In this regard relatively user friendly trading partnerships such as those within the CPC/PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) makes a lot more sense than the military alliances being entered into by the US and its allies such as NATO, the Quad, the Five Eyes and the more recently formed AUKUS treaty.

When considering imperialism as an almost inevitable advanced stage of capitalism in decline, the forming of military alliances among the so called advanced, wealthier nation states is understandable and predictable. Nevertheless, military alliances by definition are not a pathway toward – ‘lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity’. – On the other hand, user friendly, so called win win trading partnerships such as those signing up to China’s BRI at least has the potential for nation states to work toward the outcomes expressed in the above CPC proposal.

The facts revealing the truth that Socialism with Chinese characteristics is working for the PRC, are a timely exemplar for all nation states that socialism with national characteristics can enable socio-economic forms of governance and productivity that place the social and cultural needs of people first and foremost, that demonstrates respect for ethnic and cultural diversity while striving to develop a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

Lenin put it this way –

‘All nations will arrive at socialism—this is inevitable, but all will do so in not exactly the same way, each will contribute something of its own to some form of democracy, to some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat, to the varying rate of socialist transformations in the different aspects of social life. There is nothing more primitive from the viewpoint of theory, or more ridiculous from that of practice, than to paint, ‘in the name of historical materialism’, this aspect of the future in a monotonous grey.’

The contemporary Peoples Republic of China (PRC) is certainly not ‘a monotonous grey’, on the contrary it is a newly emerging dynamic ‘Middle Kin-dom’ a place and people with a brand of socialism that has its own unique Chinese characteristics, a modern exemplar of statecraft at its best.

From the Tjukurpa to the Ecozoic

Posted on January 1, 2022 by malpagaia

via my PaGaian pathway:

From the Tjukurpa – indigenous Lore of the Anangu traditional owners of Uluru – Central Australia, to the Ecozoic – a hoped for future during which all the living and non living components of the Earth community are activated by human conscious choice. This is my way of storying human consciousness at the individual and species levels and how the emergence of human conscious choice as a major geological and biological shaping power is now determining the future of our Biosphere and life as we know it.

Thanks to four decades of the NASA Hubble telescope and more recently the European Gaia camera both providing valuable information about our galaxy and beyond, we now know that our human race participates in an amazing cosmic event, an event that was billions of years in the making before the Sun and planet Earth came into being, an event that will probably continue for billions of years after our Sun and planet no longer exist. While our human participation in this event will only last for a relatively short period within it, we are nonetheless an amazing creative manifestation of it, particularly the manifestation of our human consciousness.

Consider the possibility of how our evolving human consciousness is the result of a Universe throughout which every single atom migrates in the direction of maximising manifestation and how thereby the emergence of human consciousness has enabled the Universe to reflect on and celebrate itself through a storytelling species, possibly for the first and maybe only time during this whole amazing one off cosmic event.

‘The role of civilised humanity from this standpoint is far more important than that of any other invertebrate form..

A consideration of the laws regulating evolution leads us into a domain hitherto reserved for religious and philosophical speculation. We are confronted with a new form of biogenic migration resulting from the activity of the human reason. Human thought has changed in a brisk and radical manner the trend of natural processes and has even modified what we call natural laws. Consciousness and thought, despite the efforts of generations of thinkers, have never been given physical basis, in terms of matter and energy. How can processes which seem purely physical be affected by consciousness?

This is a question to which we are trying to find a reply.

(Vladimir I. Vernadsky – ‘The Biosphere’ p81-82 – an abridged version based on the French edition of 1929.)

Vernadsky’s question encourages us to further consider how consciousness in general and human conscious choice in particular is now determining the future wellbeing of our biosphere.

Such conscious awareness cum choice can and does put our human storytelling journey into a more valuable perspective, one that should at least help us as individuals to make sense of our place in the world and our social circumstances. At the species level, it has the potential to help us overcome the geopolitical antagonism which now poses the threat of wars between nuclear armed so-called ‘major powers’. Moreover, understanding the significance of human conscious choice might yet enable us to at least mitigate if not avoid the immanent threat of catastrophic climate change, thereby enabling us to survive as a species and continue striving toward achieving our full creative human potential.

Consider Vernadsky’s question ‘How can processes which seem purely physical be affected by consciousness’? From a scientific perspective this question is complex; for me Elisabet Sahtouris and Willis W. Harman in their ‘Biology Revisioned’ (Sahtouris & Harman 1998), present a strong argument for why we need to adopt a more wholistic scientific approach when trying to better understand consciousness. Under the heading ‘Towards A Holistic Biology’ Sahtouris begins chapter 4 with –

‘Scientific distinctions between mechanics and organics have been blurred because we ignore the fact that mechanisms are, by definition, the purposive constructions of their inventors, and therefore cannot exist as natural entities evolving in purposeless (non-teleological) nature. Our whole scientific concept of nature as mechanism was derived from a Cartesian scheme that was logically complete because it included God as inventor. But to maintain that nature is mechanism after repudiating God and purpose constitutes a severe logical flaw at the heart of Western science’.

Then under the heading ‘Intelligence and Consciousness’ they begin chapter 5 first by quoting Owen Barfield (1982) then Lynn Margulis & Dorion Sagan (1995) –

‘Sooner or later a certain truth is brought home to you (namely, that consciousness) is the inner side of the whole, just as human consciousness is the inside of one human being.. Although it makes sense to enquire how and when consciousness developed into what we now experience as such, it makes no sense at all to enquire how and when mind emerged from matter… Once you have realised that there is indeed only one world, though with both an inside and an outside to it, only one world experienced by our senses from without, and by our consciousness from within, it is no longer plausible to fantasise an immemorial single track evolution of the outside world alone. It is no longer possible to seperate evolution from evolution of consciousness’.

then –

‘Not just animals are conscious, but every organic being, every auto-poetic cell is conscious. In the simplest sense, consciousness is an awareness of the outside world… To live every organic being must sense and respond to its surrounds… Life is more impressive and less predictable than any thing whose nature can be accounted for solely by forces acting deterministically’.

With this more wholistic scientific perspective in mind, I have decided to focus my brief storying of human consciousness on my relatedness with self, other and all-that-is, starting with a place and people of my own choosing and life experience – the indigenous Anangu traditional owners of Central Australia, whose Lore – the Tjukurpa, expresses for me a particularly valuable example of human consciousness, best described by Professor T.G.H. Strehlow, whose extensive anthropological work among the nearby Aranda people of Central Australia informs a booklet entitled – ‘Central Australian Religion’ (1964),in which he writes, referring to the Indigenous Australian people :-

‘The eternity motif may indeed be regarded as perhaps the most vital single element of the many that are blended together in any human religious system… Throughout his (sic) life he regarded himself as being in perpetual union with the world of eternity and hence he felt no need of waiting for a future union with a supernatural being in a life after death. Somewhat paradoxically to our European way of thinking, but perfectly naturally in the Central Australian world view, it was in the present, in the limitations of evanescent time, that man lived in union with eternity’.

From a relatively casual study cum practically informed perception of an evolving human consciousness – especially my own, I perceive evolving human consciousness as having over time become less connected ‘with eternity’, with place and with each other;before eventually arriving with the benefit of much hindsight and millennia of hard won wisdom, at a hoped for future of re-integrated consciousness. This phase of re-integrated consciousness seems appropriately defined by author and teacher Thomas Berry in his 12th principle for a ‘Functional Cosmology’ as:-

The Ecozoic era of Earth development’, an era during which we ‘activate the inter communion of all the living and non living components of the Earth community’.

Over the past few decades my chosen pathway for journeying from the Tjukurpa to the Ecozoic is well expressed as that of ‘PaGaian Cosmology’ (2005), an Earth based spiritual practice – authored by my partner Glenys Livingstone Ph.D, and informed by my own life experience of living and working among the Anangu traditional owners of Uluru in Central Australia (1990-98). Glenys begins the Preface of her book with an explanation of the term ‘PaGaian’: –

‘It expresses a reclaiming of the term Pagan as meaning a person who dwells in country, yet with Gaian spliced in, it expresses a renewed and contemporary understanding of that country. Gaia is a name for humanity’s habitat, an ancient yet new name which I understand to include whole Earth and Cosmos – there is no seam separating Earth from her context. And Pagan religious tradition offers a spiritual practice of celebrating Earth-Sun creativity manifest in this habitat. The cosmology described in this book makes a start on bringing all of this together..’

This resonates with my experience with the traditional Anangu owners of Uluru their Tjukurpa and the place itself.Since their ancestors migrated to inhabit the great southern land now known as Australia, the indigenous Anangu people of Central Australia cultivated their Tjukurpa – a unique Lore abiding and place oriented way of knowing and being. The Ananguku economy was based on a world of organic abundance and relatedness with self, other and all-that-is; they were a people who had never been at war, were never ruled over nor exploited, hence they didn’t need weapons, nor did they need liberating – materially or spiritually, and they certainly didn’t need to be colonised by 18th century European imperialist invaders.

Some millennia after the arrival of the ancestors of these first Indigenous people to this land, Europeans invaded the great Southern Land. The Europeans came from a very different world to that being cultivated by the Anangu, they came from a world of scarcity – a deliberate gravitational force on society, violence, forced labour, slavery and mass exploitation, a world in which an elite ruling class had long since established centralised control and standing armies for the purpose of conquering and exploiting Indigenous peoples the world over. In contrast, the Indigenous Anangu people of Central Australia having cultivated their Tjukurpa – their traditional Lore, over millennia, had no concept nor vocabulary within their Pitjantjatjara speaking world that could so much as give rise to thoughts of having power and control over each other, let alone the more extreme thoughts of forming a centralised group especially for such a purpose.

While there were no doubt many stages and levels of human development between that of so called primitive indigenous hunter gatherers and their European imperialist invaders, over such time centralised groups such as fiefdoms and dynasties formed the world over for the purpose of having control over places, peoples and resources. While such human development almost certainly originated for the purpose of protecting places, people and their resources, it was only a matter of time before such centralised groups determined to increase their control over the place and people that were needed to produce, increase and protect their privately owned wealth and property, thereby the origins and need/desire for imperialist conquest and colonisation of foreign lands.

Such is the difference between an indigenous world consciousness in which an economy of abundance populated by a people that did not require liberation with that of an imperialist world consciousness influenced by an economy of privately owned wealth which became increasingly dependant on the exploitation of peoples the world over. Where then do we now find ourselves in the context of an evolving human consciousness and how might we yet arrive at Thomas Berry’s Ecozoic era; or something like it.

Jean Gebser’s ‘Ever Present Origin’ (1985 English translation) makes a major contribution to the history and our understanding of the ‘awakening of consciousness’ through what he describes as ‘Mutations of Consciousness’, Gebser’s extensive research provides as good a guide as any as to where we might now find ourselves on our journey of conscious/self awareness: –

‘a consciousness of the whole, an integral consciousness encompassing all time and embracing both man’s (sic) distant past and his approaching future as a living present..’

What Gebser is saying here about a future ‘integral consciousness’ has something in common with what Strehlow observed among the Aranda people ie – ‘that man lived in union with eternity’. It is as if Gebser is trying to take us full circle, albeit that he does so through several major mutations of human consciousness over millennia, each of which Gebser defines and describes in great detail under the headings – ‘Origin – or the Archaic Structure’, followed by ‘The Magic Structure’, then ‘The Mythical Structure’ and our present ‘The Mental Structure’. Although Gebser doesn’t refer to Strehlow’s Aranda as such, I am reasonably certain that their Indigenous pre-colonised consciousness would fit into the era of Gebser’s so called ‘Magical and Mythical Structures’.

The 18th Century European invaders of Australia and most if not all Northern Hemisphere (and Western influenced) peoples were and still are working our way through Gebser’s ‘Mental Structure’ of consciousness and it could well be our final structure given that our recent invention/use of fossil fuels and nuclear weapons, which could bring about a premature end to our human journey. So, while it is well argued that our human consciousness has advanced throughout the ages, it can also be argued that such advancement has simultaneously diminished our human relationship with self, other and all-that-is, and hence has diminished our capacity for manifesting the integral structure of consciousness necessary for a future Ecozoic era.

While looking at it from a somewhat inflated European perspective the pre-colonised consciousness of Indigenous Australians was and probably still is seen as being less advanced than that of their European colonisers, it was certainly more integral and thereby – potentially at least, more sustainable. Moreover, there is no guarantee that our presumed-to-be ‘more advanced’ Mental Structure of consciousness is going to survive long enough to mutate into Gebser’s final and fifth dimensional ‘Integral Structure’. On the contrary, our diminished relationship with self, other and all-that-is now poses a real threat to our very existence. How can this be, given the steady advancement of human consciousness over millennia, all the while morphing into being creative, artistic, curious, spiritual, religious, scientific, reasonable, economic and eventually political? How come people like Strehlow, Berry, Sahtouris, Gebser and Livingstone- all quoted above, can express in advance an understanding and desire for a future more integral consciousness, while at the same time – at the species level, we appear to be working against such an advancement?

It is not as though the human does not yet know how to manifest a more integral consciousness, especially when we consider what Strehlow had to say about the indigenous Aranda of Central Australia, their Lore and their capacity for ‘personal monototemism in a polytotemic community’ as a way of being – ‘in union with eternity’. Strehlow also had something very pertinent to say about the 18th Century European invaders of the Great Southern land: –

‘Unfortunately for the Central Australians the white man first invaded their territory when the rising flood of European colonialism was drowning the resistance of non-Europeans everywhere, and when the over preening pride of the white man had reached the summit of its arrogance. Many present day observers of the world scene feel that nineteenth century European hubris has brought upon itself its own retribution in the twentieth century; and doubts about many aspects of their own traditional civilisation are invading the minds of progressive thinkers everywhere in the new atomic age.’ (Ibid p 50)

Evidently it is possible for some humans at the individual level to have further evolved their consciousness by deliberately cultivating their relatedness to self, other and all-that-is; by practicing a similar concept to that of the Aranda’s ‘personal monototemism’ or by celebrating one’s place and planet Earth’s seasonal moments as expressed by Livingstone’s ‘PaGaian Cosmology’. This is all very well and good for individuals and small groups or communities who are able to do so, but that doesn’t mean that we will further evolve our human consciousness at the most critical species level, a similar practice to that of the Aranda’s ‘polytotemic community’ – albeit on a much larger scale? The hope is that we will advance our collective human consciousness to a more ‘integrated structure’ in time to eliminate or at least mitigate the threats of war between nuclear armed states, and or catastrophic climate change, because that is what is at stake and that is what is now most likely required, a radical mutation of human consciousness at the species level.

In the meantime, it is vitally important that as individuals we find our own pathway for cultivating conscious awareness and conscious choice, thereby we can deliberately participate in and contribute to the migration of all atoms toward maximising manifestation and by imagining a more integrated future Ecozoic era for all our fellow beings and Earth-Gaia.

The storying and importance of relatedness in general and relationship with family or kin in particular was literally brought home to me when a group of maple tjilpi – friendly senior Anangu men, realised I had not been home to visit my kin for about 26 years – since leaving Wales in 1967; they thought I must be a bit sick in the head. Not long after this friendly shame job-cum-wake up call, I returned home to Wales where I enjoyed relating to my family members – including young ones whom I had never met, in what for me, was a new and healthier way of relating. At the time I was in effect being reminded about and grown up by Anangu to the importance of my own Welsh place, heritage and kin: –

I am rapidly approaching my eighth decade and having chosen ‘PaGaian Cosmology’ later in life I have been able to draw on and benefit from a rich life experience thereby finding an Earth based spiritual practice that celebrates relatedness to self, to other and to all-that-is (which as I understand it, is all Self). PaGaian Cosmology celebrates the interaction between us humans and our planetary Gaian environment; it is simultaneously a personal, cosmic, seamless relationship poetically expressed, particularly during Earth Gaia’s seasonal moments, the annual cycle of Earth around Sun, a cycle expressed in eight transitions of solstice, equinox and quarter moments. They are moments in space time that can be trusted, even worshipped: Hence the splicing of the words Pagan and Gaian to form PaGaian… it connects and celebrates the dialectical wisdom of our ancestors – the stories of old, with a contemporary scientific understanding of our place in space time – stories that are new and still unfolding.

Thomas Berry’s Ecozoic is hopefully a time and place of the future when the human race has returned to a more wholistic relationship with self, other and all that is, a time when all the living and non living components of the Earth community are activated as one again: as it was for Anangu during the Tjukurpa… only next time around it will need to have learned from millennia of trial and error and thereby the gaining of hard won wisdom.

For the whole human race to have cultivated a suitably integrated structure of consciousness capable of manifesting anything like Berry’sEcozoic era, socio-economic forms of governance and productivity would have to undergo either an instantaneous worldwide revolutionary change – which now seems unlikely, or a more gradual yet equally radical political morphing – which now seems more likely; out of global capitalism into a form of world socialism whereby the social and cultural needs of all peoples throughout the entire planet are given greater priority than that of the accumulation of privately owned wealth – as is now the case. Globalised capitalism is what has the vast majority of the human race bogged down in Jean Gebser’s so called ‘mental structure’ of human consciousness. Such global political and social change is unpredictable with no guarantee that it will ever happen, but for those of us who have been fortunate enough to be able to deliberately cultivate a more integrated consciousness at the personal level, we know from our own life experience that it is also possible at the species level.

My political consciousness has been much influenced by two revolutionary thinkers, both of whom come at the subject of politics through very different cosmologies, but both of whom remained true to their respective cosmologies and personal values: –

“Once he (sic) has done with the anarchic forces of his own society, man will set to work on himself, in the pestle and the retort of the chemist. For the first time man will regard itself as raw material, or at best as a physical and psychic semi-finished product. Socialism will mean a leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom in this sense also, that the man of today, with all his contradictions and lack of harmony, will open the road for a new and happier race..” (Leon Trotsky – ‘In Defence of the October Revolution’ 1932).

‘The only meaningful political direction left now is synonymous with the only meaningful spiritual direction left now: towards the conscious re-fusion of the spirit and the flesh… This time it will be a global consciousness of our global oneness, and it will realise itself on a very sophisticated technological stage; with perhaps a total merger of psychic and electronic activity.” (Barbara Mor – ‘The Great Cosmic Mother’ 1987).

Trotsky and Mor both, knew all too well what was and what has yet to be done. Berry’s journey toward a future Ecozoic era like Gebser give us hope by suggesting that we progress by returning to an earlier more integrated indigenous consciousness –

What must be sought for in the new hermeneutics is the recovery, through critical processes, of a second naivete, an earlier experience of a harmonious and luminous universe, associated by the Chinese with the ‘lost mind of the child’. (Thomas Berry – ‘The Sacred Universe’ 2009).

Another interpretation of the Chinese ‘lost mind of the child’ is my own ‘childhood Cynefin’, my Welsh understanding and storying of the same cultural and social dynamic of having to learn the dirty devices of this world and the subsequent unlearning and loss of one’s earlier childhood consciousness of habitat, heritage and kinship, then (if one is fortunate enough) later in life the relearning, or in my case eventually being re-minded of such relatedness to self other and all-that-is, by my Central Austrlaian Indigenous Anangu teachers.

I want to end my storying of personal and human consciousness on a promising note. Over the past few decades I have been much inspired by the emerging collective consciousness of an ethnically diverse People’s Republic of China (PRC), which as it happens is a place and people that also much inspired Thomas Berry and Jean Gebser during their earlier years of research. The contemporary PRC is a promising example to the whole human race of what can be achieved when a relatively massive and diverse population of 1.4> billion, is united and governed by a political party that gives their social and cultural needs an appropriately high priority. The following quote is indicative of why I now confidently story China as having morphed from being a much troubled Middle Kingdom into being a much less troubled Middle Kin-dom, a more integrated, safer and happier people, a nation state that is deliberately rejuvenating itself and thereby well advanced along the road toward a future Ecozoic era; or at least something like it: –

‘The world has once again reached a crossroads, and humanity faces a choice between two paths. One advances into brightness; the other retreats into darkness. The profound changes we face, on a scale unseen in a century, and the raging Covid-19 pandemic are interlinked. Cold War thinking and the zero-sum game mindset are resurgent. Unilateralism, hegemony and power politics are on the rise. Economic globalization is battling against headwinds. The global arms race is escalating. Conventional and non-conventional security issues, such as climate change, terrorism, cyber-attacks, biosecurity challenges, and major infectious diseases, together pose a severe threat to global and regional security. The beautiful planet on which all humans live is experiencing a tremendous crisis, one caused by humanity itself. Confronted by this level of change, and other difficulties and problems hindering development and governance, there is an urgent need for human society to seek out a new philosophy and make the international system and order fairer and more reasonable. The CPC has proposed building a global community of shared future, with the goal of creating an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity‘. (The Communist Party of China ‘Mission and Contributions’ 2021)

malpaTaffy,

Summer 2022.

Watch this space called China.

Posted on September 13, 2021 by malpagaia

Quote:

We are not a party like other parties.. Our aim is the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited through the socialist revolution. Nobody will prepare it and nobody will guide it but ourselves. Leon Trotsky– 1938.

The above ‘aim’ delivered by Leon Trotsky during the launch of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in 1938, is by definition a profound and difficult aim to achieve, not least because of it being underpinned by Trotsky’s even more profound ‘theory of permenant revolution’ and hence only achievable on an international scale, throughout the entire planet.

The ICFI and its international branches of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) as a programme and party of ‘world socialist revolution’ has take upon itself the task of preparing the international working class for the overthrow of state power and the replacement of global capitalism with a global socialism. Eight decades later, it has become painfully obvious why ‘the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited’ is having to be achieved as Marx and Engels suggested it would in The Communist Manifesto – ‘by degrees’.

Quote:

‘The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoise, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, ie; of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible..’

The Communist Manifesto including its ‘by degrees’ advice would have almost certainly influenced Trotsky when he later gave us his own revolutionary advice through his writings of 1939-40, not long before he was murdered by a Stalinist thug in Mexico –

Quote:

‘The perspective of the permanent revolution in no case signifies that the backward countries must await the signal from the advanced ones, or that the colonial peoples should patiently wait for the proletariat of the metropolitan centers to free them. Help comes to him who helps himself. Workers must develop the revolutionary struggle in every country, colonial or imperialist, where favorable conditions have been established, and through this set an example for the workers of other countries. Only initiative and activity, resoluteness and boldness can really materialize the slogan “Workers of the world, unite!”

Trotsky was evidently expecting or at least hoping for at least one or more ‘country, colonial or imperialist’ to be further developed in revolutionary struggle and thereby able to set an example for ‘the workers of other countries’. This begs the question which country or countries have developed the revolutionary struggle sufficient to set such an example for the workers of other countries? Or better still, the ‘Workers of the world..’

I put it to my fellow SEP comrades that there is really only one such country that has over the past seven decades become a suitable example of having developed such revolutionary struggle, namely the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). The PRC and its Communist Party of China (CPC) cadre have – albeit unwittingly, taken Trotsky’s advice and helped themselves rather than ‘await the signal from the advanced ones’ and in doing so China is now setting ‘an example for the workers of other countries’ to follow. This year 2021, the CPC celebrated its first centenary of revolution, reconstruction and reform, during which it has enabled the people of China to recover from being a conquered, impoverished, backward colony, to becoming the largest state productive force ever. The CPC is now the second largest – 95> million members, political party in the world and for the past three decades has been having a direct and positive influence on the lives of at least 18%> of the total world population including and especially the Chinese working class. As of 2021 the PRC has consistently registered relatively higher levels of trust and confidence in their government than most other advanced state populations measured by the same international trust barometer.

Between 2021 and 2049 (the next 28 years), providing the CPC/PRC can avoid going to war against other so called major powers, avoid or at least mitigate the negative impact of a collapsing global capitalism and above all, continue earning the trust and support of its 1.4> billion population, it is most likely to be celebrating the first 100 years of the PRC (1949-2049) having reached their well planned objective of becoming a ‘modern socialist state that is moderately prosperous in all respects’.

This is how the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee expresses it in their August 2021 ‘Mission and Contributions Statement’ –

Quote:

‘The salvoes of Russia’s October Revolution in 1917 sent Marxism-Leninism to China, and the CPC came into being. The Chinese people were awakened, and a torch was lit for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation..

The CPC is dedicated to the people and forever puts their interests first. It follows the underlying trends of social development and respects the people’s principal role in making history. It pursues the lofty goal of working for the wellbeing of the Chinese people; and does everything in the interests of the people.

The CPC is rooted in the people. It was born in 1921 in the great struggle against feudal rule and foreign aggression, at a time when Marxism-Leninism became integrated with China’s workers movement. From the very day of its creation, the CPC has represented China’s working class, the Chinese people, and the Chinese nation. It has no special interests of its own, nor does it represent any interest group, establishment group, or privileged social group. Its only goals are to deliver happiness for the people and achieve national rejuvenation..

Over the past hundred years, the CPC has grown from a small party with just over 50 members into the largest governing party in the world, with more than 95 million members in a country of more than 1.4 billion people. It is a party of major international standing.

It has governed the world’s largest socialist country for more than seven decades. It has led the Chinese people onto the path towards national rejuvenation and modernization, and it enjoys extensive support from the Chinese people..

By carrying out the socialist revolution in China, they brought to an end several thousand years of feudalism – a system exploitative and repressive by its very nature and established socialism as China’s fundamental political system. In the course of building socialism, they overcame subversion, sabotage, and armed provocation by imperialist and hegemonic powers, and brought about the most extensive and profound social changes in the history of the Chinese nation. This great transformation of a poor, backward and populous country in the East into a modern socialist China created the fundamental political conditions and laid down the institutional foundations necessary for realizing national rejuvenation.’

If the working class of China are deemed by the ICFI/SEP not to be a worthy example for the international working class as a whole of a country and people who have developed revolutionary struggle to the point where they can now be a positive example of how we might yet achieve world socialism, then there has never been such a country, nor government, nor people since Trotsky gave us his revolutionary instruction eight decades ago and Trotskyists might have to receive The Communist Manifesto’s ‘by degrees’ as being more like ‘by centuries’.

If the working class of China were deemed to be an example befitting Trotsky’s 1939-40 instruction, then this could provide a whole new incentive to the formation and development of the ICFI/SEP strategy of International Workers Alliance of Rank and File Committees (IWA-RFC). Rather than just reacting to social crises before forming such RFCs, the ICFI/SEP/WSWS could start to encourage the forming of RFCs among the 1> billion Chinese workers and students on the basis of them being empowered to make sure that their CPC stays on track to keep its promise to the Chinese people of them being able to share a ‘common prosperity’ within a ‘modern, moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2049′. Moreover, to make sure the CPC reduces the gap between China’s highest and lowest income quintiles to a minimum that is acceptable to the Chinese working-class and that the private ownership of production is gradually reduced to being strictly limited to non essential (luxury type) goods and services on the periphery of China’s centralised socialist market economy.

IWA-RFCs throughout the rest of the world could be encouraged on the basis of – watch this space called China.

malpaTaffy,

Spring 2021

Could Trotsky’s crisis of revolutionary political leadership be healed by taking some Chinese medicine?

Posted on August 26, 2021 by malpagaia

The ICFI/SEP program and party of world socialist revolution either refuses or at least is reluctant to accept that the governance of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is communist and or socialist, usually referring to China as being Stalinist and or capitalist. This ICFI/SEP categorisation of China is not in keeping with how the vast majority of Chinese people and the world in general identify and name the governance of the PRC.

The Communist Party of China (CPC) clearly identifies itself as being a communist party. More importantly, the people of China not only accept their ruling party as being communist, they evidently have a relatively high level of trust and confidence in their rulership. During recent years a reputable international barometer has ranked China among the top two or three populations in the world when measured for levels of trust and confidence in their respective governments. In 2020, around 604,000 people were disciplined by China’s top anti-graft body, the resolute fight against corruption has resulted in surging public support. According to a survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics, 97.3 percent of the respondents expressed satisfaction with the improvement of Party conduct, the working practices of government officials, and social morality.

This relatively high level of trust and confidence among the general population of China for the CPC is consistent with a country that for the past 7 decades has enjoyed an average annual growth of disposable income of 6%>. Besides income increases, during the last three decades Chinese people have also enjoyed other benefits, such as access to better education, medical care, improved living conditions and a safer environment. China now has the largest social security system globally, with basic medical insurance covering over 1.3 billion people and basic old-age insurance covering about 1 billion. The average life expectancy of the Chinese has risen to 77.3 years. As of 25/08/2021 China has all but defeated an outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19, that began one month earlier. China’s relatively proficient management of the pandemic from its earliest months in 2020 is not only providing better protection for its people, it will also increase an already high level of trust and confidence among them for their government.

As China embarks on the next stage of its journey toward a 2049 centennial celebration of what the CPC refers to as becoming a – ‘moderately prosperous socialist state’,

their leader Xi Jinping will be sharing his thoughts on how China intends to get there through what he calls ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’, this by way of having Xi’s thoughts included in China’s formal educational curriculum. Given the success of China’s program of ‘national rejuvenation’ over the past seven decades and providing it can continue making similar progress over the next three decades using Xi’s Socialism with Chinese characteristics, there is little or no reason to doubt that the concept and use of the word ‘socialism’ will be just as readily accepted and related to by the people of China as is the concept and use of the word ‘communism’.

In addition to the 1.4 billion Chinese population, most of the world population recognise the PRC as being governed by a communist party – the CPC, this for better or for worse depending on one’s political perspective and preference. When informing and preparing the international working class for world socialist revolution, there is little or no merit in the ICFI/SEP reporting via the pages of WSWS – a daily online source of political information that is second to none, that the CPC is not communist or socialist and worse still by referring to China as ‘Stalinist’ and or essentially ‘capitalist’. Trotskyists should keep in mind that the PRC includes about 20% of the total international working class, for those Chinese working class who do get around to reading ICFI/SEP/WSWS reports on China, they are more than likely to be offended by such unnecessary political spin.

Deliberately denigrating the one and only nation state that publicly claims to be influenced by a Marxist inspired communism, that also happens to now be the largest and most successful communist party throughout modern history, could well be a counter-revolutionary act.

Most of the other than Chinese international working class – about 80%, are constantly being fed anti communist, anti socialist, propaganda by their respective capitalist cum imperialist governments. For decades the real crisis in revolutionary political leadership has been the struggle against such propaganda in an effort to win over the international working class.

Trotskyists know better than most why a world perspective is superior to a nationalist perspective and why Trotsky’s theory of permenant revolution should have prevailed over Stalin’s socialism in one country. The fact that it didn’t is a historical no brainer, more appropriately described as a ‘crisis of revolutionary political leadership’. The cost of such weak political decision making and leadership over the past century in terms of lives lost, property destroyed, human expertise, skills and money wasted on wars defending antagonistic nation states and failed revolutions, is almost unfathomable. These two critical political concepts while coming from very different perspectives and being so politically opposed to each other, nevertheless had at least one thing in common – ‘Socialism’.

For the international working class to achieve world socialism, the revolutionary political leadership of the ICFI/SEP will need to gain the approval of and thereby be able to prepare the international working class for world socialist revolution. As things stand in 2021 the size and political influence of the ICFI/SEP program and party of world socialist revolution is minuscule when compared with the size and political influence of the CPC. The program and party of world socialist revolution cannot afford to alienate 20%> of the international working class because it is being unnecessarily cynical toward a political party that has clearly already gained the trust of its working class.

The ICFI/SEP cannot afford to depend on responding to catastrophic events to pave the way for establishing rank and file committees within China and internationally. Maybe us Trotskyists can start healing our crisis of revolutionary political leadership by learning from a country and people that has enjoyed many an epoch as the world’s most advanced culture, without needing to be an imperialist coloniser. In terms of world status the past two centuries has been an aberration for China, a nation state that has literally ‘been there, done that, got the teeshirt’ several times over. The ICFI/SEP should seriously consider taking some Chinese medicine, even if it is a bitter pill to swallow.

malpaTaffy,

Spring 2021

Southern hemisphere.

My Uluru story

Posted on July 6, 2021 by malpagaia

My Uluru story – Ngayuku puli tjukurpa.

Story telling.

For better and for worse, todays information sharing technology makes it so much more evident that the human race is primarily a story telling species, everything we do and say, all our thinking and behaviour is almost entirely influenced by the stories going on between our ears, be they fact or fiction, be they well intended or otherwise, stories are our primary and most influential source of information. So, it is with this grand philosophical premise in mind that I offer you My Uluru story – Ngayuku puli-pulka tjukurpa, this by way of celebrating NAIDOC 2021, here on the traditional land of the Wakka Wakka people (S.E. Queensland Australia).

Uluru Looking After Uluru Kata-Tjuta ~ The Anangu Way

Stanley Breeden 1994.

Life among the Anangu.

‘We commend this book to you, and affirm its accuracy and value. We Anangu are strongly committed to our culture, and we believe this book shares in our commitment’

Tony Tjamiwa – Traditional Owner in forward to the book –

Uluru Looking After Uluru Kata-Tjuta ~ The Anangu Way

(Stanley Breeden 1994).

Back in 1994 I was highly motivated by Stanley Breeden’s chapter thirteen entitled ‘To climb or not to climb’ in which he writes –

Tjamiwa expresses it.. We want tourists to learn about our place, to listen to us Anangu, not just look at the sunset and climb the rock..’

Renomination of Uluru – Kata Tjuta National Park

Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories 1994

Finding my own story stone.

Uluru – Looking after Uluru-Kata Tjuta~The Anangu Way (1994: p183)

Life back in mainstream Australia.

an ‘Ecozoic era of Earth development’, an era during which we ‘activate the inter communion of all the living and non living components of the Earth community..’

Barbara Mor – ‘The Great Cosmic Mother’ 1987.

“Once he has done with the anarchic forces of his own society, man will set to work on himself, in the pestle and the retort of the chemist. For the first time man will regard itself as raw material, or at best as a physical and psychic semi-finished product. Socialism will mean a leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom in this sense also, that the man of today, with all his contradictions and lack of harmony, will open the road for a new and happier race..”

Leon Trotsky – ‘In Defence of the October Revolution’ 1932.

The above quotes inspired me to revive and pursue the development of my political consciousness, hence I am now convinced that providing we can survive global capitalism and replace it with a global socialism, we could enable the emergence of Thomas Berry’s ‘Ecozoic era’, and maybe eventually aglobal communion with the wisdom of Ngapartji-Ngapartji, yet another inspiring indigenous Australian story. Like an onion, as you peal away the layers of this particular Ananguku story it reveals deeper meanings. For example, the outer layers of this story reveal a relatively simple ethic of reciprocity or fair exchange, then maybe that of the ‘golden rule’- doing unto others as they would do unto you. Closer to the core of this Ananguku story reveals a more empathetic relationship whereby we do unto others what they would have us do unto them, a more organic understanding that does not distinguish between receiving and giving, an understanding whereby giving and receiving are one and the same.

Until this day, learning from the place and people of Uluru enables me to continue cultivating a more balanced sense of place and relatedness, it is also enabling in me a deeper spiritual and even political consciousness than I otherwise might have.

All thanks to having found Ngayuku puli tjukurpa – My story stone.

Robert (Taffy) Seaborne.

Revolutionary Surveillance.

Posted on April 25, 2020 by malpagaia

(‘The Great Cosmic Mother’ – Barbara Mor 1987 p:418)

When considering the ramifications of the AI enabled mass surveillance of world populations – similar to the app now being developed on behalf of the Australian government to track cases of the COVID-19 pandemic, we should keep in mind the fact that such technology is for the most part designed, built, operated and maintained by waged and salaried workers, better thought of in the context of international socialism as a working class IT productive force. With this in mind and in the context of what might be in the best interest of the international working class as a whole, it is reasonable to assume that such surveillance technology – in theory at least, could work equally well on behalf of populations being enabled to survey future socialist governments as it now does for capitalist governments surveying their populations for purposes of control and exploitation. The said same surveillance technology used to monitor populations and vice versa governments, could enable more sophisticated socio-economic forms of governance and productivity based on better informed and less policed populations throughout the entire planet. Just imagine having a socialist government provided app that enables the general public to participate in more frequent feedback and referendums for the purpose of ensuring that their government remains focused on meeting all of the population’s social and cultural needs etc:

We are not a party like other parties. … Our aim is the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and exploited through the socialist revolution. Nobody will prepare it and nobody will guide it but ourselves.

(Leon Trotsky 1938)

CLIMATE – Change the story.

Posted on January 7, 2020 by malpagaia

‘A major human adaptation has been the creation of stories (beliefs) that trigger and guide emotions; the emotions are real, the actions are real, but the stories are only coded devices to attach motive force to action.’

JAMES KEYE – Politics & Emotion

The human species has long since become an inventive story telling productive force, a capacity that for better and for worse has given us an enormous advantage over all other species that inhabit planet Earth. However, as our scientific story of biology informs us, in essence we continue to be no more or less natural than any other species on planet Earth, all of whom are thereby subject to the natural checks and balances of planet Earth’s primary productive force, also storied by the scientific story of geophysics as the biosphere.

The human productive force is now artificially disrupting the Earth’s atmosphere to the point where global weather patterns are producing more intense climate variations, resulting in more severe droughts, floods and wildfires. The observable, measurable and thereby scientific rate of ‘climate change’ – particularly that of measuring the average surface temperature of planet Earth, is a relatively recent phenomenon that can be storied as a predictable response on the part of planet Earth’s biosphere to a disruption of it by a lesser – albeit significant, human productive force. It can also be storied that the capacity of the human productive force to artificially alter the planet’s atmosphere is now being subjected to the sort of natural checks and balances that have consistently taken place throughout planet Earth’s biosphere for millennia. Planet Earth’s capacity to respond to significant disruptions to the biosphere has evidently survived the test of time – about 4.5 billion years of time. We humans now have good reason to story planet Earth as simply doing what she has always done, she is responding in this case to a human induced artificial disruption of the atmosphere in particular and thereby Earth’s biosphere as a whole.

In the context of our human disruption of the biosphere, according to some of the more reputable scientific storying of the atmosphere eg; The Woods Hole Research Institute, we now only have three realistic options left ie; mitigation, adaptation and suffering. While we already participate in all three options to some extent, each depends upon the other, for example, the extent to which we experience the ‘suffering’ option depends entirely on the extent to which we act on the other two options.

*Such climate related damage, loss and suffering is now (Jan 2020) being felt on a new and more terrifying scale throughout SE Australia.*

*Unusual refugees escaping wildfire on a beach in SE Australia Jan 2020.*

Planet Earth’s biosphere as a whole is the primary productive force that has enabled the seasonal cycle of life and death to flourish for billions of years, it should therefore be regarded – even celebrated, as being the essential pre-requisite for the emergence and continued development of our human productive force. Conversely, our effort to dominate planet Earth’s productive force for material gain is proving to be a serious human mistake, a mistake made possible only through some of the tall stories we have invented to convince, motivate and justify such stupidity.

If we are to better understand and manage the relationship between our human productive force in the context of planet Earth’s primary productive force – the biosphere, then some of us may need to change our stories, especially our most influential religious, scientific and political stories.

For better and for worse all three religious, scientific and political stories influence each other to some extent. For example, the more influential religious and political stories that persuade – even convince, many of us that the human productive force is superior to and should have ‘dominion over’, the natural resources of the biosphere, while such hubris has indeed inspired many a great invention, such stories are now proving to be delusional life destroying stories. Particularly misleading can be such religious, scientific and political stories that persuade some of us humans to regard certain artefacts and entities as sacred – even sacrosanct, including the artefacts of deity, money, private property and wealth. The time has arrived when we need to question our most influential religious, scientific and political stories, with a view to replacing them with stories that will help us to avoid destroying ourselves and possibly the entire planet.

I know that this is easier said than done, requiring as it does some serious attention and rigour, but my advice is that we look for religious, scientific and political stories that are at least compatible with the health of our biosphere and less contradictory with each other. For example, rather than being confined to some imagined, theist pie in the sky superstition, it is easy enough to find animist type religious stories and or spiritual practices that are more down to Earth, observable and thereby more available to our physical senses, even measurable.

Lucky me, I have ‘PaGaian Cosmology’ authored by my partner Glenys Livingstone Ph.D. in 2005. PaGaian Cosmology is an Earth based spiritual story and practice that celebrates the Earth, Sun and Moon relationship, a relationship that enables and sustains planet Earth’s biosphere. PaGaian Cosmology is a spiritual practice based on scientific observation, with no need for superstition. Human induced or otherwise and irrespective of what happens to our weather patterns, the Earth, Sun and Moon relationship enable a cosmic seasonal wheel of the year comprised of solstice and equinox moments that are fixed, observable, measurable and consistently determined by the angle of Earth’s axis and the rate of Earth’s rotation around the sun. This cosmic wheel of the year together with our Moon’s equally consistent 28 day cycle of waxing and waning, makes for an awesome phenomenon and story that is not only critical for the health of our biosphere, it is also worthy of our admiration and celebration.

Given that we are all now participating in an information technology (IT) revolution that is in turn enabling the development of artificial intelligence (AI), the search for and choice of scientific stories is all the more critical and deserving of careful scrutiny and some rigour. The inevitable and relatively rapid advance of IT and AI is already having a huge impact on our human well-being. For better and for worse, scientific research and development is often influenced by our religious and political stories with a view to exploiting planet Earth’s natural resources including the human productive force – waged labour. To the extent that the scientific story is being influenced by religious and political stories, makes the task of finding scientific stories that are more compatible and less contradictory even more challenging. My thoughts on the search for scientific stories that can have a positive influence on the wellbeing of life in general and us humans in particular, is that they should at least have been subjected to serious peer group review and thereby able to demonstrate a level of scientific integrity that can be trusted and valued.

While the world wide web and its variety of search engines now make it possible for us to do more thorough searches for the best of scientific stories, it should also be their compatibility with our personal world view and values that ultimately lead us to decide to what extent we are prepared to be influenced by the story of science.

‘Climate change, and other manifestations of environmental degradation, are the product of a social and economic system that is incapable of organizing global production in a rational and scientific manner, on the basis of social need—including the need for a healthy environment—rather than the endless accumulation of personal wealth.’

(WSWS.org ‘Perspective’ 3^rd Jan 2020).

Given that we are now confronted with the twin threats of catastrophic climate change, and war between nuclear armed states, looking for a political story that is capable of mitigating these threats and thereby worthy of adopting and being influenced by, is probably our most urgent and challenging search.

As a species we obviously have the capacity to move beyond the fear based, antagonistic nationalist programs that place such a disproportionate emphasis on protecting and defending the accumulation of privately owned wealth within their respective nation states. Most of our religious and scientific stories including the sacred, the good and the bad, are not constrained by nation state boundaries. Unfortunately, this cannot be said for our political stories, most if not all of which are deliberately confined to looking after the interests of their respective nation state, particularly the ruling elite of the nation state.

My own life experience includes having sailed around the world in the British merchant navy (1965-67), having been a forest overseer in Victoria (1976-90) and having had my mind properly adjusted while living and working among the traditional aboriginal Anangu owners of Uluru in Central Australia for eight years (1990-98). Following my introduction to a more indigenous and traditional Australia, I was motivated to study for and gain a Master of Applied Science (Social Ecology) with Distinction (University of Western Sydney 1999-2003) – in a somewhat vain effort to cross the cultural bridge between an indigenous and a colonised Australia. For me this is still a work in progress.

On the strength of what I now regard as a relatively privileged life experience, I eventually found a political story that genuinely cares about and places an emphasis on the wellbeing of planet Earth and the human as a whole. After several years of searching and frustration and having almost given up on politics – particularly the Australian variety, I found the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) through its Sydney NSW Australia branch of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). What attracted me most was a political story whose founder Leon Trotsky made it clear in 1938, that his programme and party was different to any other in that ‘the aim of our party is the full material and spiritual liberation of the toilers and the exploited’. At last I had found a political story and party that placed a deliberate and genuine emphasis on our human wellbeing, by uniting and liberating the human productive force to achieve its full potential ‘throughout the entire planet’. If you have not already done so, I can highly recommend you visit the World Socialist Web Site – WSWS.org, where you will find a relatively rare political story that is indeed compatible with the well being of the biosphere in general and us humans in particular.

‘For peoples, generally, their story of the universe is their primary source of intelligibility and value. The deepest crises experienced by any society are those moments of change when the story becomes inadequate for meeting the survival demands of a present situation.’

(THOMAS BERRY, The Dream of the Earth).

malpataffy,

Southern Summer 2020.

Deeper Down Under

Posted on June 6, 2015 by malpagaia

Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park is a World Heritage Area listed for both it’s natural and cultural values, yet many living outside Australia still only know it by its European name – Ayers Rock. Here, even during a brief stay of only a few days, visitors can and do experience a profound sense of being in a sacred place. For the Anangu traditional owners of Uluru and for others who are fortunate enough to live in its presence, and who choose to dwell there in a receptive manner, it can be a place for deepening awareness of the manta – the Earth, as sacred.

Most of Uluru’s quartz-like mass is buried to a depth of almost 6 kilometres beneath the surface of the desert. It’s awesome above ground appearance presents less than one percent of its total mass, but is nevertheless unlike any other natural feature throughout the vast landscape of Central Australia. Located about 400 kilometres South West of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory it is not an easy place to get to. From any major Australian city it requires either several days travel by road or a flight, usually via Alice Springs, then onto the Yulara tourist resort situated just 30 kilometres from the great monolith.

I was fortunate enough to be one of those piranpa – non-Anangu, ‘whitefellas’ – who got to live at Mititjulu, a community that emerged in response to Uluru’s growing popularity as a tourist attraction. As an employee of the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service I lived close enough to be able to see Uluru from our kitchen window and I drove alongside it to work most mornings for about five years. I lost count of the number of times I climbed Uluru, in the course of my work. On one occasion I climbed it during the light of a full moon, looking for so-called ‘new age’ trespassers, but I soon lost any desire of meeting let alone apprehending trespassers: being on top of Uluru that night was as close as I could imagine to actually walking on the moon itself. On other occasions, as part of a rescue training program I landed on and took off from a helipad on top of Uluru, and once I accepted an invitation to fly with the camera crew that filmed a Qantas promotion, wherein one of their commercial passenger jets does a tight and dramatic turn over the top of Uluru. These were amazing and unusual interactions for anyone to have with Australia’s most popular icon.

One evening while on what we called the sunset patrol, I had a most exhilarating interaction with another species. The last tourist had long since reached the bottom of ‘the climb’ and headed off to one of the sunset viewing areas or back to Yulara and I was alone on top of Uluru watching Sun slowly disappear behind Kata Tjuta – “the Olgas” as they are named by Europeans, about 30 kilometres to the West. I first heard the flapping of its wings then a few seconds later it took my breath away and my knees began to shake, I was being circled and focused on by the greatest of Central Australia’s hunters walawuru – the wedge-tailed eagle. It had swept up from a gorge behind me and as it circled directly above me it came close enough for me to see the brown of its eyes. I dropped onto my knees as if wanting to worship such an awesome creature, but it was more a case of deep respect, as well as the awe and a tinge of fear that I felt. I also thought that being there in walawuru’s domain after sunset was not what the great eagle wanted. Some months later a similar, more awesome interaction took place between walawuru and I. On this occasion I was sitting, again alone at the top of Uluru and watching Sun setting – Earth turning: walawuru circled, without moving in for closer scrutiny, and this time I didn’t feel unwelcome – it felt like an amicable interaction.

These walawuru and other air-borne Uluru experiences were for me, doorways into gaining a far more embodied and profound consciousness of the other-than-human. There was also an opening to a particular cave at the base of Uluru wherein much awaited me: a remembering of my childhood ways of knowing and being – a remembering of the sense that everything belonged to me and anything was possible. I found there what I called my ‘Selfplace’. Nowadays I reflect on that time and space as my desert pilgrimage, the beginning of a new way of relating to other and all- that-is.

After living at Uluru for five years as Park Manager, I left that position and was able to enjoy the relative freedom of a less formal and demanding role as Senior Project Officer on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, about 300 kilometres south of Uluru. During the following three years on these AP lands I was able to ritualise my return visits to Uluru and seriously cultivate a deeper relationship with what I now understand to be one of Gaia’s most sacred places.

These ritualised return visits to Uluru in general, and to my chosen cave in particular, were for me the beginning of a lengthy and intense process of remembering how to listen to the manta – to Earth, and it is where I found my ‘Story Stone’. Ngayulu puli tjukur(pa) – ‘My Story Stone’, appeared to me decades after my Welsh mother Dilys first introduced me to stone consciousness using fossils on Penarth beach – my favourite childhood playground. I received my Story Stone as an act of generosity made available to me by the subtle realms of a cosmic consciousness. I share this story in the belief that the first act of ngapartji-ngapartji (Pitjantjatjara for a deep reciprocity) is that of receiving.

The experiences with my Story Stone were instrumental in leading me to find both the strangest, and the most beautiful, attractors in my life: the first – my strange attractor – was my arrival at the University of Western Sydney, where I was able to make some sense of the cultural interface from which I was emerging. There I met my beloved Glenys Livingstone – my beautiful attractor: together we are greatly inspired to carefully listen to teachers such as Thomas Berry when he says –

“The dawn and sunset are moments when the numinous source of all existence is experienced with special sensitivity. …Living things come into being, flourish then fade from the scene. This ever-renewing sequence of sunrise and sunset, of seasonal succession, constitutes a pattern of life, a great liturgy, a celebration of existence” (1999:177-78).

My Story Stone and the tjukurpa – the religious philosophy of Central Australia, opened new ways of knowing and being for me. It continues to be a great source of wisdom and guidance, as I deepen with my beloved, into our ‘PaGaian Cosmology’ a new and homely Earth based Goddess religion. The Central Australian religious observances have been described as showing

“ a generous diversity in their outward patterns from group to group, and from person to person. More importantly, the very nature of the religious beliefs prevented the rise of that particular kind of religious fanaticism which could have swept a small, but well organised body of men into a position of authoritarian power over a large community.”

(Strehlow 1978:47).

Such religious practice of the people of this Land inspires me, and undergirds my observance of the seasonal celebrations of my own ancestors – re-created in this place.

Our time to celebrate Eostar – Spring Equinox approaches. It is the season for a particular kind of “deepening down under”. As my beloved Glenys would say –

“This is the time of Spring’s return… The story of Old tells us that Persephone beloved daughter, returns from Her journey to the underworld. Demeter stretches out her arms – to receive and rejoice. The beloved One, the Lost One, returns with new Wisdom from the depths”

(Livingstone 2005:210).

References:

The Great Work (Thomas Berry 1999).

Central Australian Religion (T.G.H. Strehlow 1978).

Pitjantjatjara / Yankunytjatjra to English Dictionary

(Cliff Goddard 1992).

Uluru (Ayers Rock –Mount Olga) National Park

Plan of Management 1991.

PaGaian Cosmology (Glenys Livingstone 2005).

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