The 100^th post on alloporus was posted 8 months ago. That mini-review managed to reduce most of the previous content down to a couple of words “leadership sucks”.

And if you live in Australia then you would probably agree without reservation, whatever your political persuasion. We have an imploding Federal government with an opposition that just has to sit and watch it happen, whilst at state level there is a steady unpicking of legislation to turn the world brown.

Australia is even losing the plot in sport where in one code it is fine to punch the opponent in the biggest game of the season and in another a punch that missed is described as ‘despicable’

Ah, leadership, wherefore art thou.

As though in some kind of zombie state most folk seem to be ignoring it all. Perhaps it might go away. Just keep on selling the coal to the Chinese and we can carry on being rudderless [no pun intended].

Public lethargy is everywhere, spread as a thin veneer over stronger feelings of fear and woe, suggesting that leadership still sucks.

Only in the 100^th post I also made a commitment to be more positive. Well that was a promise easily made and hard to keep.

It would seem that 5 decades of exposure to the human condition has allowed negativity to seep right through to my core. No matter the sunny disposition, gratefulness, the knowledge of blessings, and awareness of the privilege I enjoy — most of the latest alloporus blog posts are still glass half empty.

Not even the clever work of Plummer showing that despite our growing numbers the grand scheme of things is getting better has made me feel chipper.

It could be that I am wired to get upset and then depressed at all the craziness. I mean do we really need to know the sex of Kim Kardashian’s baby when we don’t know where most of our food comes from?

Less depressing would be the idea that this preoccupation with the inane and a requirement for drama is hard wired in us all and, more importantly, was necessary for our success.

There is obvious survival value in being obsessed with the immediate and the mundane for out on the savanna there were mundane things that could eat you or make you sick. Any hunter-gatherer who sent her mind gazing too far into the future went hungry or lost her child to an opportunistic leopard.

The addiction to stress is less easy to justify away unless we see it as a by-product of a requirement for drama. Argument does bring us awake, sets our adrenaline to work and makes us ready to fight or flee. In other words, drama was probably a basic requirement for successful savanna life.

Modernity provides us with every opportunity to latch onto drama and be in that alert state; only we have very little real need for it. Now drama is of our own making. These days we don’t find ourselves risking a drink from the crocodile infested rivers but we still like the feeling such risk brings.

I guess what all this justification talk becomes is a soothing of sorts. I do feel better posting rants when I accept that drama, argument and disagreement are a natural part of me, part of us all. The ego has to be thanked for getting us this far

What is still challenging is how to shift through to the positives. Not the ‘ra, ra, ra, yes we can’ positivity that is just another way of priming the body to act. I mean the real positives that come from truth.

For the moment these are harder to write about.