Leadership | Alloporus

Do we think enough or too much? It’s an interesting question with chalk or cheese answers depending on where you try to find them.

According to Parnell McGuiness writing in the Sydney Morning Herald we are not thinking enough because our breakneck media cycle and the domination of the lobbyist has eroded true thoughtfulness on the big issues. Immediacy and a need to be right have reduced the extent to which we really explore a challenge and so we have become stuck in a narrow range of options. Discussion has been reduced to argument and no one seems able or confident enough to subject their view to serious interrogation.

I must say I have to agree. Our serious media reports more on style than substance from our leaders, although to be fair, this is because there is so little substance to discuss. The intellect is there. It cannot be that so many highly educated individuals cannot figure things out or engage in the necessary debate on issues that are difficult to resolve. Yet it is hard to find that debate. Instead we are given the extremes of opinion without the logic flow that led the proponents to their definite conclusion.

McGuiness suggests a return to true open-ended questions such as ‘What is happiness?’ As opposed to the already constrained “Can we be happy in a capitalist society?” Implying that we have become too constrained in our thinking for thinking to be effective. She has a point. And her solution is that we create more fertile thinking places and get to it.

Then there are the new age types who tell us that we think too much. We live in a mental fog created by our thinking brain that makes it very hard to see the truth. Constant brain chatter has made us fearful of the future and a slave to all our past psychological damage. If we could only stop all that noise and intuit then we would know instinctively what must be done.

This spiritual solution, that is hardly new having been around in various guises for millennia, is to take up meditation, yoga and gentle walks in the countryside or any activity that will help our chatterbox brains take a breather. In short, think less.

So are we not thinking enough or are we thinking too much?

Well there is definitely too much chatter going on in our heads. We are far too easily distracted by the inane, argumentative and opinionated. And what is it with the thousands of TV dramas in which there is either murder, infidelity, corruption or, preferably, all three. Our minds are so stimulated that it is no surprise they are manic.

So yes, we think too much. And we could all do with some quiet and quieting time.

Only then we need to re-engage our thinking minds with the wisdom we will find in those quiet moments. We need our brains to help make intuition real because reality requires practical solutions. And they need some thought.

So maybe we each need a week of Vipassana meditation followed by a workshop at the nearest think tank. I wonder what kind of solution that would produce.

You can find the original essay on open-ended thinking by Parnel McGuiness in the latest issue of Binge Thinking

This picture is of a white rhinoceros, Ceratotherium simum.

The species nearly became extinct in the 1980’s but was saved by a concerted and dedicated effort of translocation, breeding, reintroduction and protection.

When you are next to one of these creatures you know that a world without Ceratotherium simum would be a lesser place.

Saving both the iconic and the less well-known but equally important species that make up biodiversity will require more heroic action and a fundamental shift in perception. We will all need to understand that there are consequences of resource use by 7 billion humans and that if we want to keep rhinos, even as semi-wild species, then we must pay attention to those consequences.

We will all need to be green.

And this will happen. When it does we won’t think of recycling, energy efficiency, consuming only what we need, rambling in wild places because they will all be completely normal. Green will not be some funky fringe activity, it will be the solid mainstream.

There will not be green, only normal.

As Hot, Flat and Crowded author Thomas L Friedman says

“(The) sign that we are succeeding will be when the term ‘green’ blessedly disappears. (Because) when green is the standard, not an option, you’ll know that we’re having a green revolution and not just a green party.”

In anticipation of this critical event the Australian Greens might consider a name change. How about ‘The Progress Party’? Or maybe, ‘The New Whigs’?

No doubt there are far better suggestions.

Only the point is serious. There is an opportunity right now for new political leadership, for a party to emerge that understands that green and brown will be replaced by another colour; purple perhaps

A colour that can meld all the conservation and preservation ethos of green with the production and wealth creation necessity of brown to create a colour that represents an economic system that supports for now and the long term.

It is a shame that word purple has too many syllables to be marketable, for it is the colour of wisdom.