Finally a glass half full movement - ARC Conferences

 The movement .  ARC The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

More on me here  https://manyadvisers.blogspot.com/2025/02/its-not-all-about-me-but-to-start-us.html

For nearly 5 decades many of us in the caring professions have seen a substantial erosion of respect for both the basics and the best and highest aims of our callings.
So what if ARC can't do everything we want to it to . Its great relief to find we are not the only ones banging our heads against brick walls!
Get this . I don't know anyone who ever succeeded in their work expected to have to defend the foundations of our faith ; this recent era of having to defend our old vehicles and our effective working tools of trade; and to have to fight off incompetence and careless criticism . It would have seemed absurd to us early in our careers as practical helpers that our society would ever try to pull the road from under us after giving us the impression ,as young graduates ,that we had chosen the very best of professions. Do these dilatants know what they are doing ? The answer in No and we haven't got time here to say why the cynics, the careless  and the half baked  get to dominate in public debates. Some sites for reference 

But this erosion happened. More in some areas than others. The younger the profession ( Conservation of natural resources in my case)  the more the foundations of our work have been undermined by fears of wasted effort , landslides, worry and mismentored efforts to fund "better solutions ".What we carers see as a challenge many see as a blocking device that justifies either doing nothing or wasting public money on half baked solutions that simply don't work. . 
The paradox is of course is that our work , even when done very well , is not final . For many its easier to adopt the Dalek solution .  

This is not the time to list the reasons for this trend , except to note that the West has, ever since it took the mantle of Christ's calling, tried to push against the pricks . This high road not only the road less travelled but the road that appears to be all uphill. Naturally a lazy thinking and lazing acting generation  find the Dalek solution very attractive . What solution will work in our failing democracies ?
Why care ? 
Why care then ?  Let's examine what might be the opposition . "We all die and its much more efficient to let the unfit fall by the wayside.  Is it not a form of kindness to let the aged and infirm go free? Why not let the strong win over the weak. Surely its  only natural to let the new god of our age Nature take over. ? "I  don't have any stock answers here , but just for the moment, let me ask you to think of Chesterton's line that "Nature is not our mother but our Sister."

Lets face it . Now is not he time for either you or me to discuss this enormous landslide in our thinking in our time  . We don't have time  here to explore the  huge number of the many mind  and faith and habit  games that  must have helped us stay on the once beautiful highway of care we all started on .

Half baked concerns and half baked solutions
We know that all caring costs and if that cost is increasingly being born by taxes,  it may now be unsustainable .We know some book keepers in charge can only see columns . I pray for the day when all economists and the ecologically educated allow for externalities on nearly every line and column.
The forces against us 
We also know that caring may not make sense to a large group lot of people who have tried and failed in some way in some areas. We know that the very simple thought of more immigrants grows the ranks  of the cynics as it seems to bring forward the  most efficent of all solutions ; remove the problem  the Dalek solution . We oldies know from our own  grief at losing things that the ranks of cynics grow each day with our ageing mates in the ageing population  of the West. The cynics ranks grow with the many indulged persons whose own ideas of caring for themselves has failed ( their blinkered self centered ideas of ecology, role and place . We all seem to have a lot to learn about our own place of refuge , let alone the place of refuge for others .   
Lots to think about . Lots to think more deeply and clearly about. Where are our educational institutions on this ? 

A basis for hope?  I hope for  a day when the future is seen , not in simple self centered terms, but in more fully ecological terms 

Where to from here  TODAY ? 
Now is not the time for depressing news. Now is the time to celebrate the arrival of a movement that restores some of the genuinely productive substance that  still makes caring that grand calling.: We might not talk about them enough but for me there are lots of hints of lots of the externalities that the merely efficient mind might hit us over the head with.

Congratulations :   We are back on the highway ( at least in mindscape terms) and , yes we might even give our children back the hope them denied by the careless dilatants , skeptics and cynics; the recruiting sergeants ( Chesterton ) who  lost their legs and have never seen, or have forgotten,  the view from the top. 
Personally 
I am going along to my first ARC  conference in February . here are just a few things I hope will come up for discussion -     Love to catch up with anyone who is interested in discussing these broad challenges as they might be addressed by ARC while we are in London in the third week of February (or on Net )
If you want to add any questions and concerns please join in here on Blogger 

I have updated my profile  Look at it here  . 

 

Sorry BUT some of you MUST move out of the way. WE pay you to get it right first time.

And not stalling on what's required to make a decision. Your office is fully connected - ours isn't.
If you say you don't have some information to make a decision, please make sure you haven't lost a file, a contact or a guideline . a precedent
YOU are qualified to make decisions, just make them- even if you qualify them and make sure you do them in a timely manner (depending on the situation) no procrastination. 
In the future, you may be rewarded for how few delays, consultancies and referrals you feel you had to make to persons who remain unnamed and unaccountable for accountability and sustainability purposes. In case you have noticed,  its the planner's job to quickly and finally integrate the various concerns of others, so that sustainability decisions are made by you in a very timely manner. 


The otherwise most amazing King Canute was given a hard time because his own caution about just powerful he was,( was not)  was not matched by many of those who worked for him. The public service were not doing the planning job he expected them to do; to be practical realists who were confident to make real world decisions. 
Not only did he have an incompetent and inefficient public service He ALSO must have been a very wise leader because he knew his limitations. We pray to have more such leaders. and people who listen more carefully 

The courtiers of his day overrated their power to keep their economies going.  The mines which had made his Country rich were running short. 



BUT worse has come 
The courtiers of our day have often overrated their power and relied too much on their position instead of their ability to understand the complex ecologies of economy. 
Worse --modern leaders of Western democracies are elected on the basis of  highly inflated ideas of what new innovations and tecnology can do. Read Ellul and Whitehead

 Modern westerners  have let the idea of progress and experimentation allow them and their agents to go exploring (and wasting taxes) in fields where even courageous old scientists would not ever go . This is wrong and must be stopped by an insistence on competency in research and action spending. 

Sound hope is one thing we can sometimes find with competent leaders, but false hope is much more common and more appealing to many. 
In Australia in Nov 2024, Greenlabor  expects our homes to run on forms of battery power than have not even been invented yet.

Members of these lightheaded parties don't know that yet, but a lack of big picture knowledge and ground truthing is not uncommon amongst them.

Careless experimentation and the licensing to do it so must be stopped in favor of you making the best decision you can -When it comes to risk management that is all we expect. .   

The Republican mandate  USA 
WE wish them the best, but we pray they will listen to those who know HOW to care properly.
Otherwise,  all these great and good intentions will come to nothing; They can, by throwing the baby out with the dirt in the bathwater, be worse. read Ellul 






Those of us who really know how to care have seen it all before.
The wannabes see the waste, but that's not new; any fool can see THE PROBLEM .

What wannabes often cannot see is that they do not see the SOLUTION. That missing ingredient and recipe require  a fair bit of HOW.  Ineffective ways of how where and why of public process can litter modern risk management  with huge waste (time and resources ).   
The public service is full of talk of good intentions and that is one of its biggest hidden handicaps .We must be effective carers if we are to be paid. 

Talk is not enough , so those who real record is "not on the ground "should be questioned,
Those who can't immediately make a decision on the ground should also be questioned.

The process of sound reform 
Before the weed pulling occurs though , the whole place should be harvested to find what is still good inside the system.  
The careless wannabes see the problem so clearly that they are motivated only to action, The not so wise go where the angels fear to thread ( because they are ignorant of the complexity of decision making in care work) ,I f leaders are there only as agents of new change, they should not be there.

Really effective care takes years to learn and perpetuate; its a profession based not only on sound education BUT sound application. With the new ideas generation at the doorstep,  its the mature stable and sustainable work methods (respect for EFFECTIVE application and experience ) that must be recognized first. Care focused on Growth is also complex and multi faceted , Sometimes pillows sometimes pain.  Proper performance assessment  must weigh heavily  on time in the job.

 
What wannabes often can't see is that they cannot even see what to do about the problem. WHAT WHERE  WHEN   They not only will take too long, but on their own they never get there. 

If by OUR GREAT GOOD FORTUNE they admit they don't new know what to do about the problem,  those of us who have learnt exactly HOW to care,  have a chance to survive, "Move out of the way, you are taking too long", Real carers are efficient machines,  but it doesn't take much to wear them out .    Even a trainee needs someone to correct him, Proper performance assessment  must weigh heavily  on time in the job.This can be rare in some sectors. Look for that and high loss rate. 

If the incumbents act too quickly or without a view to effective long term reform,  the star players that The Trump collective want in the system will soon be gone. ;   they may well be gone anyway.

 A good player 's team might already exist somewhere - go find it . Those who always run meetings, contracts and data collection should always be questioned.  Trust should be a test for performance - not a pile of stats .  
The capables have been in hiding for years, so the good ones will take some finding and reenergizing ( because caring is still hard work,  even if you know how to do it yourself.)  Really short staffed happens because the real work is hard and efficiency only focus will kill incentive .. 

We all need to see how we all would quit if the incompetent person is in charge , "
Find those people  and nail them!
In order to reduce the natural tendency for incompetence to take charge in the public service, we need to know what we all  can do to stop that. Some of the departments are big,  but making them smaller and more accountable regionally and close to need areas will be pleasing and more sustainable for many. Lots more to consider.  
 

Bloated empires and corruption - it's all happened before and it could happen again - especially with the pressure of public debt and the  very high risk of death bleeding and complete failure in the caring professions.  
Keep in touch here 

Who really cares ?

 
Up until yesterday ( When Trump won the Presidential election ) one could have thought WW3 was  about which party in the USA really cares.
The Democrats wanted us to believe the devil incarnate would allow the rich to ride roughshod over the poor 
while many Republicans appeared to want no real King but one clumsy Caesar .



I agree with many that its ALL very scary.
Democracies are clearly at great risk because for all intents and purposes ( AC Grayling)  good leaders are crushed , the idiots and children appear on our screens and the process is precarious and ineffective.  
According to Ellul, what doesn't work in technological society gets thrown out.
And all of us Concerned for Responsible Citizenship know things can get worse not better with the reactionary and childish drivel that is thrown at us by the wannabes, the desperate elites and screen idols.   
 
Maybe only Jung and a few more objective persons should have the last word because both major parties ( same here in Australia) are rich and

---- the real problem is we still don't know how to help the poor ,(eg homes work and freedom to speak and do ); the real problem is we still don't know how to care and we ,because clearly many do not really give a stuff about anyone else, don't really know who really cares ( big picture ecology ) 

I am not going to add to the simmering heat by discussing the matter too much further except to say that I wish the Republicans the best because they 

1. have admitted to the problem outlined. Confession makes the best start. 
2. have a team who talk credibly to being more effective and efficient in use of taxes 
3. build their case for a war against the current high levels of incompetency by making competency the competitive focus 
4. have reminded us that the greatest evil (eg having too many people living as complete dependents  on the tax take ) has been done and is often still done in the name of the best intention ( eg bloated public service ) 
5. talk about courage which is the thing that can overcome the inertia of incompetence 
6. have a track record in actually doing something productive and not hiding behind a life of failure in being able to invest their own money and decision making wisely
7. aren't afraid to say with both Nietzsche and Jung that the danger of all dangers is that we let our minds become our own worst enemies and poorest defense.
8. give us some concrete hope for a future based not on emotion, but on sound discipline of the mind and thoughts for our life together . 
   
   
   That might be enough for now. 

The peasants have reason to be revolting

 You may think that the rural purges of Stalinist Russia ,Communist China, Rwanda, Serbia,Sudan  and Cambodia were really really bad, but the demon that drove them has not left us. 
There are still tyrants who are taking over land that is not theirs (and they are not just  in northern Europe ) These tyrants are all occupying positions of authority over land they do not own in England , Australia, Europe and America. 

The new owners in the West take over in much more subtle ways than the above . They  even change the ownership balance to prevent 'ownership: concepts like the leaders did when they rid Europe of serfs .
.
These arrogant newcomers assume authority over our land management decisions . They  get away with it because they do it so nicely and with all the justification of their idea that our/your world is in danger. They claim their territory in the name of science even though they don't practice science properly

Those of us online here question deeply what they really know and beyond that , whether their medicine will work even on the sores they identify, AS practical real world risk takers who KNOW the complexity of ecosystem protection and how to manage them , we simply do not accept their "the last word "on risk and eco management, as the way forward. We need to stop the wasted bleeding and get some healing; some more resilience discussions and how to find it conversations and legs on the ground .

The huge dilemma farmers have always managed in trying to look after all the animals on their land is symbolized for me in this mature lamb still getting milk from its mother. I have a blog on childrenincharge

The mature mothers and fathers looking on would scratch their heads , if they could,

at such behavior.

What we are calling for   - is sound fully scientific management of the spaces.

Men can live with nature and the new places provided we keep our demands within the ecological limits.  Censure, dependency  and indulgence is not right when a proper balance can restore resilient and sustainable order.  

WE do not accept the simple answer is" no more  harvesting of  life at a mature age" ( Which is not a cop out , but a part answer to freedom from the pain of life ; it's inevitable grief separation and death ) WE  want freedom of the immediate carer and his community to make care filled decisions; and for them and us to enjoy, instead of just grief and pain, the joy of providing food, caring for their ecosystems and seeing new life grow safely within them.  

You should be aware that

unless Westerners turn much of their investment money that they currently spend on researching and reducing their fears (and forgetting about helping produce resilience using known science), the noise from the fearmongers, and the new fiddlers around the edge of the fears, will dominate. 

Because most of the current research is party politically driven and reactionary it cannot be expected to be productive. That means whatever happens our children  will have less productive surplus based investment opportunities than we have had.

The trouble with dams

Maybe Bob Brown was right about one thing. That is that - it's possible to have too many dams. 
Trouble is, the one good point he made seems to have stopped him realizing that he is still as silly , reactive and as ignorant as most of us; He has not shown any wisdom by resisting the trend in our age to give all dams a bad name.





Worse, as a movement. like so many baby Greens shoots, they think they know enough to work in the court of human beings when their misanthropy, immaturity, pride and ignorance will only ever create war with the deep truths of nature. And their pride continues to stand in the road of those who know how its profound chemistry and physics must be studied and respected first. 
They too of course, like most of us, forget the toughest and most evil beast of all; human nature itself.
Jung said the only remaining problem for man is man himself.
Ellul ( The Technological Society) said that technology is not the problem, but our worship of it is.    

THE FLOODS OF early 2020's
Not one of our polys have never known what they are doing here with wonderful water, but they keep fiddling and meddling with flows, walls and gates. Finally in 2020's, God had the last say and allowed the horse to bolt in its naturally productive time honored way.  
Yet nobody, with this decisive dramatic truth being exposed, is now happy.
Nobody is now sure whether they want rejuvenation when it's at the cost of huge floods, silt and bedload movement, but that is exactly what is needed to reset the redgum and the other seeds in the wetlands.

Make up your minds people .  Nature says one thing and you should listen first to it .but then ,

Men, made in the image of the Creator may say another . 
Our dam creations have, for the first time in decades, played their noninterventionist role by just being pools in the stream flow. Our gates were never going to be opened enough to even create the Environmental Pissing Flows planned by Burke and other burk's, so the huge events needed to get wetlands to rejuvenate, meant the storages stayed close to full till this summer,
Naturally, because of the perversity of men's minds and the predictability of natural forces, these very useful drought, irrigation, power and flood detention storages remain close to full because no one dares to create the sort of flood, bed loads and silt deposition that upsets those riverside visitors who haven't yet lived there long enough to know how to really live with and respect nature. 

Hypocrites who refuse to act for the long term, but will pretend they care,

What a complete twat is Mr Murray Watt--  the new Labor man who wants to play the good shepherd.  He needs to go read the Bible .  He would then realize that the good shepherd KNOWS sheep . 

Federal Labor want to score some points with their own worry warriors in the city.  

They think that old age animals with no teeth (to get a feed in the paddock  ) should not go on well fed cruises where they finally get fat .
The worriers know this , the aged might lie down and not get up  just like they would if they were left to starve in the paddock with younger sheep with better teeth.

Labor haven't learnt anything since Ludwig saved the world

.... and neither have the press 
The sentimentalists want to end the live sheep trade. 

Albo is getting desperate and we in the country can all see the shallowness of his preoccupations . He can't visit the NT ,but he can go to Sandiland's wedding 

Show some respect for farmers, the sheep and vets and make sure they have a good trip !
More of the story here 

What Watts and Marles and his mates have done this week is just to try and stay in power --- to sound caring!
These desperadoes know to press the pain button will get them votes. 
 The only criteria a good conservationist and any realistic adult knows is". Will the pain last?"
If its short term gain at the expense of long term...... its wrong 
Greenlabor are desperate enough to shore up their sinking sentimentally laden ship with an appeal to care for the sheep.
If only they were intelligent and strong enough sheep to really stand up for them 
Richard Marles and Murray Watt don't even know the truth "That it takes one to know one " 




Now this man cares for his sheep . notice how closely the young animals graze 



Posted today 

To Minister Murray Watts 

I understand you are about to deny my parents and grandparents their well earned pension and overseas  cruise, complete with the best food and water they will ever taste.. 

You are clearly blind and sentimental twats who deny death  and are happy to let our dear ones starve;Desperately looking for some simple self righteous sentimental appeal to the masses that is as thin as your understanding of tough old nature.  

You clearly  don't realize that without their teeth they will slowly starve here in the paddock with us and any discomfort you think they suffer is overstated  because like you , the overly worried and over protected, being fed and watered and having a place to lie down is nearly everything. .

You said and did nothing when hundreds of thousands of kangaroos  died of starvation all across Australia a few years ago because you know not how to care .   

On behalf of the family    

Hugh Sheep 

signed also by the farmer who they trust and are walking towards 

To call your right to deny our fun a mandate is to show yourself as ignorant and arrogant  as the Agricultural ministers before you ,
A correspondent suggests that the Labor party are delusional to think 1/3 of the vote is a MANDATE 

IF YOU STILL HAVEN"T GOT IT - mature sheep will starve in the paddock BECAUSE the shorter grass is obtained by younger sheep,  The same thing happens to all animals who live in the savannah,
------by allowing this closure you are not HONORING FARMERS VETS and INDUSTRY 

The greatest evil in protecting the earth is NOW done in the name of the best intention of saving it .

 Edmund Burke's great quote could be refined for our age in a form that should shock both conservatives and progressives alike  - in May 2020 we have never seen such a mockery of the competence required to  work  well with nature .The hardest management job we  and our children will face is presumed to be in the hands of polys  and their use of our ever diminishing tax basis  Thinking is no longer required .   

Despite the gigantic budget of Australian governments spent in the name of the environment, there has never been so few independent well trained scientists to ensure the incentives and cutting are done well enough to produce a sustainable result. The wastage on treeplanting and other tokens ad old tech in previous decades alone sets the scene for this latest nonsense that governments NOW know what is needed.   
 
The greatest evil in protecting the earth is NOW done in the name of best intention of saving it .
. 
I could make a long list
 but let me just remind you that government's have neevr been so carless with their cutting.

The completely incompetent Albanese government legislates to allow bureaucrats and lawyers to make decisions solely on the basis of how they affect our production of carbon dioxide..
Instead of spelling out actions,  his completely woke lot trust that the magic formulae of 43 % will work magic . It won't work and all those who try to work with such indecision and incompetence  will be corrupted b their ineffectiveness. 

I am in too much grief over this totally unscientific approach to resource management to say any more Please ask questions /