While staying in London’s Earls Court recently we stopped in a few times at the local Marks and Spencer Food to pick up supplies. Apart from how cold it was inside, we appreciated the way the food was presented …  and it made we wonder about our supermarkets in Australia.

My hunch that we are being cheated was confirmed when I read this months Monocle issue on food. A myriad of exemplary food retailers from all corners of the globe are featured, including some types that don’t typically feature in a discussion on the future of healthy food such as a Japanese burger chain and middle eastern supermarkets. Australia didn’t rate a mention except for the following:

“It’s not all good news. On our frequent visits to Australia we have often wondered how a nation that has one of the best restaurant cultures in the world has some of the most boring supermarkets: Coles is like a 1970s throughback.” A column then slams the impact of the Coles / Woolworths duopoly.

For an amateur foody like me, it’s an embarrassment. Sure there are alternatives, in fact Monocle uses a stat. indicating that 30% of us (in Australia) never go into supermarkets. We get meat, fish and some fruit and veg from the Vic markets once a week and we pick up supplies at our local strip regularly, especially on the weekend. We are lucky to have a local bakery, fruit and veg, Indian supermarket and an IGA. But with essentially six adults to feed it’s hard to avoid the big supermarkets.

But apart from the pricing dimension, most of don’t realise we are being robbed of best practice food retailing, that includes transparency in the supply chain as well as the way it is presented to us. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Food is one of those big issues, around which there will need to be change on a global scale. Colin Tudge spoke about some of the issues recently at the Do Lectures. You can listen to his talk here. Sometimes, it seems we are happy just sticking our heads in the sand and pretending everything is OK.

In Melbourne, our news diet of late has featured the Occupy Melbourne protests, spawned by the Walls Street occupation. Similar gatherings are now in 900 cities around the world. Beyond the predictable media that loves to capture the antics of dreadlocked hooligans, those I’ve spoken to talk about intense and serious discussions about aspects of our society that are broken. They speak of a hunch that ‘things are not quite right’ and believe that the only way in which we can begin to develop systemic solutions is to talk, with different players around the [figurative] table. Isn’t that what a city square is supposed to be for Mr Doyle?

If, in our immediate lives and spheres of influence we are tracking along just-dandy-thank-you-very-much, then talk of ‘things being not quite right’ sounds a bit alien. But if all of us were to lift our eyes and ask questions about the long term impact of our choices and engage in genuine curiosity about what life is like for all sectors in our communities, then I suspect we would be less inclined to wish these agitators would go away. Improving the way food is produced and sold to us in Australia is just one issue for which there appears little political appetite.

Many years ago someone told me that the reason they supported the NFP organisation I worked with was that they had had a bad experience with us. I do a double take, did I hear that correctly??? He went on to explain that he had come to base his life on the reality of paradoxes: you get more satisfaction from giving than getting; to truly own something you have to let it go; seeking acceptance from people actually drives them away, etc etc. He therefore found it liberating to be generous towards an organisation that hadn’t treated him well. Hmmmmm.

Paradox has been deeply informative for my own view of the world. In particular, I accept that apparently contradictory ideas, when held together, can offer insight and wisdom that are denied us when we hold dogmatically to a particular perspective, irrespective of its apparent right-ness.

One of the things I appreciate about the way David, Andy and the team designed the Do Lectures (www.dolectures.com) in Wales this year was the bringing together of things that rarely end up in the same space.

• An international gathering of acclaimed achievers, sharing their stories while being accommodated in tents (not hotels). Eliminates the pretention that typically accompanies such events when you are bunking down in sleeping bags and lining up for simple but exception food with enamel plates.
• CEOs, activists, film-makers, inventors, adventurers, entrepreneurs … Do-ers of all kinds sharing the microphone.
• An event that unashamedly showcases a smart little country (Wales), while being genuinely international.
• High tech threads (via speaker selection and social media savvy) and earthy, high touch culture.
• … and the list could go on.

To illustrate this, in one session we heard from Zach Smith (co-founder of Makerbot industries http://www.makerbot.com/ – a 3D printing device likely to be part of the manufacturing revolution) and designer and photographer Nick Hand who rode his push bike around the coast of the UK seeking out and interviewing artisans along the way (http://www.dolectures.com/lectures/why-we-need-to-celebrate-craftsman/ ). The question about which approach, high-tech localised manufacturing or the super skilled handcrafts of the artisans is ‘better’ misses the opportunity to retain the best of the past and embrace the future by holding both stories together in tension.

Our world is in constant flux. Wise people remind us that the thinking required to solve today’s challenges cannot be the same thinking that created the challenges in the first place. When I caught up with fellow Do-participants Ross (@RossHill), Sam (@sambe11) and Derek (@dwinter) last week we talked about the difference in approach when the motivation is not so much to ‘save the world’ but to get on with creating a world with the attributes we understand as good. The Do Lectures, like many other gatherings these days, is part of a groundswell that is not just imagining what a healthy 21^st world is like, but is already living it. This is not happening by reacting against the dominant systems, but by just getting on and doing, believing that the intuitive innovation and resilience of the human spirit will create pockets of life and energy that grow organically.

Haven’t been as inspired by a group of people collectively and individually for a long time.