My apologies that the link in the previous post was broken – thanks Ross for the note  … if you are interested try http://www.duthie.net.au/

Some readers of this blog will know that Maria and I plan to see some of this great land before we get too old. Now that our kids are getting older and more independant, we have joined the congregation of grey nomads on the highways and in the caravan parks. For us, its not retirement. Its not even purely a holiday. Its more about a privileged experiment with learning to live in a slower, mobile, non-urban routine.

If you are interested, we will be blogging over the next couple of months on our yurting site; www.duthie.net.au

This blog will be on leave until I’m back in urban mode.

my breakfast view

In the scheme of things, my knowledge and experience is essentially zero. I am having a slow breakfast at the hotel which has been my second home this year in Port Moresby (POM). I look around the tables at the familiar mix of people; ex-pats, some who seem to literally live here, others here for a few days, local professionals including a colleague from PNGSDP, landowners who cut their own path through the a western style hotel ….

So many conversations with people spiral back to exclamatory comments about the security, the lack of basic functionality and the myriad of fascinating social realities that obscure the view of the so called ‘real PNG’ from people like me. You leave this place feeling like you’ve never actually been here. I got in the lift one day in the hotel and a total stranger said out loud, “Why am I in jail, I’ve done nothing wrong?”

Just one experience can change everything. I was talking yesterday with a permanent expat resident, and he was relaying the story of how some people downplay the security risk. He commented how that all changes when they experience violence.

Our view of the world (every event, relationship, thing, place, philosophy, ….) is totally shaped by what we understand based on our experiences. This is both legitimate and nothing. It is legitimate because it’s all we have. And, let’s face it, I know stacks of stuff, I’ve had 45 years of sucking in knowledge and experience. I’d be a psychological wreck if I didn’t have confidence in my view of the world.

It is nothing because there are an infinite number of ‘experience cocktails’  that interpret reality. Everyone, from every social reality; royalty, criminals, marginalised, centred, every scenario, sees their world through their complex baggage of personality and experiences. And then there are a near infinite number of places and cultures to be experienced. In the scheme of things I know nothing. About anything.

This is not just a size thing. For example, we could argue that in the extraordinary size of the universe where the numbers of zeros become meaningless, the earth we live on is nothing. And it is everything. This is different than what I mean, because we know that the earth is unique in its capacity to cultivate life. So there is an objective specialness about the earth. The metaphor would be true to what I am trying to say if there were millions of earths. From the perspective of those that live on them, their world is everything. In the scheme of things they know virtually nothing about everything there is to know.

How do we hold the legitimacy and the relative nothingness of our perspectives together? I think by humility. We can argue strongly for our view. We can ensure our knowledge and experience adds value. We must back ourselves and our judgements when the call is ours to make.

But we recognise that wisdom comes not from the cleverness of an argument for a particular perspective but from the ability to account for different ones. We will always hold and offer our views lightly; they are not objective reality, they are our view of reality. This mix of strong conviction and openness to other views is a rare attribute. In my view, it will be a key one for leaders to navigate the complexities of the world in which we now find ourselves.

I was privileged to be among the 150 people at Trampoline II on Saturday. Trampoline is an unconference … no agendas are set before the start, it is simply an opportunity for people to talk and listen to each other on the broad theme of ‘what I find interesting in the world’. The organising framework is based loosely on how Open Space Technology operates. It also borrows from Barcamps.

a shot from the first trampline earlier in the year

I loved hearing about ‘edge theory’, learning how to be funny from a professional comedian, listening to some intelligent commentary on intergenerational learning, thinking about how simplistically we have used computers in education … and overall loved the generosity and energetic dynamic that Pat, Steve and Mel facilitated. You guys are legends.

The day left me with apparently conflicting reflections. One the one hand there is nothing new under the sun. The energy and passion of (mostly young) people who are seeking to cultivate a better world will always be.

But every season brings new opportunities and on the other hand there is a compelling argument that the shifts we are experiencing now, with the perfect storm precipitated by climate change and evolving economic systems will bring genuine revolution.

I wonder about leadership. I looked around the room and loved the spirit. But energy, passion, intelligence and vision is not enough. I am one of those who thinks that personal character makes the difference between being a frustrated, the-world-owes-me-something type and those that are able to leave their mark. And personal character is marked not by cleverness or opportunism. It is forged through perseverance in suffering, discipline and intentional humility. It comes from a well formed view of the meaning of life, one that enables us to live in service of a cause bigger than ourselves. That’s what I reckon anyway.

My experience on Saturday gives me hope. Scattered among the brilliance and vision was the right stuff … I look forward to the future if it can be shaped by people like some of those at Trampoline.

The bloke two seats away (there was a spare between us) leaned across, tapped his watch and said; “Its 5 o’clock, you can stop reading now.” I was reading a Report called Prosperity Without Growth, the economics was doing my head in, but it is also about the lifestyles we are addicted to. So there I was, on a plane for the 2^nd of 4 times in a two day period, having just hosted a meeting about business and environmental sustainability. Oh to be free of compromises and hypocrisy.

Today I join thousands of other bloggers around the world in discussing Climate Change. www.blogactionday.org The encounter with my fellow passenger raises (at least) two interesting questions for me. What permission do we have to call each other on unsustainable practices? And how do we make judgements about our own hypocrisy?

What’s the relationship between climate change and so called work life balance? Both are related to healthy and sustainable living. Most people I know would say they struggle with so called work life balance. I think the real issue though is not about balance, it is about integrity. Integrity is about making sure the way we behave is aligned with what we say is important. If the people I love the most really are the most important thing, then my behaviour should demonstrate that; now – not in 10 years when I’ve managed to ‘free up’ some time. Too late then. So the problem is not that I work too much, it is that I haven’t cultivated a compelling life outside work.

The bloke in 21D might have thought I was overdoing it (with my heavy reading agenda on the plane while he sips his complementary red). I knew I had some activity planned for the rest of the week that tapped into other passions beside work. But I love that he called me on it. I hope desperately that society will shift in ways called for in the Prosperity Without Progress Report so that being addicted to work will become socially unacceptable, not as a regressive prohibition, but because it reflects an absence of other healthy stuff that cannot coexist with it. And it will be OK to dob in a workaholic.

The problem most of us have, I think, with changing our behaviour so we are part of the solution to damaging climate change, is that we are addicted to an unconstrained-carbon-lifestyle. We are carbon-aholics, without even knowing it, or caring. I think the solution to workaholism is not to coach ourselves to ‘work less’, it is to develop passions that compel us to stop work. In the same way, as carbon-aholics, we must change our view of the world so that we learn to appreciate, like and even love activity that is part of the solution.

For example, we need to learn to love buying local food so we do not perpetuate unsustainability of ‘food miles’, or we need to learn to love riding our bikes whenever possible, or we need to appreciate the discipline associated with turning appliances off, or we need to reset our idea of holidaying to exclude air travel.

We will move to a healthy and progressive carbon-constrained economy via action at all levels of society. As much as it is up to business (shifting the economy) and government (legislative incentive), it is also clearly up to each of us to do our little bit. I hope you can develop an appreciation of some behaviours and lifestyle options that provide incentive to give up some carbon.