The illusion of strength

 For those of us who follow the Master,  the idea that "we are winning the war" is quite real,  but it is seldom something we see day to day in the world around us. 

We, like all those who see their causes apparently failing,  can get fanatical easily .
Sorry about that when it happens . 

But while  a downturn can get to us,  our master looks after us and we learn to see and keep investing in the future   " using That hideous strength " .

.A down turn is hard work .But low ebbs are where the vision of  ultimate success is often where the outcome is most concrete  and sustainable  What also sustains us, is that we learn form experience  that the picture we have  of things going the right way is often just that -- an illusion . 
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No so those whose god is their popularity,  like the Pirate Fitzimmons . Turnbull and Phillip Adams and sadly many who hide in what was once our ABC .
The  charm of the rebel starts to wear thin when the childishness of the games they play become obvious to others .
When media heavies  confuse popularity with democracy for example
,When the guru knows everything 
When someone like Flannery dares to open his mouth on every subject he wants and the ABC broadcast it :When Adams trots out every turnup as his own creation .
When  our supposedly intellectual ABC don't question  why Adam Bandt is controlling the agenda of Parliament .    
When the same old same olds keep being trotted out to drum up support for their expensive columns of hot air .Q&A's  total hypocrisy became real to many as it kept moving the targets each few minutes.

Real passions are driven by more than the bank and book accounts ......and last longer.   

As in all ages where dilatants have the stage , most of us are too busy achieving things to let  the  shallow speculation of how things work take up out time . Read Valclav Smil 

When the traitors  ships start to sink , any illusion   that the captain actually has a crew is soon shown if you note all the silence as the rats abandon  the rotting hull .


The Creator of habitats doesn't live in a particular hull and encourages us to live the same : sail the high seas with gay abandon and a faith that says the world is round and the forces can  work for good . 



You may see the ship sinking but we know that you are only seeing a down turn in mere numbers and dramatic highlights. Do fanatics lose sight of what a highlight really looks like?- they certainly have lost sight of how to get there!

The cyclic is a more reliable basis for hope than the linear .

Progressives are their own worst enemies - going too hard in one direction and setting themselves up for overreach .Like the  little kids they often are , they  are impatient to go somewhere and don't care enough about how quickly they can waste their life in quick fixes that don't work.If they are adults they still have to go back to classes they have skipped and which would have helped them be more successful in their latest foray  . 
Those of us who have achieved things need to remind each other of just how many turns there are in the road .If we don't do that, and teach our children about slowing down,  reading  the signposts and making the tough choices ,  the crashes along the way will grow .

Our situation post election 2022 in Australia with progressives advocating a rocket ride to 46% is completely mad and childish.

 All thinking adults  want the reconciliation with fossil fuel supply,  but some of us know you can't forge the way forward .  Many things and much pain  including climbing costs of resources will play a bigger in this reconciliation than mere laws and the the irrational desires to not study previous failures ( eg Carbon tax)  assuage guilt and unrealistic attempts  to stop greed.  

Getting progress is not a matter of speed or even direction as the children have now stated  ( The truth is there are many ways to same end and the wooriers" end is nigh" scenarios are not ours ( inc SMIL)  . 
Anyone who is ever going to really make progress knows achievement comes by knowing the route ,the connections , the distractions --  the HOW  as  Vaclav Smil ( HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS) points out so well in his new book .Most progressives  do not know this because they refuse to accept the discipline of walking . They see , like the children they often are , only the end point.   
  

You see , pointing the way is the pedantic child's way and we don't need the increasing numbers of children in Parliament as we ALL  go into what will be  a difficult transition . The adult thing is to remind each other that while the noisy children  will bang on about the end point , we all agree on the end point but need a strategy for each days journey , and it may not be a straight line ; and most importantly won't be achieved before they leave Parliament .
The childish  fights in the house now that they have done this will be hard for everyone to bear . 

If the truth be told , most westerners are not very successful in advancing solutions to complex problems  and show this in their cynicism about old ways ( they have tried -- in a sort of a way)and their vulnerability to new clothes salesmen.

The transition away from fossil fuels is a huge one but one that will need the very same precision ( not the smart arse cutting ) that has made the West great and which is often abandoned by the poor students of our day . . 
True respect for science incl science of economics &ecology is already absent and there is no way the paid off research institutions can ever recover http://ecomia.blogspot.com
30 years of Flannerys flaying around  on the ABC has been 30 years wasted and all we have is a generation of children lost to that institution's cynicism .  The Americans or someone in Asia maybe the first to revive an education system that works because we the reactionary west , sure can't . 

Progressives in the Green labor alliance are still ( August 2022) very  upbeat about the opportunities that being elected provides them for more action on climate change
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Stupidly, its progressives  silly shallow faith in being first off the starting blocks  and heading  for  simple meaningless  but tokenistic goals that increase the risk of failure by believing too much in the power of raw power ( a common enough fad of those who have never weilded it ) ---- Its the effectiveness of any action ( not the push factor or  a date and a %)that really matters.

This blind ambition is  stupid in the extreme  when its clear these leaders have no idea of  the critical elements of energy and how it powers our economy .   
Its all very well to talk sustainability but just a joke if you don't know how to get it .  The  oldies  keep talking about batteries and technologies yet to be proven, handcuffed by bad mouthing coal and nuclear . tied up completeley by making mad competing nonsense assumptions about quickly we can all run .  Bankruptcy is the end result of such a process. 
Smil makes the critical  point that we  do need to go there in haste ,  but shows how mad it is to set goals and think its all political and not economic ( eg the price of fuel  being a more efficient  allocator of resources than ANY government policy . So whose pushing and   what cerd do they have ? 

This phenomenon not lost on those of us who know the cycle of impotence( let alone the cycle of radiation  physics which makes us laugh at the mere worship of the invisible --wind and hot air)  .and the end stages of fanaticism .Many of us who know how to manage real world resources,  know the real cost of fanaticism is going to be in a huge unnecessary degradation  of those resources. 

Nothing can touch you for a while  because even  if you don't know what you are actually going to do, you DO have the power to change policy direction and keep the daily media  for new angles happy . The majority of the public will often see all his movement as progress , as they have dome with Mr Andrews clear ability to get ahead of  his own dogs and dodges  and stop them from bighting him on the behind.
This powerful effectiveness o this wonderful (if short trem gain )phenomenon is   not seen by most people who are  used to  being served  some  sweet newness treat each day .

lets face it everyone on the screen is playing the game . What they don't know,  but the panel at  Gruen  know is---- just who is paying