Yes Brian,while we have a society and economic system in which Growth At Any Cost has the status of a sanctified religion then we are going to see all sorts of disastrous results,some of which you describe.

There needs to be more Australians taking a clear eyed and hard headed look at where we have been,what we are now and where we are likely to be if continue on this trajectory.

A good place to start is the population issue which is at the base of most problems.If we continue to pack more people into a finite and fragile Australia where are we going? I suggest - more degenerate people,more dysfunctional lifestyles,more degraded environment and much less chance of a sane and sustainable nation.

Is this is what the likes of Rudd want with their "vision" of a "Big Australia"? - more like a nightmare.

Yes!

One of the best books written on this topic, or how this situation came to be, was/is The American Replacement of Nature by William Irwin Thompson.

Indeed his work altogether is essential reading if one wants to understand where the world is at altogether, and how we got to here.

Of course the work of Thompson is too "far out" to be acceptable in either the academy or in the circles of people who write and talk about the situation of the world, and how we got to here.

Nope, I'll be the difficult one. Brian, just before you race off to collect your humanitarian award consider this: what do people want? Do they want shopping malls or do they want to commune with the bush? The answer is that mostly they want shopping malls. This is sad I agree but there it is. The bush is the place where they go in their four wheel drives. The fact that the tree went missing to build a mall car park is also sad but people wanted a mall and there are other trees out there.. Heartless? Perhaps. However, overwhelmingly people want a balance that includes malls and some preservation, but preservation away from their homes.
If you seek to confront us then ask yourself this difficult, confronting question. You mention three indigenous girls at the beginning of the article. What was the status of women in pre-contact indigenous society and what was their likely fate?

By saying "There are three indigenous girls walking and scrambling along the shores of Botany Bay. They are seeking something tasty to add the tribe’s dinner for that night." you paint a very rosy and peaceful picture of what life for the typical aborigine was like before whiteman came. However, in reality things weren't as serene as you make out. For example, in tribes around where I come from (Mt Isa, Queensland) the children were quite likely to be hunting down their cousins as a food source (ie: the Kalkadoons, like many aboriginal tribes, were cannibalistic). Even tribes that weren't cannibalistic were still very likey to be at constant war/conflict with their neighbouring tribes. A typical aborigine was lucky to die of old age-- many died premature painful deaths from fighting injuries, injuries caused by their lifestyle (such as snake bites), poor health due to bad diet, infections from cuts and broken bones and starvation.
So perhaps whiteman and his distance from "nature" isn't so bad after all?

lovely philosophical piece, brian - it brought tears to my eyes.

bill mckibben's 'the end of nature'' is another very good book - focussing on our species' duty of care, as custodians of what is left of nature on this planet, now that we have tamed the wilderness.

tony kevin

Hang on a while, I'll just rewind Brian's film, & have another look without the rose coloured glasses.

What we find now is 3 dirty, hungry, lice infested girls, desperately searching for food, any food. The men have been slack. They haven't burned the scrub for too lomg, & it's far too thick for hunting. No one has been able to find any larger game for a while, & the whole tribe's hungry.

Now the wet season makes the foraging harder, & it's hard to get a scrub fire going with everything wet. It's going to be a while with flat bellies.

Fast forward to Miranda years later. That bl00dy gum tree, that they tried to save has just dropped another huge branch. Dangerous damn thing, like most old ones, does it all the time. This time the tree surgeon has said it's too far gone. If we don't get rid of it, it will kill someone.

A different picture, probably a little closer to real life.

Wouldn't it be loverly, [that song again], if these dreamers just saw the facts, & called it as it really is, or was, as the case may be.

I don't like cities either, that's why I don't live in one. However, I have enough sense to know that they offer the easiest, most comfortable living for the majority of people.

If only they would stop painting idyllic pictures on a bush landscape, which would starve most of them to death, quite quickly, if it hadn't killed them in an accident, first.

Oh, & Brian, yes keeping busy is sure to be good for you, but try changing what you are doing old mate. What ever it is you are up to is not good for you. It's giving you hallucinations.

Thoughtful piece.

We are moving too far away from nature. Will future generation's only contact with nature be digital - linked only to movies like Avatar and computer games. Probably won't get that far - we are all becoming aware of this phenomonen and many people are moving back to the earth even if it is only in their backyard vegie patches. There is a resurgence of interest on TV about alternative lifestyles, organics, biodynamics and home grown or locally produced food.

Some kids in American cities don't even know milk comes from a cow. IMO we are too focussed on growing a Big Australia we will have to keep knocking down wilderness to accommodate the needs of growing populations.

You don't have to necessarily think in terms of the noble savage or aspire to isolation like Thoreau to realise that we are moving away from nature and in the way humans are not only part of the natural environment but have great influence over it - not all of it good.

Good on you Brian. This was obviously heart felt. I think you're a romantic is the Wordsworth tradition. No problem there.

I think you could be right re less contact with nature but because there are more of us, and each one of us still has some contact with nature, making in total, more contact with nature than we've ever had before.

You're quite right though Brian. There are people who are living an Avatar life. They think they can play guitar like Hendrix by playing Guitar Hero on a video game. Many kids see nature as 'something to overcome' - which isn't the right attitude.

Philosophically, I’m with Brian. However, Curmudgeon makes a valid point.

The fact is that the average Australian is not connected to the land, despite all the myths; the material life, not nature, is the be all and end all for most Australians. We are materialists, pure and simple.

If we really cared about Australia, the environment and wilderness, we would not be voting for the same politicians that we do. Both major parties are big population proponents; they are in the grip of developers whose greed will never be satisfied. They would have housing and shopping centres on every scrap of land available if they could. The quietly disappearing minor parties no longer worry about the environment as they desperately try to stay relevant to the mainstream, having lost the battle for the environment. We need to start looking for an entirely new political/voting system.

There was a TV program last night advising that we ‘had to’ prepare for a further 20 million people this century; and some money-grubber had come up with a low priced, boxy house totally unsuited to the Australian climate. I have no problem with reasonably priced housing for existing Australians, but the cargo cult attitude of building them to attract more people is lunacy.

We do not ‘have to’ import another 20 million people to a country which is mostly uninhabitable because of its harsh climate. We do not “have to’ get more people because of that old chestnut, ‘ageing population’. There was chuntering on the above-mentioned TV program about a rising birth rate. Rubbish! The crazy increase in population is down to completely and utterly suicidal immigration. Immigration has gone berserk.

brian you come from the city and long for isolation and spirits or whatever, I came from a tiny community completely isolated - phone calls were difficult and expensive, the "plane" came once a day, when we were lucky, radio was relayed, badly from "down south". Living on an island in the South Pacific sounds idyllic, till you learn the Beatles music has come and almost gone when you hear of it, scant medical services, no new books at the library.

By the time I was in my teens I was completely fed up with being disconnected with the world, everything took so long to do, no conveniences at all.

I love the city, would not live anywhere else, it is all so connected and everything is available - it is wonderful and rich with life and culture.

I don't feel like I miss anything, I go talk tot he fig tree, the lemon, and lime trees and the Bay tree in the garden, and they reward my attention, with fruits - nature for the city person.

I imagine those girls would not have been in a nirvana, they would have been stressed about not coming back with enough food, of damaging the food before they got it back. About how others would treat them regardless of what they brought back. They would have been filthy, stunk of sweat and smoke, they had no culture of bathing in fresh water, soap was unknown to them and they would have been alive with parasites.

Try going out and living like that, it is a dream you admire, not reality.

Look, some of us are very very happy where we live and revel in civilization and its bounty.

I was thinking about Brian's piece and how Leigh has used it for an anti-population rant. Many of these quite beautiful articles are dragged through the sludge by the anti-people, anti-immigration, anti-capitalist, anti-humanist, anti-fun, Unsustainable UnPeople Depopulation lobby. I'm calling the anti-pops the 'Ants' from now on.

Cheryl,

Whatever you disagree with is not necessarily a 'rant'. You obviously don't read any of my posts as you call me anti-capitalist. How many times do I have to support capitalism to get through your thick head?

You can call "the anti-pops the 'Ants' from now on". I'm calling you an idiot! Your seem to be the sort of capitalist who doesn't have the brains to survive without a big population and tax payer aid.

Cheryl

I agree that Brian is a romantic in the Wordsworth tradition, but I disagree that this is harmless. His is not just a sentimental yearning to get back to nature but a fundamentally reactionary ideology that would unwind the material progress of the past 300 years AND the political progress – respect for the rights and autonomy of the individual – that accompanied it (and in my view, underpinned it).

Let’s unpack this stuff a little:
• a highly idealised and unrealistic view of “primitive” society
• an elitist contempt for his fellow humans and the lifestyles and values they choose, because we (though presumably, not him) are “mentally conditioned to make by those who create the market”
• virulent anti-materialism (“unbridled consumption”)
• a desire to make the world by imposing controls on the freedom of the rest of us to live as we like (we should not be permitted to eat “junk food”)
• paranoid technophobia (“new type of human brain evolving”)

This is a close cousin to the ideology of the Unabomber:

http://cyber.eserver.org/unabom.txt

... and it is deeply inimical to human freedom and welfare.

I stand corrected Rhian. Your profile actually puts me in mind of Leigh and the fundamentally unsound anti-pops. Leigh, I probably couldn't survive without the tax base. But neither could you mate.

You can call "the anti-pops the 'Ants' from now on". I'm calling you an idiot!

GOLD!

LOL, love your work, Leigh

Trees are beautiful natural creations which are appreciated by many and I'm sure we can get better at integrating nature into our urban environment in the future. But doesn't this article lack balance?

Oddly enough, while continuing to bemoan the advent of civilisation, most nature lovers refuse to move to the countryside where they can make friends with thousands of trees. Perhaps the benefits of civilisation are not being acknowledged by the author?

I'm sure Brian wants to be close to medical services,supermarkets and probably parking stations as well which is why he lives where he lives.

If you live in the City of course you will feel disconnected from nature but you should be cautious about believing your personal issues about urbanisation is evidence of a general malaise caused by the soulless march of Western decadence.

They're still there, old rpg, Leigh, it's a team. They barrack for each other. It's a male bonding club to see who can depopulate the earth first. It's a kind of schoolboy masturbation fantasy re Steve Biddup, Iron John, hairy chest, etc, etc.

I know Rhian wasn't thinking of the 'Ants'/anti-pops aka the desperate single men's club lead by Kanck and Coulter (there's a match!) but he nailed it on the head.

But having said that, I am romantic enough to appreciate Brian's contribution and I too miss seeing Aboriginal kids playing near the cliffs of Botany Bay. Hang on, I've never seen Aboriginal kids playing near Botany Bay. All those bloody jets!

You've got a dirty mouth on you Cheryl.

cheryl, I'm not anti-population, far from it, you have made that up.

I don't agree with the anti population or anti migrant stance, why would I, being 2nd generation Australia?

I did think Leigh's comment was funny, you called him and he pwned you.

Brian

In the carpark of a supermarket, down in the valley from my home, a young eucalyptus was planted in a thin median strip bordering the parking bays. The median strip is bright green - astro-turf glued to within a couple of centimetres of the sapling's trunk.

The tree is dying.

It is a spirit free zone.

There's always some benefit to be had from looking closely at what the process that we call "civilization" has created.

And whether viewed through Brian's rose-tinted bi-focals or not, it is also a fundamental truth that for millennia, humankind lived in some form of balance with the planet on which they lived.

The problem is, we no longer have a choice as to how we live. The price of "progress" - the process that has brought us all to the point where we communicate our views by tapping on a keyboard and letting technology do the rest - is that it is irreversible.

Yup, there are definitely no spirits in the new wilderness. That we have created for ourselves.

And cannot un-create.

But what I cannot see is any real value in pretending that we could, if only we tried.

It seems to me, that you are presenting an either-or scenario here
Brian. We can choose to have the best of both worlds, if we wish.

When I occasionally visit the big smoke, those endless
houses of suburbia, remind me of sardines in a sardine can, neatly
lined up one next to the other. That is simply not for me.
But for many that is all they know and all they want to know.
Fair enough, that is our choice.

I look out the windows here and enjoy the wonders of nature, the
butterflies, the wild parrots, the change of seasons, etc. I much
prefer those things to the concrete jungle, which many city people
need.

But that does not mean that I disagree with market, or hate
capitalism. After all, they have given me the internet, online
shopping if I need it and other benefits.

So we really can have the best of both worlds, if we wish.

Throw away your PC and go hug your tree-friend, Brian. I am sick of hearing about it. If Greenberg "warns" of a new brain that's unlike those of the narcissistic, hypocritical boomers we hear so much crap from, I welcome it.

Leigh
"We do not ‘have to’ import another 20 million people to a country which is mostly uninhabitable because of its harsh climate."

But it's okay now Leigh, because politicians can adjust the climate. They just tax you however much they want and control anything and everything, and - bingo - they just adjust the climate to what they think would be best for the greater good.