The Big Issues: We Need to Hear More from Sam Harris About Guns

In my last post, I pleaded for Americans to have a real conversation about guns after Newtown. Predictably perhaps, I have been despairing since as that conversation again failed to achieve any kind of sentience. Then, on Wednesday night, almost out of nowhere, one of my intellectual heroes came through with what may yet be the most courageous and important piece of commentary on “The Riddle of the Gun”.

Sam Harris is a writer who regularly receives death threats for courageously upending the worldviews of the majority of the world's population, yet I suspect that "The Riddle of the Gun" may be his most courageous piece of writing to date. 

I have two reasons for crediting Sam's courage in writing this. The first is that he knows it will alienate many of his most loyal readers and will draw rebuttals from many of his allies - Sean Faircloth of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science was quick off the mark with this considered piece. The second reason requires an entire post to itself so I’ll come back to that soon. 

This post is dedicated to why I believe the "The Riddle of the Gun" is so important...

I believe that "The Riddle of the Gun" is important because around two thirds of its approximately 6,000 carefully selected words represent the most complete and understandable summary I've seen on “the case for guns in America". Sam is one of the most rational and eloquent Americans alive today. His words are always worth reading and this piece is no exception. I urge everyone to read them and to be challenged by them. I urge everyone to reflect upon his words as honestly and as rationally as Sam reflected while he wrote them.

Call me a hopeless optimist, but I want to believe that these 6,000 words are the beginning of the conversation that we’ve all been waiting for. We all know and respect Harris enough to know that if he continues to participate in that conversation, then his presence will draw in other qualified intellectuals. We know know that he will debate politely and rationally. He will hear polite, rational, and honest responses to his case. He will reflect rationally and respond honestly and politely to them, drawing further qualified and respectful contributors to the conversation.

Ranting ideologues on both sides of the debate will be excised, and the parts of Sam’s argument that are robust enough to withstand sustained intellectual scrutiny will prevail. Where his position is shown to be lacking, he will expand, or he will concede.

I really want to believe that Sam Harris has at last sparked the conversation. The conversation that will leave Americans and the world with a better understanding of the many truths behind “the US gun problem”. The conversation that will leave individuals and policymakers across the political compass with actionable intelligence to shape a more sane future.

This conversation can never happen in the mainstream media, but Harris has started it in the blogosphere - It is possible that such a complex issue can be deconstructed fully by an engaged citizen media.

Thank you Sam Harris! I'll be watching, and hoping...

The Big Issues: Anyone up for a Game of End-Times Bingo?

I'm an avowed atheist, but apart from occasional lapses, I try to limit my anti-supernatualist "preaching" to light-hearted piss-taking of thick-skinned religious friends.

Wherever we sit within the many spectra of faith systems though, a conscious concern for Sustainable Human Flourishing forces reflection on the positives and negatives of religion… For me this is especially true at times like this when such madness is again on display in places like Cairo and Benghazi - insanity that has reached my adopted home of Belgium and even as far away as my erstwhile secular homeland of Australia. At times like this, I must pause to reflect on the potential for religious extremism to affect those that I love.

I have to say though, that while I consider religiously motivated terrorism to be a real danger, it seems a massively over-hyped threat when compared with two elephants that quietly share a room with today's most popular religions, specifically:

The Big Issues: Is Organic Food a Sham?

A good friend asked for my thoughts today about this Gawker report (about a USA Today article about a meta-study and a University of Oxford study) which claims that organic food is no better (and in some cases worse) than non-organic food.

I get variations on this theme all the time, so this time I have actually written my answer down for posterity and for future reference - I will also tell you definitively whether I believe that Gawker is correct in its conclusion of "Science Suggests That Organic Food Is Largely a Sham". 

First though, I will frame my response to this specific article with three four observations:

1. (Edit) I believe that most studies, meta-studies, and popular discussion on the topic of "organic vs. conventional" miss the point entirely (including, disappointingly this recent TreeHugger article)
2. As someone who aspires to live sustainably, I don't give a shit about "organic food". I only care about "sustainable food".
3. As someone who aspires to live rationally, I trust scientists to report results correctly and factually, within the parameters of their study.
4. For the same reason as 3) I do not trust USA Today to report scientists' results impartially.

Religion, Fascism, and Norway

Last week, we heard the Norwegian courts sentence their country's worst ever mass murderer. We all know who he is and what he did, and everyone also knows the verdict and sentence. Everyone also has an opinion on it.

It is my opinion, however, that very few of those opinions reflect positively on the potential for Sustainable Human Flourishing. Most, in fact, have left me shaking my head sadly for our poor, oh-so-human race.

Even normally rational secular humanist groups have been seething with old testament "eye for an eye" insanity since the verdict was announced - Comment threads like this one left me feeling very disillusioned and more than a little pissed at my fellow "humanists".

In my funk, I unfairly lashed out at an old high school friend who posted his opinions on his Farcebook wall. This old school mate who I'll call Max (because he approved that I use his real name) also happens to be a pastor at a "Bible Christian" church in my old home town of Perth in Western Australia… As always, Max was gracious and patient with me, and our extended exchange took some interesting twists and turns over the course of almost a week. Despite my many uncharitable anti-theistic barbs, we remain friends, and he has graciously assented to our conversation being re-published here for (potentially) wider scrutiny than it received on our little corner of Farcebook…

Below is the thread as it appeared on Max's wall - apologies in advance from both of us that our logic lacks crispness in parts, but we were both time-stressed and just chatting amongst friends. Apologies also that it is so long - feel free to read it a bit at a time, over the period of a week to recreate the original experience if you wish ;-) I'm publishing it here in this form because I really want to continue exploring some of the issues for myself, and I find that writing stuff down helps. I left Max last right of reply on his wall and promised to stop bombarding his poor parishioners with my religion bashing, but I respond below and re-open the conversation to Max and anyone else who would like to pick up on the many threads we've left dangling…

The Big Issues: What are the rich and powerful saying about our future?

Dystopia, the opposite of a utopia, describes a place where life is full of hardship and devoid of hope. Analysis of linkages across various global risks reveals a constellation of fiscal, demographic and societal risks signalling a dystopian future for much of humanity.

That quote is from the executive summary of this year's Global Risks 2012 - Seventh Edition out of the World Economic Forum last month in Davos, Switzerland.

IMHO the Global Risks Report is consistently one of the most useful and enlightening things to come out of Davos. It is easy to read and has lots of graphics that make a very complex topic digestible – This year it also has a cool new interactive microsite to help you to explore the data.

Graph of identified risks, focusing on the "centers of gravity" and "critical connectors"

Some profound insights for any student of Sustainable Human Flourishing - Check it out!

The Big Issues: The Greatest Challenges of Our Time

I think that the most deliciously idiosyncratic thing about Belgium is that we are right at the heart of all that is good and bad about Europe. So many interesting and potentially world-changing discussions happen right here.

Living close to Brussels also means that I can gatecrash some of these discussions at the various European institutions based there. I have no affiliation with these institutions beyond the fact that my tax dollars help to support them, but I honestly consider "Europe" to be an amazing achievement - even more so because normal people like me are encouraged to participate occasionally.

On Wednesday, for example, I went to the European Parliament with a couple of friends to watch a presentation based on the book "The Greatest Challenges of Our Time" by László Szombatfalvy.

Important note: You can and should get your free download of this enlightening book (or read online) in English, French, Swedish, Spanish, and more languages coming...

Before we go any further though, I should warn you that this is a pretty straightforward wrap-up post. It contains lots of information about a fascinating presentation, with many interesting links, but I apologise that I don't have time right now to add too much of my typical rambling, opinionated commentary.

Also, since the link between the presentation and this blog should be self-evident, I won't waste too much of our time tying everything back to Sustainable Human Flourishing.

The Big Issues: How to get the real story?

On Thursday night, I participated in the Occupy Wall Street November 17 Mass Non-Violent Direct Action. This SHF GreenRant is my attempt to capture and share my amazing personal experience.

No, I didn't fly to New York and get arrested, but with tens of thousands of others all around the world, I most certainly did participate.

On Thursday night, live on my computer, I watched as tens of thousands of happy, excited people peacefully reclaimed the streets of New York.

I watched live as buildings, parks, bridges, and at times seemingly entire neighbourhoods were reclaimed and occupied by peaceful, happy, singing crowds.

I watched live as the NYPD behaved (mostly) honourably and (mostly) with integrity. There were moments when some almost seemed to help protesters.

I watched live as retired police captain Ray Lewis allowed himself to be arrested in support of the protests. I heard the cheers and chants of thousands of people in support of his brave personal sacrifice.

I watched and held my breath as I witnessed troublemakers (often allegedly plain-clothes police) attempt to incite the excited crowds to do something stupid...

Two reasons to celebrate #NOKXL and #OWS

I'm back after a quick family staycation where I was largely offline. Did you miss me?

It is rare these days to have something to celebrate in the domain of Sustainable Human Flourishing, but this week, there have been two significant breakthroughs.

The first was the success of the NOKXL campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. As you can see in this inspirational victory video, after the most extensive environmental activism campaign in recent history, President Obama finally sent this awful project packing.

Here's a more light-hearted interview with one of the heroes behind that success, Bill McKibben

"What do we want?""How the heck are we supposed to know?""When do we want it?""Now!!!"

I am sick of hearing otherwise reasonable people making unreasonable demands of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. I can't count the number of times that I've heard...

"... they will never make a difference if they only protest against something! Why don't they just tell us exactly what it is that they are protesting for?"

The Big Issues: Economics for flourishing Part 3

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this post, I gave my thoughts on some of the more widely discussed problems with neoclassical economics, but in this final installment (for now), I will tie this all back onto the theme of this blog - Sustainable Human Flourishing... More specifically, I will try to finish the thought process about just how a system that is so demonstrably damaging to SHF as the Chicago school ideology has become so bloody influential? This side of the story is far less widely discussed, and so I would particularly like to hear from economics insiders...

One of the most detailed yet approachable explorations of this idea that I have found is Naomi Klein's eye-opening book The Shock Doctrine.

The Big Issues: Economics for flourishing Part 2

In part 1 of this post, I threw my hat in with many in the blogosphere who consider neoclassical economics to be a disappointingly unscientific undertaking. For me though, the substantive question is not whether neoclassical economics is a science, but whether we should entrust our collective futures to it?

If we believe (and I admit that this is highly contentious) that one of the most important roles of an economy is to serve human development (or, in other words, to support Sustainable Human Flourishing) then all evidence seems to suggest that Chicago School neoliberalism is simply not fit for purpose.

For this reason, what concerns me even more than the current global economic crisis is the fact that even most honest, reflective economists seem only to want to get things back on the track that they were on before the crisis, refusing to acknowledge that the track itself was unsustainable. As professor Tim Jackson notes in his brilliant "Prosperity Without Growth" report on behalf of the Sustainable Development Commission

The Big Issues: Economics for flourishing Part 1

Update: I originally published these three articles as a single, unreadably long post - To show more respect for my readers, and to try enforce some self-discipline, I have now broken it into separate, and I hope more digestible parts...

I've been struggling for a while to find the right angle to express my Sustainable Human Flourishing-related concerns about Chicago school neoclassical economics - (Note: If those words mean nothing to you, then you should look into it a bit, because this is the school of macroeconomic thought that pretty much runs the world today.)

Noah Smith has saved me from an important part of that struggle with this brilliant post, in which he expresses some very valid concerns on the widely debated topic of whether modern economics is a science (there are some stellar follow-up comments too). I've recently started following Noah because he seems to be a rather clever economics (almost) grad who eloquently expresses many of the same concerns I've heard in various forms from other younger generation economists. Some great quotes from Noah's post include:

The Big Issues: When Should We Stop Burning Fossil Fuels?

I often hear people making statements like - "There is no point reducing my carbon footprint, because anything that I do is insignificant compared to increases in developing countries."

Realistic people convince themselves that this is a realistic position. Sensible people make the sensible choice to enjoy life now before the oil runs out. Rational people come to the rational conclusion that we are ripping ourselves off if we don't gorge on the cheap fossil fuel pie - Nobody will leave the last piece of the pie on the table out of politeness, right?

Sure, we'll move to cleaner, more expensive fuels later, but only when we really need to. You've heard this all before, haven't you?

The Big Issues: Canadian Tar Sands

Updated

Did you know that over the last two weeks there were 1252 arrests during a sustained, non-violent, civil disobedience sit-in at the Whitehouse?

If you get your news from the mainstream media, you may not even be aware that tens of thousands of concerned people have just finished phase 1 of a protest that surely has ramifications for you and your family. What were they protesting against?