00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:15.467
(plant roaring)

00:00:19.632 --> 00:00:22.530
(car engine revving)

00:00:22.530 --> 00:00:25.197
(piano music)

00:00:32.218 --> 00:00:34.200
- [Driver] Sorry, we've
gotta stop you doing that.

00:00:34.200 --> 00:00:35.033
- [Cameraman] Why?

00:00:35.033 --> 00:00:35.910
- [Driver] You might be terrorists,

00:00:35.910 --> 00:00:38.220
and you're in our car park as well.

00:00:38.220 --> 00:00:39.961
- [PCD] We're just filming for a doco...

00:00:39.961 --> 00:00:42.544
(piano music)

00:00:43.500 --> 00:00:47.160
- [Tim] I think one thing
I find really quite amazing

00:00:47.160 --> 00:00:51.120
is just how fast the
changes may come upon us.

00:00:51.120 --> 00:00:52.833
Because our current growth rate,

00:00:53.670 --> 00:00:55.830
it may seem small,

00:00:55.830 --> 00:00:58.860
just 2.3% per year thereabouts

00:00:58.860 --> 00:01:01.653
for our rate of energy
consumption growth,

00:01:03.150 --> 00:01:06.840
but that translates to a doubling

00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:10.473
in our consumption rate
in just 30 years.

00:01:12.270 --> 00:01:13.470
Now that's incredible,

00:01:13.470 --> 00:01:17.100
because if you think that
it took us 10,000 years

00:01:17.100 --> 00:01:19.240
to get to our current consumption rate,

00:01:20.370 --> 00:01:25.370
and that we will double
this again in just 30 years,

00:01:26.790 --> 00:01:31.790
then we are thinking about
a change in civilization

00:01:32.520 --> 00:01:34.830
that in our very lifetimes

00:01:34.830 --> 00:01:37.800
will reproduce everything
that has happened

00:01:37.800 --> 00:01:41.585
over centuries, millennium.

00:01:41.585 --> 00:01:44.820
(piano music)

00:01:44.820 --> 00:01:49.293
That brings to us, I think,
to a very basic question.

00:01:50.610 --> 00:01:52.263
How will this happen?

00:01:54.600 --> 00:01:58.230
Can we sustain a doubling

00:01:58.230 --> 00:02:01.980
of our daily energy consumption rate

00:02:01.980 --> 00:02:04.380
and all the raw materials
that go along with it?

00:02:05.430 --> 00:02:07.713
Do those raw materials exist?

00:02:09.270 --> 00:02:10.290
Perhaps they do.

00:02:10.290 --> 00:02:14.190
Perhaps we can figure out
ways to extract

00:02:14.190 --> 00:02:16.350
sufficient resources
from our environment

00:02:16.350 --> 00:02:20.730
to maintain a doubling
of our civilization

00:02:20.730 --> 00:02:22.020
in the next 30 years,

00:02:22.020 --> 00:02:24.150
and then in the next
30 years beyond that,

00:02:24.150 --> 00:02:26.133
which would be four times as large.

00:02:27.510 --> 00:02:28.770
Perhaps we can do that.

00:02:28.770 --> 00:02:31.203
Perhaps the resources are out there.

00:02:32.370 --> 00:02:33.600
Or perhaps they aren't.

00:02:33.600 --> 00:02:35.130
And if they aren't,

00:02:35.130 --> 00:02:37.900
then I think naturally
we would think that

00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:41.910
all the activities of civilization

00:02:41.910 --> 00:02:43.863
will somehow have to slow.

00:02:45.060 --> 00:02:46.230
Then we can start thinking about,

00:02:46.230 --> 00:02:50.190
well, what does that mean for
civilization to start slowing?

00:02:50.190 --> 00:02:52.110
What does it mean for the economy

00:02:52.110 --> 00:02:54.660
if we can no longer
sustain all the activities

00:02:54.660 --> 00:02:56.260
with the energy that's required?

00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:01.290
Or if we can sustain the activities

00:03:01.290 --> 00:03:04.230
by uncovering sufficient resources,

00:03:04.230 --> 00:03:07.260
what does it mean to
have all the accumulating

00:03:07.260 --> 00:03:10.950
waste products that are
produced by the consumption

00:03:10.950 --> 00:03:14.640
accumulating in, for
example, our atmosphere

00:03:14.640 --> 00:03:16.495
in the form of carbon dioxide.

00:03:16.495 --> 00:03:17.700
(piano music)

00:03:17.700 --> 00:03:22.020
A planet that is five
degrees Celsius warmer

00:03:22.020 --> 00:03:26.310
than it is today will
not be the same place,

00:03:26.310 --> 00:03:30.450
and I think we have to think seriously

00:03:30.450 --> 00:03:33.570
about what that implies

00:03:33.570 --> 00:03:37.560
for the ability of civilization
to continue to grow.

00:03:37.560 --> 00:03:42.057
Somehow, something will have to give.

00:03:42.057 --> 00:03:44.640
(piano music)

00:03:57.480 --> 00:03:59.040
- [Sid] It's gotten to the point where

00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:00.840
it's very darkly humorous

00:04:00.840 --> 00:04:02.250
when you open up and you read the news

00:04:02.250 --> 00:04:03.960
and someone's talking, for instance,

00:04:03.960 --> 00:04:06.690
about carbon capture technology, right?

00:04:06.690 --> 00:04:08.670
I mean, we've burned
all this fossil fuel

00:04:08.670 --> 00:04:09.960
and gotten all this energy out of it

00:04:09.960 --> 00:04:12.300
and the result is we've
released all this carbon.

00:04:12.300 --> 00:04:13.860
It never seems to occur to anybody

00:04:13.860 --> 00:04:16.410
that it would take at least
as much energy if not more

00:04:16.410 --> 00:04:19.440
to take the carbon
back out again, right?

00:04:19.440 --> 00:04:21.270
And if you use that much more energy,

00:04:21.270 --> 00:04:23.430
it's gonna create that much more waste.

00:04:23.430 --> 00:04:26.244
So renewable energy doesn't
help us in the long run.

00:04:26.244 --> 00:04:28.410
It actually it could harm us.

00:04:28.410 --> 00:04:30.060
I'm not saying we shouldn't
build it, we should.

00:04:30.060 --> 00:04:32.700
We should absolutely be
pushing renewable energy,

00:04:32.700 --> 00:04:35.133
but we need to be realistic
about what it means.

00:04:36.210 --> 00:04:38.100
We're using up the world,

00:04:38.100 --> 00:04:40.020
and just because we're
doing renewable energy

00:04:40.020 --> 00:04:42.020
doesn't mean we're using it up any less.

00:04:43.410 --> 00:04:45.720
There's plenty of sunlight
hitting the planet

00:04:45.720 --> 00:04:49.170
to provide the energy to do
anything you could dream of

00:04:49.170 --> 00:04:51.000
many, many times over.

00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:52.230
But in order to capture it

00:04:52.230 --> 00:04:54.570
and get it someplace where
it can do useful work,

00:04:54.570 --> 00:04:56.550
you have to concentrate it.

00:04:56.550 --> 00:04:58.590
It's too diffuse to do any work

00:04:58.590 --> 00:05:00.180
when it's hitting the planet.

00:05:00.180 --> 00:05:02.670
And therein lies the devil,

00:05:02.670 --> 00:05:07.670
because the energy density of
wind and of solar is so low

00:05:08.520 --> 00:05:10.680
that you end up putting
too much energy in

00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:13.293
to concentrate it in order
to perform useful work

00:05:14.220 --> 00:05:16.543
than you can get out of it.

00:05:17.640 --> 00:05:20.100
So that's why modern
industrial civilization

00:05:20.100 --> 00:05:21.570
can't be sustained on renewables.

00:05:21.570 --> 00:05:22.980
It's not that there
isn't enough energy--

00:05:22.980 --> 00:05:26.130
there's plenty of energy--
it's the density.

00:05:26.130 --> 00:05:29.520
A barrel of oil contains
four and a half years,

00:05:29.520 --> 00:05:31.120
man years of human labor,

00:05:32.550 --> 00:05:36.080
in a thing that I could have
sitting right here next to me.

00:05:36.080 --> 00:05:39.690
To get that much work out of sunlight

00:05:39.690 --> 00:05:44.690
requires acres of solar panels
or several towers, right?

00:05:45.630 --> 00:05:47.820
And they all required
fossil fuels to build

00:05:47.820 --> 00:05:49.350
and they're not gonna last.

00:05:49.350 --> 00:05:51.300
So you don't have the energy density

00:05:51.300 --> 00:05:53.190
that allows you to get
the work out of the system

00:05:53.190 --> 00:05:55.593
that we have gotten out of fossil fuels.

00:05:56.910 --> 00:06:00.300
And you will hear
some of the most amazing

00:06:00.300 --> 00:06:04.200
tap dancing I have ever seen
from economists these days

00:06:04.200 --> 00:06:07.577
about how we can still have
growth and live sustainably.

00:06:07.577 --> 00:06:08.850
(interviewer laughing)

00:06:08.850 --> 00:06:13.140
But they're coming up
with strange fantasies.

00:06:13.140 --> 00:06:14.850
They're not talking
about the real economy,

00:06:14.850 --> 00:06:18.450
because the real economy
that produces food

00:06:18.450 --> 00:06:20.340
and shelter, and clothing,

00:06:20.340 --> 00:06:21.840
and moves people about,

00:06:21.840 --> 00:06:24.030
that real economy depends upon energy.

00:06:24.030 --> 00:06:25.950
In fact, energy is the economy.

00:06:25.950 --> 00:06:28.781
Everything that we do is energy.

00:06:28.781 --> 00:06:31.364
(gentle music)

00:06:33.690 --> 00:06:35.090
- [PCD] This is a platypus that lives

00:06:35.090 --> 00:06:37.410
in the river near my home.

00:06:37.410 --> 00:06:40.650
If it took the platypus more
energy to hunt for food

00:06:40.650 --> 00:06:44.370
than it got back in energy
from eating the food,

00:06:44.370 --> 00:06:45.933
the platypus would soon die.

00:06:46.890 --> 00:06:48.720
The same for our civilization.

00:06:48.720 --> 00:06:51.120
But unlike the platypus,

00:06:51.120 --> 00:06:54.780
our civilization requires a
vast amount of surplus energy

00:06:54.780 --> 00:06:56.730
to do all the things humans like to do

00:06:56.730 --> 00:06:58.620
besides getting food,

00:06:58.620 --> 00:07:01.110
like building rockets and submarines

00:07:01.110 --> 00:07:02.622
and going shopping, of course.

00:07:02.622 --> 00:07:04.680
(gentle music)

00:07:04.680 --> 00:07:07.920
The problem is there is
less and less surplus energy

00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:09.690
in the types of energy we extract,

00:07:09.690 --> 00:07:13.830
because naturally we've used
up all the best stuff first.

00:07:13.830 --> 00:07:16.290
Now our platypus friend
could just survive

00:07:16.290 --> 00:07:20.190
on a one-to-one ratio of energy
returned on energy invested,

00:07:20.190 --> 00:07:23.700
but our civilization
needs a 10 to 1 ratio

00:07:23.700 --> 00:07:26.523
just to maintain itself without growth.

00:07:27.450 --> 00:07:30.300
And these energy sources like biofuels,

00:07:30.300 --> 00:07:33.540
tar sands, wind and solar
with battery storage

00:07:33.540 --> 00:07:35.580
fall well below that threshold.

00:07:35.580 --> 00:07:38.640
With hydrogen, it takes
more energy to make it

00:07:38.640 --> 00:07:40.110
than you get back from it

00:07:40.110 --> 00:07:42.030
because you have to make it.

00:07:42.030 --> 00:07:44.403
It's not like free
energy like coal and oil.

00:07:45.870 --> 00:07:47.280
With nuclear power?

00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:51.390
Well, nuclear power plants
take 10 years to build at least,

00:07:51.390 --> 00:07:53.730
and thousands of years to dismantle,

00:07:53.730 --> 00:07:55.320
so trying to work out

00:07:55.320 --> 00:07:58.800
their energy return on
investment is difficult.

00:07:58.800 --> 00:07:59.760
Like fossil fuels,

00:07:59.760 --> 00:08:01.980
uranium is very energy dense,

00:08:01.980 --> 00:08:04.170
and ultimately this documentary

00:08:04.170 --> 00:08:07.113
is not about demonizing
any energy source.

00:08:08.160 --> 00:08:10.080
What it's about is the wise use

00:08:10.080 --> 00:08:14.130
of limited, one-use-only,
potent energy resources

00:08:14.130 --> 00:08:16.830
that, well, we are really
privileged to have,

00:08:16.830 --> 00:08:19.770
and maybe we need to
have a greater gratitude

00:08:19.770 --> 00:08:21.540
and reverence and respect

00:08:21.540 --> 00:08:23.880
for the energies that enrich our lives

00:08:23.880 --> 00:08:25.563
and that are limited.

00:08:27.032 --> 00:08:28.230
(bird chirping)

00:08:28.230 --> 00:08:30.780
- [Ian] It is certainly a myth
that technology can save us.

00:08:30.780 --> 00:08:33.870
There's no doubt that the
biggest single problem

00:08:33.870 --> 00:08:35.430
is addiction to growth,

00:08:35.430 --> 00:08:39.183
the myth that growth can go on forever.

00:08:41.970 --> 00:08:44.610
It's now 45 years
since the Club of Rome's

00:08:44.610 --> 00:08:46.800
first report, "Limits to Growth,"

00:08:46.800 --> 00:08:49.410
pointed out that if the
existing growth trends

00:08:49.410 --> 00:08:51.960
in population, resource use,

00:08:51.960 --> 00:08:54.120
agricultural production,
industrial output

00:08:54.120 --> 00:08:56.100
and pollution were all to continue,

00:08:56.100 --> 00:08:58.380
we would reach limits
within a hundred years,

00:08:58.380 --> 00:09:00.180
and the most likely effect

00:09:00.180 --> 00:09:03.330
would be a sudden and
uncontrollable decline

00:09:03.330 --> 00:09:07.260
in our ability to feed people,

00:09:07.260 --> 00:09:09.930
our ability to provide our resources

00:09:09.930 --> 00:09:12.000
in the middle decades of this century.

00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:15.060
And Dr. Graham Turner
of CSIRO has compared

00:09:15.060 --> 00:09:16.770
their standard world model,

00:09:16.770 --> 00:09:19.830
which has collapse
between 2030 and 2050,

00:09:19.830 --> 00:09:21.450
with 40 years of data,

00:09:21.450 --> 00:09:24.033
and we are right on track
for that dismal outcome.

00:09:25.500 --> 00:09:28.380
If you are wedded to unlimited growth,

00:09:28.380 --> 00:09:31.560
inevitably you will outgrow the capacity

00:09:31.560 --> 00:09:34.110
of your nation's resources

00:09:34.110 --> 00:09:36.240
and there'll be conflict
with other nations.

00:09:36.240 --> 00:09:38.800
Because when, historically,

00:09:40.500 --> 00:09:41.880
when resources got tight,

00:09:41.880 --> 00:09:42.930
the old men of the tribe

00:09:42.930 --> 00:09:45.600
would send the young men
out to wage war.

00:09:45.600 --> 00:09:47.580
And that was win-win,

00:09:47.580 --> 00:09:49.950
because if the young men
successfully waged war

00:09:49.950 --> 00:09:51.450
you got more resources.

00:09:51.450 --> 00:09:54.180
If they're unsuccessful,
you had fewer mouths to feed.

00:09:54.180 --> 00:09:56.640
So either way, the problem was solved.

00:09:56.640 --> 00:09:59.670
When they were just battling
with sticks and clubs,

00:09:59.670 --> 00:10:03.510
that was an acceptable way to behave,

00:10:03.510 --> 00:10:06.663
but now we have weapons
of mass destruction.

00:10:08.160 --> 00:10:12.450
We have to find better
ways of resolving disputes

00:10:12.450 --> 00:10:15.513
and we have to find ways
of avoiding disputes.

00:10:17.040 --> 00:10:18.270
What that basically means

00:10:18.270 --> 00:10:19.920
is that we've gotta get
off the growth treadmill,

00:10:19.920 --> 00:10:21.600
because the growth treadmill

00:10:21.600 --> 00:10:24.543
locks us into getting into
conflict with our neighbors.

00:10:25.890 --> 00:10:29.100
So we have to accept
that there are limits

00:10:29.100 --> 00:10:31.161
and be prepared to live within them.

00:10:31.161 --> 00:10:33.360
(gentle music)

00:10:33.360 --> 00:10:36.030
- [PCD] In 1970, the
amount of raw materials

00:10:36.030 --> 00:10:39.540
extracted from the earth
was 27 billion tons.

00:10:39.540 --> 00:10:43.080
By 2010 it had grown to 70 billion tons.

00:10:43.080 --> 00:10:44.670
Then, in just seven years,

00:10:44.670 --> 00:10:48.570
it grew to 92 billion tons in 2017.

00:10:48.570 --> 00:10:50.880
That is exponential growth,

00:10:50.880 --> 00:10:52.530
and it is inherently unsustainable

00:10:52.530 --> 00:10:55.190
for the health of the
planet and capitalism.

00:10:55.190 --> 00:10:57.300
(gentle music)

00:10:57.300 --> 00:10:59.490
Fossil fuel use still increases

00:10:59.490 --> 00:11:02.640
while the resources needed for
the rebuildable energy revolution

00:11:02.640 --> 00:11:05.100
because solar, wind and batteries

00:11:05.100 --> 00:11:06.723
are already a waste problem.

00:11:07.590 --> 00:11:10.740
Well, that all requires a
massive increase in mining

00:11:10.740 --> 00:11:13.080
for the minerals needed like copper,

00:11:13.080 --> 00:11:15.636
silver, neodymium and lithium.

00:11:15.636 --> 00:11:18.219
(gentle music)

00:11:20.010 --> 00:11:22.260
Nearly everything is
marketed to us these days

00:11:22.260 --> 00:11:24.270
with green credentials.

00:11:24.270 --> 00:11:25.800
But the reality is,

00:11:25.800 --> 00:11:28.500
the earth is being ravaged
at an increasing speed

00:11:28.500 --> 00:11:31.263
because of growth and efficiency.

00:11:32.100 --> 00:11:34.260
Because the more efficient
we make something,

00:11:34.260 --> 00:11:35.412
the more we consume it.

00:11:35.412 --> 00:11:38.400
(gentle music)

00:11:38.400 --> 00:11:39.480
- [Will] Well, I think
there's an awful lot

00:11:39.480 --> 00:11:41.100
of greenwashing going on.

00:11:41.100 --> 00:11:43.590
I mean, that's the thing that people

00:11:43.590 --> 00:11:47.340
in this market-based economy
based on growth, growth,

00:11:47.340 --> 00:11:49.050
greed, greed, profit, profit.

00:11:49.050 --> 00:11:51.180
If you can portray yourself as green

00:11:51.180 --> 00:11:53.185
and if it helps your bottom line, do it.

00:11:53.185 --> 00:11:54.840
(cars revving)

00:11:54.840 --> 00:11:56.460
When you look at how long it takes

00:11:56.460 --> 00:11:58.410
to completely decarbonize,

00:11:58.410 --> 00:11:59.670
not just an energy system,

00:11:59.670 --> 00:12:03.090
but the whole economy,
that's a huge task.

00:12:03.090 --> 00:12:05.700
And when you look,
crunch the numbers to say,

00:12:05.700 --> 00:12:08.250
how much more can we emit
in cap at two degrees,

00:12:08.250 --> 00:12:10.290
we don't have much time left to get

00:12:10.290 --> 00:12:12.690
every country's trajectory down.

00:12:12.690 --> 00:12:14.160
We're still drifting up in Australia,

00:12:14.160 --> 00:12:16.650
so we haven't even topped out.

00:12:16.650 --> 00:12:17.490
- [PCD] Yeah.

00:12:17.490 --> 00:12:20.010
- So it's a big ask,
and I would say

00:12:20.010 --> 00:12:23.100
if we don't have solid plans
here and around the world

00:12:23.100 --> 00:12:26.310
by 2020, 2022,
we've lost it by then.

00:12:26.310 --> 00:12:27.250
So it's critical.

00:12:27.250 --> 00:12:28.560
(gentle music)

00:12:28.560 --> 00:12:31.590
- [PCD] As I narrate this,
it is now 2023,

00:12:31.590 --> 00:12:34.320
and all we've done is shift
recycled deck chairs around

00:12:34.320 --> 00:12:37.434
on the Titanic and put our
foot on the accelerator.

00:12:37.434 --> 00:12:38.550
(gentle music)

00:12:38.550 --> 00:12:42.060
- [Randy] I thought that
the extreme weather events

00:12:42.060 --> 00:12:44.460
that climate disruption are causing--

00:12:44.460 --> 00:12:48.630
droughts, and floods, and
hurricanes of greater strength,

00:12:48.630 --> 00:12:51.690
tornadoes in areas that
didn't have them before--

00:12:51.690 --> 00:12:56.010
that this might cause a
rebirth of deep concern.

00:12:56.010 --> 00:12:59.520
And it does, but then it
seems to be short term,

00:12:59.520 --> 00:13:00.840
particularly in the United States

00:13:00.840 --> 00:13:03.180
but maybe most everywhere.

00:13:03.180 --> 00:13:07.830
And so while we desperately
want and need

00:13:07.830 --> 00:13:10.890
to have a strong rebirth,

00:13:10.890 --> 00:13:12.660
we're just gonna have
to roll up our sleeves

00:13:12.660 --> 00:13:14.490
and work hard to make that happen,

00:13:14.490 --> 00:13:17.880
to get people's awareness
and attention and action.

00:13:17.880 --> 00:13:19.962
I'm happy to be
an alarmist, you know.

00:13:19.962 --> 00:13:26.038
I wanna sound the alarm
that we have got a situation

00:13:26.040 --> 00:13:28.860
that requires all hands on deck.

00:13:28.860 --> 00:13:32.430
We have got to get humanity's
foot off the throat

00:13:32.430 --> 00:13:35.550
of the natural systems
that support our life.

00:13:35.550 --> 00:13:37.023
If you're a humanist,

00:13:38.970 --> 00:13:41.310
then one of the greatest
things you can do

00:13:41.310 --> 00:13:44.760
is create humanity's
relationship to nature,

00:13:44.760 --> 00:13:48.030
is to correct humanity's
relationship to nature

00:13:48.030 --> 00:13:50.190
so that nature continues to nourish us

00:13:50.190 --> 00:13:53.896
so that humanity can
flourish in a dignified way.

00:13:53.896 --> 00:13:58.896
(turn signal ticking)
(piano music)

00:14:00.930 --> 00:14:02.550
- [Chris] Getting that?

00:14:02.550 --> 00:14:03.706
- [PCD] Yeah.

00:14:03.706 --> 00:14:06.570
(suspenseful music)

00:14:06.570 --> 00:14:08.040
He's definitely following us.

00:14:08.040 --> 00:14:09.983
- [Chris] Well, why would
he not be following us?

00:14:11.070 --> 00:14:12.090
You wanna go talk to him?

00:14:12.090 --> 00:14:12.923
- [PCD] No.

00:14:12.923 --> 00:14:15.360
(suspenseful music)

00:14:15.360 --> 00:14:17.520
- [Chris] We should keep going.

00:14:17.520 --> 00:14:18.353
- [PCD] Yeah, which way?

00:14:18.353 --> 00:14:19.920
- [Chris] Back home.

00:14:19.920 --> 00:14:21.381
- [PCD] Let's see what he does.

00:14:21.381 --> 00:14:22.925
(suspenseful music)

00:14:22.925 --> 00:14:24.045
I've got his number plate.

00:14:24.045 --> 00:14:25.949
- [Chris] Yeah, what is it?

00:14:25.949 --> 00:14:28.116
- [PCD] (recites number plate)

00:14:29.902 --> 00:14:30.888
We'll stay here for a minute

00:14:30.888 --> 00:14:32.059
(suspenseful music)

00:14:32.059 --> 00:14:34.106
What's this dude doing, man?

00:14:34.106 --> 00:14:35.553
(suspenseful music)

00:14:36.733 --> 00:14:40.080
- [Chris] Shall we let someone
know, for a safety precaution?

00:14:40.080 --> 00:14:41.210
- [PCD] Oh, that's why
I thought we should go

00:14:41.210 --> 00:14:44.460
back into a built-up area.

00:14:44.460 --> 00:14:45.510
- [Chris] He won't be able to stop us

00:14:45.510 --> 00:14:47.010
once we're on the road, though.

00:14:47.850 --> 00:14:49.998
- [PCD] Yeah, but we're
going into middle of nowhere.

00:14:49.998 --> 00:14:53.490
(suspenseful music)

00:14:53.490 --> 00:14:55.380
I would just feel safer that we go.

00:14:55.380 --> 00:14:56.213
- [Chris] Yeah?

00:14:56.213 --> 00:14:57.083
- [PCD] Back to Warragul.

00:14:58.650 --> 00:14:59.976
- [Chris] Do you want me
to boot it back?

00:14:59.976 --> 00:15:00.840
(suspenseful music)

00:15:00.840 --> 00:15:03.420
- [PCD] Cameraman Chris
and I had been out

00:15:03.420 --> 00:15:07.350
filming a large out-of-control
mine fire in 2014,

00:15:07.350 --> 00:15:11.010
which had begun from big bushfire.

00:15:11.010 --> 00:15:13.320
This drama was before the incredible

00:15:13.320 --> 00:15:16.710
Black Summer bushfires of 2019,

00:15:16.710 --> 00:15:18.570
which are probably forgotten now

00:15:18.570 --> 00:15:20.820
because we need more and more spectacle

00:15:20.820 --> 00:15:22.533
to get our attention,

00:15:23.580 --> 00:15:26.433
a bigger slap on the face
from nature to wake up,

00:15:28.020 --> 00:15:32.010
unless you believe that
the fires are a conspiracy

00:15:32.010 --> 00:15:33.630
and were lit by the government,

00:15:33.630 --> 00:15:37.650
which is fantastic at devoiding us

00:15:37.650 --> 00:15:39.870
of our collective responsibility

00:15:39.870 --> 00:15:41.960
for altering the environment.

00:15:41.960 --> 00:15:45.240
(chopper blades whirring)

00:15:45.240 --> 00:15:48.061
Anyhow, we later found out
from the police

00:15:48.061 --> 00:15:50.640
that the ute that had been following us

00:15:50.640 --> 00:15:52.500
was actually the coal mine manager,

00:15:52.500 --> 00:15:55.115
who thought it was some eco-terrorists.

00:15:55.115 --> 00:15:56.568
- [PCD] He's an old dude
who's got a mustache.

00:15:56.568 --> 00:15:58.170
- [Chris] He's an old
dude who's got a mustache.

00:15:58.170 --> 00:16:03.610
- [William] As we become
more ecologically constrained,

00:16:03.610 --> 00:16:04.980
the grounding for this kind of

00:16:04.980 --> 00:16:07.680
democratic liberal civilization

00:16:07.680 --> 00:16:10.740
is increasingly going away.

00:16:10.740 --> 00:16:13.350
And you can already see that

00:16:13.350 --> 00:16:15.900
we're exhibiting
some of the typical signs

00:16:15.900 --> 00:16:18.363
of a civilization in decline.

00:16:20.100 --> 00:16:24.213
Ecological resources
are getting scarcer.

00:16:25.230 --> 00:16:28.680
Population growth, other
forms of exponential growth,

00:16:28.680 --> 00:16:30.540
are stressing the system.

00:16:30.540 --> 00:16:35.160
We're running into basic
thermodynamic limits

00:16:35.160 --> 00:16:37.320
of the laws of physics.

00:16:37.320 --> 00:16:39.060
We have increased complexity

00:16:39.060 --> 00:16:41.550
that is becoming harder
and harder to deal with

00:16:41.550 --> 00:16:44.700
and demands more and
more from us resources,

00:16:44.700 --> 00:16:46.470
not only physical resources

00:16:46.470 --> 00:16:50.250
but intellectual resources
and political resources.

00:16:50.250 --> 00:16:53.550
And you can see from the
state of the world today

00:16:53.550 --> 00:16:56.820
what kind of a challenge that is.

00:16:56.820 --> 00:17:00.090
The problems become so
large and intractable

00:17:00.090 --> 00:17:03.000
that governments can no
longer deal with them.

00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:06.930
And instead of cooperating
to solve the problems,

00:17:06.930 --> 00:17:09.750
the elites begin to
fight among themselves.

00:17:09.750 --> 00:17:13.680
The system becomes more
and more dysfunctional.

00:17:13.680 --> 00:17:16.800
It simply can't operate in the same way,

00:17:16.800 --> 00:17:19.920
and you begin to see
that we are developing

00:17:19.920 --> 00:17:21.990
all the signs of a civilization

00:17:21.990 --> 00:17:24.885
that is verging toward collapse.

00:17:24.885 --> 00:17:28.677
(crowd cheering)
(piano music)

00:17:28.677 --> 00:17:33.677
It seems that just as human
beings are born and then die,

00:17:35.580 --> 00:17:38.970
civilizations have a kind of lifecycle.

00:17:38.970 --> 00:17:42.600
It's not inexorable and it
varies from each civilization,

00:17:42.600 --> 00:17:45.060
but they follow a fundamental pattern

00:17:45.060 --> 00:17:48.300
where they go from a pioneering stage

00:17:48.300 --> 00:17:51.750
through a succession of stages
of more and more success,

00:17:51.750 --> 00:17:55.050
and then the success
begins to create problems

00:17:55.050 --> 00:17:56.490
that they can't solve.

00:17:56.490 --> 00:17:58.230
Eventually they become decadent

00:17:58.230 --> 00:18:00.093
and finally there's a downfall.

00:18:01.230 --> 00:18:04.470
It seems to be an inexorable
part of the human condition.

00:18:04.470 --> 00:18:07.140
Just as our own life cycle,

00:18:07.140 --> 00:18:08.820
we don't live forever,

00:18:08.820 --> 00:18:12.060
civilizations can't
live forever, either.

00:18:12.060 --> 00:18:14.643
(gentle music)

00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:34.500
- [John] Animals that
adopted agriculture--

00:18:34.500 --> 00:18:35.850
ants, termites and humans--

00:18:35.850 --> 00:18:38.460
went through exactly the same process

00:18:38.460 --> 00:18:40.920
with exactly the same results.

00:18:40.920 --> 00:18:42.960
Domination of the planet,

00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:44.520
the loss of individuality.

00:18:44.520 --> 00:18:46.323
You become a cog in a machine.

00:18:47.190 --> 00:18:49.623
What ant biologists call totipotency.

00:18:50.820 --> 00:18:55.710
Ants are small percentage
of the insect species,

00:18:55.710 --> 00:18:57.300
but yet they dominate.

00:18:57.300 --> 00:19:01.530
They're something like
50% of the insect biomass.

00:19:01.530 --> 00:19:04.920
In tropical rainforests
it's something like 75%.

00:19:04.920 --> 00:19:07.770
So they also dominate local ecosystems.

00:19:07.770 --> 00:19:10.500
All other species within an ecosystem

00:19:10.500 --> 00:19:13.020
are sort of harnessed to establish

00:19:13.020 --> 00:19:15.720
the ant community and the enterprise.

00:19:15.720 --> 00:19:17.537
Probably the most, if you know,

00:19:17.537 --> 00:19:19.001
I hate to use this word, but,

00:19:19.002 --> 00:19:23.433
"advanced" group of ants
are called leaf cutter ants.

00:19:24.480 --> 00:19:27.270
They have extremely
complex division of labor.

00:19:27.270 --> 00:19:29.640
They have ants that cut the
leaves and drop to the ground,

00:19:29.640 --> 00:19:32.370
other ants that carry
the leaves to the fungus.

00:19:32.370 --> 00:19:34.560
They live on a kind of fungus,

00:19:34.560 --> 00:19:36.210
it's like a monoculture.

00:19:36.210 --> 00:19:38.670
They developed a symbiotic relationship.

00:19:38.670 --> 00:19:43.050
They use antibodies to keep
the fungus from being attacked.

00:19:43.050 --> 00:19:46.380
Many of the same antibodies
that we use in our agriculture,

00:19:46.380 --> 00:19:49.290
they trade these antibodies
with other ant colonies.

00:19:49.290 --> 00:19:50.883
I mean, it's incredible.

00:19:52.200 --> 00:19:53.670
Where was I going with this?

00:19:53.670 --> 00:19:57.840
We're all part of this
larger superorganism,

00:19:57.840 --> 00:19:59.418
we're beginning to call it.

00:20:00.559 --> 00:20:02.160
And it's hard to get away from.

00:20:02.160 --> 00:20:04.110
And if you're an ant in an ant colony

00:20:04.110 --> 00:20:06.990
and you can see ahead somehow
that the colony's gonna

00:20:06.990 --> 00:20:09.060
overshoot it's resources and collapse,

00:20:09.060 --> 00:20:09.893
what can you do?

00:20:09.893 --> 00:20:11.430
You still have to be an ant.

00:20:11.430 --> 00:20:12.960
You still have to eat some of the fungus

00:20:12.960 --> 00:20:15.630
that's being grown underground.

00:20:15.630 --> 00:20:16.722
We need jobs,

00:20:16.722 --> 00:20:21.360
we need big cars to impress
our girlfriends or boyfriends.

00:20:21.360 --> 00:20:23.040
So the real question is,

00:20:23.040 --> 00:20:25.680
how do we get on another
evolutionary path

00:20:25.680 --> 00:20:28.050
without crashing the whole system?

00:20:28.050 --> 00:20:30.700
And right now we're in a lot of trouble

00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:34.260
because of resource scarcity

00:20:34.260 --> 00:20:38.040
and just as important that
we're pushing the limits

00:20:38.040 --> 00:20:40.110
of the carrying capacity
of the environments

00:20:40.110 --> 00:20:43.214
to support this growing system.

00:20:44.280 --> 00:20:46.500
The problem now is there's only really

00:20:46.500 --> 00:20:49.140
one society, one global culture.

00:20:49.140 --> 00:20:51.180
When past societies collapsed

00:20:51.180 --> 00:20:52.860
they could go someplace else

00:20:52.860 --> 00:20:56.246
or be absorbed in another
conquering society, and so on.

00:20:56.246 --> 00:20:58.530
We don't have that luxury anymore.

00:20:58.530 --> 00:21:00.033
If our society collapse,

00:21:00.960 --> 00:21:02.265
it's gonna be worldwide.

00:21:02.265 --> 00:21:04.848
(piano music)

00:21:06.120 --> 00:21:08.250
We're torn, we don't
know what to do, really.

00:21:08.250 --> 00:21:11.070
We're torn between
a stone-age brain,

00:21:11.070 --> 00:21:16.070
stone-age instincts,
and a space-age technology.

00:21:16.770 --> 00:21:18.517
And we don't know how to cope.

00:21:18.517 --> 00:21:21.100
(piano music)

00:21:29.400 --> 00:21:34.400
One thing that we have that
ants don't is hereditary wealth.

00:21:34.920 --> 00:21:37.350
That really started with agriculture.

00:21:37.350 --> 00:21:42.300
Okay, ants don't
inherit property and so on.

00:21:42.300 --> 00:21:44.460
There's a lot of new stuff
coming out now,

00:21:44.460 --> 00:21:48.630
that might be sort of a basic flaw

00:21:48.630 --> 00:21:52.470
in human societies that
began with agriculture,

00:21:52.470 --> 00:21:54.600
and it probably started
before agriculture.

00:21:54.600 --> 00:21:58.950
There's the Northwest Coast
Indians in North America.

00:21:58.950 --> 00:22:00.240
They were really prosperous,

00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:01.800
they didn't have agriculture,

00:22:01.800 --> 00:22:03.453
but they had settled communities.

00:22:04.650 --> 00:22:07.470
And because they're based
on these salmon runs,

00:22:07.470 --> 00:22:08.880
they were able to catch the salmon

00:22:08.880 --> 00:22:10.890
and smoke them and store
them throughout the winter.

00:22:10.890 --> 00:22:12.390
So they had surplus.

00:22:12.390 --> 00:22:14.940
And you see the beginnings
of hierarchy in that society.

00:22:14.940 --> 00:22:17.190
Certain families began to control

00:22:17.190 --> 00:22:19.410
the best salmon runs and so on,

00:22:19.410 --> 00:22:21.120
and you get the beginnings
of inequality.

00:22:21.120 --> 00:22:22.800
Nothing like we have,

00:22:22.800 --> 00:22:25.980
but so it has to do
something with surplus

00:22:25.980 --> 00:22:27.840
and hereditary wealth.

00:22:27.840 --> 00:22:29.820
So I think if there's something--

00:22:29.820 --> 00:22:33.000
I know this seems like an
impossible thing to do,

00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:36.960
but we really need to
curb hereditary wealth

00:22:36.960 --> 00:22:39.994
and bring back this
notion of the public good.

00:22:39.994 --> 00:22:43.077
(piano music)

00:22:50.100 --> 00:22:51.600
- [PCD] Once upon a time,

00:22:51.600 --> 00:22:54.150
money was backed by
gold held in reserve.

00:22:54.150 --> 00:22:56.910
But then, around the '70s,

00:22:56.910 --> 00:22:59.430
humans began growing
exponentially too fast

00:22:59.430 --> 00:23:01.530
for gold mining to keep up.

00:23:01.530 --> 00:23:03.420
Literally, there's not enough
gold on earth

00:23:03.420 --> 00:23:05.193
to repay the debt we've created.

00:23:06.060 --> 00:23:08.188
There's not enough resources
on earth to extract

00:23:08.188 --> 00:23:11.310
and turn into products
to repay the debt,

00:23:11.310 --> 00:23:13.533
but we can't risk
its health any further.

00:23:14.520 --> 00:23:17.040
One of the most
environmentally friendly things

00:23:17.040 --> 00:23:20.220
you can do is to lessen your debt.

00:23:20.220 --> 00:23:21.960
Chop up your credit cards,

00:23:21.960 --> 00:23:23.280
stop booking up so much

00:23:23.280 --> 00:23:26.220
'cause you're trying to
keep up with the Jones'

00:23:26.220 --> 00:23:31.140
in whichever market you fill,
'cause we're all marks.

00:23:31.140 --> 00:23:32.850
If you're a hippie, you're a mark.

00:23:32.850 --> 00:23:33.683
At the crystal shops,

00:23:33.683 --> 00:23:35.493
they're trying to sell you crap.

00:23:36.540 --> 00:23:39.540
If you're middle class, you're a mark.

00:23:39.540 --> 00:23:40.620
At the shopping malls,

00:23:40.620 --> 00:23:43.021
they're trying to sell you crap.

00:23:43.021 --> 00:23:45.540
And if you're rich with
monopoly money, you're a mark

00:23:45.540 --> 00:23:50.340
at the Gucci shops or the fancy yachts.

00:23:50.340 --> 00:23:51.838
We're all marks in the market.

00:23:51.838 --> 00:23:54.421
(piano music)

00:23:58.293 --> 00:24:02.550
- [Helena] So at one
point money was symbolic

00:24:02.550 --> 00:24:05.820
and a tool used to concentrate wealth

00:24:05.820 --> 00:24:08.100
and to save wealth a little bit.

00:24:08.100 --> 00:24:13.050
I think as a tool kept in
relationship to the real wealth,

00:24:13.050 --> 00:24:14.670
which is natural resources,

00:24:14.670 --> 00:24:17.010
it can be a useful technology.

00:24:17.010 --> 00:24:20.070
And at one point people
would put it in a bank

00:24:20.070 --> 00:24:21.240
and the money would be there,

00:24:21.240 --> 00:24:22.320
and if they wanted it again,

00:24:22.320 --> 00:24:23.400
they could take it out.

00:24:23.400 --> 00:24:27.360
But then the bank started
slightly cheating the population

00:24:27.360 --> 00:24:29.250
with fractional reserve.

00:24:29.250 --> 00:24:31.080
They didn't actually
keep all the money there,

00:24:31.080 --> 00:24:33.960
they started lending
out more than they had

00:24:33.960 --> 00:24:36.210
and created wealth that way.

00:24:36.210 --> 00:24:39.030
Now we've allowed that bubble

00:24:39.030 --> 00:24:41.070
of creating money out of thin air,

00:24:41.070 --> 00:24:43.650
out of an idea of wealth,

00:24:43.650 --> 00:24:47.313
to escalate into the
most insane proportions.

00:24:49.145 --> 00:24:50.280
We are allowing algorithms

00:24:50.280 --> 00:24:52.560
to determine the value of our currency

00:24:52.560 --> 00:24:55.320
and with it, the value of our food,

00:24:55.320 --> 00:24:57.090
the value of our water,

00:24:57.090 --> 00:25:01.800
the value of our democracy and jobs.

00:25:01.800 --> 00:25:05.100
So from my point of view,

00:25:05.100 --> 00:25:07.110
the big wake up that can happen

00:25:07.110 --> 00:25:09.270
is when we have a
"big picture" movement

00:25:09.270 --> 00:25:11.850
where people put the pieces together,

00:25:11.850 --> 00:25:13.710
and there is alliance building

00:25:13.710 --> 00:25:16.350
between those who are
primarily focused

00:25:16.350 --> 00:25:18.270
on living Mother Gaia

00:25:18.270 --> 00:25:22.290
as our mother and as
our only real economy,

00:25:22.290 --> 00:25:27.153
and those people who are so
frightened by job insecurity,

00:25:28.110 --> 00:25:31.530
identity and cultural
breakdown and change.

00:25:31.530 --> 00:25:34.050
And of course these
people are very frightened,

00:25:34.050 --> 00:25:38.730
for economic reasons are
ending up voting to the right,

00:25:38.730 --> 00:25:42.960
and we are in a great danger
of allowing that shift

00:25:42.960 --> 00:25:45.660
to continue into outright fascism

00:25:45.660 --> 00:25:47.328
and the shutdown of democracy.

00:25:47.328 --> 00:25:50.280
(metallic chiming)

00:25:50.280 --> 00:25:54.570
For me, having lived in
ancient nature-based

00:25:54.570 --> 00:25:57.000
cultures like Ladakh and Bhutan,

00:25:57.000 --> 00:25:59.980
it became very clear that the ecosophia

00:26:00.840 --> 00:26:04.410
was the passing on over many generations

00:26:04.410 --> 00:26:07.680
knowledge about the specifics of place,

00:26:07.680 --> 00:26:10.740
the specific climate,
the specific soils.

00:26:10.740 --> 00:26:15.740
And this knowledge is
localized knowledge,

00:26:15.960 --> 00:26:18.930
was so holistic.

00:26:18.930 --> 00:26:22.440
It was an awareness,
it was an ability to see

00:26:22.440 --> 00:26:25.263
the complexity and interrelationships.

00:26:26.430 --> 00:26:28.650
So it was far wiser.

00:26:28.650 --> 00:26:31.140
It was also far more humble,

00:26:31.140 --> 00:26:35.490
because in facing the
complexities of the living world

00:26:35.490 --> 00:26:39.210
people realize that it's impossible

00:26:39.210 --> 00:26:40.920
to be absolutely in charge,

00:26:40.920 --> 00:26:43.230
and there was a greater humility

00:26:43.230 --> 00:26:46.680
in the face of these
complex relationships.

00:26:46.680 --> 00:26:50.310
And human beings saw
themselves much more a part

00:26:50.310 --> 00:26:51.570
of those relationships,

00:26:51.570 --> 00:26:55.440
and there was much greater
respect for the power of nature

00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:59.433
and for the power of these
forces of interdependence.

00:27:00.870 --> 00:27:04.620
So ecosophia, we need to learn

00:27:04.620 --> 00:27:07.410
both from more traditional approaches

00:27:07.410 --> 00:27:11.760
and much more localized
knowledge systems

00:27:11.760 --> 00:27:13.180
need to be nurtured.

00:27:13.180 --> 00:27:15.763
(piano music)

00:27:28.230 --> 00:27:30.720
- [Morag] Permaculture for
me is it's actually about

00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:32.061
designing for sustainable living.

00:27:32.061 --> 00:27:34.487
And it's asking the questions, like,

00:27:34.487 --> 00:27:35.577
"How are we to live?"

00:27:35.577 --> 00:27:38.460
and then looking at how we can create

00:27:38.460 --> 00:27:41.340
sustainable human systems that
fit with the natural system.

00:27:41.340 --> 00:27:45.030
So it's about building
relationships with the land,

00:27:45.030 --> 00:27:47.490
relationships with our
communities and with ourself.

00:27:47.490 --> 00:27:50.160
It's a very common sense approach,

00:27:50.160 --> 00:27:52.680
and it's far more than
about just gardening,

00:27:52.680 --> 00:27:55.398
which is quite often what
permaculture is associated with.

00:27:55.398 --> 00:27:56.760
That's the basis.

00:27:56.760 --> 00:27:58.920
I mean, actually, focusing on food

00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:00.630
I think is a really good place to start,

00:28:00.630 --> 00:28:03.480
because unless you're
a breatharian, you eat.

00:28:03.480 --> 00:28:06.690
And so by focusing on foods
gives you a point of connection

00:28:06.691 --> 00:28:08.520
with so many different people,

00:28:08.520 --> 00:28:10.560
from whether you're focused on health

00:28:10.560 --> 00:28:11.850
or environmental issues

00:28:11.850 --> 00:28:14.400
or whatever it might be,

00:28:14.400 --> 00:28:17.100
focusing on food
gives you that foundation.

00:28:17.100 --> 00:28:20.940
And healthy agriculture
is the foundation

00:28:20.940 --> 00:28:22.470
of a healthy civilization,

00:28:22.470 --> 00:28:23.850
so we kind of focus on that.

00:28:23.850 --> 00:28:25.440
It makes sense.

00:28:25.440 --> 00:28:26.730
But it's so much more than that.

00:28:26.730 --> 00:28:29.970
It's actually about how we
set up our economic systems,

00:28:29.970 --> 00:28:30.935
our community systems.

00:28:30.935 --> 00:28:34.710
It's a way of thinking and a way life.

00:28:34.710 --> 00:28:38.340
In a way I kind of see it as,
it's a paradigm shift.

00:28:38.340 --> 00:28:39.173
- [PCD] Yeah.

00:28:39.173 --> 00:28:40.920
- [Morag] And it's
about respecting nature,

00:28:40.920 --> 00:28:44.190
working with nature,
and living really well.

00:28:44.190 --> 00:28:46.200
It's not about going backwards

00:28:46.200 --> 00:28:48.030
and, like, living with hair shirts.

00:28:48.030 --> 00:28:50.580
It's actually about
finding a new way forward

00:28:50.580 --> 00:28:53.220
that is a really viable alternative

00:28:53.220 --> 00:28:55.320
to the current way that we are living,

00:28:55.320 --> 00:28:58.650
which is undermining natural
capital and social capital

00:28:58.650 --> 00:29:00.120
and is not sustainable.

00:29:00.120 --> 00:29:03.150
Whereas what I see both in my own life,

00:29:03.150 --> 00:29:04.530
in my own community--

00:29:04.530 --> 00:29:05.490
the permaculture community,

00:29:05.490 --> 00:29:08.520
but also around the world in
various places that I've seen--

00:29:08.520 --> 00:29:12.210
there's this ripple effect of
positive permaculture action

00:29:12.210 --> 00:29:14.850
that I feel incredibly hopeful about.

00:29:14.850 --> 00:29:17.478
It is a real and viable
way to move forward.

00:29:17.478 --> 00:29:20.061
(piano music)

00:29:25.350 --> 00:29:27.300
- [PCD] Can you explain
what the calorie deficit

00:29:27.300 --> 00:29:28.290
in our food means

00:29:28.290 --> 00:29:30.600
and what are the consequences

00:29:30.600 --> 00:29:33.810
of this calorie deficit
for the future of humanity?

00:29:33.810 --> 00:29:36.810
- [Victor] Yep, calorie deficit.

00:29:36.810 --> 00:29:42.810
Well, calorie is just a
unit of energy really.

00:29:45.600 --> 00:29:47.160
So when we're talking
about calorie deficit

00:29:47.160 --> 00:29:49.110
we're talking about energy deficit.

00:29:49.110 --> 00:29:52.923
So everything we eat,
it's giving our body energy.

00:29:55.290 --> 00:29:59.640
So let's say a good food,

00:29:59.640 --> 00:30:02.430
be it a piece of bread
or a banana,

00:30:02.430 --> 00:30:06.363
has a set amount of energy
that you give your body.

00:30:07.290 --> 00:30:09.930
But for that good to be produced,

00:30:09.930 --> 00:30:13.230
it required a certain
amount of energy as well.

00:30:13.230 --> 00:30:16.930
So the way nature operates is that,

00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:20.520
through syntropic processes,

00:30:20.520 --> 00:30:22.710
it is able to get something simple

00:30:22.710 --> 00:30:25.323
and through living processes

00:30:26.400 --> 00:30:28.683
it turns that amount of energy

00:30:28.683 --> 00:30:31.590
into something with higher energy.

00:30:31.590 --> 00:30:36.590
So it turns carbon dioxide,
water and light into wood,

00:30:38.070 --> 00:30:41.040
and wood has that much
energy that you can burn

00:30:41.040 --> 00:30:43.470
and create heat, let's say.

00:30:43.470 --> 00:30:45.270
So that's one way that it goes to.

00:30:45.270 --> 00:30:47.880
So in terms of calories,

00:30:47.880 --> 00:30:50.310
it's always increasing in calories

00:30:50.310 --> 00:30:52.800
by those syntropic processes.

00:30:52.800 --> 00:30:57.003
But the way that our system
is working at the moment,

00:30:58.230 --> 00:31:01.950
there is so much energy
being input into systems.

00:31:01.950 --> 00:31:04.353
So there is so much fossil fuels,

00:31:06.240 --> 00:31:09.390
be it through diesel or
be it through fertilizers

00:31:09.390 --> 00:31:14.390
or pesticides, which is
a form of fossil fuel,

00:31:14.940 --> 00:31:18.180
of energy, being put to grow crops,

00:31:18.180 --> 00:31:20.220
being put to harvest crops,

00:31:20.220 --> 00:31:23.940
being put to transport
crops to a central system

00:31:23.940 --> 00:31:26.700
to then be dispersed
into other certain systems,

00:31:26.700 --> 00:31:30.300
to then being redispersed,
localized.

00:31:30.300 --> 00:31:34.660
There is so much energy
consumed to create those goods

00:31:35.700 --> 00:31:38.010
that when it comes to your table,

00:31:38.010 --> 00:31:40.737
the amount of calories it's
actually gonna give to you,

00:31:40.737 --> 00:31:43.840
it's in some cases 1/1000th

00:31:45.300 --> 00:31:49.350
of the calorie required
to manufacture that.

00:31:49.350 --> 00:31:50.577
Especially when you're looking at

00:31:50.577 --> 00:31:53.070
all those highly processed foods.

00:31:53.070 --> 00:31:54.390
So let's say this...

00:31:54.390 --> 00:31:58.380
I think there was a bit of
a research done in bread,

00:31:58.380 --> 00:32:00.180
which is really is a basic good

00:32:00.180 --> 00:32:02.940
and there's so many
ways of making bread.

00:32:02.940 --> 00:32:07.940
But these days, with all those
energy inputs through growing,

00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:11.223
through processing,
through adding things,

00:32:12.330 --> 00:32:18.549
one bread calorie almost
require 1,000 energy units

00:32:18.570 --> 00:32:20.403
to make that bread exist.

00:32:21.870 --> 00:32:24.690
So once you have such
an inefficient system

00:32:24.690 --> 00:32:27.240
and such an entropic system,

00:32:27.240 --> 00:32:29.760
you know, again we are
moving that system

00:32:29.760 --> 00:32:32.040
through a thermal decay,
or a energy decay,

00:32:32.040 --> 00:32:36.750
because there is nothing
that can sustain that.

00:32:36.750 --> 00:32:38.100
- [PCD] It sounds
inherently unsustainable.

00:32:38.100 --> 00:32:39.180
- [Victor] Yeah, I mean it's the same

00:32:39.180 --> 00:32:40.413
as our economic system.

00:32:40.413 --> 00:32:43.173
It's the same as our energy system.

00:32:43.173 --> 00:32:45.780
It's the same as our
transportation system.

00:32:45.780 --> 00:32:49.110
It's almost the same as
our communication system.

00:32:49.110 --> 00:32:52.860
It's all based on that entropic movement

00:32:52.860 --> 00:32:56.190
in which we require that
much to get that little,

00:32:56.190 --> 00:32:58.920
whereas nature really gets that little

00:32:58.920 --> 00:33:00.423
and turns into that much.

00:33:02.100 --> 00:33:06.030
And that is only possible
through living processes.

00:33:06.030 --> 00:33:10.620
Only life can actually
complexify and aggregate.

00:33:10.620 --> 00:33:13.893
There is no waste in natural systems.

00:33:15.510 --> 00:33:19.040
The chicken waste is the bacterial food,

00:33:19.040 --> 00:33:21.360
and the bacterial food
is the plant food,

00:33:21.360 --> 00:33:24.630
and the plant blossom
is the human food,

00:33:24.630 --> 00:33:26.010
and the food--

00:33:26.010 --> 00:33:27.990
and it's just a constant change.

00:33:27.990 --> 00:33:31.380
But the way we centralizing things,

00:33:31.380 --> 00:33:33.990
we taking things out of context.

00:33:33.990 --> 00:33:35.970
And once we do that,

00:33:35.970 --> 00:33:38.040
then we create more problems

00:33:38.040 --> 00:33:39.993
which requires more energy,

00:33:41.280 --> 00:33:44.820
and it's just a system

00:33:44.820 --> 00:33:47.613
that is just gonna collapse.

00:33:47.613 --> 00:33:50.196
(bird cawing)

00:33:56.520 --> 00:33:58.860
- [PCD] And here's the conundrum.

00:33:58.860 --> 00:34:01.887
The graph on the left is
historical population growth,

00:34:01.887 --> 00:34:03.150
and the graph on the right

00:34:03.150 --> 00:34:05.700
is historical energy consumption growth

00:34:05.700 --> 00:34:07.380
of all the different energies

00:34:07.380 --> 00:34:10.080
that we've consumed over the years.

00:34:10.080 --> 00:34:12.630
And they overlay each other perfectly

00:34:12.630 --> 00:34:15.540
because it took industrial civilization,

00:34:15.540 --> 00:34:18.540
it took industrial agriculture

00:34:18.540 --> 00:34:20.823
to create 8+ billion people.

00:34:21.720 --> 00:34:23.280
Now, when I was born

00:34:23.280 --> 00:34:25.290
there was 4 billion people
on the planet,

00:34:25.290 --> 00:34:27.467
and it took all of human history

00:34:27.467 --> 00:34:29.907
to get to that 4 billion people.

00:34:29.907 --> 00:34:33.243
And in just 50 years,
that has doubled.

00:34:34.470 --> 00:34:37.410
So it only stands to reason

00:34:37.410 --> 00:34:40.560
that if we're gonna
have an energy descent,

00:34:40.560 --> 00:34:44.670
then logically this will
involve a population descent.

00:34:44.670 --> 00:34:45.843
Because let's face it,

00:34:46.980 --> 00:34:50.640
there's too many people
consuming too much,

00:34:50.640 --> 00:34:53.321
too fast...it's simple.

00:34:53.321 --> 00:34:55.890
(siren wailing)

00:34:55.890 --> 00:34:58.230
- [William] The present
global system, right?

00:34:58.230 --> 00:35:00.030
I just call it the global enterprise

00:35:00.030 --> 00:35:01.428
or the human enterprise.

00:35:01.428 --> 00:35:02.261
- [PCD] Yeah.

00:35:02.261 --> 00:35:05.370
- It is almost entirely the
product of fossil fuel.

00:35:05.370 --> 00:35:08.490
That entire explosion,
this enormous increase--

00:35:08.490 --> 00:35:10.890
a seven, eight fold
increase in human beings

00:35:10.890 --> 00:35:12.810
in just 200 years--

00:35:12.810 --> 00:35:15.840
is associated with
the use of fossil fuel.

00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:19.440
You see, human beings are like
every other natural species.

00:35:19.440 --> 00:35:22.470
We have the capacity
to grow exponentially.

00:35:22.470 --> 00:35:24.630
But in nature we're kept back

00:35:24.630 --> 00:35:26.700
by what's called negative feedback.

00:35:26.700 --> 00:35:30.210
Disease, food shortages,
resource shortages,

00:35:30.210 --> 00:35:31.320
and so on and so forth.

00:35:31.320 --> 00:35:32.153
- [PCD] Yeah.

00:35:32.153 --> 00:35:33.990
- [William] With the
Scientific Revolution,

00:35:33.990 --> 00:35:36.180
we began to control disease,

00:35:36.180 --> 00:35:38.580
and fossil fuel provided the means

00:35:38.580 --> 00:35:40.860
by which we could grow all the food

00:35:40.860 --> 00:35:43.380
and acquire all the
other resources necessary

00:35:43.380 --> 00:35:46.110
to sustain growth
of the human population.

00:35:46.110 --> 00:35:50.070
So for the first time in
human evolutionary history,

00:35:50.070 --> 00:35:54.060
just 212 or 215 or 220 years ago,

00:35:54.060 --> 00:35:56.850
humans began to grow exponentially.

00:35:56.850 --> 00:35:59.880
In other words, to realize
our full biological potential

00:35:59.880 --> 00:36:01.920
for the first time ever.

00:36:01.920 --> 00:36:04.020
And of course we're now suspended

00:36:04.020 --> 00:36:06.480
on this fountain of fossil fuel,

00:36:06.480 --> 00:36:10.140
and utterly dependent on it to maintain

00:36:10.140 --> 00:36:12.150
the current numbers of people

00:36:12.150 --> 00:36:16.110
and the current status of
all of our cultural artifacts.

00:36:16.110 --> 00:36:18.330
And fossil fuel is going away.

00:36:18.330 --> 00:36:21.420
It'll go away either because
we abandon it

00:36:21.420 --> 00:36:24.210
to avoid catastrophic climate change,

00:36:24.210 --> 00:36:28.230
or because we simply
run out of economically

00:36:28.230 --> 00:36:30.600
mineable fossil fuels.

00:36:30.600 --> 00:36:34.020
And you know, for all we hear
about wind power and solar--

00:36:34.020 --> 00:36:36.960
Australia is a powerhouse
in these domains--

00:36:36.960 --> 00:36:41.640
it's not going to be an adequate
substitute for fossil fuel.

00:36:41.640 --> 00:36:46.440
In fact, the current rush to
produce EVs and wind panel--

00:36:46.440 --> 00:36:50.630
or wind towers and
the solar panels and so on,

00:36:50.631 --> 00:36:52.260
is adding to
our carbon emissions.

00:36:52.260 --> 00:36:56.460
So the world has this
narrow, simplistic focus

00:36:56.460 --> 00:36:59.070
on climate change
as if it's the problem.

00:36:59.070 --> 00:37:03.001
It's merely a symptom of overshoot,
but we focus on it.

00:37:03.199 --> 00:37:05.373
And with our narrow, simplistic,

00:37:06.390 --> 00:37:10.050
almost prehistoric brains,

00:37:10.050 --> 00:37:14.400
we can't seem to compute the
complexities of the systems

00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:15.357
we're dealing with.

00:37:15.357 --> 00:37:19.020
And so we focus on climate,
making the situation worse.

00:37:20.340 --> 00:37:23.260
The notion of continuous
economic growth

00:37:24.150 --> 00:37:28.560
abetted by continuous
technological advances,

00:37:28.560 --> 00:37:30.510
that's our cultural myth.

00:37:30.510 --> 00:37:32.940
And it's a global cultural myth,

00:37:32.940 --> 00:37:35.433
so that people
believe in this profoundly.

00:37:37.110 --> 00:37:39.150
We have got to face the reality

00:37:39.150 --> 00:37:41.970
that things are going to go down.

00:37:41.970 --> 00:37:43.803
We should be preparing now.

00:37:44.779 --> 00:37:47.779
(piano music)

00:37:50.610 --> 00:37:53.130
- [PCD] I feel like this
needs to be said again

00:37:53.130 --> 00:37:54.990
to really sink in.

00:37:54.990 --> 00:37:57.000
This is something even
most environmental groups

00:37:57.000 --> 00:37:58.440
don't want to face.

00:37:58.440 --> 00:38:01.770
And that is, we cannot
make nuclear power,

00:38:01.770 --> 00:38:03.420
solar panels, wind turbines,

00:38:03.420 --> 00:38:06.000
hydrogen or hydroelectric power,

00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:08.760
without one-use-only,
energy dense,

00:38:08.760 --> 00:38:11.823
climate-changing,
limited fossil fuels.

00:38:12.810 --> 00:38:17.160
The solution that
everybody wants is simple.

00:38:17.160 --> 00:38:21.060
It's degrowth, which will
occur one way or another.

00:38:21.060 --> 00:38:23.940
So I think one of the
most important things

00:38:23.940 --> 00:38:26.640
to concentrate now on is our emotional

00:38:26.640 --> 00:38:28.803
and our mental sustainability.

00:38:30.330 --> 00:38:33.480
There's plenty of couples
that are into sustainability

00:38:33.480 --> 00:38:37.080
that relationships don't
last and they split up, too.

00:38:37.080 --> 00:38:41.280
So that sense of sustainability
has a lot more to do with

00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:44.366
than just the solar panel
or an electric vehicle

00:38:44.366 --> 00:38:46.953
or just using less fossil fuels.

00:38:48.870 --> 00:38:50.700
It goes much deeper than that.

00:38:50.700 --> 00:38:52.410
I don't like to use
the word "spiritual,"

00:38:52.410 --> 00:38:53.430
'cause that's pretty corrupted,

00:38:53.430 --> 00:38:58.020
but, you know, you've gotta
learn how to get along

00:38:58.020 --> 00:38:59.313
with what we've got left.

00:39:05.070 --> 00:39:07.110
- [Stuart] It's sort of
interesting for me.

00:39:07.110 --> 00:39:10.840
I was involved with permaculture

00:39:12.450 --> 00:39:14.130
from the beginning, I guess,

00:39:14.130 --> 00:39:17.127
and I went to a lot of
the early conferences,

00:39:17.127 --> 00:39:19.980
in particularly in North America,

00:39:19.980 --> 00:39:24.960
And I saw people talking
about permaculture

00:39:24.960 --> 00:39:27.780
like something to do out there,

00:39:27.780 --> 00:39:36.280
and yet I thought there was still
a lot of negative behaviors.

00:39:36.480 --> 00:39:41.250
And I just had this sort of
phrase came to my mind one day.

00:39:41.250 --> 00:39:45.180
I thought, "To have
permaculture out there,

00:39:45.180 --> 00:39:47.463
"you need to have
permaculture in here."

00:39:48.360 --> 00:39:51.127
And so I started using the phrase,

00:39:51.127 --> 00:39:53.337
"Permaculture of the inner landscape,"

00:39:54.360 --> 00:39:59.310
thinking that if you've
got that healthy,

00:39:59.310 --> 00:40:07.738
diverse, multi-story,
integrated system out there,

00:40:07.740 --> 00:40:10.780
we need to have that going on inside us.

00:40:11.880 --> 00:40:15.750
Which is not a sort of
monocultural way

00:40:15.750 --> 00:40:18.210
of thinking about things,

00:40:18.210 --> 00:40:22.083
but a more diverse, integrated, complex,

00:40:23.640 --> 00:40:27.928
mutually supportive way
of functioning internally.

00:40:27.928 --> 00:40:29.700
(water splashing)

00:40:29.700 --> 00:40:33.930
If you ask people to imagine

00:40:33.930 --> 00:40:37.260
what they would like to do,

00:40:37.260 --> 00:40:42.260
what happens, is because we
are made up of multiple selves,

00:40:43.980 --> 00:40:48.090
our unwounded self or our
core self will come up

00:40:48.090 --> 00:40:51.120
with some ideas subconsciously.

00:40:51.120 --> 00:40:52.890
But all our wounded selves

00:40:52.890 --> 00:40:57.510
and adapted selves will
subconsciously censor that

00:40:57.510 --> 00:41:00.360
and say, "No, you couldn't do that

00:41:00.360 --> 00:41:03.949
"'cause you haven't been able
to do anything up to now."

00:41:03.949 --> 00:41:05.700
(chuckles)

00:41:05.700 --> 00:41:08.850
Whereas, paradoxically, if
you ask people to lie about

00:41:08.850 --> 00:41:11.430
what they haven't done,

00:41:11.430 --> 00:41:15.510
there's actually no role for
censoring, 'cause it's a lie.

00:41:15.510 --> 00:41:19.240
So you actually get to hear
what your unwounded,

00:41:20.250 --> 00:41:24.638
core self really wants
to do and could do

00:41:24.638 --> 00:41:27.090
and has been striving to do.

00:41:27.090 --> 00:41:27.990
- [PCD] With the lie?

00:41:27.990 --> 00:41:30.330
- [Stuart] Yeah, as a lie, you see.

00:41:30.330 --> 00:41:31.163
- [PCD] So the lie will be what they

00:41:31.163 --> 00:41:32.220
really wanna be doing.

00:41:32.220 --> 00:41:34.890
- [Stuart] Yeah, because
that's how you find out

00:41:34.890 --> 00:41:39.890
what you really want to do,
is to lie about it

00:41:40.260 --> 00:41:41.313
as if you've done it.

00:41:43.710 --> 00:41:47.250
Then you can actually use
that as a starting point,

00:41:47.250 --> 00:41:50.100
because if that's come
from your core self,

00:41:50.100 --> 00:41:53.340
you've actually spent your
life trying to do things

00:41:53.340 --> 00:41:55.653
related to what you just lied about.

00:41:57.570 --> 00:42:01.750
In some ways the knowledge
that we think we know

00:42:03.101 --> 00:42:06.330
is what's tied into cleverness,

00:42:06.330 --> 00:42:08.700
and it's what we study in school

00:42:08.700 --> 00:42:11.160
and get tested on and so forth.

00:42:11.160 --> 00:42:16.160
But the other stuff,
which is the majority,

00:42:16.260 --> 00:42:21.260
is really only accessible
through experience

00:42:21.720 --> 00:42:25.920
and intuition and feelings
and gut sense

00:42:25.920 --> 00:42:27.420
and all those sort of things.

00:42:27.420 --> 00:42:30.376
And it manifests as wisdom.

00:42:31.080 --> 00:42:36.080
And so in some ways what's needed most

00:42:36.300 --> 00:42:40.530
in solving the dilemma we're in

00:42:40.530 --> 00:42:44.130
is wisdom, which is the basis

00:42:44.130 --> 00:42:49.105
for being clear about
values and priorities.

00:42:49.105 --> 00:42:53.070
And all that cleverness
needs to be in the service

00:42:53.070 --> 00:42:56.010
of that wisdom, and so forth.

00:42:56.010 --> 00:42:59.490
And all the real great
creativity, in a sense,

00:42:59.490 --> 00:43:00.850
is tied up with that.

00:43:03.570 --> 00:43:05.100
And the tragedy at the moment

00:43:05.100 --> 00:43:08.789
is wisdom is sort of an
extracurricular activity

00:43:08.789 --> 00:43:11.220
in our educational system.

00:43:11.220 --> 00:43:16.020
So the whole educational
system is pretty much dedicated

00:43:16.020 --> 00:43:17.640
to cleverness,

00:43:17.640 --> 00:43:21.140
which is partly why we're
not making a lot of progress.

00:43:21.140 --> 00:43:22.558
(chuckles)

00:43:22.558 --> 00:43:25.475
(piano music)

00:43:27.800 --> 00:43:29.100
- [PCD] One of the most profound things

00:43:29.100 --> 00:43:32.310
that stands out to me from
my schooling and education

00:43:32.310 --> 00:43:36.180
was when a sweet, elderly
Salvation Army priest

00:43:36.180 --> 00:43:37.230
came into the classroom

00:43:37.230 --> 00:43:39.810
and taught us about the "Deep Dark Devil,"

00:43:39.810 --> 00:43:42.960
that an invisible evil
force was manipulating

00:43:42.960 --> 00:43:44.430
and hindering mankind

00:43:44.430 --> 00:43:48.420
and we'd go to hell if we
didn't obey God's rules.

00:43:48.420 --> 00:43:50.880
To me, this is child abuse,

00:43:50.880 --> 00:43:54.480
yet to religious people
it's child protection.

00:43:54.480 --> 00:43:58.140
But I feel herein lies
the main fault line,

00:43:58.140 --> 00:44:02.010
the main fissure humanity
has with nature.

00:44:02.010 --> 00:44:05.310
We have spiritual religious
beliefs that are limitless,

00:44:05.310 --> 00:44:07.800
governing and guiding us
in an ecosystem

00:44:07.800 --> 00:44:09.960
that has limits and boundaries.

00:44:09.960 --> 00:44:12.367
And this doesn't seem very wise.

00:44:12.367 --> 00:44:14.370
(piano music)

00:44:14.370 --> 00:44:16.200
- [PCD] Can you explain how

00:44:16.200 --> 00:44:18.660
Aboriginal people have
a spiritual connection

00:44:18.660 --> 00:44:19.493
with the Earth,

00:44:19.493 --> 00:44:22.500
whereby damaging the Earth
also hurts you spiritually,

00:44:22.500 --> 00:44:25.590
whereas a modern man believes
in a spiritual connection

00:44:25.590 --> 00:44:28.736
with some heaven sort of
outside of Earth, yeah?

00:44:28.736 --> 00:44:33.060
And do you think this spiritual
separation from the Earth

00:44:33.060 --> 00:44:34.170
of which we are made

00:44:34.170 --> 00:44:36.540
is a major cause
of our apathy towards,

00:44:36.540 --> 00:44:37.790
or destruction of, nature?

00:44:39.210 --> 00:44:40.830
- [Uncle Bob] That's a
beautiful question,

00:44:40.830 --> 00:44:43.890
because really our spirit only goes

00:44:43.890 --> 00:44:45.963
to the height that the bird flies.

00:44:47.280 --> 00:44:49.503
Anything beyond that
is one's imagination.

00:44:51.210 --> 00:44:54.180
Everything that's of importance
to us as human beings,

00:44:54.180 --> 00:44:55.443
we believe is here.

00:44:56.370 --> 00:44:58.260
It's here right beside us.

00:44:58.260 --> 00:45:00.930
It's here on the land we're walking on.

00:45:00.930 --> 00:45:03.240
It's here with the trees around us.

00:45:03.240 --> 00:45:06.600
It's here in the air we breathe
and the water we drink.

00:45:06.600 --> 00:45:09.480
And that's the Creator energy

00:45:09.480 --> 00:45:12.243
quite often we would
refer as the "chukopa,"

00:45:13.560 --> 00:45:16.260
and some people might
even refer to that energy

00:45:16.260 --> 00:45:20.610
of that super consciousness
as God, or call it other things.

00:45:20.610 --> 00:45:23.670
But ours is so here,
it's not no more

00:45:23.670 --> 00:45:26.670
than the height of the
flight of the highest bird.

00:45:26.670 --> 00:45:29.920
It is so much part of who we are

00:45:31.290 --> 00:45:36.290
that we have to care for
that for our own survival.

00:45:36.330 --> 00:45:38.520
Because its survival depends on us

00:45:38.520 --> 00:45:41.140
and our survival depends on it,

00:45:42.928 --> 00:45:45.780
'cause I believe from the
teachings of my ancestors

00:45:45.780 --> 00:45:50.400
and my old people that
everything is equal.

00:45:50.400 --> 00:45:52.410
And the mistake humans have made

00:45:52.410 --> 00:45:54.510
when we became materialistic,

00:45:54.510 --> 00:45:56.280
we put ourselves above that

00:45:56.280 --> 00:46:01.280
and have openly destroyed
and boasting about it,

00:46:01.440 --> 00:46:04.110
destroying other forms of life

00:46:04.110 --> 00:46:07.620
which is so important
to our own survival.

00:46:07.620 --> 00:46:09.423
That's the ridiculousness of it.

00:46:10.290 --> 00:46:14.280
We are killing what's
there to care for us.

00:46:14.280 --> 00:46:15.963
You've gotta be rama rama.

00:46:16.980 --> 00:46:21.980
It's crazy, it's suicidal,
self suicidal.

00:46:29.460 --> 00:46:34.499
- [Bobbi] Let me talk about
narcissism for a minute.

00:46:34.501 --> 00:46:36.699
We need to-- because I do
like to think in terms

00:46:36.700 --> 00:46:39.779
of evolutionary psychology
and social psychology,

00:46:39.780 --> 00:46:43.920
because I think with this
emphasis on individual psychology

00:46:43.920 --> 00:46:47.700
we've got a bit bound
up with, like you say,

00:46:47.700 --> 00:46:50.460
too much emphasis on the individual.

00:46:50.460 --> 00:46:53.610
Too much emphasis
on self-improvement.

00:46:53.610 --> 00:46:57.720
And if you put too much
emphasis on the individual

00:46:57.720 --> 00:47:00.270
and too much emphasis on the self,

00:47:00.270 --> 00:47:03.300
you're going to create narcissism.

00:47:03.300 --> 00:47:05.130
But what is narcissism?

00:47:05.130 --> 00:47:09.480
Well, as humans, we've
got this wonderful gift

00:47:09.480 --> 00:47:11.850
of self-reflexive consciousness,

00:47:11.850 --> 00:47:15.540
where we can see ourselves
from the outside.

00:47:15.540 --> 00:47:17.880
We can think about
what we are doing.

00:47:17.880 --> 00:47:22.080
We can, perhaps, if we like to,
choose a different direction

00:47:22.080 --> 00:47:25.920
or we can choose to change
a behavior or a habit.

00:47:25.920 --> 00:47:28.350
But we have to,
so we can set with--

00:47:28.350 --> 00:47:31.200
That comes from our
ability to kind of step out

00:47:31.200 --> 00:47:35.280
outside of ourselves,
reflect on our behavior,

00:47:35.280 --> 00:47:38.430
and then make a change.

00:47:38.430 --> 00:47:42.150
Now that's a wonderful gift,

00:47:42.150 --> 00:47:44.460
but it is a two-edged sword,

00:47:44.460 --> 00:47:48.061
because if you think of Narcissus

00:47:48.061 --> 00:47:50.170
looking in that pond

00:47:51.150 --> 00:47:54.033
and all he can see is himself...

00:47:54.900 --> 00:47:56.700
I know in the myth

00:47:56.700 --> 00:48:01.700
that it's kind of put as that
something very pleasurable,

00:48:02.340 --> 00:48:05.760
but it's only momentarily pleasurable.

00:48:05.760 --> 00:48:09.839
And after that-- I'll stop
myself swearing there.

00:48:09.839 --> 00:48:12.480
It's terrifying.

00:48:12.480 --> 00:48:16.050
Yeah, because you're all alone.

00:48:16.050 --> 00:48:19.593
And if there's only you,
where are the reference points?

00:48:22.110 --> 00:48:24.186
How do you survive in this world?

00:48:24.186 --> 00:48:27.660
(piano music)

00:48:27.660 --> 00:48:29.880
- [PCD] And here we are
in the middle of what

00:48:29.880 --> 00:48:32.670
health carers are calling
"the loneliness epidemic"

00:48:32.670 --> 00:48:35.733
combined with a narcissism epidemic.

00:48:36.630 --> 00:48:38.700
It seems we in this consumer society

00:48:38.700 --> 00:48:43.053
have divorced ourselves from
ourselves and from nature.

00:48:44.490 --> 00:48:46.020
The Aboriginal peoples of the world

00:48:46.020 --> 00:48:48.240
have long recognized their connection,

00:48:48.240 --> 00:48:51.660
their deep intimate
relationship with the Earth.

00:48:51.660 --> 00:48:54.060
But for us non-aboriginals,

00:48:54.060 --> 00:48:57.840
we have forgotten that we
too are intimately connected,

00:48:57.840 --> 00:49:02.840
that what happens to the Amazon
rainforest affects us all

00:49:03.240 --> 00:49:05.274
because we're all
indigenous to the Earth.

00:49:05.274 --> 00:49:08.191
(piano music)

00:49:15.597 --> 00:49:18.480
- [PCD] For the Aboriginal
peoples of the world,

00:49:18.480 --> 00:49:21.240
there's no going back to
their original ways anymore.

00:49:21.240 --> 00:49:24.213
Yet for the white man
in the modern ways,

00:49:25.470 --> 00:49:28.620
that has no future 'cause
it's completely unsustainable.

00:49:28.620 --> 00:49:29.533
So knowing this, do you think,

00:49:29.533 --> 00:49:32.520
like, a new world Indigenous
culture needs to form,

00:49:32.520 --> 00:49:34.740
and the white people
also need to recognize

00:49:34.740 --> 00:49:37.200
their indigeneity as well?

00:49:37.200 --> 00:49:38.670
- [Whaia Whaea] I hear
what you're saying.

00:49:38.670 --> 00:49:42.360
I hear what you're saying
and I recognize that.

00:49:42.360 --> 00:49:47.360
I recognize that in my
pākehā, my white sisters.

00:49:48.660 --> 00:49:50.490
I don't even like
to say that word, really,

00:49:50.490 --> 00:49:55.200
because it's judgment again.

00:49:57.570 --> 00:49:59.230
And that's what I feel...

00:50:00.870 --> 00:50:04.980
A lot of my sisters
in that way feel lost,

00:50:04.980 --> 00:50:06.993
and I would say to them,

00:50:09.187 --> 00:50:10.293
"Remember who you are.

00:50:13.350 --> 00:50:16.290
'Don't feel like you don't belong

00:50:16.290 --> 00:50:19.530
"because you don't have a culture,

00:50:19.530 --> 00:50:21.300
"because it's incorrect.

00:50:21.300 --> 00:50:23.670
"We all have a culture,

00:50:23.670 --> 00:50:25.470
"We just have to
remember what it is."

00:50:26.482 --> 00:50:28.470
- [PCD] Do you think
what humanity's doing

00:50:28.470 --> 00:50:30.360
is like what the Easter Islanders did,

00:50:30.360 --> 00:50:31.920
but on a global scale?

00:50:31.920 --> 00:50:34.680
So the Easter Islanders did
themselves out of resources

00:50:34.680 --> 00:50:36.450
and wrecked their environment,

00:50:36.450 --> 00:50:38.250
but that was, like, a small place.

00:50:38.250 --> 00:50:39.870
But now we're global.

00:50:39.870 --> 00:50:42.240
So do you think we're
doing a similar thing?

00:50:42.240 --> 00:50:45.090
- [Mindahi] I think we
are doing even worse,

00:50:45.090 --> 00:50:48.690
because we don't even know what
is happening at other levels.

00:50:48.690 --> 00:50:51.873
Because all systems are interrelated,

00:50:53.190 --> 00:50:56.140
so we cannot just say,
"Oh, this is local

00:50:57.000 --> 00:50:59.220
"and it's not affecting other places."

00:50:59.220 --> 00:51:03.327
Now it is even because of the technology

00:51:05.670 --> 00:51:10.670
that is even bigger and bigger
is affecting the human lives.

00:51:11.280 --> 00:51:13.290
It's affecting the forest,

00:51:13.290 --> 00:51:14.370
it's affecting the sea,

00:51:14.370 --> 00:51:16.320
it's affecting the air.

00:51:16.320 --> 00:51:18.300
In other words, it's affecting life

00:51:18.300 --> 00:51:20.430
and the sacred elements of life.

00:51:20.430 --> 00:51:21.660
Why? Because of the grid,

00:51:21.660 --> 00:51:26.130
because of commodification
of any single element,

00:51:26.130 --> 00:51:30.146
any single material
that is around the world.

00:51:30.146 --> 00:51:34.500
It is the greed that
human beings have built

00:51:34.500 --> 00:51:35.850
over the centuries.

00:51:35.850 --> 00:51:38.670
- [PCD] And do you think
greed is a mental illness?

00:51:38.670 --> 00:51:39.897
- [Mindahi] Greed is..

00:51:40.920 --> 00:51:42.826
- [PCD] Spiritual illness,
mental illness.

00:51:42.826 --> 00:51:47.999
- [Mindahi] It's an illness,
but it's based in evil forces,

00:51:48.870 --> 00:51:52.009
because it is
just to take, take, take, take,

00:51:52.011 --> 00:51:56.900
and then there is--
it produces sickness

00:51:57.300 --> 00:51:59.970
not just at the spiritual level,

00:51:59.970 --> 00:52:03.386
which is worst, but
also at the mental level

00:52:03.386 --> 00:52:07.057
and also in the bodies
because it's all related.

00:52:07.057 --> 00:52:09.090
- [PCD] And do you think a collapse

00:52:09.090 --> 00:52:11.400
of our civilization is inevitable?

00:52:11.400 --> 00:52:14.553
And if so, what can
we do to prepare?

00:52:16.920 --> 00:52:21.990
- [Mindahi] We think that we
are in a transition process,

00:52:21.991 --> 00:52:22.997
and at the same time we are

00:52:22.997 --> 00:52:24.360
within the unification process.

00:52:24.360 --> 00:52:26.913
We need to come together
and pull together.

00:52:27.900 --> 00:52:30.780
But there is not going to
be enough time,

00:52:30.780 --> 00:52:35.780
so it's like some places are
going to be worse than others.

00:52:35.970 --> 00:52:39.180
Why? Because some places
there are still people

00:52:39.180 --> 00:52:42.270
who are taking care,
and nature knows,

00:52:42.270 --> 00:52:44.881
because there is intelligence in nature.

00:52:44.881 --> 00:52:47.193
There is intelligence in the universe.

00:52:48.030 --> 00:52:50.760
We are wrong that we think
that we are the only ones

00:52:50.760 --> 00:52:53.740
that have intelligence.

00:52:53.740 --> 00:52:55.680
- [PCD] And what else,
what is some wisdom

00:52:55.680 --> 00:52:57.370
that your culture can teach us

00:52:58.290 --> 00:53:00.210
to help us survive the collapse?

00:53:00.210 --> 00:53:02.820
Whether it's building
internal resilience

00:53:02.820 --> 00:53:04.290
or external, with food security.

00:53:04.290 --> 00:53:06.390
What's some wisdom your
culture can teach us

00:53:06.390 --> 00:53:07.920
to help us make that transition?

00:53:07.920 --> 00:53:10.383
- [Mindahi] Yes, first of all
we need to recover family,

00:53:11.700 --> 00:53:13.980
to come together as family,

00:53:13.980 --> 00:53:16.050
because it's not about individual.

00:53:16.050 --> 00:53:19.050
We need to forget about
individual beings.

00:53:19.050 --> 00:53:21.003
We are social beings.

00:53:22.050 --> 00:53:26.170
We need to go back and
recover dignity in the family

00:53:27.090 --> 00:53:31.323
and meet our responsibilities,
and then rebuild communities.

00:53:32.850 --> 00:53:35.910
And whether if we like it or not,

00:53:35.910 --> 00:53:37.110
we are going to be pushed

00:53:37.110 --> 00:53:43.999
to live in a more basic way.

00:53:44.220 --> 00:53:46.833
We need to live simple.

00:53:47.910 --> 00:53:49.590
We don't need too many things.

00:53:49.590 --> 00:53:52.590
It's just an illness,
that getting and getting,

00:53:52.590 --> 00:53:54.498
and you know, you get sick.

00:53:54.498 --> 00:53:57.081
(bell chiming)

00:54:02.640 --> 00:54:05.970
- [Rocky] There's a crisis of
spirituality around the world.

00:54:05.970 --> 00:54:08.399
And because of that, people.

00:54:08.400 --> 00:54:12.660
they're looking for something,
because we are human.

00:54:12.660 --> 00:54:13.830
We are connected to something big.

00:54:13.830 --> 00:54:15.663
We can feel it, we know it.

00:54:16.650 --> 00:54:21.340
But what has come in is really
the church of consumerism.

00:54:22.800 --> 00:54:25.047
More acquisition, acquiring more,

00:54:25.047 --> 00:54:26.310
and that is the only way

00:54:26.310 --> 00:54:30.090
you can have a higher social status

00:54:30.090 --> 00:54:32.640
based upon the car you drive,

00:54:32.640 --> 00:54:35.190
who you are with, your friends,

00:54:35.190 --> 00:54:38.460
the social group that you run with.

00:54:38.460 --> 00:54:45.539
So I feel that our priorities
are totally misplaced.

00:54:45.540 --> 00:54:49.080
And hopefully if we are
able to move into a space

00:54:49.080 --> 00:54:51.510
where we have technology

00:54:51.510 --> 00:54:54.300
that can disseminate
information very quickly--

00:54:54.300 --> 00:54:57.990
so that means that every
grand idea can spark

00:54:57.990 --> 00:54:59.460
within a short period of time--

00:54:59.460 --> 00:55:03.353
you know, the viral
consciousness need to go viral

00:55:03.353 --> 00:55:07.923
and the consciousness of
everybody checking their...

00:55:09.750 --> 00:55:10.710
looking at their lives

00:55:10.710 --> 00:55:16.999
and, like, "Okay, how is my
lifestyle impacting the Earth?"

00:55:17.490 --> 00:55:21.810
Is it helping to create
a sustainable system,

00:55:21.810 --> 00:55:24.000
a sustainable future for myself?

00:55:24.000 --> 00:55:28.470
Or is it helping me
perpetuate into this fallacy

00:55:28.470 --> 00:55:30.540
of endless consumerism?

00:55:30.540 --> 00:55:33.960
- [PCD] So would you say
that like things like greed

00:55:33.961 --> 00:55:34.770
is like a mental illness?

00:55:34.770 --> 00:55:36.239
'Cause that's what's causing it...

00:55:36.239 --> 00:55:39.483
- The ultimate illness.

00:55:40.590 --> 00:55:42.393
What has led us to this?

00:55:43.951 --> 00:55:47.850
It's greed, but if it was
just greed by itself

00:55:47.850 --> 00:55:51.120
then you could isolate the problem.

00:55:51.120 --> 00:55:53.340
But it's greed that was driven

00:55:53.340 --> 00:55:59.340
by the sense of racial,
all our divisions.

00:56:00.090 --> 00:56:02.770
So it was driven by power,

00:56:06.337 --> 00:56:07.890
and it happens even in mine

00:56:07.890 --> 00:56:10.254
because I'm not talking
even about race.

00:56:10.254 --> 00:56:14.370
We can go even to the tribal construct.

00:56:14.370 --> 00:56:18.301
Even within my tribal construct
in Africa, you see that.

00:56:18.302 --> 00:56:20.790
One tribe sees the opportunity,

00:56:20.790 --> 00:56:21.623
it takes it.

00:56:21.623 --> 00:56:23.580
One tribe feels like
they are the only ones

00:56:23.580 --> 00:56:25.470
that needs to be represented,

00:56:25.470 --> 00:56:27.140
they squash the other tribe.

00:56:27.140 --> 00:56:30.630
It's a human disease

00:56:30.630 --> 00:56:35.630
of always seeing that the only people

00:56:35.760 --> 00:56:38.763
that we need to stand up for is our own.

00:56:39.930 --> 00:56:44.283
And I think if you pour
greed into that mix,

00:56:45.360 --> 00:56:48.573
then you have something
that is a runaway disease.

00:56:49.919 --> 00:56:52.537
(indistinct chatter)

00:56:52.537 --> 00:56:55.454
(piano music)

00:56:58.170 --> 00:57:01.337
(indistinct chatter)

00:57:02.820 --> 00:57:04.128
- [Man] Hey, give a fuck!

00:57:04.128 --> 00:57:05.501
- [PCD] They're filming you, too.

00:57:05.501 --> 00:57:06.390
- [Man] I don't care.
- [PCD] Everyone's filming this.

00:57:06.390 --> 00:57:07.223
- [Man] I don't really care.

00:57:07.223 --> 00:57:08.460
- [PCD] I'm allowed
to come here and film.

00:57:08.460 --> 00:57:09.397
- [Man] Oh, you can do what you like.

00:57:09.397 --> 00:57:10.371
- [PCD] Good.

00:57:10.371 --> 00:57:11.708
- [Man] But don't fuckin' point it at me

00:57:11.708 --> 00:57:14.033
or I'll fucking kill ya.

00:57:16.800 --> 00:57:18.480
- [2nd Man] Yeah, there's
dropkicks everywhere.

00:57:18.480 --> 00:57:19.440
- [Man] Aw, yeah.

00:57:19.440 --> 00:57:20.373
- [2nd Man] No, no, no.

00:57:20.373 --> 00:57:22.047
You don't talk like that to someone.

00:57:22.047 --> 00:57:22.880
He's your brother, mate.

00:57:22.880 --> 00:57:25.107
- [Man] He's a brother, is he?
- [2nd Man] We're all brothers.

00:57:25.107 --> 00:57:27.600
- [3rd man] Oi, look,
everyone's getting this.

00:57:27.600 --> 00:57:29.036
It's ridiculous
- [Man] I know.

00:57:29.036 --> 00:57:30.750
- [3rd Man] It's well past that point.

00:57:30.750 --> 00:57:33.650
- [Man] Fire up the saws,
cut this fuckin' thing down.

00:57:33.650 --> 00:57:35.610
- [PCD] In the country town
where I live,

00:57:35.610 --> 00:57:38.790
there was a protest to protect
this grand old gum tree

00:57:38.790 --> 00:57:43.050
from being felled because the
council deemed it dangerous.

00:57:43.050 --> 00:57:46.620
Many people in the community
wanted it saved in some way

00:57:46.620 --> 00:57:48.690
while others wanted it taken down,

00:57:48.690 --> 00:57:51.600
many because of an ideological hatred

00:57:51.600 --> 00:57:53.253
of the "greens" and "lefties."

00:57:54.210 --> 00:57:56.850
Y'know, "Climate change is
a conspiracy" and all that.

00:57:56.850 --> 00:57:58.590
It was a very emotive issue

00:57:58.590 --> 00:58:01.230
because native forest
logging had been stopped

00:58:01.230 --> 00:58:02.640
in the state of Victoria,

00:58:02.640 --> 00:58:05.400
and there were a lot of threats
and intimidation leveled

00:58:05.400 --> 00:58:07.203
against the peaceful protestors.

00:58:08.070 --> 00:58:11.010
The main lesson I learned
from this whole adventure

00:58:11.010 --> 00:58:15.780
was that those who bullied
people were far more dangerous

00:58:15.780 --> 00:58:18.360
than the elderly mountain grey gum.

00:58:18.360 --> 00:58:21.527
(chainsaw buzzing)

00:58:23.971 --> 00:58:26.026
(tree branch thudding)

00:58:28.026 --> 00:58:31.616
(chainsaw buzzing)

00:58:35.671 --> 00:58:38.838
(piano music)

00:58:43.560 --> 00:58:45.660
- [Alnoor] God, divine emergence,

00:58:45.660 --> 00:58:47.940
cosmic mind, whatever you wanna call it.

00:58:47.940 --> 00:58:50.670
Allah is a metaphor for the universe

00:58:50.670 --> 00:58:52.473
becoming self-aware through you.

00:58:53.310 --> 00:58:56.850
The second premise
is this self-awareness,

00:58:56.850 --> 00:59:00.570
this consciousness is
distributed through all of life.

00:59:00.570 --> 00:59:03.090
It does not reside
in the human mind.

00:59:03.090 --> 00:59:07.380
It's a distributive, spiritual,
cognitive impulse

00:59:07.380 --> 00:59:09.720
that is an all beingness.

00:59:09.720 --> 00:59:12.390
So don't get into your
anthropocentric hubris

00:59:12.390 --> 00:59:13.980
about the thing.

00:59:13.980 --> 00:59:16.920
Conscious is not exclusive
to the neocortex.

00:59:16.920 --> 00:59:18.690
It's distributed.

00:59:18.690 --> 00:59:20.973
The third is, act accordingly.

00:59:21.930 --> 00:59:25.170
So there's no rules, no masters,
no mullahs, no imams,

00:59:25.170 --> 00:59:27.960
no popes, no Qurans that take precedent

00:59:27.960 --> 00:59:30.840
over your direct relationship

00:59:30.840 --> 00:59:33.480
of being an emissary
of divine emergence

00:59:33.480 --> 00:59:35.433
on a divine, living planet.

00:59:36.420 --> 00:59:39.630
And then the fourth is,
all the rest is commentary.

00:59:39.630 --> 00:59:41.550
One starting place is
this acknowledgement

00:59:41.550 --> 00:59:43.860
that consciousness is temporary.

00:59:43.860 --> 00:59:48.210
This idea that you somehow
achieve an enlightened state

00:59:48.210 --> 00:59:49.830
and then you can stay there

00:59:49.830 --> 00:59:52.740
is part of the New Age myth.

00:59:52.740 --> 00:59:57.630
In Sufism we say, "State is gift,

00:59:57.630 --> 00:59:59.497
"station is earned."

00:59:59.497 --> 01:00:02.010
State is gift, station is earned.

01:00:02.010 --> 01:00:05.760
So you can access these
non-ordinary states

01:00:05.760 --> 01:00:07.800
in these higher states of being,

01:00:07.800 --> 01:00:10.470
but the station to
actually not just have that

01:00:10.470 --> 01:00:11.790
as a temporary blip,

01:00:11.790 --> 01:00:15.900
but to live in that frequency,
requires deep cultivation

01:00:15.900 --> 01:00:19.320
of practice, we call "mantra zikr,"

01:00:19.320 --> 01:00:21.420
which literally just
means "remembrance,"

01:00:21.420 --> 01:00:24.960
to constantly be in that non-dualistic,

01:00:24.960 --> 01:00:27.840
non-separation remembrance
of all that is

01:00:27.840 --> 01:00:30.000
and all that is moving through us.

01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:32.040
And that's a very difficult practice,

01:00:32.040 --> 01:00:35.040
especially in a culture
that wants temporary fixes,

01:00:35.040 --> 01:00:37.830
that wants solutionism,
that has, as you say,

01:00:37.830 --> 01:00:39.960
like, "retreat consciousness," right?

01:00:39.960 --> 01:00:42.427
Which says so much even
in the word "retreat."

01:00:42.427 --> 01:00:44.137
"I'm gonna go to this
Ayahuasca retreat,"

01:00:44.137 --> 01:00:46.350
"I'm gonna go to
a vipassana retreat."

01:00:46.350 --> 01:00:51.499
And what are you
retreating from, and why?

01:00:52.260 --> 01:00:56.160
If we spent one third of the
time we do in contemplation

01:00:56.160 --> 01:00:59.430
of the effects and consequences
of our way of living

01:00:59.430 --> 01:01:02.340
that we do in going to
self-help retreats

01:01:02.340 --> 01:01:04.980
and reading Tony Robbins
or Joe Dispenza

01:01:04.980 --> 01:01:06.960
or whatever people are
reading these days,

01:01:06.960 --> 01:01:09.660
we would already have a
revolution on our hands.

01:01:09.660 --> 01:01:13.620
But most people are not
taking responsibility

01:01:13.620 --> 01:01:17.420
for the moment in time
and the historical context

01:01:17.420 --> 01:01:19.680
in which we have incarnated

01:01:19.680 --> 01:01:21.690
because they feel victimized

01:01:21.690 --> 01:01:24.150
and sort of brought into a world

01:01:24.150 --> 01:01:25.440
that doesn't belong to them.

01:01:25.440 --> 01:01:26.850
And so the coping mechanism

01:01:26.850 --> 01:01:31.200
and the strategy is to
get as much as we can

01:01:31.200 --> 01:01:32.550
on the sinking ship,

01:01:32.550 --> 01:01:35.280
to have the first class
cabin on the Titanic.

01:01:35.280 --> 01:01:40.260
That's the logic of the invisible hand.

01:01:40.260 --> 01:01:42.300
If everyone just behaves very selfishly,

01:01:42.300 --> 01:01:44.760
somehow this perfect
equilibrium will be created.

01:01:44.760 --> 01:01:48.510
And it's deeply delusional
and deeply psychotic

01:01:48.510 --> 01:01:50.190
and deeply cannibalistic.

01:01:50.190 --> 01:01:52.410
And then you add the fact
that everyone's trying

01:01:52.410 --> 01:01:54.420
to survive late-stage capitalism,

01:01:54.420 --> 01:01:57.690
and so there's these fields
of commodification, right,

01:01:57.690 --> 01:01:59.527
to turn something into commodity.

01:01:59.527 --> 01:02:01.290
"What can I get out of this?"

01:02:01.290 --> 01:02:02.760
Most people walk into space

01:02:02.760 --> 01:02:05.130
and they're net takers, energetically,

01:02:05.130 --> 01:02:08.850
because they're thinking, how
do I quote unquote "network?"

01:02:08.850 --> 01:02:12.330
How do I get the thing I
need in order to survive?

01:02:12.330 --> 01:02:14.910
And again we get into
this very reactionary

01:02:14.910 --> 01:02:16.230
survival mechanism,

01:02:16.230 --> 01:02:19.261
and that's how most social
interaction happens.

01:02:19.261 --> 01:02:21.928
(bells tolling)

01:02:24.840 --> 01:02:28.101
- [Stephen] Well, you can
hear the tolling of the bells,

01:02:28.102 --> 01:02:31.043
which we didn't predict,
in the village we're staying in.

01:02:34.043 --> 01:02:36.043
Orphan wisdom can't,
in and of itself,

01:02:36.120 --> 01:02:37.570
I don't think, teach anything,

01:02:38.490 --> 01:02:41.530
but it can make available
a kind of practice

01:02:42.750 --> 01:02:44.643
rather than a scheme of teaching.

01:02:45.810 --> 01:02:47.940
And the practice would
be a willingness to abide

01:02:47.940 --> 01:02:50.850
by two sets of circumstances.

01:02:50.850 --> 01:02:51.800
One of them is

01:02:53.227 --> 01:02:54.960
that anybody who looks
like me on the continent

01:02:54.960 --> 01:02:58.954
that I live on, North America,
doesn't belong there.

01:02:58.954 --> 01:03:00.450
(bells tolling)

01:03:00.450 --> 01:03:02.970
Don't really know how we got there.

01:03:02.970 --> 01:03:07.870
And we're bewildered at
the project of trying to

01:03:11.220 --> 01:03:13.890
inhabit the place
without owning the joint.

01:03:13.890 --> 01:03:16.383
It's just completely confounding to us.

01:03:18.060 --> 01:03:21.540
So exercising dominion
becomes the surrogate

01:03:21.540 --> 01:03:22.803
we have for belonging.

01:03:24.570 --> 01:03:29.570
So I called my school Orphan
Wisdom School to remind us--

01:03:30.030 --> 01:03:32.820
those of us who answer to
the description of "orphan,"

01:03:32.820 --> 01:03:34.620
culturally speaking--

01:03:34.620 --> 01:03:37.120
that orphans are not
people with no parents,

01:03:38.640 --> 01:03:40.650
culturally or individually.

01:03:40.650 --> 01:03:43.440
Orphans are people who can't
get to their parents directly,

01:03:43.440 --> 01:03:45.930
who can't reach across the table

01:03:45.930 --> 01:03:50.040
and touch them, who may not
know the names or the languages

01:03:50.040 --> 01:03:53.883
or the fears and the loves
and the trials and so on.

01:03:56.280 --> 01:03:59.130
And that there should be some humility

01:03:59.130 --> 01:04:03.720
that goes with the
cultural kind of privation

01:04:03.720 --> 01:04:08.313
that being an orphan and
not knowing how to belong

01:04:09.900 --> 01:04:10.733
carries.

01:04:12.810 --> 01:04:17.280
But for all of that, it's
not a recipe for shame

01:04:17.280 --> 01:04:22.280
or kind of class action guilt at all,

01:04:22.710 --> 01:04:27.273
despite the current
regime for social justice.

01:04:28.440 --> 01:04:31.590
And so I called it
Orphan Wisdom School,

01:04:31.590 --> 01:04:34.740
which is not an insinuation,
it's a declaration.

01:04:34.740 --> 01:04:37.020
It's a piece of advocacy.

01:04:37.020 --> 01:04:42.020
And it says orphans have
a capacity for wisdom,

01:04:42.870 --> 01:04:44.970
but they're gonna have
to undertake the work

01:04:44.970 --> 01:04:49.970
of realizing it differently
than simply inheriting it

01:04:50.340 --> 01:04:54.510
in unbroken generations,
as can be the circumstance

01:04:54.510 --> 01:04:56.910
in so-called "intact" cultures.

01:04:56.910 --> 01:04:58.740
There it is, there's the
wrinkle of our appearance

01:04:58.740 --> 01:05:00.030
in the scene.

01:05:00.030 --> 01:05:01.350
There's the historical reality.

01:05:01.350 --> 01:05:04.413
There's the bullshit luck
of birth, if you will.

01:05:09.180 --> 01:05:12.950
The notion of an orphan
wisdom in this world is...

01:05:13.460 --> 01:05:16.020
It's not a recipe for anything,

01:05:16.020 --> 01:05:19.783
but it's a plea for a kind of humility

01:05:19.783 --> 01:05:22.743
to take the place of
the current humiliation.

01:05:24.586 --> 01:05:27.503
(piano music)

01:05:29.327 --> 01:05:31.994
(birds chirping)

01:05:36.780 --> 01:05:39.680
Well, first of all, I hope the
civilization is not reborn.

01:05:40.860 --> 01:05:42.860
I mean, that would
not be a bad outcome.

01:05:44.460 --> 01:05:46.173
There's reasons that it's dying.

01:05:47.670 --> 01:05:49.800
I suspect that if it's not a complete

01:05:49.800 --> 01:05:51.420
and utter death,

01:05:51.420 --> 01:05:55.230
those reasons for its dying
will remain like trace elements

01:05:55.230 --> 01:05:56.763
in its resuscitation.

01:05:57.990 --> 01:06:01.140
I mean every--
I shouldn't say every.

01:06:01.140 --> 01:06:03.360
But it seems to me
that one of the themes

01:06:03.360 --> 01:06:08.360
of the post-apocalyptic
films that you can watch

01:06:08.490 --> 01:06:10.240
if you're not feeling well someday,

01:06:11.430 --> 01:06:16.930
has this idea that the
remnant shard of humanity

01:06:18.660 --> 01:06:21.300
is not secretly more honorable

01:06:21.300 --> 01:06:23.343
than when it was all mass humanity.

01:06:25.710 --> 01:06:28.590
In these films the
remnant shard of humanity

01:06:28.590 --> 01:06:31.200
is as belabored, beleaguered,

01:06:31.200 --> 01:06:35.550
bewildered and besotted by itself

01:06:35.550 --> 01:06:37.383
as it was when it was intact.

01:06:38.310 --> 01:06:42.490
In other words the question is,
how bad does it have to get

01:06:43.620 --> 01:06:49.620
before we question just even
the utility of persisting?

01:06:50.070 --> 01:06:52.440
We've just been through Covid,

01:06:52.440 --> 01:06:56.820
and was it the World Health
Organization just delisted Covid

01:06:56.820 --> 01:06:58.683
as a thing.

01:07:01.110 --> 01:07:02.490
But the consequences of it

01:07:02.490 --> 01:07:04.353
haven't even begun to roll out yet.

01:07:05.310 --> 01:07:07.920
And one of them
could well have been,

01:07:07.920 --> 01:07:12.183
man, we ducked something merciless.

01:07:16.440 --> 01:07:21.333
Is that reason enough to pull up short?

01:07:22.530 --> 01:07:26.820
Is that reason enough to
reconstitute our sense

01:07:26.820 --> 01:07:31.053
of what's important prior to
the utter demise of the thing?

01:07:32.280 --> 01:07:33.960
It doesn't look like it.

01:07:33.960 --> 01:07:37.320
So I don't know the answer
to how bad it has to get,

01:07:37.320 --> 01:07:42.150
but I do hope that most
of what we've managed

01:07:42.150 --> 01:07:45.873
doesn't survive the big one.

01:07:48.780 --> 01:07:49.613
Having said that,

01:07:49.613 --> 01:07:51.686
there are things that,
it would be something

01:07:51.686 --> 01:07:56.163
if they lingered somehow
longer than we did.

01:07:59.790 --> 01:08:01.953
Our instinct for awe, for example,

01:08:03.420 --> 01:08:04.480
which is still there,

01:08:05.910 --> 01:08:09.450
and the capacity to be sad for things

01:08:09.450 --> 01:08:14.450
that are not personal loss or dilemmas.

01:08:14.910 --> 01:08:17.640
That's an immensely honorable thing.

01:08:17.640 --> 01:08:20.280
That's what grief is,
as I understand it.

01:08:20.280 --> 01:08:22.770
The capacity to be grateful for
things that are in the world

01:08:22.770 --> 01:08:25.833
that don't benefit you
directly, or at all.

01:08:26.790 --> 01:08:28.893
Massive accomplishment
of humankind.

01:08:32.070 --> 01:08:34.350
To treat the neighbor as oneself,

01:08:34.350 --> 01:08:37.860
although self care is
not that big a priority,

01:08:37.860 --> 01:08:40.290
so maybe that's not a
good one to point to.

01:08:40.290 --> 01:08:42.990
But there's a lot of things, surely,

01:08:42.990 --> 01:08:47.990
that would belong in some
kind of new world order.

01:08:49.348 --> 01:08:52.265
(piano music)

01:08:55.076 --> 01:08:56.316
- [PCD] Is a new world order,

01:08:56.316 --> 01:08:58.530
a world as one, even possible

01:08:58.530 --> 01:09:00.390
with a species at war with itself?

01:09:00.390 --> 01:09:02.160
(piano music)

01:09:02.160 --> 01:09:03.990
From the bedroom to the battlefield,

01:09:03.990 --> 01:09:08.310
from competing elites
to competing bikie gangs,

01:09:08.310 --> 01:09:10.830
how can we ever be
environmentally friendly

01:09:10.830 --> 01:09:12.432
when we engage in warfare?

01:09:12.432 --> 01:09:13.890
(piano music)

01:09:13.890 --> 01:09:16.850
We're artificially sustaining
8+ billion people

01:09:16.850 --> 01:09:19.320
on one-use-only fossil fuels,

01:09:19.320 --> 01:09:24.240
and the solutions to the meta
crisis we face, like degrowth,

01:09:24.240 --> 01:09:28.020
are incompatible with
infinite growth economics.

01:09:28.020 --> 01:09:29.580
And infinite growth economics

01:09:29.580 --> 01:09:33.480
and infinite growth spirituality
are incompatible

01:09:33.480 --> 01:09:35.715
with the ecosystem that
we are embedded in.

01:09:35.715 --> 01:09:38.632
(piano music)

01:09:55.470 --> 01:09:59.880
- [John] Deep ecology
suggests that seeing

01:09:59.880 --> 01:10:04.050
ourselves as being the evil villain

01:10:04.050 --> 01:10:06.480
that's responsible for all of this

01:10:06.480 --> 01:10:09.210
is just as anthropocentric as thinking

01:10:09.210 --> 01:10:11.130
that we are the crown of creation,

01:10:11.130 --> 01:10:13.530
that we're the measure of all being.

01:10:13.530 --> 01:10:16.650
We are a single strand
in the web of life.

01:10:16.650 --> 01:10:19.680
We are one cell in the
living body of the Earth.

01:10:19.680 --> 01:10:22.740
And if we are destroying the Earth,

01:10:22.740 --> 01:10:24.810
then this is the Earth
destroying herself,

01:10:24.810 --> 01:10:26.610
because there is no separation.

01:10:26.610 --> 01:10:27.963
We are part of the Earth.

01:10:29.970 --> 01:10:34.970
It may be that the necessary wisdom

01:10:35.250 --> 01:10:38.760
will emerge that will
allow us to make a change

01:10:38.760 --> 01:10:39.990
in our course.

01:10:39.990 --> 01:10:42.600
But I think it's important
for us to realize

01:10:42.600 --> 01:10:43.830
that the very things

01:10:43.830 --> 01:10:47.130
that are driving us into
this destructive mayhem

01:10:47.130 --> 01:10:51.840
are the things that helped us
to survive in the first place.

01:10:51.840 --> 01:10:56.840
That when we were just
another species in the jungle,

01:10:57.930 --> 01:11:01.080
caught between the pangs of hunger

01:11:01.080 --> 01:11:05.700
that forced us out of
our shelter and the claws

01:11:05.700 --> 01:11:08.940
and teeth of the predators
that lay in wait for us,

01:11:08.940 --> 01:11:13.200
the kinds of forerunners of the greed

01:11:13.200 --> 01:11:16.540
and the violence that are
laying the world to waste

01:11:16.541 --> 01:11:18.810
were actually the very thing
that helped us

01:11:18.810 --> 01:11:21.090
to survive through those circumstances.

01:11:21.090 --> 01:11:23.610
And so I think we can be compassionate

01:11:23.610 --> 01:11:31.919
with ourselves in spite of
the awful road to oblivion

01:11:31.920 --> 01:11:34.500
that we seem to be embarking on,

01:11:34.500 --> 01:11:37.470
that there's something
very innocent about us.

01:11:37.470 --> 01:11:40.260
And that if we could be more forgiving

01:11:40.260 --> 01:11:42.630
and more compassionate
towards ourselves,

01:11:42.630 --> 01:11:47.630
perhaps we would have more
chance of discovering the wisdom

01:11:47.820 --> 01:11:51.310
that we need in order to
make this enormous change

01:11:52.410 --> 01:11:57.060
that would be required
for future flourishing.

01:11:57.060 --> 01:11:58.230
- [PCD] 'Cause something
I've thought about

01:11:58.230 --> 01:12:01.020
ever since our first
interview together in,

01:12:01.020 --> 01:12:03.930
I think it was 2009, back
under that Westgate Bridge,

01:12:03.930 --> 01:12:06.770
is that...

01:12:06.770 --> 01:12:09.687
(piano music)

01:12:10.650 --> 01:12:11.940
...with all the technology now,

01:12:11.940 --> 01:12:15.630
we haven't been able
to find any other life

01:12:15.630 --> 01:12:17.520
or intelligent life form
out there in the universe.

01:12:17.520 --> 01:12:19.050
We've got, there's radars
and all this stuff,

01:12:19.050 --> 01:12:20.700
and it isn't obvious to us.

01:12:20.700 --> 01:12:22.590
It's like we logically think

01:12:22.590 --> 01:12:23.730
there should be aliens everywhere.

01:12:23.730 --> 01:12:24.780
We should be, everywhere.

01:12:24.780 --> 01:12:26.807
Like, they're everywhere out there.

01:12:26.807 --> 01:12:29.250
But there's not,
there's nothing obvious to us.

01:12:29.250 --> 01:12:31.833
And that makes me think
that we're quite--

01:12:32.700 --> 01:12:35.580
I don't like to use the word
"special" or "unique"

01:12:35.580 --> 01:12:38.520
or "rare" in this universe.

01:12:38.520 --> 01:12:44.249
And that's even more of a
passion to not fuck it up,

01:12:44.250 --> 01:12:47.700
to not, like, make ourselves extinct.

01:12:47.700 --> 01:12:50.070
'Cause, like, if we're
the part of the universe

01:12:50.070 --> 01:12:52.740
that has evolved now
to learn about itself,

01:12:52.740 --> 01:12:54.933
then we don't wanna wreck this.

01:12:54.933 --> 01:12:57.270
It's like, we want to keep this going

01:12:57.270 --> 01:12:59.610
if we are so unique in the universe.

01:12:59.610 --> 01:13:03.150
And we need that wisdom
now more than ever,

01:13:03.150 --> 01:13:04.860
and going back to indigenous cultures

01:13:04.860 --> 01:13:06.180
and combining the modern,

01:13:06.180 --> 01:13:11.160
the old with the new to ensure our--

01:13:11.160 --> 01:13:13.410
I don't like to use the word
"sustainability" now,

01:13:13.410 --> 01:13:16.830
'cause it's so corrupted,
or maintainability,

01:13:16.830 --> 01:13:21.693
that we can still keep evolving.

01:13:23.340 --> 01:13:24.240
- [John] That was so well said.

01:13:24.240 --> 01:13:25.220
Maybe I should sit over there.

01:13:25.220 --> 01:13:27.840
Do you wanna just say
that again to camera?

01:13:27.840 --> 01:13:31.921
Because I think that's really important.

01:13:31.921 --> 01:13:33.420
Are you happy to appear?

01:13:33.420 --> 01:13:35.321
- [PCD] No, no, I'm too
scared to be on camera.

01:13:35.321 --> 01:13:36.840
I don't like the look of myself.

01:13:36.840 --> 01:13:39.118
- [John] Oh, come on, give it a go.

01:13:39.118 --> 01:13:42.035
(piano music)

01:13:45.480 --> 01:13:47.430
- [PCD] People are really
freaked out these days

01:13:47.430 --> 01:13:50.070
by artificial intelligence

01:13:50.070 --> 01:13:54.210
whilst forgetting the natural
intelligence of nature

01:13:54.210 --> 01:13:58.230
that gave birth to our
apparently real intelligence,

01:13:58.230 --> 01:14:01.710
as opposed to the artificial
intelligence we've created

01:14:01.710 --> 01:14:03.303
from the natural.

01:14:04.350 --> 01:14:05.970
It's very confusing,

01:14:05.970 --> 01:14:07.980
But everything came from nature.

01:14:07.980 --> 01:14:10.653
So there is nothing not natural,

01:14:11.640 --> 01:14:15.147
but not everything natural
is good for us,

01:14:15.147 --> 01:14:17.144
like asbestos.

01:14:17.144 --> 01:14:19.857
And if AI does take over

01:14:19.857 --> 01:14:24.163
and can survive a solar flare,
a nuclear war strike,

01:14:25.135 --> 01:14:29.127
a supernova, then humanity,
quite amazingly,

01:14:29.127 --> 01:14:32.520
has just created the next evolution

01:14:32.520 --> 01:14:34.203
in nature's intelligence.

01:14:35.070 --> 01:14:38.283
And may it have fun traveling the stars.

01:14:39.270 --> 01:14:40.957
I'm really jealous.

01:14:40.957 --> 01:14:43.874
(piano music)