A natural world order, Part I
Correcting some of the ways progress lost us
The banner picture is emblematic of our current situation: pristine landscape and farming tradition since Middle Ages, juxtaposed with modern development proving to be unsustainable with gas flaring. This follows posts you’re invited to backtrack in the banner index: my spiritual re-emergence and my recent relationships allowed me to practice and propose an alternative way to what I left behind when I left my wife and down-classed myself, as described in this series.
Update 1: please see next in this mini-series here, original series continues next.
Update 2: Céline Dion’s Prayer added at the end of this post touches on this:
“… Can you hear cathedrals falling
All the universe is calling
Cry a single cello from your heart
Since the world has lost her way…”
In a nutshell, “levelling up” works no better in today’s UK policies (planned attempts to equalise regions and reduce social disparity thru government programs), than it did in society (to reduce disparities in economic and social prospects of men vs. women or among ethnicities). Let me suggest there is a natural order of things that is unavoidable, that nature has a way we’ve only managed to spoil not honour so far — all we do is lead into and not out of the current Climate Emergency — and that Mankind’s hubris is that we think ourselves more clever than God, in any guise depending on time and place.
Mankind’s hubris is that we think ourselves more clever than God
Let me start with an unpopular statement to the point: women are and never will be equal to men, in either physical stature, economic prospects or social desires — as I told my teen daughter awhile ago “just saying it is not so, doesn’t make it not so”… don’t get me wrong, I adore our youth who are our future — it’s an unavoidable natural fact that women aren’t built the same, aren’t meant to function the same, and indeed cannot have the same timetables: For example periods and pregnancies create hurdles that are overcome for sure, but remain hurdles nonetheless:
French Justice Minister Rashida Dati returning to work just five days after giving birth early 2009 (France 24) is an extreme example of a woman trying to be a man, in order to succeed as an “haut fonctionnaire” or highly positioned role. It’s an inalienable observation that to succeed, women have to become what I call ‘male females’: forgo children like former Australian Prime Minster Julia Gillard or dress in tailored pant suits like former German Chancellor Angela Merkel for example. Plus former IMF head Christine Lagarde said in 2018 of the 2008 financial crash here: “… if it had been Lehman Sisters rather than Lehman Brothers, the world might well look a lot different today.” Yet the fact of the matter is that men still dominate society as a whole: while pointing that out garners polite applause, we all go back to our male-dominated ways.
Here is my spiritual re-emergence described in the first post of this series — follow the banner index at the top — “As my life situation has changed […] I’m withdrawing from social media, activism and geo work until I sort my life out’. That made space for my spiritual re-emergence as ‘I sought out those five who really support me, rather than the 500 who ‘like’ me on-line’.” In two subsequent online relationships with religiously committed women, I was able to propose a return to old values espoused by their faiths — returning me most recently to Catholic traditions I grew up with young, as also described in this series — that man submits to God, woman to man & God, children to parents & God and so on toward nature: originally a geologist, I call this an imbricate relationship, where authority flows left to right. Most importantly however, at the same time and in the same direction will flow a duty of care, which introduces checks-and-balances.
Most importantly […] at the same time and in the same direction will flow a duty of care, which introduces checks-and-balances.
As when those are maintained — and avoid historic abuses that led to shunning this and attempting to “level up” — there is a flow back: children learn to care for and respect the environment and then share their inherent zestfulness with their parents in a framework including God the ultimate provider, women care for families as well as their careers in a benign and respectful place, and men turn to God and help themselves be better providers as heads of family. This framework turns the master-servant relationship — rightfully shunned since its Medieval or Antiquities roots roughly after the Age of Enlightenment — into a master-student one:
God ← → man ← → woman ← → child ← → animal ← → plant ← → microbe
Those responsible (to the left in the flow) have both duties and responsibilities (right arrow) to those they provide for (to the right in the flow), and that creates a back flow (left arrow) of community-building and inclusivity… That in turn will render obsolete the need for redress on millennial system abuse or recent levelling-up processes to try and rectify those imbalances. That is the natural world order I’ll model in Colorado.
Let me end with a metaphor: The North American mighty Mississippi River flows over such a distance and covers so much ground with its Missouri and Ohio tributaries, that not only is it already miles wide way inland in Wisconsin, but also the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has a full time job keeping its mouth to the Gulf of Mexico in New Orleans, when it naturally wants to jump its levees toward Morgan City. Current levelling-up is keeping its mouth in New Orleans, vs. the natural order is to change course toward Morgan City.
Note 1: the Morganza Spillway to manage the flow of the Mississippi River and stop it jumping its levees is not unlike the Bedford Levels in East Anglia to manage flooding in a subsea area close to the North Sea — see Fenlands Challenge and previous story maps — and USACE were early adopters of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to manage their sigificant task over the last half century, see their portal. GIS being my profession, the comparison was natural.
Note 2: Geomorphology 101: Rivers scour the landscape and carry a sedimentary load of mud, sand & gravel upstream near their mountain source at high speed & energy among steeper slopes & higher altitudes. Rivers lose their capacity to carry their sedimentary load as they slow down at lower altitudes & slopes near their mouths to the sea. They create levees as they dump their load, which elevates them compared with the local landscape. That makes them susceptible to jump their levees and change course, when there is a surge in water energy during extreme snow melt or rain fall that cause flooding. Here is an illustration of levees of the River Cam in East Anglia:
