How many times have you heard, ‘I wish it was a long weekend EVERY weekend…’ after a public holiday?? Australia has one of the highest rates of unpaid overtime in the western world. In a globally competitive, free-market (rat) race to make a living, are we forgetting to make a life for ourselves? Could a four day week be the ticket to improve our relationships, our mental health and our ability to find meaning and purpose in our lives? How would our economy react if we all collectively agreed to work less?
In the mid 1970’s I heard a bureaucrat [Bob Lansdowne] argue that social change came from shifts in compassion or compulsion-he was discussing our relationship with Indonesia and argued that compassion was in short supply. He was suggesting that huge disparities in income and wealth in an increasingly open and global environment were a recipe for instability and conflict–and that we should be afraid of the consequences of failing to address it. His concern is even more relevant today.
Democracies have little value unless the populace participates. I (probably like many others) am put off from active participation and my cynicism is fed, by the cumbersome nature of government and the lack of cooperation between parties. Does a ‘party system’ have to translate into the circus that we witness in our parliaments?
Because this is one of the root environmental problems we face. My grandmother was born into a world with 75% fewer people and this seemingly unstoppable growth undermines all of the good we do. If we halve consumption and double the world’s population, we have achieved nothing, but forced sterilisation is obviously completely unacceptable, as is the total freedom to have 9 children if you feel like it. You should care because at the moment the future does not look like now with more electric cars; you should more picture 40m people in rags foraging in a gravel car park the size South Australia for 27 potatotes.