Auroville

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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: India; Published: 06 November 2012; Hits: 55719

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We took a Tuck-Tuck out of town to Auroville (City of Dawn) an ‘alternative’ township founded in 1968. The founder Mirra Alfassa then proclaimed its purpose to be: ‘to realise human unity’ ‘where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony, above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities’.

According to the information provided it is nevertheless organised on national lines with various ‘pavilions’ and its founding charter states participants ‘must be the willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness’.

There is quite a bit about yoga and meditation that I imagine that Emily would find interesting.

It has an impressively designed visitor’s complex in postmodernist concrete, terracotta and glass boasting four ‘gifty’ boutiques and a coffee shop designed by architect Roger Anger.

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This provides information about the village’s alternative and green credentials; including its commitment to solar energy and recycled water. Strangers are not allowed into the actual village; but there is a viewing location.

I wondered how they keep these well lit trendy shops powered from the rather tiny solar panel in the garden; particularly as it is overshadowed by trees for much of the day. Alongside sits a solar cooking apparatus, with mirrors that have lost their silvering; obviously non-functional.

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A short walk behind a nearby shed revealed the secret. A 200kW diesel generator that had just stopped as the mains electricity came back up. The village itself is similarly supplied with 11kV from the local distribution grid and no doubt has a lot more than 200kW of diesel back-up.

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The bushland setting feels surprisingly Australian except that to get there you have to pass some very poor Indians; wondering cows; some colourful market stalls obviously aimed at tourists; lots of Indian vehicles, in all their variety and colour; and numerous blond and/or hairy Europeans on motorbikes; probably commuting between Auroville and their Ashram.

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I am by nature a sceptic when it comes to projects like this, that seems to rest on its faith in an idealised view of human nature based on Divine Consciousness.

I don’t believe in a Divine Consciousness nor do I have much faith in revolutionary solutions. I prefer to rest my hopes for (rather than faith in) humanity; on social evolution. This needs to be driven by increasing understanding of how the universe actually works; the rejection of erroneous ideas that have previously misled us; and a healthy climate of open debate and mutual compromise.

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Apart from the cult-like nature of its charter, Auroville seems to be founded on ideas I would like to debate then, in all probability, reject. These seem to include some emanating from the French Existential and Postmodernist intellectual movements, which led to Pol Pot, like agrarian idealism and the abolition of money; and some from eastern mysticism, like faith in a universal spirit.

I don’t intend to spend more time on it. If you want to know more Read here…

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Travel

Romania

In October 2016 we flew from southern England to Romania.

Romania is a big country by European standards and not one to see by public transport if time is limited. So to travel beyond Bucharest we hired a car and drove northwest to Brașov and on to Sighisiora, before looping southwest to Sibiu (European capital of culture 2007) and southeast through the Transylvanian Alps to Curtea de Arges on our way back to Bucharest.

Driving in Romania was interesting. There are some quite good motorways once out of the suburbs of Bucharest, where traffic lights are interminable trams rumble noisily, trolley-busses stop and start and progress can be slow. In the countryside road surfaces are variable and the roads mostly narrow. This does not slow the locals who seem to ignore speed limits making it necessary to keep up to avoid holding up traffic.

Fiction, Recollections & News

A Digger’s Tale

- Introduction

The accompanying story is ‘warts and all’. It is the actual memoirs (hand written and transcribed here; but with my headings added) of Corporal Ross Smith, a young Australian man, 18 years of age, from humble circumstances [read more...] who was drawn by World events into the Second World War. He tells it as he saw it. The action takes place near Rabaul in New Britain.

Opinions and Philosophy

Climate Emergency

emergency
/uh'merrjuhnsee, ee-/.
noun, plural emergencies.
1. an unforeseen occurrence; a sudden and urgent occasion for action.

Recent calls for action on climate change have taken to declaring that we are facing a 'Climate Emergency'.

This concerns me on a couple of levels.

The first seems obvious. There's nothing unforseen or sudden about our present predicament.

My second concern is that 'emergency' implies something short lived. It gives the impression that by 'fire fighting against carbon dioxide' or revolutionary action against governments, or commuters, activists can resolve the climate crisis and go back to 'normal' - whatever that is. Would it not be better to press for considered, incremental changes that might avoid the catastrophic collapse of civilisation and our collective 'human project' or at least give it a few more years sometime in the future?

Back in 1990, concluding my paper: Issues Arising from the Greenhouse Hypothesis I wrote:

We need to focus on the possible.

An appropriate response is to ensure that resource and transport efficiency is optimised and energy waste is reduced. Another is to explore less polluting energy sources. This needs to be explored more critically. Each so-called green power option should be carefully analysed for whole of life energy and greenhouse gas production, against the benchmark of present technology, before going beyond the demonstration or experimental stage.

Much more important are the cultural and technological changes needed to minimise World overpopulation. We desperately need to remove the socio-economic drivers to larger families, young motherhood and excessive personal consumption (from resource inefficiencies to long journeys to work).

Climate change may be inevitable. We should be working to climate “harden” the production of food, ensure that public infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, hospitals, utilities and so) on are designed to accommodate change and that the places people live are not excessively vulnerable to drought, flood or storm. [I didn't mention fire]

Only by solving these problems will we have any hope of finding solutions to the other pressures human expansion is imposing on the planet. It is time to start looking for creative answers for NSW and Australia now.

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