Crisis what crisis?

The closer that a society comes to crisis, the more aggressively it seeks out those that not only speak the truth, but that also have genuine solutions to the crisis.

War is an obvious example.

In a documentary that I watched the other day, during WW2 Hitler repeatedly turned to Ferdinand Porsche for engineering solutions because Porsche was a genius that could create amazingly unexpected solutions.

It says something about Hitler too; he could obviously recognise and promote rare talent.

Hitler wanted a tank that was 10x bigger than any other and to achieve this Porsche invented the diesel-hybrid-electric drive to save the weight of the gearbox (weight being an issue in the bogging of the big heavy tank). This revolutionary drive train wasn’t re-used until the 90’s when Toyota introduced the Prius.

I think I’m going to have to find a good book on the subject of Ferdinand.

To book-end the opening remark, if there is no crisis then there is no need for those that carry the truth, nor those that have the less-than-obvious solutions.

Australia in 2015; it would appear that we are in crisis, if you care to listen to the media. Terror, Economic Collapse and Climate Change; the sky is falling in.

But it isn’t really.

Unfortunately our politicians have learned to peddle crisis chatter in order to help them get re-elected. Our media is short of content in their 24/7 reporting cycles so they mega-phone this trash-talk.

The only thing that prevents us from being fully dilated by all these crises is the needs of the local services business sector. This non-voting lobby group that represents about 70% of our GDP wants consumer confidence promoted and crises silenced, so that revenues and profits keep growing.

The truth is that there is no crisis:

1. Climate change – we are well placed to weather the storm  in Australia. We’re a big country with very few people and, in any case, the rest of the world will deal with this issue for us.

2. Terror – we know it’s not a real problem because if it was we wouldn’t hear about it. The best way to promote terror is to incessantly report on it.

3. Economy collapse – apparently we are just about buggered. Resources are down and we are out of export opportunities so we need to ‘innovate’ before we become the next Sudan. Yeah if you believe that the you may as well believe in Santa Claus. The truth is that we have enough land and resources to sell off (to whichever the next developing economy is) such that we will be luxuriating in consumer gadgets for the next few centuries

If there is a crisis in this country it is a moral one. But to accept this you would have to agree that greed and stupidity represent a moral crisis. And if you are greedy and stupid you would be very unlikely to accept that you are greedy and stupid. Unless you were loopy, in which case you would be shunned. And if you weren’t greedy and stupid you would be labelled as loopy and shunned anyway.

If a crisis does head our way it’s going to be damned interesting watching a nation of greedy and stupid people adapting to it. My guess is that it wouldn’t be pretty.