Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Approaching the Center of Truth

Consultation is Prior to Environmental Progress

By John Taylor; 2009 June 17, Nur 11, 166 BE


Last week I drove my father to one of his doctors' offices in Hamilton.
For a moment's distraction I picked up a copy of Toronto Life. The
only article remotely interesting was called "A Mighty Wind," by
Andrew Westoll. It is available online at:


http://www.torontolife.com/features/mighty-wind/


The article tells the distressing tale of a failed attempt by the
Ontario government at gaining democratic approval for a wind farm
planned for the shallow waters of Lake Ontario, offshore of
Scarborough in northern Toronto. As the article says, you would expect
in this day and age that an alternative energy installation like that
would gain instant approval from everybody concerned.


Unfortunately, according to the author a series of blunders in setting
up public meetings by Ontario Hydro and the present government of
Ontario rapidly polarized the issue between fanatical
environmentalists and foaming-at-the-mouth NIMBY'ists (NIMBY means
"not in my back yard"). Every half-hearted attempt at bringing
citizens together in a common learning process was botched. Each
successive public meeting ended in a fight for the microphone, after
which the citizen who did speak was then drowned out by shouted
denunciations and insults from the crowd. Bad feelings worsened on
both sides and bitter contention escalated out of control.


As a result, now there is no hope that either side might learn
something from the government sponsored "information sessions." What
little agreement did come about was a common consent that the
government is not to be trusted. Meanwhile the slow process of
environmental assessment -- rather tellingly termed a "proponent
driven self-assessment" -- has not even begun.


I read in the Toronto Star another astonishing angle on this. It seems
that there has never been study, anywhere, of the impact of wind
turbines on peoples' health. One fellow on the other side of the lake
is trying to rectify this with a mailed-in survey approach. He is
sending a questionnaire to residents near a new wind turbine.


I can say from personal experience (several large turbines have sprung
up around our town of Dunnville) that I have never heard a peep out of
these startlingly beautiful constructions, even in high winds. I
cannot imagine how you would find any health impact at all from them.
The largest around here, at a large Dutch florist called Rosaflora, is
built right beside the owner's house. The problem of noise from wind
turbines was all but eliminated a couple of generations ago, from what
I have read in science magazines. Again, astonishingly, another
proposed wind turbine installation near Toronto Island is similarly
being held up for lack of a noise impact study. How they will ever
detect any sound there that is not drowned out by the roar of rushing
vehicles on the Lakeshore Expressway is beyond me. My, how cautious we are about alternative energy, and meanwhile anything currently operating, trains, planes and automobiles, does not have to have a noise assessment. Nothing that burns hydrocarbons need be examined, only solar panels and wind turbines pose a menacing threat to ourselves and the world.



The Toronto Life article tells about an interesting proposal from a
Swiss research institute called the Council of the Federal Institute
of Technology. They suggest that we can get around the
Environmentalist vs. NIMBYist fight by establishing clear goals for
all aimed at small steps for energy conservation, as well as new
mega-projects. They call it the "2,000 Watt Society."


"Having established that average energy consumption worldwide works
out to 2,000 watts per person per day, they are now challenging
members of the higher-energy-consuming societies to meet that average.
(Europeans currently use 6,000 watts per capita, while Africans use
only 500. Canada and the U.S. are at 12,000.) If Torontonians lowered
their consumption enough to meet the 2,000-watt challenge -- a stretch
at the moment, but bear with me -- the wind farm off the Bluffs would
cover the continuous energy needs of 90,000 people." (Andrew Westoll,
"A Mighty Wind," Toronto Life, May 2009, p. 43)


This is a perfect first step towards what I have been proposing here.
If everybody sported a dynamically-linked escutcheon displaying such
indicators as the number of watts used, and if these escutcheons were
posted prominently on web sites, at front doors and in every
neighbourhood and city hall, then there would be no perceived need to
divide up into NIMBY's and environmentalists. Nobody would want to see
their escutcheon blackened and uglified by using more than their fair
share of 2000 watts. I am sure that if the Ontario Government had
already had strong consultation links to households and
neighbourhoods, and if they had pictured the wind farm as a way to
remove a blot from everybody's escutcheon, then there would never have
been any argumentation at all. Such projects would instantly gain
grassroots support from all levels of governance if we took a less
centralized, more local and goal-oriented approach.


Another way to avoid consultational fiascos like the one discussed in
this article would be to invest in meeting technology. Mohawk College
and other research groups and companies have invented remarkable ways
of using computers to enhance classrooms, conferences and public
meetings. There is no excuse in this millennium to have people lining
up before a microphone. It is possible to have dynamic discussions
among members of the audience along with moderated cross-talk, all
projected on the wall above the presenters at a public meeting.


Teachers already use clickers to get dynamic feedback on students'
reactions. Why not have a clicker at every public consultation? With
all the money at stake in a project like this -- not to mention the
danger to the environment -- you would think that such technology
would be in high demand.


But this is not just a technical issue. Everybody needs to be better
trained in the spiritual as well as intellectual requirements of
consultation. We need to take consultation more seriously. We should,
each and every one of us, be more actively involved in consultation on
a daily level by practicing it in our families and households. The
family meal is the primal "meeting technology," used for thousands of
years as ground zero of social progress. It founded most religions,
including Christianity with its "love feasts" and the Baha'i Faith
with its "19 Day Feasts." We also need an entire new level of
government, the neighbourhood. If families voted for a neighbourhood
council, and neighbourhoods elected city and town councils, we would
have something closer to the face-to-face cordiality that democracy
and consultation both require.


We must learn that it is possible to have an extremely effective
consultation without clashes, even without opening our mouths to
speak. Total silence allows each individual to arrive at the truth in
the most economical way for their own powers and abilities to act.
Abdu'l-Baha discussed how effective this meditative silent meeting was
for an ancient society of thinkers called the Illuminati in his talk
to the Quakers in London (see the last part of Paris Talks). I cannot
help but think that silence would have been far more productive than
the shouting matches that put the kybosh on any wind farms to be built
near Toronto. All the great inventions and real, lasting progress
throughout history did not come from heads bashing in heated
contention. They arose in silence, from hard work combined with
meditation, prayer and silent reflection on what reality demands of
each of us. That is the only way we can directly approach what
Comenius called the "center of truth."


"We see how disagreements could be tolerated without mutual hatred,
and how unnecessary it is on their account to clash with one another
with hostile minds and pens and arms. But it is desirable that
differences should be not only tolerated but capable of solution, i.e.
all controversial questions should be solved with such wisdom that the
centre of truth is found, and even diametrically opposite opinions are
duly brought back to it, and inasmuch as any one opinion contains a
particle of truth it should help to establish truth in general and
thereby should be itself established, and any irrelevant ingredient
would incidentally disappear." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 8, para
28, pp. 120-121)


John Taylor


email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/


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