“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), English politician and writer

“It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.”

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer, social critic, playwright, novelist, and debater

This article begins a series that looks at how our love affair with individual car ownership will take unexpected twists, and much sooner than you think.

In 1982, the London pop/ska band Madness released a song called ‘Driving In My Car’, a whimsical tune about the sheer enjoyment of driving (for a bit of light entertainment, watch the video here). The lyrics of the song convey a simple truth – we derive an enormous amount of pleasure from getting behind the wheel of our own car, turning the ignition key and hearing the engine come to life, and driving to any place we want. Owning a car is the ultimate expression of independence – providing unprecedented freedom, convenience, comfort, and flexibility. Nothing else has allowed humans to sprawl so far and wide across every continent, and almost every terrain.

2012 – Thirty Years On
Today, driving in your car can be madness! There are more than 800,000,000 passenger cars on the road. If you include other light-commercial vehicles (such as vans and buses), and other small vehicles (such as motorcycles and scooters), this number easily exceeds 1,000,000,000. That is, roughly speaking, one vehicle for every seven people on the planet. This is a staggering number of vehicles when you think about it. Most of these vehicles are concentrated in and around cities. As a result, cities all around the world are battling the equivalent of late-stage heart disease – roads are like filthy, clogged arteries, barely able to provide life-giving oxygen to the different parts of the city. It is no coincidence that city planners focus on ways to ‘bypass’ areas of high congestion. Sadly, this ultimate expression of independence is rapidly becoming a very modern form of torture, with people being forced to drive more and more slowly in cars that are designed to travel fast!

The Forecast
Despite this growing crisis, the demand for cars is expected to soar. Forecasters estimate that before 2050, the number of cars on the road will have more than doubled from 800,000,000 today to over 2,000,000,000. On average, growth in vehicle numbers is forecast to be 3 per cent annually. This will vary in different parts of the world: markets like the United States where car ownership is already very high will grow at 1 to 2 per cent annually; markets like China and India where car ownership is very low will grow at 7 to 8 per cent annually.

The “good” news in this forecast is that it assumes a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario – in other words, the world is no longer in recession, ‘some’ people (the top two billion roughly) will have the money (or access to loans/credit) to buy cars, and that the global population keeps growing. Resource companies will continue to mine and export raw materials in ever-greater quantities, car manufacturers will continue to increase production while marketers tempt us to spend more than we can afford, and more profits will be made by companies all around the world, making the privileged few shareholders even richer. That’s the “good” news that the forecasters would have us believe.

The “bad news” is that it’s very unlikely to be ‘business-as-usual’. Remember, we live on a finite earth – what I call ‘Earth Island’ (see why here) – and for the first time in the history of mankind we are facing a situation where the planet is becoming ‘full’. There are unknown factors associated with a ‘full Earth Island’ that will be impossible to predict. What is predictable is that this expected surge in demand for cars will come at the same time as chronic pressure continues to impact on other areas of our lives, such as: fuel shortages, housing affordability and the impact of negative equity, rising unemployment, excessive personal debt, ageing populations, acute skills shortages, water scarcity, land scarcity, and resource scarcity (to name a few). While we tend to believe that these problems will be solved in isolation by experts in their respective fields, it is no longer possible for us to expect this to happen on a finite planet. We face an unprecedented ‘perfect storm’ of issues. These issues will combine in ways that are unlike anything we have ever experienced, with outcomes that will be totally unpredictable.

Sadly, we will be ill prepared to deal with these issues because we are so intimately tied to our current economic model of consumption, growth, and profit. It is impossible to maintain such a model on a finite planet forever. While this model “worked” for the past few hundred years, it is close to breaking point because we are reaching the finite capacity of the planet. This demands a radical rethink about how we do business – something governments and corporations understand completely, yet are unwilling to put in place. This denial of the truth, and subsequent delay in implementing change will endanger our very survival on Earth Island.

Controlling Demand
In the meantime, congestion is getting worse and cities have been forced to impose ‘band-aid’ schemes to control the growth in vehicle numbers. Beijing in China is a good example. In November 2010, the total number of registered cars was 4,700,000, an increase of 6.7 per cent in just three months (from August 2010), or a staggering 100,000 cars per month – in one city. Despite massive investment by the Chinese government in bus, rail and subway infrastructure, this has failed to dampen demand for the private car. To combat rising car ownership, Beijing has taken drastic action. Since January 2011, a ‘New Car Licence Registration’ system has been in place, limiting the number of new cars that can be registered each month to just 20,000 (about one-third of average monthly demand). The first draw took place on 26 January 2011. The lottery cap ensures that large numbers of people will be forcibly excluded from owning a private car, and be forced to either continue using the public transport system or start using it. You can read more about this scheme here.

What’s interesting is that at the 2011 International Transport Forum held in June, delegates from Europe were urging a twenty-first century renaissance in bicycle transport (including electric and electric-assist) for personal health and climate health. While agreeing that “the bike is better to get around in Beijing”, Pan Haixao, a Professor at Tongji University in China, told delegates, “bicycle use is dropping fast due to poor air quality and the danger from car traffic.” How ironic. Encouraging bicycle transport is not going to solve the problem, and China has recently jumped to second place in the world for car population, overtaking Japan.

Singapore has also imposed a system that constrains new car registrations. Individuals enter a bidding process (held twice a month) to obtain a Certificate of Entitlement (COE). This way the Singaporean government can peg long-term vehicle population growth to three per cent annually (which will still lead to a doubling of cars in this small country within 25 years – see my article 72 – The Magic Number). The problem, of course, with the bidding system used by the Singaporean government is that it favours those with the ability to pay. The Beijing system is open to all citizens, regardless of income. In Singapore, the system favours those who can most easily afford cars, and these people tend to prefer luxury models. As a result, underlying social issues may increase as the gap between the haves and have-nots becomes more visible on the roads of Singapore. It would be interesting to see how the COE impacts on crime statistics in the future.

The Reality for Now
Beijing and Singapore are examples of the kinds of policies that are slowly appearing in an effort to curb growth in vehicle numbers – band-aid solutions that ignore the real challenge. These are merely temporary measures, putting off the inevitable crunch that will come eventually. Other countries are even less forward-thinking, and car manufacturers are falling over themselves to grab market share (and tasty profits) in these new territories. As a result we are producing more cars than ever in history – 2012 will be the first year ever that more than 60,000,000 new cars roll off the production line, with China leading the way.

Meanwhile, the relationship between the car and the city gets worse and is in no better state today than it was one hundred years ago when the ‘horse and buggy’ was the chief mode of transport. At its peak, residents of New York City had to contend with over 1,100,000 kilograms of manure and 225,000 litres of horse urine on their streets annually. Add to that the fact that over 15,000 horses died each year (300 a week) on the streets of New York City, and they had a significant health issue. Other large cities faced similar challenges.

The introduction of the motor car was both a practical solution as well as an economic one, although in hindsight it has simply replaced one set of problems with another – it has not solved traffic congestion (in fact, it is worse than ever) and air quality has suffered as a result of emissions from fuel combustion.

Now, we face another challenge – how to balance the desire for independence that private ownership of cars brings, with increasing congestion and pollution, as well as the increasing scarcity of raw materials.

The Question: How would you feel if you were no longer guaranteed the right to buy a new car?

The Exercise: Consider what changes you would make in your life if you no longer owned a car.

“Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.”

James Bryant Conant (1893-1978), American chemist, educational administrator government official, and diplomat

This article explains why I believe we should all get used to calling our unique planet ‘Earth Island’ rather than simply ‘Earth’.

Our planet is unique – there is nowhere else quite like it anywhere that we know of. It is our home and it is the only one we have. As large and as pristine and beautiful as it may appear from space, this planet is finite and can only give us so much. Yet we continue to take from it as if there is an endless supply of land, water, energy, food, resources, and materials.

Kenneth Brower, an environmentalist, and the eldest son of the prominent environmentalist David R. Brower, sums it up nicely in this quote:

“A living planet is a rare thing, perhaps the rarest in the universe, and a very tenuous experiment at best. We need all the company we can get on our unlikely journey.”

The question is, if we had to ‘get off the bus’ at some point in the future, where would we go?

A New Hope
One way would be to find another planet like Earth Island and move there. From a logical perspective, it makes sense to accept that somewhere out there in the universe is at least one other planet that can naturally sustain human life, and perhaps has even spawned life already (think of the film ‘Avatar’). If there is such a paradise, it hasn’t been found yet, and it is probably so far away as to be considered non-existent from our perspective based on our current technology. It may also be inhabited by a species that doesn’t particularly want us to be there. Realistically, therefore…

The chances of us finding a nice, cosy, alternative to Earth Island are, to all intents and purposes, zero.

Alternatively, we can use our supreme ability to conquer hostile environments to set up home somewhere that otherwise would not support life naturally. We can ‘force’ it to sustain us artificially. The obvious candidates for this are our moon, and our neighbour, Mars. I have no doubt in my mind that at some point this century we’ll have ten or twenty people ‘living’ on at least one of these – it is in our nature to prove that we’re capable of this and so it will be done.

Back to Earth Island
Let’s be a little more truthful with ourselves. Even if we ever manage to set up a ‘colony’ on the moon, or Mars, the number of people who will ever ‘live’ there will be tiny. Given that our population is increasing by 153 people every minute, there is absolutely no way we will have more than a few ‘minutes’ of population living anywhere else except Earth Island. For the rest of us, the 99.99999 per cent, it will be ‘business as usual’ – facing the consequences of our actions here on Earth Island.

As much as science fiction likes to portray us roaming the galaxy in great starships as part of a Federation of species, it is exactly that… fiction. You will not live to see this.

Instead, if you are reading this article in the twenty-first century, the overwhelming probability is that you will die here on Earth and either be cremated, or you’ll be buried and be food for the worms. The same goes for your children, and their children after them.

Struggling to accept that? Think of it this way – the amount of energy required to get one 100kg human off the surface of the planet and into space is the equivalent of eating more than 3,000,000 Big Macs. Given the energy crisis we’re going to be facing down here on Earth Island over the next couple of decades, it is unlikely that we’ll be embracing wholesale space exploration. It is a dream… and should remain so.

Look at it another way. As a decent, caring human being, how can you advocate the amount of energy, time, effort, money, and skills squandered on space exploration when there are over a billion people dying of starvation and lack of clean drinking water? How much better would it be if we treated the eradication of poverty as an absolute priority and diverted all the skilled engineers and all that money to solving this problem first?

Earth Island and Easter Island
This is the reason why I believe we should get used to calling our planet ‘Earth Island’. The planet as a whole is no different from Easter Island (read about it here and here). In fact, I can be even more specific and say that living on Easter Island would have been the better choice than living on Earth Island (ignoring the obvious logical flaw in this). Think of it this way:

• On Easter Island, when they cut down the last tree, that was it – no more trees for fire, shelter and for transporting stone around the island
• When they killed the last bird, that was it – no more birds to eat
• When they stripped the last good soil from the ground so crops could no longer grow, that was it – no more food (the people resorted to eating each other pretty soon after rather than let people starve to death and waste all that nice meat)
• It is exactly the same for Earth Island – the only difference is that it is bigger. We think of Earth Island as so big that it can give us whatever we want, and as much as we want. We can’t hold an image of Earth Island in our heads and understand that just like a fridge, it can be empty. The same goes for Easter Island – the inhabitants couldn’t quite understand that once they depleted all the resources that was the end of it. Game over
• We look back in history at Easter Island and we imagine an island in the middle of the ocean and we get it; we wonder how stupid those people must have been; we’re more intelligent than that aren’t we? Well, no we’re not. When it comes to applying this same logic to the planet, most of us are absolutely incapable of doing so. We get brain freeze. It’s too hard. It’s easier to drink another beer, order another steak, buy some more shoes, or go on holiday and forget about it
• Worse than that, we simply ignore it completely and let a few ‘good’ people worry about it for us – completely passing the responsibility to other organisations, and worse, passing responsibility to governments and corporations while we focus on making money, consuming too much, and enjoying ourselves. Stupid

Back to Earth Island and Easter Island. Here’s why I stated that it was better to live on Easter Island than Earth Island:

• Easter Island is surrounded by sea and contains a food supply – it didn’t help the inhabitants of Easter Island in the long-run as their diet was deficient in many ways once they lived off what they could catch from the ocean. It did buy them a bit more time
• Easter Island is surrounded by sea and can be used to travel to another land – this is the big advantage Easter Island has over Earth Island. The islanders could leave. We can’t. Earth Island is totally and utterly isolated – cut off from any other form of life support system. We can’t go anywhere else and yet we behave as if we can

In the words of David R. Brower, environmentalist and founder of ‘Friends of the Earth’, and the ‘Earth Island Institute’:

“We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

What Can I Do?
This is the question every decent, empathic person is left wondering, “What can I do?”

It is actually very, very simple. I’ll borrow the words of German-born philosopher Hans Jonas:

“Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.”

You can make a choice right this minute.

You can make a choice to devote some time every week for the rest of your life to doing your own research and getting a much clearer picture of what is happening. You can make a choice to be strong and bring up these topics with your loved ones, your family and friends, and colleagues. You can challenge the companies you work for to think about more than just profit.

My website is a starting point. I have spent literally thousands of hours researching, reading, understanding, and combining all the different threads together so that you don’t have to. It doesn’t mean I want you to take what I have to say as the truth. The reason that there is a question at the end of every article (and occasionally an exercise) is because I want these articles to be starting points for your own thinking. I want you to get passionate and get involved. I want you to question what is happening. I want you to share these articles with people you care about and think about the questions asked.

My website is here for you… for free, and free of any political or religious agenda, and free of any self-interest on my part (other than following the advice of Hans Jonas). I am incredibly pessimistic about what is happening, and incredibly optimistic that every solution we need is already here, if enough of us stand up and make the right choices. It is an amazing and energetic space to be in.

That means it is still OK to watch mindless TV at the end of a hard day at work – just mix it up with some documentaries on the health of Earth Island. It is OK to spend some time reading mindless celebrity magazines – just mix it up with a few good books about the health of Earth Island. It is OK to go on holiday – just be mindful of what impact your travelling is having on Earth Island. It is OK to buy clothes – just check with yourself why you’re buying them and the cost that Earth Island is paying for you to have them.

Once you learn something from an article like you’ll find on this website, it’s hard not to know it. You’re changing your life one page at a time… for the benefit of all of us.

Commit to this simple choice and you’ll find your way of following the advice of Hans Jonas. Below is a question to get you started (and if you need help read my article about Coke here).

The Question: If you have a job or role in an organisation that is contributing to devastating Earth Island, what can you do about it?

“We are our choices.”

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French existentialist philosopher, novelist, critic, and political activist

This article is about attachment and its effect on judgement.

I was reading a book recently that contained a wonderful story about attachment. It is so simple and in alignment to the goals of Devil’s Inquisitor that I thought I’d use it as the basis for an article.

The book is ‘Presence – Human Purpose and the Field of the Future’, written by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers.

In the book Peter Senge meets with Master Nan Huai Jin (his personal website is here), one of the most renowned and revered lay Buddhist Masters in China, and a great teacher in all three traditions of spiritual cultivation (the Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions). He has written more than 30 books on these subjects.

According to Gary Hamel in ‘What Matters Now’, today “humanity’s most pressing problems aren’t merely technological; they’re social, cultural, and political, and global in scope”. Similarly, in his conversation with Peter, Master Nan said:

“what has been lacking in the twentieth century is a central cultural thought that would unify all these things: economy, technology, ecology, society, matter, mind, and spirituality. There are no great philosophers or great thinkers who’ve been able to develop the thinking that unifies all these questions.”

Master Nan then went on to relate a story about a famous Chinese Prime Minister who held office when China was still divided into many small states.

One of the Prime Minister’s sons was arrested and about to be executed in a neighbouring state. The Prime Minister decided to send his youngest son on a diplomatic mission to rescue his brother. The eldest son heard about this and objected. “Sending your youngest son means you don’t think I’m capable,” he said. “Send me.”

The Prime Minister was reluctant to change his mind, and the eldest son continued to protest until he relented. So, the eldest son left to rescue his brother from certain death. When the eldest son reached the neighbouring state, he sought out a minister who was very close to the emperor and pleaded with him, offering him a great deal of money for the release of his brother. The minister agreed to help.

Soon, there was an announcement that the emperor would release all prisoners.

Upon hearing this news, the eldest son thought, “Wonderful. I don’t have to keep my promise to give the money to the minister, since all the prisoners are being released.”

What the eldest son did not know is that the minister had kept his end of the bargain to secure the release of the Prime Minister’s son. Knowing the emperor well, the minister realised he could not appeal on behalf of the Prime Minister’s son only and draw attention to the son of a rival. Instead, he convinced the emperor to release all prisoners as an act of magnanimity, to enhance the emperor’s reputation and benefit the entire country.

When the minister and the eldest son met again, the minister learned that the eldest son was now withholding the money. Upon this, the minister went back to the emperor and informed him that one of the prisoners was the son of the Prime Minister of a neighbouring state. As a result, all the prisoners were released, except the son, who was executed.

When the eldest son returned home to his family, carrying the lifeless body of his brother, his father’s apprehensions about sending the eldest son were confirmed.

Why? Because the father knew that the eldest son, who had worked very hard for his money, wouldn’t want to give it away, while the youngest son didn’t have the same attachment to money.

Master Nan concluded the story by saying,

“Attachment affects our ability to judge, and our knowing. That’s what it means when you don’t know how to stop.”

The point Master Nan was making is that our attachments affect our ability to consider different perspectives, or make wise judgements. The attachment prevents us from seeing information that may be available to us, or taking a different perspective, even if this is better for us in the long-term. Right now, the world is heading towards an uncertain future and we need to give ourselves permission to relax our hold on some of our beliefs in order to let other information enter our critical thinking brain.

In the words of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406, Muslim scholar and author of al-Muqaddimah),

“If the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment’s hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The result is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted.”

In more contemporary terms, this is why, in the words of Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892, British Fundamentalist Baptist Preacher),

“A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

Our strongly-held beliefs, and our attachment to the status quo, can blind us to the evidence that is in front of us. Hence, we are guilty of not making changes when we should, and before it’s too late. This is particularly the case when we hold beliefs that have been ‘given’ to us by those with power – parents, teachers, government, “successful” people, and CEOs – and by the power of marketing messages – when those beliefs are false and should must be challenged.

The Question: What strong beliefs do you have that perhaps should be questioned?

The Exercise: Sit down with your children, friends, or work colleagues, share some strong beliefs, and explore what information either supports them or contradicts them.

“A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer, social critic, playwright, novelist, and debater

This article looks at what people regret the most when they are faced with the final days and weeks of their life, and the lesson it has for the rest of us now.

Having done the research for the article, what struck me most was that on the rare occasion we are near someone who is close to death we are often so overwhelmed with our own feelings that we miss the opportunity to learn about the final thoughts of the person who is dying. Death brings a clarity to the value we place on our life and the people and possessions in it.

The most renowned person in this area is Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004, Swiss-born psychiatrist and pioneer in Near-Death studies). The Foundation set up to continue her work is here.

Kübler-Ross is most famous for her ground-breaking book ‘On Death and Dying’, first published in 1969. In this book, she first discussed  the Five Stages of Grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (now known as the Kübler-Ross model). Initially discussed in terms of those close to death, this model has since been extended to the stages we go through in response to other SIGNIFICANT EMOTIONAL EVENTS (S.E.E.) such as losing your job, divorce or relationship break-up, and so on.

Kübler-Ross did not intend this model to be a rigid, sequential series of steps. Everyone takes their individual path through the stages, perhaps in a different order, perhaps skipping one or more stages. What she intended is to recognise that the familiar phrases ‘time heals’, and ‘life goes on’ have some basis in fact as we quite naturally pass through different emotions as part of the healing process.

Kübler-Ross’ most important message was,

“Listen to the suffering and the dying… LISTEN to your… dying loved ones.”

According to her model, the five stages are:

1. Denial - a conscious or unconscious refusal to accept facts, information, reality, etc., relating to the situation concerned. It’s a defense mechanism and perfectly natural. Some people can become locked in this stage when dealing with a traumatic change that can be ignored. Death of course is not particularly easy to avoid or evade indefinitely
2. Anger – people dealing with emotional upset can be angry with themselves, and/or with others, especially those close to them. Knowing this helps you remain detached and non-judgemental when experiencing the anger of someone who is very upset
3. Bargaining – traditionally the bargaining stage for people facing death can involve attempts to bargain with whatever God the person believes in. People facing less serious trauma can bargain or seek to negotiate a compromise. For example “Can we still be friends?” when facing a break-up. Bargaining rarely provides a sustainable solution, especially if it’s a matter of life or death
4. Depression – in a way it’s the dress rehearsal or the practice run for the ‘aftermath’ although this stage means different things depending on whom it involves. It’s a sort of acceptance with emotional attachment. It’s natural to feel sadness and regret, fear, uncertainty, etc. It shows that the person has at least begun to accept the reality
5. Acceptance - this stage definitely varies according to the person’s situation, although broadly it is an indication that there is some emotional detachment and objectivity. People dying can enter this stage a long time before the people they leave behind, who must necessarily pass through their own individual stages of dealing with the grief

I know that most of us are good people – yet the world we live in forces us to be in denial about the impact mankind is having on a finite earth. As Kübler-Ross highlights, you can become locked in a stage of denial when ‘dealing with a traumatic change that can’t be ignored’, such as the one we are dealing with now on a global scale. You do have a choice about this.

What We Regret
When it comes to regret, there is a phrase ‘never regret anything because at one time it was exactly what you wanted’. I believe this is an excuse that hides certain truths. After all, why do we experience regret at all? Regret is a natural and necessary human process – it is a signal from our core values and beliefs that says, “Hey, you do realise you shouldn’t have done that, don’t you?”, or “You do realise you missed a great opportunity there, don’t you?” It’s the little voice on the shoulder – your Devil’s Inquisitor if you like! Animals have no need for regret – they do exactly what they have to do in order to survive and ensure the survival of their species. They kill only where it is necessary to eat, protect their young, or protect their territory. Animals do not have the communication skills to negotiate an effective peace settlement – that is a cause for regret amongst civilised humans if ever there was one.

Of course, dwelling on every little regret to the extent that it paralyses you is pointless, and that’s what the phrase is attempting to convey. However, you should regret everything where you had a choice and made it knowing that it failed the test of “Is it good for me, is it good for others, and is it good for the planet?” Practically, this is difficult in the version of the world we have now – we’d all be paralysed with regret. The interim step is to be more aware of what you’re doing and why – “I know that eating more than I need is wrong when so many people are starving” – so that you can begin to make changes – it’s never too late (and that’s where coaching can be a great help).

This is where we come to Bronnie Ware and her memoir ‘Regrets of the Dying’. Bronnie spent many years working in palliative care, caring for people in the last three to twelve weeks of their lives. As a result, she has a unique insight into what people think about when they are faced with their own mortality.

When I first discovered Bronnie, her memoir had a profound emotional impact on me. Combined with concerns and awareness about the impact of mankind on the planet and each other, it increased my determination to express these values TODAY, not THE DAY I DIE.

Here are the most common themes Bonnie heard whilst caring for the dying:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me – according to Bonnie, this was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard – this came from every male patient that Bonnie nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women spoke of this regret to a lesser extent because most were from an older generation and had not been breadwinners. All of the men Bonnie nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence. By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings – many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result. We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends – often the dying would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying. It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to even manage this task. It all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks – love and relationships
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier – according to Bonnie this is a surprisingly common message. Many people do not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to themselves, that they were content when deep within they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again. When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying

Wow! If you feel even one-tenth of the emotion I felt when first reading this, then I am truly happy for you – you are an emotionally-connected human being! I cried when I let myself FEEL the words Bonnie had written about all these dying people. I have so little experience of dying people – only my wife’s father who sadly passed away five years ago. When my grandfather died when I was a child, my parents kept my sister and I out of the way completely. We saw nothing of my grandfather as his health deteriorated over the final two weeks, and I wish I had – we have to understand death as early as possible in life. My grandmother died so suddenly and peacefully (and somehow knowingly did so two weeks after seeing all her family together at her 90th birthday party) that I was able to simply let my sadness at her passing express itself at her funeral rather than feel regret. I miss her a lot.

When it comes down to the last few thousand breaths you’ll ever take, your salary, Frequent Flyer status, luxury car(s), extravagant holidays, expensive jewellery/clothes, techno-gadgets, gaming machines, and so on are nothing but adornments to let people know how important YOU think you are in the pecking order, or use to make yourself feel good (also read my article on H.O.T.). On your deathbed, all of this will mean nothing other than what you leave behind for others in terms of the impact of your over-consumption.

On a finite planet, it is plain stupid to want so much for yourself when you can’t take it with you anyway – particularly if you work yourself to death earning the money to pay for it all, spend your life in a soul-less job because of the pay check, or get yourself into debt in order to buy it all. Read how one 16-year old decided to spend some of the money saved for her college fund, or read about the 93-year old still teaching yoga.

All that matters is love and relationships – and that includes a love for all species, an understanding of the inter-connectedness of all life, and a caring relationship with our only home, Earth.

The Question: What will you regret most when the end comes?

“What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?”

Jared Diamond (1937-), American scientist and author (in relation to the collapse of Easter Island)

A little girl says to her mummy, “When did the world stop buying Coke? Mummy replies, “It began on 1 August 2012, and by Christmas that year Coke no longer existed.” The little girl says, “Were you there Mummy? Were you part of it?” Mummy replied, “Yes I was darling, because I know how bad Coke is, and even though I was still pregnant with you, I didn’t want you to be born into a world where you would be drinking something like that.”

The little girl asked, “So it really was possible for people all over the world to work together to get rid of a product that was no good?” Mummy replied, “It was the first time, and since then power has shifted from the huge corporations and governments to the people, and the world is beginning to become a better place.”

“Thank you Mummy, because I don’t like the sound of that Coke stuff, and I’m glad you stood up for something so I won’t ever know what it was.”

Mummy replied, “It was an easy choice really. When I thought about whether I wanted you to grow up in a world with turtles in it, or Coke in it, I realised I had to do something. We’ve been valuing the wrong things for too long, and it’s time to change.”

Dare To Dream – “Dream Into Action”
Imagine this conversation happening five or ten years from now between a mother and her daughter. How good would it feel to know that when this started, you were there, taking a stand, exercising your right as a citizen of earth to bring into line a giant corporation that sells a product that has no place in a congested, polluted, water-scarce, food-scarce planet?

Social Media is the weapon of the People
The world we live in today has the biggest weapon ever created – a weapon that can’t effectively be controlled (well that’s not strictly true, as the Chinese have demonstrated) – SOCIAL MEDIA. At our fingertips is a network of inter-connected people right around the world with the power to spread a message in minutes – it is a “powerful amplifier of moral conscience”. This tool is ours to take back the planet from the hands of the rich and powerful who have for too long controlled our lives in such a way that they earn massive profits from us, selling products whether they are good or bad, whether they are harmful to the environment or not, as long as it continues to meet shareholder and Wall Street earnings expectations (and remains, within a hair’s breadth, on the right side of the slow-changing law). This is capitalism without moral discipline.

It is TIME TO TAKE CONTROL and we start with the number one brand in the world – Coca Cola.

From 1 AUGUST 2012 let’s stop buying Coke. It’s really that easy.

Coke is a product that contributes to OBESITY, DIABETES, TOOTH DECAY, and OSTEOPOROSIS. It is branded as HAPPINESS by the uncaring, greedy corporate executives who delight in shifting 1,700,000,000 servings of their beverages EVERY DAY or 20,000 servings per second.

In one simple action – without violence, without protest, and in total anonymity – we can rid the world of a product that no longer deserves to exist. Rather than the Coke brand telling us that it is “the real thing”, it is a marketing concoction built with advertising dollars – its true values lack conscience and morals.

The gap in the market that the death of Coke will create will provide a brilliant opportunity for entrepreneurs to offer better products that have no chance of existing now because of the competition they face from the Coca-Cola colossus. Let’s make sure the current version of the Coca-Cola Company becomes extinct as a step towards making sure our species continues to survive, and as a step towards preventing other animals becoming extinct.

All you have to do is forward the message – get behind it by using your networks to forward this message LOUD and CLEAR – the citizens of Earth no longer need Coke – give us something better.

Why Coke?
Coke is rated as the number one brand in the world – imagine that? They sell 1,700,000,000 servings across the world every single day, and the GROSS PROFIT MARGIN is 60.9%. Every dollar you spend on their products pours another 61c into their pocket after deducting the cost of production. The company is worth $80,000,000,000, of which more than $12,200,000,000 (or 15%) is simply GOODWILL – the value placed on the brand BECAUSE WE KEEP BUYING IT. It is imaginary money – it’s not real value at all (unless another, even bigger, company comes along to try and buy it). So the value is simply a way of making a few people very, very, rich at YOUR EXPENSE.

What About All The People Who Work For Coke Around The World?
The Coca-Cola Company employs 146,200 people in 200 countries around the world (0.002% of the world’s population or less people than are added to the population of the world in 16 HOURS).

Once this product is gone from the market, the Coca-Cola Company will either promote another product in their stable (Fanta or Sprite? Let’s hope they’re not that stupid), or other companies will see the trend and develop and launch beverage products that are good for you and the planet. Either way, people will find jobs elsewhere, and not all employees will lose their jobs.

Alternatively, people can find jobs in professions that are better for the planet – just think how many different occupations are available to web designers, engineers, product designers, project managers, analysts, marketers, drivers, accountants, lawyers, and so on, that could be helping the planet?

Coke is just one of their products, surely it won’t make a difference?
Is that an excuse or what?

If the death of Coke creates an opportunity for the Coca-Cola Company to promote other products into the gap in the market, then that’s fine – as long as those products are better than Coke! If they can’t manage to remove harmful products from their portfolio, then campaigns like this will continue to hurt them, the company value will drop significantly and this will have knock-on effects – after all the BRAND is Coke. Just imagine how many investors are going to sell their stock in Coke IN CASE THIS CAMPAIGN WORKS? This alone will cause problems for the company unless they come out and do something to show the world that they are serious about offering clean, honest-to-goodness products that do no harm to people or the planet.

The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest beverage company – they own or license more than 500 non-alcoholic beverage brands alone. Coke is the biggest-selling drink in history, and the best known product in the world and their vision for 2020 is to double the size of their business – it is about time Coke became history (or Zero Coke).

Look at one of their new marketing campaigns in Asia to increase sales – a vending machine that dispenses FREE COKE if you HUG IT (view it here on YouTube).Seriously – is this a future you want to be responsible for?

Do your own research
Don’t simply take my word for it – go on the internet and learn about Coke for yourself. Read the annual filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) here. Facts and figures reproduced here are directly from the report. Check out the section ‘Risk Factors’ from page 11 onwards if you want to understand just how aware the company is of the nature of their products versus the good of the planet. It’s all about profit at the end of the day. Can you see the irony of a company that understands the threat that water scarcity has on its ability to sell products – water being the main ingredient – and its “partnership” with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to help promote water conservation (so the supply of water for Coke is uninterrupted?). It is unethical and people are falling for this. At present, it takes 2.26 litres of water to make one litre of product (on average), so why not just give people the water?

In the UK, the Coca-Cola Company made a huge mistake in 2004 by launching a ‘purified water’ that was simply tap water put through a purification process (plus some added mineral salts) – they were forced to take the product off the shelves and exit the market, and it was a very costly mistake for them. Press headlines in the UK included, “The Real Sting”, and “Coke sells tap water for 95p”. Here’s an article from the BBC.

Remember this: The Future We Face Rests On The Choices You Make – what future do you want?

This campaign is the easiest thing you’ll ever participate in that has the potential to change the course of history. By committing to stop drinking Coke, letting your friends and family know you’re doing it, asking them to join you, and forwarding this article to show them why, we can shift the direction humans are heading in. Coke SERVES NO PURPOSE for our civilisation and eliminating it in this way will open up possibilities for change you can only dream about today. So let’s do it together.

Check out the Facebook Campaign here - http://www.facebook.com/ZeroCokeCampaign

This campaign will focus on all variants of Coke – Diet Coke, Classic Coke etc.

Zero Coke Campaign: STOP BUYING COKE FROM 1 AUGUST 2012

The Question: Are you prepared to change the world for our mutual benefit and the benefit of future generations?

This article looks at an interesting social phenomenon known as the ‘Diderot Effect’, which can act as a driver of consumption.

It is named after the French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713-1784) who first described the phenomenon in an essay entitled ‘Regrets on Parting with my Old Dressing Gown’. In his essay, Diderot explains how he received the gift of a beautiful and elegant scarlet dressing gown (otherwise known as a ‘smoking jacket’), which leads to very unexpected results, eventually plunging him into debt.

How on earth could the gift of a dressing gown cause someone to plunge into debt?

Diderot explains that while initially pleased with the gift, the wearing of it caused him to realise that his other possessions appeared old and dated. As a result Diderot replaced his old straw chair with an armchair covered in Moroccan leather, replaced his old desk with an expensive writing table, and replaced his beloved prints with more costly ones.

Eventually Diderot laments,

“I was absolute master of my old dressing gown, but I have become a slave to my new one.”

Consumption Driver
The Diderot Effect is a driver of consumer behaviour – with each new purchase other possessions appear less appealing. This is particularly the case for products that are complementary – for instance, buying a Blu-ray DVD player may lead you to become unhappy with your current television and stereo system, with the result that you replace both of these too. In the same way, buying a new skirt may lead you to buying a new top, jacket, belt, and shoes as well.

Note the use of the word ‘replace’ not ‘upgrade’ because the replacement isn’t necessarily an upgrade in any appreciable sense – other than in styling and cosmetic appearance. The Diderot Effect may cause you to replace something which appears dated and old with a shiny, new version with exactly the same function and capability.

Marketers have learned to use this ‘consistent appearance’ effect to their advantage – for instance, IKEA stores are laid out in such a way that you are forced to walk all the way through the store in order to get back out. The route through the store is carefully designed to maximise exposure to all products, and forces you to view products in a potential room setting, so the complementary products are more likely to be purchased as well. In this way, the consumer who went in to buy a new bed for their teenage daughter comes away with a matching desk unit and drawers as well.

Online Retailing
The online shopping environment is perfectly suited to exploiting the Diderot Effect. In real-time, online retailers can see what the consumer is looking at, or adding to the shopping cart, and make helpful suggestions about other products that you may like, or that other consumers like you have purchased. The online retailer can sweeten the deal by offering a discount or ‘bundled’ price, thus causing you to buy products you previously had no intention of buying.

This is exactly what happened to me when I purchased my iMac in 2011. I was perfectly happy with the current speaker system with my old iMac, and had no intention of replacing it, despite having owned it for over five years. After all, it is a speaker system for a computer, how good does it need to be? At the checkout, Apple ‘suggested’ a sleek Bose computer speaker system to go with my iMac. Suddenly, I found myself mentally comparing the image of my shiny, new iMac with my now ‘old and dated’ speaker system, and the Diderot Effect kicked in. On impulse, I added the Bose speakers to the shopping cart, even though they were not discounted at all! My savings took a bigger hit than I expected and my old speakers are now sitting in storage because I don’t want to throw them out – after all, they’re perfectly fine. My decision to buy the Bose speakers is completely irrational.

This is where the Diderot Effect continues to influence our decisions. When the speakers were delivered, I could have returned them. However, once I set up the new iMac with the old speakers, I experienced exactly what Diderot described in his essay. The speakers did look shabby, and the decision was made. Out with the old, and in with the new – even though the experience is hardly any different.

As an experienced marketing professional, I am aware of the tactics used to stimulate consumption and encourage the basic desire of humans to possess more ‘stuff’. The Diderot Effect is one of the tactics that is not formally taught in Marketing, yet is highly effective at encouraging unnecessary consumption. It appears to be employed most often with online retailers, so beware!

Impact on Consumption
Increasing consumption is one of the big issues for our future. Economic growth is only possible when you spend more and consume more, which is why governments, business and financial companies want us to shop, shop, shop.

However, this is not the solution for a finite world and it is important to be aware of external influences (such as marketing tactics) and internal influences (the Diderot Effect) to help reduce overall consumption.

In the developing countries of the world, such as China, India, and Brazil, vast numbers of people are climbing out of poverty for the first time, and will have the money to spend on new products. It is easy to see how the Diderot Effect will influence spending in these countries – after all, when a brand new television appears in a poor household, it is not long before other furniture and furnishings appear to complement the television, thus driving consumption more quickly than necessary.

The Question: When have you personally experienced the Diderot Effect?

“The brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832), English cleric, writer and collector

This article questions whether it’s time to challenge the leadership of large corporations who peddle harmful products, while enriching themselves and a privileged few.

On 27 July 2009, Thom Hartmann, an American author and talk show host, published an article* entitled ‘Profiling CEOs and their Sociopathic Paychecks’.

The premise of his article was this:

“What could a person such as William McGuire or Lee Raymond (the former CEOs of UnitedHealth and ExxonMobil, respectively) possibly do to justify a $1.7 billion paycheck or a $400 million retirement bonus?”

Hartmann continued by questioning how, in a ‘free market’ of labour for CEOs, that natural competition for the top roles would drive DOWN executive pay. After all, it would be in the interest of shareholders to avoid paying such huge sums to CEOs and other senior executives. All the shareholders of UnitedHealth would have to do is to find someone who would be willing to do McGuire’s job for say $500 million and they would save over $1 billion.

So why are some companies forced to pay upwards of $1 MILLION A DAY to have somebody successfully do the job of CEO? Dr Hartmann’s conclusion is that the only reason executive pay is so high is because there is a serious shortage of people with the necessary skill set to perform the role of CEO.

What part of the job is so difficult that mere mortals would find it impossible to perform it? Dr Hartmann’s opinion is that the crucial element is the ‘sociopath’ characteristic. Dr Hartmann suggests that of the 1 per cent of the general population who are sociopaths, only a small percentage have sufficient levels of education and business know-how to qualify as a CEO, hence the stiff competition.

CEO as Corporate Sociopath
This topic has been revisited many times over the years (and I have been covering it in a series of articles, here, here, here, and here). A quick search on the internet reveals a whole variety of articles stretching from last month back to the early years of this century. What they have in common is that successful CEOs tend to share the characteristics of a sociopath (or psychopath). They make decisions on a daily basis that can DESTROY the lives of many human beings, while enriching the privileged few.

A sociopath is defined as someone who doesn’t have ‘normal’ human feelings. According to Dr Robert Hare, the creator of the Psychopathy Checklist, a sociopath is someone who isn’t burdened by conscience; has a profound lack of empathy; uses other people callously and remorselessly for their own ends; takes pleasure from their power over other people; and are pathological liars (see the list of eight traits below).

Dr Hare appeared in the 2003 film ‘The Corporation’, giving authority to the film’s premise that corporations themselves are ‘sociopathic’ because they ruthlessly seek their own selfish interests - ‘shareholder value’ - without regard for the harm they cause others, such as environmental damage, and severe restructuring and downsizing to cut costs and deliver more shareholder value. Dr Hare also points out these sociopaths can exist within organisations even as they continue to appear to be ‘normal’ outside the work environment – a type of ‘schizophrenia’ that allows them to compartmentalise conflicting parts of their personality (read more here).

In fact, it is the very environment we now live in – a fast-moving, rapidly evolving, technological world – that is perfectly suited to the sociopath as the organisational and marketplace chaos that ensues provides both the necessary stimulation for sociopathic thrill-seeking and sufficient cover for sociopathic manipulation and abusive behaviour! Now, more than ever, we need to be on our guard to prevent these people from flourishing, as the world lurches towards a global collapse.

The Coca-Cola Company
Let’s take one obvious example of a company that may well have a number of sociopaths amongst its senior executive team and Board.

What decent human being would market and sell a product like Coke? It is a chemical cocktail that includes a significant amount of sugar (or even more damaging chemical substitutes for sugar), and provides no nutritional benefits whatsoever, just ‘empty’ calories. Sugar can lead to obesity, tooth decay, the long-term destruction of your bones, behavioural issues, and diabetes. According to Elaine Hollingsworth in her excellent book ‘Take Control of Your Health and Escape the Sickness Industry’,

“sugar leaches the body of precious minerals and vitamins because of the heavy demands its detoxification and elimination make on the entire system.  To protect the blood, so much calcium is leached from the teeth and bones that osteoporosis and decay, and weakening of the entire body, results.”

Soft drinks are terrible products, yet the market for them worldwide has made a few people extremely rich, in part due to very successful (and expensive) marketing and promotion. Look at the annual reports for these companies and you’ll get a feel for the sheer amount of this product being shifted every day. For instance, in its 2011 Annual Report filing in the U.S., the Coca-Cola Company states that it owns and markets ‘four of the world’s top five non-alcoholic sparkling beverage brands: Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Fanta and Sprite.’ These are sold in more than 200 countries around the world, and the company sells more than 1,700,000,000 servings of these products every day (or about 90 servings per person per year for every human on the planet). What’s more the Coca-Cola Company spent a massive $5.8 billion in 2011 on promotional and marketing programs alone (enough for PLAN to sponsor more than 600,000 children in developing countries for the first 18 years of their life).
Amongst the recognised threats that the Coca-Cola Company lists in its annual report is the following:

“Water scarcity and poor quality could negatively impact the Coca-Cola system’s production costs and capacity. Water is the main ingredient in substantially all of our products. It is also a limited resource in many parts of the world, facing unprecedented challenges from overexploitation, increasing pollution, poor management and climate change. As demand for water continues to increase around the world, and as water becomes scarcer and the quality of available water deteriorates, our system may incur increasing production costs or face capacity constraints which could adversely affect our profitability or net operating revenues in the long run.”

Do you feel sorry for the Coca-Cola Company? I don’t. Here is a company that clearly recognises several of the major issues we face as a species, yet perceives it purely in terms of how it may affect long-term revenue and profits. Is this really what being human is all about? Are the people running this company, and those invested in it, really concerned about other people? Imagine the impact the Coca-Cola Company could have worldwide if they made the decision to cease production of soft drinks (and energy drinks), and explained that they were doing so because there is no place for a product like Coke, Fanta, Sprite and so on in our fragile world? How would this shift public sentiment and how would this affect other companies that produce similar junk products?

As Gary Hamel says in his recent book ‘What Matters Now’,

“By definition, every organization is ‘values-driven’. The only question is, what values are in the driver’s seat?”

The Eight Traits of the Corporate Sociopath

Companies like the Coca-Cola Company exist because we allow them to. The people that run these companies may well have the characteristics suggested by Dr Hare as belonging to a corporate sociopath. These eight traits are:

• Glibness and superficial charm
• Grandiose sense of self-worth
• Pathological lying
• Conning and manipulativeness
• Lack of remorse or guilt
• Shallow affect (a coldness covered up by dramatic emotional displays that are actually playacting)
• Callousness and lack of empathy
• Failure to accept responsibility for one’s own actions

Does this sound like anyone you’ve worked for?

Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon from the University of Surrey in the UK also studied this area and concluded in their paper that senior executives might be called ‘successful psychopaths’, while the criminal elements are the ‘unsuccessful psychopaths’ who tend to score higher on traits such as chronically unstable; antisocial; socially deviant lifestyle.

The simple solution to all this? Imagine if millions of people around the world CHOSE to work together and stop buying a product like Coke for one month? Imagine if they went further and encouraged as many of their friends and family as possible to do the same? The impact would be so enormous that the Coca-Cola Company would HAVE to listen. In today’s internet age, WE have the power to do the right thing, IF we agree and work together.

Remember… ‘the future we face rests on the choices you make’.

Spotting the Corporate Sociopath

Dr Hare, in conjunction with Paul Babiak, has introduced a tool called the B-Scan. This is a personality test that companies can use to spot job candidates who have an MBA, yet may lack a conscience. While this is a step forward in identifying and avoiding candidates with these characteristics, it presumes that the existing senior leadership are willing to introduce such a screening tool – after all, would they be willing to take the test themselves?

Time for New Leadership
This is why this article is called ‘Time for New Leadership’. People with the talent and skills are out there and ready to lead organisations, and yet too few of them make it to the top because to do so would mean adopting some of the corporate sociopath characteristics this series of articles has discussed. Many perfectly capable leaders are ready to step into senior leadership roles if there is a culture shift about what business means.

If we consider the global threats to our existence – water scarcity, food shortages, poverty, starvation, pollution, climate change, exploitation of the land, over-population, obesity, diabetes, cancer, diminishing fossil fuels, religious conflict, human rights issues, species extinction and so on, it must be clear that the only way this is going to change is if each of us accepts responsibility for the part we play. It really is this simple… ‘the future we face rests on the choices you make’.

Organisations such as the Coca-Cola Company exist because we allow them to – by continuing to buy their products even as we KNOW they are not good for us. Others choose to work for companies like the Coca-Cola Company because of the opportunity to be paid well, rather than find some other way to earn a living. Our own unlimited desire to have ‘more stuff’ provides the opportunity for sociopaths to exist as we fail to accept the part we play in the destruction of our only home, planet Earth.

The Question: How much effort would it take for you to get behind a campaign to rid the world of a product like Coke?

*Hartmann’s article is largely excerpted from his book, ‘Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture’, and his website is www.thomhartmann.com

“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer, social critic, playwright, novelist, and debater

This article considers why nuclear energy must be considered as a practical solution to ever-growing energy demand, and as a way for the world to transition away from its dependence on fossil fuels, such as oil, coal and gas.

Let’s set the scene:

• The world we live in today (and the 7,000,000,000 people that inhabit it) came about through an intense burst of industrial and technological revolution over the past two hundred years enabled purely because of easy access to energy from the sun that has been locked away over hundreds of millions of years in the form of fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas)
• It is absolutely clear and understood by the governments and ruling bodies of the world that this precious resource is finite and will therefore become increasingly valued and sought after as supplies are exhausted
• The ‘green’ technologies of wind, solar and tidal power are weaklings compared to fossil fuels in terms of the level of energy they produce
• Demand for energy is set to grow considerably over the next couple of decades as the populations of China, India and other less-developed countries increasingly shift from living in the countryside to living in cities and consumption increases
• Virtually everything we take for granted in our day-to-day lives is powered by fossil fuels – including food, clothing, heating, cooling, lighting, transportation, entertainment and so on

A True Story

The President of the United States requested the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to compile a report taking a ‘new and hard look at the role of nuclear energy power in our economy… in light of the Nation’s prospective energy needs’.

The President made this request in March, and the report was duly delivered in November.

The report acknowledged that:

“next to the land, the water, and the air, without which we could not exist at all, energy is by far the most important of our terrestrial resources. Without it, our industrial society would be impossible.”

Furthermore, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, having consulted widely with scientists and other experts in compiling the report, wrote in its opening statement:

“today’s society depends almost entirely upon energy originating in the sun.  The vast bulk of this has been stored during hundreds of millions of years in the form of fossil hydrocarbons such as coal and oil. The storage process proceeds so slowly that, in terms of foreseeable human history, replenishment must be considered negligible. Although the supply is vast, we are consuming these materials at such a rapidly increasing rate that if not supplemented they will begin to approach exhaustion within the span of a few generations.”

(The emphasis is mine.)

If you assume this report was written and presented to the President of the United States last year, in 2011, you could be forgiven for thinking that we have plenty of time ahead of us to look at the many different options we have available to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels – solar, wind, biofuels and others, along with nuclear energy.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the President of the United States made the request for this report in March as a direct result of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster that occurred on 11 March 2011 following a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Unfortunately, this is not the case.

The President of the United States that I am referring to is John Fitzgerald Kennedy, or “JFK”, and the year was 1962.

That’s right – 1962; half a century ago, and a time when there was less than half the number of people on the planet than there are today.

1962 was a memorable year for those who remember it.  Ironically, it was a year where the whole world was well aware of the power of nuclear energy, as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded in events that were the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war.  It was finally averted due to the bravery of JFK and his Russian counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev.

Other events that year included ‘The Beatles’ being famously turned down by Decca Records, while ‘The Rolling Stones’ made their debut; both ‘The Hulk’ and ‘Spider-Man’ made their first comic book appearances; James Bond hit the big screen for the first time in ‘Dr No’, Marilyn Monroe died from a ‘probable suicide’; and Nelson Mandela was arrested by the South African government and sentenced to five years in prison (which later became life imprisonment).

Today, we have ‘consumed’ two of the generations the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission refer to in their report.  The world’s population has more than doubled, and our consumption of oil alone has more than tripled.

It is quite possible that back in 1962, people came to the conclusion that there was still time – “a few generations” sounds like a long time.  If the report was written last year, we could be forgiven for thinking the same thing, and after reading this article, you could go back to whatever you were doing, and trust that someone else will take care of things.

However, if you stop for a moment, and take in what is happening here, then it is no longer possible to continue thinking like this.  The world’s population has more than doubled; the consumption of oil has more than tripled.  Every year that passes now is consuming at least three times more oil than the world was in 1962.  It is no longer a case of a few generations as we are consuming oil at such a rapid rate that there is every chance we will run out of easily-accessible oil within ONE MORE GENERATION.

Think about that.

So, why do we need nuclear?
If the population of humans continues to increase AND the average energy consumption per individual continues to increase, then the demand for energy is going to continue to increase rapidly (see my article on the Kaya Identity). Providing a constant, “always-on” source of energy is going to be tough, particularly as fossil fuels are depleted and/or carbon taxation increases, reducing the attractiveness of fossil fuels.

As much as there is the risk of major incidents like Fukushima in March 2011, the simple fact is that there is no power source known to man at this time that is so energy-dense that it can replace fossil fuels. Solar, wind and other so-called ‘green energy’ options are weaklings in comparison. Weight for weight nuclear fuels have 20,000 times the energy content of fossil fuels!

Furthermore, nuclear energy has the advantage of being a stable, reliable form of energy – it has the potential to produce electricity 24 hours a day. Wind, solar, and tidal energy solutions are subject to the prevailing weather conditions and can’t be relied upon for base load. If you examine the figures provided for these technologies installed around the world, the number quoted is often the maximum power that can be produced, NOT what is realistically able to be produced. There can be a big difference between these figures.

There is also an irrational fear of nuclear power that is completely false. The risk of injury or death from a nuclear reactor is tiny. In a table of U.S. deaths, the average number of people per year that died as a result of nuclear power is virtually zero. At the same time, the average number of people per year who died from other accidents include: 50 from bee/wasp stings, 126 from candles, 211 from car collisions with deer, 500,000 from tobacco-related illness, and 733,834 from diseases of the heart.

If we compare nuclear to oil and coal the difference is even more stark. Below is a simplified chart produced by Seth Godin, in an article called ‘The triumph of coal marketing’, that highlights ‘death rate per watts produced’. For every person that dies due to nuclear power generation, 4000 die due to coal power generation.

 What I like about Seth’s article is his comment, “I think that any time reality doesn’t match your expectations, it means that marketing was involved.”

The Chernobyl Accident
A quarter of a century after the Chernobyl nuclear accident of April 1986 – the world’s worst-ever nuclear disaster – the official report to the United Nations (UNSCEAR 2008) shows that 28 people died in the first three months after the explosion, and another 19 people died between 1987 and 2004 of various causes NOT NECESSARILY associated with radiation exposure. Incidence of thyroid cancer increased significantly, particularly among children, which could have been avoided if iodine had been administered more quickly. The major impact of the accident was the psychological trauma of relocating 220,000 people and the subsequent hardship this placed on many people.

The conclusion of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s report from 1962 was that, “nuclear energy can and should make an important and, eventually a vital contribution toward meeting our long-term energy requirements,” and that “the development and exploitation of nuclear-electric power is clearly in the short- and long-term national interest and should be vigorously pursued.”

So, how far has the United States come since 1962?

In terms of electricity generation, 66 per cent was generated through the burning of coal in 1962. Today 48 per cent comes from coal burning, and 22 per cent from nuclear power. This is particularly impressive when you take into account that total consumption of electricity has roughly tripled since 1962. The United States has accomplished much (although it is far short of its goal of 50% of electricity generation from nuclear power by 2000 that was proposed back in 1962). There are more than 100 nuclear reactors in operation in the United States, and at the time of writing, it is the world’s largest commercial supplier of nuclear-electric energy. By comparison, 11 per cent of electricity-generation today comes from renewable energy sources.

However, the flip side is that 48% of electricity generation still comes from the burning of coal, so the total amount of coal burned is more than twice what it was in 1962 – contributing significantly more to carbon emissions.

What’s the Point?

It was recognised fifty years ago that the planet’s stockpile of fossil fuels was rapidly decreasing, and it would be unwise to rely upon them for energy in the future. The United States understood this, and investigated ways to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. Fifty years later, little has changed. Total energy consumption has increased far more than any efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources (or nuclear). The primary reason for this is that fossil fuels remain the cheapest energy source as a result of government subsidies and concessions (thanks to powerful industry lobby groups). Times are changing… slowly. As long as the focus is on maximising profits, and the environmental cost is not clearly accounted for, fossil fuels are hard to dislodge from their position of dominance. That is, until they run out…

The Question: How does this article affect your perception of nuclear energy?

This article continues my mini-series on power. If you haven’t already done so, read the previous articles first (‘The Abuse of Your Power’, ‘Using Your Power’, and ‘Quiz: Is Your Boss a Psychopath?’).

Deeper Meaning to the Corporate Psychopath
In Joel Bakan’s book ‘The Corporation – The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power’, Dr Robert Hare talks about the psychopathic tendencies of corporate executives whose objectives are to try ‘to destroy your competitors’ and who are not ‘particularly concerned with what happens to the general public’ as long as they’re buying the products the company offers. I respect the argument Dr Robert Hare is making about the existence of corporate psychopaths and their ability to compartmentalise the contradictory moral demands of their corporate and non-corporate lives – a form of schizophrenia.

The concern I have is that if Dr Hare is correct, then there is a deeper question to be asked, which is ‘why do otherwise normal people CHOOSE to take on roles in corporations that force them to adopt psychopathic behaviours?’

Ask executives this question and you are likely to get a range of responses such as “because I believe I can make a difference”, “because it is how the system works”, “I have a responsibility to the Board and shareholders”, and “I want to be successful”. Dig deeper still, and in my opinion, any response you get will eventually lead you to the same two exclusively-human traits I have discussed before – GREED and a NAÏVE BELIEF IN INFINITE GROWTH. Who in their right mind would insist on keeping a job (or even aspire to it) that requires them to be a psychopath at work, even when there is clear evidence of the pain, neglect, and suffering they cause others? Is it as simple as Dr Hare suggests or is there more to it? Perhaps the ‘warm and loving relationships’ he talks about are thinly-veiled illusions. I’d love to see some proper research done in this area as I believe it is a major obstacle to corporations becoming H.O.T. – honest, open and transparent, and doing the right thing by making decisions based on the question, “Is it good for me, is it good for others, and is it good for the planet?”

Let’s return to where I started this series of articles – Robert Greene’s ‘The 48 Laws of Power’. I have quoted the summary of each law, taken directly from the preface to his book (and also online here), below. In my opinion, in order to successfully master each law, it is necessary to take on the traits of a psychopath! Wikipedia notes that this book sold in excess of 1 million copies upon release in 1998 (it is likely to be much higher now) and that it is ‘one of the most requested books in American prison libraries’!

Dr Hare estimates that 1-in-a-100 people have psychopathic personalities! Their influence on us is significant because these aspects of their personality cause them to seek out people to hurt, abuse, use or destroy. If they occupy senior positions in corporations, their influence is enormous.

Law 1
Never Outshine The Master
Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.

Law 2
Never Put Too Much Trust In Friends, Learn How To Use Enemies
Be wary of friends – they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

Law 3
Conceal Your Intentions
Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defence. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realise your intentions, it will be too late.

Law 4
Always Say Less Than Necessary
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinx-like. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

Law 5
So Much Depends On Reputation – Guard It With Your Life
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.

Law 6
Court Attention At All Cost
Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses.

Law 7
Get Others To Do The Work For You, But Always Take The Credit
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.

Law 8
Make Other People Come To You – Use Bait If Necessary
When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains – then attack. You hold the cards.

Law 9
Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument
Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: the resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.

Law 10
Infection: Avoid The Unhappy And Unlucky
You can die from someone else’s misery – emotional states are as infectious as disease. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are only precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.

Law 11
Learn To Keep People Dependent On You
To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.

Law 12
Use Selective Honesty And Generosity To Disarm Your Victim
One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armour, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift – a Trojan horse – will serve the same purpose.

Law 13
When Asking For Help, Appeal To People’s Self-Interest, Never To Their Mercy Or Gratitude
If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasise it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.

Law 14
Pose As A Friend, Work As A Spy
Knowing about your rival is critical. Use spies to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. Better still: play the spy yourself. In polite social encounters, learn to probe. Ask indirect questions to get people to reveal their weaknesses and intentions. There is no occasion that is not an opportunity for artful spying.

Law 15
Crush Your Enemy Totally
All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely (sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smoulders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: the enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.

Law 16
Use Absence To Increase Respect And Honour
Too much circulation makes the price go down: the more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.

Law 17
Keep Others In Suspended Terror: Cultivate An Air Of Unpredictability
Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: be deliberately unpredictable. Behaviour that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorise.

Law 18
Do Not Build Fortresses To Protect Yourself – Isolation Is Dangerous
The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere – everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from – it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. Better to circulate among people, find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.

Law 19
Know Who You’re Dealing With – Do Not Offend The Wrong Person
There are many different kinds of people in the world, and you can never assume that everyone will react to your strategies in the same way. Deceive or outmanoeuvre some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lambs’ clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then – never offend or deceive the wrong person.

Law 20
Do Not Commit To Anyone
It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others – playing people against one another, making them pursue you.

Law 21
Play A Sucker To Catch A Sucker – Seem Dumber Than Your Mark
No one likes feeling more stupid than the next person. The trick, then, is to make your victims feel smart – and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.

Law 22
Use The Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness Into Power
When you are weaker, never fight for honour’s sake; choose surrender instead. Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane. Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you – surrender first. By turning the other cheek you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.

Law 23
Concentrate Your Forces
Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point. You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper than by flitting from one shallow mine to another – intensity defeats extensity every time. When looking for sources of power to elevate you, find the one key patron, the fat cow who will give you milk for a long time to come.

Law 24
Play The Perfect Courtier
The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the most oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.

Law 25
Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity; one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

Law 26
Keep Your Hands Clean
You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.

Law 27
Play On People’s Need To Believe To Create A Cult-like Following
People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise, emphasise enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organised religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.

Law 28
Enter Action With Boldness
If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honours the timid.

Law 29
Plan All The Way To The End
The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others. By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.

Law 30
Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work – it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.

Law 31
Control The Options: Get Others To Play With The Cards You Deal
The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets. Give people options that come out in your favour whichever one they choose. Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: they are gored wherever they turn.

Law 32
Play To People’s Fantasies
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

Law 33
Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

Law 34
Be Royal In Your Own Fashion: Act Like A King To Be Treated Like One
The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; in the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

Law 35
Master The Art Of Timing
Never seem to be in a hurry – hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself, and over time. Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually. Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power. Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.

Law 36
Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them Is The Best Revenge
By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.

Law 37
Create Compelling Spectacles
Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power – everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then, full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

Law 38
Think As You Like But Behave Like Others
If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.

Law 39
Stir Up Waters To Catch Fish
Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. Put your enemies off-balance: Find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.

Law 40
Despise The Free Lunch
What is offered for free is dangerous – it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit. It is also often wise to pay the full price – there is no cutting corners with excellence. Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating, for generosity is a sign and a magnet for power.

Law 41
Avoid Stepping Into A Great Man’s Shoes
What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them. Do not get lost in their shadow, or stuck in a past not of your own making: establish your own name and identity by changing course. Slay the overbearing father, disparage his legacy, and gain power by shining in your own way.

Law 42
Strike The Shepherd And The Sheep Will Scatter
Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual – the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoner of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them – they are irredeemable. Neutralise their influence by isolating or banishing them. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.

Law 43
Work On The Hearts And Minds Of Others
Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.

Law 44
Disarm And Infuriate With The Mirror Effect
The mirror reflects reality, but it is also the perfect tool for deception: when you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact. By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson. Few can resist the power of Mirror Effect.

Law 45
Preach The Need For Change, But Never Reform Too Much At Once
Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

Law 46
Never Appear Too Perfect
Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.

Law 47
Do Not Go Past The Mark You Aimed For; In Victory, Learn When To Stop
The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril. In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat. Do not allow success to go to your head. There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning. Set a goal, and when you reach it, stop.

Law 48
Assume Formlessness
By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.

The Question: Which of these ‘laws’ do you recognise in action in your workplace?

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”

Albert Camus (1913-1960), French author, journalist and philosopher

This articles continues my mini-series on power and follows on from ‘The Abuse of Your Power’, and the quiz ‘Is Your Boss a Psychopath?’ In order to combat the abuse of power by others, we need to recognise it when it is being used by others for the wrong reason and have the courage and conviction to challenge it.

Power. The word itself is ‘powerful’ isn’t it? Stop what you’re doing for a moment, close your eyes, and think about the word ‘power’.

Then say the word ‘power’ out loud and take notice of what has happened to you. Did you lower the tone of your voice, allowing the word to come from somewhere deeper inside you? Did your fingers tighten and clench into a ball? Did you clench your jaw perhaps? Was there a narrowing of the eyes, or a wicked gleam in them? Something else?

There’s nothing wrong with any of this – it just demonstrates the ‘power’ of words and the emotional meanings we attach to them. (That’s how marketers get you to buy stuff you don’t need, by the way.)

As an aside, one of the best examples of a word that has become incorrectly fixed in meaning is ‘manipulate’. Strictly speaking, it is a neutral word – it is neither negative nor positive. Yet when was the last time you heard anyone use the word in anything other than a negative context? Crazy, right? I used the word in one of those group HR management team development programs once and the facilitator had a complete meltdown – accusing me of all sorts of nasty things in front of everyone. The whole group was bemused by her unprofessional reaction to a single word. Even when I calmly pointed out the strict meaning of the word and explained the context in which I was using it, she wouldn’t hear a word of it. While no one disagreed with her having a different opinion, as a result of the way in which she disagreed, she lost the respect of the entire group for the remainder of the training. It was a lost opportunity.

Today, we see the evidence of power being abused everywhere. Along with its companion ‘greed’, it is the chief reason the economic world is in the mess it’s in. It’s why we hear about men in high positions allegedly helping themselves to hotel staff as if they were part of ‘room service’. It’s why we see bankers awarding themselves huge bonuses even as others lose their jobs and their life savings. One of my former bosses describes any woman in a senior management role who throws their weight around to prove themselves as a ‘power pussy’. Hilarious… and apt.

Power itself is not a bad thing. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best:

“I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.”

And that’s the point exactly – using power for the RIGHT reasons. How tragic is it that we see people every day who are in a position to DO SOMETHING RIGHT and they don’t? Instead, they’re thinking only of themselves, forgetting that we are all connected when it comes to our place on the planet.

That’s where your power comes in. If you witness a situation where power is being used for the wrong reasons, you have the power to do something about it. What I get really excited about is that right now the world has never been in more of a mess, and at the same time, there has never been a better time for individuals, through the power of the internet and social media, to take action to make change. The only question is, “what will it take for you to use your power?”

Albert Einstein said:

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

As a result of all my researching, questioning, and digging over the past few years, I can clearly see the dynamics at play on a global scale – and it is not pretty. Luckily I am not alone in this view. The environmentalist Paul Gilding summed it up nicely at a presentation I attended when he said:

“We’re slow, but we’re not stupid.”

By this he means that the human race is good at dealing with a disaster and we tend to pull together and help each other out in a crisis. It’s an accurate statement, for sure. My concern is that we’re heading for that disaster and yet we could avoid the ‘worst case scenario’ version of it, if we as individuals, step up NOW. We cannot rely on governments and big business to do it for us folks.

It’s the main reason I’ve established this website – I want as many people as possible to start thinking about what is possible through a better understanding of the basics, and ask themselves (and others) when making a CHOICE, “Is it good for me, is it good for others, and is it good for the planet?”

Only by immersing ourselves in this type of questioning can we begin to change our habits and our consumption. This form of questioning and thinking is what will lead to new ideas and innovation. If you have children, we need them to be thinking this way, to inspire their creativity, and get them to seek roles in later life that serve a higher purpose than money and wealth.

The Question: How can you use your power more effectively?

“I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British writer, social critic, playwright, novelist, and debater