Living Democracy by Tim Hollo. NewSouth. 304pp. $32.99.
I'm prefacing this review of Tim Hollo's campaign for a better world, Living Democracy, with an anonymous scrap of verse from the 18th century:
"The law does punish man or woman/ that steals the goose from off the common,/ but lets the greater felon loose/ that steals the common from the goose."
Hollo is executive director of the Green Institute, a former member of Greenpeace Australia Pacific, and lives in Canberra, where he established the city's buy nothing groups. He is also the founder of Green Music Australia, has recorded seven albums and toured with FourPlay String Quartet.
An important facet of his powerful crusade for a sustainable future concerns the dangerous nexus between corporate economic power and what is known as "the commons", the natural resources that supposedly belong to us all. At this point I will declare an interest as a left-leaning disappointed humanist whose Vote Compass surveys consistently place me with the Greens, despite a lingering scepticism about some of their political ploys.
The persuasive logic of Hollo's well-footnoted ecological manifesto is driven home with passionate intensity, which is worth noticing, since progressive enthusiasms can risk sounding over-zealous. Of course, some of the arguments - particularly for a fellow traveller - might be considered mother's milk, such as how cooperation and goodwill are more likely to encourage caring communities than capitalism's selfish individualism and greed. However, his take on living democracy as an organic entity, that thrives on diversity, interdependence, and consensus, is profound, and empirically based on a wonderfully eclectic range of examples and references.
Hollo tells us: "[I]n living democracy, everything is connected, in its grand interdependent diversity, as we negotiate our coexistence". There's little doubt that aggressively adversarial politics diminish and damage common interests.
The heart of Hollo's thesis beats with the seductively fascinating rhythm of ancient wisdom blended with natural diversity, evolution, and a colourful cast of scientists, philosophers, and free thinkers.
Hollo believes the answers aren't abstractions; they are part of what makes us human, and quotes - among others - Peter Kropotkin, a natural scientist studying evolution around the same time as Darwin but seeing different forces at play. Kropotkin examined how "the instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and humans in the course of an extremely long evolution" can be translated into social political theory. Providing an evolutionary basis for "the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each person from the practice of mutual aid; of the close dependence of everyone's happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the sense of justice, or equity which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other individual as equal to their own".
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When these thoughts are considered alongside many others hunted down by Hollo's extensive research, such as Indigenous wisdom bestowed by the "generative cultural practice of yarning" from Tyson Yunkaporta's 2019 book, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking can save the world, the possibilities for cultural and political progress begin to sound promising. Although, given our fractious political system, this might take more time to achieve than we have available. However, some of the signposts can be simple and direct. Such as that provided by Hollo's friend, Dr Amanda Cahill, who is using her organisation, The Next Economy, to facilitate constructive conversations in communities in transition out of fossil fuels. When asked how she managed to reach consensus in such an angrily disputed topic, she replied: "Don't ask people to pick sides."
Good advice, because picking sides invites a competition between "us" and "them" that falls too easily into adversarial rather than cooperative mindsets. Hollo also reflects on Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci's theory of an "interregnum" - a space between an old dying world and new possibilities and believes we may have already reached this point. He doesn't pull any punches about the catastrophic effects of climate change, and the way governments have stubbornly subordinated environmental progress to the economy rather than the other way round.
Hollo's Living Democracy surveys an astonishing abundance of ideas to rejuvenate our tired old world, some of which are already working in community-based groups. Although, sadly, I doubt whether we could make them work on a national scale in the time we have left. We are in serious trouble. But the heartbreakingly tragic irony is that with truly collective good will, we could not only survive but flourish! This feistily intelligent defence of survival strategies deserves wide readership.
