the oceans after two centuries of exploitative resource quest, and many people
previously aligned to a reactive style of governing are now being driven to realize
(Saul 1997: 78) that ‘the power we refuse ourselves goes somewhere else’. As a
consequence reflective settler society jurisdictions are more conscientious about
people and their communities after two or more centuries of reliance on the
libertarian workings of a free market.Wealthy people alight sporadically upon the rural and wilderness landscapes, but
for the majority the urban pods proliferate. And in all of this planners mostly
watch perplexed from the sidelines. The outcomes are messy, inexorable, inter-
minable and often also excruciating, for while the dollars pile up for some, quality
of life eludes many others. Understanding comes mainly from commentator-
journalists – such as Joel Garreau and Robert Kaplan, and earlier on James
Kunstler. They neither represent the female majority nor the pilloried minority.
They have been sent out by their publishing houses to look, listen and report,
advisedly. They serve up much despair, along with some hope, but provide no
proven or lasting solution. But now the wealthier parts of the globe, through their
democracies, have sufficient information from these authors and from scientific
sources to wake up to the stark realities of water, soil, mineral and atmospheric
loss and change – and adjust.
For some, mainly the flight-from-chaos people and the economically top-
layered, life still seems materially good. For the poor, and socio-environmental-
ists, it is mostly perceived as unsustainable, characterized by low-grade ambience,
low-variety urbanity, and low-intelligence transmissions through the ether. There
is a disharmony to challenge, and given the vast wealth of the Anglo New World
the capacity is there to refashion, reconstitute and reconstruct that quest.
Tipping the balance involves devolution to smaller units and agencies of gov-
ernment (subsidiarity); clarification by governments of the wider powers and con-
trols available to each unit of administration (general competence); and of course
an adherence to due legal process (justice). The modern progression throughout
the twentieth century, from smartness to becoming too damn smart – in essence
behaving unsustainably – will give way to more ‘clever’ processes; implicating an
ever-learning, ever-improving, ever-enabling and ever-empowering continuum.
It is long term, a this-with-the-next generational matter. It engages trade-offs and
compromises from economic growth in the direction of social fairness and envi-
ronmental harmony, a paradigm shift for a balanced improvement to the overall
quality of settler society living.280 Practice