10 Richard Bawden on a long life as a radical agricultural educator, and how it feels to be dying from cancer

In this online conversation, I’m chatting with an old friend and radical agricultural and development educator, Richard Bawden. He’s on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, I’m in Suffolk. This is a longer pod than usual. Richard is dying from cancer (he’s not living with it). It’s metastasised, it’s now untreatable. The phases are coming fast.

And yet. We laugh, tell stories, wander over a life of 87 years. In lieu of something written, it’s a conventional autobiography, squeezed into just over an hour. Before the end of the recording, I say, using clunky language, “Let’s not take up too much of your time.” Richard says, “Why not! I’m enjoying this.”

We’ve bumped this episode up the schedule. If you have any comments on the chat, I’ll make sure they get to Richard. 

Richard grew up on a mixed farm in Cornwall. At Wye College, the principal, Dunstan Skilbeck calls out one day, as he walked across the square, “Where are you going? Where are you going with your life?” Now, that’s a good question from a mentor. “You like sheep, don’t you?”

Richard ends studying sheep parasitology in Australia. He goes on to head Hawkesbury Agricultural College, installing a new curriculum in 1981 focused on agroecology and experiential learning, with students learning to be the people in the systems they are studying. This experiential learning becomes truly radical, and links with educational and development groups all over the world.

Then the empire strikes back. The wardens of the old system come out with big sticks, and beat the novel system of learning and being into darkness. 

We talk of the emergence of regenerative systems, ask what does good looks like. We also talk of the central importance of worldviews (weltanschauung in German). It’s all about worldviews – these shape what we think is important. They change through experience, through being, in the world.

Richard recommends Lester Milbrath’s 1985 book “Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out.” This is how we get out of the climate hole. We learn our way out.

He recommends, first by thyself. Be existential. Figure out why you hold the beliefs you have, and whey are different to others.

I finish by reading an excerpt from Mary Oliver’s wondrous poem, Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me.

“The tree was a tree, with happy leaves…

Imagine, imagine,

The long and wondrous journeys, still to be ours.”

 My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery." 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:10

It's retirement. It's retirement. Oh, yeah. That's what it is. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, brilliant. Great. Brilliant. Yeah. Good. Well, it's so nice to see you. It's brilliant. Um, and we're doing the podcast, but we ought we ought to probably, after the formal start, um, talk about the the big hole that you're in.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

And I don't know whether how much you want to mention that, but that is the framing condition that uh that is kind of dominant. So do you think we should just talk about that to begin with?

SPEAKER_00 0:46

I would I would be very happy to because there's a sort of sense now of of urgency, which there wasn't before.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

And there's a sort of um, you know, is there anything I can do in the last whatever um that I really need to do before I drop off the perch? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Um I'm very positive about it all. I mean, I as you may recall, Diane died uh 30 years ago uh of metastatic cancer, and um, so I know the procedure more or less. Uh it's a bit more sophisticated these days, but yeah, you know, it is what it is, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Yeah, it is. It is. Um, and I loved your letter that you sent out to people. I think I think that the the your main contacts that was just kind of full of laughter and reflection and um such a nice kind of tone, actually, which I think says everything about you, actually. It's not but it's it's uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

I mean, it was interesting, and that um one of my children said, Would you please write uh write an autobiography? And I said, No, I don't really want to do that. Um, and then my son said, Why don't you tell those funny stories you keep telling about all the things that happened to you while you were overseas? And I said, Well, I could actually combine the two. I could sort of have a um a chronological event of funny events, but have a theme, you know, what's the theme about all of this? And it is exactly what you've said, you know, that humor really does make such a huge difference. And when Diane uh was really, really ill, and I said to her, you know, do you have a sort of uh any any special requests? She said, Yes, two. One, would you please stop saying that I'm living with cancer? I'm not, I'm dying from cancer. Would you please understand that? Yes, okay. And secondly, she said, I want to surround myself solely by clever, funny people. And I thought, you know, that's what I'm gonna do. I'll find all my funny, clever friends. And uh a psychologist said to me when I was first first um diagnosed, she said, you know, the thing is just send out a message to five or ten people you know who you really like. And that's become 35, you know, each one send on I guess so. Oh, I heard your news. It kind of rolled around things, didn't it?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

I mean, some of the sad ones is one uh guy, an English guy actually, uh, who said to me, I actually don't know any funny stories. And I thought, no sad indictment. And he was serious. Well, I think he was serious. Yeah, maybe that was a joke.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Well, well, possibly, but I think possibly more than that. It's it's an invitation to kind of creativity by sending out something like that. It's asking for people to to delve into their their experiences and their memories and to talk about that. If they can't do that, they're going to it's good that he still comes back and says something because he wants to content. That's true. But that's kind of that's rather nice.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Um, I mean, the the other thing was interesting in in one of the funniest people I know have ever worked with, an American Frank Fear, sociologist. And he has wit, phenomenal wit, really quick, funny wit. And he wrote back and said, You know, I'm sorry, I I actually don't know any funny stories. And I wrote back to him and said, No, you you don't. You don't need to. You have this phenomenal talent of wit. For you to tell a funny story would be a farce. That's not your talent. Yeah. He'd give an example of his wit. We were in a restaurant. I hadn't known him for all that long. We were in a restaurant, and the the wake person, as they called them over there, came up and said, You know, can I help you? And Frank said, Uh, yes, you can. He said, Look, I've just come out of jail after 20 years. And the poor guy had no idea what to do.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Brilliant. He said it with all seriousness, like that.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Well, he sort of, yeah, he said it uh with the sense of, you know, I I don't know what's in the modern menus.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Oh God. Oh, how bad. I love that way. I just all we can do really when when the body starts to fail, uh it's all we can do is connect with people and use words, um, tell story, engage with people, um, try not to let the big thing get you down, get us down, get everybody down. Um and and it's and it's a really difficult passage because we haven't had any practice of it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

You know, well as I say, you know, I don't if I hadn't been through it with Diane, I would be very different. So I I know the phases at least. I don't know the speed or the whatever, but I I know the phases. I know that um you know that I'm in phase two, uh, which is you know, it's it's now uh untreatable. Phase three is when I really start to get sick, and and phase four is assistant dying, and you know, I'm doing all that.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

So yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, let's kind of come to that. Um uh just a formal welcome then to the podcast, Richard, Richard Borden. Uh real, real pleasure to have you on. Now I'm gonna embarrass you a little bit by saying uh uh for listeners and viewers, uh you're gonna hear from one of the greatest ever agricultural leaders and educators. And you've really deeply emerged by that we've stopped, Liv. Yeah, I should well let me just say this. I shaped and influenced a lot of people, a mentor to me as well when we first met in the 80s, late 80s. Around about then. Um, and um uh you also had this this um uh capacity, and we'll come to Hawkesbury in a bit, to to bring out the wardens of the old empire. They come out with big sticks when and that and that's usually a sign that something is working when they get front and want to hit back. Uh so we'll talk a little bit about that. But uh uh as as viewers and listeners will have gathered, um, you are you are dealing with cancer, it is metastasizing, it's evolving faster than the treatment. You said not to put too dramatic a point on it on it. The bloody thing is only not only incurable, but now it's untreatable as well. Um, so I was looking this morning, I was listening to some traditional folk music this morning because I was thinking, can you make a link back to your your origins in Cornwall? And there's a there's a famous series of songs around something called Wild Mountain Time, um, but also Lassie Go, which people may have heard of, and a recent variation on it called The Moon Shines Bright by Sam Lee. And it goes something like this uh just four lines Oh, the summertime has come and the trees are sweetly blooming. Will you go, Lassie? Go, and we'll all go together. And that's uh, you know, we're we're we'll go together with you, Richard. Um, uh full of love and smile.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

I uh I trained as a singer, as you might not know. I didn't and um I uh yeah, and at one stage, you know, I sang corner ships, and uh the one that I remember what was the most stupid one ever was going up Camberan Hill coming down, going up Cambern Hill, coming down. You thought, what a senseless. What happens when you get down?

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Right, we climb up and well, maybe maybe that that's a uh a good link to the to the kind of um theme of the podcast, and and wider than this is that we're in a big hole, climate nature hole, economy, political, all of that kind of stuff, and we don't know how to get out. We haven't we haven't done this before, and it's gonna need the greatest of ingenuity and and courage, actually, I think to do it. Um, but but the wardens will come out with big sticks as well. Um and so yeah, have done, exactly. They know how to do that kind of stuff. So all we can do is draw on a bit of experience. Um do you want to start with a little bit about kind of early years in Cornwall? Just just tell us a bit about growing up on a small mixed farm, well, a hundred hectare mixed farm, if I've got my data right, the Cornish culture of storytelling art song, as you just mentioned.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Well, I remember uh what yes, when we did meet and I started to follow your literature, and and uh I remember your book way back on regenerative agriculture. And I thought, I remember well the tension that I felt when I went to university to study agriculture, how within the first maybe six months I realized that the more I studied agriculture, and the theme of my degree was this was just after the war in the 50s, uh, England has to be more productive. In fact, it's food is secure, we need to be food secure. And I looked at our family farm and said, There's no way we're going to be able to do that. You know, we can't increase productivity. Uh, we've got these 24 different economic activities, none of them are capable of actually really being large enough to be productive. Uh, and so I really sort of saw, as I was learning and being clever, the the end of a way of life for people in in the West Country. That sort of um, do you remember that line um that showed the difference between English West and English East? The T's X line from the River T's down to the River X. So everything on the right, which includes you over there in in uh Essex and Sussex and all those nice pieces, Norfolk. Uh, and then there's sort of Cornwall, Devon, Wales, uh, which are really not very productive and never can be, never will be. Um, so yeah, and of course it was during the war. So the first sixty years of my life uh was at war, and unfortunately, we I found was on this side of the river of Cornwall, with Plymouth on the other side, which was one of the two cities that was flame bombed, completely, literally burnt to shreds. Now I was actually six when the war ended, but when I started to go to um primary school, four, you know, occasionally a plane would go over or two planes would go over, and my father would throw me into a hedge and go, what was that for? So there was a sense of that. And then when I got to grammar school, uh I went to school in Plymouth as a day boy at a boarding school, and I just walked, caught the bus, whatever, through a burnt city. It was just extraordinary. Um yeah, so and if ever there was a reason for for optimism, it was that, you know, that we actually got through that. Millions and millions, tens of millions died, but we got through it. And it was in part because the sort of an and I'd like to keep this as a theme of what I'm saying in terms of of that comment that that um I'm on about comp simplicity on the other side of complexity. And the thing with the with the war, like too many other things now, is that everybody's looking at complexity if it was a sum of simplicities, which of course it isn't. So everybody's looking at the simple issue without understanding how we deal with complexity. And that's been my career. It's sort of trying to help people understand, me included, what it is you have to do cognitively, behaviorally, affectively, to be able to deal sensibly with complexity by looking at a simplicity that makes a difference. Um, so yeah, that's that's the theme of my life. And I want to tell that story in relation to the question you asked me of who's who's my hero. Uh, you know, I don't know whether you anticipated to say Socrates or somebody, you know. But my hero was Dunstan Spielbeck, who was at that stage the principal of Wai College, which was the agricultural faculty of London University. And uh it's an absolute true story. As I was walking across uh uh the the quad, this voice came up from somewhere. He said, Nikki, where are you going? I said, What? I said, it's it's the principal, where are you going? I said, I'm going to help a friend with his harvest. He said, No, you fool. In life, in life, where are you going in life? I said, I haven't thought I'm 21, you know. I haven't got got to that yet. I haven't got an answer yet. He said, uh, you like sheep, don't you? I said, well, I said, sure, I like them. I've been around them for a long time. And I did my honours thesis on sheep, yes. He said, Australia, thank God they got a lot of sheep in Australia. He said, I think you should go and do a higher degree on sheep in Australia. And that's how I came to Australia. Wow. Scholarship to study parasitology and sheep in University of Queensland.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

How amazing. Well, what what a lovely story about Y College. I mean, it's it is no more. Uh it was kind of swallowed up by a larger, very large university in London, and then mainly to the land. Yeah, and took away the kind um and that kind of loss of agricultural colleges has happened across across the UK. But that's across the world. Yeah, across the world. Yeah. Uh that that kind of insight of a leader who's also um gonna kind of prompt you with a little bit of a stick. Where are you going?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Well, fabulous. Uh I I didn't know that at the time, so I was bound to get a scholarship.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

That was that was an advantage, definitely, especially towards sheep. Um, well, let let's let's jump on a bit then to the as you've just kind of pointed towards Hawkesbury Agricultural College in in western part of Sydney and the emergence of soft systems thinking, soft systems methodology, complexity thinking, as you, as you just mentioned, open systems. Um tell us a little bit about how that how that emerged and how you helped that emerge, because I think we all look to you and a few other key leaders in all of this as starting a movement, if we can call it that, um uh uh from the 1980s onwards that was and has been enormously influential about about worldviews, Weltanschauung, I think there was um the phrase, the German, lovely German word, to explain this and how we ourselves are important actors, we're not separated from the thing that we're investigating. We're a central part of it. Which doesn't sound that radical, but actually, holy moly, it's it proved to be.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Um it's radical, radical in the sense of uh root-like, isn't it? I mean, so it's genuinely radical. But it's um if you're gonna change stuff uh in that famous old story, is you don't um jump across uh a uh uh what do you call it, big big hole in the ground uh in one step, in two steps, you really gotta if you're gonna do it. And uh funny enough, I was doing a podcast with a with a guy called Jim Logan. Do you know him? Tim Logan, I'm sorry. Tim. Yeah, English guy. And he asked me why we did what we did. And um uh it's almost an impossible question to answer, isn't it? Yeah, but my my turning point, I mean, other than Dunstan Skilberg, which was obviously the first major shift, I never thought about doing what it is I finished up doing. The other thing was I got a wonderful letter out of the blue saying when I was at University of New England, which was before I went to Hawkesbury, and uh it was from the UN FAO that said, you know, can you be in Uruguay tomorrow? Sort of, you know, standard UN type letter. And um so, oh I I think so, yeah, you know, not that far, is it? Uh I'll give it some thought, yes. Um anyway, I discovered development. I mean, I was I was a PhD in parasitology, I knew a fair bit about two particular nematodes, that was it, you know, that was my expertise. Um but I knew a fair bit about about agriculture and and the notion of parasitism as a biological phenomenon, not as a disease. I mean, I did my PhD in vet school, and everybody kept talking about them as disease agents, and I kept saying no, they're not, you know. I mean, they happen to be just normal beings doing what they do, and uh it's the way we handle sheep is makes them an issue. It's not the parasite, the parasite's just doing what it's always done. Uh and that didn't go down terrible in the vet school. But in FAO it did, surprisingly, in Latin America. But it it struck me, hey, you know, we uh we're looking at it in terms of parasites and sheep and cattle and so on. That's not it. No, the it is how do human beings relate to their environment in the environment that I knew as a farm boy, which we looked after, nurtured uh regeneratively, I mean by accident. Um and then I saw development and I thought, you know, this is there's much more to it than all of this. Um and that's really the journey I've been ever since. And when I got back to UNE, I uh ran for the dean. Dean she's got the faculty as a senior lecturer, and and won it by two votes. So I had this huge mandate for change. Um that was not gonna happen in a in a conventional university. So when the Hawkesby job came up at my interview, I said I would literally accept this on two conditions. One, that it's really gonna be radical, it's really gonna say where are we at in rural Australia and what can we do about it. That's the one thing, and I'm not gonna do that unless there's a faculty who are prepared to do that. So they gave me two trips down to meet with the faculty, and there were at least half a dozen out of the 40 who said, Oh god, let's do it. And right. So that's what happened. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

And that's that's already telling us a story about kind of having an idea uh but not really knowing what the outcome will be. Um, creating hoping for and getting enough support to be able to start the process off. You never get 100% support, and there's always going to be some very vociferous opposition over here. But if there's enough of people to kind of be thought leaders or action leaders, then the thing can start to happen. Um uh and but but you could you've I mean you had to tell them a story, first of all, to get them to believe in it, didn't you? You had to say this is this is what I think we need to do, um, in short.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Well, I I guess that I mean it was the it was the um the uh Uruguay story that I told in the context of the stuff we've just been talking about. Where did you come from, you know, blah, blah, blah. Um, and the recognition that we look back um for the past uh in those days, the earlier 40 years of what had been happening in Australian rural agriculture, rural, rural Australia, not just agriculture. And what was being seen as rural, as agricultural development was rural undevelopment. I mean, it was the environment, uh, it was in the uh 70s and 80s, high use of machinery, high use of chemicals, high use of water, without really thinking too much about it. And because we've got so much space, everybody just keeps, well, you know, we just keep we can do that. And then all of a sudden people woke up and said, Woo, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, you know, um, suicide rates in in rural Australia, New South Wales in particular, were you know, just nobody was talking about that. We were saying, well, it's you know, it's systemically related. You know, if you're desperate and you can't work and you're now using machines instead of people. Um, you know, this is what happens.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Yeah. So there's a there's an there's an element there of of um particular moments in time and also technology development. Um you know, a couple of generations after new stuff comes in, the wheels literally start to come off. Um, because the thing, whatever it is, doesn't deliver, you could say the same for kind of neoliberal late-stage capitalism. It goes on for a couple of generations and and then the wheels start coming off as we as we find ourselves at the moment. Um uh and at that point, uh the question becomes who's gonna ask the bigger questions? The questions about where the people are in the system and how they might look at the problem situation in a different way, how they might frame it in a different way. And already we're thinking systems at this point, um, as soon as we're starting to think in that kind of way, aren't we? Yeah. Yeah. So Hawkesbury Hawkesbury begins with the new curriculum in in about 81, is is as I got it. Yeah, 81, 82.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

I can never remember which.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of groundbreaking and in innovative. Um uh tell us a a bit about the central components of this agroecology, expand. Experiential learning, telling the students as people that they're going to be important actors in the systems that they're studying and will be working in in future. I mean, that's that doesn't sound like a lot, does it? It sounds kind of sensible actually when you say it like that. But my guess is that that to begin with is something that that people are thinking, Crikey, this is this is a little bit different. Um staff as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Well, it's it's I can remember um you know I just sort of read a little quote of of uh Lester Milbrath, who you will know. Uh and he wrote a book in 1989, which is uh an important year for us when Hawkesbury moved into the university sector, having been in the college sector. Um, but he said people and institutions in modern society are not familiar with and seldom use systemics and futures thinking. These thinking modes could be developed and applied by a variety of institutions, such as private consulting firms, government bureaus, business corporations, cha-cha-cha. And what was interesting uh is that I was going to write a sequel to that uh as as the context of what he got right and what he got wrong. And what he got wrong, as did so many other people, poor Chick Peter Checkland, who died uh this week, um, kept talking about thinking. People keep talking about thinking. Wrong word. You know, it it it it's it's experiential, it's existential, isn't it? You know, so we chose experiential learning because of the John Dewey idea, uh and others, I mean, going way back to Plato, of saying, you know, that experience is not observation, experience is everything. You, as you said earlier, you know, we're part of it, and it doesn't exist without us. So we are construing reality. And so what we're seeing really is is what we're experiencing. And we might do that second-handedly, it might be because we've read something. Uh, in my case, going back to my days in Cornwall, my teacher used to say, Good morning, boys. What did you see on the way to school this morning? Great, yes, wonderful question. Yes, completely, yeah. You know, and so it's this, you know, and how do you feel about that? Uh and so that was the first big step we took. Secondly, it was social learning from day one, where we're all in groups and were held in different groups all the way through, the course. So they got used to working with different people. Secondly, um, we use um sort of real experiences on on our own college farms uh as issues. So, whether it was wheat with weeds in it or whatever, and we just asked some naive questions, like, you know, uh, here's some weeds in wheat, what are we gonna do about it? Some of the farm boys would immediately say, Well, you spray it, and then some of the other people would say, Well, wait a minute, it's not a very good idea, is it? And then clever questions like if you spray that wheat, why don't all the crops die at the same time? What's the difference between that plant and that? So you stop it as a facilitator and you say, Okay, well, now we need to learn some answers to those questions. So you you spiral downwards, you start with the issue, and you get back to finding out. So our students over three and a half years got very good, very good at being able to deal with the complexity and to the extent where they would actually complexify it. Well, that's not the issue. I mean, it's let's really have a look at what's going on here. Uh, like climate change is a really good example, isn't it? You know, sort of say, well, it's the way we live our lives. Whether it's um, you know, if you put a number on it and say, well, we must get down below 2.5 or 450 parts per minute or whatever it is, that's just simplicity on this side of complexity. That's not actually addressing issues at all. So if we've done anything, um, if Hawkesbury did anything at all, it was that. It was sort of realization that we really need to manage complexity in a way there has to be a way forward. And the way forward is development. It's not solving problems, it's development uh in the truest sense of the word, you know.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Yeah, lovely. Um Paul Paul Richards wrote a book, uh uh anthropologist at UCL at the end of the 1980s called Agriculture's Performance. Uh, and that I thought that that kind of created this idea of of there never being uh an end point or a perfection that you get to. There's just a continuing kind of set of asking questions, testing things, learning from them. Our experience in doing that and sharing that with other people, we hope takes us down uh paths that are better in some way, progressive in some sort of way, reducing costs or increasing yields, or whatever we want to talk about there. Um uh but there's no kind of glorious point where where we say the job's done because something will constantly require our attention. And that's I think that that sort of as we were saying earlier, that worldview which which determines how how your students at the time are engaging, um uh that that is really quite different to saying, well, here's a small particular problem, once we've solved this, then by definition it's a good thing, you know. Once we've learned how to burn fossil fuels, well, how wonderful is that kind of thing, without thinking what the side effects are and the consequences of the next stage of this. Um how soon were you were you uh kind of talking about worldview and a kind of people, the way that we that's a very good, very good question.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Um, we I I hate sort of um uh what can I say? I'm not simplistic in the sense, obviously, from what I've been saying before. So you read the odd book and you think, oh yeah, that's that's interesting. You know, and there are a number of books that uh well, in fact, there were hundreds of books that we read, which was uh an interesting part about an agricultural faculty of people reading about epistemology and philosophy uh as people who didn't ag scientists. You know, it was that exciting, and the students started to do the same thing, and it was was really fabulous. And we came across the idea of worldview, first of all, the naive one where going back to the first exercise, they disagreed. And so the question would be, why are you disagreeing? And the answer, the first answer, of course, would be well, I know. And you say, Well, so does empowers. No. So if you believe that putting pesticides on crops is poisonous and going to kill people, that's knowledge. Why is it any different from yours, where you say we can spray them and it won't do that? Uh, and the issue of validity, you know, it's a how do you how do you know what you know and how can you say that? So the idea of, in the end, that there's actually some profound differences here, not differences of opinion or mental whatever's, you know, it's actually profound views, and we used to, and when we got to the stage, helped by a number of uh philosophers and psychologists, who said, you know, let's just look at the idea of worldview from three intersecting sets of what the mind does or the body does, in body mentality, whatever. So it's it's it's the idea of the nature of nature, reality, whatever, the nature of human nature, particularly ethics and aesthetics, and the nature of knowing and knowledge. And um we got those three questions, and then uh Peter Checkman came along and brought forward the idea of learning systems, although he didn't he didn't start that, he just had a very useful methodology for doing that, uh, which we said, and I think much to his chagrin, that actually his methodology is simply experiential learning. Um and he wasn't too happy about that for a number of years. But you know, so the idea of methodology is sold and it becomes a recipe. And you know, I know that Peter always didn't want that to happen, but it did happen, has happened.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Uh so we we we were seduced by the idea of learning systems, um, but we didn't find out a way, we couldn't figure out how you could use how you could put into uh the it was a conundrum, how you could have experiential learning and this whole idea of the systems idea, systems thinking. And then, as I say, we got rid of the idea of thinking, and it's actually more than that. So that what we do in the world is the basis of how we see it, and the seeing is not thinking. I mean, that's part of it, but obviously, you know, it's all to do with these profound beliefs and assumptions that we have about those three factors and others. Um, and and we read a paper in 1985 or 86 by Marcia Salmer, an American, who uh we haven't got time to tell the story, but there is an extraordinary story that comes out of that. Anyway, she wrote this brilliant paper that said she had noticed that really she was teaching systems theory, as she called it, at a Seabrook Institute in the United States. Some students get it and some don't. And we said, you know, that's exactly what happens with us. Why is that? And she said it's to do with epistemological development. She used a whole lot of other theories that uh she drew upon. And so she presented this thesis that until and unless you actually reached a level of intellectual and moral maturity, development, you'd never get it. You just simply see all these things as simplicity, this side of complexity, including the methodology. And so the worldview to us was a total release of saying, whoa, how? And this was the argument we also had with with Peter, where he would say, you know, you have this connection between the transformation and the worldview. And our argument was the worldview is the biggest transformation you could ever get. You know, so what if we saw education as a focus on worldview development, on epistemic development? Uh, and that's what we did. Um, and you know, to the students, huge credit. These are kids who do agriculture, you know, and they've met with these pseudo-phon philosophers sort of saying, you know, we're really going to do that. But they got it. They really got to it. You know, I mean, those who really got into it, and then many went on to graduate studies, and you know, you asked the question uh in your email to me about what I'm proud of. If I'm proud of anything at all, it's those graduates you know who took enormous risks. Um, you know, they ever expected them to have a degree in agricultural science, particularly their parents. People don't know anything about agricultural science and agricultural technology, and I would say no, that's that's not what the degree is. The degree is called systems agriculture. It's not agricultural systems, it's systems agriculture. It's the application of ways of knowing, not just thinking. Um, so yeah, so this this whole idea of systems thinking, I sort of get a little rash every time I see it, you know. For God's sake, can't we get beyond that? Because that's not gonna help us. Yes, we can think about whatever we want to think about, but that's not what makes us who we are, is it?

SPEAKER_02 33:23

Yeah. Um, I I fantastic, lovely, well, beautifully put. Um uh the experience that we had was was uh kind of focusing quite a lot at that time on on the differences between words, talking about methods rather than tools, and getting kind of across when when talking about implying things were as simple as tools, you know, instrumental as tools, and um uh and thinking about the methodology, as you've said, as the whole kind of system of engagement with the world. And um I I once counted up the number of number of places I ran workshops, uh training workshops in in countries largely in the global south, but not entirely, um, on the kind of participatory inquiry stuff, so the the method of inquiry. And there was 42 um in in total, and in every in every single one of those, there would be somebody or several somebody quite early on, probably sitting with their arms crossed and a bit cross about the whole thing, yeah, who say, Well, that might have worked over there, but it isn't going to work here, you know. That you know, they're the odd ones, but we're the correct ones. Um uh, and then having to use not just methods of argument, but an awful lot of kind of energy to try to kind of switch that around to keep everybody to to be going on with it without the the momentary sabotage actually undermining the whole thing. Sometimes those people would flip and become the greatest supporters, you know, they were just being fearful and defensive to begin with. Um, and sometimes I would have to go up to people and say, Well, look, I uh in the break, I you know, it's fine if you leave. I, you know, you don't have to stay for this course, it's okay. Um you know, just take the take the rest of the week off. Um uh that in other words, that the at a particular time not everybody's gonna get it. And it's that point that you said there are gonna be some yes, get it and some don't. But those who do become great leaders in all of this because suddenly there's a sort of release, isn't there? Um well then some years later, the backlash um comes. Uh the Empire strikes back. Um uh and had you had you gone to Michigan by then or Michigan State? No. Um the the the the 13 years roughly after 10 years, 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

So we were we started in 78, and then in 1988, the the uh Labour government said, okay, we're not gonna have uh as Britain did, you know, not gonna be any politics anymore. So we were not allowed anymore to be what we were, which was a college of advanced education, politics. And so we had a number of choices. One, you could join an existing university, uh, and I left an existing university because it wasn't gonna get anywhere. So that wasn't a very good idea. The second one was you were big enough to be able to become a university, and some were big enough. We were not, we were only 6,000 students by that time, having grown from 1,000 to 6,000 was that option. There were two other colleges that we joined with, one way down south of Western Sydney, and one in west west of Sydney. Um, and so we became University of Western Sydney as it was now Sydney, West, Sydney, Western Sydney University, yeah. Um, and there were two two really good things about that. The first one was we got federal funding for research. The sad thing was that that brought then a culture of saying you're a university, therefore you're a research institution. And we were saying, well, we are a research institution, but our research is into where people make sense of complexity. They said, No, no, no, you're agriculturalists, you know, so you've got to do that. In spite of the fact that in 1988, when I was offered a personal chair, they said what he wanted to be in agriculture, I said, no, systemic development. And the guy said, Well, it gets meaningless. What do you mean by systemic development? Systems development. That's okay. I said, No, no, no, we've got the opposite to that. You know, it's it's an adjective to development, it's not the thing that we're trying to develop. Uh so I I I never tell people this, but for many years I was a professor of systems development until we had a new administrator. And I said, the first thing you can do is change my title. And then we created a center, and then we created an institute, which which uh was private after the university life. Um so up until 1970, 1994, we had become by then the largest agricultural faculty in Australia. We were um, which again people don't know about, we were running everything from associate diplomas two years up through to PhDs. Um and some of my PhD graduates, my gosh, they've done incredibly well. Like, you know, ministers of agriculture and rural development, phenomenal. Anyway, um, yeah, and then dying, my wife was diagnosed in 94, she died in 95, I lost everything, you know, mojo, uh, a large part of me. And uh I was given leave to go away for a while, so I went to Michigan State, where I'd had some sort of open invitation to go and spend some time there, which I did, with one of my daughters. And when I left there, the then um vice chancellor equivalent who became the president later as it happened, said to me, if ever you want a job, just let us know. Um and so uh yeah, with her death uh I had done no no I'd given no thought at all to a successor. Um and I'd done a lot of the dirty work in terms of dealing with politicians and you know the yeah the worst of those who really wanted to kill us off. And so nobody had those sort of contacts. And um so that was in part of it. There was also this collapse, as we mentioned earlier, internationally of agricultural education, anyway. And because we were so radical, we were the amongst the first to go. Um and then I came back from the US and that really nice guy who changed my title said, What would you like to do? And I said, What I would like to do is to start a center of systemic development um to do action research and consulting. And we'll pay for ourselves, you can pay my salary because I'm a professor, but everything else we'll earn. And that's what we did. And so for five years we did that. I wrote to MSU, then I had to retire at 60 in this country at those days. They said, Yep, get on a flame, you know. So I was uh yeah, incredible, given this amazing title. Um, and I didn't have to do research, I didn't have to write, I didn't have to do anything, I just go around and be a scholar. Uh and the interesting thing, and it relates to your comment about different countries and so on, in that I had had the anticipation, because I'd worked earlier in the United States on a curriculum committee, that the Americans are incredibly conservative. I mean, really in academia in particular, and they're also polemic. And so this idea of discourse, you know, the whole idea of sustainable development is, of course, discourse. Um, and they found it very difficult. And the students are really poorly prepared because they thought all the time. So when you get this radical Australian walking in, and you know this is collapse to Australia and the Australian culture in that we were able to do what we did, um, in large part, I am sure, am certain that it was because it's Australia. And you know, uh, yeah, give it a go, mate, it'll work, you know, and it did. And then the sort of British system of of education, university education in particular, got in and said, Well, you're not doing the right sort of research, and your faculty, you know, too many of them don't have higher degrees, so they've all got to do that, and the whole culture changed. So we won by being able to get research money, uh, and we were able to do some of that in the stuff that we did, but also we could bring in graduate students, and that was a huge, huge forward for us. And we brought in a whole lot of international ones, and that was just brilliant, brilliant. Yeah. So it started to sort of go down. Uh, and by our time I retired in 2000, when I went off to the United States, it was then really no longer what it was, put it that way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Well, I read this kind of extraordinary extraordinary consultant's report um about kind of uh I found it somewhere, um uh review of of of the Hawkesbury thing. Uh you I'm sure you'll know the the language well, where they talk about it's time to finally conclude this, the use of this learning approach, a kind of smeary sort of tone, to draw a line under the past and move forward. Oh my god. Uh recommendation four use of experiential learning approach should cease in favor of more conventional and well-proven pedagogical approaches. And God, that's the that's the supreme ignorance, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 42:42

That was a senior senior professor from University of South Australia. And uh by then I was in the US, and someone said that to me and said, you know, you're gonna love this.

SPEAKER_02 42:53

Yeah, well, I you know, it it it it it kind of takes your breath away, really, when you see all that, but but also it kind of doesn't because um uh I can't remember who whether it was you or one of the um others who were involved in the the system's work at the time, but somebody used that phrase that the empire always strikes back, and you know, it tries to come back hard. Um, and sometimes it makes some big advances, and you just have to kind of swerve a bit and then kind of carry on in some other kind of way um and celebrate the wins that that you had. Um, you could have had more if that didn't happen, but I think we're gonna see the same sorts of big um strikes back when it comes to getting rid of all fossil fuels, for example, in the world, getting, you know, creating a whole different way of thinking um uh about what we want. Uh and that still remains a big hole because everyone goes back to the kind of the instrumental stuff. This is what we need to fix, and this thing over here we need to fix. very few very few in the people are uh discussing about where where we would want to get to what does what does good look like what I mean what what do we want that to look like in other words what what kind of experiences can we bring to that sort of thinking and we're still still kind of waiting for for that to well I think that that you know I I have a uh uh a sort of sad thing about about Tony Blair when he first got in and talked about the third way and um I read um Peter Giddens in particular and Urich Beck and people like that about the risk of society and and so on and it all made so much sense.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

The third way there is no point from a worldview perspective there's no point in arguing worldviews because you're never going to change them. And if you do it's not because someone tells you you're wrong a because you can't because you can't be wrong with a worldview you just have one for any given moment in any given circumstance but it's the fact that politics has just so let us down that and you know and the United States I again I lived there for eight years during George W. And there was this polemicist all the way through everybody. Within the academy there would be people who were just these never ever questioned worldviews and that was you know I was unsuccessful in doing what it is that I did go there to do. I had a wonderful time fabulous time met some wonderful people wrote a book um yeah uh did a lot of international work from there and when I left I said to the the uh then president of the university I said what was it that why why did you offer me the job uh from nowhere she said well the interesting thing is we Americans and I've always thought about this ever since then we Americans are very good at analysis and terrible at synthesis she said the interesting thing about you as portrayed by what you do and how you write and how you speak is that that's what you do. You synthesize from all sorts of areas so you don't see psychology and philosophy and parasitology as anything other than human ways of making sense of what's going on in a particular domain. And you brought them together she said and you know we we can't handle that I said that's true and they can't so there is actually she's wise enough to see that that's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

Yeah yeah fantastic well when you look at the when you when if we kind of circle around to to what we were saying about kind of regenerative approaches and where this all kind of started with thinking of agroecology and people in systems and and the worldviews we have uh when you when you look on the ground in Australia in particular and elsewhere with the emergence of regenerative methods um and the writing in this I mean I'm thinking as an of an example Charles Massey's book The Paul of the Reed Wobbler for example which was uh is um uh a glorious story of transformation and change inside as well as outside um uh how I did do you look at that and think yes we have kind of we we've we're on the right track in certain ways when when when we're seeing these differences in in transformation he he did he did his PhD at um ANU Sweden National University with someone who had been at Hawkesbury.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

She wasn't in our team uh but she was uh as she argued in the podcast I did with her uh a huge influence on what she then did and and Charlie uh who I tried to get onto a podcast but I can never get it because he hasn't got any connection on his phone um uh he uh he often says you know that that the courage he got in doing what it is that he did um because it's so well theorized and he doesn't actually use the word worldviews I recall but he says the same thing you know that it it ain't soil it ain't stuff and it ain't even people or thinking it's it's worldviews you know that if if you really get serious about saying well I really want to be regenerative what would I need to do and we of course did that on our family farm by accident you know uh because there was there were no pesticides there was no uh chemical fertilizers or whatever and then the dilemma you know that if we are introducing increases in productivity how do you do that without that uh and maintain a way of living you know and I don't think we're anywhere near that I don't know about you but I don't think we're anywhere near that.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

No exactly it's too difficult a question it seems to me yeah yeah exactly and maybe maybe uh well I wanted to kind of quote the the the the question that his nine year old grandson asked him which I think was a a lovely one where he says why do we have to kill things to grow things which which which was uh you know a lovely kind of innocent question of a nine year old actually worldview worldview there I mean there's there's a good kind of poke around worldview which which is which is fabulous but but if we kind of just say pick up that word courage again that we've mentioned a couple of times maybe maybe there have to be kind of advances in in practices in you know making this sort of thing work rather than that kind of thing of cutting out pesticides and still succeeding or changing the water regimes on farms that you do and then people's courage kind of increases because they're less frightened by the change that they see or they read about or they hear about um we we're seeing quite a fabulous expansion of what people call regenerative ag in the UK um it's gone from being uh you know sort of it was a term that was never going to be used even though I wrote a book about it 30 years ago um but now it's kind of like uh uh I I'm happy to say to people oh yeah you know well this has got kind of a little bit of history behind it but I find I see people with a a lot of kind of um you know strength and courage in what they're doing which is really difficult different from the big machinery industry the big input industry the big seed industry all and the big farm industry the the uh I'm not sure where it goes um but but I'm quite encouraged by that actually um uh they're not going to I think most of those farmers wouldn't understand what you meant this is not being patronizing either I hope um if you say well that you know your worldview has changed but if you said the way that you look at the farm and the way that you look at the world and the way that you are doing stuff to help wild birds or the swifts that fly in the barn over the barns or do you now think these other things are as important as the or more important even uh uh than the wheat yields then I think you have already seen a change in worldview um which is kind of interesting actually let let's let's let's uh not take up too much more of your time Richard um uh your proud why not actually it's on my bucket list yeah yeah Dr. Jules well yes why not exactly uh um uh a proud um we've we've I think we've talked about some of that you were proud of bringing bringing through Hawkesbury students who go off to become their own leaders um yeah no that that sounds like a great thing there's nothing better than helping others to to kind of transition and grow and go forward like that yeah yeah and the other thing is and you would have gone through this I know where I got an Australian award and uh it's very hard to say without sounding trite uh it's not me literally hundreds of people have been part of this whole exercise uh all I've done really is provide um license for people to be people to sort of do stuff and come up with ideas and um and whilst not the senior uh it's almost invariably a a group and it's almost also invariably the Hawkesby story it's not the Borden story it's the Hawkesbury story um and and uh yeah so um and you make a sort of statement as well you know it's it's the team or whatever but I actually really meant that but it wasn't you know so it really is a reward to them and and they accept it in that in that spirit you know they couldn't have been more happy lovely um well human human kind of human advanced progress whatever we want whatever frame we want to put it in are all collective I mean that they're they're all groups of people doing things together. I mean you know they may be we may have kind of individual ideas but they're framed coming from people in the first place and from the environment and nature around us. And there's a kind of we're not independent actors um and that's that strikes me as a kind of starting point for all of this. So that's kind of well yeah exactly. A book to recommend would you would you give a book to recommend that that people should um you know I thought deeply about that question and there are so many out there.

SPEAKER_00 54:03

I mean we've got a library as you and I have as you have there there um you know I've I've culled mine now and I'm down to 500 books after 3000 or whatever it was at one stage or another. And I could honestly say that because again this idea of of simplicity and other side complexity all of those books are important aren't they? You know so it's it's genuinely a library in that sense of the word so if someone you know says well I mean I've got a few here left um and I and I read them and over and over again but they're so contextual aren't they you know books books are yeah literally contextual so you you read something that uh connects with what it is you're working on at any given moment and you think yeah that that yeah I'll try that that's a really good idea um yeah I guess you know in terms of of the the book that that's optimistic it is Milbrath um because it was 1989 as I recall it was 1989 um and he says this the undertitle is learning our way out yes no learning our way forward would have been better but the the emphasis on learning and then those comments that I made about about systemics and and futures which is precisely what we did in our consulting when we we merged systems and systemics together um and yeah for years ran a consultancy on on that but you never I don't know how you ever felt about your consultancies but you always get the sense it's it's going to be put up on a shelf somewhere and you know no matter how excited you get or whatever and the other comment I was going to make when you make those comments about the countries that uh the 42 countries or whatever I found that working in in um polylinguistic countries it's so much easier because people are used to the idea in that you can say things in one language like Versenschal which you can't actually say in any other language uh or um you know I mean it's just simpatico in Spanish you know you can't you can't translate that particularly well and so on as some of those extraordinarily compound nouns in German you know uh and and so working in places like Mozambique where I I've worked quite extensively in South Africa um where English isn't like it is in Europe another dominant language so you speak Danish and English whereas you go to a country like South Africa everybody speaks at least three at least three with no connection between Zulu and Afrikaans so they're just totally different constructions therefore different worlds. And and that's my dear that's my experience and and that one of the things that I found disappointing about about Australia is you know speak Australian you don't uh you don't speak uh Spanish or Afghan or whatever in a bus. You know um whereas in England you did I mean certainly when I was a kid um and that was before the Jamaicans arrived but it was you know I mean so many people spoke French. I mean I went to France when I was 14 um I did French at school I did Latin at school and so languages were sort of part of my education in England. Yeah uh here they're not you know it's just sort of another subject that you do and because we're so far away from anywhere and the close languages to us are difficult including the Aboriginal ones which are really very difficult. But um I mean Bahaz is is reasonably simple but it's not sort of well I mean you can't use it in too many other places to be found about Southeast Asia. So for me language is um is incredibly important and and metaphor and all those other things together. And so this worldview is so much more than thinking and you know we just got to get beyond that just get rid of that wretched word.

SPEAKER_02 58:09

Yeah yeah exactly well I love that that thought that started this learning our way out um you know yeah that's what we've got to do because we haven't done this before um uh and and you know we've only we've got kind of one big shot at this really this you you know we can't put it off we can't just kind of let the the the bads accumulate because they're already a major problem. Um uh a top action dare dare you dare you make a recommendation uh what should what should people do um uh at at this stage i i what what my when i first read that question i wrote down the sort of socratic first know thyself and then i thought that that's too difficult to explain in complex terms and so people will see it tritely and and you know do what most people do I'm an angry person I'm a happy person I'm you know whatever first know thyself yeah I know me pretty well no you don't you know I mean uh who asks questions like what uh what is the nature of nature uh what is the nature of reality um and yet without asking those questions you actually have no idea what yourself is and particularly most of that stuff is subconscious and therefore has to be surfaced um so it's if if it is to be that uh uh first know thyself maybe it's first be thyself you know first sort of be existential be be aware of what's happening and then try and figure out why you hold the beliefs that you hold why they're different to others and and how they may well be limiting to yourself and to others you know how many arguments do you get to in the end which are worldview differences when you don't really even know you have a worldview you know yeah exactly beautifully put well put um I I uh lovely thanks Richard um I I um thought we could finish on on an excerpt from Mary Oliver um the American poet um she wrote a lovely poem called Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me. In fact in fact my daughter read it at my son's wedding um two years ago um and and this I think this is worldview stuff I think this is seeing the world just as you've described and asking different questions of it and I've just excerted three small bits um uh and and would would take us to that point of the journey ahead last night the rain spoke to me slowly saying what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud I was standing under a tree the tree was a tree with happy leaves imagine imagine the long and wondrous journeys still to be ours and that's how she finishes it and it's a it only takes a minute to read the whole poem.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

A tree with happy leaves that's yeah isn't that wonderful um but also imagine that one long and wondrous journeys still to be ours um they they're still awaiting us whatever the current situation oh absolutely I mean anybody who knows anything about history recognises that you know this is these in many ways are quite extraordinary days um one of the interesting uh discussions I have with some friends here is about the idea of progress you know when you live in a in a country that's had people living in it for 5000 years who uh have done their own thing and people say you know what this is a country that's filled with iron why didn't they get into an iron age and the easy answer is because they didn't need to why would they do why would they do that exactly everything was working working perfectly well for 5000 years. If that's not deep time I don't know what is exactly exactly people talk about sustainability and one of the issues there is that people keep talking because it's utilitarian that you know why don't we ask the Aboriginals how to help us with fire because they're very good with fire and they have a different way of dealing with the fire. And I say that is the greatest insulting thing I can think of you know you sort of come up to me and and and say how do you clip your toenails? You know because we you do it differently to me so that would be really good. And I say well actually it's a lot more to me than my toenails. And then this issue of people keep talking about indigenous knowledge that's not clever. Everybody gets an indigenous knowledge you know eat that red thing and you'll die. Oh God no we won't eat that one anymore he just died the idea of way of knowing so it goes back to to worldview and if you have a different ontology a different epistemology different uh axial different set of values or whatever then your language is is frames that doesn't it so it's it's when you say something like a rock and I are related we can't possibly understand that from our particular epistemology or ontology onto epistemology to make it easier um and and people keep talking about it here like you said it's the wrong thing you know just how do Aboriginals know and I I've worked with a with a number of Aboriginal people who are absolutely delightful and and one of the things I would say at the end is one of them in particular is you're having a conversation with you when a bird will fly by and he suddenly starts a conversation with the bird and it's not a joke. You know it's it's it's the bird's none no less important you are yeah and the bird happens to you know it's the the happy leaves of the tree there's a happy bird going by and you know of course you're gonna you're gonna greet it and say hello and and mark its passage.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:05

Yeah lovely.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:06

So that that's the good news you know I think that if we can actually start to see well again it's worldview to actually understand indigenous peoples have ways of knowing I go back to dance and music um you know and and and my background in in in music where I could express myself presentational knowledge as they say in ways when I sang that I couldn't when I spoke. So um back in those days you know if you could you could break into a song where like you know you love uh for instance I mean I love Italian opera but I don't speak very good Italian so most of the time I don't understand what's being said and I don't want to understand what's being said.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:48

I'm there watching this existential thing happening around me uh happy people uh I mean they might not be happy people but they're expressing happiness like the leaves you know and I I just adore it yeah fantastic well Richard thank you very much indeed it's great that you came on in the evening at your end um uh good good luck for the next little bit long bit long bit yeah long bit I think long bit