Is material wealth more important than cognitive and spiritual wealth? Is it better to strive for the material comforts that come with possession or the peace and equilibrium that is the product of practising meaningful empathetic, compassionate, and non-judgemental behaviour? Is it inevitable that it is only possible to pursue one of these choices but not both? Is there a day or even just an hour that goes by during that day when a member of the human race manages not to round on another individual or group laying the finger of blame for some action, behaviour, or inaction? These are the stark, invariably unpleasant traits of today’s world societies. They are not all being practised everywhere at the same level or intensity, perhaps unsurprisingly the more wealthy and materially abundant a society has become, the more widespread the behaviour.Does any of this matter? Are these references to spiritual behaviour simply archaic leftovers from a world once dominated by religion? Or are they the markers of a civilisation in serious and perhaps irreversible decline? And where does climate change fit amongst all this?
Dick Stiles is a retired chartered mechanical engineer who lives in New South Wales, Australia. He has spent most of his working life in the Oil and Gas Industry, having first served in the Royal Navy. The culmination of his career was a two-year spell in Iraq, where he worked as the program manager for the post-invasion reconstruction of the country’s oil and gas infrastructure. His time is now taken up with philosophical study, traditional timber boat building, and caring for his grandchildren. This is Dick’s first literary publication.
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In this, his first, book, Mr Stiles, a former junior R.N. officer and retired chartered mechanical engineer (and much else in between), proposes certain changes to our thinking and behaviour that are required if we are to cope with climate change. He has obviously read widely on his chosen subject and writes clearly, even elegantly. His argument is, therefore, easily understandable. I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who is, or should be, interested in climate change and, I suppose, that, when all is said and done, that is all of us.
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Dick weaves together a cross genre synopsis of our world we live in with clarity and with great literary skill. Comprehensively but succinctly, Dick has distilled our history, and then looked into our collective potential future through the lense of philosophy, history, engineering, climate science and touched on key spiritual ideas in order to give the reader a birds eye view on the key questions we need to ask ourselves to guarantee that we in-fact have a future. Dick has captured ideas from a broad range of wise sources (from Plato to Wilber, Harari to Huxley) and cleverly put together ideas and questions that stretch beyond climate change but to the very fabric of being human. The way we now negotiate the world collectively is a concern for every homo sapien and it would do the world a service if we could all think of our future through the questions that Dick raises. Do yourself a favour and pick up this book......
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