Ordinary Heroes: The Writer of Escaping the Progress Trap – Daniel O’Leary
“Ordinary Heroes” is a series of interviews about ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Some people wiser than me claim that to live a life that is truly lived, a life that is beyond existing, a person must find their one gift, their one great talent and give it to the world as a gift.
The great part of this choice is that the person who gives away their gift gets to live an extraordinary life.
I hope this tale of these ordinary heroes doing extraordinary things will inspire you to do the same.
Gord: It’s great to finally meet you on Zoom after admiring your work for so many years.
Daniel: While I am glad you admire my work how is that you got to know about my work which is not as well known as it should be?
Gord: In a way I first met you in 2007 during the Provincial election when I was a Green Party candidate. One day I opened up a parcel from you and there was a copy of your book. You wrote in the cover “Good Luck in the election!”.
Daniel: Did you then read the book?
Gord: Of course I read it right away & was most impressed. You made a solid case for your idea that our society, like many before it, had boxed itself, by its very success, into a trap which is very difficult to escape from.
Daniel: More importantly, did trying to communicate that idea help you win any votes?
Gord: Well, not really. The already converted liked it, but most voters found it too abstract and did not see how it connected to their everyday life challenges. Enough about that, let’s focus on how you got to right such an excellent book, given the fact that you are not the University professor I had assumed you are.
Daniel: Yes, I can understand how you thought I was a University professor at Concordia in Montreal because there is one there who has the same name as I do. However, I did study Science & Human Affairs there in the 1980s. But let’s start at the beginning. I grew up and lived in South Africa until 1976 when I came to Canada because I did not want to live in an Apartheid regime as I thought it would never change.
Gord: Was it much of shock to live in Canada? Was living here what you expected?
Daniel: While I am happy living in Montreal what surprised me was how Rationalistic people behaved. It just felt “off” but I could not put my finger on what it was or why. Later I had a partial explanation: it felt like the emotional part of being was missing. It felt like the left and right brain were not talking well.
Gord: What was different about South African culture?
Daniel: I think it was the Ubuntu philosophy which literally means term meaning “humanity” or “I am because we are. In a more philosophical sense it means “the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity”. Somehow the unconscious state – where I am because we are – creates a less individualistic and less reason dominated worldview – one I did not realize existed until I experienced the culture of Canada.
Gord: How did this “discomfort” evolve into the writing of your book?
Daniel: First, I had to pay the bills. So I worked all my career in graphic design and website work for hospitals. That means I had time to explore why North America was so different and I really wanted to understand why it made me uncomfortable. After much digging I came to the conclusion that they riddle could be solved by examining how people here related and solved their problems. In my case my concerns focused on environmental problems because it seemed to me, based upon my readings, that this was the most intractable problem we had. It took me decades to work this out until I finally self published the book in 2007.
Gord: So what did you find out?
Daniel: I concluded that people in North America, because they were so individualistic and reason focused, looked at individual problems as having specific solution that technology could solve, rather than seeing all these environmental problems has being connected to how we live as humans on the Earth today. Nobody wanted to hear that. In particular I was perplexed by the Paradox of Inaction that I saw: the more people learned about ecological disasters the more they were stuck in inaction and trying to live their happy life in their happy bubble. Lucky for me serendipity stepped in to save me.
Gord: I love that word. I think I am going to like how Serendipity saved you.
Daniel: One day in 1988 I picked up a book belong to my wife, who is an artist, called “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”. In the book they elaborated upon research for epileptic patients who had undergone surgery to separate the two brain halves to stop seizures and found rational responses to something that actually made no sense. This is called split brain syndrome. I concluded that people could rationalize anything. I concluded that Scientific method in not infallible and perhaps suffered from the Split brain Syndrome and thus had a blind spot to the hard to rationalize parts of existence.
Gord: Did this train of thought mingle with your work and family life in some way?
Daniel: Yes it did. Our oldest child was very cranky and when we brought him to several Doctors we were told we were just over anxious parents. Well, we finally found a Doctor who took us seriously and recognized that the child needed emergency heart surgery to live – but it was too late. He died. I think the Doctors only saw what they wanted to see. I concluded that all reason has this kind of limitation; we are blind to what we see as the impossible or improbable.
Gord: How did this work to help you write your book?
Daniel: At that time I was a student at Concordia and for my 4th year project I wrote a paper which became the central thought for my book. It was titled The Progress Trap. I think you quoted from it when you wrote your recent article for the CACOR website.
Gord: Yes I did as a pdf of that paper is available online. How is that you only were able to self publish it 17 years later?
Daniel: As I worked full time and was a Father as well I only wrote part time. I did submit my draft to Queen’s University Press for publishing after being told it was a novel idea worth sharing, however, when under Peer Review for 2 years, it was decided that it was not publishable. Just at that time the Massey Lecture using the same idea I had was given by Ronald Wright titled A Short History of Progress. His book became very famous, and is proposing 99% of the same viewpoint of the problems with progress being a probably dead end as I had done. However, my book goes further in looking at the behavior that accompanies the downturns of of progress.
Gord: That must have been a hard blow.
Daniel: Yes, at first I was upset but in a way it was assuring; it told me that I had GREAT idea and a valid way of thinking about current cultural and ecological conundrum.
Gord: So what does the future hold for us as we seek to Escape the Progress Trap?
Daniel: I now believe that we are doing our very best to NOT escape the Progress Trap but only accelerating our “improvements” to way of living that is clearly a dead end. So I am guessing that the environmental devastation will accelerate, cultures will lose the little social cohesion they have and that warfare will result.
Gord: Are there any groups out there who are seeking to Escape the Progress Trap?
Daniel: Yes, Extinction Rebellion gets it. There are some Scientists who get it. But our political and economic leaders do not – at least to extent that they cannot see a way to rule and make money with exponential growth of the GDP.
Gord: Did you ever feel like John the Baptist crying in the wilderness “Repent!” ?
Daniel: Yes, that exactly how I felt in the past. Know I now I am alone and that every day more and more people are seeing what I saw years ago. They key is Ubuntu – we must reconnect our 2 brain halves to not allow the Tyranny of Reason. We must reconnect with each other, for nobody can live without others. And finally we must reconnect and bring Nature into our family. That can only happen when Science includes the Right Side of the brain in how it understands the World.
Gord: Is that happening in South Africa [SA] more than Canada?
Daniel: Well, I will only say it is different, not necessarily better or worse. What good about SA is that people wear their heart on their sleeves. This makes change together with other people easier because people are more honest about ther public display of emotions and thus pretend less. In Canada it feels like we are more rigid, we are stuck in our success and our wealth and our “being the best country in the world to life in”…. so why change?
Gord: But are things really so great in Canada?
Daniel: Of course not. We have slightly different problems than other countries but I see that all of us, all humanity, is heading more or less in the same direction, the direction of denying reality and existing now in Collapse model and just trying to keep things as they are in a more and more desperate attempt to avoid change.
Gord: Let’s begin to wrap things up. Given your energy and curiosity and desire to live more sustainably is there anything practical you have done in addition to your book?
Daniel: Yes, I invented and built a portable solar and wind emergency power unit. You can see it at www.gensolaria.com
Gord: Well done! So, given that you see our society as being in collapse mode, how do you keep your sanity and continue living optimistically?
Daniel: Well, the first step is that I don’t focus on the bad news, I focus on any good news I can find. I only focus on my problems long enough to solve them and then really, totally relax. I tell myself to “turn my brain off” so I can really live and experience the physical and emotional reality around me. I see overthinking as part of the problem because most of my good ideas come when I turn my brain off. To help do that I walk a lot, listen to music, grow flowers and have mindfulness practice.
Gord: That all sounds good to me! Once again I want to thank you for the book you sent me in 2007 and for sharing with us how you have done your very best to be an “Ordinary Hero”.
Daniel: It was a pleasure to share my efforts with you. Please recommend that people buy and read my book. It is available on Amazon. I think they will find my thoughts helpful as they try to make sense of the world today.
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