Local council employs "white witch"

You know, there was a time, not so long ago as I recall, when nobody would believe you if you claimed things like this. But what a sign of the increasingly irrational times we live in. Superstition has made a Strong comeback, either explicitly as in this case, (and modern managerialism, with its obsessive focus on change and innovation as ends in themselves is just as nutty as someone thinking they are a witch in my view), or implicitly under the cover of pseudo-science like the more extreme versions of environmentalism and the make believe climate "crisis" or the medicalisation of bad behaviour (especially for children). So no surprises at all that the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment has also wasted taxpayers' dollars employing this woman. But the sickness spreads much wider than that. How do we recover faith in human beings and their ability to think rationally and logically as the only real solution to our problems? Because that is what we see here. Effectively we in the West have lost faith in ourselves and have become receptive to any crazy idea that comes along, whether it is about the climate, our health or the environment. As the Bolter says below: As I say, we’re on a retreat from reason: THE Victorian Ombudsman has criticised a left-leaning inner-city council for spending $620,000 of ratepayers’ money on a self-styled “white witch” to assist with “change management”. Port Phillip Council’s ad hoc but costly arrangement with pranic healing and astrology devotee Caroline Shahbaz was savaged in a report by the Ombudsman tabled in the Victorian parliament yesterday...It has also emerged that the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment has used Ms Shahbaz as a consultant, as have the Victorian Department of Planning, Parks Victoria, Melbourne Water and the Reserve Bank. If you were wondering what kind of irrational, superstition-addled brains left us with water supplies critically low, forests dangerously overloaded with fuel, housing land too scarce, and useless wind farms scarring the coastline to fight a warming that actually stopped a decade ago, now you know. It’s the kind of minds that took a witch for their guru.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous