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It’s a mad world – the rise of middle class angst
I am delighted to publish this latest piece from Stephen Smith, an occasional Webdiarist, who we have not heard from since Fear and loathing in Cronulla.
by Stephen Smith
Nothing brings out violence like a peaceful demonstration.
J G Ballard – Millennium People
As John Howard would have us believe, “We’ve drawn back from being too obsessed with diversity to a point where Australians are now better able to appreciate the enduring values of the national character.” Thus Kerry Packer was really “a sentimental bloke” and his state funeral a celebration of our core values. Howard’s message rests on: “Australia’s greatness – our sense of balance.” Of course ‘balance’ is a relative term. But as the PM is quick to tell us, it is not to imply a nation at rest. Rather, balance “is the handmaiden of national growth and renewal”. (Even the ‘war on terror’ has now found a sense of balance in the form of ‘the long war’.) But in shifting to the desired position might there be a risk that some ‘tipping point’ will disrupt the balance? If so, we shall argue here that any such imbalance is most likely to be tipped by the middle classes.
The problem with Howard’s “sense of balance” is its narrow focus on economic performance as an indicator of wellbeing. Signs that the balance has gone a little awry have been noted by columnist Ross Gittins:
“But if ever-rising living standards are the key to our contentment, there are just a few telltale signs that all may not be well. Why, now we’re so much wealthier than we were, do we have more trouble, rather than less, with divorce, drugs, crime, depression and suicide?”
A recent front-page headline in The Sydney Morning Herald proclaimed - ANGRY PEOPLE GOING NOWHERE. It could be a reference to the pop heritage of its ‘angry’ readers.
(The song lyric begins in our head.)
All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere...
There are of course people who feel left behind by Howard’s willingness to skip ahead in the history lesson. A new survey of our wellbeing reveals the urban middle class to be the most disgruntled people in Australia. This group – many of whom live in Labor held inner city electorates - has been labeled as the ‘chardonnay socialists’; they are the academics, journalists, public servants and other “culture workers” who inhabit places such as Sydney’s inner west.
(As the song continues)
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow...
Their state of mind can also be called melancholia; and it generates the very alienation of which it then complains. Steven Shaviro calls this melancholia “a symptom of the desperation of traditional humanist intellectuals… These people should get a life”. But what if the getting of such a life becomes more desperate and meaningless? This is the possible fracture in Howard’s system of ‘balance’. In an irony of reversibility we see how the total impunity of the system begins to implode under its weight of angst. The system becomes its own worst enemy. Aside from the ‘inner city blues’, a loss of wellbeing may also follow those who are affluent but with low disposable income. In order to ‘get a life’ will Howard’s aspirant voters turn against him in the act of breaking free?
The Wellbeing score comes hard on the heels of an unflattering portrait of Cronulla and the Shire of Sutherland. According to this research, these are among the Sydney people least tolerant of cultural diversity and multicultural values. But at the same time they are also counted as one of Sydney’s most affluent and middle class areas.
(And the band plays on)
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying
Are the best I’ve ever had…
What these surveys jointly point to is that the affluent middle class, across its suburban range, shows ominous signs of intolerance and angst. Furthermore, these feelings coincide with an artificial, virtual environment dominated by the media and a culture of consumerism. This leads to a loss of faith and belief, reflected in survey scores of 'wellbeing’. It is part of a global affliction of the rich, as Jean Baudrillard observes in his new work, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact:
It is the excess of reality that makes us stop believing in it. The saturation of the world, the technical saturation of life, the excess of possibilities, of actualisation of needs and desires. How are we to believe in reality once its production has become automatic?
From Cronulla to King Street, angst is not so much ‘bad attitude’ (racism; Howard-hating) but rather a tipping point - of intolerance to the system itself. It is what we are hearing from the Grumpy Old Men; it is the battle cry of The Chaser team’s War on Everything. (Why is it that such themes always pop up on the ABC?)
Above all, it is a trend best captured by JG Ballard in novels such as Super-Cannes and Millennium People (MP).
In MP (set in London) the proposition is that “the middle classes are the new proletariat”. They are so sick of school fees, mortgages, health costs, stealth taxes, parking meters, traffic jams and public transport that they begin to dismantle the “self-imposed burdens” of civic responsibility and consumer culture. As Ballard himself explains:
I’ve tried to nail down a certain kind of nihilism that people may embrace, and which politicians may embrace, which is much more terrifying; all tapping into this vast, untouched resource as big as the Arabian oilfields called psychopathology.
In the Cronulla riots, certain parallels emerge both in the way in which violent impulses took over an initially peaceful rally; and the way the ‘race card’ was later played by politicians. The residents who took part were from the more affluent and middle class end of suburbia. If we place ‘the Shire’ in the framework suggested by Ballard, violence becomes an antidote to a “totally pacified world”. It is an insight that first appeared in an earlier Ballard novel, Super-Cannes:
Our latent psychopathy is the last nature reserve, a place of refuge for the endangered mind. Of course, I’m talking about a carefully metered violence, microdoses of madness like the minute traces of strychnine in a nerve tonic.
Howard feigns tolerance. But there is a growing intolerance to the system itself as we lose our singularity and values. Further, tolerance only exists as far as global power seeks to make the world’s wealth of cultures interchangeable. Returning again to Baudrillard:
For, paradoxically, whereas tolerance is held up everywhere as the supreme value, the question of intolerance to the system itself and to its effects is never raised… In a world ruthlessly doomed to this principle, the irruption of intolerance will soon be the only event. The automatic return of all forms of racism, integrism and exclusion in reaction to this unconditional conviviality.
In MP, a similar view of ‘tolerance’ is voiced by chief agitator Dr Richard Gould.
We tolerate everything, but we know that liberal values are designed to make us passive... We believe in equality but hate the underclass... We’re living in a soft-regime prison built by earlier generations of inmates. Somehow we have to break free.
In an interview with The Guardian Ballard further explains:
The point about the middle-class revolution in Millennium People is that it was pointless, that it failed... What I’m arguing in MP is that in our totally pacified world the only acts that will have any significance at all will be acts of meaningless violence. Already we have seen signs of this – random shootings... suicide bombings that achieve nothing... As MP tries to show, even a political revolution may be pointless. All this, it seems to me, means that the main danger in the future will not be from terrorist acts that advance a cause, however wrong-headed, but from terrorist acts without any cause at all.
There will be no repeat of the great political movements of the last century. Instead, we may find a fragmented series of outbursts, gaining in frequency but not in synchronisation. MP ends amid the smoke and debris. Yet the failed figures in Ballard’s fiction begin to resemble the irrational actions of people in an ever more fictionalised world.
Their revolution was indeed meaningless... the blueprint for the social protests of the future, for pointless armed uprisings and doomed revolutions, for unmotivated violence and senseless demonstrations. Violence... should always be gratuitous, and no serious revolution should ever achieve its aims.
The unleashed middle class psyche reminds us that the ‘sense of balance’ urged by John Howard speaks to his balance of power; and it is a power subject to ever smaller circles of influence upon it. If the system revolves around wealth and excess in such a meaningless way, it is hardly surprising that revolt may itself be aimless. Never mind the jihad. Beware the “upholstered apocalypse”.
For once the media got in right – if only in the headline “angry people going nowhere”. (Here too, the song concludes.)
I find it hard to tell you
’Cos I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It’s a very, very
Mad World
(“Mad World” – Tears for Fears)
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Hi Robyn and Jay
Hey all,
I've been off the last week and didn't see your response, Jay S. I have emailed you to start things off. Hope you are still interested.
For Robyn, and anyone else who wants to help drafting a paper covering options for our political future, contact me at :
enuffenuff@fastmail.fm
Onwards...
Forward the revolution!
That makes 4
Hey guys and gals, excellent. I've had a couple of days off from WD and was really expecting no one would be interested. There are lots of preachers and few practising what they preach. I'm encouraged greatly as four attracts more while one is a lonely number.
Could I suggest that we ask Hamish to provide us with each other's email addresses, anonymous Hotmail address is fine if you like and that we discuss it offline. It would bore those that aren't interested and we have the Editor himself in so we can ask for publishing when we have something to start with.
What really encourages me is that Jay S has kicked off some thoughts and that's where we are at: we need thoughts first, reality or not.
Thanks guys and talk to you soon, OK?
Let's change the world
Fine with me. My e-mail is somas@bigpond.com. BTW, I don't practise what I preach. I balance it with a healthy dose of self-preservation.
Sorry
Sorry Mike and Phil, I find names without faces hard and used Phil's when I meant Mike's. I should check before I post.
Another go
I don't think I have expressed myself well.
I would be just as uncomfortable as Phil conforming to one particular leader's vision for us all, and I agree with Deb's assessment of Howard's and Costello's recent comments and religious prejudice being an impediment. But I think one should look at the core teachings of any religion rather than make judgements according to the behaviour of some of its exponents. I have no statistics (and I think they are probably ungatherable over such long periods of time) but I am sure that religions are responsible for much more cooperation than division. There have been wars, but people have also promoted peace, and generated an awful lot of health care and social welfare advances in the name of religion.
But my point really was that self-reliance and action within the limited sphere of our own families won't overcome the angst being described in this post because we are social beings. The sphere of interactions that influence us and which we influence is wider than that. In order to feel fulfilled, I think our make-up demands that we are actively contributing in some fashion to a collective that is as wide as our awareness. And these days our awareness is pretty wide. Personal affluence doesn't sit comfortably when there is so much inequity in the world, great threats to the ecosystem which sustain us, and little that is being done to overcome these.
We need vision for the collective but it will also have to be generated by and thus owned by the collective in order to be effective. Practically, I guess, it will be two steps forward and one step back, and pockets of advances and coalescing of groups and dissolving of others almost as messily as it has always been. But it is becoming critical that somehow we find some way of all generally moving in the same direction and all being actively involved in getting there.
...yes Robyn
I'm with Mike, Robyn, I think that we would connect and care for others a lot more if religious bias and prejudice were not an impediment. John Howard’s and Peter Costello's recent comments are examples of poor leadership from self-professed Christian leaders.
Let's be better than that and look for unity and friendship, not division, anger and superiority.
Vision
Individual visions are not satisfying because human beings are social animals. Whether we like it or not our wellbeing is inextricably linked to that of others.
Rightly or wrongly, we look to our politicians and other leaders to assist us in our being together, and to overcome problems which affect us collectively.
Religions both call us out of our selves and provide opportunities for us to connect with and care for others. It may be easier to think about the post-death rewards offered in religions, but there is much on offer in this life too. "Does being good really work?", Jay. Yes, but maybe only if we are prepared to look further than ourselves, at least initially. St. Francis and others have said that "It is in giving that we receive." There is satisfaction and other "spiritual" benefit in being of assistance to others, but also an increase in the welfare of the collective will benefit us eventually.
We are in this life together. Yes, we may be freer than we have been, as individuals here in the West, from the dictates of those who take it upon themselves to decide what is best for the collective. But we hunger for something more, and we look back to times when it seems that people were more involved with each other, sharing both the good things and the bad. Deep down we know that is the way it is supposed to be, because that is the way we are constructed.
Climate change may threaten our very survival as a species. This, more than any thing else at the moment, points out the need for collective vision. One individual's action will do almost nothing to change anything for the better, but millions of people working together can make a difference which may well be the difference between survival or not.
Unfortunately, though, I think even developing a vision is a collaborative process. It won't be good enough to sit back and wait for someone else to come up with one. We will have to seek each other out and do the work together.
Speak for yourself, Robyn.
Challenge
Hey all, and Jay S in particular,
We all seem to have ideas about what is wrong or not and seem able to criticise what governments are doing or not doing.
I've said below that Australians are apathetic.
Well here's an opportunity for those that keep claiming they know the answers to show such.
What I propose is that a group, as many as want to join in, put together a paper on what changes the group would like to see. It wouldn't be quick and it wouldn't be easy.
The idea would be to circulate such a paper through the media and political parties to sound them out. Someone has to come up with an alternative to the two existing parties as people are looking for that alternative and mostly do not want any of the minor parties either.
I have plenty of ideas and no doubt you all do too. Use them!
I'd just like to see how many here actually have the guts to have a go rather than just highlight the problems with what we have now.
Are any of you up to it?
As Geoff has said, get of your arses and act for a change.
Fiona: Good call, Ross! BTW, you will notice a slight editorial change in deference to 'Diarists of my ilk...
Can't refuse a challenge
Hi Ross, I’m game for “a group, as many as want to join in, put together a paper on what changes the group would like to see. It wouldn't be quick and it wouldn't be easy.”
I’d suggest that we need to think of two quite distinct activities – a) the management of the “paper” development process, and b) the “paper” itself.
I can think if three ways of managing the “paper” development process – a) an interested group of volunteers go off-line and develop the paper by communicating with each other directly; b) we use Webdiary with its current functionality in some way to develop the paper in an open forum; or c) we organize a wiki as an open forum to develop the paper.
I’d vote for option b, at least for the time being. Those with a mind to, submit a paper to Webdiary on one or more of “The Issues” It starts with the title “Solutions: ... to identify this type of paper. People respond, and either the original author or someone else produces another paper on that Issue, which is hopefully an improvement in the right direction.
We do not need to wait till there is a “complete paper”. Individuals make a commitment to actively promote those ideas they believe in – in the workplace, through letters to the media and politicians, through their membership of political and other organizations etc. As we as a group become more confident of the rightness of the ideas, we can consider more systematic methods of propagation.
Are others interested, and what are their suggestions for getting it off the ground?
Hamish: if there's interest in this project I'm into helping. Webdiary, on the Drupal platform its built on, can get more functional if it needs to.
Oh Yes. The Vision Thing
How's this for a vision.
Stop expecting so much from Governments. Any Government. State or federal. Present or future. Australian or foreign.
Politicians and parties like to build expectations. That is both the nature and the central paradox of a liberal democracy. That is the business they are in and they have to do it to survive. But we have a system and process that ensures that all government powers, including the administration and judiciary, are stunted at every turn, at times almost to the point of paralysis. With good reason. We should not have it any other way.
It is curious that those who object most to attempts to increase official powers, inevitably at the expense of individual liberties, are likely to complain the most at what they perceive to be Government's failure to deliver. They should make up their minds what they want.
How on earth have we got to the point where we seriously expect the Government to deliver "meaningful" lives? We feel "desperate". "Angst". We don't like the crap on TV. We are disillusioned with the "culture of consumerism". Life is becoming "meaner" as well as "meaningless". Living in the big cities is making us sick. Our jobs have not been designed to suit normal human beings. We achieve unprecedented levels of affluence and yet "wellbeing" remains elusive. We become disillusioned, and with disillusion comes "melancholia". An epidemic of depression.
So what do we do? Why, blame the Government of course. Better still personalise it. That way you can really work up a good lather. This is "Howard's Australia". Bloody Howard. Some people get so bitter about this that it cannot be good for their health. Read Phillip Adams' piece in this morning's Australian for an example. Poor Phillip. I hope he felt a little better after writing that, for his sake. One thing is for certain. I will bet the house that Howard is a far happier man than he is.
So my vision? Self reliance. Get off your arse and do something about your own lives. Stop expecting some semi-mystical Big Brother to swoop down out of no where and do it for you. A kind of secular messiah with a magic wand who will set everything right. Sure.
The truth is we have never been freer. Options and choice have never been broader. But choice requires decision, action and courage. Perhaps it is this that terrifies so many. The nostalgic "past" of "wellbeing" and happiness is a brutal myth. The past was an open prison of stifling social conformity, monoculture, material and food shortages, hunger, disease, high childhood death rates, inhibited and expensive travel, a powerful and intolerant clergy, sectarianism, rationed education, primitive technology, dangerous low paid jobs, employer domination of workers and strictly limited life choices and rights for women and total war for men.
Surely if we have learned anything at all from the last century it is to beware of utopianism. Idiots sprouting ideology. Politics as a substitute for a lost religion. Or even worse, religion as a substitute for politics. The man on the white horse with all the answers who will lead as all back to the Garden of Eden. Who will make our choices for us.
No thanks.
My expectations of government and officialdom have become quite limited. That way I am seldom disappointed. My main expectation is that as far as possible it will stay out of my face.
Visions are for individuals
Ethical, not bloody likely
“If anyone has a vision that is ethical, realisable, and sustainable, please speak up.”
This is a very hard question. Let’s start by defining our terms:
Ethical: Being in accordance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a profession.
Ethic: A set of principles of right conduct.
Realisable: To comprehend completely or correctly. To bring into reality.
Sustainable: To keep in existence; maintain.
Do we see a spanner in the works here? Yep, that bloody word ethical. That word we all know yet choose to ignore at our peril.
I would venture a guess that if we understood the word and the role it plays in a just society then adopted an ethical approach to governance and law then the terms "realisable" and "sustainable" would follow as a natural consequence. In short society would benefit.
It does not take a lot of research or simple observation to discover we live in a world that is anything but ethical. On the Bail 9 thread I have posted links about the ubiquitous criminal behaviour of the pharmaceutical companies. Many appear in the top 100 corporate criminals (1990’s) with Hoffmann-La Roche on number 1.
The recent debacle concerning the AWB is another example of unethical behaviour and I’m sure we could find enough examples of unethical behaviour, whether by corporations, governments and individuals, to fill a universe.
It is amusing that the middle class, although generally happy with the economy, feel that we have become meaner, for it is the middle class who have supported our current and previous governments in the policies that have led to a more competitive, dog eat dog society.
Is this a contradiction or is it there are more people who feel like winners than losers, and are they (the winners) prepared to accept the misfortune of others as a natural consequence for their more affluent lifestyle?
Sadly there is not a lot I can offer in the way of vision, unless of course we want to start with first principles and ask ourselves:
How can we create an ethical and just society?
We will all have to dig deep to answer that one.
In the mean time we can expect more of the same and we will blame our meanness on the politicians we elect, while watching our plasma TV’s and paying our mortgages.
PS. Ron, that’s about the best I can do on that one. You?
No solution?
The major world religions provide a process and a goal or reward. Unfortunately, many of us no longer believe in Nirvana or Heaven. The concept of post-death reward accentuates our lack of faith that the good can enjoy life on earth – bad people will get away with all the cookies. Does being good really work?
I also find religions both complex and simplistic: complex in that there are a welter of sometimes contradictory rules and simplistic in that they don’t solve real problems.
While Stephen Covey does not give a solution, he does propose a process. He outlines seven habits, grouped into personal victories and public victories. I particularly like one that says seek to understand before being understood.
Perhaps there is no solution – only a journey.
Michael de Angelos "All I
Michael de Angelos: "All I see in Australia now is a great apathy and the occasional stirrings of a latent but not very vicious racism that lies dormant but is every so often stirred up by depthless politicians, as Peter Costello has with his recent barmy 'Australia values' nonsense. If the recent polls are accurate, that show Australians generally believe the country has become meaner under Howard but don't care because they perceive the economy has been good, which it will also seem when you go on a credit bender, then the country really does suffer from a mass attention deficit disorder."
Well, is this not the problem I was alluding too? It seems to me, that just like Alf Garnett some people are seeing problems around every corner. And yes, just like Alf who only ever has the answer of solving them by kicking out whomever he dislikes, so too does this apply equally to those problem finders in Australia.
I seriously cannot remember a left-opposition putting forward anything but complaints and common policy platitudes in years. Australians I would suggest look for answers not being told and retold about preceived problems. I think you call this vision!
No Ron, probably a lazy dickhead
Ron, neither mate, just being a bit of dickhead that's all. It's a lot easier being lazy than providing solutions. I suppose a better description would therefore be, a lazy dickhead.
Ron, have you got any good ideas?
"They are as legion..."
Re Phil Moffat's comment, I am brought to recollection of a comment that once appeared in Webdiary, to the affect that; "If dickheads had wings, the sky would be black".
Off now, to watch parliament on auntie. They are discussing the AWB affair again...
bloody Howard's Australia
I'm sure I'm in the category of those who refer to present day Australia in this manner, Jay White, although I would question your comparison to the Alf Garnett character. Having lived through the later part of Harold Wilson's Prime Ministership in London many of us mourn the passing of what was the then most exciting of times in the greatest city on earth, possibly only matched by the euphoria many felt with the brief rise of Gough Whitlam.
Garnet was meant to be a right-wing working class bigot fairly unmatched in Australia though fairly common in the UK. Typically he was a character who had gained the most from the socialist reforms of Labour governments but was their fiercest enemy. There's something strangely poetic about the fact that the actor who played his left wing un-employed son is Cherie Booth's father and a critic of her husband.
They were in force and very vocal again during the Thatcher years particularly with the Falkland's War and one would have to bite one's tongue in a pub when voicing incredulity at the folly of that mad war in which thousands of young Argentineans died needlessly a horrible death on a blazing battleship and hundreds of Brits were horribly maimed so madam could have her war whilst the odious Sun newspaper declared Britain was once again great because of it. They are here but weren't usually seen or heard of until John Howard signalled that it was OK to openly attack anyone and anything, just as he has today with Muslim female garb. What a sorry epitaph, but how indicative of his ten years in office - an attack on a minority group and women to boot.
All I see in Australia now is a great apathy and the occasional stirrings of a latent but not very vicious racism that lies dormant but is every so often stirred up by depthless politicians, as Peter Costello has with his recent barmy "Australia values" nonsense. If the recent polls are accurate, that show Australians generally believe the country has become meaner under Howard but don't care because they perceive the economy has been good, which it will also seem when you go on a credit bender, then the country really does suffer from a mass attention deficit disorder.
However I still can't get an accurate description of this great " increase in living standards" we are supposed to be enjoying under the Howard years. Certainly the toys are getting more fabulous every year, if quickly outdated, but that's not a government success. I've certainly become much richer in the past ten years but only because my house has increased in value to a ludicrous level that is basically useless to me. The Hawke, Keating and even the Fraser years were much more fun and certainly felt more exciting. Maybe I'm suffering from former working-class angst.
Just how long this vast smoke and mirrors trick can go on for is anyone's guess.
Howard's Australia
Michael de Angelos, you speak of "euphoria many felt with the brief rise of Gough Whitlam". What about the euphoria we all felt when the people consigned him and his government to the rubbish bin? That was a great day. Matched only by the defeat of the Keating government and the start of rebuilding Australia from a "Banana Republic". I know it cannot be much fun for you these days especially as you pin your hopes on Labor winning the next election, but to be logical about it all you really would not trust Beazley and his comedy team with Australia's future. If you listened to Parliament today you would realise what a hopeless Opposition we have. Every time they ask a question we are reminded in the answer what a failure Labor was when last in office. They have become a party of "muckrakers" with no credible policies, ably abetted by Bob Brown and Andrew Bartlett.
As for Peter Costello, somebody has to remind us of the danger of Islam and the way it is spreading.
Bananas In Parliament
Here we are, with the best terms-of-trade in ages, sustained demand and record export volumes and the current bunch of incompetent liars still can't balance the nation's books, let alone turn a profit.
Don't look now, but we are a lot closer to that "Banana Republic" than you think. Face it, the differences between the parties are trivial.
Bananas
Michael Coleman, yes I saw that item, a bit like "the Beazley Black Hole" - you remember that, don't you?
The differences between the parties are not trivial. At least the Libs are not tearing themselves apart like Labor is doing at the moment as the unions start to flex their muscles again. I give Beazley three months at the most as the unions white-ant him. So I guess they will install Gillard as a last desperate effort, and then the fun will start as the Labor Party does a "Kernot" on her.
Who me, not on your nelly!
I'd like to but I'm a little bit scared of our dissent laws.
wimp or pretending?
Phil Moffat, you can't articulate your vision because you are a little bit scared of our dissent laws. You poor thing.
An ethical, realisable, and sustainable vision
Jay Somasundaram: "If anyone has a vision that is ethical, realisable, and sustainable, please speak up".
I totally agree with this statement. The problem is that those claiming to have any type of vision will never tell you how we should go about achieving it. Hence all I ever read and hear are constant complaints either about a person or persons; rarely, if ever, alternatives.
I remember some time back watching a fairly average English movie that had a TV spin off called Till Death Do Us Part. It follows the main character, Alf Garnett, through his life from WWII into the mid 70's. During this period Harold Wilson becomes Prime Minister. Most of the movie I have forgotten but one thing burnt in my mind is Alf's (an arch-conservative) complaints about the very left-wing Wilson. As in the milk is not cold "bloody Wilson's England"; it starts raining "bloody Wilson's England", and so on.
I think at the moment in Australia we could swap a lot of people for Alf and swap Wilson and England for Howard and Australia.
Raising Chooks
The middle class may see that the emperor has no clothes, but they lack the vision, motivation or drive to do anything about it (other than perhaps to move to the coast and raise chickens). The Greens had a vision once, but they’ve been hugging trees for so long that they can’t see the woods for the trees anymore (sorry for the bad pun, couldn’t let the opportunity pass).
The disadvantaged and disenfranchised have the motivation and sometimes the drive, but lack the vision. Unfortunately, only the extremists have a vision.
If anyone has a vision that is ethical, realisable, and sustainable, please speak up.
Apathy
Hey Jay S, agree with you also.
We, as a nation, are apathetic and I had been one of those millions who are.
I have changed from someone who simply worked, enjoyed their family and tried to find enjoyable pastimes to someone who is now focused on the performances of all Government entities.
I say this simply to say that people can change their approach and I guess it is up to us, here at WD, and all the other small groups to awaken that sleeping giant, the people.
All of us are doing what we can and trying to spread information, draw attention to what is going on and trying very much to find groups they are comfortable and confident to belong to. Today's political parties are not such organisations.
One thing that stands out to me which those that aren't interested should be made to acknowledge is Australia's standing in the world today. One thing makes this clear, I believe.
That is an Australian Government group going to Iraq, cap in hand, to ask them, to overlook corruption in Australia's wheat marketing and selling organisations. We are asking them for forgiveness basically. And we should too, given what we know so far. What else is there to find out, I wonder?
Has Australia ever been in this position before, or have our standards dropped from what we once were? I say it has, greatly.
As an aside, those who do try contacting MPs and Senators on any issue may be interested in this response I received from Barnaby Joyce, that wonderful man from QLD:
"your message
To: Joyce, Barnaby (Senator)
Subject: Telstra and other things
Sent: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 11:17:34 +1100
was deleted without being read on Mon, 27 Feb 2006 09:52:07 +1100'"
As you can see, the email I sent was on 17 August last year. In late February 2006 his inbox was apparently cleared. It seems he doesn't read what he gets, but who is surprised?