Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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Morning, Rowley
"Morning, Rowley!" said Henry Wimbush.
"Morning, sir," old Rowley answered. He was the most venerable of the labourers on the farm--a tall, solid man, still unbent, with grey side-whiskers and a steep, dignified profile. Grave, weighty in his manner, splendidly respectable, Rowley had the air of a great English statesman of the mid-nineteenth century. He halted on the outskirts of the group, and for a moment they all looked at the pigs in a silence that was only broken by the sound of grunting or the squelch of a sharp hoof in the mire. Rowley turned at last, slowly and ponderously and nobly, as he did everything, and addressed himself to Henry Wimbush.
"Look at them, sir," he said, with a motion of his hand towards the wallowing swine. "Rightly is they called pigs."
"Rightly indeed," Mr. Wimbush agreed.
"I am abashed by that man," said Mr. Scogan, as old Rowley plodded off slowly and with dignity. "What wisdom, what judgment, what a sense of values! 'Rightly are they called swine.' Yes. And I wish I could, with as much justice, say, 'Rightly are we called men.'"
From Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow
How did I come to Webdiary? Well, like the old Rowley in Huxley's story, I aspire to ponderously and nobly point out the wallowing swine wherever they are found.
A little under two years ago I became a father to the first in a new young generation of my branch of the family Rowley. It was a moment of transformation - I stopped feeling young and naïve, and stepped closer to being that old Rowley. I realised I hoped that one day people would say of our son, "What wisdom, what judgment, what a sense of values!" Then I realised this was my own goal - to be wise, to exercise good judgement and to act in accordance with a strong sense of values.
In the years before the birth of our son, both my wife and I had worked hard in our respective careers. For me that time meant long hours away from home and long distances travelled, nearly all the time working, thinking, sometimes agonising over complex ethical issues. It was stimulating work, and I loved that aspect. It was stressful work as well (too often), and a few events in the years I did this job made me fully realise just how mad it could become.
I still can't speak openly about much of that work. I'm bound by an agreement. The need to maintain confidence sometimes made the ethical issues all the more difficult to personally wrestle with. At times, I found myself pondering the nature of trust, responsibility, and accountability. I often reflected on the need for balance.
Then one-day in 2001, news headlines broke that would rock the boat with our client. Day after day, and then for weeks on end, the issue was raised in headline after headline. It kept bobbing up. Still does.
Then late one night in 2001, I was back home and watching a US pay-TV news channel. A passenger plane flew straight into a New York skyscraper! Then another. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. As I watched this tragic event brought into my living room live on satellite I knew the job I was doing became even more important, and subsequently more stressful.
In 2002, my team completed the work we had to do. I hoped my decisions had been wise, my influence had been sufficient, and with luck my work life balance could now be restored.
Not so lucky for some of my colleagues. The work we had done with the client had created a 'deeper relationship' which was exploited. A new team with different expertise was engaged to assist with other knotty issues. I knew they'd have some relentless hard yakka ahead.
Then early one Monday morning in 2002, I went into the office and a partner told me that a colleague working on that job had died. He was only twenty-something years old.
I sat at his funeral, listening to a liturgy that touched on war (the issue of Iraq's disarmament had reached a crisis; Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan occurred; we had been working with warriors), and the priest spoke about the way my colleague, my friend, had as a child written a moving plea for world peace.
All the while I contemplated how I was living my own life. Reflecting on what small part I played in bigger things, and whether I was doing what is best. When I am called to account (or rather some priest recounts my deeds) what will be said?
I decided finally that day that I hate war. It had come to dominate my waking thoughts and my dreams. I no longer wanted to be a warrior, even if I was just the type that packs a kit including a laptop, contract documents and flash cuff links.
On the day of my wedding anniversary that year while flying an F-16, Major Harry Schmidt mistook Canadian anti-tank and machine-gun exercises as enemy fire and dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on the 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, wounding eight and killing four: Sgt Marc Leger, Cpl Ainsworth Dyer, Pvt Richard Green and Pvt Nathan Smith.
Later that year my wife joyfully told me we were to be parents. I decided I needed to get my act together, and get serious about achieving balance or face grave consequences. At about that time Iraq faced "serious consequences" and the US set about the largest government reorganisation since the creation of the Department of Defense in 1947.
We were getting organised for our first child, setting out to change things for the better. People all over the world started getting organised at that time as well, and trying to change things. By February in 2003 there were global protests against war on Iraq - more than ten million people protested in over 600 cities worldwide, the largest war protest to take place before the war occurred. I looked at this and felt hope for the child in my wife's womb. I saw the best in people when I saw them and hoped for the best to come.
A month later the "moment of truth" meeting in the Azores Islands took place. A few days later the first American bombs dropped on Baghdad, Iraq. Instead of a better way, the shock and awe campaign began. I was shocked. It was awful knowing that your child would be born in a time when your country is at war. At a time when we should know better.
I still held hope. I still looked forward to our life changing event.
Around the time my son was born the talk in the news was all about 'honest politics'. I recognised it as newspeak. About the same time the chief UN weapons inspector said the dossier used by honest politicians to argue a case for war "did not correspondent with reality," I recognised the dossier for the hogwash it was.
The reality had well and truly sunk in with me by then. Things needed to change if I were to really protect our community, to keep the powerful accountable and see a better world for our children to live in.
Being a past 'change manager' I knew that in order for things to change, first I must change. So I did. I decided to become more aware and more active. To talk straight. To think globally, and act locally.
And that is how I came to the Webdiary community. It is also why I'm glad you've met me here. Some of you have read the thoughts I've shared on the accountability of our local political leaders. We've trudged through the pork-barrelling, passed the tilting point and seen the dunghill.
And now it's more important than ever to walk a few more miles together. I'll keep stepping closer to being that old Rowley and we can look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; and with hope we should be able to agree on which to say, "Rightly is they called pigs."
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re: Morning, Rowley!
Well the tears are certainly welling in my eyes again, here, Craig . I've watched your posts ever since I came to webdiary and I was charmed by the way you always meandered along in your arguments, going through every tiny shred of detail, then all of a sudden coming up with a completely faultless conclusion. I thought it was a weakness but it was simply thoroughness and professionalism. This piece here is something different altogether. You've mixed your brilliant intellect, with something rarer, which is heart. Thank you.
I find myself often very cynical, especially in recent years, but I'm also often touched. Your story is one that I can see is important and which I intend to learn from. Please, continue to listen to and speak from the heart. It does make you sound like a statesman. I've never been able to push myself all the way through Crome Yellow , so I can't relate to the comparison, but there is dignity here in your words.
re: Morning, Rowley!
Good to see you still here Craig.
Nothing like a birth or death to focus the brain on what may or may not matter in life.
My firstborn (a son) was born when I'd gone thirty eight. My second (a girl) when I'd gone forty. What had been a easy (looking back) existence which (given no children) was focused on my wife and myself changed unalterably. Amazing the issues that grab your attention that had been about but never really in contact.
Last Friday I along with my family and five siblings buried my father. At Eighty-two he had died due to complications relating to vascular problems. The least of which may have been the debilitating Alzheimer's or the rot progressing up the leg he had left. The worst the decision to remove drips etc and let nature do what nature does. Still having recurrent thoughts over that one.
I was one of four brothers who gave the eulogy. Whilst I scratched and scribbled to do justice to a bloke that had worked three jobs and brought up six children I wondered the exact same thing as you did. More I suppose along the lines of "will I compare favourably?"
I wondered too at the crematorium, as the RSL paid final respects and read the "old Man's" WWII record out, whether those our government sent to fight an unnecessary war will be treated somehow differently. One would hope not. It was not their bloody decision.
re: Morning, Rowley!
INVOKING HISTORY TO SAVE WHAT’S LEFT OF HOWARD’S HONOUR
Treasurer Peter Costello seems to be putting in a fair effort of batting for ‘America’ these last few days. On Nine’s
http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/political_transcripts/article_1848.asp
‘Sunday’ program we had him coming on strong about anti-Americanism and today in
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16347344%255E7583,00.html
‘The Australian’ Costello has had his interview with John Laws published in the editorials in which Costello insists that that part of our history where America comes to our rescue during the Second World War should never be forgotten.
Of course, our Prime Minister is always prattling on about what an enormous debt we owe to America from the Second World War. But now to bring in Costello – of all people – to help reinforce the idea smacks a bit of desperation in the ranks over the loss of direction in Iraq particularly from the Americans’ point of view. If America goes down in Iraq then so do we. Trouble is, Howard has committed Australia to ‘stay the distance’ with America. He won’t back away from that but will need some let out when things finally and irreversibly do go pear-shaped for the US in Iraq. Howard will tell us that it was a matter of honour that we stick with the Americans through thick and thin, no matter what, and that he had no choice because of that than to stay with them.
We no doubt will be hearing a lot more in the coming months about how the Americans stayed with us even as we were threatened by the Japanese on our very doorstep. And as Americans wake up, as they indeed are now doing, about how wrong it was to go into Iraq in the first place, so we will be hearing more and more of how we are obliged as a matter of debt and honour to stay with the US regardless of what they choose to do in the end.
It’s the Lying Tyrant’s only way out.
re: Morning, Rowley!
I can only dream of being as eloquent and intelligent as you Craig but thank goodness you are and that you have decided to employ your talents to shine a light in dark corners. We need people like you now more than ever to help save Australia's soul for the future of all our children.
Here's hoping you do an equally magnificent dissection of the IR con we will be blitzed with in the coming months, our children and our children's children will be counting on it.
Also, could you link up with Professor Stephen Coleman for an expose on his thoughts on eDemocracy while he is still in Australia?
re: Morning, Rowley!
Craig I read your words and note similarities between your experiences and mine.
I wandered through the first 40 years odd of my life, in a variety of work types, with little concern for politics, only with my own selfish needs as a basic guidance mechanism. Although I was broadly of the left, a fact I put that down to a deep feeling of distrust in the policies of Margaret Thatcher, and the money rules attitude that naturally followed. The traditional 'conservative' values followed by my parents, and, to some extent, instilled in me, were disappearing fast in this new selfish 'grab what you can now' world.
Honesty, respect, decency and all those 'old world' values were swept away in a concerted campaign of ideology, money, deceipt, lies and the early origin of 'spin'.
And Tony Blair simply followed suit.
I came to Australia, and ignored the machinations of the early Howard years, as I was not a citizen, and therefore could not vote.
Then the momentous year 2000 arrived.
To start with, I became a citizen.
I had also finally found that 'place' where I was content to settle, and stop travelling restlessly - Sydney's Northern Beaches.
The Olympics, and that glorious feeling of 'community'.
And I met my wife, whom I still love dearly.
We married in May 2002, on a cliff top overlooking Narabeen Lakes, and had our honeymoon - with my immediate family - in Port Douglas. It was the first time my family had been together in the one place for approximately 15 years. It was a wonderful and memorable time.
Then in late August of that year, we got a call at 3 am one morning - my father had finally succumbed to the final of a history of heart related complaints, and we flew to the UK in a state of shock. That holiday in Port Douglas was our last time together, and I treasure those days with a fervour it is hard to understand.
The family had lost it's figurehead, and upon my return to Australia, I simply lost it, and lashed out at the world - arguing at work, and in the pub, railing against the sheer blind stupidity of colleagues and friends who couldn't see the wood for the trees.
I began doing that quintissentially British thing - writing letters to the newspapers.
Then, in August 2003, out first born, a girl, arrived, and I to wanted her to grow up in a peaceful world. I was now loooking at the world from a parents eyes, and essentially wanted the world to be perfect for her.
I wanted, and still want, the lies, deceipt, and pure and simple rorting of John Howard, and his Government, to stop.
I wanted to live in a country where the leader had vision for the country, rather than kow-tow to the lowest common xenophobic factor of fear of others and the unknown.
One who made his team accountable to the electorate when they made glaring errors of judgement, or even blatently lied to us.
One who did what was best for the country as a whole, rather than his own small minded and petty self interest.
I wanted a leader who didn't lie to take us, possibly illegally, into a disastrous foreign war - one that potentially compromised our safety at home, and alienated an entire community - all so that he could 'strut' his stuff on the world stage at countless photo ops with other decieptful 'leaders'.
And then I found Web Diary, and found myself more and more engaged in a political, and other, debates. Some of it, as with every venture, is facile, purile, and worthy of 6 year olds in the playground. At others, it is fascinating, and uplifting, and most of all, highly revealing. The breadth of knowledge and research undertaken is rewarding in itself
I hope Craig that you continue to write and contribute here, and look forward to many an interesting dialogue.
Cheers, one and all, Adam
re: Morning, Rowley!
As Winston Churchill says: "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."
re: Morning, Rowley!
Just on your mysterious work; if I do make an application to work as an ASIO officer, could you be of any assistance to me? I'm aware I'm not meant to publicise it, but surely no one will be able to tell the difference if I'm successful or not. I'm a little weary of being in a position of helplessness here and I'm genuinely concerned over the handling over the issues of National Security. I think I could be of quite a lot of use, since I'm inquisitive, honest, well educated and intolerant of B.S solutions. I'm concerned that that kind of work attracts zealots, hacks and bureaucrats.