What's driving this new puritanical pyche in our culture? Have we gone stark raving fucking MAD??
I could almost understand the ban on smoking. I'm not a smoker myself but have I been in the past. Still, even as a non-smoker, I was irked by the Puritanical Police dictating to people how to live their lives. There aren't many addictive substances that society allows. Which is a good thing. But let's face it, we're human. We have flaws. We need to make some allowances for this. We need to give people some 'breathing space' when it comes to making their own choices. Granted big tobacco corporations are making a fortune trading in on people's lives, and this is one of the reasons I could come to terms with the puritanical police starting their assault against smoking, but simultaneously, people make choices. And often they make informed choices. No one in this day and age can deny they haven't been given plenty of information about the dangers of smoking. We need to stop sueing the shit out of each other and take some personal responsibility.
Now it's one thing to fight against the big tobacco corporations who hide information from the public about the dangers of their product, or who manipulate people into buying a product that they know is dangerous, and it's another thing when the Puritanical Police start banning of all smoking in public arenas. Yet even this is understandable. It's only a natural progression from understanding how passive smoking affects non-smokers. But it's another thing again when the New Puritans begin to take actions against what people do in their own homes. Things start to take a sinister twist right there.
No one wants to think that some poor unsuspecting children are getting sick from second-hand smoke, but logic would tell you that most responsible smoking parents don't want to hurt their children and will find alternative ways of protecting them from their own habits, once they understand the dangers. So educate them. But don't go into people's homes and start dictating to them how they should live, taking away their rights. What do you want to do next, stick a brain-washing television that can never be turned off in the corner of every lounge room? We might as well all move to North Korea then! I hate to tell you this people, but work in aged-care long enough and you realise that most people die of cancer related illness if they live long enough. .. It's not nice, it hurts but the truth is we're all DIEING.
My understanding is that these New Putirtans want to eventually ban smoking outright, and I can feel some of my civil liberties being eroded again, the right to to make mistakes, the right to human error, the right to regret in the face of my bad choices if I so decide, are drying up in a puddle. They may be well-meaning, on a campaign to save every life from their owir own horrible cancer-ridden fate, but will you stop for god's sake people! Will you stop already! You've fought the good fight, you've kicked corporate murderer arse, not let us all be adults and take responsibility for ourselves and will you accept that some of us are going to make painful and irreversible mistakes at times? It's called humanity. Stop trying to clean us up, clean death up. If you want to continue this fight, kill two birds with one stone and keep aim at the tobacco corporations, bring them down. At least that way death won't be wholesale.
And now it's the grog they want to start fiddling with. Some people are alcoholics, but many many people aren't, and oh man, if you come between me and my bottles of wine of a Friday and Saturday night I won't be a happy girl. I play the game every weekday and on the weekend I want to relax and become a little irresponsible - forget the fact that I am actually dieing slowly day-by-day just through the very process of living. Just have some fun. Just enjoy being alive in the moment and stop worrying about money and work and the strain of having to support my life in this god forsaken capitalist rat race. All the little industrial ants out there, who don't have access to the same health care system as the elite classes, who won't live as long anyway because their work is harder and the time in their day for themselves and their families is shorter, who are aware of their own mortality anyhow because of it all - just want a drink sometimes to forget. Some of my best childhood memories were sitting around the floor in my parent's kitchen on the weekends looking at Seventies album covers while the adults got 'happy' and communal. Not all drinkers are alcoholics, that's a personal problem. And many things contain poisons. You cannot eradicate all the poisions from our environment. You can only learn to live with them relatively safely.
Oh and this morning on TV it was JUMPING CASTLES. Because now jumping castles are dangerous. Jumping Castles - are you people serious? Sure, someone could actually DIE falling off the side of a jumping castle, but most people don't! Our kids have already lost the water slide and the slip-and-slide and the garden sprinkler through water shortages, and you're going to take another slightly dangerous and exhilarating opportunity for fun away from them. Risk taking rides can teach children the art of self-control in the face of an out-of-control situation.
Oh for fuck's sake. Yes we can die smoking. We can become alcoholics. We can die in a car accident, a plan accident, we can choke on a chicken bone, we can fall off trampolines and jumping castles and break our necks, we can get bitten by sting-rays, have allergic reactions to bees, get bitten by a spider, we can take a wrong step on a stair and trip to our deaths, we can wake up one day and have a deadly disease. We can give up smoking and go to the doctor only to be told we've contracted a deadly STD, passed on to us unsuspectingly by our cheating spouse. True, most sane people will want to minimize the odds of dying by stopping behaviour they know will contribute to the chances of an early death. But some won't.
New Puritans, you cannot control humanity, you cannot control some people's violent disregard for their own safety. The best thing you can do to protect the general public against themselves, is educate them. There are some substances, activities and behaviours that do need state interference because the dangers are so high. And it's possible that smoking may be one of those and I'm just not ready to receive this because I so much hate the notion that I could smoke or not smoke at my own discretion, but by-and-large, I suspect it's not because of the interest of the state for the individual, as much as it is in the interest of the the state for a robust, healthy and majorly efficient and productive work force work force. And of course whose crazy enough to argue when the benefits are personal. But are they really?
We're really beginning to police ourselves like a fundamental religious organisation aimed at eradicating anything we consider 'evil.' And evil seems to be in everything and everywhere we look, as it is also for a fanatic.
People, ugly and as scary as it is, even for me, life is about RISK, and inevitably DEATH. And if we just accepted that we'd have less people running around sueing each other for breathing on us when they smoked, for making wrong decisions in the operating room, for letting our children go on their jumping castles. We'd be more forgiving of human error and inevitably more compassionate to our brothers and sisters. We'd be more human.
Understand this and come to peace with it: EVERYTHING IS POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS!!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
What am I?
... that's what The Bunyip of Berkley's Creek kept asking anyway.
Fortunately for the Bunyip of Berkley's creek, it didn't matter what he was. As soon as he saw himself reflected in the lady bunyip, he accepted himself as the same kind and lived happily ever after. Maybe he should have looked at this website?
http://uqconnect.net/~zzlaueli/bunyips.htm
At this point in life, I've decided I'm a Socialist, hardcore feminist who likes to wear dresses and make-up, (don't scoff this is totally justifiable and can easily be argued as irrelevant to any true feminist motivation for gender equality, which doesn't demand we negate or deny our natural biological urges to appear attractive. Gender equality is about mutual respect and appreciation for differences and what each gender brings to society, not about revenge or blind rebellion,) Christian, Taoist, Metaphysical Panantheist, (as opposed to Pantheism itself.)
http://www.panentheism.com/
I'm huge on Christ, and on Lao Tze Tung, both of whose teachings are not as far removed as one might think. I believe Christ's teachings have been perverted and hijacked for political and personal gain and the original church bears little resemblance to his original teachings I think if Jesus' teachings were put into practice, they would appear Socialist in nature.
But why doesn't Socialism work? My theory is, because like any political ideal, although the ideals are good, put man into the equation, and you will inevitably have problems. There is no known system we have yet created that has eradicated the ability for men with wrong motivations and wicked plans from infiltrating those systems, and I cannot imagine there ever will be. We consistently make the same mistake of assuming that in the places we don't safeguard against wrong doing, men will govern themselves to do the right thing. (Thatcherism was a good example of this.) But at least some political systems were designed with predominant altruistic concerns. I find Capitalism to be ruthlessly individualistic, at the detriment of society as a whole.
Still, Socialism needs a bit of a spruce up don't you think? Plug up a few holes? As does Christianity? Taoism has fared a little better so far.
Fortunately for the Bunyip of Berkley's creek, it didn't matter what he was. As soon as he saw himself reflected in the lady bunyip, he accepted himself as the same kind and lived happily ever after. Maybe he should have looked at this website?
http://uqconnect.net/~zzlaueli/bunyips.htm
At this point in life, I've decided I'm a Socialist, hardcore feminist who likes to wear dresses and make-up, (don't scoff this is totally justifiable and can easily be argued as irrelevant to any true feminist motivation for gender equality, which doesn't demand we negate or deny our natural biological urges to appear attractive. Gender equality is about mutual respect and appreciation for differences and what each gender brings to society, not about revenge or blind rebellion,) Christian, Taoist, Metaphysical Panantheist, (as opposed to Pantheism itself.)
http://www.panentheism.com/
I'm huge on Christ, and on Lao Tze Tung, both of whose teachings are not as far removed as one might think. I believe Christ's teachings have been perverted and hijacked for political and personal gain and the original church bears little resemblance to his original teachings I think if Jesus' teachings were put into practice, they would appear Socialist in nature.
But why doesn't Socialism work? My theory is, because like any political ideal, although the ideals are good, put man into the equation, and you will inevitably have problems. There is no known system we have yet created that has eradicated the ability for men with wrong motivations and wicked plans from infiltrating those systems, and I cannot imagine there ever will be. We consistently make the same mistake of assuming that in the places we don't safeguard against wrong doing, men will govern themselves to do the right thing. (Thatcherism was a good example of this.) But at least some political systems were designed with predominant altruistic concerns. I find Capitalism to be ruthlessly individualistic, at the detriment of society as a whole.
Still, Socialism needs a bit of a spruce up don't you think? Plug up a few holes? As does Christianity? Taoism has fared a little better so far.
Brat Camp (2) and Big Brother: Teenagers and women.
In the second show of Brat Camp, the the kid’s begin turning on one another.
Rob said to me as we watched them, “oooh great can’t wait for that episode, yeah that’s what happens, I see it in the class room all the time,” (I could see he was getting some depraved sense of schadenfreude from the whole show,) “Once the authority has complete control, then the kids start attacking each other.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Dunno,” he shrugged. “I just know that’s what happens.”
“Maybe it’s because there’s no point in challenging an authority that has firmly and unquestionably instituted it’s position, so they move on down to the next level where they can still have some hope of exercising control over people who are still in a struggle for power with one another?”
“Yeah that would be it, " he agreed.
I wondered how Chomsky would explain this in regard to his theory that the natural human response hardwired into our brain is to never allow ourselves to be fully subjugated by totally oppressive political systems. Maybe the kid's responses were a perfect example of how humans instinctively rebel against tyrannical systems, (because let's face it, regardless of the fact that the system seemed to be effective in changing the kid's behaviour, Camp Turn-a-bout was undoubtedly tyrannical.) Maybe the very fact that some of the kids rebelled against the totallitarian approach of the camp leaders was not an indicator of their 'naughtiness' or 'waywardness' but was a natural human response. There was no doubt to me that some of these kids were truly out of control and needed help, but was it really benefiting them to teach them to blindly and unquestioninly obey authority figures?
As far as I was concerned, Joe - the punk with the Union Jack T-shirt - might have needed to learn respect for other human beings and the value of contributing to society with some good hard work, but Camp Turn-a-bout also had the potential to strip all those things I saw in him of value. The parts of him that did question the authority systems of his society, and any society who loses the ability or right to questions its governing body, is a society putting itself at risk. It taught them to unquestioningly conform. Surely there must be other ways of getting to these kids.
But I'm jumping the gun a bit, maybe Camp Turn-a-bout will surprise me in future episodes. I see a lot of the psychology surrounding the place works on the basis that the kids need to appreciate their rights by earning them with responsibility. Maybe, hopefully, in further episodes as the kids mature, their understanding of their social responsibilities will be realised as an earned right to question their authority figures, not indiscriminately, but when the time calls for it.
On another note, the whole process of the subjugated human responses to turn on each other, raised some questions in my mind on another matter; how women treat one another.
All of a sudden I recalled reading in my latest book, (Witch Hunters. P.G Maxwell Stuart,) an explanation by the author of what he really understood to be the motivations of the reporting of a witch in a community. By his understanding and research, it was often, (not always,) more a matter driven by local and communal internal pressures rather than driven by larger political conspiracies.
He bases some of this argument on the fact that it was usually women reporting on other women that began the trial of a so-called witch. (There were also many male witches incriminated.)
The state of female relationships in our own day and age is currently under a lot of speculation. Why do our teenage girls tear each other apart? We have movies like “Mean Girls” which addresses the fractious nature of female teenage relationships, we watch psychologists grappling with the problem on Oprah Winfrey. We see in the Big Brother series (I’m speaking of my country’s version,) that the culling of female contestants often happens in preference to the young, virile, Australian male, and we witness the way the girls on the show unwittingly fall into the trap of being prime candidates for viewer’s dislike and their own eventual eviction, because as the boy housemates bond and become closer and more invincible, the female housemates almost always fall into patterns of tearing each other down. And although the males also engage in bitching and back-stabbing, the intensity of the girl’s version of these experiences is strong enough to deny them the same very strong group bond that the males often end up in, which almost always inevitably leads to house domination.
(This is not to say that the average white Australian male always wins Big Brother; We just had a female win recently. But she was young, blonde, sweet and non-threatening, which also reveals the psyche on femininity in the Australian public.)
And while it’s true that there are also a lot of votes going to male housemates simply because the show is puerile and watched by scores of teenage girls who vote the men in so that they can look at their 'hot bods,' and this is probably the obvious reason men are lasting longer than women, it doesn’t discount by above theory as a valid contributor to why men lasting longer on the show than women in general, in fact it supports it, because we then have to ask the question, why are female voters more predisposed to vote for men they like to look at or think they have a crush on as opposed to voting for their own sex in a demonstration of solidarity?
Naturally my first thought was that females tear each other apart without stopping to think about what they’re doing for just the same reasons Rob and I had discussed in relation to Brat Farm. They think they are in a competition with one another to attract male attention. (And as Naomi Wolf points out in The Beauty Myth, females look upon themselves firstly in the light of how other people are going to experience them, and only then how they will experience and look upon themselves.) But it's also deeper than that, they tear each other apart because they're so deeply subjugated by patriarchy that they can't even recognise it, it's normal for them to accept the patriarchal system they've been under forever and so it doesn't enter their minds to truely turn their attention to toppling that power structure, instead they turn in on each other.
http://got.net/~elained/patriarchy.html
Any and every female is preconditioned to exist in a patriarchal society from birth. Julia Kristeva would argue that it begins when a child learns language, which is patriarchal in nature. I would argue that it happens even before that with the unspoken and physical cues that a baby of any sex is presented with and long before he or she understands language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Kristeva
In one of my Master's papers I wrote;
Long before use of language in a patriarchal form, a child is receiving a multitude of information that signifies our patriarchal culture, which will inevitably affect the very core of who the child becomes. For example; an experiment played out for the camera, was one in which a baby boy was dressed in a pink jumpsuit and left on a couch for strangers to come and talk to and hold, and then alternately dressed in a blue jumpsuit and the same procedure repeated again. Although it was the exact same baby in the pink and then blue jumpsuit, the behaviour of the adults towards the baby was vastly different.
While the baby was in pink, it was held tenderly to people’s bodies, rocked, sung to softly and its future was ruminated on in regards to stereotypical female professions like “ballet dancers.” While the baby was in a blue jumpsuit, people once again assumed it was a little boy, hugged it with a little more gusto, threw it up into the air, told it how “strong” it was and considered such occupations for it as a “football player” or “fireman.” Despite the fact it was always the same baby...
Rob said to me as we watched them, “oooh great can’t wait for that episode, yeah that’s what happens, I see it in the class room all the time,” (I could see he was getting some depraved sense of schadenfreude from the whole show,) “Once the authority has complete control, then the kids start attacking each other.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Dunno,” he shrugged. “I just know that’s what happens.”
“Maybe it’s because there’s no point in challenging an authority that has firmly and unquestionably instituted it’s position, so they move on down to the next level where they can still have some hope of exercising control over people who are still in a struggle for power with one another?”
“Yeah that would be it, " he agreed.
I wondered how Chomsky would explain this in regard to his theory that the natural human response hardwired into our brain is to never allow ourselves to be fully subjugated by totally oppressive political systems. Maybe the kid's responses were a perfect example of how humans instinctively rebel against tyrannical systems, (because let's face it, regardless of the fact that the system seemed to be effective in changing the kid's behaviour, Camp Turn-a-bout was undoubtedly tyrannical.) Maybe the very fact that some of the kids rebelled against the totallitarian approach of the camp leaders was not an indicator of their 'naughtiness' or 'waywardness' but was a natural human response. There was no doubt to me that some of these kids were truly out of control and needed help, but was it really benefiting them to teach them to blindly and unquestioninly obey authority figures?
As far as I was concerned, Joe - the punk with the Union Jack T-shirt - might have needed to learn respect for other human beings and the value of contributing to society with some good hard work, but Camp Turn-a-bout also had the potential to strip all those things I saw in him of value. The parts of him that did question the authority systems of his society, and any society who loses the ability or right to questions its governing body, is a society putting itself at risk. It taught them to unquestioningly conform. Surely there must be other ways of getting to these kids.
But I'm jumping the gun a bit, maybe Camp Turn-a-bout will surprise me in future episodes. I see a lot of the psychology surrounding the place works on the basis that the kids need to appreciate their rights by earning them with responsibility. Maybe, hopefully, in further episodes as the kids mature, their understanding of their social responsibilities will be realised as an earned right to question their authority figures, not indiscriminately, but when the time calls for it.
On another note, the whole process of the subjugated human responses to turn on each other, raised some questions in my mind on another matter; how women treat one another.
All of a sudden I recalled reading in my latest book, (Witch Hunters. P.G Maxwell Stuart,) an explanation by the author of what he really understood to be the motivations of the reporting of a witch in a community. By his understanding and research, it was often, (not always,) more a matter driven by local and communal internal pressures rather than driven by larger political conspiracies.
He bases some of this argument on the fact that it was usually women reporting on other women that began the trial of a so-called witch. (There were also many male witches incriminated.)
The state of female relationships in our own day and age is currently under a lot of speculation. Why do our teenage girls tear each other apart? We have movies like “Mean Girls” which addresses the fractious nature of female teenage relationships, we watch psychologists grappling with the problem on Oprah Winfrey. We see in the Big Brother series (I’m speaking of my country’s version,) that the culling of female contestants often happens in preference to the young, virile, Australian male, and we witness the way the girls on the show unwittingly fall into the trap of being prime candidates for viewer’s dislike and their own eventual eviction, because as the boy housemates bond and become closer and more invincible, the female housemates almost always fall into patterns of tearing each other down. And although the males also engage in bitching and back-stabbing, the intensity of the girl’s version of these experiences is strong enough to deny them the same very strong group bond that the males often end up in, which almost always inevitably leads to house domination.
(This is not to say that the average white Australian male always wins Big Brother; We just had a female win recently. But she was young, blonde, sweet and non-threatening, which also reveals the psyche on femininity in the Australian public.)
And while it’s true that there are also a lot of votes going to male housemates simply because the show is puerile and watched by scores of teenage girls who vote the men in so that they can look at their 'hot bods,' and this is probably the obvious reason men are lasting longer than women, it doesn’t discount by above theory as a valid contributor to why men lasting longer on the show than women in general, in fact it supports it, because we then have to ask the question, why are female voters more predisposed to vote for men they like to look at or think they have a crush on as opposed to voting for their own sex in a demonstration of solidarity?
Naturally my first thought was that females tear each other apart without stopping to think about what they’re doing for just the same reasons Rob and I had discussed in relation to Brat Farm. They think they are in a competition with one another to attract male attention. (And as Naomi Wolf points out in The Beauty Myth, females look upon themselves firstly in the light of how other people are going to experience them, and only then how they will experience and look upon themselves.) But it's also deeper than that, they tear each other apart because they're so deeply subjugated by patriarchy that they can't even recognise it, it's normal for them to accept the patriarchal system they've been under forever and so it doesn't enter their minds to truely turn their attention to toppling that power structure, instead they turn in on each other.
http://got.net/~elained/patriarchy.html
Any and every female is preconditioned to exist in a patriarchal society from birth. Julia Kristeva would argue that it begins when a child learns language, which is patriarchal in nature. I would argue that it happens even before that with the unspoken and physical cues that a baby of any sex is presented with and long before he or she understands language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Kristeva
In one of my Master's papers I wrote;
Long before use of language in a patriarchal form, a child is receiving a multitude of information that signifies our patriarchal culture, which will inevitably affect the very core of who the child becomes. For example; an experiment played out for the camera, was one in which a baby boy was dressed in a pink jumpsuit and left on a couch for strangers to come and talk to and hold, and then alternately dressed in a blue jumpsuit and the same procedure repeated again. Although it was the exact same baby in the pink and then blue jumpsuit, the behaviour of the adults towards the baby was vastly different.
While the baby was in pink, it was held tenderly to people’s bodies, rocked, sung to softly and its future was ruminated on in regards to stereotypical female professions like “ballet dancers.” While the baby was in a blue jumpsuit, people once again assumed it was a little boy, hugged it with a little more gusto, threw it up into the air, told it how “strong” it was and considered such occupations for it as a “football player” or “fireman.” Despite the fact it was always the same baby...
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Australian PM takes a tumble
Now, any inquisitive person with a basic interest in politics, or a person with a subversive hatred of their own government, if they saw this;
would be asking them selves, "does every country turn their leader into the number one article on the evening news because he tripped over going up a flight of stairs?"
Well, I think we could assume with reasonable success, that this man would feature on the top news headline of his country for tripping over...
But you could safely guess that this man probably wouldn't...
Monday, July 23, 2007
Never under estimate children's literature, or; Why I love Alice.
The Ancient Greek Presocratic natural philosophers are some of my very favorite thinkers.(Can't get enough of that abstract metaphysics.)
Heraclitus; (get your mind out of the gutter - it isn't spelt like that,) introduced the notion of flux and unity of opposites just around the time Taoism was born. (Though there is no known proof the ideas were linked by inter-relation of the respective authors.) Amoung other things, Heraclitus believed that harmony existed through the dynamic force of opposites, (night/day, war/peace,) so that the true nature of the universe was one of constant, ever-changing flux and motion.
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/HERAC.HTM
Parmenides; Parmenides on the other hand, believed that change was impossible. To Parmenides, reality is complete as it is. It is unchangeable, immovable, singular and undivided.
http://www.abu.nb.ca/Courses/GrPhil/Parmenides.htm
Zeno; came up with the argument to support Parmenides theory that matter is continous and is composed of an endless collection of units or points. He formulates this idea on the premise that any three dimensional object can be divided endlessly into smaller and smaller parts. This affects time, space and motion. For instance; The famous Achilles and the tortoise paradox;
"Achilles gives the tortoise a head start. But before he can get to where the tortoise is, it will have moved a little farther on, and before he gets to that spot it will have moved further on again and so on indefinitely. Achilles can never catch the tortoise no matter how far he runs, for every time he moves, the tortoise moves too. " (Philosophy. 100 Essential Thinkers. Phillip Stokes. Arcturus. 2003.)
We all know on a practical level that Achilles can out run the tortoise in real life by increasing his own speed in relation to the slower speed of the tortoise, but Zeno's argument to support an unchanging and indivisible whole, has been hard to refute for philosophers down through the ages as any line or distance can be divided up into a smaller one. Atoms as we now understand them, can be divided up into smaller and smaller elements of matter. Apparently modern set-theoretic mathematics now has a satisfactory answer to Zeno's argument, but don't look at me -I"m a mathematics vegetable!!! (Although I did once read The Book of Nothing by John Barrow and not only surprised myself by enjoying it, but even understood most of it.)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/z/zenoelea.htm
The first time I contemplated Parmenides' idea that change was impossible, (in the light of Zeno's argument,) I sat for hours looking up at the leaves rustling in the wind above me and wondered if it were possible that they were moving so infinitely, that they weren't even moving at all. That really blew my mind!
Democritius; made the first prediction of modern science's understanding of atoms. To Democritius, atoms were solid matter and indivisible, and it was only the space around them that could be divided up into infinite parts. This theory lead to unity between Hereclitus and Parmenides' own theories because it encouraged the idea that change and motion were necessary, and simultaneously the idea that non-being was impossible.
http://www.thebigview.com/greeks/democritus.html
The first time I really thought about atoms, I had to go around hitting everything with the palm of my hand or tapping on the surfaces of things with my fingers, saying to people around me, "that's made up of atoms you know ... of course you know, but you know what that means? Well if atoms are really made up of two-thirds empty space as they now say, then all that hard matter around us, doesn't exist the way we think it does. Think about that, we're living in a world that's more space than it is hard matter, it's more not here than it is here.! What does it mean? What does it all mean for mind and spirit then?" Now that really, really blew my mind and it's ideas like that which keep me fascinated in metaphysics, quantum physics and philosophy.
Anyway, I could go on forever about this stuff, but that was a basic introduction to, or reminder of, depending where you are on the subject, the philosophers of Ancient Greece. But why did I put that up?
Because of this;
"Alice could never quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and the Queen kept crying 'Faster!' but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had no breath to say so.
The most curious part of the thing was that the trees and other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. 'I wonder if all the things move along with us?' thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried 'Faster! Don't try to talk!'
Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. she felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so out of breath: and the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster!' and dragged her along. 'Are we nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at last.
'Nearly there!' The Queen repeated. 'Why we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence,with the wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, or so she fancied.
'Now! Now!' Cried the Queen. 'Faster! faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little now.'
Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree all the time! Everything's just as it was!'
'Of course it is,' said the Queen: 'what would you have it?'
'Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'
'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."
And you thought it was just a children's story! (More Alice philosophy coming up in future posts.)
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Brat Camp 1 (Reflecting on our brat years.)
Last night we watched Brat Camp on ABC TV. (My favourite character was the kid with the Sid Vicious haircut and the Union Jack T-shirt who hated the Government and Capitalism.)
The premise of the show is that a whole lot of out-of-control English teenage brats are sent packing to an American cowboy hardline ranch in Utah.
Our conversation on the show after we’d watched it went something like this;
I told Rob that I thought it was a little extreme, considering that what was ultimately happening was that naughty little English rebels were being taught how to conform without question and with total subservience to a rigid set of applied rules.
Rob, (being the high school teacher that he is,) said “yeah but these kids need some non-negotiable rules in place because their behaviour is so extreme and that’s all they understand, extreme rules for extreme behaviour. These kids want all the rights without any of the responsibilities and they needed to learn that all rights come with a set of responsibilities.”
I shrugged my shoulders, I guess he was right and I could see how the designers of “Turnaround Ranch” had created a program that supported this theory. In one scene, as a distraught teenage girl was crying out, “this isn’t fair!” The bull-headed cowboy/tyrant teacher/ yelled, spittled, back into her face, (not without a level of vehemence,) “nothing in life is fair, understand that now, nothing in this life is fair for anybody!”
So harsh to hear someone saying it out aloud and to a child more or less, but how can you deny the reality of it?
Our conversation turned to something more like this then;
Me telling Rob that I recall being just like one of those naughty little teenagers who was all caught up in myself and my own worries to the point that I couldn’t acknowledge other people’s sufferings and that I was under the delusion that I had it harder than anyone else I knew - the ‘poor me’ syndrome.
And that it took me a damn long time to wake up and grow up and realise that everyone suffered and everyone’s life was hard in one way or another and life wasn’t fair and no one owed me anything. Once I realised that I wasn’t anyone special and I began to look around and saw how other people all had to cope as best as they could in the face of their own adversities, then I began to think that maybe I should just pull my head in and get on with it.
And sometimes, (I told Rob,) life can get so bloody hard that you really have to purge all that extraneous self-pity because there’s just no time for it. You’re too busy surviving, sometimes one second to the next, especially once you have kids and you have to put your own feelings and emotions and needs on the back shelf, then you realise what hardships are really about, and then you discover that long periods of melancholic self-pity are nothing more than complete and utter narcism. They’re a friggin’ luxury! People who have enough time to feel sorry for themselves for silly lengths of time, are people that aren’t suffering enough to be forced to forego they’re perverted ego massaging.
Rob said, “yeah, took me a long time to grow up and realise that too.”
Maybe we were too sheltered or spoilt, or maybe we didn’t have proper tools to help us deal with the transition from childhood to maturity, to help us deal with, and accept the inevitable tragedies that were set aside to be ours.
The premise of the show is that a whole lot of out-of-control English teenage brats are sent packing to an American cowboy hardline ranch in Utah.
Our conversation on the show after we’d watched it went something like this;
I told Rob that I thought it was a little extreme, considering that what was ultimately happening was that naughty little English rebels were being taught how to conform without question and with total subservience to a rigid set of applied rules.
Rob, (being the high school teacher that he is,) said “yeah but these kids need some non-negotiable rules in place because their behaviour is so extreme and that’s all they understand, extreme rules for extreme behaviour. These kids want all the rights without any of the responsibilities and they needed to learn that all rights come with a set of responsibilities.”
I shrugged my shoulders, I guess he was right and I could see how the designers of “Turnaround Ranch” had created a program that supported this theory. In one scene, as a distraught teenage girl was crying out, “this isn’t fair!” The bull-headed cowboy/tyrant teacher/ yelled, spittled, back into her face, (not without a level of vehemence,) “nothing in life is fair, understand that now, nothing in this life is fair for anybody!”
So harsh to hear someone saying it out aloud and to a child more or less, but how can you deny the reality of it?
Our conversation turned to something more like this then;
Me telling Rob that I recall being just like one of those naughty little teenagers who was all caught up in myself and my own worries to the point that I couldn’t acknowledge other people’s sufferings and that I was under the delusion that I had it harder than anyone else I knew - the ‘poor me’ syndrome.
And that it took me a damn long time to wake up and grow up and realise that everyone suffered and everyone’s life was hard in one way or another and life wasn’t fair and no one owed me anything. Once I realised that I wasn’t anyone special and I began to look around and saw how other people all had to cope as best as they could in the face of their own adversities, then I began to think that maybe I should just pull my head in and get on with it.
And sometimes, (I told Rob,) life can get so bloody hard that you really have to purge all that extraneous self-pity because there’s just no time for it. You’re too busy surviving, sometimes one second to the next, especially once you have kids and you have to put your own feelings and emotions and needs on the back shelf, then you realise what hardships are really about, and then you discover that long periods of melancholic self-pity are nothing more than complete and utter narcism. They’re a friggin’ luxury! People who have enough time to feel sorry for themselves for silly lengths of time, are people that aren’t suffering enough to be forced to forego they’re perverted ego massaging.
Rob said, “yeah, took me a long time to grow up and realise that too.”
Maybe we were too sheltered or spoilt, or maybe we didn’t have proper tools to help us deal with the transition from childhood to maturity, to help us deal with, and accept the inevitable tragedies that were set aside to be ours.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
A little bit of literature creeping in now. (What is history?)
Last year I wanted to be a physicist, last month a philosopher, last week a linguist, this week an historian. Which is why I'm none of them I suppose.
(We have fog outside now and all the mountains are shrouded in it. The baby is watching The Wiggles in the lounge room and so I'm blogging with abandon.)
I've read more books than I have watched television this week. Sometimes I find books with titles I like the sound of, and I read them like an automaton until I finish that book, whether or not I like it. A little bit Asperger's I know, but the nice symmetry of finishing a book makes me feel secure and in control. And anyhow, you learn heaps.
This week I've been forced to think about history, personal and collective, through a set of circumstances that reminded me of my own. One thing I've learned is that to some degree each person's understanding of history is distinct from everyone else's. Therere have been times in my past through which I viewed myself as a misunderstood heroine, a victim of circumstances out of my control or an overcomer of adversity. But other people, through those same set of historical circumstances, have a completely different perception of me, one in which I appear as a minor character and do not occupy the same role I though I was playing. Sometimes, to my shock and horror, I discover that I've unwittingly been someone's downfall, and even played the villain in the historical script of their life.
I've also been reading a book called Witch Hunters by P.G Maxwell-Stuart (Tempus 2005) which discusses the way collective consciousness creates realities on a mass scale through cultural and societal norms. It discusses the writings and philosophies of prominent witch hunters in various disciplines from doctors (Condrochi,) and judges (De Lancre,) to theologians (Del Rio,) and demonstrates just how logical witch-hunting seemed in the face of the limited knowledge medieval society had at their disposal. For a person in the middle-ages it was widely accepted as a truth that women by nature, were weaker than men and more prone to falling into 'sin,' being both "sexually rampant and morally frail." (I wonder if they ever stopped to consider that men needed to accomodate all that sexual rampantness for it to flourish so profusely in women in the first place.)
"What is more, women's bodies leaked, as was evidentfrom lactation and menstruation. This therefore meant that women's bodies were less contained than those of men, making the business of crossing their physical boundaries much easier."
Now if you live in a time where this is the pervasive conscious and unconscious psyche, how can you ever really transcend it? This was as real to them as global warming is to us today. If a man believes this is the truth about a woman, how does this affect how he interacts with her? And if a woman believes this is true also, then how does this affect how she interacts with her world? Everyone plays their part, because it's 'reality' and not to be questioned and people who do question societal realities, find themselves on the fringe of that said reality and subsequently suffer differing degrees of punitive treatment. This demonstrated to me, just how we not only invent our own individual histories, but how we incorporate them into the history of our time and therefore contribute to the making of it.
History is a subjective thing. Historians make decisions on who, where and what are important contributing factors to the shaping of history and so they exclude some information and include others. They define history through the eyes of their own time and culture and even when they work very hard not to do this, how can they ever really escape their own time and culture completely enough to ever see history truely objectively? This isn't a judgement, but a fact for anyone in almost any disciplines as is pretty common knowledge these days. Even in certain scientific realms.
So what I now understand, is that not only is my own history something of my own creation, Ibut 'm conspiring with the world around me to accept the widely held belief-systems of my culture and society as reality. This isn't a bad thing, it's a necessity for human survival.
I've also read an article in the March issue of Philosophy Now by Stephan Snaevarr (Don Quioxte and the Narrative Self,) that discusses the idea that we learn to define and understand our lives by applying narrative meaning to them. This also supported my new realisation of history.
All this is great news if you're a po-mo advocate because an exploration of history does seem to demonstrate the validity of ideas such as that; there is no reality except what we decide is a reality to substantiate and control our societies by; that each man's reality and understanding is as valid as the next person's; and that there are many competing narratives, none of which are more valid than the next. And it almost converted me to post-modernism!
Almost...
Because then I got to thinking about why we choose certain realities to exist within collectively. The first most obvious answer, is that we do it to make sure the human species survive.
Much like the penguin march where all the penguins treck to the mating ground together and huddle into each other in the cold to form a huge barrier so that even while some on the outskirts of their group might die of exposure, enough of them survive to promote the survival of their species, so humans do the same thing, only we use social rules to engage with each other to collaborate together on survival of the species.
And I cannot help believing that some of these rules are based on realities and truths that are not subjective as a post-modernist would argue, but are either external and universal laws, or are innate human survival mechanisms.
Love is a truth that cannot be removed from our human psyche because without it, we would begin to forget to look after each other, we would begin to destroy each other and therefore potentially threaten the survival of our own species.
Which is the underlying reason I hate Capitalism, because it promotes individualism that, although it professes to be based on the same assumption that external, or innate, truths of compassion and love promote the survival of the species, it simultaneously and illogically encourages people the whole time to go against this natural inclination of group or species survival, by giving us permission to disregard each other in the pursuit of personal gain. In my opinion this is nothing more than raw survival mode and doesn't contribute to the construction of a healthy society.
Who were the best post-modernist cultures? I would argue that they were the ones where communication was most primitive and less defined because understanding one another is based on common modes of complex and intricate communication systems, most effectively demonstrated in language, but if you begin to break these codes up and distort them so that there are nothing but competing understandings of reality alone and no real consensus of what reality is, then you threaten to break down social barriers. So is post-modern theory, by creating the end of history, sending us forward? Or could it be sending us backward? (Some earlier thoughts I have along these lines are in another post Notes on my Poem.)
Where does this leave me? It leaves me believing that there are many different perceptions on reality, which contribute to people being able to construct and shape history and their own lives to a large degree, but also believing there are still real and definable external and innate realities we need to acknowledge. I cannot overturn the social realities around me in my lifetime but I can contribute to changing them by resisting the parts that I consider immoral or unethical or that I consider not conducive to a healthy society. I do this by fighting from inside the social structure and not from outside it as an enemy. (At least not in this point of time.) I also need to come to terms with the idea that many of society's elements are in place to help me survive. It also confirms to me the notion that criticism in a society is a healthy and necessary thing.
I want to construct my own narrative with self and social awareness. In creating an understanding of my own philosophical, political and religious belief system, not distinct from the social and cultural system around me, but within in it, I have some control and don't have to feel so disempowered. When I first began this blog I used the term disempowered in a site feed, but I think the very writing of this blog has opened up my understanding to the fact that I'm not always as disempowered as I assume I am.
As part of my experiment with this web blog, I want to begin to develop my own metaphysical or religous understanding, taking from history but not being controlled by the dominant forces of religion. I want to begin to develop my own political ideal, and to define my own philosophical stance on things. I've done a good job starting that today...
Cheers
(We have fog outside now and all the mountains are shrouded in it. The baby is watching The Wiggles in the lounge room and so I'm blogging with abandon.)
I've read more books than I have watched television this week. Sometimes I find books with titles I like the sound of, and I read them like an automaton until I finish that book, whether or not I like it. A little bit Asperger's I know, but the nice symmetry of finishing a book makes me feel secure and in control. And anyhow, you learn heaps.
This week I've been forced to think about history, personal and collective, through a set of circumstances that reminded me of my own. One thing I've learned is that to some degree each person's understanding of history is distinct from everyone else's. Therere have been times in my past through which I viewed myself as a misunderstood heroine, a victim of circumstances out of my control or an overcomer of adversity. But other people, through those same set of historical circumstances, have a completely different perception of me, one in which I appear as a minor character and do not occupy the same role I though I was playing. Sometimes, to my shock and horror, I discover that I've unwittingly been someone's downfall, and even played the villain in the historical script of their life.
I've also been reading a book called Witch Hunters by P.G Maxwell-Stuart (Tempus 2005) which discusses the way collective consciousness creates realities on a mass scale through cultural and societal norms. It discusses the writings and philosophies of prominent witch hunters in various disciplines from doctors (Condrochi,) and judges (De Lancre,) to theologians (Del Rio,) and demonstrates just how logical witch-hunting seemed in the face of the limited knowledge medieval society had at their disposal. For a person in the middle-ages it was widely accepted as a truth that women by nature, were weaker than men and more prone to falling into 'sin,' being both "sexually rampant and morally frail." (I wonder if they ever stopped to consider that men needed to accomodate all that sexual rampantness for it to flourish so profusely in women in the first place.)
"What is more, women's bodies leaked, as was evidentfrom lactation and menstruation. This therefore meant that women's bodies were less contained than those of men, making the business of crossing their physical boundaries much easier."
Now if you live in a time where this is the pervasive conscious and unconscious psyche, how can you ever really transcend it? This was as real to them as global warming is to us today. If a man believes this is the truth about a woman, how does this affect how he interacts with her? And if a woman believes this is true also, then how does this affect how she interacts with her world? Everyone plays their part, because it's 'reality' and not to be questioned and people who do question societal realities, find themselves on the fringe of that said reality and subsequently suffer differing degrees of punitive treatment. This demonstrated to me, just how we not only invent our own individual histories, but how we incorporate them into the history of our time and therefore contribute to the making of it.
History is a subjective thing. Historians make decisions on who, where and what are important contributing factors to the shaping of history and so they exclude some information and include others. They define history through the eyes of their own time and culture and even when they work very hard not to do this, how can they ever really escape their own time and culture completely enough to ever see history truely objectively? This isn't a judgement, but a fact for anyone in almost any disciplines as is pretty common knowledge these days. Even in certain scientific realms.
So what I now understand, is that not only is my own history something of my own creation, Ibut 'm conspiring with the world around me to accept the widely held belief-systems of my culture and society as reality. This isn't a bad thing, it's a necessity for human survival.
I've also read an article in the March issue of Philosophy Now by Stephan Snaevarr (Don Quioxte and the Narrative Self,) that discusses the idea that we learn to define and understand our lives by applying narrative meaning to them. This also supported my new realisation of history.
All this is great news if you're a po-mo advocate because an exploration of history does seem to demonstrate the validity of ideas such as that; there is no reality except what we decide is a reality to substantiate and control our societies by; that each man's reality and understanding is as valid as the next person's; and that there are many competing narratives, none of which are more valid than the next. And it almost converted me to post-modernism!
Almost...
Because then I got to thinking about why we choose certain realities to exist within collectively. The first most obvious answer, is that we do it to make sure the human species survive.
Much like the penguin march where all the penguins treck to the mating ground together and huddle into each other in the cold to form a huge barrier so that even while some on the outskirts of their group might die of exposure, enough of them survive to promote the survival of their species, so humans do the same thing, only we use social rules to engage with each other to collaborate together on survival of the species.
And I cannot help believing that some of these rules are based on realities and truths that are not subjective as a post-modernist would argue, but are either external and universal laws, or are innate human survival mechanisms.
Love is a truth that cannot be removed from our human psyche because without it, we would begin to forget to look after each other, we would begin to destroy each other and therefore potentially threaten the survival of our own species.
Which is the underlying reason I hate Capitalism, because it promotes individualism that, although it professes to be based on the same assumption that external, or innate, truths of compassion and love promote the survival of the species, it simultaneously and illogically encourages people the whole time to go against this natural inclination of group or species survival, by giving us permission to disregard each other in the pursuit of personal gain. In my opinion this is nothing more than raw survival mode and doesn't contribute to the construction of a healthy society.
Who were the best post-modernist cultures? I would argue that they were the ones where communication was most primitive and less defined because understanding one another is based on common modes of complex and intricate communication systems, most effectively demonstrated in language, but if you begin to break these codes up and distort them so that there are nothing but competing understandings of reality alone and no real consensus of what reality is, then you threaten to break down social barriers. So is post-modern theory, by creating the end of history, sending us forward? Or could it be sending us backward? (Some earlier thoughts I have along these lines are in another post Notes on my Poem.)
Where does this leave me? It leaves me believing that there are many different perceptions on reality, which contribute to people being able to construct and shape history and their own lives to a large degree, but also believing there are still real and definable external and innate realities we need to acknowledge. I cannot overturn the social realities around me in my lifetime but I can contribute to changing them by resisting the parts that I consider immoral or unethical or that I consider not conducive to a healthy society. I do this by fighting from inside the social structure and not from outside it as an enemy. (At least not in this point of time.) I also need to come to terms with the idea that many of society's elements are in place to help me survive. It also confirms to me the notion that criticism in a society is a healthy and necessary thing.
I want to construct my own narrative with self and social awareness. In creating an understanding of my own philosophical, political and religious belief system, not distinct from the social and cultural system around me, but within in it, I have some control and don't have to feel so disempowered. When I first began this blog I used the term disempowered in a site feed, but I think the very writing of this blog has opened up my understanding to the fact that I'm not always as disempowered as I assume I am.
As part of my experiment with this web blog, I want to begin to develop my own metaphysical or religous understanding, taking from history but not being controlled by the dominant forces of religion. I want to begin to develop my own political ideal, and to define my own philosophical stance on things. I've done a good job starting that today...
Cheers
snow and politics
First of all, I've removed my last post. For anyone unfortunate enough to read it, apologies... for those of you lucky enough to have missed it, it was just a drunken tirade against the culture of world societies that de-value artistic people and artistic pursuits unless they're a successful consummer commodity. Who the hell am I fooling? It was just a drunken tirade...
I don't have many vices these days, well I have none anymore, except for a couple of glasses of red on weekend evenings which get me bourgeois tipsy, but there's nothing wrong with a few glasses of red on the weekend is there now? Just remember not to post anything afterwards!
Secondly, you should see the snow here. We don't have any around our house, the valley is too deep, but on every mountain around, at every angle, the snow is all over the gum trees like icing sugar. It's stunning and I don't mind the icy air and having to stay on top of the heater for the romance of it all.
Thirdly, has anyone read the headlines in The Age this morning?
"Treasurer accuses the Prime Minister of putting his own interests ahead of the Liberal Party's."
(Well what's he got to lose now? He ain't never gonna be PM.)
And what about this one?
"Federal court judge says he too, would fail the immigration test being used to detain terror suspect Haneef."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/judge-astounded-at-visa-ruling/2007/07/18/1184559867713.html
Ho ho! That little scheme is backfiring on you isn't it Ruddock? Not looking so hot in the public eyes now are you? But then you never really did.
You gotta love it... the snivelling little despot rats are self-destructing in panic as their decade long rule, their wicked little house of cards, begins to tumble in slow motion.
I make no apologies for my indifference to the feelings of the Liberal Party, they never showed any compassion for the way their policies affected mine.
I don't have many vices these days, well I have none anymore, except for a couple of glasses of red on weekend evenings which get me bourgeois tipsy, but there's nothing wrong with a few glasses of red on the weekend is there now? Just remember not to post anything afterwards!
Secondly, you should see the snow here. We don't have any around our house, the valley is too deep, but on every mountain around, at every angle, the snow is all over the gum trees like icing sugar. It's stunning and I don't mind the icy air and having to stay on top of the heater for the romance of it all.
Thirdly, has anyone read the headlines in The Age this morning?
"Treasurer accuses the Prime Minister of putting his own interests ahead of the Liberal Party's."
(Well what's he got to lose now? He ain't never gonna be PM.)
And what about this one?
"Federal court judge says he too, would fail the immigration test being used to detain terror suspect Haneef."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/judge-astounded-at-visa-ruling/2007/07/18/1184559867713.html
Ho ho! That little scheme is backfiring on you isn't it Ruddock? Not looking so hot in the public eyes now are you? But then you never really did.
You gotta love it... the snivelling little despot rats are self-destructing in panic as their decade long rule, their wicked little house of cards, begins to tumble in slow motion.
I make no apologies for my indifference to the feelings of the Liberal Party, they never showed any compassion for the way their policies affected mine.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Unhappy dissent
Where's all the noise lately about the new John Howard plan to send scores of police, military and doctors into Aborginal communities under the rouse of protecting the children from sexual abuse?
Now what's wrong with this picture? Plenty if you ask me. I don't know about everyone else, (except from those whose opinions were highlighted on TV,) but alarm bells were going off furiously in my head from the first moment the words 'child protection' and 'military' were said in the same sentence on the National News.
(If you're not familiar with Australian Politics go to the below link for a more detailed account of the situation:)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21947691-601,00.html
Ok, so I don't doubt for a minute that there are some serious issues going on with child abuse in the Aboriginal community. Here's a people who have been abused for generations, their culture and their people and their self-identity has been decimated. Abuse breeds abuse and so our own race and culture have contributed to this modern state of affairs. None of this information is news to Australians. So why now Mr Howard? Why so suddenly and forcefully? You have to ask yourself the question on what this man's motivations are. 'Honest John' doesn't do anything without an ulterior motive. He has a long history of lying to his constituents and why should we expect that this instance is going to be any different? I think it's the height of naivity to assume that Mr Howard is doing this for altruistic reasons. So the next logical question then is, why is he doing this? What's in it for him?
Let's just stop and ask ourselves how white Australia might respond if John Howard decided to send police, military forces and doctors into a white community that had statisitical wide spread child abuse and threatened to remove their social security pensions if they didn't comply with his laws, or if they decided to take back possession of their housing commission homes, the ones they'd spent years on a waiting list for and had begun to pay off. I mean where are you in those neigbourhoods John? There's a white estate just down the road here that could use your help.
All you have to do is drive through the main street and if you know anyone in that estate, you'll also know the gossip. Someone will tell you that that little girl sitting on her bike over on the curb had to go to hospital because her father raped her violently. That guy who stands on the side of the road when cars go past with the dark glasses on is Stanley and everyone knows that Stanley's done time for peadophilia. Those two kids with heads too small for their bodies there? Brother and Sister, caught having sex behind the school bike shed. Their Mum was an alcoholic and drank through both her pregnancies, used to actually feed the kids dope when they were still in a high chair. Flasher in that house there, guy in that house on your right comes out every few months and shoots his rifle off into the air - Viet Vet. The guy next door buried his mother and father in the back yard and cops finally got him when the insurance money came in and he bought three new cars in the same week. That fat lady with no bra on walked naked down the street last night, mad as a hatter, so where the HELL ARE YOU JOHN? WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU MAL BROUGH, in MY local lower socio-economic neighbourhood? Your policies are inconsistent, and LOADED with something sinister and self-serving. Don't fool yourself here. Child protection is not the main motivation but only the cover and Australians are by and large an ignorant, racist bunch who are happy enough to believe John Howard's lies.
Does it seem reasonable that there needs to be a military presence storming in suddenly to deal with social, health and welfare issues? How humiliating and degrading for the people of those communities, I'm talking about the ones that don't abuse their own children. And how many Aboriginal children were abused by white caretakers in the Stolen Generation? How arrogant of us to be repeating the same mistake.
Does it seem justifiable that John Howard is disregarding the Racial Discrimination Act to impose separate laws on black people to white people? Or that he feels justified in over riding Northern Territory laws to implement his plan? Why aren't people alarmed at the blatant acts of racial discrimination his government are commiting in the name of compassion?
Does it seem logical that he needs to take control back of the land Indigenous people had stolen off them and worked so hard to win back? Of course bloody not. There is no possible sensible reason he needs to do this.
I don't think enough Australians remember their year 8 history lessons well enough. Germany was easily ruled by a madman in the wake of the terrible hardship their nation endured after the first World War. Lesson, everything Hitler said sounded reasonable at the time because they needed to believe it.
(A quick refreshing history lesson on national politics and collective pysche: http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/hitler-cardset.doc )
I do not understand how a man who has stripped us of Industrial Relation Workplace Laws that protects workers against employees, a man who breeds fear into his people constantly and unrelentlessly over the idea of this vague enemey of terrorism, (one he himself has created by backing the Americans,) a man who wants to snip away at the social security safety net that protects the wounded and weak of our society, a man who has allowed the atrocities of detention centres to even exist, defying basic human and civil rights, can still be leading our country and making still more decisions to disempower and violently, ignorantly and cruelly cause even more suffering to minority groups that he and his elite cronies consider unworthy of basic human rights. What is wrong with you Australia?? This man is a DESPOT! A psychopath! This man is a terrorist! He is the abuser and we are the abused. The whole nation is suffering from some sort of sick man/wife abusive relationship. The sad thing is, by the time the wife usually realises just how bad it is and decides to leave once and for all, she's usually been damaged beyond repair.
If you like me, feel any sense of outrage and disempowerment, at least email the bastard and get it off your chest.
http://www.pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm
But don't be surprised if the neo-McCarthyites come knocking on your door to interrogate you.
Now what's wrong with this picture? Plenty if you ask me. I don't know about everyone else, (except from those whose opinions were highlighted on TV,) but alarm bells were going off furiously in my head from the first moment the words 'child protection' and 'military' were said in the same sentence on the National News.
(If you're not familiar with Australian Politics go to the below link for a more detailed account of the situation:)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21947691-601,00.html
Ok, so I don't doubt for a minute that there are some serious issues going on with child abuse in the Aboriginal community. Here's a people who have been abused for generations, their culture and their people and their self-identity has been decimated. Abuse breeds abuse and so our own race and culture have contributed to this modern state of affairs. None of this information is news to Australians. So why now Mr Howard? Why so suddenly and forcefully? You have to ask yourself the question on what this man's motivations are. 'Honest John' doesn't do anything without an ulterior motive. He has a long history of lying to his constituents and why should we expect that this instance is going to be any different? I think it's the height of naivity to assume that Mr Howard is doing this for altruistic reasons. So the next logical question then is, why is he doing this? What's in it for him?
Let's just stop and ask ourselves how white Australia might respond if John Howard decided to send police, military forces and doctors into a white community that had statisitical wide spread child abuse and threatened to remove their social security pensions if they didn't comply with his laws, or if they decided to take back possession of their housing commission homes, the ones they'd spent years on a waiting list for and had begun to pay off. I mean where are you in those neigbourhoods John? There's a white estate just down the road here that could use your help.
All you have to do is drive through the main street and if you know anyone in that estate, you'll also know the gossip. Someone will tell you that that little girl sitting on her bike over on the curb had to go to hospital because her father raped her violently. That guy who stands on the side of the road when cars go past with the dark glasses on is Stanley and everyone knows that Stanley's done time for peadophilia. Those two kids with heads too small for their bodies there? Brother and Sister, caught having sex behind the school bike shed. Their Mum was an alcoholic and drank through both her pregnancies, used to actually feed the kids dope when they were still in a high chair. Flasher in that house there, guy in that house on your right comes out every few months and shoots his rifle off into the air - Viet Vet. The guy next door buried his mother and father in the back yard and cops finally got him when the insurance money came in and he bought three new cars in the same week. That fat lady with no bra on walked naked down the street last night, mad as a hatter, so where the HELL ARE YOU JOHN? WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU MAL BROUGH, in MY local lower socio-economic neighbourhood? Your policies are inconsistent, and LOADED with something sinister and self-serving. Don't fool yourself here. Child protection is not the main motivation but only the cover and Australians are by and large an ignorant, racist bunch who are happy enough to believe John Howard's lies.
Does it seem reasonable that there needs to be a military presence storming in suddenly to deal with social, health and welfare issues? How humiliating and degrading for the people of those communities, I'm talking about the ones that don't abuse their own children. And how many Aboriginal children were abused by white caretakers in the Stolen Generation? How arrogant of us to be repeating the same mistake.
Does it seem justifiable that John Howard is disregarding the Racial Discrimination Act to impose separate laws on black people to white people? Or that he feels justified in over riding Northern Territory laws to implement his plan? Why aren't people alarmed at the blatant acts of racial discrimination his government are commiting in the name of compassion?
Does it seem logical that he needs to take control back of the land Indigenous people had stolen off them and worked so hard to win back? Of course bloody not. There is no possible sensible reason he needs to do this.
I don't think enough Australians remember their year 8 history lessons well enough. Germany was easily ruled by a madman in the wake of the terrible hardship their nation endured after the first World War. Lesson, everything Hitler said sounded reasonable at the time because they needed to believe it.
(A quick refreshing history lesson on national politics and collective pysche: http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/hitler-cardset.doc )
I do not understand how a man who has stripped us of Industrial Relation Workplace Laws that protects workers against employees, a man who breeds fear into his people constantly and unrelentlessly over the idea of this vague enemey of terrorism, (one he himself has created by backing the Americans,) a man who wants to snip away at the social security safety net that protects the wounded and weak of our society, a man who has allowed the atrocities of detention centres to even exist, defying basic human and civil rights, can still be leading our country and making still more decisions to disempower and violently, ignorantly and cruelly cause even more suffering to minority groups that he and his elite cronies consider unworthy of basic human rights. What is wrong with you Australia?? This man is a DESPOT! A psychopath! This man is a terrorist! He is the abuser and we are the abused. The whole nation is suffering from some sort of sick man/wife abusive relationship. The sad thing is, by the time the wife usually realises just how bad it is and decides to leave once and for all, she's usually been damaged beyond repair.
If you like me, feel any sense of outrage and disempowerment, at least email the bastard and get it off your chest.
http://www.pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm
But don't be surprised if the neo-McCarthyites come knocking on your door to interrogate you.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
So you want really good television? My favorite shows.
1: Shameless http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/S/shameless/
2: The Royle Family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royle_Family
3: Northern Exposure
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/N/htmlN/northernexpo/nothernexpo.htm
4: The Office http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/
5: Big Love http://www.hbo.com/biglove/
6: Fawlty Towers http://www.fawltysite.net/
7: The Goodies http://www.goodiesruleok.com/
2: The Royle Family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royle_Family
3: Northern Exposure
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/N/htmlN/northernexpo/nothernexpo.htm
4: The Office http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/
5: Big Love http://www.hbo.com/biglove/
6: Fawlty Towers http://www.fawltysite.net/
7: The Goodies http://www.goodiesruleok.com/
Saturday, June 30, 2007
I am not ashamed to be watching Shameless, Dr Phil. (The New Puritans.)
Saturday night is red wine, low fat rice snack, (the healthy alternative to chips, even though I prefer chips, they make me fat,) and movie night. And around eleven o'clock, when everything all looks a little bit Frank Gallagher blurry, the pinnacle of the night's excitement, (we do have a baby you know, if you think it should be other things,) is Shameless.
We LOVE LOVE LOVE Shameless.
Maybe it's got something to do with the quirky, dysfunctionally obscure characters and their quirky, dysfunctionally obscure relationships and lifestyles. Maybe it's got to do with the fact that all those people live the next suburb down from me. The suburb I lived in in my twenties as a young married born-again Christian, just fresh out from a mentally disturbing experience with, you know, all those things late teens/early twenties people think are cool to do. Then I found God, as you're apt to when the only choice left is between God or the psyche ward of the local hospital. God damn, I even used to try and evangelise those people!
Maybe it's the way the show vacillates between utter hilarity and heartbreaking tragedy with such precise execution of the script, without ever falling into bland sentimentality. And isn't that just like real life? No one's life is a constant. We all find ourselves propelled suddenly and with shocking violence from one to the other at times. Oh the joy of revelling in someone else's dysfunctional lifestyle.
So all those critics of dysfunctional family drama, (I'm talking to you Dr Phil and Rabbi Shmuley,) pull your heads in I say. Shit, life is short, not nearly long enough for every man, woman and child world-wide to discover self-enlightenment and find Shalom in the Home. Can't we just take a little comfort from the fact that we aren't alone in our sordid, fallible human imperfections? I'm sick to death of the New Puritans. Yeah we need to help each other out sometimes, yeah we all desire to strive for those ideals that offer us a better familial, harmonious way of life, and yeah Dr Phil and Rabbi Shumley have tools to offer us in that quest, but let's not get too fundamental here.
Because in the end Dr Phil, what you offer is not just psychological well-being, but in the context of television, you also offer us another consummer commodity. Wholeness. The New Puritans are forever telling us the right things to eat, why we shouldn't smoke, how bad alcohol is for us,(especially when pregnant, but go tell the French that.) This week red meat causes cancer, next month they'll tell us red meat is good for us, in moderation, and that it's chicken pumped with steroids that's bad for us. The New Puritans are busy banning smoking in pubs. They're busy scaring us with television exposure to the new epidemic of crystal meth. The New Puritans are busy scaring us off anything that might kill us, they're even waging war on old age. They're busy fixing all our psychological pains and imperfections so we're happy and industrious. And if the New Puritans have their way, we'll all be shining, almost immortally healthy epitomes, of perfect little corporate worker ants.
Oh little New Puritans, how cute you are in all your American optimism. How truly sincere and compassionate your well meaning little hearts are. We do appreciate you New Puritans. I for one can honestly say that my life has changed for the better from the gleaning of some of your wisdom. I moved out of that Shameless suburb down the road, and now only drink wine in moderation, and don't throw plates at my new boyfriend (as much as I did with my last husband,) and my family's almost normal. (A statement which could almost set off a whole new debate.) But New Puritans, we don't live on the front cover of a cereal box. And you don't have to be afraid that watching a few dysfunctional families on television will glorify the agonising pain of real life relationship problems. And it's ok, we all know that real life families with dads like Frank Gallagher, never actually produce such well balanced children. Please, we're not total idiots!
So tonight, I'm going to give you all the bird, and settle down with a big sigh of relief as the nutcases of Chatsworth Estate grace my screen with their refreshing imperfect humanity, and I'm going to say to myself as I watch them, "thank fucking God for the Gallaghers." And I'll eat my low fat rice snacks instead of my chips, and stay thin and healthy.
We LOVE LOVE LOVE Shameless.
Maybe it's got something to do with the quirky, dysfunctionally obscure characters and their quirky, dysfunctionally obscure relationships and lifestyles. Maybe it's got to do with the fact that all those people live the next suburb down from me. The suburb I lived in in my twenties as a young married born-again Christian, just fresh out from a mentally disturbing experience with, you know, all those things late teens/early twenties people think are cool to do. Then I found God, as you're apt to when the only choice left is between God or the psyche ward of the local hospital. God damn, I even used to try and evangelise those people!
Maybe it's the way the show vacillates between utter hilarity and heartbreaking tragedy with such precise execution of the script, without ever falling into bland sentimentality. And isn't that just like real life? No one's life is a constant. We all find ourselves propelled suddenly and with shocking violence from one to the other at times. Oh the joy of revelling in someone else's dysfunctional lifestyle.
So all those critics of dysfunctional family drama, (I'm talking to you Dr Phil and Rabbi Shmuley,) pull your heads in I say. Shit, life is short, not nearly long enough for every man, woman and child world-wide to discover self-enlightenment and find Shalom in the Home. Can't we just take a little comfort from the fact that we aren't alone in our sordid, fallible human imperfections? I'm sick to death of the New Puritans. Yeah we need to help each other out sometimes, yeah we all desire to strive for those ideals that offer us a better familial, harmonious way of life, and yeah Dr Phil and Rabbi Shumley have tools to offer us in that quest, but let's not get too fundamental here.
Because in the end Dr Phil, what you offer is not just psychological well-being, but in the context of television, you also offer us another consummer commodity. Wholeness. The New Puritans are forever telling us the right things to eat, why we shouldn't smoke, how bad alcohol is for us,(especially when pregnant, but go tell the French that.) This week red meat causes cancer, next month they'll tell us red meat is good for us, in moderation, and that it's chicken pumped with steroids that's bad for us. The New Puritans are busy banning smoking in pubs. They're busy scaring us with television exposure to the new epidemic of crystal meth. The New Puritans are busy scaring us off anything that might kill us, they're even waging war on old age. They're busy fixing all our psychological pains and imperfections so we're happy and industrious. And if the New Puritans have their way, we'll all be shining, almost immortally healthy epitomes, of perfect little corporate worker ants.
Oh little New Puritans, how cute you are in all your American optimism. How truly sincere and compassionate your well meaning little hearts are. We do appreciate you New Puritans. I for one can honestly say that my life has changed for the better from the gleaning of some of your wisdom. I moved out of that Shameless suburb down the road, and now only drink wine in moderation, and don't throw plates at my new boyfriend (as much as I did with my last husband,) and my family's almost normal. (A statement which could almost set off a whole new debate.) But New Puritans, we don't live on the front cover of a cereal box. And you don't have to be afraid that watching a few dysfunctional families on television will glorify the agonising pain of real life relationship problems. And it's ok, we all know that real life families with dads like Frank Gallagher, never actually produce such well balanced children. Please, we're not total idiots!
So tonight, I'm going to give you all the bird, and settle down with a big sigh of relief as the nutcases of Chatsworth Estate grace my screen with their refreshing imperfect humanity, and I'm going to say to myself as I watch them, "thank fucking God for the Gallaghers." And I'll eat my low fat rice snacks instead of my chips, and stay thin and healthy.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Chahinaz: What rights for women?
The night before last, I watched a show on SBS about a young Algerian woman named Chahinaz, was looking for answers in respect to a woman's role and rights in her own culture and in other cultures internationally. She talked to women from many different religious and educational backgrounds, in many different countries, and questioned the oppression of her own culture in regards to women, and in other cultures, and explored the ways in which oppression was instituted, (including traditional religious belief structures as she experienced it through her own culture,) and also ways in which it could be fought, through changing wide-range perceptions, through the law, and in more militant forms of revolutionary ideology.
I don't know a lot about Algeria, but it was confronting to watch the video footage of her and her friend walking down the street while not wearing a veil. The were heckled and verbally abused with comments like: "Hey, where do you think you're going dressed like that?" To my eyes, they were dressed in very demure, respectable and understated clothing. And when you come from a culture like my own, where almost any type of clothing now appears to be permissable, (although this is a complex issue in its own right,) it's hard to imagine how you'd fare in a more restrictive culture.
She was an intelligent, passionate young woman and I had great admiration for her, as she managed to motivate herself to compile such a slick documentary and have it distributed for viewing in enough nations so that I in Australia was sitting there watching it in my lounge room on a Tuesday night. The highlight for me, were the interviews with the two Irish women Nell McCafferty and Mary Robinson. You can watch all episodes of Chahinaz's journey from this web link, if you have broadband:
http://www.madmundo.tv/en/chahinaz/home-page/
Watching Chahinaz's story came at a time for me where I was being posed questions in my Master's writing subject about the nature and importance of cyber-feminism. The first thing I thought as I watched Chahinaz's documentary, was of how little importance the Internet was in terms of changing real-world woman's rights issues, especially in the face of how few women, (and people in general statistical terms,) have access to the Internet. All of a sudden it seemed so impotent and full of nothing more than fancy ideologies.
But after some thought, I came to the conclusion that cyber-feminism is in fact important and for more than just ideological reasons.
One academic whose work we've been looking at is Donna Haraway,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway
Haraway poses theories on the notion of women as cyborgs in the Internet or computing world, and how this concept frees women of the political constructs that reduce them to bodies. I like some of what Donna Haraway talks of, particularly in ideas relating to cyber-feminism as a tool for political action and the positive concept of utilising machines as tools for liberation. I like her critique of capitalism. Although I am adamant that to be accepted equally in a society, I must do it in my own body, in my own skin, and have that also accepted, as it is a large part of who I am.
There's much I admittedly don't understand about Haraway's work, having only briefly skirted over it. But I do agree with her on the point that women have to keep current with technoscience if they are to be included in the discourse of evolving technology, or the gap will widen leaving women behind through lack of knowledge. We always need to be right in the middle of where the argument takes place, and right at the cusp of where the future is being created.
The other thing that struck me, is the ratio of women to men involved in computer programming science technology. Men far dominate this discipline and I wondered on how important it is that women do not just utilise modern technology for discourse or to break traditional modes of thought, but how we also need to contribute directly at a ground roots level in shaping the modern technological culture of our time. Because it's at this level where where major technological issues are raised in regard to managing software, industrial practice, computer science and policy making. And where there is matters of policy making and industrial practice, there are, or should be, matters of ethical and moral substance. Where are the female Bill Gates? And if you find capitalism as abhorent as I do, where are the female Linus Torvald's? (Creator of Linux.)
If someone has more knowledge than I do on this issue, and can offer me some evidence of women out there who are tackling these issues head on, it would be greatly encouraging to learn of them.
I don't know a lot about Algeria, but it was confronting to watch the video footage of her and her friend walking down the street while not wearing a veil. The were heckled and verbally abused with comments like: "Hey, where do you think you're going dressed like that?" To my eyes, they were dressed in very demure, respectable and understated clothing. And when you come from a culture like my own, where almost any type of clothing now appears to be permissable, (although this is a complex issue in its own right,) it's hard to imagine how you'd fare in a more restrictive culture.
She was an intelligent, passionate young woman and I had great admiration for her, as she managed to motivate herself to compile such a slick documentary and have it distributed for viewing in enough nations so that I in Australia was sitting there watching it in my lounge room on a Tuesday night. The highlight for me, were the interviews with the two Irish women Nell McCafferty and Mary Robinson. You can watch all episodes of Chahinaz's journey from this web link, if you have broadband:
http://www.madmundo.tv/en/chahinaz/home-page/
Watching Chahinaz's story came at a time for me where I was being posed questions in my Master's writing subject about the nature and importance of cyber-feminism. The first thing I thought as I watched Chahinaz's documentary, was of how little importance the Internet was in terms of changing real-world woman's rights issues, especially in the face of how few women, (and people in general statistical terms,) have access to the Internet. All of a sudden it seemed so impotent and full of nothing more than fancy ideologies.
But after some thought, I came to the conclusion that cyber-feminism is in fact important and for more than just ideological reasons.
One academic whose work we've been looking at is Donna Haraway,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway
Haraway poses theories on the notion of women as cyborgs in the Internet or computing world, and how this concept frees women of the political constructs that reduce them to bodies. I like some of what Donna Haraway talks of, particularly in ideas relating to cyber-feminism as a tool for political action and the positive concept of utilising machines as tools for liberation. I like her critique of capitalism. Although I am adamant that to be accepted equally in a society, I must do it in my own body, in my own skin, and have that also accepted, as it is a large part of who I am.
There's much I admittedly don't understand about Haraway's work, having only briefly skirted over it. But I do agree with her on the point that women have to keep current with technoscience if they are to be included in the discourse of evolving technology, or the gap will widen leaving women behind through lack of knowledge. We always need to be right in the middle of where the argument takes place, and right at the cusp of where the future is being created.
The other thing that struck me, is the ratio of women to men involved in computer programming science technology. Men far dominate this discipline and I wondered on how important it is that women do not just utilise modern technology for discourse or to break traditional modes of thought, but how we also need to contribute directly at a ground roots level in shaping the modern technological culture of our time. Because it's at this level where where major technological issues are raised in regard to managing software, industrial practice, computer science and policy making. And where there is matters of policy making and industrial practice, there are, or should be, matters of ethical and moral substance. Where are the female Bill Gates? And if you find capitalism as abhorent as I do, where are the female Linus Torvald's? (Creator of Linux.)
If someone has more knowledge than I do on this issue, and can offer me some evidence of women out there who are tackling these issues head on, it would be greatly encouraging to learn of them.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
What on earth...
... what makes you think I dislike your style of politics John Howard?
(OK, so it's a bit juvenile. But we all need a bit of comic relief now and then.)
Fish and Chips or Smoked Trout Risotto?
Again and again I find myself coming back to Channel Nine, like a bad addiction. Always knowing that it's doing strange and disturbing things to my psyche. But I can't help it. I go into denial. I tell myself all sorts of things to seduce myself and put myself to sleep over it. Things like, "it's all just a harmless bit of entertainment." Hey, sometimes it really can be. I make no apologies for that.
But there are undeniably some aspects of Channel Nine that make it the trashiest, (part of its appeal,) most insidious mouthpiece for the rich and powerful, that's around right now. To watch Channel Nine with that in the back of your mind, means one of two things, to put your conscience on the shelf, or to be permamently outraged. I'm the second.
Channel Nine is like Fish and Chips. You see it, or smell it (respectively,) and you start to salivate. It isn't bad for you if you only have it once in a while, just for a treat, you tell yourself. Everyone needs to let loose and relax every now and then, we've all only got one life. Yeah it's all true enough. But you can't help going back for more and more of all those those things you know can't be good for you. And it's never as satisfying as you thought it was going to be before you started. You always end up flaked out on the couch, feeling bloated and saying to yourself, "what just happened there? That was like ingesting cardboard."
Now when you watch SBS, suddenly you realise that there's been this place down the road serving Smoked Trout Risotto for the same price. But wait, there's more. There's Gado Gado, Pupasas, Ciabatta Bread. It's not addictive, it's good for you and it's still surprisingly, really yummy. It takes an acquired taste, it's classy but not snobby and its not as provincial as those country fish and chips. Everytime I go there, I make a promise to myself to go back. I find myself frequenting it more and more often. You've got Big Love, Shameless, Myth Busters, XY Docs, The Eurovision Song Contest, The Roman Empire, World Movies, The Movie Show, RAN, the list goes on and on. But those fish and chips ... I don't know. Can I ever leave them alone?
But there are undeniably some aspects of Channel Nine that make it the trashiest, (part of its appeal,) most insidious mouthpiece for the rich and powerful, that's around right now. To watch Channel Nine with that in the back of your mind, means one of two things, to put your conscience on the shelf, or to be permamently outraged. I'm the second.
Channel Nine is like Fish and Chips. You see it, or smell it (respectively,) and you start to salivate. It isn't bad for you if you only have it once in a while, just for a treat, you tell yourself. Everyone needs to let loose and relax every now and then, we've all only got one life. Yeah it's all true enough. But you can't help going back for more and more of all those those things you know can't be good for you. And it's never as satisfying as you thought it was going to be before you started. You always end up flaked out on the couch, feeling bloated and saying to yourself, "what just happened there? That was like ingesting cardboard."
Now when you watch SBS, suddenly you realise that there's been this place down the road serving Smoked Trout Risotto for the same price. But wait, there's more. There's Gado Gado, Pupasas, Ciabatta Bread. It's not addictive, it's good for you and it's still surprisingly, really yummy. It takes an acquired taste, it's classy but not snobby and its not as provincial as those country fish and chips. Everytime I go there, I make a promise to myself to go back. I find myself frequenting it more and more often. You've got Big Love, Shameless, Myth Busters, XY Docs, The Eurovision Song Contest, The Roman Empire, World Movies, The Movie Show, RAN, the list goes on and on. But those fish and chips ... I don't know. Can I ever leave them alone?
TV homework for the insane or bored.
This is really fun. I do it once a week if I get half the chance. Either on a Saturday morning while I'm still in bed, or during the week while I'm cleaning the house, but bedroom is best if you have a TV in there. If you're in Australia you just tune into SBS. If you're from another country, use whatever your multicultural television station is. It's easy. All you have to do is put the TV on this channel when it's time for the world news. The stipulation is, you aren't allowed to know the language of the country whose news you are watching. Now shut the curtains, and it almost feels as though you're in a hotel room somewhere doesn't it? And it's hot, or cold outside, accordingly, and everything that's happening in the world news is happening right outside that bedroom window, and if you got up and put your coat on, you'd walk out into a long hallway and then into the very streets of the news you're watching. You wouldn't understand a word anyone was saying around you, unless you were carrying your Lonely Planet travellers guide. Isn't this cosy? You're poor but you're still travelling. Couldn't you just jump on the bed and raid the mini bar? Look around you for God's sake - I bet you never thought you'd have enough money to get here! Isn't that unknown language beautiful?
A note on my poem.
It's been pointed out to me. That my poem in the last post, is impossible to understand. So I thought it might be helpful to give people who feel that way a brief run down on the philosophy behind it.
You're not supposed to understand the poem. Very simply put, the poem is a complaint against the ridiculous use of language that post-modernists love to revel in. I don't find this practice half as clever as I do designed to confuse and impress.
I do believe that language needs to lend itself to different disciplines so that people can discuss ideas with each other quickly and more succinctly. (It's easier to speak in language codes for physics, or literary theory or Internet technology etc. The word post-modernism is a good example. Bringing to mind and summing up many ideas that it would take an eternity to explain everytime a literary theorist might otherwise mention it.) Apart from the necessity of different disciplines to apply specific dialects to make life easier though, I feel language is designed to communicate and that language should be accessible and about effective communication.
When those people who love to chatter away in 'po-mo' speak, (and those who love to write inaccessible po-mo poetry,) make their messages impossible to attain for the normal person, then what they essentially do, is isolate those people from what should ideally be the democracy of language, and turns their branch of philosophy or their discipline, into just another elitist one. I think this goes against the very philosophy of a lot of post-modernist thought in the first place. Po-mo is supposed to make meaning in language accessible to any man in the sense that he can intepret these texts for themselves and then create their own truth or meaning from them. This idea hints at a democracy of language, but how can this be done when po-mo theorists are busy isolating large body of readers? All it ends up doing is distancing one reader, and therefore one human being, from another. In my opinion, post-modernism eats itself when its constuct negates its content.
So there you have the idea behind my poem. The fact that it confuses is a proof of point. And it isn't just gobblede gook. If you ever sat down to interpet that long string of unintelligable words, what it basically amounts to is: for all my huffing and puffing and grandstanding, I have really done nothing to further the evolution of human morality.
The idea is that almost anyone can speak that lingo if they really want to, but it's ideas not obtuse application of language, that counts.
Below is a link to a simple definition and explanation of post-modernism for anyone interested.
http://www.toronto-h.schools.nsw.edu.au/postmodernism.htm
Also some might find this interesting: The fictitious and contrived modernist poet who was designed as a literary hoax to demonstrate the unintelligable waffle that posed and still poses as poetry as little more than a joke. His poems made no sense, having been designed not to. He became very famous. You could read this in two ways. A: That meaning and truth really are only in the mind of the reader, which would support post-modernist claims. Or B: That people really are gullible idiots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley
Something a little more in depth - my critical appraisal of the politics of post-modernism in a nutshell.
Now don't get me wrong, I like post-modernism, to a point. I like the general politics behind the school of thought that was born in the Parisian revolution of 1968, which utilised post-modernism to challenge existing ruling class authorities. I like it as a tool to deconstruct litertary texts, and even, as they say, the text of life. But to me it's only half the picture, and I'm a bit of a critic of the school of thought as a whole. My reason for this, is that I don't see in post-modernism (as a political tool, and in many other forms,) as the full picture. Because I don't believe it can be truly revolutionary without a collective notion of truth for people to gather under and strive torward. The notion of many relative truths has the possibility of leaving people fragmented and isolated from one another. And post-modernism denies the possibility of any metaphysical truths.
Although it is argued that post-modenrnism served to critique opppressive structures, such as the years of Hitler, there were also Nazi apologists who utilised the same approach to support it.
It is only valuable as a tool to challenge existing authoritarial schools of thought and political structures, but is not designed, and doesn't accomodate very well, new creations of political and philosophical structures, indeed even designed to ensure no new ones are ever created. Po-mo theory as a political tool, is great if you're an anarchist. But I am not.
But even more than that, it has become a conservative and largely unchallenged school of thought, turning it into little more than a fundamentalism that has lost its potency.
Now let's get back to really important things - WATCHING TELEVISION!
You're not supposed to understand the poem. Very simply put, the poem is a complaint against the ridiculous use of language that post-modernists love to revel in. I don't find this practice half as clever as I do designed to confuse and impress.
I do believe that language needs to lend itself to different disciplines so that people can discuss ideas with each other quickly and more succinctly. (It's easier to speak in language codes for physics, or literary theory or Internet technology etc. The word post-modernism is a good example. Bringing to mind and summing up many ideas that it would take an eternity to explain everytime a literary theorist might otherwise mention it.) Apart from the necessity of different disciplines to apply specific dialects to make life easier though, I feel language is designed to communicate and that language should be accessible and about effective communication.
When those people who love to chatter away in 'po-mo' speak, (and those who love to write inaccessible po-mo poetry,) make their messages impossible to attain for the normal person, then what they essentially do, is isolate those people from what should ideally be the democracy of language, and turns their branch of philosophy or their discipline, into just another elitist one. I think this goes against the very philosophy of a lot of post-modernist thought in the first place. Po-mo is supposed to make meaning in language accessible to any man in the sense that he can intepret these texts for themselves and then create their own truth or meaning from them. This idea hints at a democracy of language, but how can this be done when po-mo theorists are busy isolating large body of readers? All it ends up doing is distancing one reader, and therefore one human being, from another. In my opinion, post-modernism eats itself when its constuct negates its content.
So there you have the idea behind my poem. The fact that it confuses is a proof of point. And it isn't just gobblede gook. If you ever sat down to interpet that long string of unintelligable words, what it basically amounts to is: for all my huffing and puffing and grandstanding, I have really done nothing to further the evolution of human morality.
The idea is that almost anyone can speak that lingo if they really want to, but it's ideas not obtuse application of language, that counts.
Below is a link to a simple definition and explanation of post-modernism for anyone interested.
http://www.toronto-h.schools.nsw.edu.au/postmodernism.htm
Also some might find this interesting: The fictitious and contrived modernist poet who was designed as a literary hoax to demonstrate the unintelligable waffle that posed and still poses as poetry as little more than a joke. His poems made no sense, having been designed not to. He became very famous. You could read this in two ways. A: That meaning and truth really are only in the mind of the reader, which would support post-modernist claims. Or B: That people really are gullible idiots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley
Something a little more in depth - my critical appraisal of the politics of post-modernism in a nutshell.
Now don't get me wrong, I like post-modernism, to a point. I like the general politics behind the school of thought that was born in the Parisian revolution of 1968, which utilised post-modernism to challenge existing ruling class authorities. I like it as a tool to deconstruct litertary texts, and even, as they say, the text of life. But to me it's only half the picture, and I'm a bit of a critic of the school of thought as a whole. My reason for this, is that I don't see in post-modernism (as a political tool, and in many other forms,) as the full picture. Because I don't believe it can be truly revolutionary without a collective notion of truth for people to gather under and strive torward. The notion of many relative truths has the possibility of leaving people fragmented and isolated from one another. And post-modernism denies the possibility of any metaphysical truths.
Although it is argued that post-modenrnism served to critique opppressive structures, such as the years of Hitler, there were also Nazi apologists who utilised the same approach to support it.
It is only valuable as a tool to challenge existing authoritarial schools of thought and political structures, but is not designed, and doesn't accomodate very well, new creations of political and philosophical structures, indeed even designed to ensure no new ones are ever created. Po-mo theory as a political tool, is great if you're an anarchist. But I am not.
But even more than that, it has become a conservative and largely unchallenged school of thought, turning it into little more than a fundamentalism that has lost its potency.
Now let's get back to really important things - WATCHING TELEVISION!
Friday, June 22, 2007
Overland rejection
Overland rejected my poem. I don't know why, I think it was because it wasn't flowery enough, it didn't have enough convoluted language or evasive imagery or something...wasn't lyrical enough? Academic enough? Surely it's political enough! In a sort of philosophically politically inverted, deconstructing the deconstructionist way...Guys, why don't you love me? You're breaking my heart here.
Postmodernism 101
What am I saying?
Well, let me think,
How can I put this so that you
understand?
I’ll just adjust my glasses…
now,
the way I see it, convergence with
supercilious prose, poetry and/or thought,
and the confluent inaction (or torpor,)
of obtuse communication
that declines, even renounces,
the elevated functions of ethical
discourse – that is, the abstract intent of –
meliorating benevolence is,
quite honestly,
above you.
Reality being subjective as such
and
Hitler having been just another
man with only a relative notion
of truth.
After all, common meaning is
only an historical myth,
and now we are ill-fated enough to
spend the rest of our days,
misunderstanding one another
…
does that help any?
Well, let me think,
How can I put this so that you
understand?
I’ll just adjust my glasses…
now,
the way I see it, convergence with
supercilious prose, poetry and/or thought,
and the confluent inaction (or torpor,)
of obtuse communication
that declines, even renounces,
the elevated functions of ethical
discourse – that is, the abstract intent of –
meliorating benevolence is,
quite honestly,
above you.
Reality being subjective as such
and
Hitler having been just another
man with only a relative notion
of truth.
After all, common meaning is
only an historical myth,
and now we are ill-fated enough to
spend the rest of our days,
misunderstanding one another
…
does that help any?
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
"Football Genius." An oxymoron or a new appreciation?
Now I can't talk for other countries, but sports propaganda is big business here in Australia. I don't know what it is about the Australian psyche, but by and large, we're not much one for academics or intellectual pursuits, generally opting for more simple pleasures, chiefly cricket or football. Maybe it's the convict history of the nation, maybe we're all just one collective convict with little education and an unmitigated desire to beat the shit out of something, anything, each other. Maybe we're still trying to offload some of that pent-up anger at being treated like a collective, bread-stealing, penal colony inhabitant, second-class citizen for so long. You'd think that would make for a good bunch of rebelliously well educated post-modernists, but no, it makes for good football players.
Still, all is not lost. Last year I actually heard the term "football genius" uttered by the chairman of the AFL, Rob Evans, in reference to Gary Ablett. (Of Geelong Cats.)
Now, according to The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, Genius refers to:
A natural ability, special mental endowments; exalted intellectual power, instinctive and extraordinary imaginative, creative, or inventive capacity; person having this.
At the risk of incurring a lot of hate mail, let's deconstruct this explanation of a genius and apply it to Gary. (Because I think the term 'genius' is thrown around far too casually these days. )
A natural ability: Well yes, there's no argument that he has a natural ability to play football, maybe this is what they mean when they call him a genius. Yet a lot of people have natural abilities at specific pursuits but that doesn't warrant labelling them all geniuses. If we did we'd have more geniuses in the population than we have average people, so I'm guessing the term 'natural ability' refers specifically to the next line...
Special mental endowments; exalted intellectual power: Although I'm sure it's true that football players need more than just brawn, but also a good intuitive understanding of the field, their opponents and the rules and nature of the game, (which no doubt constitutes some superior grasp of the intricacies of the game of football,) I'm not sure that addresses a human being's general overall intellectual ability as spectacularly brilliant.
For one thing, you'd never pick a footballer as a genius from listening to them talk. This may be a generalisation, but just put your hand over your eyes next time you hear a footballer interviewed on TV. With idiot parrot catch phrases like, "at the end of the day" churned out religiously, you could hardly tell one from the other. Oh and I love this one, "yeah, nah." What the hell is that? ... "Yeah, nah."
"Yeah, nah, we trained hard this season. Gazza's out with a strained hamstring but we have some good players still. Yeah, nah, at the end of the day the best team'll win."
Extraordinary imaginative, creative or inventive capacity: Well this is probably much closer to what they means when they call Gary a genius. After all, it must take some imaginative, creative and inventive ability to come up with spur of the moment ducks and dives around opponents on the field in different weather conditions and the like. And it's no secret just how imaginative, creative and inventive footballers can be when they get together with a group off football groupies. Just think; group gang-bangs, male physical bonding over a generic and faceless woman whose drink has just been spiked...
On second thoughts I take it all back. These are blatant and idiosyncratic character traits of men who can't think for themselves on any level.
But who knows? I could be really wrong. Never say never. There is photographic evidence that he does in fact, have the characteristics of a genius after all.
Albert Einstein: The man who invented the theory of relativity. A man who essentially changed the way we understood physics and therefore the universe.
Vincent Van Gogh: The man who pioneered Expressionist painting and therefore influenced Twentieth Century Art.
Tolstoy: Russian novelist, dramatist, essayist and philosopher whose literary masterpieces are still revered today.
Still, all is not lost. Last year I actually heard the term "football genius" uttered by the chairman of the AFL, Rob Evans, in reference to Gary Ablett. (Of Geelong Cats.)
Now, according to The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary, Genius refers to:
A natural ability, special mental endowments; exalted intellectual power, instinctive and extraordinary imaginative, creative, or inventive capacity; person having this.
At the risk of incurring a lot of hate mail, let's deconstruct this explanation of a genius and apply it to Gary. (Because I think the term 'genius' is thrown around far too casually these days. )
A natural ability: Well yes, there's no argument that he has a natural ability to play football, maybe this is what they mean when they call him a genius. Yet a lot of people have natural abilities at specific pursuits but that doesn't warrant labelling them all geniuses. If we did we'd have more geniuses in the population than we have average people, so I'm guessing the term 'natural ability' refers specifically to the next line...
Special mental endowments; exalted intellectual power: Although I'm sure it's true that football players need more than just brawn, but also a good intuitive understanding of the field, their opponents and the rules and nature of the game, (which no doubt constitutes some superior grasp of the intricacies of the game of football,) I'm not sure that addresses a human being's general overall intellectual ability as spectacularly brilliant.
For one thing, you'd never pick a footballer as a genius from listening to them talk. This may be a generalisation, but just put your hand over your eyes next time you hear a footballer interviewed on TV. With idiot parrot catch phrases like, "at the end of the day" churned out religiously, you could hardly tell one from the other. Oh and I love this one, "yeah, nah." What the hell is that? ... "Yeah, nah."
"Yeah, nah, we trained hard this season. Gazza's out with a strained hamstring but we have some good players still. Yeah, nah, at the end of the day the best team'll win."
Extraordinary imaginative, creative or inventive capacity: Well this is probably much closer to what they means when they call Gary a genius. After all, it must take some imaginative, creative and inventive ability to come up with spur of the moment ducks and dives around opponents on the field in different weather conditions and the like. And it's no secret just how imaginative, creative and inventive footballers can be when they get together with a group off football groupies. Just think; group gang-bangs, male physical bonding over a generic and faceless woman whose drink has just been spiked...
On second thoughts I take it all back. These are blatant and idiosyncratic character traits of men who can't think for themselves on any level.
But who knows? I could be really wrong. Never say never. There is photographic evidence that he does in fact, have the characteristics of a genius after all.
Albert Einstein: The man who invented the theory of relativity. A man who essentially changed the way we understood physics and therefore the universe.
Vincent Van Gogh: The man who pioneered Expressionist painting and therefore influenced Twentieth Century Art.
Tolstoy: Russian novelist, dramatist, essayist and philosopher whose literary masterpieces are still revered today.
What is this, Beirut?
The big news item in town recently, is a shooting in Melbourne in Flinders Lane, on the corner of Flinders Street Station. A pivotal, historical cornerstone of the city.
One man died as he intervened trying to help a woman being pulled from a cab by her hair, and two others were critically injured. The gunman is still at large.
Now I'm not saying it's not newsworthy. I think it is, and I think it deserves to be a major headline. These sorts of things don't normally seem to happen in broad daylight, in a city street in the center of Melbourne. It must have been terrifying for those involved and like some sort of streetscape nightmare for those in the center of town that day; realising the gunman could be striding past them at any moment. But let's put it all into perspective here. Does it really warrant whole daytime hours of uninterrupted television coverage to the detriment of our normal scheduled viewing? Does it warrant three or four stories in a row on every evening news show?
Rachel Rollo from Channel Nine News called it, "a city under siege." One man dead and two critically injured people is what Rachel considers a siege? I hate to tell you this Rachel, but what you call a siege, and much, much worse, goes on all over the world in a constant stream of unpublicised horrors.
Here Rachel: Dictionary.Com's definition of the word siege:
1. The act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible.
(Other possible interpretations here: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=siege
This is a siege Rachel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Beirut
Then we had a grand romp down memory lane, reflecting over all the horrific shootings and related major crimes in Melbourne - Nov 1996, 1987 in Hoddle Street, March 1986 - the Russell Street bombing. In global perspective these are all pretty minor events. But, our Channel Nine News reporter, (not Rachel,) chose to label them, "the day terror came to town."
Channel Nine, you really do love to whip up a healthy frenzy of fear don't you? All this heavily loaded language designed to induce over reaction and shock. You live ina big city people - these things are bound to happen! What's going on here, is Australia suffering some sort of S 11 envy? What makes us so special that a shooting in our city warrants so much self-pity and constant attention? When we carry on about our traumas in the extreme, (no doubtedly designed by TV execs to up ratings,) we look like spoilt Americanized sooky la-la's. Can't we just address it as a news item of considerable merit and leave it alone a bit?
I noticed that seventy-eight people died in a bombing in Bagdhad today - it flashed across the bottom of the screen in fine print and later came up as a minor news report in the world news section. (Not in all News Channel. Let's say thank God for ABC and SBS.)
One man died as he intervened trying to help a woman being pulled from a cab by her hair, and two others were critically injured. The gunman is still at large.
Now I'm not saying it's not newsworthy. I think it is, and I think it deserves to be a major headline. These sorts of things don't normally seem to happen in broad daylight, in a city street in the center of Melbourne. It must have been terrifying for those involved and like some sort of streetscape nightmare for those in the center of town that day; realising the gunman could be striding past them at any moment. But let's put it all into perspective here. Does it really warrant whole daytime hours of uninterrupted television coverage to the detriment of our normal scheduled viewing? Does it warrant three or four stories in a row on every evening news show?
Rachel Rollo from Channel Nine News called it, "a city under siege." One man dead and two critically injured people is what Rachel considers a siege? I hate to tell you this Rachel, but what you call a siege, and much, much worse, goes on all over the world in a constant stream of unpublicised horrors.
Here Rachel: Dictionary.Com's definition of the word siege:
1. The act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible.
(Other possible interpretations here: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=siege
This is a siege Rachel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Beirut
Then we had a grand romp down memory lane, reflecting over all the horrific shootings and related major crimes in Melbourne - Nov 1996, 1987 in Hoddle Street, March 1986 - the Russell Street bombing. In global perspective these are all pretty minor events. But, our Channel Nine News reporter, (not Rachel,) chose to label them, "the day terror came to town."
Channel Nine, you really do love to whip up a healthy frenzy of fear don't you? All this heavily loaded language designed to induce over reaction and shock. You live ina big city people - these things are bound to happen! What's going on here, is Australia suffering some sort of S 11 envy? What makes us so special that a shooting in our city warrants so much self-pity and constant attention? When we carry on about our traumas in the extreme, (no doubtedly designed by TV execs to up ratings,) we look like spoilt Americanized sooky la-la's. Can't we just address it as a news item of considerable merit and leave it alone a bit?
I noticed that seventy-eight people died in a bombing in Bagdhad today - it flashed across the bottom of the screen in fine print and later came up as a minor news report in the world news section. (Not in all News Channel. Let's say thank God for ABC and SBS.)
Thursday, June 14, 2007
RATM
The world is my expense.
The cost of my desire.
Jesus blessed me with its future,
And I protect it with fire.
So raise your fists
And march around,
Just dont take what you need.
I'll jail and bury those committed,
And smother the rest in greed.
Crawl with me into tomorrow,
Or Ill drag you to your grave.
I'm deep inside your children,
They'll betray you in my name.
Sleep now in the fire.
The lie is my expense.
The scope of my desire.
The party blessed me with its future,
And I protect it with fire.
I am the Nina,
The Pinta,
The Santa Maria.
The noose and the rapist.
The field's overseer.
The agents of orange.
The priests of Hiroshima.
The cost of my desire.
Sleep now in the fire. Sleep now in the fire.
For it's the end of history.
It's caged and frozen still.
There is no other pill to take,
So swallow the one
That made you ill.
The Nina,
The Pinta, The Santa Maria.
The noose and the rapist.
The field's overseer.
The agents of orange.
The priests of Hiroshima.
The cost of my desire.
Sleep now in the fire
(There's nothing like a bunch of self-righteously aggrieved and angry young men, or women for that matter. And they're even better when they're Marxists.)
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
A nation of blockheads
Watched The Nation last night. Premier on Channel Nine. (Australian TV.)
I watched it primarily to see if my preconceptions of it, based on it's TV advertisements promotions, would hold vaild ground.
The premise of the show seemed to be that it was a parody of a serious news broadcast, which then inverted news content by taking the piss out of serious newsworthy issues. This naturally lead to the conclusion that there was a bit of a culture jamming element to it. It refers to itself as:
News with a Difference.
Mick Molloy swaps his tracky daks for a snappy suit to sit at a desk and let rip with a topical, news-based program - with an edgy difference.
http://channelnine.ninemsn.com.au/section.aspx?sectionid=5747§ionname=thenation
I imagined a group of television executives, producers, creative assistances, writers and the like, wracking their collective brains for a winning combination of hit shows, Rove Live with the ABC's The Chaser's War on Everything.
This would mean they could rely on a tried and tested formula, hence determining relative success, (or at least upping the statistical odds of success, and therefore profits,) and all the while pretending to be a contemporary and racy new program.
Er sorry Channel Nine, but you could never culture jam, and it all really looks rather pathetic and sucky-uppy. Why could you never culture jam? Because you've already sold your soul to the establishment, heck you are the establishment. Who else have you got to rebel against? You can hardly incite us to rebel against you now can you? This is why all the targets of your humour were banal and obvious and no real challenge to societal structure, even though they masked themselves as such.
Let's take a look at some of them. This week we had an array of religious leaders to poke fun at. Yawn! All been done before. We had the Dalai Lama, (who's currently in town for a while,) being portrayed as an aggressive and violent rock star persona. Hey, let's make fun of a man who's spent most of his life fighting the moral injustice of Imperialist China invading his homeland. Yeah that should get some laughs!
Yeah sure, religious leaders are often in positions of prominence and power which they abuse, perverting the foundations of their religious belief system to satisfy their own ambitions, or even simply because they try to impose their personal beliefs or lack of understanding of a religious text onto larger social constructs. So come on Mick, surely you guys could have come up with something a little more challenging if you're pupporting to be a news parody show.
There were some quick and forgettable snipes at The Pope, so quick and forgettable that I fail to remember them - (Something about the Pope Mobile.)
And let's not forget the jabs at the predecessor of the recently resigned controversial Mufti, Sheikh Taj el-Din Hamid Hilaly, with the insinuation that the new Mufti will be no improvement on the last. This not only has the potential to send blatant signals of rascism as an acceptable ideology to watching Australians, but easily reinforces the national state of distrust and fear that has ruled the politics of this country lately. Good one Channel Nine, anyone in your exec suite having brunch with John Howard lately? Or maybe you just meet up at the same swinger's night.
While it might be true that the last Mufti was a sexist, arrogant, megalomaniac who loved the notoriety his words afforded him, the actions of the media in using the opportunity to irritate and magnify the widening religious and cultural gap between fellow Australians is not only unwise, but immediately self-serving and a friggin' disgrace.
Then there was an endless parade of Hollywood trollops to scoff and laugh at, including Paris Hilton, naturally enough. But let's face it - the whole world has Paris schadenfreude right now. Religious leaders and celebrities Channel Nine? Tsk, tsk, tsk. When are you going to go after the real Bullies? Like Corporate executives that give themselves pay rises vastly disproportionate to the average Australian wage, and in a world where millions of helpless children die of starvation each year. Or what about the politican who exploits the unfounded fears of his own nation simply to feed his insatiable and endless greed for power and money?
Admittedly there was one skit referring to Guantanamo bay detainees, but this news is hardly challenging or cutting edge anymore. Despite the fact that the whole Guantanamo Bay affair is offensive and an abomination of human rights, now that it's all out in the open, as long as the Australian public are busy watching David Hicks style sagas, then their attention is off
a multitude of other criminal acts being commited by leading Western politicians and secret police organisations. That's my consiparcy theory for the day anyhow.
So Channel Nine, I reckon you should just drop this stupid show and go back to what you do best, confusing and clouding middle-class Australian minds with innane bullshit to stop them thinking about the real social, cultural and political issues at hand. Oh wait - I get it, that's just what you were intending to do with this show in the first place! My mistake.
I watched it primarily to see if my preconceptions of it, based on it's TV advertisements promotions, would hold vaild ground.
The premise of the show seemed to be that it was a parody of a serious news broadcast, which then inverted news content by taking the piss out of serious newsworthy issues. This naturally lead to the conclusion that there was a bit of a culture jamming element to it. It refers to itself as:
News with a Difference.
Mick Molloy swaps his tracky daks for a snappy suit to sit at a desk and let rip with a topical, news-based program - with an edgy difference.
http://channelnine.ninemsn.com.au/section.aspx?sectionid=5747§ionname=thenation
I imagined a group of television executives, producers, creative assistances, writers and the like, wracking their collective brains for a winning combination of hit shows, Rove Live with the ABC's The Chaser's War on Everything.
This would mean they could rely on a tried and tested formula, hence determining relative success, (or at least upping the statistical odds of success, and therefore profits,) and all the while pretending to be a contemporary and racy new program.
Er sorry Channel Nine, but you could never culture jam, and it all really looks rather pathetic and sucky-uppy. Why could you never culture jam? Because you've already sold your soul to the establishment, heck you are the establishment. Who else have you got to rebel against? You can hardly incite us to rebel against you now can you? This is why all the targets of your humour were banal and obvious and no real challenge to societal structure, even though they masked themselves as such.
Let's take a look at some of them. This week we had an array of religious leaders to poke fun at. Yawn! All been done before. We had the Dalai Lama, (who's currently in town for a while,) being portrayed as an aggressive and violent rock star persona. Hey, let's make fun of a man who's spent most of his life fighting the moral injustice of Imperialist China invading his homeland. Yeah that should get some laughs!
Yeah sure, religious leaders are often in positions of prominence and power which they abuse, perverting the foundations of their religious belief system to satisfy their own ambitions, or even simply because they try to impose their personal beliefs or lack of understanding of a religious text onto larger social constructs. So come on Mick, surely you guys could have come up with something a little more challenging if you're pupporting to be a news parody show.
There were some quick and forgettable snipes at The Pope, so quick and forgettable that I fail to remember them - (Something about the Pope Mobile.)
And let's not forget the jabs at the predecessor of the recently resigned controversial Mufti, Sheikh Taj el-Din Hamid Hilaly, with the insinuation that the new Mufti will be no improvement on the last. This not only has the potential to send blatant signals of rascism as an acceptable ideology to watching Australians, but easily reinforces the national state of distrust and fear that has ruled the politics of this country lately. Good one Channel Nine, anyone in your exec suite having brunch with John Howard lately? Or maybe you just meet up at the same swinger's night.
While it might be true that the last Mufti was a sexist, arrogant, megalomaniac who loved the notoriety his words afforded him, the actions of the media in using the opportunity to irritate and magnify the widening religious and cultural gap between fellow Australians is not only unwise, but immediately self-serving and a friggin' disgrace.
Then there was an endless parade of Hollywood trollops to scoff and laugh at, including Paris Hilton, naturally enough. But let's face it - the whole world has Paris schadenfreude right now. Religious leaders and celebrities Channel Nine? Tsk, tsk, tsk. When are you going to go after the real Bullies? Like Corporate executives that give themselves pay rises vastly disproportionate to the average Australian wage, and in a world where millions of helpless children die of starvation each year. Or what about the politican who exploits the unfounded fears of his own nation simply to feed his insatiable and endless greed for power and money?
Admittedly there was one skit referring to Guantanamo bay detainees, but this news is hardly challenging or cutting edge anymore. Despite the fact that the whole Guantanamo Bay affair is offensive and an abomination of human rights, now that it's all out in the open, as long as the Australian public are busy watching David Hicks style sagas, then their attention is off
a multitude of other criminal acts being commited by leading Western politicians and secret police organisations. That's my consiparcy theory for the day anyhow.
So Channel Nine, I reckon you should just drop this stupid show and go back to what you do best, confusing and clouding middle-class Australian minds with innane bullshit to stop them thinking about the real social, cultural and political issues at hand. Oh wait - I get it, that's just what you were intending to do with this show in the first place! My mistake.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
The tool is not the Tool, but is the sum of the Tools.
Look, I know analysing Television Pop Culture has taken a back seat to analysing Cyber culture, but I've never been one for following trends per say.
And it seems to me that although the technology changes, the arguments don't change as much as we'd like to imagine. It's true that the Internet has opened up that whole 'democratisation of media' debate, and this holds massive implications for the societal structure through new technology, but now it seems to be narrowing again to focus on the dominant elite who always seem to end up monopolizing any new technologcal advance and manipulating it to conform to their own desires.
The Internet is the new battleground, so here I am in true form, acknowledging its uniqueness in allowing almost anybody in a wealthy country to have a voice by exercising my own. But is it really as democratic as we like to believe? Or are the boundaries of the fight between feudal lord and peasant only moving into a global arena as global politics and economics shape the world into one massive village? After all, 649 million people in the 15+ age bracket use the Internet worldwide. That's only 14 percent of people in that age group. (If my interpretation of ComScore Networks stats are right. If you know better I'd be pleased too know about it.) Those people who don't have Internet access are invalid members of global society because they do not constitute consummer power. And those are of course, the poor.
We've seen it all before in many forms. The Victorian ruling class, who found that the loss of religion in mass due to the rise of science and social change, were losing that particular form of control and so employed the use of Literature as a new medium for creating a new social cement.
More recently television has been the chosen form of dominant control over the masses.The big debate today is whether or not the nature of the Internet will ever really allow full dominant control by the priveleged again.
I think we often underestimate the ability of human beings to critique their own culture, particularly when what is in their best collective and personal interest is being challenged and undermined by the establishment. But we also underestimate the determination and lack of social conscience that lives in the minds of the kind of people who feel compelled to rule over others for one reason or another.
So to me, the problem is not within the medium, but within the hearts and minds of our fellow humans. The revolution should not be a technological one, but a social, philosophical and cultural one designed to alter the way humans regard one another. Technology is only a tool and is impartial. It's the people who utilise it that are the problem.
My partner and I are always having an endless debate over this, and no matter how much I despise either the innane rubbish they broadcast on television, or the blatant attempts at force feeding dominant ideologies down my throat, I still can't get enough of television and find myself defending it over and over again.
The idea of creating stories and relaying messages through moving pictures and sound is fantastical and brilliant! Despite the fact it was invented well over 80 years ago, I'm still not over it. It probably has something to do with the fact that my childhood home didn't get a television set until I was nine years old, and then it was only a black and white one, and even then, all television shows that weren't on the ABC, most especially Dallas and Prisoner, were not allowed.
So I want to say, Television I still love you! I just disrespect the 'Tools' that are your Master.
(Definition of a Tool: http://toolshed.down.net/bio/tooldef.html )
I know people who still don't even have a computer, let alone the Internet. I know people who have it, but are frightened to use it and tap away on it with trepidation. I know Luddites and full blown nternet Junkies. But every single one of them still has a television, and every single one of them watches it...
Let the fun begin!
And it seems to me that although the technology changes, the arguments don't change as much as we'd like to imagine. It's true that the Internet has opened up that whole 'democratisation of media' debate, and this holds massive implications for the societal structure through new technology, but now it seems to be narrowing again to focus on the dominant elite who always seem to end up monopolizing any new technologcal advance and manipulating it to conform to their own desires.
The Internet is the new battleground, so here I am in true form, acknowledging its uniqueness in allowing almost anybody in a wealthy country to have a voice by exercising my own. But is it really as democratic as we like to believe? Or are the boundaries of the fight between feudal lord and peasant only moving into a global arena as global politics and economics shape the world into one massive village? After all, 649 million people in the 15+ age bracket use the Internet worldwide. That's only 14 percent of people in that age group. (If my interpretation of ComScore Networks stats are right. If you know better I'd be pleased too know about it.) Those people who don't have Internet access are invalid members of global society because they do not constitute consummer power. And those are of course, the poor.
We've seen it all before in many forms. The Victorian ruling class, who found that the loss of religion in mass due to the rise of science and social change, were losing that particular form of control and so employed the use of Literature as a new medium for creating a new social cement.
More recently television has been the chosen form of dominant control over the masses.The big debate today is whether or not the nature of the Internet will ever really allow full dominant control by the priveleged again.
I think we often underestimate the ability of human beings to critique their own culture, particularly when what is in their best collective and personal interest is being challenged and undermined by the establishment. But we also underestimate the determination and lack of social conscience that lives in the minds of the kind of people who feel compelled to rule over others for one reason or another.
So to me, the problem is not within the medium, but within the hearts and minds of our fellow humans. The revolution should not be a technological one, but a social, philosophical and cultural one designed to alter the way humans regard one another. Technology is only a tool and is impartial. It's the people who utilise it that are the problem.
My partner and I are always having an endless debate over this, and no matter how much I despise either the innane rubbish they broadcast on television, or the blatant attempts at force feeding dominant ideologies down my throat, I still can't get enough of television and find myself defending it over and over again.
The idea of creating stories and relaying messages through moving pictures and sound is fantastical and brilliant! Despite the fact it was invented well over 80 years ago, I'm still not over it. It probably has something to do with the fact that my childhood home didn't get a television set until I was nine years old, and then it was only a black and white one, and even then, all television shows that weren't on the ABC, most especially Dallas and Prisoner, were not allowed.
So I want to say, Television I still love you! I just disrespect the 'Tools' that are your Master.
(Definition of a Tool: http://toolshed.down.net/bio/tooldef.html )
I know people who still don't even have a computer, let alone the Internet. I know people who have it, but are frightened to use it and tap away on it with trepidation. I know Luddites and full blown nternet Junkies. But every single one of them still has a television, and every single one of them watches it...
Let the fun begin!
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