30 October 2007
Throughout civilised history in Indo-European cultures a small number of intellectual elites established centres of learning and universities to encourage critical thinking and discover the reality of our world. What has happened in modern society is that everyone has wanted to elevate themselves to the level of intellectual elites and many people now are being educated in schools and universities without the noble ideals to drive them. Written below are my own personal observations from when I participated in university.
When I first went to university I got excited, not just because there were girls as I came from a boy's school, I also got excited because I believed I would learn something new and be more challenged than at high school. What I discovered however was that it was no different to high school, in fact the only difference was that the university students were from privileged backgrounds. As I became friends with some of the students, I realized even though they were nice people, their only objective for being there was to improve their status in life. They wanted to do the appropriate course, get as high grades as possible so they could then get into some graduate program at some corporation. They had no real yearning for knowledge and intellectual endeavor. They just saw it as a means to an end.
Because of the liberal notions of equality for all, including education at university level, the system is becoming corrupt. University is now a farce and a waste of resources because ultimately people people that attend don't care for anything but themselves and their standing in life and what they can get out of anything. What I'd normally hear before exam time was people rote learning stuff for the exam and only for that reason. This led me to believe that very few people think at all. Thinking is an uncommon activity and one that is only exerted in a process that is designed to manipulate other people and the system. Thinking beyond this is seen as unnecessary to many people and to do so would even provoke ridicule as they believe that the inquisitive person would be wasting unnecessary thinking time that could be used for further manipulation of people around them.
Plagiarism is also rife at undergraduate levels and even at Master's level. This plagiarism is a symptom of the underlying dysfunction of the status objectives of the students. What is the point of the process of education when students cheat if it isn't for status? It's even gotten to the extent where there are signs in exam toilets warning students not to use mobile phones for cheating purposes. It is obviously an all pervasive problem with the university system. The fact that it happens at all should ring alarm bells for our society. Should not these students who pursue university studies have a genuine interest in what they are learning?
Another problem I found with our university system was the large number of international students that pay for their university education. Normally I would find the ideal of international students studying in Australia an appealing one as they can learn about our culture and Australian students can learn more about international cultures. However the universities that encourage them to come to Australia don't really care about educating the international students. In fact a large portion don't even meet the minimum requirement for basic English comprehension! This also meant that there was very little interaction between the international students and the Australian students because of the language barrier. They were just a product of extreme capitalism and globalisation which produces very little for society in Australia and in their home countries except for how to create more sterile environments that efficiently produce goods and services with built in obsolescence.
I believe that education needs to be restructured to two levels. At one level there should be a learning system that is based on critical thinking and a yearning for learning for students that genuinely want to think and advance their knowledge and this should be for two reasons. The first reason is to advance ourselves culturally and improve society and the environment. The second reason is to produce goods and services in an efficient way but to do so that fits in with the first reason, to improve society and the environment. On the second level education should be based on technical and general skills for the average person. The technical skills should be based on a trade, clerical work, sales and even general practice medicine. The general skills should be based on skills needed for everyday life and can include cooking, driving, budgeting and even manners. Only a minority of the population would fit into the first category as very few people have a genuine interest in thinking and learning. Most people belong in the second category and there is actually nothing wrong with this fact as not everyone is the same. Intellectuals in society should claim control of universities and have real power to determine who should be educated as it is completely unrealistic to expect every person to become an academic as it only results in the corruption of our university system.
By Nicaea Delyan
19 October 2007
"I've never accepted the external appearance of things as the whole truth. The world is much more elaborate than the nerves of our eye can tell us... " - James Gleeson.
Gleeson was spawned in Hornsby, Sydney in 1915. He studied primary school teaching at Sydney Teachers College and art at East Sydney Technical College, becoming drawn to the works of Dali, Ernst and the European Surrealists. Around the time of joining the 'Sydney Branch of the Assertively Experimental Contemporary Art Society', Gleeson became interested in the writings of Freud and Jung.
Typical of surrealists, Gleeson's themes are commonly said to explore the human unconscious and its relationship with our rational or conscious states. Surrealism, as a movement in art and ideas belonging to the broader Modernist period of the early 20th century (modernism being proceeded by Romanticism and Enlightenment in turn) undertook to transfer over to art theories popularized by the psychologist Sigmund Freud, which were themselves in some form actually anticipated by Nietzsche's writings on the underlying human will to power, and which potentially downgrade, according to the Surrealists, the primacy of our rational faculties.
From a slightly different and philosophical-historical perspective, Surrealist art is another manifestation of our long held tendency to doubt the objectivity of what are today held to be our infallible tools for grasping what is 'real', i.e., our senses. Doubt regarding the objectivity of these most academically came to the attention of Modern Europe through the philosophical works of Immanual Kant and subsequent German Idealists, but these thinkers were by no means the first to tackle the subject. Plato and many religions preceded them.
With the German Idealists, 'Idealism' did not designate a dedication to any moral nor heroic ambition but rather to two, both metaphysical and epistemological, points. Firstly: the possibility that our minds do not grasp reality in itself but rather only representations of reality which may or may not correspond to reality objectively (i.e. may not correspond to reality as reality is, in-itself, separate from our perception of it). This idea can be demonstrated simplistically by putting forward the case that what we experience as the colour red really does not exist in the so-called 'red' objects themselves, but only in our minds as the subjective result of our optical nerve reacting in a certain way with the certain wavelength of light that 'red' objects reflect, to produce a certain (red) image in our consciousness or in that part of our mind which deals with the representation we depend on live. This scepticism has often been extended to claims, of varying degree and plausibility, that the underlying laws or invisible principles (i.e. of Newtons) with which nature or reality is organised are really, or merely, laws embedded into our understanding rather than into nature itself, and that our (now subjective) representations of reality, while organised by these principles, therefore do not necessarily correspond to the 'chaotic flux', or what have you, of nature as it really might be in-itself, possibly devoid of such ordering principles.
Secondly: German idealists, borrowing from eastern philosophy to some degree, posited the slightly different theory that reality itself is simply one big idea or interplay of mental entities or thoughts rather than of concrete material entities or objects, and that we ourselves are but mere thoughts or hypotheses of this mental reality (or 'over mind'). What is known as Hegel's dialectic method is an influential example of one instance of this idea. Another is Schopenhauer's conception of the world as 'will and idea' and to some degree Nietzsche's more personal-based notion of humans existing simply as the players in a big arena subject wholly to their will to power, this 'will' being the fundamental driving force behind all human action and also thought (including rational thought, which thus turns out being wholly determined and thus can be downgraded from being considered as a free and hegemonic faculty to being simply at the whim of our will to power or 'survival' or 'life' force).
As for Gleeson, it is the first of these stances on Idealism, in the two aforementioned philosophical senses, that his quote at the opening of this essay alludes to, and the influence of this sort of thinking can be seen in those of his works which hint at the 'otherness' of being which possibly lies 'behind' our experience of life, or in the same works which at least stand as wake-up-calls and metaphors for the sheer mystery of existence that we at all times live with but which we moderns conveniently ignore and cover up with the increasingly drone-like and mundanely standardized nature of day-to-day life or which we have become too desensitised to or accepting of, like a constant stimulus or situation which soon becomes ignored due to familiarity.
The second stance seems not to have been neglected either though: Worshipping the vague idea that the cause of all our thinking and action is some sort of underlying or unconscious driving force or will, Gleeson, seemingly along with the Surrealist movement in general, wants to let this force express itself through art "in the absence of conscious moral or aesthetic self-censorship". It is obvious that Gleeson's works do not bear witness to a lack of standards, but rather to less interest in normal depictions of form as opposed to more 'normal' styles of art, representing a Dionysian-like interest in the human being's drive to simply create and expend its energy un-hindered by too many unnecessary impositions.
In the end, it is the place of visionaries like Gleeson to hint at the uncertainty that will forever stem from the facade or at least the boundaries of human perception, but also to manipulate in the surreal fashion the appearances that we do possess of our only reality, and to "stimulate the fantasy of mortals" to borrow a quote from Varg Vikernes. As with the musician, who's craft could be labelled surreal in many ways, great Surrealists like Gleeson twist and distort every-day representations (i.e. pieces of sense data) to form new organisations/structures of sense data, expressing the part of either our consciousness or unconsciousness (I'll leave that up to you) standing in awe of a universe that by the very scale of its vastness appears surreal to us, and which continues on in its ways indifferently to our relatively petty and slight individual concerns.
18 October 2007
Born a baker's son in West Melbourne, McCubbin would become a predominant figure in the 'Heidelberg School' of Australian art.
The Heidelberg school was foremost influenced by the European impressionism movement. It abandoned the laborious attention to detail, produced within the studio, emphasizing 'plein air' or open air landscape painting, the instantaneous effects of lighting, and also experimentation with visible brushstrokes. Works reflecting the style of the school were not 'finished' to the polished levels of those of Von Guerard or even Buvelot, but with all its quirks and the influences it took from Europe, the school, which was more like a club consisting of artists who took excursions to Heidelberg in the late 1880's/early 1890s, and in particular McCubbin, who maintained a slightly heightened sense of realism when compared with his colleagues, produced many works which captured the feel of the Australian landscape and general atmosphere to a degree surpassing all previous attempts.
After all, the artistic skills of those who came before and influenced McCubbin were imported, in some sense, as opposed his own which he developed at the same time as he grew around the subject matter he would come to depict.
He is remembered often for his portrayal and celebration of, what was, the Australian bush life. Perhaps his most famous work along these lines is 'The Pioneer' (above) from 1904, which expresses an affectionate portrayal of the lives those freemen who, in the time subsequent to the convict era, layed the foundations, in terms of managing to settle in isolated parts of the harsh bush and farm, for a civilization that would subsequently flourish.
18 October 2007
A Swiss-born landscape painter who emigrated to Melbourne in 1865, Buvelot studied, worked or painted, or all three variously, in the locations of Paris, Bahia in Brazil; Rio de Janeiro (attracting the attention of emperor Don Pedro II who knighted him with the 'order of the rose'), and lastly Switzerland before sailing for Australia where by 1869 his reputation was established in Port Phillip as the colony's leading landscape artist.
Several artists of the Heidelberg school, such as Frederick McCubbin, who Buvelot in fact taught at one point, considered him to be the father of Australian landscape painting with his emphasis on painting out in the open air directly in nature and in the surroundings of one's subject matter, and for his astute and realistic assessment of tone and lighting rather than emphasis on romantic themes and renderings, (a la Von Guerard), which Buvelot used to animate each of his works and which enabled him to depict the true appearance of the Australian landscape to a degree not yet witnessed.
18 October 2007
Born in Vienna, Austria, Von Guerard was educated in the visual arts in Rome and Dusseldorf, Germany. He immigrated to the gold fields of Victoria in 1852 but soon found that there were opportunities for men of his artistic talent in Australia.
His own style drew noticeable influences from German landscape painters of the European Romantic period (spanning, roughly, from 1790 to 1840) such as Caspar David Friedrich. This style of natural art was attached to the intellectual concerns of the Romantic Period such as holism and of identifying God, the 'divine', or the 'life force', inside of nature rather than outside of nature (these ideas also provided the abstract mental orientation for Darwin's observations and subsequent theories). Thus the art strove to depict nature as infinite and as 'the sublime'. Works emphasise depth, detail and 'the picturesque'. Tiny human figures are often dwarfed by the grand scale of nature, as can be seen in many of Von Guerard's works.
By 1860 Von Guerard was recognized as the leading landscape artist in the colonies. Although with the onset of greater 'spontaneity' in the works of Louis Buvelot a few years later, and then even more so with the subsequent Heidelberg school, his population began to dwindle in later years.
In all, he was considered a pioneer in Australian art, and a man of considerable strength and determination, venturing into remote areas of wilderness in search of the sublime and opening the eyes of younger Australian artists to the vast and inspiring subject matter that lay in waiting to anyone who cared to venture into more remote areas away from the cities and larger townships.
18 October 2007
Disembowelment ~ 
Transcendence into the Peripheral (1992)
I. The Tree of Life and Death {10:25}
II. Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory {7:40}
III. Excoriate {4:45}
IV. Nightside of Eden {2:39}
V. A Burial at Ornans {14:38}
VI. The Spirits of the Tall Hills {9:23}
VII. Cerulean Transience of All My Imaged Shores {10:06}
Total Length ~ 59:36
Oppressively heavy, at times hauntingly and majestically introspective, this album from extinct Melbourne beast Disembowelment is a diamond in the rough. Whereas a tendency might exist to classify this band along side those of the Doom Metal sub-genre, this release from the band transcends that genre qualitatively and idealistically. Indeed the music has more in common with grindcore and also ambient music than some overly sentimental and melancholic doom/heavy metal.
A high level of musical variation is displayed as furiously fast and liquid 'melodic' phrases flow and progress linearly, subsequently changing down to slow but vast and crushing passages of, yes, ambient riffing.
Tone is delivered through a huge and hideous method of production partly paralleled in much grindcore music but here given much more bass and also some reverb. This production technique allows such slow and weighty riff fragments to hang in an infinite space, vibrating with an intensity comparable only to the energy levels immediately furnished by an exothermic reaction in the sun.
Clean but deconstructed 'lead' guitar lines are used to stunning effect when placed over these fragmented and weighty undercurrents of thunder, as are occasional clean vocals, creating an ambient and 'doomy' variation of melodic grindcore. These aspects of the music are given boundaries by shifting percussion which sometimes hits repetitively, slow and hard, in rhythm with the laborious riffs and at other times changes to blast furiously around the riff pattern.
Progression in each composition is thus often slow, but it is by no means non-existent. Tacks do flow, often remarkably so, but... slowly - due to the ambient nature of much of the music which injects much more space into metal than is the norm, especially in grindcore-influenced metal. This is reflected in the long length of time expended by most of the tracks.
This is vast music and it dwarfs the listener, but in this way it is far from being self-obsessive. I imagine that, due to its impact, it is as much an exercise in ego death as can be achieved by music. However, one's time meditating with this monster will nevertheless furnish questions and highlight the ever groping nature of the human being.
18 October 2007
Portal ~
Seepia (2003) 
I. Glumurphonel {5:05}
II. Vessel of Balon {2:42}
III. Tempus Fugit {4:20}
IV. Sunken {3:10}
V. Atmosblisters {4:11}
VI. Transcending A Mere Multiverse {3:03}
VII. Antique {2:41}
VIII. The End Mills {6:41}
Total Length ~ 31:53
Appealing to our subconscious sense of or desire for the infinite, or for ego death, experienced in the face of near chaos, or perhaps to a desire for what lies 'behind' currently accepted human designs, Portal emerges with its first full length work which proves to be an exercise in sustained discordance par excellence. The relatively thin and grainy production used for the album adds to the rhythmically fragmented and musically atonal nature of the material, where nothing is as it seems it should be.
This is a truly challenging work, for Seepia combines the employment of rhythmic unpredictability when the structure of notes being used is more agreeable/perceivable, with tonal unpredictability when the rhythmic/timing structure is instead somewhat more perceivable. 'Ecto surreal abysmill horror', as the band describes it, indeed.
Portal would seem to be spot on in labelling their art as surreal, in the sense that its aims are, in light of its discordance, to appeal to our subconscious feelings rather than our conscious rational powers (...used to perceive structure etc, for in this release structure is, even relative to some other extreme metal, minimal). The last two tracks possibly provide the greatest amount of relief, though minute, from the cacophony, with an electronic/soundcape piece and then a metal track with sustained use of barely melodic themes, and the question begs itself as the album closes and the piece loses what ever consonance it had, as to whether music should forsake our need for structre as us much as this release does.
To this writer, Seepia proves to be an interesting exercise in art, although it seems too ready to disregard as 'unreal', like much Surrealist/Dadaist/Absurdist art, what Julius Evola would call the 'conscious and sovereign principle of the person' in favour of the 'irrational, unconscious and nocturnal dimension of the human being', and as a result it often lacks the power to do much other than disturb and coldly agitate the listener. Here structure, and particullary the principle of tonal structure, is violated, leaving the listener with little to work with.
Portal ~
The Sweyy (2004)
I. The Sweyy {5:05}
II. Werships {6:11}
III. Doors {2:57}
Total Length ~ 14:13
The Surrealists from Queensland returned, quite soon after their 2003 cacophony, Seepia, with an additional guitarist to deliver a new but short length release possibly hinting at what is in store from this band for the future in the form of increasing use of structure and adherence to boundaries.
The first track on this EP most closely resembles the heavily discordant Seepia album, although it is a little more focused in that many phrases take the listener in a sustained direction for longer before unravelling into the fragmented atonality and also sometimes rhythmic irregularity this band is known for. But then boundaries to the randomizing combination of elements are again erected around the phrases and the piece explodes forward with this traction once more enabling a sense of defined spacial direction. Similarly, but in certain of the not so completely discordant section of the piece, tones float above the sustained and rigid stream of percussion below in an ambient but slightly detached manner, akin to debris floating to and fro in a gentle river eddy as the current spills on right next to it, before being pulled back into a main flow and pummelling onward down the musical stream.
The second and last 'metal' track on this release displays an even greater awareness from this band of what the human brain perceives as structure in music. Long and sustained phrases stretch in and out, almost as if reality is breathing, to create a majestic sway against the rigid and grounding use of percussion before again briefly exploding forward and then finally unravelling into disarray. A soundscape wraps up the EP.
In all, this release is poignant for its ability to so vividly portray the human consciousness as it moves between the contemplation of all that it cannot achieve without an adherence to structure or design on the one hand, and a realisation of the sharp unfolding clarity and direction which suddenly emerges when those conditions are met on the other.
Portal ~
Outre (2007)
I. Moil {1:35}
II. Abysmill {4:46}
III. Heirships {6:06}
IV. Omnipotent Crawling Chaos {5:17}
V. Black Houses {5:00}
VI. Outre {2:32}
VII. 13 Globes {4:08}
VIII. Sourlows {7:18}
Total Length ~ 36:36
Moving further into uncharted territory with this release, Portal manage to fully incorporate ambient composition into their increasingly blackened brand of death metal. Their use of extreme dissonance resembles bands such as Averse Sefira and Immolation, but here it is taken one step further, allowing it free reign to guide the music through seemingly random yet subtly ingenious structures.
After a brief, disturbed intro which builds tension the music moves seamlessly into blasting dissonance; this build up without resolution in characteristic of this album, which utilises constant churning chaos without immediately recognisable structure to penetrate the darkest recesses of the listener’s subconscious. Drawn out tremolo picked melodies are repeated for long periods accompanied by the more usual highly dissonant technical riffs. The repetition is complemented by the increasingly ambient style of drumming, which now often resembles a black metal pulsing blast more than regular death metal drumming. These elements create a chaotic and atmospheric style, directly assaulting the listener’s perception.
The structures may alienate the average hessian at first because of their complete rejection of standard metal forms. They more closely resemble the droning dark ambient style of Raison D'Etre and Lustmord in their constant development and lack of cycles. Each riff is used and then discarded in the constant unrelenting chaos of this album, and multiple variations on themes ensure that these songs are not linear but more closely resemble the growth of a tree, with parts shooting off in every direction. This is brutally penetrating; its surrealistic tendencies serve only to reflect the dynamic nature of reality, communicating the seeming omnipotence of both continuation and change.
Internally these songs are held together by melodic and rhythmic devices, which may allow some degree of familiarity for the listener. As a melody shifts a rhythmic idea remains constant, or melodic ideas are transposed to another riff with a different tempo. This gives each song a vague sense of continuity which was less developed on their previous album. As each song begins the chaos is gradually decoded to reveal a continuous narrative. These gradual rises and descents between chaos and order have no definite beginning and end as might be found in other metal, rather it seems they are in constant motion, this allows a great deal of freedom or the listener to find their own meaning within this maelstrom of dissonant harmony and ambient style song structure.
While this is without doubt a challenging listen, this album is relentlessly inventive and at times, beautiful. Beyond the immediate chaos there is a sense of order established that puts this release above much death metal and Portal are beginning to realise their potential and clearly display an ability to transcend the metal genre. This reviewer recommends that listeners become familiar with ambient music in order to gain a better understanding of this release.
06 October 2007
Australian society is run primarily in the interests of the economy. Now, corresponding to any period in which a certain social orientation reigns we may discover certain regimes of truth, or particular ideologies, which reinforce the social orientation.
Those in power must universalise their worldview so that the particular social orientation persist: a more enduring and thus 'successful' worldview will convince individuals in a society that they act in their own interests when in fact they are really just means to an end beyond themselves.
So, what does the social orientation entail and why? Well when we compare these modern times with the stock of literary, architectural and other historical indicators of past European ages, we may see that the current 'politically correct' worldview which pervades much of the globe (and not just Australia) is relatively individualistic, 'humanistic', and materialistic in nature.
Its aims are effectively to engineer and reinforce a society which, as if it were a shopping centre, possesses the minimum of entry standards and excludes no one because its aims go no 'higher' than economic ends which are benefited most by ensuring that the largest possible quantity of individuals are both buying and selling now and into the immediate future.
Along these lines the apparent equality between all homo-sapiens is parroted and the 'universal rights of man' are constantly evoked as if they were something that actually existed somewhere in the universe to be discovered as fact.
A safe, comfortable and rather mundane 'consumer' existence is celebrated so that we pander to nearly all of our desires which, only fittingly, can be satisfied by products. It's also vital that we don't forget to belt up and subsequently die on the way to work or to the shops, decreasing the economic biomass of the nation and Gross Domestic Product with it.
The endless invasion of marketing in our lives reinforces the narrow-minded view that buying a particular brand or type of car, for instance, over another makes one somehow different and special. Indeed, it is a pity that the genuine inequality between human beings is trivialised in marketing slogans like "Everyone's journey's different: that's why we've designed different models for different people" and is realised only as far as the shallow plane of choice between products. (Openly display difference in some sort of significant ideological way, for example by questioning democracy, consumer society and 'equality between humans', and then see how long it takes before you are avoided; quite hypocritical in a society that in theory preaches that all people are equal).
We must face reality: We live in a society which, like all of them before ours, possesses an agenda. Capitalism, populism, humanism (equality) are not 'disinterested' ideologies. Further, many of us as citizens have internalised these ideologies, meaning enough of us constantly reinforce them in our own thoughts and actions and keep the status quo going. But is there a problem with all this?
Well look at the aforementioned emphasis we place on equality. Julius Evola suggests in his book 'Men Among the Ruins' that the aspects under which human beings are all equal represent the 'minus' or the lowest aspects of humanity rather than the 'plus' or most interesting aspects. He asserts that to give primacy to the lower aspects of humanity is like regarding the bronze in many statues as the prime feature of the statue rather than regarding each as the expression of a distinct idea to which the bronze merely supplies the mundane working matter.
It would seem that only a community which aims exclusively to maximise the value of goods and services supplied and demanded by engineering a bumper crop of human consumers would regard the mere fact of belonging to the biological species 'homo-sapiens' as a fitting standard to evaluate its individuals against. I might be wrong but I suspect that a chimp could be taught to work in many of the jobs homo-sapiens are currently happy with and to engage in the purchasing of products.
But perhaps this hints at the truth; that the powers that be (exploiting the stock of values we currently hold) posses a vested interest in the slow but sure levelling down of the human being from the
lofty heights it has proven it can reach - right back down to the level of working and consuming apes.
By David.
06 October 2007
When one sweeps their mind clean of many of the concepts that have been instilled in one's pattern of thought over the years by a globalized society possessing a set of fundamental assumptions, taking great care to address, to the greatest degree humanly possible, the bare facts of experience in their raw essence, it becomes startling to observe the degree to which the idea of Democracy is worshipped today.
It is asserted as though it is some sort of universal moral/political law, naturally existing as such, and so it is very rarely itself dissected and justified. "But that is anti-democratic", or the like, can be heard prematurely killing numerous debates. 'Real' universal happenings, such as the laws identified by physics, are those forces embedded in nature which just are, and which cannot themselves be questioned. The force of gravity and the force which binds atoms together, known as the 'strong force', for instance, are all universal happenings, meaning they apply, for all practical purposes, anywhere and everywhere and cannot be questioned. They are by their nature necessary and immutable.
However, there are no equivalents in the realms of morality or politics - because all such notions are completely subjective and man made. No universal moral or political laws 'exist', and therefore no theories in those realms should be taken for granted. Today, one is usually dismissed immediately for questioning the suitability of democracy. I think this is wrong. Democracy is taken as a given, when in fact it has no objective basis what so ever. Furthermore, its subjective basis seems, to this writer, to be misguided.
Democratic theory has been parroted in the -modern- western world since the Enlightenment period. That period of European thought was all about discovering the universal traits that exist in the universe (in the human being, the physical universe etc). The thing identified as existing, universally, in all people, was their faculty of reason. The concept of 'reason' is a slippery one, but it has something to do with grasping effects and their causes, or alternatively, grasping the laws of logic which are apparently infallible throughout the Universe.
People were encouraged to break from the traditional sources of authority such as the church and monarchy, and to work reality out for themselves. Apparently the *potential* ability of all people to grasp effects and their causes vindicated the notion that they should lead society themselves, all of them, 'equally'. No one person's vote would be worth more than another's.
This might sound nice at first, but it ignores two points. Firstly, the fact that one person is often more developed in their faculties than another, and secondly that many people do not care about the dynamic and holistic issues that they find themselves voting for or against once every four years. So what? Well this results in nothing less than one intelligent and well researched vote being cancelled out and ruled obsolete by one ignorant vote.
Alarm bells should be raised considering that our popular current affairs shows on television are clogged with light weight segments like 'the worst neighbors in the country', while our most popular newspapers often struggle to raise themselves above the depth level of a tabloid magazine.
Moreover, in our modern time of highly specialized labor can we really expect that all people have the time and breadth needed to devote themselves to political and social issues?
In contrast to Ancient Athens, the era and place that originally spawned state democracy, the average voter in our modern democracy is engaged with some form of narrowly specialized job all day and this era of paid employment is typically preceded by time spent in narrow fields of education in preparation for our narrow fields of employment.
Consider the citizen, male as he was, in Ancient Greece who spent much less time at work for himself and whose education was not nearly as specific and individualistic as in modern times. It was concerned, not with entry into some specific field of employment, but with developing the whole (man) in all his virtue.
This reflects the preoccupation held by Ancient Greeks with life beyond the individual. For the Greek citizen "was essentially social...Religion, art, games, and discussion of things - all these were needs of life that could be fully satisfied only through the polis (city-state)...Moreover, he wanted to play his own part in running the affairs of his community"1.
I do not think it is a coincidence that a political theory like democracy sprang up in Ancient Greece. As well as experiencing a culture that revolved around civic pride, the voters were exclusively the men of the polis: many of them kept slaves and their wives managed all the domestic affairs, leaving each of them with time and energy to devote themselves to the society.
The reality of modern life is much different to the utopian idea that everyone is equal in their reasoning abilities. Similarly, the reality of
our culture is at logger heads with the democratic premise that all modern 'citizens' care about the realm of life beyond entertainment and the individual.
Besides the further fact that not all people are equal in their abilities but that paradoxically all votes are considered equal, democracy is slightly absurd because there exist no cultural obligations related to logic/argument, politics, and society.
By David.
1 Kitto, H.D.F. (1951) 'The Greeks', Penguin Books, Middlesex, pp. 141
06 October 2007
Australians love an underdog. We often get behind the disadvantaged or 'battling' party in sporting matches, in conflicts, and in any situation where some number of people potentially come out 'on top' of another. Often, however, this psychology goes so far that we display the type of behaviour that is commonly labelled 'tall poppy syndrome' in that we tear down the 'best' among us in the various pursuits that together comprise the activities of our society and our communities, be they economic, sporting, artistic, intellectual, and so on.
Accordingly, a person cannot be held up as an ideal in Australian society for long before he or she is attacked and scorned, often in quite a primitive and vicious manner, by various people and/or interest groups. So what could possibly be the cause of this? Two hypotheses suggest themselves to my mind: our convict past on the one hand and our multiculturalism and pluralism on the other.
To the first: A large part of our outlook as a people was forged at a time when Australian society was sharply divided between ruler and ruled, master and slave, corrector and convict. From 1790 to 1820 the nation was first and foremost a British penal colony, and a modern and materially developed nation was so quickly built simply because the then leaders of the separate colonies possessed the luxury of a totally subject labouring force, i.e. the convicts, who could be mobilised and set to work at once where ever some infrastructure building needed to be done, largely for pastoral, agricultural, and settling purposes.
Many convicts were subsequently 'placed' in the employment of freemen, many of whom came to Australia basically as businessmen to benefit from the economic opportunities presented by a rapidly developing Western capitalist nation with a large and cheap labour force. The convict workers were given very few, 'rights', if any, and punishment for abandoning one's assigned duties, be they in the service of the particular colony on the one hand or a freeman on the other, was swift.
It would not be a huge leap of faith to assume that a subjugated collection of British outcasts shipped to a harsh and inhospitable new land and made to work under the hot Australian sun would have harboured a very vivid resentment and jealousy towards those 'on top' considering the comparative luxury in which the British officers and subsequent free settlers surrounded themselves with.
The second hypothesis behind our Tall Poppy Syndrome is another but more recent aspect of our collective outlook: the political philosophy of pluralism and an associated social philosophy, multiculturalism. Pluralism in a multicultural setting is basically an idea that encourages the coexistence of different interests, lifestyles and ideals within a single geographical and political entity, many of which naturally would have existed with more autonomy in less globalised times.
Considering the inherent lack of consensus in matters of ideals that this Pluralism promotes by its very definition it should surprise us little that Australian cultural possesses no meaningful shared definition, on the whole, of what constitutes success or failure, resulting in the state of affairs in which anyone held up as an elite or as encompassing the ideal is quickly torn down from their pedestal.
But of course Australian society does possess some kind of unconscious common ideological orientation, despite the fact that this is not to an extent that we can publicly glorify those who encompass it. Due to the disparity of values that is effectually promoted in our society by pluralism and multiculturalism we simply lack any consensus of what constitutes success beyond that element of success which is common to all the interests, lifestyles and ideals that bubble away around us: materialism.
The aspect of the 'good life', or that which constitutes success, and is common to all the competing sets of values has naturally taken the form merely of material success. For everyone, no matter their culture, beliefs or ideals, needs to achieve a certain level of material sustenance before they can then fulfil their higher desires or ideals. Such a point of commonality held amongst people possessing different value systems can thus be referred to as the 'lowest common denominator'.
Thus, while we scrap with each other to tear down the different individuals who are held up as the ideal Australian from time to time, be they a particular sportsman/woman, intellectual, artist, public figure, or worker etc, it comes as no surprise that all the while behind the scenes the one type of person who is increasingly being emulated by the average joe is the purely material man or woman: the person who has the big car, the big TV, the McMansion and accordingly the big ego, put up like a wall around him or herself to block out anything which goes beyond the lowest common denominator concern for status through goods and money.
By David
06 October 2007
My well meaning parents had the desire to educate me at a private girl's school. They were influenced by modern values which dictate that women should be educated and have the same opportunities as men. Their intentions were genuine and I am grateful for the many useful academic skills I acquired. However, the private girl's school was influenced by feminist agendas. It left me misguided and in a career that was not suitable to me and my abilities that were more in line with my natural feminine instincts.
The purpose of the feminist agenda was for women to gain equality with men in the workplace. We were constantly reminded that in many professional careers the number of women was significantly less than men. Statistics about men in high status careers were quoted often. Our school believed that through education we would become independent. We would achieve our full potential academically and professionally instead of 'being chained to the kitchen sink'.
Influenced by the propaganda, I pursued the academic path with a view for a career that was male orientated. I dutifully went to University and enrolled in an appropriate degree. What I didn't realize at the naive age of seventeen, however, was that I had no natural interest in these courses. I eventually came to realize that I had been misguided by feminist agendas which were based on statistics. What I have become passionate about are feminine pursuits which are neither academic nor professional.
That is why this organisation appeals to me, it looks beyond the propaganda that modern society feeds you and sees the world in a real form. The real form of it is that we look at the reality of the way males and females adapt to the world. And that reality is that men and women are different and this is a scientific fact not a feminist fallacy. Sexual selection has created differences between the sexes. This has meant that the needs and abilities of women are often different from those of men.
It is not my objective to explain these differences, my aim is to state that people of both sexes should aim to pursue what they know will ultimately fulfil them, within practical limitations. It should not be set by feminist agendas which are not based in reality. For example if a woman chooses to be a stay at home mother and invest in her family then she should not be made to feel guilty about it, if a woman wants to be a dressmaker or beautician she should be able to pursue that without feeling that she is less important. And if a woman wants to be highly educated professional then so be it, but it should not be forced upon her by propaganda.
In conclusion the way we look at the roles of men and women needs to be carefully examined. We shouldn't construct empty moral rules based in delusion and statistical adjustments as the consequences are that many women become misguided and unfulfilled in their everyday roles and that our society looses an invaluable part of itself to the relentless modern march of social standardisation.
By Nicaea Delyan
hink of it all - of the life that is! Study your friends and foes!
Study the past! And answer this: "Are these times better than those?" The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide.