31 July 2008
"We're not going to watch your prime time programs or put up with your ads much longer because, basically, we're bored witless and we're not going to take it any more.
We're also over the free-to-air prime time TV shows. You expect us to watch an endless stream of jerks, jocks, docs, cops and corpses.
We're proud of our achievements and we're sick of the sexualisation or sell-out of women. We refuse to fit your ageing stereotype and we like humour.
So, what will we do when we stop watching TV? Plenty."
::View Article::
Awesome. We need more intelligent people to come out of their wildernesses and speak out about television and the mass media which are in the business of appealing to the most base desires of society in order to capture people's attention and advertise 'unique' brands of products and services which are usually much the same as all the other competing brands. Sit down, 'tune in, and drop out'... it's this kind of pacifistic human consumption of information that television and other parts of the commercial media depend on us for.
It's a parasitical state of affairs, yes, but perhaps the most damaging aspect of television is that its shows influence the values, opinions, and behaviours of an unwitting audience. Its a vicious circle, in that the most pacifistic, transient, and also self-cantered desires that attract one to the screen are cultivated by the often mundane worlds that each show offers the viewer an escape into.
Come back to reality. Is there anybody... out there?
29 July 2008
"VIOLENT crimes have risen to record highs in Victoria, leaked police data shows.
Almost 43,000 people suffered from violent crime in 2007-08.
Premier John Brumby said Victoria continued to be the safest state, and the increase in violent crime had been driven by the abuse of alcohol.
"We have got an issue with alcohol-fuelled violence," he said. "We've said this is a priority, we are tackling it, we need to do more, but this is alcohol-driven"."
::View Article::
My bet is that in responding to this the state government will simply do what any of our modern bureaucrats, I mean politicians, would do with their overly abstract and removed thinking: tax alcohol more or enact some similar sort of band-aid solution that treats the symptoms of a problem but not the cause.
The causes of this violence are the negative side effects of our social design and culture. It's what happens when we're constantly told that the individual is king, so that we buy what ever we might desire to boost the movement of tokens in the economy. It's what happens when a bunch of people in a geographical area have no collective goal in life besides partaking in a giant rat race to see who can accumulate the most booty, who will be labelled as hippies or fools for questioning this unfulfilling sort of 'progress', and who thus feel no attachment to their society whatsoever beyond using to get what they want when they want it.
All hail progress!
27 July 2008
"GOOD workers are becoming so hard to find that employers are pleading with the courts to keep them out of jail.
A Queensland judge was asked twice yesterday to spare defendants from jail sentences because the tough economic times meant their employers could not do without them.
Commerce Queensland president Beatrice Booth said it was almost impossible to have staff exempted from jury duty and productivity was taking a hit from jury service obligations.
"If they're at government-imposed duties, then the productivity for those days is non-existent," she said."
::View Article::
Is this how fanatically focused we are becoming on the purely economic issues of productivity, material growth, and good and services? What about the other aspects of life?
One of our main problems as a society is that we have created no sense of personal accomplishment beyond material and economic conquest, leaving people greedy and unfulfilled. We certainly don't need the economy ruling life to an even greater degree. Sure the economy is important, but how important? Materialism should be seen as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.
25 July 2008
"ONE Federal Coalition figure admits, albeit privately, that being in Opposition can be fun. "You throw a few hand grenades and you run away," he says with a smile.
Opposition generally means less stress and shorter hours. Running a guerilla campaign to bring down the Government is largely how you spend your time."
::View Article::
Our politicians spend their time playing games to catch each other out in the eyes of the voters. The main focus is on how one team can injure the other in the eyes of the voting public, rather than on the quest to formulate the best possible policy. Even the politicians themselves are now admitting this.
This, if left unchecked, can only be dangerous. Consider the following analogy...
One Major General and one General are leading a mass of soldiers in a battle. The General was appointed to his more senior position by the soldiers in a ballot before the battle and this democratic practice occurs before every battle: there are only these two General Officers and the one who gets the most votes from his soldiers who were in the previous battle claims the higher ranking position of General in the next one.
Now, imagine that the two Generals, instead of formulating realistic and noble real-time war strategy in the battle, compete with each other to look good in the eyes of the voters/soldiers by cushioning them from the battle. In this way each of the two generals hope to be the one voted in as the General, as opposed to the lower position of Major General, next time around, receiving higher pay and more lip service from the establishment.
What naturally happens? Their side as a whole suffers a crushing defeat due to the commanders of strategy focusing more on what's popular as opposed to the reality of what needs to be done.
While the Australian citizens (the soldiers) and the Labor and Liberal parties (the two competing Generals) might not be crushed by an opposing army, we might well be crushed by the significant internal (social) and external (environmental) tensions which naturally arise from the operation of todays society if we are not lead by strategic thinkers who address reality and not necessary simply the fancies of a mass of voters.
Democracy is slightly insane so long as the elected leaders are purely self interested and also so long as the majority (quantity rules remember) of voters are purely self interested.
23 July 2008
"A WIDENING gulf between international and local students has prompted warnings of resentment and a backlash on Australian university campuses, as overseas student numbers continue to grow.
[...]
Local students tended to work off campus and were not active in student life, while international students spent most of their time on campus, generally in the library, Professor Simon Marginson, of Melbourne University's Centre for Higher Education, told The Age. "So you've got this odd situation with the local students half disengaged in a way I've never really seen before," he said.
[...]
Professor Marginson said internationalisation of higher education was supposed to enrich universities by helping staff, students and institutions create strong cultural and intellectual links with other countries, as well as bring in much-needed revenue. But it did not appear to be meeting its aim.
Cuts in federal funding have forced universities to seek revenue from other sources, including international students. Meanwhile, growth in domestic students has slowed, while international student numbers have rocketed to 370,000."
::View Article::
Wow. Here we have a clear and realistic report on the whole business of multiculturalism in our Universities that can be generalized, with a small amount of imagination, to the level of the nation because the same underlying forces are at work on both levels.
We have the university establishment which for purely financial reasons is progressively boosting overseas intake. Despite the rhetoric of 'enrichment' and 'diversity' that is spurted out by the mouthpieces of the establishment, trying to convince everyone that it's in their best interests, this multiculturalism is creating ethnic divisions or enclaves: the natural/organic organization of members of a particular ethnic group around each other. These enclaves are contributing to a lowering of general civic interest in each university campus community, leading increasingly to an environment where people simply rock up, spend the least amount of time there as possible, and then promptly go home.
...Not the healthy and dynamic centre of knowledge, debate and fraternity a university is traditionally perceived to be, hey? We need to stop conveniently ignoring the significance of the genuine differences that seperate people of different ethnicities and seriously examine the negative side effects of the sort of outlook which is concerned simply with quantity and which seeks to accumulate masses of human beings merely for positive bureaucratic/financial results.
22 July 2008
I'm no christian by any stretch of the imagination. I have empirical and moral reasons to oppose its dogmatism. However I'm amazed at the near-equally dogmatic dislike that some people have displayed towards the pope during his time in Australia.
Is the basic message that came from the pope not healthy for us or any Western nation in its current stage of material propsterity? Like the call to ease back on the superfluous levels of individualism and materialism that currently characterise us and to focus instead a bit more again on the processes which make our communities possible in the first place rather than simply the results which these processes enable us to consume/benefit from. From a
nihilist or corrupt perspective these processes include: the environment, community bonds, mutual respect, family, the authority of experience and wisdom, and so on.
Sure the catholic church might have some funny particular views on 'the processes', but at least they are concerned with this sort of thinking and starting dialogue in these very areas of thought. Any organisation or thinktank or religion which is concerned with a society in the same way you might think of an organic living thing, which is born for various reasons and which may die/decline for various reasons, has to have at least some merit when you address reality.
If secularism means the same thing as an Australian state seperated from any deeper but at the same time practical and non-abstracted thinking about what it takes to maintain a healthy and strong society behind the stockmarkets, gadgets, wage disputes, art vs porn debates, etc then its simply another dangerous fanaticism itself.
20 July 2008
"THE proposal aired in last week's Sunday Age to reinstate conductors to Melbourne's trams was greeted with unsurprising enthusiasm. But the nostalgia for connies probably has little to do with the mechanics of tram ticketing and more to do with a general unease about 21st-century relationships.
[...]
It probably isn't the cost of conductors, or the ballooning cost of myki that makes so many people miss the connies. As blog comments, reader contributions and subsequent opinion pieces have made clear, what people are most nostalgic for is human contact on the tram.
[...]
Rather than hoping that conductors will somehow rebuild Melbourne's community spirit, why not look at what's holding that spirit back? We will probably discover it is much more than dissatisfaction with ticketing machines."
::View Article::
Correct. If you wipe away the dogma and look at society from a structural point of view you might perceive that our communities are becoming increasingly artificial and strained.
We live in an increasingly centralised society which constantly reminds people of their individual rights, liberties and freedoms whilst failing to instil them with the balancing sense of virtue and common concern (beyond the buying and selling of products, which is our sole unifying force these days). The state pumps literally hundreds of thousands of people from a mixed bag of vastly different cultures into the population each year leading to increased isolation and disconnection among people despite all the rhetoric of harmony, and it promotes among its people no higher aspiration than the accumulation of wealth, a dangerously unsatisfying psychology which naturally leaves people needy, unfulfilled and agitated.
Significantly, we're also all told that we're 'equal' and 'the same' and that everyone should be crammed under this same stupid social design, which is simply leading to an standardised, atomised and lowest common denominator way of life based around shallow displays of individualism and materialism.
In contrast to modern social trends, Corrupt believes that we should base our social values on the common good as opposed to the individual good: to a higher degree than is currently the norm, and also on the organic concepts of common heritage, common values, common goals, and the cultivation of true diversity between these more unified communities. This would pave the way to more significant levels of social concern, satisfaction and natural human interaction within each community beyond the modern 'culture' of buying and selling products, individual attention seeking, and ritual intoxication.
18 July 2008
"Big Brother was a cultural phenomenon that defined popular culture in the 21st century for many of us. We were left with so many indelible memories. Remember the guy with the thing? And remember what that girl did to the other one? And when they said that thing about the people, I almost died. Also, some of them were gay.
[...]
I fear for the kids. There are only so many drugs you can take before you start yearning for something more. There are only so many stories about Angelina's marriage hell, only so many breakfast radio sound effects, only so many Zoo magazine covers featuring Imogen Bailey that you can endure, before you turn towards the one show that you thought would be an eternal spring of cultural inspiration. A spring that just ran dry.
Big Brother may not have been perfect TV, or excellent TV, or bearable TV, but by God it was TV, and in this day and age, when young people are so quick to leap aboard any
passing worthy cause or
major world religion that happens to pop up, we sorely need more of it."
::View Article::
This overtly sarcastic article is right on the money. Big Brother is the figurehead for mainstream 'culture' of the early 21st century: a culture of mass obsession with watching something as fleeting as one marathon party for weeks on end every single year for, oh, 8 years.
The point of this is not to attack everyone individual who has ever watched Big Brother. It's to suggest that there is a very good chance that a large majority of us are completely unconcerned in our free time with things that go beyond mere entertainment and insular, passive pursuits that will no longer matter after the channel has been changed.
Considering we are all voters in the political system known as a democracy I would have thought that we would all naturally be interested in the bigger things, at least in addition to the entertainment and hedonism. I doubt this is the case, however, to the ultimate absurdity of the hopes and rhetoric surrounding our democracy and society.
17 July 2008
"UNIVERSITIES should place less emphasis on year 12 entry scores so that more disadvantaged students can get into prestigious courses, according to a leading vice-chancellor.
In a radical suggestion presented to the conference yesterday, University of Sydney deputy vice-chancellor Ann Brewer suggested an "equity trading scheme", whereby institutions that boosted participation among disadvantaged groups would be rewarded with "credits". These could be traded for government funding.
[...]
Professor Robson's comments about ENTER scores come after the Australian Catholic University also raised concerns about the system, saying character and community service were equally important."
::View Article::
In addition to pure intelligence, which can be used for destructive as well as constructive purposes, placing a tertiary emphasis on other aspects of character could indeed be good for society.
However the proposal to boost the intake of students from "disadvantaged groups" smells dangerously of moral self-righteousness rather than logic. Instead of lowering the standards for the various university courses, which is what this proposal would effectually do, it would seem to me more effective to reform and bring all the high schools around the country up to a good standard to ensure that every student, even if he or she is from a typically 'disadvantaged' area, has the opportunity to meet the expectations of a particular university course.
In this way we would not be lowering the standard of our highly educated people while we would be making it less likely that one's economic origins get in the way of any future potentiality in life.
17 July 2008
"Sydney mother Laurina took her 8-year-old son to [the Dark Knight] as a school holiday activity and left the cinema highly disturbed by the violent scenes, and felt the movie was inappropriately rated.
"I'm horrified, this movie is rated M and I almost feel it's heavier than an R rated film. I had to cover his eyes and talk to him throughout to cover some of the dialogue.
"I mean these companies market Lego products to children like my son. This movie should definitely be rated higher. We're going to go and get some sunshine and go somewhere happier!""
::View Article::
Way to go. Take your 8 year old son to a movie that is recommended for over 15s, and then after he comes out naturally disturbed and shaken blame the situation on an unchecked need for further government regulation.
People like this cause day-to-day life to be superfluously centralised, monitored and regulated by the state: a sub-section of people who are not capable of making basic realistic decisions for themselves and who require big brother to do it for them, or alternatively people who expect big brother to clean up the mess resulting from their bad decisions. They make life increasingly tedious, patronising and restricted for everyone else who can make good decisions on their own.
15 July 2008
"COLES' and Safeway's stranglehold on grocery retailing is pushing food prices down rather than up, according to the head of the company that owns Coles.
Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder said big retailers charge lower prices by benefiting from economies of scale that smaller retailers cannot achieve.
[...]
Mr Goyder said higher food prices were here to stay as the powerhouse economies of Asia continued to Westernise, putting pressure on food supplies."
::View Article::
While it is highly unlikely that two firms dominating the food retail industry in Australia is not pushing up food prices to some degree due to a lack of competition, Goyder is speaking some sense. China alone has over 1.3 billion individual people in it and is the world's most populated nation. India has over 1.1 billion people and is the world's second most populated nation. All the nations of Europe combined have a population, while itself a large number, of just 731 million people.
Significance? Well, when you consider that China and India by themselves, let alone all the other emerging nations around the world, are in the process of bringing 2.4 billion human beings up to consumption levels of the average Western man or woman, it does not require a large leap in imagination to conclude that humanity in general will be demanding a hell of a lot from the planet's food supply. And when demand rises faster than supply, prices rise.
The world's population is expected to rise from the current figure of 6.7 billion to around 9.5 billion by 2050, with no end in sight. Logically speaking this cannot be sustainable, and these higher food prices that we are all experiencing are but one initial signal that too many people are demanding too much from the planet. Other 'signals' include the rapid global rates of deforestation and extinction of animal species. Rising oil prices could very well be included here also.
13 July 2008
"JANA Rawlinson has apologised for being a "drama queen" at the Athens Olympics.
The world 400m hurdle champion returned to Sydney this morning, five days after announcing she had pulled out of the Beijing Games because of injury, and said she wanted none of the drama that surrounded her knee operation four years ago.
"I apologise for the circus that was created ... I was a bit of a drama queen in Athens," she told reporters at Sydney Airport."
::View Aritlce::
I like the traditional idea behind sport, the old Olympian ethos of self-betterment and the pursuit of physical excellence in a certain field. Hell, I've even been involved in a fair of sport in my time. But the way professional sport is headed is a path that I find distasteful, disrespectful and fleeting.
Its increasingly going to way of ego worship: Excessive individualism has infected the professional sporting world. It's increasingly all about the 'star' rather than the process, the effort, the achievement.
What a sports man or woman is wearing seems to be the new fascination, drug use is positively rampant and the on field/on court antics of figureheads is getting more and more inflated, ridiculous and un-sporting.
11 July 2008
"Corruption is a word with several shades of meaning. It may mean the payment of bribes, and in that sense, as Royce Millar acknowledged in his reports, there is no hard evidence that political donations by corporations or wealthy business people are corrupt. But corruption can also refer to the buying of influence, rather than making payments in return for specific favours. And in that wider sense of the word it can only be of profound concern that, as our reports show, the corporate donors to the Victorian ALP are, overwhelmingly, in construction or other infrastructure-related areas of business. Of the 44 corporate donors to the ALP in 2006 and 2007, more than three-quarters were in these areas, or in alcohol or gaming, or had contracts with the Government. These firms, it can reasonably be surmised, gave money to the governing party because their prosperity depends on securing government contracts. To assert that they are doing anything other than what Mr Schwartz suggests — giving money because they want something in return - would be to strain credulity to breaking point.
Victorian Labor is notable for the relationships it has developed with infrastructure firms because its corporate fund-raising arm, Progressive Business, has been conspicuously successful at forging such relationships. But they are not unique to the ALP, or to this state. In NSW, both major political parties have similar fund-raising affiliates, and here in Victoria the Opposition Leader, Ted Baillieu, agrees with the Premier that the present rules governing political donations - no limit on how much can be given, and disclosure required only for donations above $10,500 - should remain.
Only by redefining "healthy" can the Premier's contention that donations from government contractors or would-be contractors indicate a healthy democracy be taken seriously. When a political party receives substantial funds from companies with which it must deal when in government, those companies inevitably acquire greater influence over government decision-making than ordinary voters possess. The same, of course, could also be said about trade union donations to political parties."
::View Article::
This article captures the reality, as opposed to the rhetoric, of our political and decision making system: its not run by the voters. Most political decisions are given impetus by factional power groups while the masses are kept happy by trifling television & other mass media, alcohol, and assurances that the status-quo will fill their bank accounts most rapidly allowing them to purchase more and more 'things'. Voters only become aware of aspects of reality at the last moment when things like resource prices, water and food shortages, rampant street violence and individualism, and terrorism give a loud 'wake up call' that our leaders are in fact short-sighted idiots.
Those of us who are not satisfied with an increasingly atomized Australian society based around the denial of reality that is facilitated by the mass media, drugs, and consumer culture need to band together and make ourselves known in public debate, academia, business and the arts.
The mainstream 'Left' and 'Right' don't get it. Each address only aspects of the problem while proposing measures that would make other aspects of this problem worse. For example the left is correct in that power is increasingly being centralized in the hands of some wealthy individuals and corporations who are simply interested in their own profits as opposed to the other aspects of life of a society, but they forget that this is being facilitated by the baseness and aloofness of the common 'consuming' man whom they argue should have even more influence.
The mainstreem right is correct in that talented individuals need to be recognized and rewarded above those who simply consume, leach and hang on to the processes that support society, but their conception of 'talent' is stunted and simply encapsulates 'ability/drive to make a dollar no matter what': a characteristic which turns off many intelligent, motivated but holistic minded people who are interested in more than simply excessive wealth and empires of the individual.
Leave the ideological dogmatism behind. Get onboard the worldwide Corrupt movement and give voice to a dynamic third way.
08 July 2008
"IT'S been 13 long months since the leaders of the G8 gathered for their annual talkfest. Just in case you've forgotten what was agreed in Heiligendamm, here's a reminder: "We noted," the G8 said, "that the world economy is in good condition and growth is more evenly distributed across regions." This was June 8, 2007, two months to the day before the entire global financial system came to a shuddering halt. If you like your humour black, it's rather funny isn't it?
But wait, it gets better. The communique expressed confidence that there would be "a smooth adjustment of global imbalances which should take place in the context of sustained and robust economic growth".
If the G8 was doing its job properly, this week's communique would be rather shorter than usual. It would say the world is about to be battered by a triple crunch of a credit-fuelled financial crisis, galloping climate change and - even in the absence of speculation - a long-term increase in energy prices caused by the imminence of peak oil."
::View Article::
You guessed it. The Global economic elite has no interest in any greater good than their own aspirations, and no long term vision.
This increasingly global economy and society is being driven for short term factional gain. With the number of humans expected to surpass a number somewhere in the range of 9.5 billion this century, and with China and India chasing first world consumption levels with unprecedented consumer populations, we will all be demanding so much more of the old and cheap energies like coal and oil, and also more water, food, and land.
Now, the more land we require for people to settle, the less we have for growing food. The more coal we demand, the more we will pollute the atmosphere and heat the climate reducing fresh water supply. The more oil that is demanded globally, the less able supply will be to meet this extra demand, driving prices up further and halting economies.
Our planet and its societies are going to go through unprecedented challenges in the coming century related to overpopulation and its heavy demands on the environment and its resources. We will require intelligent, informed and holistic minded leaders if we are to survive and prosper, not 'leaders' who make a career out of telling the masses what they want to hear: that everything is 'ok', that it's simply 'business as usual', and who defend a system which discourages people from coming together to plan for the future to soften the immanent blow which in this case will be a hard one if we don't act to reduce the world's population and our spiralling demand for earth's resources.
06 July 2008
"The Federal Government's climate change adviser says support from all sides of politics for an emissions trading scheme will give it a better chance of success.
Professor Garnaut has told Channel Nine it is almost inevitable that the Opposition will look to politicise the issue.
But he says the scheme will fare better with bipartisan support."
::View Article::
If you have a political system like democracy which is based on the quantity of voters rather than on the quality (read: objectivity) of voters and is thus really just a big popularity contest, its no surprise that the factional and overly self-interested politicians play to the most base fears and desires of the crowd rather than to truth.
Politicians politicise issues that in fact require clear and concise action: because their careers are advanced the most by being popular rather than by doing what's necessary. Democracy is not perfect by any means.
01 July 2008
"Four out of every five respondents to the survey, conducted in the wake of recent controversial statements by the Howard Government, believed immigrants should be forced to adopt Australian values when they arrived.
A recent speech by Mr Costello in which he said new arrivals to Australia should be forced to live by the country's existing values drew widespread support, with 79 per cent of respondents backing his point of view.
While the survey showed broad community support for recent statements by Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello on racism and immigration, respondents overwhelmingly disagreed with Mr Howard's assertion... that there was no underlying racism in Australia."
::View Article::
So, Australians feel a natural opposition to having their values compromised but are feeling guilty about this self-perceived 'racism'.
They shouldn't because a stance against pluralism, the promotion of multiple sets of cultural values under the one political entity, is not necessarily a racist one. Quite to the contrary. The only possibly way for each unique people on this earth to maintain its traditional bonds (as opposed to merely economic or 'modern' bonds) is for each to live according to their own values and to promote these values internally. Pluralism by definition means compromise and the lowest common denominator.
In an educational context for example, as you get more and more different cultural systems involved, it becomes 'politically incorrect' to teach, with any real depth, one particular set of values, one particular cultural history/legacy, one particular conception of what is 'good' and 'bad' for society, etc.
What results is that no one particular take on any of these things gets taught at all! No common attachment to any particular history is conveyed, no common attachment to any particular conception of what is 'good' and 'bad' is conveyed, and thus no common good prevails beyond what is 'good' to all the different cultures that have been accommodated: buying and selling things: economic transactions.
Under Pluralism you increasingly get the state of affairs in which people view their political entity as simply a means for individual gratification rather than as a SHARED project. Materialism and individualism prevail. Culture turns into a giant rat race for a McMansion and a plasma TV, violence on streets and in cities escalates, and society basically turns into a generic mass of people who are living together but who increasingly dislike each other: because everyone has to compromise their values to live TOGETHER under one generic political entity.
Join Corrupt Australia's dissection and expansion of modern political discourse: A stance against pluralism is not racism! Pluralism, or the 'massification'/cramming in of different value systems under the one political entity, results in social atomisation and decay in the long run. It is failure. Parallelism, which says that we need parallel communities based on shared ethnicity, culture, history and values is the future. Organic societies are the future.
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.