31 August 2008
"Maurauding gangs of "Americanised" youth are staging violent pitch battles on the New South Wales-Queensland border, terrorising locals and cutting a swathe of destruction through the premier tourist locale.
The situation has become so bad, local police have called for help from academics to formulate new strategies to deal with the problem.
"We are putting the call out there - why are are our youth going this way?""
::View Article::
More useless youth crime that has nothing to do with economic disadvantage. Perhaps youths are committing pointless and egotistical crime because we live in a culture that constantly goes on about human 'rights' but goes almost silent when it comes to human 'obligation': 'you have the 'right' to be who you want to be, and to do what you want to do and forget about a public code of ethics because values are purely the 'private' concerns of individual families in their homes, not the concern of schools, the media, or your community.
Even if this were 'true', the amount of time parents actually have access to their children's attention is obviously dwarfed by the amount of time they don't: when youths are at school, watching movies, surfing the internet, and roaming around with their crew on the streets.
29 August 2008
While attempting to watch some of the athletics in the Olympics games a couple of weeks ago in amongst the swarm of advertisements and crassly sentimental pre-packaged drivel, I groaned as yet another Quantas add geared up. A large chorus of beaming children carefully selected from a large variety of ethnicities piped up for the 8th time to insist that 'we are one but we are many', that 'we are Australian'.
What exactly could they mean by this I wondered as I began looking for the remote control that had vanished down the side of the couch. I guess they meant to impart the sentiment that while the collection of people living on the landmass that is Australia are characterised by a diverse range of, not just places of origin, but also religions, secular values, and other ideologies, they, we, all share a special bond, or a 'common good' that binds us together as one. Sounds nice doesn't it?
But is this in effect saying we can all have nothing in common and by doing so, have something in common? Now I was becoming confused!
Australia is diverse. With our current annual net-immigration intake of just below 200,000 we're going through another major 'diversifying' stage in our history. Apparently, we are not all going to agree on an 'extensive' ethical project, or on any significant set of values by which we should live our lives, without experiencing inter-ideological conflict: so we agree to disagree, and make values a strictly private, rather than a joint, shared or social matter.
We are under absolutely no obligation to society beyond obeying some very basic laws and we are free to pursue our purely personal self interests and our person comfort. No social consensus, or 'common good', required: just do what you will. This is knows as Liberal Pluralism. Its basic justification is that it delivers freedom and choice: freedom from the ideological impositions of others and choice to choose one's own conception of 'the good life'.
But hang on. This is starting to sound too good to be true. For starters don't we need some sort of 'common good', some sort of social consensus or set of standards, and some personal
obligation towards a set of goals, in order for there to exist, in the very first place, a society which enables the existence of 'free' individuals who are capable of thinking and forming particular conceptions of 'the good life' in a Liberal manner? Bear with me here. I'm thinking of such things which actually set the stage for a Liberal society.
No one can deliberate over, pursue, rationally debate, or change their conception of what makes up the good life if institutions like the family, schools & universities, religions, philosophical societies, politics are not upheld through social virtue, i.e., obligation. If homes are broken because parents become too self-interested to commit, if schools are havens of undiscipline and universities simply degree factories rather than places of wide deliberation, if politics is restricted by 'politically correct' dialogue and ministers pursue simply their own career advancement rather than the greater good, then 'Liberal' freedom is logically impossible.
Crime, obtuseness, a focus on industry instead of creativity in learning, and corrupt leadership are not conducive to the type of society in which people objectively deliberate over what values they will follow and accept others who hold different ones to their own.
This leads us to the conclusion that even a pluralistic 'liberal' mass and diverse society, like modern Australia, cannot do away with obligation or consensus. Such a society requires some
illiberal manifestations in order to realise the freedom, choice and diversity it purports to exist for. This leads us to a further and more interesting question.
Why, in all our diversity, do we all feel as though we have to associate under one mass society, which by its very nature (namely the co-existence of different backgrounds, ethnicities, and ideologies) calls for a lowest common denominator compromise between all the competing conceptions of the good life? Why do we feel we have to live in a mass society which subsumes all the different conceptions of the good life relative to the different backgrounds, ethnicities, and ideologies into one big melting pot?
This simply leaves us with less social harmony and consensus that might otherwise exist if we lived in smaller, more localised social or political entities where we actually agreed upon values, customs, and laws. Now, less social harmony leads to many 'illiberal' things such as more of governments impeding on our lives to (1) prop up communities who's constituents do not work together and to (2) clean up after minor or major conflicts. It also leads to more alienation, depression and anxiety among a group of atomised and unconnected individuals who enjoy no more meaningful social interactions than those that surround the buying and selling of products, and who derive no sense of meaning from their employment, day in-day out, in a society they don't have any attachment to.
Unfortunately we innately view more homogenous and localised (organic) societies with suspicion. Why? Well, largely because of the very fact that they naturally revolve around a higher level of consensus between their members. Thus they involve the individual being subjected to the goals and standards of the community to larger degree than in a mass plural society.
It is this sort of fear of being judged that will result in us as 'Australian's' partaking in a life increasingly characterised by a lowest common denominator mass culture that citizens care nothing about and derive no meaning from, and in which government will be increasingly sticking its nose to make up for the absence of non-abstract, grass roots human consensus.
27 August 2008
"MORE than two-thirds of working mums would rather be at home with their children, yesterday's Daily Telegraph revealed.
"For most mums it is not an option because they need a job just to make ends meet," the article said.
Not an option? I don't believe that for a minute. Many women don't realise it, but the very simple answer to the question of balance for working mothers is this: be happy with less."
::View Article::
This is one of the many tales of a materialistic society. The more we choose to base our lives on the rate race, on attaining the flashiest cars, the biggest televisions, the trendiest designer clothes, the less time we have for those things 'oh so old fashioned', but innately valuable, pursuits like raising our children and spending time with those people we call our family members.
We need these old fashioned pursuits, both for the good of our communities and our own well-rounded mental wellbeing. The more we leave our kids to be brought up by day care centre franchises and the mass media because we are too busy working, the more we will be raising dysfunctional, self-centered unattached members of society. The more we skip those opportunities to actually get to know our parents, siblings or children, the more regret we will experience, and the more atomised, neurotic, and self-alienated we will be as human beings.
26 August 2008
"A NORTH Queensland school principal is under pressure to perform a policy backflip after he banned students from doing cartwheels and handstands in the playground.
Belgian Gardens State School in Townsville has banned all gymnastics activities during breaks, claiming it is protecting students from injury.
Mother Kylie Buschgens told The Townsville Bulletin she was dumbfounded when her daughter Cali, 10, was told she could no longer do cartwheels, even on the grass."
::View Article::
Don't we only learn from falling down? Don't we have a generation of children many of whom are overweight? Don't we, as human beings, have to learn about risk and experience some adventure - which involves some childhood activities which may break a few bones and bruise a few knees?
Hypothetically speaking, a society driven entirely by fear might indeed be 'safer' but it would also be a paranoid, lifeless society. Adventure, new ideas, physical activity: all of these involve 'risk' but are in the long run are beneficial and part of greater whole.
26 August 2008
"TOP university students will be headhunted by the State Government and offered financial incentives to work in Victoria's most challenging schools under a radical plan to tackle underperformance.
University graduates from all courses - not just teaching degrees - will be aggressively recruited, given weeks of intensive training and ongoing mentoring to cope with life in some of the toughest classrooms.
But the plan is likely to prove contentious, with teachers already raising concerns that some university graduates, no matter how successful they are in their fields, may not be cut out for the rigours of teaching in struggling schools."
::View Aritlce::
Hypothetically speaking this is great. Encourage the 'best' in their fields to use their skills for the widest social benefit.
Practically speaking, however, it sounds like it might run into trouble. Attaining high marks in a university degree does not necessarily mean one will be able to manage children from the Jungles that are Victoria's 'most challenging' schools. We live in a society in which the individualism of children clearly dwarfs that of the past and we have taken away the ability of teachers to be more assertive in maintaining order in the classroom, leading to the many of the problems this plan seeks to solve.
The public teaching profession as a whole needs to be better paid, by us, the taxpayers, so that worsening classroom conditions can be balanced by more financial incentives, encouraging a higher quality of personnel to join and stay in a profession that is growing more challenging and thus less attractive to talented people choosing a career.
24 August 2008
Born in 1882 in Brighton, Victoria, Percy was the son of an architect. The Graingers moved around often and perhaps as a result of this Percy enjoyed the companionship of few childhood friends. He was home schooled by his mother who also began his piano tuition which would be his entry into the world of performing and composing. His father gone from the scene, Percy and his mother travelled to Germany when he was 13 and then to London when he was about 19.
It was in London that Percy met the great Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg who encouraged him in his artistic career as composer to 'classicise' and thus celebrate the folk tunes of the English speaking world, primarily, but also those of other European nations such as the Scandinavian ones. Grainger would become an influential proponent of 'world music' in general. Grainger's folk-orientated compositions were notable for their directions on how they were to be played: 'Rippingly' or 'clatteringly'. Such 'Grangerisms' have frustrated performers of his music ever since.
As a performer, Percy is said to have played according to the prevailing mood. His piano style was generally virile and attacking, stemming from performances in large halls he gave in his youth, although he could also be lyrical and gentle. The great Grieg stated that Percy's playing was "like the sun breaking through the clouds", that "it is a great human, a great soul, an aristocrat that is playing". Percy himself said that "fierceness is the keynote of my music".
The man seems to have fashioned an 'athletic philosophy' in life: he was constantly walking, cycling and would never ascend or descend a set of stairs without bounding the entire way. He was an athlete and an artist, with a somewhat ascetic, yet playful, outlook. "I do not eat meat, I do not smoke, and I do not drink" he declared. Grainger admired the supposedly free and wild life of the Vikings and other groups like the ancient Greeks of the Homeric epics.
While his artistic side yielded a stern yet playful beauty, his athletic side yielded a cruel yet playful sexuality which he would became notorious for. Percy the child was kept in check by his mother's corporal punishment and by the time he was a teenager he had developed a fetish for pain. He wrote, amusingly, "A man cannot be a full artist unless he is manly, and a man cannot be manly unless his sex-life is selfish, brutal, wilful, unbridled."
Grainger died of prostate cancer in 1961, but performed right up until 1960, leaving behind his wife, a long and fruitful life, but no children. Along with his supremely joyful and energetic music with its visions of force, movement and beauty, his unorthodox character, and bounding personality, Granger's legacy includes his experiments in the 1930's with 'free music', where music could be artificially generated by a machine, anticipating the role of the much used modern synthesiser.
Information loosely sourced from 'Facing Percy Grainger' - An exhibition at the National Library of Australia - http://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/percygrainger/index.html
~Recommended Works~
- 'Lincolnshire Posy'
- 'Country Gardens'
- 'Shepherd's Hey'
- 'Molly on the Shore'
- 'Green Bushes'
- 'My Robin is to Green Wood gone'
- 'The Duke of Marlborough Fanfare'
- 'Willow, Willow'
- 'Scotch Strathspey and Reel'
- 'I'm Seventeen come Sunday'
- 'Shallow Brown'
24 August 2008
Dead Can Dance ~
The Serpent's Egg (1988) 
I. The Host of Seraphim {6:19}
II. Orbis De Ignis {1:36}
III. Severance {3:22}
IV. The Writing on my Father's Hand {3:51}
V. In the Kingdom of the Blind the One-eyed are Kings {4:12}
VI. Chant of the Paladin {3:48}
VII. Song of Sophia {1:25}
VIII. Echolalia {1:17}
IX. Mother Tongue {5:17}
X. Ullyses {5:09}
Total Length ~ 36:16
Dead Can Dance released
The Serpent's Egg in 1988, the title being an allusion to ancient creation myths. The album is an epic collection of partial and full blown period pieces from various cultures, played on modern instruments. This 'timeless' musical setting is appropriate for what may possibly be described as the timeless or 'classical' symbolisms presented to varying degrees of abstraction in the lyrics: of self-discovery, perceptual refinement, the idealistic attainment of wisdom, the human will and also its antithesis in depression, Plato-esque cave allegory, and frustration but not resignation towards humanity.
Lush synthesisers, organs and strings mix with the soaring primitive vocal performances of Lisa Gerrard (known also for scoring movies such as
Gladiator) and the soulful and austere style of Brendan Perry. Both artists combine very well at various points both as vocalists and musicians, and it is no surprise that the album was produced at a time when the two were unified by much more than simply their music. Tonal organisation of instrument and voice ranges from mystery inducing polyphony (The Host of Seraphim) to the primal wale of a single melodic line (Song of Sophia), and while rhythm favours slow unravelling motion it deviates towards paces of ritualistic affirmation towards the close of the album.
These contrasts are united by the overall 'feel' of the music which is archaic and epic without being crass, evoking a powerful sense of transcendence from fickleness and fad.
22 August 2008
"Earlier this year the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, an acknowledged leader in research into diabetes and obesity and their related complications, such as stroke and heart disease, estimated that 4 million Australians are now obese and another 5 million are sufficiently heavy to be classified as overweight and at risk of joining those classified as obese. It argued the inexorable rise of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease was an indication that this society is effectively gorging itself to death.
The report, commissioned by Diabetes Australia, makes for disturbing reading for all Australians. The cost to the taxpayer of this obesity epidemic in the growing burden on the health system, lost productivity, welfare payments and carers' costs, has all but tripled to more than $58 billion a year, up from $21 billion in 2005. This massive jump reflects the increased incidence of weight-related diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
What is clear from this report, and others, is that as a society we are failing to tackle the expanding obesity problem, and if radical action is not taken soon, it will be to Australia's long-term health and financial cost, as weight-related premature deaths, disability and hospital admissions grow."
::View Article::
So, each Australian is paying more than $2,762 a year to maintain the unhealthy lifestyles of the overweight.
While the causes of obesity are sometimes psychological, related to deeply ingrained dispositions such as serious depression, and also physiological, generally speaking we need not maintain a culture that allows many people to go about their day comfortable in the knowledge that their poor and un-realistic lifestyles will automatically be supported by the hard work of society when things eventually hit the fan. A culture that always makes everyone pay for the obvious poor choices of individuals is skewed the wrong way.
21 August 2008
"Yet this is the frustrating thing about the F-word today: so much of the feminist debate still assumes that women are powerless. If a man and a woman are in a relationship, then he is in control. If a woman is in a workplace, then she is a target for harassment. If a woman wants a career and children, then she is destined for a life of doing the "double shift". Obviously, you cannot trust men to step up to the plate.
For young women of my generation, the brand of feminism which says that women are disempowered and harassed just doesn't have much resemblance to real life. A quick scan of my friends and colleagues renders the idea that we are all dominated and subordinated by our partners and husbands laughable.
...
But feminism focuses on these facts and says we have not gone far enough. It says that we are still victims, and we will be until women work - and earn - as much as men. We will be victims until every husband does the dishes exactly 50 per cent of the time. And this is where feminism is getting it wrong.
...
We need a new feminism that does not assume that women are victims and does not try to pigeonhole us into one homogenous group. It does not tell us to stay at home, or get to work. It does not focus on workforce participation, or the gender wage-gap, or the average number of hours spent doing housework. The new feminism is about choice."
::View Article::
One giant and endless battle between the sexes will grant neither males nor females dignity. Demanding that men and women live the exact same, carbon-copied lives simply fuels pointless conflict.
'Equality absolutism' is destructive and deluded: people are simply not all the same.
19 August 2008
"Sleep-deprived teenagers are at greater risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks - and their mobile phones, computer games and iPods could be to blame, research suggests.
A study of teens aged 13 to 16 found those who slept less than 6.5 hours a night were up to three times more likely to have elevated blood pressure.
[...]
"There are teens who text message or listen to music all night, compounded by early school hours. Adolescents need nine hours of sleep," Professor Redline said.
[...]
Fatigue is also implicated in a high proportion of car accidents, workplace injuries and cases of depression."
::View Article::
Life is about balance. Don't get addicted to gizmos to the point where its taking away from other aspects of life: especially sleep. Sleep is vital for energy, vibrancy, a sense of purpose, and basically, happiness.
Treat your body well: it's better than any drug.
18 August 2008
"'You don't want democracy for sale.' - Kevin Rudd at a March 4, 2008 joint press conference with federal Treasurer Wayne Swan
[...]
Here's a rare look into the shooting gallery. It comes in the form of an offer document to the corporate sector being circulated by Labor HQ in the interests of raising money for the party. And on any measure it's Kevin Rudd who's up for sale.
Under the auspices of the Federal Labor Business Forum here's how that offer goes; it starts with a $15,000 package which entitles two company representatives to meet Labor's "rising stars", attend a three-day retreat to "liaise with the entire ministry, discuss specific issues with ministers in smaller settings, and hear an address from the Prime Minister"."
::View Article::
Need it be any clearer? Our two major political parties, one of which always becomes the governing body in this nation, are, in a matter of speaking, corrupt. Both (yes even the so called 'labor' party) direct policy in the interests of corporations and other bodies with tens of thousands of dollars to spare for the privilege. You see, the more money one of the major political parties receives for this sort of service, the more it has in the bank to spend on election campaigns and other vehicles of career promotion for its constituents.
The public wastes a significant amount of time exercising its 'democractic rights' by taking up opposing sides on issues that the political parties in cohort with their contributors bring to the table as opposed to those that individual citizens bring to the table. After all, who's going to listen to you, a mere 'citizen', your just a needle in a haystack: so much for modern Democracy.
17 August 2008
"And nowhere is that more true than with the games of the Olympiad, where the obscene cost of broadcast rights means not only charging obscene amounts for advertising spots (hundreds of thousands of dollars in Australia; millions in the US) but cramming as many of them into every hour as possible.
[...]
Television rights have underwritten the Olympics for at least 20 years, and major broadcasters pay highly for the privilege: NBC coughed up almost $US1 billion ($1.12 billion) for the US broadcast rights for Beijing. The Seven Network paid $70 million just to get its cameras into the venues, with the cost of actually broadcasting on top of that (apparently another $20-$30 million).
[...]
And that's what's really disappointing about this year's Olympics coverage. Not that we're exposed to more than 200 hours of advertising during the course of it. But that there's so little in those 200 hours to have us cheering."
::View Article::
Oh? The commercialism surrounding the Australian broadcasting of these Olympic Games is staggering. I couldn't care less how exciting the content of Olympic advertising on the seven network might be when I'm being treated like an indifferent fool who, it is hoped, will sit through all that is fed to me:
And here's how it seems to go: a large collection of ads, a single race (say an 800 meter track semi final), ads, a jingoistic and crassly sentimental pre-packaged celebration of some Australian medal win a few days ago, ads, the other 800 meter semi final, ads, another pre-packaged collection of replays of 'Australian glory', and the cycle continues, begging the question... are the limited bursts of actual Olympic competition in amongst all this the real focus here?
No. This 'coverage' isn't so much a presentation of the Olympic games itself, i.e. the privilege to see competition between the world's best athletes in the large variety of Olympic sports, but rather a way for the seven network to recover the superfluous fortune it paid to 'cover' the games, and to make a profit on the back of these costs by showing only the limited range/number of events that the masses (the prospective consumers of the ads) will watch and by luring the masses to the screen through crass lowest common denominator appeals to worst kind of patriotism.
The amount of money that television networks are charged for coverage rights, if this is the root cause of the commercialism surrounding the coverage, is surely not in the 'Olympic Spirit' we hear so much about.
14 August 2008
"Could someone point out to me where, in last year's election campaign, Kevin Rudd or his Labor cohorts announced they were going to commit Australia to a gang-busters immigration program?
Last year, net overseas migration was 178,000, almost 30 per cent higher than the natural increase of the population (birth rate over death rate), thanks to a policy put in place by the Howard government. Total population growth was 315,000. Under the Rudd Government, it appears set to be higher this year. Then add the growing guest-worker program for people on temporary work visas.
How is increasing the population by a million people every three years going to contribute to lowering Australia's carbon footprint? Don't ask big business, or the ALP machine, both addicted to "growth" defined by corporate fundamentalism, which means higher per capita consumption and more consumers."
::View Article::
You have no real political choice. After preferences your vote necessarily goes either to (a) the ALP or (b) the Liberals. Both parties are addicted to the big business and industry driven religion of growth, and that quantity over quality mindset.
'Freedom' and 'democracy'?: They're just illusions to distract us while certain people get on with using society for personal short-term advantage.
13 August 2008
"RISING food and energy prices, water scarcity, climate change and increasing migration could fuel growing instability and violence around the world over the next decade, a global research report has concluded.
It highlighted 15 global challenges, ranging from water and energy to organised crime and global ethics, that require priority attention.
Today 700 million people face water scarcity (defined as less than 1000 cubic metres per person per year) and the figure could grow to 3 billion by 2025 because of climate change, population growth and increasing demand for water per capita."
::View Article::
So, food and water is becoming harder to get for billions of people because of climate change and, at the root of it, global population growth. This causes the mass movement of people as they leave areas affected most by scarcity and the conflict that naturally comes with scarcity. This mass migration causes unrest because, surprise surprise, ethnicities like to stick together and ward off 'outsiders' coming along to consume their limited stocks of food and water.
A question begs itself: why is overpopulation not listed as one of the fundamental 'global challenges' above? Because the notion of 'overpopulation' is, unfortunately, taboo in any real shape, context or form.
10 August 2008
"Scientists and environmentalists have long promoted the value of trees in fighting pollution, but they are re-thinking just how valuable Australia's forests are in helping the fight against greenhouse gases.
[...]
The scientists found that the forests can store three times more carbon than previously thought.
[...]
About half of Australia's forests have been cleared in the last two centuries. In three quarters of these, carbon stocks have been degraded by human activities such as logging."
::View Article::
Another reason to halt or even wind back our impact on our environment, as if we really needed another.
Human environmental impact universally involves two factors: population level and the rate of consumption by this population. To stabalise/reduce our impact on the environment to any significant degree we need either to cap further population increases/wind back our population or cap further increases in consumption (economists' idea of 'living standards')/reduce consumption levels. There is no 'easy' way out.
10 August 2008
"Last Wednesday, on one of the toughest ratings nights of the week — and much to everyone's astonishment - Nine's new "game show" Hole in the Wall was the second most-watched show in Melbourne. Nationally it was third, with more than 1.5 million viewers.
It's a remarkably silly program, even by the standards of the genre. People stand with their backs to a large piece of lightweight injection-moulded plastic into which a human-shaped hole has been cut. With the help of their teammates, they have to pose their body in a matching shape to pass through the hole in the wall. Or they fall into a swimming pool. So essentially it's a night of people in unattractive silver body suits falling into a pool.
The renaissance of slapstick TV started earlier this year when Seven's Gladiators rated through the roof, drawing almost 2 million viewers with its first episode.
"These shows are an easy watch, you don't have to concentrate, and they have real universal appeal," says Nine's Len Downs."
::View Article::
This is kind of reminiscent of the culture of late 1st, early 2nd century Imperial Rome which the poet Juvenal described using the expression "panem et circenses". This means "bread and circuses" and describes the act of a small and purely self-interested section of society pacifying and controlling the masses (and thus society) by satisfying, or promising to satisfy, the latter's decadent desires.
It's a metaphor for the masses who are easily manipulated or appeased through 'food and cheap fun', and its a particular recognition of reality that is as old as the entire religion of Christianity.
08 August 2008
"Thus imagine my surprise to find myself shedding a tear as I read Hillary's concession speech: "You can be proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States. And that is truly remarkable."
Back in the real world, it is still very remarkable for women to be appointed to the board of one of our Australian Stock Exchange top 200 companies.
What is it that needs to be done to make the appointment of women to the board of directors of one of our top 200 companies unremarkable?
The Standing Committee of Attorneys-General has been asked to consider what role government can play to increase the number of women on our private sector boards."
::View Article::
...Hopefully a by-product of this role won't be the encouragement of a national culture which instils girls and young women with the belief that if they don't devote their lives exclusively to self-orientated careers in business, they are not 'successful'.
While many women are naturally ambitious and self-striving on the one hand, on the other hand many do not value a life of puritanical career advancement in the world of business but instead value more functional or creative or human-orientated or community-based occupations and also, (gasp), their families.
Pushing both men and women further away from their families and communities and into empires of the individual will not, I hope, be the outcome of this focus on equality of opportunity.
07 August 2008
"A paper prepared for the Academy of Social Sciences Experts say the country needs to boost immigration by 30 per cent within the next 20 years to meet its growing work force demand.
Professor McDonald says that migration over the next 20 years would need to go up by about 50,000 per year, from about 170,000 to 220,000 each year.
"Later on, after 20 years, it would be going up again to up around 300,000," he said"
"...the notion is that because of increased living standards, because of the need to renew a lot of infrastructure in Australia, because of the ageing of the population - a lot of different reasons - we expect the demand for labour in the future to remain very strong."
::View Article::
But what about Australia's water and housing shortages, environmental problems, and infrastructure overload?
300,000 people over just ten years is 3 million people, and 15 million over 50 years. That's bucket loads. All of these extra human beings will themselves demand water, wood, houses, energy, and infrastructure like roads, public transport and commercial transport. These extra human beings will contribute further to the in vogue environmental problem of climate change, generally coming to a more consumer intense nation compared with their native lands, but also to less popular environmental problems to do with salinity and biodiversity loss.
Do we really 'need' to overpopulate ourselves?
04 August 2008
"I don't have the innocence of a child, but I have the innocence of the unguilty. It was being questioned by strangers, then by me. If every man has to explain himself when he is with children, if he has to have a police check to volunteer his time, if he has to deal with suspicious looks because he has taken his niece to the park, if his daughter's friends aren't allowed to sleep over, then we have become a society that is prepared to sacrifice some trust for its vigilance.
The protection of children from sexual predators must be paramount, but there are costs. Among them is the price good men pay for the deeds of a few.
The fact that I am reluctant to pick up and cuddle a young girl or boy these days makes me feel sad. We have all lost something joyful."
::View Article::
We shouldn't let waves of collective fear, stemming from the actions of a few, dictate the affairs of everyone to the extent that we become so narcissistic and scared that we distrust one another. Let's recognise that complete security, happiness, and other 'perfections' are impossible in a real society, and that the drive to achieve these perhaps 'ideal' notions in their entirety can be dangerously stifling.
Life will always in involve risk. If we become so reactive that we run from risk then we will not really live.
03 August 2008
"TOUGHER rules to make new houses greener could "easily" be achieved and are widely supported by people who recently built, or are planning to build, a home, a Government-commissioned report has found.
The report, obtained by The Sunday Age under freedom-of-information laws, found that the [Victorian] State Government could improve the energy-rating scheme for new homes from five stars to six "immediately and with no major problems" and seven stars was "attainable in the medium term".
The focus groups also backed seven stars - which includes even better insulation, ensuring no large unprotected windows faced east or west, and eaves on windows - but there was some resistance, particularly from those who felt it may be difficult to change the way a house sat on a small block, and from those who did not want to modify windows. It was explained the seven stars would add 2-6% to building costs but reduce demand for heating and cooling by 45%."
::View Article::
Very nice. But while we argue about what energy rating is most suitable for houses we must remember that any benefit to the environment from making existing houses slightly more energy efficient will be well and truly cancelled out by our, or our government's, current fanaticism for growth:..
"Victoria's population swelled by about 80,000 last year.
A report from Monash University's Centre for Population and Urban Research says... the Victorian Government's Melbourne 2030 planning vision is a failure and Melbourne will need to accommodate at least an extra 1.1 million cars and 782,000 new homes in the next three decades."
::View Article::
We can embrace symbolism as much as we like, with 'green' energy ratings for houses, but we simply cannot convince ourselves that such measures will deliver net environmental benefits when our population is going up, and bloody fast at that.
The emerging global society has no goal beyond unlimited growth and pure quantity. What help can energy stars and green light bulbs be in this context?
01 August 2008
"Generation Y don't know what they want and we should all stop trying to figure it out, writes Bob Dumpling
I think there is a subtle distinction between Gen Y and the Boomers: Baby Boomers actually stood for stuff, had beliefs, dropped out and shook things up. No doubt there is an element of echoing in Gen Y, but more of the vacant, drafty kind than anything that actually resonates.
Many accuse Gen Y of consuming at an unparalleled rate. This would seem very unlike the Boomers in the 1960s. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing - and you can't really blame them when they grew up in the age of John Howard's annual tax cuts and a booming economy. But unfortunately much of this extra cash is being spent on five lifestyle "pillars". They are: entertainment ($151 per week), fashion ($55), sport ($25), travel ($24) and music ($11).
Why so angry? In the past 10 years, the media, entertainment and political landscape has changed and it's all Gen Y's fault. The majority of consumer products and infotainment are marketed towards Gen Y. Media content is dictated by the 16-25 year-old demographic and it has been completely dumbed down."
::View Article::
Contrary to what the author of this article implies, I don't think that all this is purely Generation Y's fault.
What he says IS probably correct: Generally speaking, Generation Y is a generation of consumers, period. Consumers with no ideals beyond entertainment, lifestyle choices, and other merely introverted whims. And society is doing everything it can to focus on them, and taking everyone along with it.
But why is this the case? Is it because Generation Y is genetically or intrinsically more whimsical and introverted than their descendants, allowing the commercial interests of society to have a field day with them? Of course not. Members of Generation Y, as relatively young people in the world, have unprecedented levels of disposable income to spend, as opposed to their parents and certainly their grandparents. They have the consumer 'power' and with this the fire of desire, and the wolves smell blood, so to speak.
Society is so concerned with Generation Y because society is comprised mostly of commercial interests. Indeed, commercial interests have their place in society, but when the primary goal, spoken or unspoken, of a society is commercialism and materialism as it is with Australia in the modern world, society is going to abandon itself completely to the money making opportunities: the whims of Gen Y, currently.
Because we all live in society we will all experience the negative effects, or 'externalities', of a commercial society who's highest priorities are naturally the whims of merely one section of the population: our youngest and least experienced and least wisdom-endowed adults. The Author already listed some of these externalities: the dumbing down of media and politics, and the Schizophrenic focus of retailers and information outlets on the newest transient mindsets.
Generally speaking, the commercial nature of Globalisation is encouraging each society around the world, including our own, to abandon itself to the shifting introverted desires of the newest whimsical generation of spenders, what ever the nature of these desires may be. What a noble epoch for the history books!
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.