Copyright © 2008 Corrupt Australia
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.

Boast as you will of your mateship now - crippled and mean and sly - The lines of suspicion on friendship's brow were traced since the days gone by. There was room in the long, free lines of the van to fight for it side by side - There was beating-room for the heart of a man in the days when the world was wide.

With its dull, brown days of a-shilling-an-hour the dreary year drags round: Is this the result of Old England's power? - the bourne of the Outward Bound? Is this the sequel of Westward Ho! - of the days of Whate'er Betide? The heart of the rebel makes answer "No! We'll fight till the world grows wide!"

The world shall yet be a wider world - for the tokens are manifest; East and North shall the wrongs be hurled that followed us South and West. The march of Freedom is North by the Dawn! Follow, whate'er betide! Sons of the Exiles, march! March on! March till the world grows wide!

~ Henry Lawson

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18 July 2008

« Universities to Selec… | Home | Culture »

Oh Brother

"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. Used tags: