How are these for words to live by: I will avoid being part of the problem.
Imagine if that was followed universally. If no-one said “I’m just one person; what can I do?” and wussed out of doing anything at all, or of caring about the impact of what they actually do. If the people complaining about the way the world is and consequently refusing to engage critically with it realised that part of the reason the world is the way it is is because people like them refuse to engage critically with it and, you know, stopped doing that.
Sure, I can’t on my own create an environment in which everyone chooses to take that constructive approach – but I can take it myself and, by choosing to try to avoid being part of the problem that is people not avoiding being part of the problem, avoid being part of the problem.
PS Hurry up and enroll/fix your enrolment. You don’t have much time.
Moved On 
Problem is with this post is that voting doesn’t really solve anything.
As much as you love the Greens, and of course they’re better than the ALP and Libs, I can tell you right now you’ll be disappointed with them when they do eventually have power.
That’s not just my opinion – that’s a firm analysis based on history. No great progressive change has been made through parliamentary politics – it’s been people like you and me (before us though) that made change happen.
This is all very deep for a Friday afternoon. I feel like I should burp or fart or something.
The problem is that you do not know what the problem is.
The problem is, lots of people are taking the constructive approach – you just don’t like their conclusions.
I didn’t just mean voting. I meant doing your part to try to solve the problems you recognise, rather than just reconciling yourself to them.
And BT – at the very least the Greens can pull Australian politics back to the left, back towards decent public services and civil liberties. If they don’t, then we’ll try again with another mob.
Ah, but the beautiful thing about politics is that one party cannot possibly be everything you want it to be, so you have to keep paying attention. Otherwise you’d vote for them and then not worry about it again, safe in the knowledge that they were doing everything you wanted.
Exactly. I think of it more as nudging a lumbering ship or something back in the direction you want it to go. (At the moment the keel is stuck pretty hard to starboard.)
Nudging is a good idea. We can all do that, even if not necessarily in the same direction. Real problems arise when ideologues believe that they have the answers and that they should take control.
It’s not ideologues taking control that should worry you.
They can be spotted from a mile away and dealt with accordingly.
It’s the spivs and manipulators who act under false pretences, tell lies and confect public concern in order to shore up their positions of power and wealth.
All the while they protest that they work for the public good.
It’s the financial mountebanks with their legerdemain that ensures that they and their accomplice clients get rich at the expense of somebody else.
Real money for nothing.
And when the non-existant wealth returns to the ether from whence it came, they rattle their silver-handled cups and demand alms from the public purse.
All the while they protest that they’re essential for the public good
It’s the moral sneaks who peer into our bedrooms, boardrooms and parliaments and presume to tell us who to fuck, how to trade and what to legislate, not because they want us to be like them but simply because they brook no challenge to their hegemony.
All the while they protest that they’re concerned for the public good.
Finally, it’s the ernest preachers of outrage and the heroic iconoclasts who feel the need to trample, condemn, accuse and vilify ‘the other’ for profit and self-aggrandisement.
Those victims of violence, abuse, injustice and suburbia, who should know better, decide that the opportunity to be a petty tyrant is too valuable to squander on something as insipid as forgiveness and understand, not to mention moral charity.
All the while they protest that they’re champions for the public good.
Those are the ones that we should fear.
Not because they seek to take control, but because they simply ask for it and we gladly give it over.
And that happens when, rather than avoiding being part of the problem, when we decide that it’s not our problem at all.
Apathy kills.
Cheers.
We are in substantial agreement here, Marek:
“It’s the spivs and manipulators who act under false pretences, tell lies and confect public concern in order to shore up their positions of power and wealth.
All the while they protest that they work for the public good.”
I don’t like the union bosses that decide who our PM will be, either.
And I certainly have no truck with monopolists, bankers or financial engineers who spend their days devisinging convoluted get-rich-quick schemes by hiding risk and pretending profit is inevitable.
“It’s the moral sneaks who peer into our bedrooms, boardrooms and parliaments and presume to tell us who to fuck, how to trade and what to legislate, not because they want us to be like them but simply because they brook no challenge to their hegemony.”
There is a public interest in knowing what goes on in boardrooms of major corporations and what goes on in government. Bedrooms are a different of course. I don’t get why you have lumped these altogether.
“Finally, it’s the ernest preachers of outrage and the heroic iconoclasts who feel the need to trample, condemn, accuse and vilify ‘the other’ for profit and self-aggrandisement.”
There is not much difference between Pauline Hanson and BT when you look at it like that. One won’t criticise their own culture and the other will not permit criticism of the ‘other’. Usually a bit of both is in order.
“Those victims of violence, abuse, injustice and suburbia,”
They are the ones usually called ‘rednecks’ and ‘bogans’ in these pages. In reality they are just ordinary people trying to make ends meet. Because they face grim reality every day, they do not have much truck with the leftist power elite nor do they identify with big unions or big business. They are concerned about governments who dump their refuse upon them, and they are especially cynical about carping PC wankers whose misguided social engineering leaves them to deal with the consequences of their ‘enlightened’ policies.
The ones we need to watch out for are the ones that wield real power. And we should ignore the unceasing croaking of the demented toads of the trendy inner city environs which is designed to make them feel good about themselves while leaving the less well off to deal with the urban blight that so often follows from their progressive policies.
As usual I have taken a middle position – a distrust of power and an understanding of the concerns of those who have to deal with the consequence of bad policy.
It is not just apathy that is the problem. I’m sure you would agree that not listening to the concerns of others is also a serious defect.
Even more serious is listening and then deciding that ‘it’s not my problem‘.
A simple example of such relates to the subject of boat people.
Certain segments of the community can hear the story of years in refugee camps where sons turn to drugs and crime, where daughters are raped for sport and parents fall into despair and depression.
Yet should some of these people have the temerity to jump the queue and seek salvation for their families, something that every Australian would do in the same circumstances, they are branded as criminals and personae non gratae.
Apparently having to live in hell is not our problem as long as it keeps them out of our paradise.
Agreed, but I was thinking of Rolex Revolutionaries claiming that the country’s economy will collapse if they are made to pay a fair market value for the resources they exploit.
As for the lumping of boardrooms, parliaments and bedrooms together, I was thinking that there are some countries and institutions which force trade and fiscal rules on overseas industries with the sole intent of augmenting their own trade and investment positions whilst claim to work for the good of the target country.
US and IMF policy in Latin America springs to mind as does the ironically named US Free Trade pacts with Canada, Mexico and, now, Australia.
Don’t even get me started on political interference in the affairs of sovereign nations by larger political bullies!
Cheers.