BigBlog

Intellectual fashions have done more damage than nuclear weapons, tsunamis, road accidents and over-eating combined.

 I remember Marxism: where are the Marxists now? Deeply flawed, sinking under the weight of its own contradictions, it could never have flown; yet millions died under its steamroller. And State socialism? Only Bob Ellis remains. And down the same Drain of History have gone political correctness and postmodernism.

Yet, in their day, these and other fashions were followed by vast armies of fascist fashionistas who actually believed they had the truth, were utterly intolerant, and were happy to crush those few who dared to stand alone.

But the few who stand alone against these cultureless revolutions are the ones who actually create our more-or-less free society - flawed though it is, compromized though it is, with all its limitations on freedom and its contradictions (growth vs. the ecology,), it's all we have to protect us against the next wave of fashion: a resurgent Right, perhaps; swing of the pendulum.

Most people are weak reeds and bend with the flow, but I stand for what seems to me, from moment to moment, to be true, or maybe true, or approaching the true. Seeking truth is painful, slow, frustrating, difficult, and lonely. Yet, in the search itself lies truth.

Australians don't actually import everything from overseas - fashion, trees, philosophies.  No, we import them and then  we adapt them "to Australian conditions", like the Holden.

Of course the Holden never did suit Australian conditions: it let in more dust than a vacuum cleaner and wobbled on corners.

Australia is not the European, North American cities on the Eastern seaboard. They say that one way new cultures are created is by isolation. If we all lived in the dry, uncompromizing areas where the wealth is produced, North and West .. 

To be a politician now is to be irrelevant.

To be a polly you have to believe - or appear to believe - that you are right and your "oppoents" are wrong. Conservative, Green, Left - they are only pathways, each one only as useful as the destination to which it leads, and the goal can not be reached by one pathway alone.

Coping with the apparently insurmountable problems of the 21st century requires collaboration, not conflict: between conservatives and radicals, older and younger people, men and women, workers and bosses ..

 And parliaments must stop being bearpits and become think tanks.

In face of the big problems looming in the 21 century, somehow the arts are seeming less important to Australians.

 How are we going to cope with global climate change on a massive scale? Is it too late already? How can we defuse cultural conflict in our tower of Babel?

 The arts, by comparison, seem irrelevant to many people now, especially younger people. Telling stories, painting pictures, dancing, making music - great fun, but what can it actually change?

Arts funding has declined somewhat in per capita terms, but that's not the reason for the decline in the arts. There are many more artists clamoring for attention, but there are fewer people out there listening: the same hard core afficionadoes, but a smaller percentile.

 What can be done? The arts can reach out to people not in an ideological way, not just to "make work" for artists, but to offer pathways to deal with some of the world's problems; pragmatically, realistically, achievably.