Wayne Swan is an idiot.
Wayne Swan is an offence to the office of Treasurer.
Why?
Because when you start using the same rhetoric as A Current Affair or Today Tonight to speak about the banking sector, and when you start self-righteously bullying private companies on business decisions, especially if it's apparently on behalf of the good old Aussie battler, is when you stop being a politician and start being a media panderer. And I don't like that someone so beholden to people as amoral as journalists is holding the purse strings of this country. Best Treasurer in the world? It'd be funny if it wasn't so damn depressing.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
In tonight's news...
Well done, news media. You've got your priorities completely right. Ashton Kutcher getting his junk out to erase the memory of Charlie Sheen from Two and a Half Men IS blockbuster news. So is some skewed statistics about the number of drownings this year. Uh, floods unfortunately equal drownings, and more drownings than usual. Doesn't mean we've all forgotten how to swim. Aussies are generally pretty ready to deal with being dumped by a wave at the beach - in the street, not so much. It's not the shock they're making it out to be. It's just a sad reflection of the terrible events that occurred earlier this year.
But the one that really pisses me off is this At Home With Julia thing. So two actors representing our nation's prime minister and her partner are depicted nailing each other literally under the Australian flag. Seriously, so what? We're a country of sarcastic quips and unashamed satire - not to mention the fact that we respect our flag so much we (some of us, anyway) wear it as a cape on Australia Day.
Honestly, if you think about it, somebody must have done it. Probably loads of people have done it. In fact, I bet you'll be able to Like 'Doing It Under the Aussie Flag 'Cause You Fucking Love Your Country' (or similar) in a matter of days, if such a page doesn't exist already.
As with the stuff above, it's nothing extraordinary at all - not even with what the media is now calling 'fake Julia' and 'fake Tim' (because if you dropped the qualifiers, Mrs and Mr PM could slap defamation on any media outlet's ass and win the case in a matter of seconds) being the ones doing the deed.
And I really don't buy into the whole 'disrespect to our war veterans' thing. Yes, the flag is the symbol our nation. Yes, people have fought and died under it (figuratively in this case, because people realised a long time ago that having standard bearers in war is a terrible idea), and yes, people are still fighting and dying under it. Sadly, probably people will die for it before the year is out.
But I think all this talk of disrespect a massive misunderstanding of semiotics. That's right - popping out my much-maligned comms learning here. At the most basic level (which is really all I remember) everything, including each and every word I'm typing here, is made up of signifier and signified. In other words, meaning is not inherent to the words that I'm typing. They are merely the signifier indicating a signified.
Let's return to the main point for an example. The Australian flag is a signifier. The meaning we draw from it is the signified - in this case, love and/or pride in our country and all that it stands for. So we associate the flag with that idea - but the flag in itself does not mean 'Australia'. You show that to someone who's never seen it before, they won't just magically understand what it can mean, because it is just a symbol.
And to try and tear myself off this tangent, I don't believe you can disrespect so vast a concept as Australia by having actors portraying key political figures simulating sex (or implying that sex has occurred - after all, the bloody episode hasn't even aired yet!) underneath it. It's too big an idea and too normal an act. And as I said, the flag is not a physical incarnation of the idea we connect it to. It's just a bit of fabric, at the end of the day.
I can understand that the parents of recently deceased soldiers might be most upset about this. But it's still mistaking a symbol of a thing for the thing itself. The way we conceptualise Australia will remain even if we were to, say, change the flag, as has been suggested by other stupid media beat-ups.
I don't blame the people who are upset about this, though it is a result of ignorance. The ones who annoy me are all the media people out there who quite literally made this into a thing. Studying journalism as I did, and abandoning it as a career, (on grounds of not wanting to spend my life intruding into the lives of others) I know one or two things - specifically, that there are actual lists of what constitutes news value, one of which is conflict. Something I've long since realised is that this value of conflict is the single most called-upon news value in pretty much any media outlet anywhere in the world. What I imagine happened with At Home With Julia was this:
A: Person sees advance screening of episode
B: Possibly laughs at the scene
C: 'Nose for news' detects potential for conflict
D: Tells boss
E: Interviews people they know will respond with outrage
F: Publish
Rinse and repeat for every single reporter who saw the episode ahead of time, or just blame the Herald Sun, who, though I feel they are more likely to show both sides of political opinion than The Age, are into some serious muck-raking nonetheless.
So basically we live in an age where our Fourth Estate, our bastion of the public's right to know, goes around picking silly little fights that only a select few emotionally fragile people will truly be upset about, filling up newspapers and websites, and blowing our radio and TV stations full of hot air. News is not an entertainment product and nor should it be. It's meant to ensure that essential (and some non-essential) truths cannot be hidden from the public. And the sooner editors, journos and reporters remember that, rather than just using it as an empty excuse to accost people in the street (looking at you, ACA and TT), the better.
But the one that really pisses me off is this At Home With Julia thing. So two actors representing our nation's prime minister and her partner are depicted nailing each other literally under the Australian flag. Seriously, so what? We're a country of sarcastic quips and unashamed satire - not to mention the fact that we respect our flag so much we (some of us, anyway) wear it as a cape on Australia Day.
Honestly, if you think about it, somebody must have done it. Probably loads of people have done it. In fact, I bet you'll be able to Like 'Doing It Under the Aussie Flag 'Cause You Fucking Love Your Country' (or similar) in a matter of days, if such a page doesn't exist already.
As with the stuff above, it's nothing extraordinary at all - not even with what the media is now calling 'fake Julia' and 'fake Tim' (because if you dropped the qualifiers, Mrs and Mr PM could slap defamation on any media outlet's ass and win the case in a matter of seconds) being the ones doing the deed.
And I really don't buy into the whole 'disrespect to our war veterans' thing. Yes, the flag is the symbol our nation. Yes, people have fought and died under it (figuratively in this case, because people realised a long time ago that having standard bearers in war is a terrible idea), and yes, people are still fighting and dying under it. Sadly, probably people will die for it before the year is out.
But I think all this talk of disrespect a massive misunderstanding of semiotics. That's right - popping out my much-maligned comms learning here. At the most basic level (which is really all I remember) everything, including each and every word I'm typing here, is made up of signifier and signified. In other words, meaning is not inherent to the words that I'm typing. They are merely the signifier indicating a signified.
Let's return to the main point for an example. The Australian flag is a signifier. The meaning we draw from it is the signified - in this case, love and/or pride in our country and all that it stands for. So we associate the flag with that idea - but the flag in itself does not mean 'Australia'. You show that to someone who's never seen it before, they won't just magically understand what it can mean, because it is just a symbol.
And to try and tear myself off this tangent, I don't believe you can disrespect so vast a concept as Australia by having actors portraying key political figures simulating sex (or implying that sex has occurred - after all, the bloody episode hasn't even aired yet!) underneath it. It's too big an idea and too normal an act. And as I said, the flag is not a physical incarnation of the idea we connect it to. It's just a bit of fabric, at the end of the day.
I can understand that the parents of recently deceased soldiers might be most upset about this. But it's still mistaking a symbol of a thing for the thing itself. The way we conceptualise Australia will remain even if we were to, say, change the flag, as has been suggested by other stupid media beat-ups.
I don't blame the people who are upset about this, though it is a result of ignorance. The ones who annoy me are all the media people out there who quite literally made this into a thing. Studying journalism as I did, and abandoning it as a career, (on grounds of not wanting to spend my life intruding into the lives of others) I know one or two things - specifically, that there are actual lists of what constitutes news value, one of which is conflict. Something I've long since realised is that this value of conflict is the single most called-upon news value in pretty much any media outlet anywhere in the world. What I imagine happened with At Home With Julia was this:
A: Person sees advance screening of episode
B: Possibly laughs at the scene
C: 'Nose for news' detects potential for conflict
D: Tells boss
E: Interviews people they know will respond with outrage
F: Publish
Rinse and repeat for every single reporter who saw the episode ahead of time, or just blame the Herald Sun, who, though I feel they are more likely to show both sides of political opinion than The Age, are into some serious muck-raking nonetheless.
So basically we live in an age where our Fourth Estate, our bastion of the public's right to know, goes around picking silly little fights that only a select few emotionally fragile people will truly be upset about, filling up newspapers and websites, and blowing our radio and TV stations full of hot air. News is not an entertainment product and nor should it be. It's meant to ensure that essential (and some non-essential) truths cannot be hidden from the public. And the sooner editors, journos and reporters remember that, rather than just using it as an empty excuse to accost people in the street (looking at you, ACA and TT), the better.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Uther/Arthur, Morgan/Morgaine
I've just finished reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's 'The Mists of Avalon'. It says much for the quality of its story that I enjoyed it just as much as I did T.H. White's 'The Once and Future King'. However, I'm not really one of those people obsessed with the Arthurian legend, (and I stress legend - more on that in a moment) and those two novels are the main literary contact I have had with it. For my purposes, or indeed anyone's, that movie with Richard Gere and Sean Connery, that telemovie with Sam Neill (as ultimately awesome as that guy is), and that silly teen drama thing that casts Merlin as a kid with big ears speaking to a CGI dragon in a cave, do NOT count. So it's not at all surprising that I found myself thinking of 'The Once and Future King' quite a lot as I read 'The Mists of Avalon', and quite definitely inevitable that I should end up writing how they relate to one another, and indeed why the story is still such a drawcard.
But first, let me be clear - there has always been this...idea that Arthur, Guinevere et al were all real people to an extent, that the story is on some basic level, true. The reality of the legend is a matter of debate, and in all honesty, if even the Wikipedia entry is long and complicated, I doubt the question will ever be settled. But in my opinion, it is a myth - a fiction in the most fundamental sense. Oh, it's a great story, never doubt that - why do you think it endures? But there is no truth in it. And its value to people is the basis of that - a tale that ultimately belongs to everybody, to be transfigured at will, but always to depict the playing out of unavoidable fate. Arthur shall marry Guinevere, and Lancelot shall love her, and doom shall come of it. Camelot will fall.
So, to the books in question. I did not reread 'The Once and Future King' for this (as much as I love it, it's one of the those rare books I am forced to read slowly), so I'll be going along on memory.
It would be very easy, I think, to simply say that the two texts are diametrically opposed - two sides of the same coin, for sure, but never to meet. This is due to two obvious divergences - the feminine viewpoints of 'Mists of Avalon' in contrast to the male-centric 'Once and Future King', and the bright Christianity of the latter to the complex religious struggle of the former. It would simple to leave it at that, to take the depiction you like best, and run with it. But 'The Once and Future King' is not just the stories of the Christian men of Camelot, and 'Mists' is not just the stories of Goddess-serving women. To say that would be to sell both short. Ultimately White and Bradley were both working with the same tale, and the similarities are there.
Let's begin with Lancelot/Lancelet. (I'll be referencing the OAFK name before the MOA one.) T. H. White's Lancelot is simultaneously one of the most wretched, and most brilliant characters I've ever seen rendered in text. His torment, his identity as the 'Ill-made Knight', the consistent feeling he has of being inescapably and eternally evil, even before Guinevere, is gut-wrenching. In 'Mists', due to the persistent use of feminine narrators, you hardly know how deeply torn Lancelet is until his son dies. Both are valid portrayals of the archetype we call Lancelot, but they are not at all far away from each other. At the end of the day, Lancelot is Lancelet is Lancelot, regardless of the matter of vowel use, and the pull of love and loyalty to his king, and the opposite pull of love to his king's wife, creates that torment which is common to both novels.
Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar is another I could reference as being fundamentally the same person in both texts. Though 'Mists' depicts her mostly as annoyingly pious and pitiably agoraphobic, and in 'Once and Future King' she is largely just a woman, not in the object sense, but in terms of her humanity. Nonetheless, they share an important thing in common - they attempt to stay faithful to Arthur. Ultimately the bond between Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar and Lancelot/Lancelet is too strong to be denied (though in 'Mists', Arthur quite literally puts his wife into the arms of his dearest friend -and what happened after that point was definitely NOT canonical!), but the fact that both versions strive honestly to do right by their husband (and indeed, so too does Lancelot/Lancelet) links them.
And then we come to Arthur, who is the same. The Arthur who is King of Camelot is fundamentally identical in any story - ultimately he is even less a character and more of an archetype than any other of the names associated with the legend - Morgan/Morgaine, Galahad, Mordred - all of them have more substance of humanity about them than Arthur does. Arthur is in some ways unimportant to the stories that grow around him because he is their linchpin. He is the symbol of beneficent rule, at the end of the day - a peacemaker, ill-fated like so many great leaders. Even in T. H. White's novel, which some would suppose to be centrally about Arthur, the only time true focus is put upon him as a person is in 'The Sword in the Stone', i.e. when he is a child, before he is the king and thus the epitome of all good in the world. (Slight touch of sarcasm there) And though Lancelot is probably the most strongly written character in 'The Once and Future King', and the four sons of Orkney are definitely more rounded out than Arthur, and that holds true for 'Mists' as well, that's actually how it should be. What keeps people interested, keeps people writing, is that Arthur created a society that was both joyous and peaceful, and that others conspired to tear it down, while still others invited its shattering through no fault of their own.
And that happy peace is the heart of it - no matter how different the interpretations and emphasis may be, no matter if Morgan le Fay is shown to be an evil witch, or seen as Morgaine, a Druid priestess simply doing as her Goddess wills, no matter if Christianity is the enemy or the backbone to the narrative, that is why the Arthurian story endures. There was peace, and it was good, and then it was lost. But it will come again. That is the message. Though White deals with this ultimate thrust of the tale and all those that have grown out of it with the burial mound, under which Arthur lies sleeping in order to come again some day and resurrect that world, Bradley is unequivocal -Arthur is dead. And as I said before, I doubt there ever actually was such a person, at least in the form we read him as today. It's not real, but like many things that are not factual, they are valuable and important all the same - and really, there are some facts and truths that are not as important as an idea like King Arthur at his Round Table, regardless of the former's status as 'reality'. Sometimes dreams are as crucial as the world they grew from. The Arthurian legend is one of these - and despite the ruin of Camelot, the utter certainty of that fate, and the tragedies of all kinds which occur in the process of its demise, it's a good dream.
But first, let me be clear - there has always been this...idea that Arthur, Guinevere et al were all real people to an extent, that the story is on some basic level, true. The reality of the legend is a matter of debate, and in all honesty, if even the Wikipedia entry is long and complicated, I doubt the question will ever be settled. But in my opinion, it is a myth - a fiction in the most fundamental sense. Oh, it's a great story, never doubt that - why do you think it endures? But there is no truth in it. And its value to people is the basis of that - a tale that ultimately belongs to everybody, to be transfigured at will, but always to depict the playing out of unavoidable fate. Arthur shall marry Guinevere, and Lancelot shall love her, and doom shall come of it. Camelot will fall.
So, to the books in question. I did not reread 'The Once and Future King' for this (as much as I love it, it's one of the those rare books I am forced to read slowly), so I'll be going along on memory.
It would be very easy, I think, to simply say that the two texts are diametrically opposed - two sides of the same coin, for sure, but never to meet. This is due to two obvious divergences - the feminine viewpoints of 'Mists of Avalon' in contrast to the male-centric 'Once and Future King', and the bright Christianity of the latter to the complex religious struggle of the former. It would simple to leave it at that, to take the depiction you like best, and run with it. But 'The Once and Future King' is not just the stories of the Christian men of Camelot, and 'Mists' is not just the stories of Goddess-serving women. To say that would be to sell both short. Ultimately White and Bradley were both working with the same tale, and the similarities are there.
Let's begin with Lancelot/Lancelet. (I'll be referencing the OAFK name before the MOA one.) T. H. White's Lancelot is simultaneously one of the most wretched, and most brilliant characters I've ever seen rendered in text. His torment, his identity as the 'Ill-made Knight', the consistent feeling he has of being inescapably and eternally evil, even before Guinevere, is gut-wrenching. In 'Mists', due to the persistent use of feminine narrators, you hardly know how deeply torn Lancelet is until his son dies. Both are valid portrayals of the archetype we call Lancelot, but they are not at all far away from each other. At the end of the day, Lancelot is Lancelet is Lancelot, regardless of the matter of vowel use, and the pull of love and loyalty to his king, and the opposite pull of love to his king's wife, creates that torment which is common to both novels.
Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar is another I could reference as being fundamentally the same person in both texts. Though 'Mists' depicts her mostly as annoyingly pious and pitiably agoraphobic, and in 'Once and Future King' she is largely just a woman, not in the object sense, but in terms of her humanity. Nonetheless, they share an important thing in common - they attempt to stay faithful to Arthur. Ultimately the bond between Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar and Lancelot/Lancelet is too strong to be denied (though in 'Mists', Arthur quite literally puts his wife into the arms of his dearest friend -and what happened after that point was definitely NOT canonical!), but the fact that both versions strive honestly to do right by their husband (and indeed, so too does Lancelot/Lancelet) links them.
And then we come to Arthur, who is the same. The Arthur who is King of Camelot is fundamentally identical in any story - ultimately he is even less a character and more of an archetype than any other of the names associated with the legend - Morgan/Morgaine, Galahad, Mordred - all of them have more substance of humanity about them than Arthur does. Arthur is in some ways unimportant to the stories that grow around him because he is their linchpin. He is the symbol of beneficent rule, at the end of the day - a peacemaker, ill-fated like so many great leaders. Even in T. H. White's novel, which some would suppose to be centrally about Arthur, the only time true focus is put upon him as a person is in 'The Sword in the Stone', i.e. when he is a child, before he is the king and thus the epitome of all good in the world. (Slight touch of sarcasm there) And though Lancelot is probably the most strongly written character in 'The Once and Future King', and the four sons of Orkney are definitely more rounded out than Arthur, and that holds true for 'Mists' as well, that's actually how it should be. What keeps people interested, keeps people writing, is that Arthur created a society that was both joyous and peaceful, and that others conspired to tear it down, while still others invited its shattering through no fault of their own.
And that happy peace is the heart of it - no matter how different the interpretations and emphasis may be, no matter if Morgan le Fay is shown to be an evil witch, or seen as Morgaine, a Druid priestess simply doing as her Goddess wills, no matter if Christianity is the enemy or the backbone to the narrative, that is why the Arthurian story endures. There was peace, and it was good, and then it was lost. But it will come again. That is the message. Though White deals with this ultimate thrust of the tale and all those that have grown out of it with the burial mound, under which Arthur lies sleeping in order to come again some day and resurrect that world, Bradley is unequivocal -Arthur is dead. And as I said before, I doubt there ever actually was such a person, at least in the form we read him as today. It's not real, but like many things that are not factual, they are valuable and important all the same - and really, there are some facts and truths that are not as important as an idea like King Arthur at his Round Table, regardless of the former's status as 'reality'. Sometimes dreams are as crucial as the world they grew from. The Arthurian legend is one of these - and despite the ruin of Camelot, the utter certainty of that fate, and the tragedies of all kinds which occur in the process of its demise, it's a good dream.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Well, I guess I better weigh in on this...
About this time last year, I was just beginning to wade into the ill-defined, ill-reasoned mire that was my political opinion. I was sloughing off my indifference. A year on, and here I am - once again indifferent, not because my views have regressed, but because a government as poor as this, and indeed, as sparse a political stage as this, makes it very, very hard to care.
But I've dredged up some interest (probably because my Liberal instincts sense what everyone else can - a Labor bloodbath), so I'll have a chat with regard to this goddamn carbon tax.
I have discussed this before, if memory serves (it's possibly one of the posts destroyed by mid-composition internet screwery though, so if you can find no trace of such, that's why), but I think I better revisit my main gripe - i.e. this tax will not actually help anybody or anything. It's taxing a gas in the air, (one that we actually breathe out, for fuck's sake) and if the package thus far outlined is correct, the reduction of carbon dioxide will be minimal, and easily eclipsed by the emissions of bigger, more densely populated nations. So it does not help the environment in any meaningful way.
And though the compensation package currently outlined may protect ordinary households to a great extent, the idea that a tax on some of the major pillars holding up our economy won't have a serious adverse effect on that economy is ludicrous. It's all well and good to talk about leading the way - right now we have the economical strength (even if this is not reflected in the Federal Government's actual cash reserves) and the delicately balanced political situation which politicians can afford to promote that sort of patriotism. But if that tax comes into place (I'll explain why it's 'if' later), we will very soon be doing the very opposite because tax-burdened and 'dirty' Australian companies will be unable to compete. In other words, the tax will harm our economy (and I repeat, without any discernible benefit for the environment).
Even if you don't accept that there will be a serious effect, or even an adverse effect, it is at best unrealistic and at worst dangerously blind to think that something as wide-ranging as the carbon tax won't affect the economy in some way. Our entire market from flagging retail to booming minerals is interconnected within itself and with the greater world. You can't pull a string at one end and not expect a bell to ring at the other.
But I'll move on - after all, following today's Neilsen poll results, http://www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-down-for-count-20110717-1hkak.html, everyone knows just how against this thing the vast majority of the population is. At that brings me to why I doubt the carbon tax will ever actually be implemented, regardless of the $25 million ad campaign and the very loud shouting of the people who are increasingly being revealed to be running against the tide of popular opinion, rather than riding an unassailable wave to the shore, as so many of them like to portray. You simply have to look at the players in this game.
1. Julia Gillard.
The woman is floundering. She's found herself saddled with this line of 'I am committed to putting a price on carbon', and her behaviour in the media, particularly in the past week, has demonstrated just how unable she is to deal with that fact. She keeps parroting the same words, the same vague concepts, over and over and over again, with no real understanding of the fact that no amount of saying them slowly and clearly (as if the voters were stupid - some of them are, yes, but no-one likes condescension, and even stupid people can spot that sort of thing) is going to make people suddenly go, "Oh, Julia! You are so right - we can totally forget the complete failure of your government thus far, and the fact that all your promise of action has yielded even more spin and even less action than we were choking on when Rudd was in power! We looove you!" Excuse the heavy sarcasm there, but it all honesty, there is no turning this around. She stays in power because the Greens and the independents keep her there.
2. Bob Brown
Technically, this man is our Prime Minister. I am utterly serious about this - this carbon tax is the Greens' baby, and everyone knows it. What's more, Brown's recent call for a inquiry into the media in the wake of Britain's 'News of the World' scandal shows how much Gillard is a thrall to his whims. The below was sourced from http://www.news.com.au/business/bob-brown-calls-for-inquiry-into-australian-media-and-wants-a-new-watchdog/story-e6frfm1i-1226094759334#ixzz1SSGzohts, and is Gillard's reaction to Brown's suggestion.
"I'm also not surprised to see that in Parliament, or amongst parliamentarians, a conversation is starting about a need for a review," she told the National Press Club.
"And I will be happy to sit down with parliamentarians and discuss that review that people are obviously contemplating."
Two major problems - firstly, Parliament is not currently in session, which is why she had to correct herself with 'amongst parliamentarians' - there's been no actual parliamentary discussion. Secondly, 'people are obviously contemplating' gives the false suggestion that it was more than just Brown who instigated the idea - and thus far we have seen no evidence of that. Essentially, this is Gillard saying, "I'll get right on that, Mr Brown."
Suggestions like the media inquiry and dictating policy in this manner would all be perfectly within his brief - if he and his party were a majority government, or any sort of government at all. That is, in order for his level of influence to be appropriate, he would have to be PM in fact as well as in practice.
And people are well aware that his role and his power is far more than it should be, which only drags down our actual Prime Minister even further. She's a puppet, and we can all see the strings.
3. Tony Abbott
As a Liberal voter, I am going to put my hand up right here and now and say that I don't actually much like the guy. I feel he and his party would best represent my views if they were in government, but that doesn't mean I don't think he's quite a full-on, potentially problematic Opposition Leader. His current status as preferred PM is a huge mark against Gillard rather than for Abbott, and it's a sign of just how little respect and authority she currently commands that the majority of people are choosing him over her, because let's face it - he can be more than a little scary. But that scariness would probably stand him in good stead for cleaning up the unworkable mess the current government is certain to leave. In other words, in Tony Abbott there is a recognisable alternative to the Punch and Judy...sorry, Bob and Julia show.
4. The Independents
Andrew Wilkie, Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter. Of those four names, only the last was well-known prior to the last election, and then largely as the gimmicky politician from country Queensland with the Akubra. BK is pretty much in the back seat now, having sided with the Liberals against the eventual winners in the Labor-Green camp, but the fact is we still have four people in the government who are, despite public appearances, under no real obligation (or at least, no obligation that can't be broken) to stay in their current positions.
We've all gotten used to this minority government thing, and it feels solid, but I sincerely doubt that that is the case when you get underneath the surface. Windsor and Oakeshott might bargain together, but they're still only two men, and can't possibly reap the rewards of supporting Gillard to the extent that the Greens do. Wilkie will probably stick with Labor regardless, but it's hard to predict what any of them will do. It seems to me that sooner or later, one of them will have to crack and jump ship, hanging the parliament all over again. My money is on Windsor because he has an ultimately National ideology, but it could be any of them, for any reason.
And once the government can't perform the basic functions of governance, i.e. getting bills passed into law, it ceases to be a government, and hey presto! It'd be election time again, and judging by the above-linked poll, the vast majority of people holding positions of power currently would either be relegated to the Opposition benches, or lose their seats altogether.
So:
The carbon tax will likely never eventuate, simply because the government attempting to push it down our throats probably can't survive that long. Why else the election-style campaigning? Why else the constant talk of an election supposedly more than two years away? It's because everyone from Julia Gillard right down to little old me knows it's going to be sooner than that, and possibly even sooner than we think.
But I've dredged up some interest (probably because my Liberal instincts sense what everyone else can - a Labor bloodbath), so I'll have a chat with regard to this goddamn carbon tax.
I have discussed this before, if memory serves (it's possibly one of the posts destroyed by mid-composition internet screwery though, so if you can find no trace of such, that's why), but I think I better revisit my main gripe - i.e. this tax will not actually help anybody or anything. It's taxing a gas in the air, (one that we actually breathe out, for fuck's sake) and if the package thus far outlined is correct, the reduction of carbon dioxide will be minimal, and easily eclipsed by the emissions of bigger, more densely populated nations. So it does not help the environment in any meaningful way.
And though the compensation package currently outlined may protect ordinary households to a great extent, the idea that a tax on some of the major pillars holding up our economy won't have a serious adverse effect on that economy is ludicrous. It's all well and good to talk about leading the way - right now we have the economical strength (even if this is not reflected in the Federal Government's actual cash reserves) and the delicately balanced political situation which politicians can afford to promote that sort of patriotism. But if that tax comes into place (I'll explain why it's 'if' later), we will very soon be doing the very opposite because tax-burdened and 'dirty' Australian companies will be unable to compete. In other words, the tax will harm our economy (and I repeat, without any discernible benefit for the environment).
Even if you don't accept that there will be a serious effect, or even an adverse effect, it is at best unrealistic and at worst dangerously blind to think that something as wide-ranging as the carbon tax won't affect the economy in some way. Our entire market from flagging retail to booming minerals is interconnected within itself and with the greater world. You can't pull a string at one end and not expect a bell to ring at the other.
But I'll move on - after all, following today's Neilsen poll results, http://www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-down-for-count-20110717-1hkak.html, everyone knows just how against this thing the vast majority of the population is. At that brings me to why I doubt the carbon tax will ever actually be implemented, regardless of the $25 million ad campaign and the very loud shouting of the people who are increasingly being revealed to be running against the tide of popular opinion, rather than riding an unassailable wave to the shore, as so many of them like to portray. You simply have to look at the players in this game.
1. Julia Gillard.
The woman is floundering. She's found herself saddled with this line of 'I am committed to putting a price on carbon', and her behaviour in the media, particularly in the past week, has demonstrated just how unable she is to deal with that fact. She keeps parroting the same words, the same vague concepts, over and over and over again, with no real understanding of the fact that no amount of saying them slowly and clearly (as if the voters were stupid - some of them are, yes, but no-one likes condescension, and even stupid people can spot that sort of thing) is going to make people suddenly go, "Oh, Julia! You are so right - we can totally forget the complete failure of your government thus far, and the fact that all your promise of action has yielded even more spin and even less action than we were choking on when Rudd was in power! We looove you!" Excuse the heavy sarcasm there, but it all honesty, there is no turning this around. She stays in power because the Greens and the independents keep her there.
2. Bob Brown
Technically, this man is our Prime Minister. I am utterly serious about this - this carbon tax is the Greens' baby, and everyone knows it. What's more, Brown's recent call for a inquiry into the media in the wake of Britain's 'News of the World' scandal shows how much Gillard is a thrall to his whims. The below was sourced from http://www.news.com.au/business/bob-brown-calls-for-inquiry-into-australian-media-and-wants-a-new-watchdog/story-e6frfm1i-1226094759334#ixzz1SSGzohts, and is Gillard's reaction to Brown's suggestion.
"I'm also not surprised to see that in Parliament, or amongst parliamentarians, a conversation is starting about a need for a review," she told the National Press Club.
"And I will be happy to sit down with parliamentarians and discuss that review that people are obviously contemplating."
Two major problems - firstly, Parliament is not currently in session, which is why she had to correct herself with 'amongst parliamentarians' - there's been no actual parliamentary discussion. Secondly, 'people are obviously contemplating' gives the false suggestion that it was more than just Brown who instigated the idea - and thus far we have seen no evidence of that. Essentially, this is Gillard saying, "I'll get right on that, Mr Brown."
Suggestions like the media inquiry and dictating policy in this manner would all be perfectly within his brief - if he and his party were a majority government, or any sort of government at all. That is, in order for his level of influence to be appropriate, he would have to be PM in fact as well as in practice.
And people are well aware that his role and his power is far more than it should be, which only drags down our actual Prime Minister even further. She's a puppet, and we can all see the strings.
3. Tony Abbott
As a Liberal voter, I am going to put my hand up right here and now and say that I don't actually much like the guy. I feel he and his party would best represent my views if they were in government, but that doesn't mean I don't think he's quite a full-on, potentially problematic Opposition Leader. His current status as preferred PM is a huge mark against Gillard rather than for Abbott, and it's a sign of just how little respect and authority she currently commands that the majority of people are choosing him over her, because let's face it - he can be more than a little scary. But that scariness would probably stand him in good stead for cleaning up the unworkable mess the current government is certain to leave. In other words, in Tony Abbott there is a recognisable alternative to the Punch and Judy...sorry, Bob and Julia show.
4. The Independents
Andrew Wilkie, Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter. Of those four names, only the last was well-known prior to the last election, and then largely as the gimmicky politician from country Queensland with the Akubra. BK is pretty much in the back seat now, having sided with the Liberals against the eventual winners in the Labor-Green camp, but the fact is we still have four people in the government who are, despite public appearances, under no real obligation (or at least, no obligation that can't be broken) to stay in their current positions.
We've all gotten used to this minority government thing, and it feels solid, but I sincerely doubt that that is the case when you get underneath the surface. Windsor and Oakeshott might bargain together, but they're still only two men, and can't possibly reap the rewards of supporting Gillard to the extent that the Greens do. Wilkie will probably stick with Labor regardless, but it's hard to predict what any of them will do. It seems to me that sooner or later, one of them will have to crack and jump ship, hanging the parliament all over again. My money is on Windsor because he has an ultimately National ideology, but it could be any of them, for any reason.
And once the government can't perform the basic functions of governance, i.e. getting bills passed into law, it ceases to be a government, and hey presto! It'd be election time again, and judging by the above-linked poll, the vast majority of people holding positions of power currently would either be relegated to the Opposition benches, or lose their seats altogether.
So:
The carbon tax will likely never eventuate, simply because the government attempting to push it down our throats probably can't survive that long. Why else the election-style campaigning? Why else the constant talk of an election supposedly more than two years away? It's because everyone from Julia Gillard right down to little old me knows it's going to be sooner than that, and possibly even sooner than we think.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Everybody just chill a second
I find it extraordinary that the most commonly-used term to describe someone unconvinced about climate change is 'climate change denier'. Now, I don't know about you, but I can only think of one other term where it is usual to use the word 'denier', and that's 'Holocaust denier'. I cannot understand how so many people could have become so extreme in their beliefs as to use that word and those connotations against people who disagree with them.
However, I can understand that many people on both sides of the debate are deeply frustrated that not everyone agrees with them about global warming. But the use of the word 'denier' suggests that climate change is something that is simply and basically true, such as 'the sky is blue' and that by not accepting it as fact, not 'believing', so to speak, the unconvinced person is therefore a lunatic. People who don't accept global warming/climate change as fact are NOT lunatics. They're just people are not convinced by the shouting and screaming of the people who are convinced, or by the increasingly politicised and deified vocabulary of the climate change believers.
Because it has become a sort of faith, regardless of whatever actual facts lie deep underneath. Climate change is something you believe in, not something you're convinced of. People who do not believe are heretics, deniers. Scepticism is a dirty thing now. Even the term 'climate change agnostic' has come into the lexicon. Somewhere along the line saving the planet became akin to saving God.
To be honest, 'agnostic' is probably the term I would apply to myself, if I weren't certain that the politics and religion now intimately connected to the issue of climate change needs to be pulled out by the roots in order to end the cycle of viciousness and anger on both sides. The way I see it, there are three possibilities: 1. It's happening and it's going to cause serious trouble; 2. It's happening and there will be minimal harmful effects; or 3. It's not/no longer happening, and any ill effects will balance back over time.
Now, whatever of these three you agree with (and especially if you pick option number 1), there's something that everyone MUST start respecting before the debate descends any further - you might be convinced of your particular point, but not everyone is, and screaming and hurling about foul accusations is not going to change that. Nor is the catch cry of, "We need action now!" - if it does turn out to be as dire as all that, seems to me we'll know soon enough. Besides, no-one likes to be pushed into doing something, especially when they're not sure it's right.
I guess what I'm trying to say is:
Let's not lose our humanity in our rush to save it from whoever you think the monster is. Let's try to be calm and rational, because regardless of what truth the future brings, we'll need our heads on straight to clean up the mess left behind.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
81 days with Lao Tzu (or thereabouts)
Normally this is the sort of thing I’d put in a Facebook note – it’s what I think of as my more personal blogging outlet. However Interrobang was conceived as a place for serious discussion of serious matters, and as such, my thoughts on the Tao Te Ching after spending nearly three months reading a chapter daily, or almost daily (I forgot once or twice) have to belong here and not there.
When I decided to get a copy of the Tao, I didn’t know what I was looking for, per se. I’m still not entirely sure what I was searching for out of all this – I’ve never been a particularly spiritual person, if only because of a lack of exposure to truly meaningful spiritual texts. I may have gone to a Christian high school, but quite frankly, I don’t think essentially forced attendance at church services whose theme is...wait for it...rice carries any sort of religious or spiritual weight. If you believe in God and love him (I refuse to capitalise that), then good for you for finding something real in Christianity. I never have. I started questioning God pretty much at the same time I started questioning Santa. As such, I’ve been pretty firmly an atheist for around a decade – I learnt the word in year 7 R.E. and started applying it to myself somewhere in the next six months to a year.
But of late, specifically as I began reading more Ursula Le Guin’s older, more sci-fi based work mid-last year, I began to realise I was getting something more out of her work than just pleasure at her skill and imagination. That ‘something’, I realised, was Le Guin’s long-term connection with Taoism. With an anthropologist for a father, she stumbled across the Tao Te Ching as a child and essentially grew up with it. Its ideals are integral to her writing, and it was those values that I found fascinating, and most importantly, interesting from a spiritual perspective. And when I discovered Le Guin had done her own translation/rendition of the Tao, I knew that this was it: my way into this intriguing thing I could sense behind her fiction. Up until then, I don’t think I’d quite realised I was looking for a way in.
So I got the book, got some tips from our friend the internet and went from there. The early passages I devoted a lot of time to, often trying to memorise them so I could recite them to myself during the day and so work my way through the denseness of the language. Because by all reports, Lao Tzu wrote things in a dense, deceptively simple way, and anyone who’s ever tackled a Le Guin novel knows that she does a very similar thing, and that it sometimes alienates the reader. So with the two of them together, it could often be quite a challenge to even absorb the words on the page, regardless of their apparently straightforward nature.
“The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed;
Name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.”
I have to admit that when I read this, the first chapter of the Tao, I was more than a little transfixed by it. At that point, it seemed very much like I would something worth understanding in the little book. As a writer, I still look at it and love the beauty of it. In truth, it’s probably the above passage and the one below, which came second, that struck me most deeply.
“Everybody on earth knowing
that beauty is beautiful
makes ugliness.
Everybody knowing
That goodness is good
makes wickedness.
For being and nonbeing
arise together;
hard and easy
complete each other;
long and short
shape each other;
high and low
depend on each other;
note and voice
make the music together;
before and after
follow each other.
That’s why the wise soul
does without doing,
teaches without talking.
The things of this world
exist, they are;
you can’t refuse them.
To bear and not own;
to act and not lay claim;
to do the work and let it go:
for just letting it go
is what makes it stay.”
I think what makes the above passage so interesting to me is that it is talking about something I can and do readily accept as ‘fact’. The chapter is to some extent with the nature of yin and yang as a constantly shifting balance. I can no longer remember where I read this explanation of the concept, but if you throw a stone into a pool, there will be ripples. We all know that, but if you think of how the high points of the ripple and the low points in between will swap places as the ripple spreads outward before finally returning to quiescence. In other words, what was yang (to oversimplify a bit, the high points) will become yin (the low points) and vice versa before both revert back into a single whole. It’s a fascinating idea to me, if only because it ties in with a conclusion that I’d already come to on my own: that the universe has a sort of flow that shifts direction according to its own whims. Maybe I’m getting a bit esoteric now, but in the concept of yin and yang, I see the ‘shifting flow’ that I had already perceived myself.
As I progressed through the Tao, I began to interact with it less as a spiritual tract and more as a thought for the day. I was less struck by entire chapters and more by individual lines or stanzas. In short, I started to get less out of it, the more I read. I’m not sure if this was simply the nature of my life getting in the way of me properly absorbing the work, the part of me that is a bit of more hardcore about the atheism than the rest tearing things down, or the fact that I actively disagreed with a certain amount of the ideas presented. I think it’s probably a combination of the first and third things. My atheism is largely a hazy-edged thing and I don’t think I was really dismissing what I was reading so much as only truly connecting with some of it. As the book goes on, the unity described in the first two chapters slowly gets deconstructed and discussed at length. For some reason, I found it easier to understand and appreciate the earlier chapters, ‘the whole’ than I did the increasingly smaller pieces. And of course, Lao Tzu says himself in that first chapter, and in later ones, that the Way is inherently elusive.
But then there were simple, basic moments that simply felt right to me – “To give no trust/is to get not trust” (17 and 23) is a case in point. In all honesty, reading the Tao Te Ching was like trying to find stones at the bottom of a rushing river – the water is pleasantly cool, but nothing you can easily catch hold of. You can grab the stones, but they’re at the end of the day only part of what you can see in the river itself. Here are some other little maxims I picked up along the way (pun intended).
“Forget the rules
Be untroubled.” (19)
“Self-satisfied people do no good,
Self-promoters never grow up.” (24)
“To enjoy using weapons
is to enjoy killing people,
and to enjoy killing people
is to lose your share in the common good.” (31)
“The great square has no corners.
The great vessel is never finished.
The great tone is barely heard.
The great thought can’t be thought.” (41)
“All you grasp will be thrown away,
All you hoard will be utterly lost.” (44)
“When the world’s on the Way,
they use horses to haul manure.
When the world’s off the Way,
They breed warhorses on the common.” (46)
“Seek, you‘ll find it.
Hide, it will shelter you.” (62)
“The nine-storey tower rises
from a heap of clay.” (64)
“I have three treasures.
I keep and treasure them.
The first, mercy,
the second, moderation,
the third, modesty.
If you’re merciful you can be brave,
if you’re moderate you can be generous,
and if you don’t presume to lead
you can lead the high and mighty.” (67)
“We ought not to live in narrow houses,
we ought not to do stupid work.
If we don’t accept stupidity
we won’t act stupidly.” (72)
To some of the above, I simply went, “Yes, that’s right,” or “Huh – I never thought of it that way before.” All I know is that they make sense to me on a very basic level. The excerpts of 67 and 72 are very much reflective of the way I try to approach life – perhaps I wouldn’t have chosen words like mercy and moderation to explain the way I want to do things, but modesty is certainly very deeply ingrained into my being. And I’ve never had much time for stupidity or senselessness, rightly or wrongly.
So what did I actually get out the Tao Te Ching? To be honest, I’m not sure. Ideas, I think. That sounds so basic, but I think that’s what happened – I absorbed the concepts, the spirit engendered in all the 81 chapters without really deeply interacting with them. I think certain amounts of it will resurface down the track, and I think it’s probably already positively affected my outlook on life to an extent. I was surprised how many little pieces I felt I had to mention above, how much of I felt was important, was central. I suspect I’m like many of Lao Tzu’s readers, just managing to grip a few stones in the river.
Am I a Taoist? No, I don’t think so. I think a certain amount of my own perceptions of the greater universe are inherently Taoist. The eternal interplay of yin and yang I embrace fully, just as I do the pacifist nature of parts of the text. The recurrent point that the Way is difficult to properly comprehend I definitely get. But some of it, for example the passages about the correct way to govern, I simply didn’t agree with. Maybe ignorance is the easiest means to a simple, full life on the Way, but as Lao Tzu puts it, “The great way is low and plain/but people like shortcuts over the mountains.” I like shortcuts over the mountains. I am a curious being by nature and I would never try to suppress that in myself. Thus, I cannot follow that particular part of the Way, amongst others. I don’t think that’s a failure on my part, or that the text is inherently wrong on this point. I just would never try to stifle my personality in pursuit of a spiritual goal. If you have to change or ignore parts of who you are at your core in order to follow a belief system, then you should not follow it. Which, when I think about it, is why I never connected with Christianity – so much of the brand of it which I encountered was so incredibly mired in restriction, in forbidding people from their own natural inclinations on every level. Of course the Tao is not like this; hence I found something real in it. This excerpt from chapter 21 is probably the best summation of how I now perceive the Tao:
“How the Way does things
is hard to grasp, elusive.
Elusive, yes, hard to grasp,
yet there are thoughts in it.
Hard to grasp, yes, elusive,
yet there are things in it.
Hard to make out, yes, and obscure,
yet there is spirit in it, veritable spirit.
There is certainty in it.”
I guess what I’m trying to express is that in the past three months, I found something solid in the Tao Te Ching, and in the Way. It just wasn’t the all-consuming, life-changing thing I expected it to be. And quite frankly, I’m glad that it wasn’t. I don’t believe I’m made for a deep and constant connection with spirituality. I think in my life, it belongs in the background, as a comforting underlying knowledge – there when I need it, but quiet and almost unnoticeable if I don’t.
When I decided to get a copy of the Tao, I didn’t know what I was looking for, per se. I’m still not entirely sure what I was searching for out of all this – I’ve never been a particularly spiritual person, if only because of a lack of exposure to truly meaningful spiritual texts. I may have gone to a Christian high school, but quite frankly, I don’t think essentially forced attendance at church services whose theme is...wait for it...rice carries any sort of religious or spiritual weight. If you believe in God and love him (I refuse to capitalise that), then good for you for finding something real in Christianity. I never have. I started questioning God pretty much at the same time I started questioning Santa. As such, I’ve been pretty firmly an atheist for around a decade – I learnt the word in year 7 R.E. and started applying it to myself somewhere in the next six months to a year.
But of late, specifically as I began reading more Ursula Le Guin’s older, more sci-fi based work mid-last year, I began to realise I was getting something more out of her work than just pleasure at her skill and imagination. That ‘something’, I realised, was Le Guin’s long-term connection with Taoism. With an anthropologist for a father, she stumbled across the Tao Te Ching as a child and essentially grew up with it. Its ideals are integral to her writing, and it was those values that I found fascinating, and most importantly, interesting from a spiritual perspective. And when I discovered Le Guin had done her own translation/rendition of the Tao, I knew that this was it: my way into this intriguing thing I could sense behind her fiction. Up until then, I don’t think I’d quite realised I was looking for a way in.
So I got the book, got some tips from our friend the internet and went from there. The early passages I devoted a lot of time to, often trying to memorise them so I could recite them to myself during the day and so work my way through the denseness of the language. Because by all reports, Lao Tzu wrote things in a dense, deceptively simple way, and anyone who’s ever tackled a Le Guin novel knows that she does a very similar thing, and that it sometimes alienates the reader. So with the two of them together, it could often be quite a challenge to even absorb the words on the page, regardless of their apparently straightforward nature.
“The way you can go
isn’t the real way.
The name you can say
isn’t the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed;
Name’s the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what’s hidden
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.”
I have to admit that when I read this, the first chapter of the Tao, I was more than a little transfixed by it. At that point, it seemed very much like I would something worth understanding in the little book. As a writer, I still look at it and love the beauty of it. In truth, it’s probably the above passage and the one below, which came second, that struck me most deeply.
“Everybody on earth knowing
that beauty is beautiful
makes ugliness.
Everybody knowing
That goodness is good
makes wickedness.
For being and nonbeing
arise together;
hard and easy
complete each other;
long and short
shape each other;
high and low
depend on each other;
note and voice
make the music together;
before and after
follow each other.
That’s why the wise soul
does without doing,
teaches without talking.
The things of this world
exist, they are;
you can’t refuse them.
To bear and not own;
to act and not lay claim;
to do the work and let it go:
for just letting it go
is what makes it stay.”
I think what makes the above passage so interesting to me is that it is talking about something I can and do readily accept as ‘fact’. The chapter is to some extent with the nature of yin and yang as a constantly shifting balance. I can no longer remember where I read this explanation of the concept, but if you throw a stone into a pool, there will be ripples. We all know that, but if you think of how the high points of the ripple and the low points in between will swap places as the ripple spreads outward before finally returning to quiescence. In other words, what was yang (to oversimplify a bit, the high points) will become yin (the low points) and vice versa before both revert back into a single whole. It’s a fascinating idea to me, if only because it ties in with a conclusion that I’d already come to on my own: that the universe has a sort of flow that shifts direction according to its own whims. Maybe I’m getting a bit esoteric now, but in the concept of yin and yang, I see the ‘shifting flow’ that I had already perceived myself.
As I progressed through the Tao, I began to interact with it less as a spiritual tract and more as a thought for the day. I was less struck by entire chapters and more by individual lines or stanzas. In short, I started to get less out of it, the more I read. I’m not sure if this was simply the nature of my life getting in the way of me properly absorbing the work, the part of me that is a bit of more hardcore about the atheism than the rest tearing things down, or the fact that I actively disagreed with a certain amount of the ideas presented. I think it’s probably a combination of the first and third things. My atheism is largely a hazy-edged thing and I don’t think I was really dismissing what I was reading so much as only truly connecting with some of it. As the book goes on, the unity described in the first two chapters slowly gets deconstructed and discussed at length. For some reason, I found it easier to understand and appreciate the earlier chapters, ‘the whole’ than I did the increasingly smaller pieces. And of course, Lao Tzu says himself in that first chapter, and in later ones, that the Way is inherently elusive.
But then there were simple, basic moments that simply felt right to me – “To give no trust/is to get not trust” (17 and 23) is a case in point. In all honesty, reading the Tao Te Ching was like trying to find stones at the bottom of a rushing river – the water is pleasantly cool, but nothing you can easily catch hold of. You can grab the stones, but they’re at the end of the day only part of what you can see in the river itself. Here are some other little maxims I picked up along the way (pun intended).
“Forget the rules
Be untroubled.” (19)
“Self-satisfied people do no good,
Self-promoters never grow up.” (24)
“To enjoy using weapons
is to enjoy killing people,
and to enjoy killing people
is to lose your share in the common good.” (31)
“The great square has no corners.
The great vessel is never finished.
The great tone is barely heard.
The great thought can’t be thought.” (41)
“All you grasp will be thrown away,
All you hoard will be utterly lost.” (44)
“When the world’s on the Way,
they use horses to haul manure.
When the world’s off the Way,
They breed warhorses on the common.” (46)
“Seek, you‘ll find it.
Hide, it will shelter you.” (62)
“The nine-storey tower rises
from a heap of clay.” (64)
“I have three treasures.
I keep and treasure them.
The first, mercy,
the second, moderation,
the third, modesty.
If you’re merciful you can be brave,
if you’re moderate you can be generous,
and if you don’t presume to lead
you can lead the high and mighty.” (67)
“We ought not to live in narrow houses,
we ought not to do stupid work.
If we don’t accept stupidity
we won’t act stupidly.” (72)
To some of the above, I simply went, “Yes, that’s right,” or “Huh – I never thought of it that way before.” All I know is that they make sense to me on a very basic level. The excerpts of 67 and 72 are very much reflective of the way I try to approach life – perhaps I wouldn’t have chosen words like mercy and moderation to explain the way I want to do things, but modesty is certainly very deeply ingrained into my being. And I’ve never had much time for stupidity or senselessness, rightly or wrongly.
So what did I actually get out the Tao Te Ching? To be honest, I’m not sure. Ideas, I think. That sounds so basic, but I think that’s what happened – I absorbed the concepts, the spirit engendered in all the 81 chapters without really deeply interacting with them. I think certain amounts of it will resurface down the track, and I think it’s probably already positively affected my outlook on life to an extent. I was surprised how many little pieces I felt I had to mention above, how much of I felt was important, was central. I suspect I’m like many of Lao Tzu’s readers, just managing to grip a few stones in the river.
Am I a Taoist? No, I don’t think so. I think a certain amount of my own perceptions of the greater universe are inherently Taoist. The eternal interplay of yin and yang I embrace fully, just as I do the pacifist nature of parts of the text. The recurrent point that the Way is difficult to properly comprehend I definitely get. But some of it, for example the passages about the correct way to govern, I simply didn’t agree with. Maybe ignorance is the easiest means to a simple, full life on the Way, but as Lao Tzu puts it, “The great way is low and plain/but people like shortcuts over the mountains.” I like shortcuts over the mountains. I am a curious being by nature and I would never try to suppress that in myself. Thus, I cannot follow that particular part of the Way, amongst others. I don’t think that’s a failure on my part, or that the text is inherently wrong on this point. I just would never try to stifle my personality in pursuit of a spiritual goal. If you have to change or ignore parts of who you are at your core in order to follow a belief system, then you should not follow it. Which, when I think about it, is why I never connected with Christianity – so much of the brand of it which I encountered was so incredibly mired in restriction, in forbidding people from their own natural inclinations on every level. Of course the Tao is not like this; hence I found something real in it. This excerpt from chapter 21 is probably the best summation of how I now perceive the Tao:
“How the Way does things
is hard to grasp, elusive.
Elusive, yes, hard to grasp,
yet there are thoughts in it.
Hard to grasp, yes, elusive,
yet there are things in it.
Hard to make out, yes, and obscure,
yet there is spirit in it, veritable spirit.
There is certainty in it.”
I guess what I’m trying to express is that in the past three months, I found something solid in the Tao Te Ching, and in the Way. It just wasn’t the all-consuming, life-changing thing I expected it to be. And quite frankly, I’m glad that it wasn’t. I don’t believe I’m made for a deep and constant connection with spirituality. I think in my life, it belongs in the background, as a comforting underlying knowledge – there when I need it, but quiet and almost unnoticeable if I don’t.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Hands up...
..if you are wondering how the hell a carbon tax works? I know I was. My vague impression was that it is basically a tax designed to make fossil-fuel-based utilities more expensive for everyone - that's the company producing the utilities right down to the lowliest consumer. My understanding was that this greater expense is designed to force people into using more environmentally-friendly power sources by essentially beating them where it hurts most: the wallet.
But I didn't feel I should get on here and start ranting without better information, so I went to our good friends at Google and found out. The unfortunate thing is , it appears the hazy summation outlined above is entirely correct. Behold:
"So in order to reduce the fees, utilities, business and individuals attempt to use less energy derived from fossil fuels. An individual might switch to public transportation and replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). A business might increase energy efficiency by installing new appliances or updating heating and cooling systems. A utility company might use wet scrubbers, low NOx-burners or gasification to reduce their emissions."
The lack of realism in this is mind-boggling. It's like saying that if you start poking a person for standing in a particular spot, they'll just go somewhere else, i.e. a place where poking will not occur. It doesn't account for the other alternative - the person angrily turns around and asks why the fuck you're poking them. Or in other words, bilking people out of money for using one type of power does not necessarily mean they will migrate to other (and I must point out again, still grossly inefficient) type of power. It might just mean that they shoulder the cost, and vote in the first person who promises to repeal the tax - in Australia's case, Tony Abbott.
Another problem, one that many, many people have already pointed out since Julia Gillard did yet another astonishing backflip (remember the 'it's more likely I'll play for the Western Bulldogs than be PM' comment?) and said she was "putting a price on carbon", is that pushing on the price up on one thing pushes the price up on everything else. What I'm getting is that it's hard not to see this tax affecting people's ability to afford the solar panels and whatever else that the carbon tax claims to be encouraging. Even a small-scale system costs thousands of dollars, even with rebates, and even with the compensation Gillard and co will no doubt shell out. And though things like home solar panels do eventually pay for themselves, it's by no means a short-term investment, and if people can't afford the initial outlay, they're not going to take up the option.
Thirdly, that compensation for low and middle-income earners Gillard's promising, the one I briefly mentioned above, isn't that actually going to render the tax useless? I mean, if the point of the tax is to make eco-energy sources the more cost-effective option, to increase the money going out of households and businesses in order to get them to find solutions that will lessen that flow, surely any compensatory benefit or exemption removes the punitive element of the tax. If the amount of money people have with which to buy food and other essentials remains roughly static, or slightly down, or even significantly down but not far enough to create serious issue, they're not going to feel pressured enough to switch to a green power option.
And also, since when can people on minimum wage afford the aforementioned thousands to install solar panels? Or to pay the extra one to five dollars a week to receive green power from electricity suppliers like Origin? I don't doubt that some middle-income earners could and would afford the above, and so would some low-income earners, but there are also people living hand to mouth who will be thinking about where the next meal is coming from, and then providing more comforts for their families, and then many, many other things before they have the luxury of green power. Because like it or not, effective, environmentally-friendly options in terms of power and other utilities are largely the province of the people with the money for them.
Of course, there are things in the quote above, like public transportation and switching to fluorescents. On the latter point, most people have already made that switch - unlike solar, fluorescents are both cheap and more commonly to be found in the supermarket. Also, though there are of course environmental and energy conservation benefits to doing cutting out incandescents, it's not a particularly significant saving, at least not in the context of more significant reducers of carbon usage.
As for PT, well that comes down to what's affordable, and what's convenient. Though public transport is affordable for most people, it is only in inner city areas that living entirely without a car is practical. It is possible in the outer suburbs, of course -but if you think you can get your groceries home on a hot day without meat defrosting and milk turning when it can take up to an hour to do a trip that takes only 15 minutes by car. That may be a slight exaggeration, but the point is, a complete move to public transport is not really feasible for the suburban person, and the farther out you get, the less workable it becomes.
And there is two other major problems with public transport in the context of a carbon tax, and in the context of Melbourne itself. Most buses run on diesel, (there are some ethanol ones) and though that fuel releases less carbon than petrol, it is still a fossil fuel. And trams and trains? Well, they're electric, and as most of us know, the bulk of this state's electricity comes from fossil fuel. So though public transport is probably reducing fossil fuel consumption, it's not actually the super green option it's touted as - the carbon continues. The second problem is of course that as as carbon emitters, public transport operators will also be liable for the carbon tax, thus pushing up that cost. In other words, when it comes to PT, the carbon tax will leave people between a rock and a hard place when it comes to trying avoid its effects.
And there's one more I was wondering about - if you price a gas in the air, what happens to the money? Well, it goes to the government - who (sarcasm alert) is just so incredibly efficient at managing the country's money that we can only assume they'll be able to buy us all a solid gold trophy of Climate Change Awesomeness in a couple of years. You know, once solar and wind power have suddenly stopped being problematic for mass consumption, and China decides it wants to buy those off us instead of cheap-burning coal.
In short, this tax is ridiculous. It's just acres and acres of stick for one mouldy carrot. Yes, cleaner sources of power are a good idea, or they will be when it can reliably supply as much power as fossil-fuel-based power, but beating money out of the populace until they do as they're told smacks of the nanny state mentality that Julia Gillard is increasingly using to govern this nation. She (and other proponents of this thing - yes, I'm looking at you, Bob Brown and Christina Milne) is basically to saying to the Australian people, "Be green, or give us your money". And that means that whatever your political and environmental leanings, it can't be denied that a carbon tax legislates against what ought to be a choice, not something mandated and forced upon people by government. It's really easy to say, "But some people will never go green if we don't do this" or "we need action now", but should that really be coming at the cost of people having their own opinions, making their own decisions? What price the planet if our government treats us like children?
But I didn't feel I should get on here and start ranting without better information, so I went to our good friends at Google and found out. The unfortunate thing is , it appears the hazy summation outlined above is entirely correct. Behold:
"So in order to reduce the fees, utilities, business and individuals attempt to use less energy derived from fossil fuels. An individual might switch to public transportation and replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). A business might increase energy efficiency by installing new appliances or updating heating and cooling systems. A utility company might use wet scrubbers, low NOx-burners or gasification to reduce their emissions."
The lack of realism in this is mind-boggling. It's like saying that if you start poking a person for standing in a particular spot, they'll just go somewhere else, i.e. a place where poking will not occur. It doesn't account for the other alternative - the person angrily turns around and asks why the fuck you're poking them. Or in other words, bilking people out of money for using one type of power does not necessarily mean they will migrate to other (and I must point out again, still grossly inefficient) type of power. It might just mean that they shoulder the cost, and vote in the first person who promises to repeal the tax - in Australia's case, Tony Abbott.
Another problem, one that many, many people have already pointed out since Julia Gillard did yet another astonishing backflip (remember the 'it's more likely I'll play for the Western Bulldogs than be PM' comment?) and said she was "putting a price on carbon", is that pushing on the price up on one thing pushes the price up on everything else. What I'm getting is that it's hard not to see this tax affecting people's ability to afford the solar panels and whatever else that the carbon tax claims to be encouraging. Even a small-scale system costs thousands of dollars, even with rebates, and even with the compensation Gillard and co will no doubt shell out. And though things like home solar panels do eventually pay for themselves, it's by no means a short-term investment, and if people can't afford the initial outlay, they're not going to take up the option.
Thirdly, that compensation for low and middle-income earners Gillard's promising, the one I briefly mentioned above, isn't that actually going to render the tax useless? I mean, if the point of the tax is to make eco-energy sources the more cost-effective option, to increase the money going out of households and businesses in order to get them to find solutions that will lessen that flow, surely any compensatory benefit or exemption removes the punitive element of the tax. If the amount of money people have with which to buy food and other essentials remains roughly static, or slightly down, or even significantly down but not far enough to create serious issue, they're not going to feel pressured enough to switch to a green power option.
And also, since when can people on minimum wage afford the aforementioned thousands to install solar panels? Or to pay the extra one to five dollars a week to receive green power from electricity suppliers like Origin? I don't doubt that some middle-income earners could and would afford the above, and so would some low-income earners, but there are also people living hand to mouth who will be thinking about where the next meal is coming from, and then providing more comforts for their families, and then many, many other things before they have the luxury of green power. Because like it or not, effective, environmentally-friendly options in terms of power and other utilities are largely the province of the people with the money for them.
Of course, there are things in the quote above, like public transportation and switching to fluorescents. On the latter point, most people have already made that switch - unlike solar, fluorescents are both cheap and more commonly to be found in the supermarket. Also, though there are of course environmental and energy conservation benefits to doing cutting out incandescents, it's not a particularly significant saving, at least not in the context of more significant reducers of carbon usage.
As for PT, well that comes down to what's affordable, and what's convenient. Though public transport is affordable for most people, it is only in inner city areas that living entirely without a car is practical. It is possible in the outer suburbs, of course -but if you think you can get your groceries home on a hot day without meat defrosting and milk turning when it can take up to an hour to do a trip that takes only 15 minutes by car. That may be a slight exaggeration, but the point is, a complete move to public transport is not really feasible for the suburban person, and the farther out you get, the less workable it becomes.
And there is two other major problems with public transport in the context of a carbon tax, and in the context of Melbourne itself. Most buses run on diesel, (there are some ethanol ones) and though that fuel releases less carbon than petrol, it is still a fossil fuel. And trams and trains? Well, they're electric, and as most of us know, the bulk of this state's electricity comes from fossil fuel. So though public transport is probably reducing fossil fuel consumption, it's not actually the super green option it's touted as - the carbon continues. The second problem is of course that as as carbon emitters, public transport operators will also be liable for the carbon tax, thus pushing up that cost. In other words, when it comes to PT, the carbon tax will leave people between a rock and a hard place when it comes to trying avoid its effects.
And there's one more I was wondering about - if you price a gas in the air, what happens to the money? Well, it goes to the government - who (sarcasm alert) is just so incredibly efficient at managing the country's money that we can only assume they'll be able to buy us all a solid gold trophy of Climate Change Awesomeness in a couple of years. You know, once solar and wind power have suddenly stopped being problematic for mass consumption, and China decides it wants to buy those off us instead of cheap-burning coal.
In short, this tax is ridiculous. It's just acres and acres of stick for one mouldy carrot. Yes, cleaner sources of power are a good idea, or they will be when it can reliably supply as much power as fossil-fuel-based power, but beating money out of the populace until they do as they're told smacks of the nanny state mentality that Julia Gillard is increasingly using to govern this nation. She (and other proponents of this thing - yes, I'm looking at you, Bob Brown and Christina Milne) is basically to saying to the Australian people, "Be green, or give us your money". And that means that whatever your political and environmental leanings, it can't be denied that a carbon tax legislates against what ought to be a choice, not something mandated and forced upon people by government. It's really easy to say, "But some people will never go green if we don't do this" or "we need action now", but should that really be coming at the cost of people having their own opinions, making their own decisions? What price the planet if our government treats us like children?
Thursday, January 6, 2011
A little change of pace
I've have been voraciously reading the amazing Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh of late. (http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ - check it out, it's extremely funny) That and my recent trip to the Dreams Come True exhibit at ACMI has inspired me to create this, my first (and depending on how well it goes, perhaps only) 'Crudely-Drawn Mythological Creature of the Week' post. The drawing thing I will avow here and now is something that I have borrowed from Awesome Allie, but I've tried to use it my own way. Besides, Allie is more than capable of drawing very, very well. I am not. I can, if I really try and go very slowly, draw certain things semi-decently - specifically, maps and my female protagonists. Otherwise I'm pretty much a black hole when it comes to drawing talent.As you can see, Creature of the Week is the oh-so-mighty dragon.
Now, there are plenty of incarnations of dragons throughout fantasy and mythology in general. A lot of the older legends in the UK centre around there being great British dragons, such as the red one on the Welsh flag. Their dormant bodies, lying in wait for when Britain once more needs them, are said to form various mountain ranges throughout the UK.
As a symbol, the dragon is enormously versatile - it can range from vicious beast all the way through to cultured higher being, and sometimes writers will portray many of these aspects in a single dragon. A lot of mythological creatures have this multiplicity of viewpoints, but as it is somewhat of the grand daddy of all mythological beasts, the variance is greatest here.
Obviously Smaug of Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' is quite a well-known one, and an example of your bargain-basement dragon - i.e. sleeps on gold in a cave, breathes fire, weak underbelly. In this form (which like so many fantasy tropes, became prevalent because Tolkien did it) the dragon is essentially the embodiment of greed. And fire. Always, always fire.
Other famous renditions are Saphira in Paolini's Inheritance novels (that's more for kids/young adults, though) and Segoy/Kalessin in Le Guin's Tehanu and all the Earthsea novels that follow after that. The former is a rather well-realised representation of the dragon-as-human - the beast is essentially human internally. S/he acts with humanity always and is a sympathetic creature. Kalessin is also a dragon-as-human, but differs very sharply, partly out of the much greater talent of his/her (it's never quite clear) creator, Le Guin, and partly because the aim was different - to use the dragon as a symbol of knowledge, which is probably the next most common rendition of fire-lizards after greedy gold-hoarder.
Anyway, this is the most important part - how to kill/not be killed by a dragon.
How to Kill:
- If you are facing a standard gold-loving reptile, then that weak underbelly should be foremost in your mind. Otherwise it's just armoured scales, claws, more armoured scales, fire out one end, and only god knows what out the other.
You will need a sword, but no armour, because a dragon is at the very least 10 times bigger than you, and it is better to be able to run away partially burnt, then all burnt and dead because you can't run in chainmail.
A bow may work, so too a javelin. Basically anything pointy that you can throw from a safe distance. To my knowledge, no-one has ever used a gun on a dragon. I don't advise you to try.
- If you are facing the superintelligent breed of dragon, your method is largely the same - stay back, be ready to throw your sharp object when you get an opportunity. The very important difference is that you will have far less opportunity with a smart dragon. In fact, your life hinges on your being smarter than the dragon. Not many people are, so if you have a smart dragon (they tend to use riddles and be quite charming...until they eat you) on your hands, please refer to the next section.
How Not to Be Killed:
- In the case of the angry, bestial and not very intelligent dragon, do not enter the cave/lair. You can spot one from the outside by checking the ground for a trail of gold coins of various shapes and sizes, some with bite marks. This is a bit hard to miss, so if you manage to accidentally walk into the cave, then the gene pool's probably better off without you.
But if you beg to differ, leaving before they notice you is a good strategy. If you also fail at this (the piles of gold on the floor do make it difficult to be stealthy), run like hell, and don't look back if you value the skin on your face. A dragon will breathe fire on trespassers as quickly as a redneck reaches for a shotgun. I repeat, RUN.
- As for our genius dragon, if they notice you in their lair (or nest/eyrie - the smart ones often like a high-up dwelling of some kind), you're probably screwed. They may toy with you for a while, but if they want to eat you, they will eat you. They've already figured out all the ways you could escape and formulated plans for each eventuality.
If you are extremely, unbelievably lucky (and probably you're not, 'cause lucky people don't end up in the nests of smart dragons), then you might manage to foil one of these counter-escape plans. If this happens, then again, RUN.
But because they are very intelligent, they will know your fear of mortality and will often take great joy in making you think you have a chance. If a way to escape seems obvious or unnoticed, don't take it. S/he will engage you in conversation, either to mesmerise you (smart dragons are quite skilled at this) or simply to give you a sporting chance. If you succeed in proving you are intelligent enough to live, then maybe, maybe you will be allowed to leave.
But as with many things in life, prevention is better than cure, so don't go looking for an intelligent dragon, or any dragon at all.
In closing:
Dragons are cool in a figurative sense, and fiery in a literal sense. If you see one, ascertain which kind of dragon it is. If it snarls and little else, it's a standard dragon. RUN. If it speaks with better diction than you, despite the rows of teeth and the smoke curling forth, politely answer all questions as intelligently as possible, cross your fingers, and if s/he gives you permission, RUN.
Tune in next week for another Crudely-Drawn Mythological Creature!
Monday, January 3, 2011
Oh, come on!
Every time I get angry about something more important than just "damn you, person in the car in front, the speed limit is eighty. EIGHTY!" I come here and write a blog. And very often, it seems to me that I get angry about (A) The Federal Government or (B) Self-esteem (particularly women's) and how the world tries to make sure you don't have any. Today's post is about B. Again. Sorry about that, but this is really pretty disturbing and enraging.
"[Katie] Price is often viewed a collective ideal of genuine modern femininity to a widespread audience: particularly to females. Her continual struggle with the British media against her personal life and 'rags to riches' story has turned her into an inspirational role model."
That is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for Katie Price (or Jordan), ex-wife of Peter Andre, 'glamour model' (read: near-naked most of the time and possibly outsizes Pam Anderson in the implant stakes), and the skankiest skank who ever did skank. You can see the result of a Google Images search for her below.
http://www.google.com.au/images?q=katie+price&hl=en&rlz=1T4DAAU_en-GB___AU307&prmd=ivnsuo&source=lnms&tbs=isch:1&ei=n7AiTfz7LIGKvQPnr6WNDg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&ved=0CBIQ_AU
Sexually appealing (if you're into girls and like them uber-fake), maybe. A role model? No.
NO
She is no more an 'ideal of modern femininity' than a cactus. Or a rock. I mean, holy hell, we are talking about someone who no joke put make-up and false eyelashes on her two-year-old daughter and then posted a picture on the internet. Katie Price is a shell made out of sex and tits, essentially a living sex-doll. That she is an image of the very worst example of modern femininity there is no denying. She is an epitome of the 'I am woman, watch me wear very little and have sex with as many men as possible' mentality. Very little clothing, even less self-respect.
To be clear, I absolutely believe that it is Katie Price's right to live her life in this fashion, just as it is for anyone who chooses such an utterly barren path through life. But don't tell me that she is ideal. Don't tell me that this total lack of any merit or virtue or anything that could remotely be called a good quality or be at least indicative of an acquaintance with reality is what the modern woman is or should aspire to.
So who should be a role model for modern women? Who is ideal? Well, to be honest, the best case scenario would be that women be strong enough not to need to rely on other women to make them feel confident in themselves. But I have to admit Kate Winslet and Helena Bonham Carter are both excellent examples of what femininity (and indeed humanity) should be about - self-belief and self-expression that pays no heed to the heckles of the crowd.
Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter, Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland amongst others) is utterly herself, without hesitation or apology. Nearly every time she attends a film premiere, she gets attacked by the 'fashion commentators' for dressing in way that could be fairly described as bonkers. But damn it if she doesn't always, always look bloody awesome anyway. Why? Because she doesn't give a crap what those idiots think, she's comfortable in the body she was born with, and the clothes she chooses to wear. She is completely happy to be herself - a rare thing in a person of any sex, let alone an actress.
Kate Winslet is, like me, a woman who is made angry by the promotion of insecurity. From her Wikipedia entry:
"Winslet has been outspoken about her refusal to allow Hollywood to dictate her weight. [...] She ha[s] always expressed the opinion that women should be encouraged to accept their appearance with pride, and therefore 'was particularly upset to be accused of lying about my exercise regimen, and felt that I had a responsibility to request an apology in order to demonstrate my commitment to the views that I have always expressed about body issues, including diet and exercise.'"
Now, if you did a Google Images search on either of these women, you would most definitely find photos of them posed provocatively, or with very little on, or nothing at all. Doing these things doesn't automatically make you into another Katie Price, no matter how much I might rant about her, her image and her lifestyle. (And I repeat - it is her life, she can do what she wants) But there is a rather large difference between dressing/being photographed in a manner that embraces one's femininity and sexuality, and dressing/being photographed in a manner that is, let's face it, largely for the masturbatory fantasies of boys, teenaged or otherwise. The former is about self-expression, about confidence in one's body and person. The latter is an marketing tool at best, a heinously void, self-perpetuating lie at worst.
I don't know exactly where to end with this - I came into this angry that anyone, anyone at all, could even begin to consider Katie Price as a positive reflection of femininity. Because (to hammer the point home one more time) she is everything that is negative in modern constructions of woman. (SIGHS) I am aware of how lucky I am to feel comfortable with myself and my body. I am aware that is excruciatingly difficult for some women to even look in the mirror, so deeply mired are they in self-loathing. I just wish that more people would find a way (to paraphrase Kate Winslet) to accept themselves for who they are, to be proud to be who they are. The fact that there are so many people out there who would look to someone like Katie Price as a role model is more depressing than anything else, because it means that in the battle between positive and negative views of the modern self (for both men and women, I should add),
negativity is winning. Quite overwhelmingly. It's hard to be anything but sad about that.
"[Katie] Price is often viewed a collective ideal of genuine modern femininity to a widespread audience: particularly to females. Her continual struggle with the British media against her personal life and 'rags to riches' story has turned her into an inspirational role model."
That is an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for Katie Price (or Jordan), ex-wife of Peter Andre, 'glamour model' (read: near-naked most of the time and possibly outsizes Pam Anderson in the implant stakes), and the skankiest skank who ever did skank. You can see the result of a Google Images search for her below.
http://www.google.com.au/images?q=katie+price&hl=en&rlz=1T4DAAU_en-GB___AU307&prmd=ivnsuo&source=lnms&tbs=isch:1&ei=n7AiTfz7LIGKvQPnr6WNDg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&ved=0CBIQ_AU
Sexually appealing (if you're into girls and like them uber-fake), maybe. A role model? No.
NO
She is no more an 'ideal of modern femininity' than a cactus. Or a rock. I mean, holy hell, we are talking about someone who no joke put make-up and false eyelashes on her two-year-old daughter and then posted a picture on the internet. Katie Price is a shell made out of sex and tits, essentially a living sex-doll. That she is an image of the very worst example of modern femininity there is no denying. She is an epitome of the 'I am woman, watch me wear very little and have sex with as many men as possible' mentality. Very little clothing, even less self-respect.
To be clear, I absolutely believe that it is Katie Price's right to live her life in this fashion, just as it is for anyone who chooses such an utterly barren path through life. But don't tell me that she is ideal. Don't tell me that this total lack of any merit or virtue or anything that could remotely be called a good quality or be at least indicative of an acquaintance with reality is what the modern woman is or should aspire to.
So who should be a role model for modern women? Who is ideal? Well, to be honest, the best case scenario would be that women be strong enough not to need to rely on other women to make them feel confident in themselves. But I have to admit Kate Winslet and Helena Bonham Carter are both excellent examples of what femininity (and indeed humanity) should be about - self-belief and self-expression that pays no heed to the heckles of the crowd.
Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter, Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland amongst others) is utterly herself, without hesitation or apology. Nearly every time she attends a film premiere, she gets attacked by the 'fashion commentators' for dressing in way that could be fairly described as bonkers. But damn it if she doesn't always, always look bloody awesome anyway. Why? Because she doesn't give a crap what those idiots think, she's comfortable in the body she was born with, and the clothes she chooses to wear. She is completely happy to be herself - a rare thing in a person of any sex, let alone an actress.
Kate Winslet is, like me, a woman who is made angry by the promotion of insecurity. From her Wikipedia entry:
"Winslet has been outspoken about her refusal to allow Hollywood to dictate her weight. [...] She ha[s] always expressed the opinion that women should be encouraged to accept their appearance with pride, and therefore 'was particularly upset to be accused of lying about my exercise regimen, and felt that I had a responsibility to request an apology in order to demonstrate my commitment to the views that I have always expressed about body issues, including diet and exercise.'"
Now, if you did a Google Images search on either of these women, you would most definitely find photos of them posed provocatively, or with very little on, or nothing at all. Doing these things doesn't automatically make you into another Katie Price, no matter how much I might rant about her, her image and her lifestyle. (And I repeat - it is her life, she can do what she wants) But there is a rather large difference between dressing/being photographed in a manner that embraces one's femininity and sexuality, and dressing/being photographed in a manner that is, let's face it, largely for the masturbatory fantasies of boys, teenaged or otherwise. The former is about self-expression, about confidence in one's body and person. The latter is an marketing tool at best, a heinously void, self-perpetuating lie at worst.
I don't know exactly where to end with this - I came into this angry that anyone, anyone at all, could even begin to consider Katie Price as a positive reflection of femininity. Because (to hammer the point home one more time) she is everything that is negative in modern constructions of woman. (SIGHS) I am aware of how lucky I am to feel comfortable with myself and my body. I am aware that is excruciatingly difficult for some women to even look in the mirror, so deeply mired are they in self-loathing. I just wish that more people would find a way (to paraphrase Kate Winslet) to accept themselves for who they are, to be proud to be who they are. The fact that there are so many people out there who would look to someone like Katie Price as a role model is more depressing than anything else, because it means that in the battle between positive and negative views of the modern self (for both men and women, I should add),
negativity is winning. Quite overwhelmingly. It's hard to be anything but sad about that.
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