It’s time (to panic)

Both sides of the argument are correct but again sadly they are proving Samuel Huntington’s late 20th century image of a clash of civilisations. Unlike Huntington’s clash which involved global region against global region with its basis in religious differences, the clash within Australian society has its basis in monumentally silly private and public policy decisions. And like an accelerant, divisive federal government rhetoric aimed at creating class warfare is inflaming an already scorching situation. We are in meltdown.

We have not arrived at this chaotic point in social history by accident. But we are here and we need to work out swiftly how to extract ourselves before the words of Irish poet W B Yeats that ‘the centre cannot hold” become a reality. If we are to avoid complete chaos and a descent into anarchy, to become the ‘basket case’ of the Pacific as Greece is to Europe, we need to know some stuff.

We no longer trust leaders. We are not investing in public companies. We are cynical to the point of believing everyone is trying to sell us something we don’t want. We no longer have faith in our established institutions — churches, governments, charities, the news media. We do not trust the news media (we still trust the medium of money, but only just and that’s another kettle of sharks). We are unable to find meaning in wider society. We don’t get the fabricated image of ‘community’ that politicians try to persuade us exists. We think we are being worked over by corporations and their advertisers. We think we are paying more for goods and services than is fair. We don’t get the arguments that tell us we should take sides on the big issues such as climate change and boat-people.

We are a society that is being influenced by forces beyond our control. We expect our politicians to make promises that they might keep if we elect them to public office. We have three levels of government — more than most other countries — and we now know that they rarely, if ever, say what they mean and mean what they say. The immediate past prime minister said we would not have a carbon tax. And we have one. Big mining companies say they will invest in new mining ventures that will create new jobs. Then they don’t. State governments promise to build new infrastructure such as ports and roads. In office they discover there is no funding and that they have no knowledge of how to go about the process if they did have funding. Local governments promise to fix roads. Nothing changes. Police promise to keep society safe. Drug gangs shoot the crap out of each other.

What is going to happen to us if we keep driving down this unsign-posted track?

Can Australia meet the challenges that have been set down by public and private interests since the death of the Howard government five years ago? Are national elections now simply dramatised spectacles that present a stage for actors who seek consent by making public promises they have no intention of keeping?

Are corporations engaging in shifty practices — are they working in our real interests rather than their own profit interests? Are charities doing good work or are they succumbing to the shifty practices of the corporate sector — who regulates charities? Are religious institutions attempting to influence public policy? Are the media tricking us — do they have hidden agendas?

Are we being subjected to mass persuasion by public and private interests? Are we being persuaded to believe in and to do things we feel deep-down are not reflective of our best interests? Does the weight of our very existence within the social structure preclude us from even having the time or patience to think about anyone other than ourselves? Is our own well-being more important than anyone else’s? Are we capable of and do we have the capacity to survive the present meltdown?

The old who, what, where, when, why, and how, questions are a good place to start. If we can grasp who, what, where, when why and how we got to this point, then we can work on a strategy to get out of it. When you find yourself in a hole the first thing to do is stop digging.