Egalitarianism

I’m going to have to let this out because it’s making me so fucking angry.
The more I learn about current events, the more ashamed I am of myself, my country and the non-actions of everyone who has the luxury of being ‘bored’.

Australia is not an egalitarian country.
It’s not egalitarian to exclude the people who don’t live in our country.
It’s not egalitarian to ignore the pleas of desperate children and just toss them at another poor country.
It’s not fucking egalitarian to say “those people, the one with no shoes and no home, their lives aren’t being threatened by war. They’re not unfortunate enough for us to help.”

Since when does nationality come into human morality?

Our superior lives, our prided education system, our cherished advancements in science, our fashion industry, IT industry, our perfect green and gold sporting teams, why do we think we deserve it? Change the people around and nothing would be different. It should be long past the time where people believe in inherent superiority over other groups, yet what makes Australians more deserving of Australian wealth? Didn’t we all get taught to share in primary school?

The best thing about Australia is that its citizens can afford to take for granted what they have.

Not tertiary education, not job opportunities, not four bedroom homes and centrelink. Those are things we have because we are fortunate. The saddest thing about it all is, our great fortunes make our great shames. Turn your cheek from the ‘minor’ problem of poverty for one minute and everyone’s crowing about a ‘fair go’ and Aussie pride.

It’s idealistic to expect rich countries to give to the poor and share all they have. It’s unrealistic to let refugees enter our borders unchecked. It’s also the right thing to do. I don’t care about evolution and ’survival of the fucking fittest’ or economic theory or how such a move will affect the advancement of mankind through science or a lower average standard of living for everyone. Nevermind that the advancement of science is simultaneously the deterioration of compassion. Nevermind that we’re all selfish bastards. Nevermind, as long as the pain is out of sight. As long as they can’t reach us and make us care.

I find it hard to believe that anything will change, and I hate it.

Why can’t I think?

I think I’ve realised why it’s so hard to start doing school work. I’m not motivated anymore, I’m not interested. The topic I’ve chosen for sociology is Aboriginal disadvantage – and seriously – I found this intensely interesting last year. It was like a puzzle and I was happy to find the solution. I wanted to write an essay about this last year.

But for some reason, when I try to tackle the same question this year, I get struck down with fever, am unable to conjure up any original or interesting idea, would rather sleep, would rather watch horribly repetitive and monotonous television than even begin to think about it.

I’m starting to think that I should have taken a gap year. Maybe I need a break before the old fondness for learning returns? It’s that old adage again, the one about love and absence. Seriously, Ms. Learning, how can I miss you if you won’t go away?

Maybe it’s thinking that I’m tired of, I find myself not even wanting to self-scrutinize. I find that I’d rather go walk around the house aimlessly than continue to delve into what might be wrong with me. Maslow’s heirarchy of needs would say that some of my basic, bodily requirements are unfulfilled (am I hungry? am I thirsty? do I lack for shelter? Paragraph 2 might suggest that my health is in crisis and I lack sleep), but that can’t be all. I refuse to be a slave to my base needs.

So what else could it be?

Sociologically (I may as well, it’s the subject I’m supposed to be working on anyway), university might be considered much more anomic than college. There is less support and so an individual feels less connected within the society, and unsure of their own place. Durkheim, one of the guys who championed this theory, might say that the university student who is unprepared for this sudden falling out of support would be distressed and unmotivated to function within this new society. So sociologically, I feel distanced from the uni society, something that would not necessarily be solved by departing for a gap year.

Individuals within an anomic society have higher association with suicidal tendencies, which I will de-dramatize and extrapolate to mean that they are more likely to be depressed. Overindulgence of sleeping, poor health for inexplicable reasons and feeling unmotivated are all symptoms of the clinical disorder. I’m not suggesting that I’m depressed, just that most mental disorders are on sliding scales – from normality to less normal to not normal – and it is only at a certain point of abnormality that we notice and diagnose it. Back to my point, anomie brings about desire to sleep/not wanting to do assessment.

For some reason the other day, I found myself searching ‘hate uni’ and delving into the interwebs. It was shocking to find so many people who disliked uni and had roughly the same experiences as I (having said that, I don’t hate uni). I guess this supports the whole anomie thing, as that’s something most universities must have in common.

Then again, the use of the word ‘hate’ is interesting, especially because university is completely optional and attendance implies the individual actually wanting to be there. ‘Hate’ gives the impression that university is to blame for whatever troubles are confounding the lives of all those students. It suggests that most people don’t feel like going to university is their choice – and autonomy is something that everyone needs in order to feel motivated. From this perspective, perhaps if I had taken a gap year and then chosen to return, I might feel better?

Now that I’ve babbled in a full circle, I’m going to go do some more about aboriginal disadvantage. The blog was to get me into analytical, sort-of-thinking mode. Rather meaningless dither, this was. It almost lives up to the word “blog”.

Everything is a Revelation

Okay, this whole study via blog thing has not been particularly successful so far. I think it’s because I get the impression that my blogs should be meaningful, that every entry should have some sort of directed message to it. I’m not sure if I can manage that anymore. There’s too much that I need to repeat to myself and not enough that I can process and put here coherently and with my own opinion.

Bah. I resolve to blog more and get through the term’s load of learning.

The Revelations of a Not-Child

It seems like the more I learn about the world, the more I begin to realise how hard it can be to live in it. Nothing in this world is ever easy.

I’ve known that sentence for it’s literary meaning for years, but I hadn’t properly understood the feeling it describes. There seem to be no quick clean solutions, ever, and for some people, in some situations there are no solutions at all.

It must be a thing of childhood to expect a solution. It doesn’t make sense to expect it in life. People live, they encounter a problem but rarely is there a Hollywood climax where everything is turned around. I guess if there’s a problem, we just live with it until we die.

I know this sounds depressing as hell, but don’t worry, I haven’t decided to turn my back on life. It’s just starting to sink in that some problems can’t be resolved. At least, it is beyond my, and many other people’s brain power to find a solution.

To turn this blog in a relevant direction, in sociology we discussed inequality and the gap between the rich and the poor in Australia. A few years back, John Howard announced that the growing income gap was not a problem, because the people at the bottom were not getting poorer and that’s all that matters. They are the relative poor, no one in Australia is living in absolute poverty and that is a-okay folks. What crap.

Absolute Poverty is a standard of living deemed independent of time and space. Person’s classified as living in absolute poverty are unable to obtain any two of the following: Food (BMI above 16), water, shelter, sanitation, healthcare, education, information, and access to services (financial, legal, etc).

If rich people are getting richer, they consume more, they draw away resources – from the poor. Marx described the working class as having labour power, where people sell their labour to the rich in order to survive. The wider the gap between the rich and the poor, the less buying power the poor are going to have. Relative or not, guess who is most likely to become the absolute poor?

Despite general definition, I think absolute poverty is a changing label. As the “pinnacle” of living goes up, what people consider a satisfactory standard of living also increases. If society, or the world, continues to polarise in this manner fewer and fewer people are able to achieve an acceptable standard of living. Fifty years ago, listed must-haves, like ‘information’ and ‘access to services’ were not a necessity of living. The bar is moving up and leaving more people below it.

Now back to solutions. In terms of poverty, we know what is not a solution. The solution is not to throw money at people who don’t have it, or food, or water, or televisions. The idea is they need more labour power, more capital – they need to be able to create income and production. Giving the poor money simply means they buy the next meal – and the money we gave is circulated back to us.

However, giving the poor more capital means that the wealthy will likely be giving away their own capital. If society is more equal, the people at the top won’t be so well off. Which is kind of the point, but it doesn’t feel good for people at the top. After all, the goal of the individual in capitalism is to rise to the top, right? Anyone can do it. They just have to want it enough…right?

A common opinion of people who are poor and unemployed in Australia is that they can get it together if they tried. If they weren’t lazy, if they weren’t alcoholics, if they weren’t uneducated – then they could do as well as us. It feels like these things are the reasons for their poverty, and not the result. From what I’ve learned, people in a bad situation are there because they cannot get themselves out. It is not a question of will, the poorer half of society is not the weak-willed half. Nobody wants to be poor. Often, this is just a justification for inaction.

It’s starting to feel like everyone in the world either doesn’t want to or is incapable of creating a solution. Actually, this philosopher guy (I’ve forgotten his name) once theorised that no human is capable of creating rules, actions, morals, etc, for a society, because nobody has the capacity to comprehend the complexity of how society functions. You’d have to know what each person would do in response to any one thing, how other people shape each other. Agency or structure? Does the individual shape society or does the society shape the individual?

Are we expecting too much for people to solve the problems in society?

~

Another childish ideal of mine appears to be that everything will be okay. Sort of related to the solutions thing, sort of not.

To gabble on a bit more about sociology: Durkheim was the guy who brought up the concept of Anomie. He said that society where technology, information and efficiency are taking precedence, people are seeing themselves as individuals – but this means there is less social cohesion – we may be lost and not know our place in society. A group of individuals is less ‘together’ than a group made up of several members.

At first, this didn’t seem to be that important to me. Who really cares about social identity? It’s not something I think about. But maybe that’s what he’s describing – the lack of concern for the well being of society because we feel less a part of it nowadays.

Anyway, while everything is in such fast forward motion, we are propelling ourselves into more knowledge. We make better machines, have better knowledge, strive for better things, and yet some people argue that this will be the doom of human kind. When chasing the individual, no one will care about anyone else and social rules will one day collapse – when nobody cares, people will murder, rape, pillage, or just not step in to help someone in trouble.

At first it seems ridiculous to consider the concept of doom. It seems like such melodrama and we’re all used to life going on. We haven’t seen any of this doom stuff before. Why should it happen now? However, life going on is only ever subjective. Our experience is a short window in history, where there’s no noticing all the changes. Think of a child that you watch growing up. If you see them every day, there’s no real difference. But if you come in at age 5 and come back again at 15, then you see what’s changed.

No one knows about the future, what is it? Can we really say what hasn’t happened before won’t happen ever? I don’t know if I believe Durkheim and Anomie, but I am starting to wonder if things will always be okay. It could be a survival instinct to believe so. Or something adults tell children, and then forget to revise later, “Oh, remember when I told you everything will be okay? Yeah … I don’t actually know. Could happen, could not. Sorry about that.”

Regardless of having solutions or not, and knowing that everything will be fine or not, the most anyone can do is just live with it. I guess that’s the only practical solution we can come to. Having the ponderings, having the thoughts is all well and good, but it all just boils down to the salty dregs at the bottom of the pan. One practical step at a time – because that’s as far as our near-sighted minds can see.

A Good Reference

Gosh. I was browsing the website for my sociology class and found the following passage regarding referencing sources:

“Empathise with the reader. Ask yourself whether the reader would be able to find the page that you are referring to using the information you have provided.”

That passage gave me a mini revelation. Ever since the concept was thrown at us, back some time in year 7, I have regarded the compulsory referencing of sources as something we have to do in order to prove that we hadn’t cheated. Despite browsing several dozen bibliographies and citation lists myself, I’ve never regarded sourcing as something authors do to help readers. Cheat-guard – yes, to give credit to others – yes, but oddly, I had never even thought of it that way…

There’s something to remember.

Sociology, Biology Musings 1

I figure this is a good way to study, to ponder my lectures and regurgitate all that knowledge back out into the world.

Today, the topic of social determinism and free will came up in my sociology lecture. Questions like ‘How much of our actions is individually controlled, and how much is a result of our social circumstances and conditioning?’, and “To what extent are we responsible for our actions?” were thrown around.

To me, the idea of social determinism is rather odd. After all, there is no society without the individuals that compose it, and that in itself is proof that the individual has influence. On the other hand, to singularly advocate free will is also rather short sighted, too romantic. The self and the society are inextricably entwined, they influence each other. (Replace ’self’ with ‘nature’ and ’society’ with ‘nurture’ and this argument will sound even more familiar and overused. Sigh.)

The interesting part of accepting both self and society play a role is that you acknowledge that both have a level of responsibility for the events that occur. A felon is a ’self’ that lives in a ’society’, so to what extent is society responsible for his or her crime? How much of the responsibility for his actions as an individual should be waived because he was born at the bottom rungs of a capitalist society, that generations of his family had all lived at the bottom?

And if we hold the poor felon less accountable for his actions because of this, should a middle-class felon who commits the same crime be more individually responsible than the lower class felon? Can we afford to be that ‘fair’, is it possible to determine all possible reasons behind a crime and the social influences? Is the life of a man worth the trouble?

I’m beginning to realise that all of life’s hard questions are answered by more hard questions. There is rarely a clear line to be drawn, but since when do we want anything linear in life anyway?

This sort of awkwardly takes me to Biology, the other subject I have been exposed to of late. The relationship between an individual and its environment is also something we’re looking at in this subject. Except because all subjects enjoy their own jargonised language, I will be talking about organism and environment, not self and society.

Adaptation, the phenomenon of how an organism fits so well into its environment is a question that my lecture notes tell me biologists find hard to answer. Using the previous conclusion drawn from sociology, that the organism and the environment are impossibly interwoven, adaptation makes perfect sense.

An organism grows in the environment, the environment is what it feeds on and breathes, it gives back to the environment. This close relationship means that there is no need for the individual organism to adapt – it has grown in the environment and contributed to it. The way we know how a native Australian child adapted to Australian life, there was no need to adapt, they simply lived.

Similarly, if an organism is moved to a different environment it will begin to take in the different chemicals and structure of the new environment. The constant process of input and output means that both organism and environment change from the relationship. It’s a chemical process, different chemicals in environment alter the chemicals in the organism.

There should be no question of how close they fit together, they interact with each other. Organisms in environments that are not compatible simply die, Natural selection re-Darwin.

This is just a hypothesis. There is probably more depth to the adaptation argument that I have not learned yet. The simple organism-environment relationship seems pretty logical to me at this point, but we’ll  see in a few weeks. I’ll keep these musings going for as long as I can.

Happy Holidays

Our house is like a Christmas tree that doesn’t know when Christmas is. Every year, small festive additions go up, and never come down.

We’re not big on holidays. Most occasions warrant a phone call to the grandparents, maybe something special for dinner but nothing exorbitant, nothing religious and nothing that marks the date as anything more than a number on a calendar.

Pop culture would have me believe that these special days are a time for family, love, generosity… plus other virtues, but I don’t think we need to allocate days to celebrate these things. Designating a day for romance and a day for family, these things become nothing more than a chore, and after the first few years of it, most people end up dreading them.

I think Christmas and birthdays have given me the idea that friends only need presents twice a year. Family only needs me to be extra nice a few days of the year. These small acts of redemption are good enough, it feels. And because these virtues are not what we tend to practice everyday, those few holidays are seen as the reason why we should be nice or giving or affectionate.

”Give money to the man on the street, why? Because it’s Christmas.”

or

” Give us that! Deagol my love.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my birthday and I wants it.”

Holidays told Smeagol that murder was an okay thing to do as long as it was his birthday (even if this isn’t exactly true, I’m convinced it made the task easier to justify). Holidays tell me that I’m a good person if I’m extra nice once a year in December. I should be nice because Christmastime is supposed to be nice, not because niceness is a admirable quality to possess. Children are told that if they are nice, they will get toys. There’s some first-rate intrinsic motivation for you. I hate to over-cynicise, but it gives parents the leeway to say, “I’m not buying you that, it’s three months until Christmas, ask me then.”

However, the things I enjoy about Hallmark* holidays are that they do remind people of the good things in life, even if the reasoning is shot. Movies like Love Actually and the Scrubs episode at Christmas still give me warm fuzzies, and watching happy people celebrate is never to be scorned.

Christmastime seems to have an enhancing effect. It brings out the ‘extra’ in all of us, whether good or bad. Good things seem better at Christmas, bad things feel much worse. It is then that we have a clearly defined image of how life ’should be’. Happy.

As long as these ‘pros’ exist, I consider our holidays to be something worth celebrating. But it shouldn’t mean that we never celebrate in between allocated days, nor should it make us feel obligated or guilty. The big pro for me is the aura that they create, when we really know what we want and it takes nothing more than a few kind words, hugs, kisses, friends or strangers to achieve it.

(*Incidentally, I’ve always wondered why Christmas cards only say ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’, and birthday greetings are ‘Have a great day!’. I always feel like I should at least say, “Have a great year!”, or how about even a “great life”. But I guess getting that message annually gets tiring.)

My Monster and Me

I brushed my teeth on Thursday morning 2:30AM. My dad sitting at his computer and me sitting at mine, he reminds me that my curfew is 2AM, knowing full well that I won’t be in bed until 3. And I close my bedroom door at 3AM, knowing full well that he won’t be in bed until 4. It’s a happy arrangement.

This day’s toothbrushing came free with the usual breath of mint, and a bonus! A revelation. I wove the Monster back and forth between pearly whites and coral gums, and listened to her roar.  She lashed fury at the grub remains of my midnight scavenging, screaming to the sleeping world. Her voice was monotonous but as loud to me as a drill. She buzzed away at my mouth-y innards… bzz zz zzzz.

My late night-early morning toothbrushing involves a trip to the other side of the house, to the small bathroom behind the living room.  My onflight luggage is as follows: the Monster, a cup, my traffic-director-yellow retainer box plus retainers, an old fashioned toothbrush for retainer cleaning and a tube of colgate. The trip is made on tiptoes and once I’m behind that bathroom door, I unleash the monster without fear of waking people who sleep at normal hours.

It occurred to me that the Dr. Frankenstein who invented the Monster electric toothbrush could easily have made her quieter, more docile and neighbourhood-friendly. Why, when these days everything is shipped in smaller, faster, stronger, better,  did my Monster have to be so freaking loud?

The revelation came when I realised that she sounds like the dentist’s office in kids movies. In my red-eyed epiphany hungry state, I latch onto this idea. What child will be afraid of the ‘bzzz’ in the dentist’s chair when they have their own ‘BZZZZing’ monster at home every night? Instead of running to hide behind their mother’s business suits, children will hear “See Sammy, this is just like when you brush your teeth at home!”.

My conclusion is that the oral hygiene industry seeks to remove the childish fear of dentists. I can’t say for sure whether they are able to reduce sound on electric toothbrushes. My knowledge of physics reminds me that the electrical energy, transforms into kinetic energy and provides a force that moves the brush, but much energy is lost to heat and … sound. Maybe Monsters are loud simply because they are what they are, monsters.

Either way, I should start brushing my teeth earlier.
(It is now 4AM and my dad is not yet in bed. The arrangement is not working. Then again, it is 4AM and I’m also not in bed. He knows.  !)

An Ethical Lobotomy and Depersonalisation

Is it right to change someone’s reality? Is it ethical to administer drugs, to remove the world that someone has always known, and replace it with our own?

Take a schizophrenic. Imagine her name was Mary. Mary has an entourage of small animals. They follow her wherever she goes. They speak to her. Toby the rabbit does her calculations and everyday math. The badger, Gloria, watches out for potential threats. Jane is the finch that sits on Mary’s shoulder. Jane helps Mary dress each morning, picking out her clothing and making sure she is presentable.

Mary relies on her animals for social, emotional and physical support. She needs a lot of support, because, much to Mary’s distress, the rest of the world denies the existence of Toby, Gloria and Jane. The rest of the world thinks Mary is insane and in need of help. Mary protests. She has all the help she requires from her animals.

Jane the finch is always careful, and yet the rest of the world complains when Mary turns up to work in a vest and a nightgown. Toby the rabbit is a brilliant mathematician, but somehow there is never enough money for the rent. Even fearsome Gloria cannot deal with the neighbours’ remarks about Mary’s hoard of animal food.

We each have our own realities. How do I know that this laptop, this blog and these words are logical? How do I know that they are real? Do my friends look the other way when I work on my “laptop”, when what they see is me typing away at a pencil tin? Maybe only one person sees a pencil tin. Maybe someone else sees a brick or a lump of ham. Mary’s animals are logical to her reality.

How can we condemn someone else’s reality as false when we cannot even confirm our own? How do we know that a world of nukes and assassination and starvation is more correct than one where animals speak?

The treatment for those who do not conform to our world, like Mary the schizophrenic, is usually drug therapy. A few decades ago, in the Western world, it was confinement, isolation, silencing. We locked away their physical presence because we could not bear to have them in our world. In modern society, this is no longer necessary. We have moved on, advanced. Now we lock away their mental presence. The mind that believes in talking rabbits is smothered with a mix of chemicals until it acts the way the rest of us ‘normal’ people do. The confinement is invisible, an imperceptible cage inside the mind, isolating, silencing. Not only is this effective, it is economical and morally reassuring. Economical in that society no longer has to pay for nurses, bedding or a physical cage to contain the madmen. Morally reassuring because we do not have to witness the uncomfortable madness, we can convince ourselves that it is ‘cured’.

But what if Mary wants to keep her animals? On drugs, she feels lonely. Life is empty. She has to remember how to add, subtract and find the coins to pay for groceries. Half the time she stands there, waiting for Toby to do it for her. He’s not there anymore.

In effect, these drugs remove her friends, her carers, her family; her support. Now if any of these figures were visible to general society, it would be horrendous to separate Mary from her loved ones. As it is, the act is merciful and humane.

The body without the mind is an empty shell. The way we think and what we perceive is key in personality. Anyone who is on drugs is giving up perception and thought to chemicals. Swallow and you see pigeons in tuxedos. Swallow and you are moody. Swallow and you are happy. Is it ethical for us to force them to change their personalities?

Then again, how do we help these people? While there might be slight variations in reality between you and the people to your immediate left, schizophrenics and people with other mental disorders exist in a world so removed from our own that to our perception, they are not able to function. Imagine society telling you that it is wrong to dream, that dreaming was akin to seeing dead corpses everywhere. You try to stop but you can’t. Without functionality, they may put themselves in danger, and often end up incarcerated, on the streets, or dead.

The solution today is to make it so they do function. They survive in our world at the expense of personality and free will. The question is which is more valuable?

Questions…No answers.

Why do we run out of sympathy? What is the evolutionary purpose of not wanting to try anymore, of disillusionment, of getting tired of other people being sad? I thought that when issues run for a long time, when someone hurts for a long time or when a country is in pain for decades, that it was an indication that things deteriorated and need more help than ever. Why then do we forget?

Leaving behind the weak. Tiring of altruism – giving and not receiving. Simply the limitations of empathy.

I wonder how much of evolution is relevant to our lives these days. How much, really? We move faster now, nature can’t catch up. Things are about so much more than just sex and children. What about the people who don’t want to have kids at all? Now that’s anti-evolutionary sentiment. Is it a large-scale social observation that we’re making: that we don’t need to so ardently pursue the survival of species? Is there an off-switch for instinct? At what point does the thought of ‘more children’ become one of competition and not joy? We give up parenthood and childbirth to avoid pain, disruption to our jobs and simply because it complicates things.

Marriage rates fall, divorce rates rocket. The industry of the pill, the car and media expands. Life moves so fast now. Who has much time for others when they have to think about a job – the economy – family – friends – fashion – television – money – housing – politics – internet – appearance – health – the environment – the future, the future we’re creating that will ever be harder, better, faster, stronger. The weak are left behind in pursuit of a delicate balance of all the personal complications that is one person’s life. Who has time for a beggar in the street, a boy with a broken body, a girl who talks to the air, a man who drinks himself to oblivion. Whatever the limits of compassion, it’s significant that one of the more rapidly expanding industries today is the psychology industry – where people are paid to continue to care.

I admire people who have the passion and determination to pursue good causes. I admire that they do not care about the game of “wealth” and “security” that we all seem to be caught in. However, I’m also torn between fixing what has already happened and advancing into the future. The future could mean a solution to problems of the past. It could also mean leaving them further behind. Who’s to know? Both are necessary, but where does someone decide to place themselves? How do you keep it all in balance?

I will end this abruptly because I have nothing else to write. As an utterly irrelevant conclusion:

Such happy exclusion. Sometimes, nothing hurts more than those people not even realising that they’ve injured you – because, of course, you have no reason to be hurt, do you?