Archive | May, 2012

A fit and proper halibut

3 May

Yesterday Philip Adams tweeted that Grahame Morris ought to be smacked about the head with a halibut for his comment that Julia Gillard “should be kicked to death.” There’s a great analysis of Morris’s comment and the media’s almost total silence about it here.

It wasn’t a great week for the PM as next Joe Hildebrand, in his analysis of where he thinks the government has gone wrong, included this gratuitous paragraph:

And, to be frank, the fact that Gillard has no children perhaps also limits her exposure to what’s happening in the world outside the rarefied corridors of Canberra or the Melbourne dinner party set. If the PM moved in broader circles or had better political instincts then this would not be an issue but it seems as though she needs every avenue to the outside world she can get and kids can be a great – if often unwelcome – conduit to what’s really going on. Having said that, this is of course a deeply personal matter and entirely one for her. It merely presents as one reason why she may be so insulated from popular opinion.

He was set upon by a small army of tweeps, including myself, for writing sexist claptrap that I won’t even begin to dignify with argument in this post. Overwhelmed by our aggression, Hildebrand asked us to stop. Of course we intensified out attack. Surely being employed by a boss declared not a fit and proper person to run a newspaper business must trickle down, even to hacks like Hildebrand? How come he wrote three paragraphs about new FM Bob Carr without any speculation as to how his child free state might insulate him from foreign affairs?

The mouthy Murdoch minion retired for a while, then reappeared to tweet that we should read his work properly before rushing to judgement, and he provided a link in case some of us wanted to revisit it. There’s a deconstruction of Hildebrand’s opinion piece here that’s worth a read.

It then occurred to me out of nowhere that a halibut would likely be a better PM than Tony Abbott. This fish is a flat one, and a member of the right-eyed flounders species. It’s also a bottom feeder. All in all, barely distinguishable from the LOTO. Bereft of the capacity for contemplation, the halibut is undisturbed by ethical considerations. Lacking a moral compass, it is not compelled to seek the good. Caught unawares it opens and closes its jaws while simultaneously releasing mouth farts. Yes. Bring on the fit and proper halibut. We’ll never know the difference.

Halibut

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The Good Book

3 May

I’ve just begun dipping into The Good Book. It’s a secular bible compiled by British philosopher A.C. Grayling who has, to paraphrase the blurb, distilled the teachings, the insights, the wit, the advice, the human stories, the tragedies, the yearnings, the love, the sorrow and the consolations of over a hundred authors and a thousand texts into a humanist bible. No small task.

I do find it a tiny bit irritating that Grayling references none of these sources, however he seems more concerned with the message than the messenger and the message is that “All who read this book, therefore, if they read with care, may come to be more than they were before…To determine what the good is, and of the best ways to know it, is the most important of all our endeavours, and is truly the master art of living.”

I was initially discouraged by this. It sounds like a Star Wars script. But I will persevere.

The last section of the book is titled The Good. Here we find Grayling’s definition:

“1. The good is two freedoms: freedom from certain hindrances and pains, freedom to choose and act.

2. The first is freedom from ignorance, fear, loneliness, folly, and the inability to master one’s emotions.

3. The second is freedom to develop the best capacities and talents we have, and to use them for the best.”

This short chapter of merely 18 verses contains within it most of what I need to know about the good and it’s relevance to my life. The previous 593 pages will be an interesting long-term read perhaps, but the shortened version is condensed in verses such as these:

“5. There is not one single kind of good that suits and fits everyone: there are as many good lives as there are people to live them.

6.It is false that there is only one right way to live and one right way to be,

7. And that we must obey those who claim to have the secret of a ‘one right way’ and a ‘one true good.’

8. If there are guides to the good, one must eventually leave them behind and seek the good of one’s choice, and which suits one’s own talents.”

Or, if you meet the Buddha on the road kill him, as we used to say back in the day.

I inherited a powerful anti-authoritarian streak from my grandfather that’s made it impossible to relinquish my desire to think for myself. This makes me useless as a follower of just about anything or anyone, with the exception of Leonard Cohen. The faintest odour of theology or crypto theology and I’m on the outside looking in. I don’t believe in a transcendental exteriority.The best experiences in my life have been grounded in the human, as have the worst. I can think of no greater miracle than a human being.

“Chapter 9

1. Seek always for the good that abides. There can be none except as the mind finds within itself.

4. When will you attain this joy? It will begin when you think for yourself,

5. When you truly take responsibility for your own life.”

  ∫


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