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Rainy day woman on marriage

27 Aug

It’s raining cats and dogs and all my plans for Saturday centred around the outdoors. Thwarted, I turned to my computer and read this piece on the Watermelon Blog in which David reckons it’s time to make the billionaires pay the rent; and this piece on the Political Sword, in which Ad astra alleges that Tony Abbott is the worst opposition leader in our political history, and gives resoundingly convincing arguments to support the allegation.

Rainy days are good for musing and as I ventured out to give the dog an airing, I thought about marriage, and gay marriage in particular. I fully understand why people want to get married. Heck, I did it myself twice. I did it once in a church and once with a celebrant. It was nothing to do with the state, or religion, or societal expectations. It was everything to do with my heart. In retrospect the heart alone isn’t  the smartest organ from which to make such major decisions, but I didn’t know that until I’d done it twice.

In another of the triumphs of hope over experience with which my life is littered, I’d probably do it again if the circumstances ever arose.

People usually enter into a formal commitment to one another full of good will, desire and hope. It doesn’t always work out, and we pick ourselves up from the wreckage and start our lives over, often to do it all again. It’s a public expression of mutual love, and it’s valued by many as the ultimate such expression.

It seems to me there’s two arguments going on in the gay marriage debate. The first is that gays and lesbians ought to be entitled to the same public expressions of their love and commitment as are heterosexuals. This is a no brainer, IMO. Love is no respecter of genital arrangements. In a world that needs love as much as this one does, we should be celebrating it everywhere we find it. It seems extraordinarily mealy-mouthed and mean-spirited, not to mention ignorant, for any heterosexual to insist that it can’t count as marriageable love when it blossoms between same-sex couples.

The second is the interrogation of marriage itself. Like, marriage? What is it good for? Well, I could get cynical here and say not much. But in my experience that’s a conclusion everyone has to come to, or not, in their own good time and their own good way. The idea of marriage continues to exert a powerful emotional hold. No amount of rationalizing is going to change that in the near future. I know many couples who after years of living together decide to do the marriage thing, even though de facto arrangements are as legitimate. We are encultured to view marriage as the strongest commitment couples can make. This may change, but currently, it’s what we’ve got.

It seems unfair to expect that same-sex couples, rather than demanding inclusion in the culture ought to contest it, although there are voices in the gay and lesbian community raised against the institution, as there are in the heterosexual community. Nevertheless, I doubt that marriage is going to go away anytime soon. So it matters a great deal that same-sex couples have the right to celebrate their commitment just as heterosexuals do, if they so choose.

And that’s the real argument. It’s an argument about equal rights. Whether you think marriage is a necessary institution or not is largely irrelevant at this point. Currently there are couples who are denied access to marriage solely because of their sexual orientation This is discriminatory and breaches their human rights.

None of the arguments put forward by opponents of same-sex marriage stand up to scrutiny, and most are mired in superstition and religion. We have a Prime Minister who is beholden to neither superstition nor religion. So let’s move forward, Ms Gillard, unless of course the Australian Christian Lobby, those vocal opponents of same-sex marriage, have got you under their thumb.

Finally, my apologies for spelling Craig Thomson’s name wrongly in a previous post – I gave him a p when he shouldn’t have a p. He does not have a p! There is no p!! How can anyone believe anything I say if I stick p’s in where they don’t belong! Respect the p, Jennifer! Respect the goddamn p!!

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Craig Thompson’s credibility, and why we (and Tony Abbott) tell lies

25 Aug

Embattled member for Dobell, Craig Thompson, continues to steadfastly maintain that he did not authorise the use of his Health Services Union credit card to pay for the services of prostitutes.

The card was apparently used to obtain many other non-work related services, and there’s $100,000 in cash withdrawals unaccounted for. Thompson continues to insist that his signature was forged.

The Union has now, somewhat belatedly some might consider as problems were first detected in 2008, referred the matter to the police. Fair Work Australia have also been investigating for this period, at a glacial pace it would seem.

As the inimitable Barnaby Joyce put it, if Thompson is the victim of a fraud this would have entailed someone breaking into Thompson’s house, stealing his wallet and credit card, using it  for nefarious purposes, breaking into the house again and returning the wallet and card, all of which must have gone undetected by Thompson. Or he’s lying. Take your pick, said Barnaby.

Around the age of two we usually begin to understand that other people and their minds are separate from us. This is the precursor to lying because in order to deceive someone, we need first have some understanding of what they might be thinking.

The tendency to lie is a natural one: as soon as we learn we have language with which to defend ourselves, we use it in order to avoid trouble and punishment. Part of the process of maturation is that we hopefully learn more useful and rewarding ways to deal with difficulties, rather than resorting to lies.

Lying can also be a sign of intelligence and cognitive skill. An accomplished liar convincingly  creates an alternative version of reality, and maintains it. This is most effective when the liar convinces him or herself that this version is truth. This isn’t difficult: if we tell the same lies often enough they gain authority within our own minds and lying becomes easier.

The motives for lying are usually tied up with self-esteem and self-preservation. We want to create the best version of ourselves, we don’t want to face the consequences of our actions,we want respect. We lie about mistakes to avoid punishment, we lie because it often works, at least for a time, and brings benefits.

However. Lies can be self-perpetuating: more lies have to be told in order to maintain the original deceit. The more serious the lie, the more it erodes trust in all social relations. Truthfulness and straightforwardness are the glues that hold society together and allow us to function: not everything can be governed by written contracts.

For example, Tony Abbott‘s declaration that his word means nothing unless it is recorded and signed is a profound breach of public trust. Whether or not he maintains this same position in his intimate life, I don’t know. One would hope not, and it isn’t unusual for a practiced liar to engage in the kind of cognitive dissonance that allows him or her to be highly principled in one area of their lives, and a complete scoundrel in another.

Clearly not everything a politician says can be formalized, and Abbott’s admission is a warning that he cannot be held accountable as he is a self-professed liar. In this he differs from Thompson, who insists that he is truthful against mounting evidence that this is either not the case, or he is part of a bizarre conspiracy that requires him to protect a guilty party by stoically shouldering the blame and humiliation of serious accusations. Somebody used the credit card. Somebody made large cash withdrawals. If not Craig, who?

Either way, Thompson is involved in a serious deception.

Lying isn’t always a bad thing and sometimes it’s necessary. The wise lie with awareness and care, and they know when to come clean. In general, it’s less complicated to tell the truth, and some research indicates that while people can forgive a lie when it’s confessed, they find it very difficult to forgive  serious and repeated deception that involves extended violation of trust. Nobody enjoys the shock of discovering they’ve been lied to. It can change a relationship permanently.

In general, human beings have positive expectations about another’s behaviour. We tend to take things at face value unless we have a reason not to, or have already been seriously damaged by a liar.We survive on the assumption that others are co-operative and trustworthy. If we didn’t we’d grind to a halt, because the energy required to stay constantly alert to the possibility of lies and to check everything, would detract from our ability to function. There’s a balance between being ludicrously naive and reasonable wary, and it pays to be co-operative.

Deception causes enduring and significant harm. This may be why politicians are frequently so despised. “Lying politicians” has become a tautology. Politician’s violations of public trust have long-lasting effects. They seem to have very little idea of their enormous responsibility for constructing and maintaining the kind of society in which we all live, and they apparently don’t care, with a few exceptions.

When the rot starts at the top, that sets the tone. If a country is governed overwhelmingly by liars and deceivers, nobody should be surprised if lies and deceit are the order of the day in all parts of its society.

Of course, in the Thompson matter there’s always the possibility of an evil twin.

The high cost of obstinacy

22 Aug

Guest post today by Gerard Oosterman, artist, farmer and blogger

The treasury informs us that 2.4 billion has been spent on detaining boat people since 2000. This has worked out at $100,000 per boat arrival. I wonder how long this stupid waste of money will be allowed to continue.

The tide in favour on off shore detention has been turning, and ever so slowly there now appears the realization that if not from a humanitarian but from a financial point of view, we might be better off to swallow our pride or blind obstinacy and simply do what the rest of the world has been doing for many years. That is, dealing with a difficult problem that presents itself directly on most of their doorsteps, on a never-ending and daily basis.

After all, not many countries have the luxury of submissive sovereign nations such as PNG and Nauru, or excised islands close by, where refugees can be sent and left to slowly languish while awaiting the assessment of their refugee status.

In the meantime, there are serious concerns expressed daily about the treatment of asylum seekers in detention. This treatment results in hundreds of cases of self harm, mental break-downs, riots and the involvement of the Australian Federal Police. These events ring alarm bells worldwide especially at the UNHCR.

No matter what we do to try to dissuade the boat people, they will continue to undertake dangerous voyages to escape their circumstances and find a better life for themselves and their children. They have little or nothing to lose.

So what is this deep fear that Australia has about boat people who, no matter what, will continue to arrive at our doorstep? Are they armed? Do they threaten Us? Do they come with murderous intent, do they come to rape and pillage? The general and not unreasonable assumption is that many more will arrive  if we let our guard down. That might well be true. So what?  Australia happily takes in more than a hundred thousand migrants in a year. If a thousand boat people a week arrive on our shores, what is the problem with that?

If we reduced our normal intake of migrants by fifty thousand we would still not increase the overall number. Consider that fifty thousand migrants from ‘normal’ channels are those that are in less urgent need than boat arrivals, then why not give priority to asylum seekers? Consider how our image would change overnight.

Currently, we are viewed with horror by many world-wide as images and have been since the Tampa. Then there are the terrible sights of refugees burning and self harming, and those terrible drownings at Christmas Island. Sometimes, the footage resembles Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners are also languishing after many years.

The advantage of age is the luxury of hindsight. I remember still a similar
fear of refugees and new-comers in the late fifties and sixties. The ‘reffos’ and Italians and Greeks were knife pullers and worse, garlic eaters. They would catch trains or buses while speaking strange languages. That fear for Southern Europeans later changed into a fear for the boat people from Vietnam. They would allegedly bring exotic diseases, and they wore funny hats.

All of those fears were unfounded. Can you imagine Australia without the huge benefits from all those brave enough to risk dangerous journeys to come here?
We would all still be slurping milk-shakes, eating meat pies with lamingtons for dessert, and thronging around the six o’clock swill pubs. Those killer Sundays, they were deadly quiet with just the stray dogs about,scratching their fleas at deserted suburban rail-stations. Instead, we have a lively and varied society.

We still seem to harbour similar fears against the Afghans, Burmese or Iraqis, again based on ignorance, prejudice and an unwillingness to change.

Why do we allow fear to compete so sadly with compassion?

Come on Aussies. Open your hearts. Take the risk and deal with those
unfortunate boat arrivals as best as we can. Deal with the problem with honesty and do it in Australia. Show the world we care and have compassion. We are the largest
and least densely population country in the world. Not just a country but a
complete continent with the smallest population.  Let’s also have the
largest hearts.

Gerard blogs at  Oosterman Treats Blog

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Sunday with Leonard; born to be bad, and how long is a duck’s dick?

15 Aug

In need of spiritual nourishment and it being Sunday, I gave myself a dedicated Leonard Cohen day. This entailed, along with the scented oils, incense, beeswax candles and floaty shawls, a total immersion in music and lyrics enabled by our new system that transcends anything we’ve ever had before in terms of thrilling quality of sound.

As it turns out, it is perfect for Cohen’s fruity rasp, and for appreciating the brilliance of his musicians and backers, each one of whom is a top class artist in her or his own right.

Later,as the white blond moon peered through the window at me and the dog with the cauliflower ear, I settled down with a glass of red to a viewing of the On The Road DVD, featuring excerpts from Leonard’s recent world tour, and, how sweet it is, backstage stuff about Leonard’s quirks.

Needless to say the rest of the household had buggered off by then. Sympathetic to Cohen’s music though they are, nobody has my staying power.

I am crazy in love with this man, or at least the idea of him, having never met him. Up close he’s probably as irritating as every other human being can be: it never pays to confuse the art with the artist, especially someone like Cohen who writes many of his songs from what appears to be an imagined God perspective. Or channels them, depending on your belief system. This might make him even more difficult personally than the average bloke.

(An aside, check out David Horton’s piece on climate change sceptics today, titled “I believe.” It’s a little gem. As Leonard says: Take the only tree that’s left, and stuff it up the hole in your culture…)

Back to writing in the God voice, look at the Lover Lover lyrics: (I’m using the capital “G” because I’m referring to one imagined transcendental being, not a whole bunch of them in which case I would use the small “g.” The concept of a whole bunch of them doesn’t work at all in this instance. And I know God could just as easily be a woman, but that doesn’t work either.)

I asked my father, 
I said, “Father change my name.” 
The one I’m using now it’s covered up 
with fear and filth and cowardice and shame. 
Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me, 
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me. 

He said, “I locked you in this body, 
I meant it as a kind of trial. 
You can use it for a weapon, 
or to make some woman smile.” 

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me 
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me. 

“Then let me start again,” I cried, 
“please let me start again, 
I want a face that’s fair this time, 
I want a spirit that is calm.” 

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me 
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me. 

“I never turned aside,” he said, 
“I never walked away. 
It was you who built the temple, 
it was you who covered up my face.” 

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me 
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me. 

And may the spirit of this song, 
may it rise up pure and free. 
May it be a shield for you, 
a shield against the enemy. 

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me 
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me. 

Now, personally I can barely resist the notion of an imagined transcendental being driven by such passion and such profound longing for reunion with me. It busts the heart right open, but only if it’s Cohen that’s singing about it, I’m not getting sucked in by those fundamentalists banging on about how God loves me and longs for my love in return.

Which reflects badly on me, I know, suggesting as it does that it’s the aesthetic not God after all, that transports me with delight.

There’s nothing “pure and simple” about violence and greed. Yet this phrase and others like it have been used over and over again as “explanations” of the motivations of those who rioted and looted in British cities last week.

It’s becoming evident that the offenders were not a homogenous group. Students, employed people, young kids, representatives of the middle class, the unemployed and a variety of ethnicities were all involved. Perhaps the only generalization that holds up is that they were young.

That their behaviours are criminal is unquestionable. That they ought to be held accountable is also unquestionable. What does need to be questioned is why this particular group of opportunistic looters are being singled out for attention when the world is awash with the predatory species. Check this link to the Drum today and Michael Brull’s excellent piece.

Like drug mules, the rioters and looters easy targets. They’re at the bottom of the opportunistic criminal food chain.

“They did it because they can” is another “explanatory” phrase. But all opportunistic criminals do it because they can, many of them causing far more mayhem and misery, unchecked, and for far longer periods. Opportunistic criminal behaviours, like domestic violence and incest, cross social divides. Those who are protected from the surveillance of authorities by money, power and influence are rarely called to account. Those who act out their capacity for violence and greed in the public gaze are pulverized by the self-righteous orthodoxy with the means to conceal their own criminality.

Lock them up and throw away the key, stop their benefits, chuck them out of public housing and make them homeless, that will teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.

The orthodoxy will do all this and more, because it can. It will do this because its prevailing attitude is that certain people are born bad and that’s all there is to it, and to them. The born bad fulfill a useful purpose: they distract public attention from greater opportunistic crimes perpetrated by another certain kind of person. This kind of person is presumably not born bad because being born bad means not having the ability to hide your criminality. The not born bad opportunistic  criminal commits crimes that are not perpetrated in clear sight. This species is among those with whom the orthodoxy is on good and mutually self-interested terms.

British politicians led by Old Etonian David Cameron are also engaged in giving the police a bollocking for not doing things properly. Which is a bit rich considering it took Cameron a few days to get back from his holidays in a Tuscan villa. It looks as if the only people not responsible for any of it are the politicians, who have been badly let down by both the opportunistic looters and rioters and the coppers, while they had their backs turned on their hard-earned summer holidays.

I can’t run no more,
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places say their prayers out loud…

 

That last line always makes me think of Tony Blair. You have heard about his Faith Foundation, haven’t you, the one that “promotes respect and understanding about and between the world’s major religions,” and has a flourishing branch at the University of Western Australia?

I suppose it makes a change from bringing democracy to Iraq through Blair, Howard and Bush’s Christian method of bombing the living shit out of civilians no matter what faith they follow.

Finally, I now know that the Argentine duck has a penis that is almost half a metre in length, and is, dear God, shaped like a corkscrew.

Here is a picture of a duck checking on his penis. He looks like he can’t believe it either. That’s mine?! WTF!

I don’t know how the female deals with this appendage. Please don’t anybody feel they have to tell me.

Did God give the Argentine duck his body to make the girl duck smile? Hallelujah!!!

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Government control of social media: take away Murdoch’s phones!

12 Aug

As predicted, British PM David Cameron is now flagging the possibility of controlling social media access to those the authorities perceive as responsible for inciting and participating in anti-social behaviour such as rioting and looting.

Just how this would work in practice is not yet clear, if indeed it is possible at all. The police confiscate the social media tools of anybody found wearing a hoodie? Males of particular ethnic appearance between the ages of x and x are obliged to relinquish their phones in times of unrest? Females with black nail polish and piercings likewise?

Who will judge that the usual suspects are in the throes of planning a campaign of violent civil disobedience? What criteria will they use?  Will Britain become one of those authoritarian regimes that shuts down the Internet when there’s trouble?

The idea is ludicrous. It’s another of those impotent threats trotted out by politicians who have no control over events, and are desperately casting about to find some punishment that will dissuade the mob from ever doing it again.

The threat of taking away their toys if they don’t behave is likely to incite further explosive protest. This is a cohort that already believes it’s over surveilled and singled out for police persecution.

Has anybody thought to threaten the Murdoch empire with the restriction or removal of their phones if they don’t stop hacking? Didn’t think so.

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The impotent threats of impotent leaders

11 Aug

They may come from different political perspectives (in theory, anyway) but there are interesting similarities between British PM David Cameron’s authoritarian threats against the rioting mobs, and those used by Julia Gillard on the matter of water-borne asylum seekers.

Whenever there is social unrest of almost any kind, politicians pull up the same violently repressive cliches: stamp out, crack down. I/we will not allow, full force of the law, tough stance against criminals, illegals, queue jumpers. This ritualized language is the backbone of authority’s discourse when faced with challenges it ‘s very likely incapable of controlling. The less likely the possibility of control, the more violently repressive politicians’ language becomes.

While there is a place for dissent and disobedience in a liberal democracy, these acts can only be performed within the strict parameters of acceptable middle class behaviour. It is not acceptable to riot, either in the streets of London or behind the razor wire of a detention centre. Middle class manners do not allow for extreme behaviours of any kind. This is why politicians have absolutely no hope of competently addressing extreme behaviours: they don’t understand them and they’re scared to death of them. All they can think of to do is threaten with imprisonment or expulsion, either of which may at some point become necessary, but neither of which do anything to calm a red-hot situation.

The bottom line is, David Cameron cannot control the rioters. He may bring in water cannon. Australians know from Woomera that doesn’t work. It’s a very bad look, especially for a country aiming to put on the best Olympics ever next year. The effects of water cannon are extremely temporary, unless it inadvertently kills or injures someone, and it’s use will further incite the rioters it blasts all over the streets.

The bottom line is, Julia Gillard cannot control the asylum seekers who are already here awaiting assessment, or those she intends to expel to Christmas island. She cannot stop them trying to poison themselves, going on hunger strikes, sewing up their lips or killing themselves. Her plan to despatch them to Malaysia is now completely out of her control, and in the hands of the High Court. Even if she has them shot again them with bean bag bullets she’s still got no control over them, and that’s a bad look too.

You cannot control human beings who feel they have nothing to lose. You can only attempt to create a society in which human beings are not driven to that extreme. People exhausted by failure frequently resort to savagery. Politicians consistently fail to understand this. There’s no votes in understanding it.

Once, in less sophisticated times, the public might have been reassured by politicians using tough language in a crisis. Not anymore, but politicians haven’t caught up with the change in the public’s credulity. Consequently they look increasingly impotent as it becomes more apparent that their rhetoric is hollow. The objects of their wrath are entirely un-cowed by the blustering, and more often than not, they’re driven to greater extremes by the threats.

So Cameron throws hundreds of youths in jail. Imprisonment then becomes a right of passage and the offenders emerge even more brutal and brutalized than when they went in.

God only knows what’s going to happen to the asylum seekers, but it doesn’t look like the boats are doing any stopping, and there’s still the problem of expelling unaccompanied minors into very uncertain conditions and futures.

So what exactly do the politicians hard line positions achieve?

Votes, of course. Because there’s still enough of us who want to hear the rhetoric, even if we know it doesn’t work. The authoritarian rhetoric reassures. It makes us think somebody’s in charge even though we don’t really believe it. In full authoritarian flight, the politician appears to possess the “truth” about the situations we’re facing, and the right things to do about them. It’s a chicken and egg thing: the use of authoritarian language facilitates authority.

Of course, the fact that these events are taking place at all signifies the degree to which our politicians really have lost control.

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Why tough talk won’t stop London burning: look to Johnny Rotten

10 Aug

Predictably, British PM David Cameron is talking tough, threatening anarchic marauders with the full force of the law, promising terrified residents that the government will defeat the masked and hooded teenage hoodlums with the toughest possible action. He will jail them. He will put them in juvenile detention. He will teach them not to burn and loot, by God he will.

Meanwhile, the bizarrely opinionated Brendan O’Neill of Spiked, recently in Australia where he earned a reputation for thoroughly irritating an astonishing cross section of people, has decided that the entire responsibility for the chaos can be laid at the door of the bloody welfare state. The offending yobs have suckled at the state’s tit for their entire lives, and so have their parents, and as a consequence none of them have the slightest idea about standing on their own two feet and behaving decently like their working class grandparents did. By God, the English aren’t what they used to be.

A brief aside: I was brought up by working class grandparents for a few years, and the difference was they really were working class because there was work for them to do. My granddad was never unemployed: the coal mines or the gasworks gave us food on our table and a Saturday drink at the club. Very different times, Brendan.

Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian alleges that the rioters have the “opportunistic desire to steal and get away with it.” Which, come to think of it, also describes the motives of many of those financial types who got away with ruining untold investors and still managed to reward themselves. Or the British MPs who stole taxpayers money to build moats around their castles, and swimming pools, and pay for illicit sex and exotic holidays and extra houses near Hampstead Heath.

Or even the police and politicians who fell on their knees before the Murdoch empire and turned a blind eye to vile illegalities that empire was busily engaged in perpetrating. These same police and politicians are now claiming the high moral ground in their shocked outrage against the raging youth, and in their self-righteous determination to get these delinquents who’ve had the nerve to behave really, really badly. But where are the leaders with any moral compass? Who’s setting a moral example? The rot starts at the top.

That the rioters have trashed their own neighbourhoods has been the source of much bewilderment. It’s not rocket science. These kids don’t consider themselves as part of any community. They don’t perceive themselves as having a stake in any neighbourhood. Alienation at this level comes with enormous and inarticulate rage. They don’t belong. They can’t belong. They’ll never belong. How did a society let this happen?

This isn’t a social movement designed to challenge the status quo and bring about change. This is pure destruction, and self-destruction. These kids don’t care, and they especially don’t care about themselves. Incarcerate them for a few years and they’ll likely come out worse. If David Cameron or anyone else is kidding themselves that tough talk is going to even touch these youths, they’re dreamin.’ The time for tough talk is long gone. When you ain’t got nothin’ you got nothin’ to lose, and like Bob, I’m not talking about material possessions.

The nihilistic lyrics of Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols pretty much sum up the mindset:

When there’s no future, how can there be sin?
We’re the flowers in the dustbin
We’re the poison in the human machine
We’re the future, we’re the future…God Save the Queen

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London’s burning: Blame it on the BlackBerry

9 Aug

We live in a global culture in which the ability to consume is the primary measure of human freedom. To be a prosperous consumer is to be free. Given this reality, violence, theft, and rioting by disaffected youths stealing trainers and plasma TVs, while shocking, should not come entirely as a surprise.

The marauding gangs have been described as criminal opportunists, a description that can be as accurately applied to the News of the World phone hackers,  the Wall Street financiers who gave us the first global financial crisis, the private companies making exorbitant profits from the misery of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sub-prime mortgage mongerers, authorities entrusted with public well-being who take bribes to work against the common good. Countries such as Australia, the UK and the US have been governed by men who are widely considered to be war criminals: make up your own list, the possibilities are endless.

We commit our crimes in accordance with our means and circumstances. The better our means and circumstances, the less likely we are to engage in the crimes of looting and arson. The London riots are complex in their genesis but without doubt unemployment, poverty and lack of hope play their part.

Of all the reports and analyses I’ve read thus far the one that grabbed my attention was the blame it on the BlackBerry explanation. BlackBerry offers its customers a private messenger service (BBM) that encrypts your messages, unlike the other social media that are available to everyone, including the authorities. It seems that many rioters are communicating via their BlackBerries, and when this is the case, police cannot find out until it’s too late where the next outbreak of violence will be. This has allegedly led to the rapid expansion of trouble spots around the country, as agitators’ communications cannot be decoded by authorities in time to prevent new outbreaks.

It seems something of a long bow. Presumably  an intercity tweet can also get things going faster than police can organize officers on the ground. The real objection to BBM is that it thwarts official surveillance, and when disaffected youth have a means of communication that excludes any possibility of the authorities cracking their codes, this is perceived as a menace in principle, if not in practice.

The mobile phone is one of the iconic symbols of consumption. BlackBerrys cost less than smartphones and BBM is both essentially cost-free and invisible to police. In order to communicate, BBM users must exchange PINs, but their conversations are private. They can spread their PINs via SMS, Twitter or other means.

There’s little doubt that the use of social media is a vital force in getting uprisings of all kinds off the ground, and its use enables rapid expansion. But to blame the London riots on the BlackBerry is like blaming the Arab Spring on Facebook. Social media is a tool available to everyone to use how they see fit. Undoubtedly there’ll be a call to ban BBM before too much longer, or distribute the facility only to those authorities deem to be worthy of their trust.

The violence and looting is awful. But blanket condemnation of the guilty is too simplistic. Yes, they have to be held accountable. Yes, they have to face the consequences of their actions. But these events don’t happen in a vacuum. Criminal behaviour is not peculiar to disaffected youth. Stealing trainers and plasma TVs is no more or less criminal and deserving of punishment than hacking phones, exploiting dead children, starting illegal wars and ruining the global economy. We don’t call for a law and order crackdown except when the crimes are perpetrated by disaffected youth. It’s a class-based demand.

Western culture worships consumerism. We measure worth by what we have and what we can afford. Everywhere we look there’s corruption and criminal behaviour. It’s the zeitgeist. Commentators have been quick to point out that these riots are not political uprisings because one of the goals is to steal stuff.  They’re wrong. These riots are absolutely political. The ultimate assessment of human worth in Western culture is what the human owns and is capable of owning. The middle class aspire to wealth. The working class aspires to what the middle class has. When a large enough group feels it has no stake in society, that group will revolt. Trainers and plasma TVs are the pathetic symbols of the revolt of the have nots against the haves. Not political? You must be dreamin.’

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What does brain plasticity have to do with leadership?

9 Aug

Guest post today by Dr Stewart Hase 

There are three related issues that I’d like to briefly mention here on the way to providing some hard science that people who want to be leaders could find useful, if not compelling.The first is that the ‘great’ debate about whether leaders are born or made is a non-event. The issue is more about what people do that make them leaders and whether they have the capacity to perform the behaviours. It is clear that some people can’t be good leaders and others can. The second issue is closely related to the first and that is that people in leadership roles do not pay much attention to the social, anthropological and psychological evidence about what great leaders do and how to get the most out of people and, ergo, organisations. Leadership is treated a bit like counselling and teaching (other than in schools), that it that anyone can do it, without any formal training, if they have the inclination. It is fascinating that we still promote people to leadership roles on the basis that they have demonstrated high levels of competence in their profession (being an engineer, academic, town planner). Lastly, for this little article at least, the leadership literature is, at best, fluffy and has probably not had much impact, other than the occasional halo effect, on what most people in leadership roles do at the coalface.With these three issues in mind it is interesting to actually look at the science behind what people need to do in order to become good leaders. The evidence is pretty well overwhelming concerning the conditions in which people perform best at work. The tragedy is that the evidence is not accessed, oversimplified or incorrectly interpreted. I know of many organisations that have been sold psychological ‘pups’ by consultants or whose CEOs have read a trendy book on leadership at the airport that sounds good but has not evidential base. These ‘pups’ come in the form of untested theories and models that are anecdotal at best. They might consist of colourful and sexy personality testing instruments that have no reliability or validity whatsoever and are simplistic in the extreme. Medical practitioners, psychologists, dentists, nurses, physiotherapists, engineers are required to use evidence based practice. Why not people in leadership roles?We know from many social psychological experiments that people work best in an environment where they have control over their immediate work, are informed, make a contribution to decision making, feel that what they do is worthwhile, feel that they have a positive future, feel a valued member of the team, are acknowledged for what they do, are appropriately rewarded, have interesting work, and enjoy optimal variety in their work,

We also know, again from social psychological research, what it is that good leaders do to have influence and to get the best out of people. They have empathy, listen attentively, have good interpersonal skills, make people feel valued by involving them, are optimistic and positive, involve people in decision making that affects them, and don’t micro-manage (they believe that expertise outranks rank). Good leaders consciously create the type of environment or culture described in the paragraph above.

In recent years technology has made it possible to view in living brains how experiences change our brain structure, how new neural networks grow and how relationships between the various are affected. In general it can be said that positive experiences have a growth and positive effect on our nervous system and negative experiences have the opposite.

This research has now given us some explanations of why the social factors described above seem to be important in what has come to be called employee engagement. People perform best in a situation of what I call Goldilocks Stress: it has to be just right. That is, not too much and not too little. This means the environment has to be safe and you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to see that the factors described above from social research lead to a sense of safety. People are more likely to learn and adapt when they feel safe and is a central theme in the research on brain plasticity.

Research into brain plasticity also tells us that people learn and function better in enriching and challenging environments. This would explain why people tell us that they enjoy work when they feel that they are involved, have a valued role to play, work in functional team settings, have a role in decision-making and have control over what they do. Positive parenting has been shown to have very powerful cognitive and emotional advantages to children thus exposed. There is no reason to suspect that the same thing is not true for adults whose brain, we now know, develops throughout the lifespan.

Finally, we can see the role that positive interpersonal relationships are such an important aspect of leadership. Specifically, it is easy to see why people report that they most admire and are engaged with leaders who have empathy, listen and demonstrate good interpersonal skills. In short, it has a positive effect on their nervous system. Bullying behaviour, for example, has the opposite effect: it creates stress, reduces enrichment and diminishes cognitive ability.

At least there is a significant physical science to reinforce the already considerable social psychological evidence that what managers/leaders do really does matter. As does what they do not do.

Dr Stewart Hase

Guest author Dr Stewart Hase is a registered psychologist and has a doctorate in organisational behaviour as well as a BA, Diploma of Psychology, and a Master of Arts (Hons) in psychology.

Stewart blogs at stewarthase.blogspot.com


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Guns and God: Fred Nile says secular ethics led to Nazi atrocities

5 Aug

Christian democrat MP Fred Nile today claimed that the secular humanist philosophy on which he believes ethics classes in schools are based led to the worst Nazi atrocities of the second world war.

It’s unclear whether or not the Reverend Nile knows what secular humanism is, and it’s also worrying that he seems to equate Nazism with communism.

I find it difficult to see anything the least bit ethical in Nile’s attempts to blackmail the NSW government into dropping ethics classes from schools. But what is most puzzling is the Christian furore over these classes in the first place, and the insecurity that gives rise to it. This insecurity must be considerable if they resort first to Godwin’s Law.

Apparently Christianity is on such shaky ground in NSW that its proponents feel they must destroy anything they perceive to be the least bit competitive. Non-Christians are under attack. We have the school chaplaincy program trying to get converts, and telling our troubled young that Jesus loves them, and Fred Nile trying to quelch (is that a word? Did I just make it up? A neologism?) any alternative to Christian values. Actually, there are no alternatives, according to Fred. You can’t have ethics without Christianity. Where this leaves all the rest of the world’s religions, who knows.

I’m over these Christian types who try to impose their will on the rest of us. They have some nerve. I’ve met a few over the years and one thing that has always seemed incongruous about them is their reluctance to die. Yes. Faced with serious illness they do not want to go to God. They take as many evasive measures as those of us who think we’re looking at annihilation. I do not understand this. If you’ve lived your life in anticipation of the much better time you’re going to have after you’re dead, why put it off?

The linking of secular humanist philosophy with Nazi atrocities signals a new low in Fred’s fight. He’s always been an irritant, like something you get in your eye on a windy day. Elevated to his current position of power, he’s a menace. In NSW we are in the hands of gun-mongering lunatics who want every school child to learn how to shoot, and god- mongering lunatics who will break things if they don’t get their way. Guns and God. Now that combination should scare the bejesus out of any right-minded person.

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