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She's Apples
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She's Apples Reading the commentary around the incident between the Japanese trawler and the Ady Gil, it was interesting to see that Australia is not only aspiring to be a regional power but has moved in and started measuring for new drapes and carpets. The plan to use Australia’s successful banking system as the basis for creating a regional financial centre and strengthen the nation’s economy, by contrast, seems to have been greeted by a collective guffaw of derision. Such sentiments seem to be representative of the extremes of our response to our position in the world. It is somewhat ironic that we are perfectly comfortable with the idea of being the world’s best cricketing nation or that we might aspire to be a power in the world of international soccer, yet the idea that Sydney or Perth might become an important part of the world’s financial network leaves us amused. We might happily spend the national budget of a third world country on luring the soccer World Cup to Australia, but we are averse to increasing our university spending to get a few more of our universities into the top 20 in the world. I’m not bashing sport; when the Australian Winter Olympic team slides out onto the ice and snow in Vancouver I will be cheering them on with as much one eyed enthusiasm as the next person. I just wonder why we have so much trouble taking ourselves just as seriously when it comes to other pursuits, especially where it requires half a brain. Are we tickled by the idea of being a financial centre because we don’t grasp the idea of Australians being financial geniuses? It is a little too much to say that we are an anti-intellectual society. One of the comments that is often made by visitors to Australia is that we are very self-deprecating, that we don’t take ourselves seriously. This might make us a friendly bunch of people for the tourists but it certainly seems to make us unlikely to take ourselves seriously. The basis of the idea to make Australia a financial centre was the ability of the banking sector to prosper during the GFC; it strikes me that many people seem to think of it as a fluke rather than a generation of sensible financial regulation paying off. We seem to enjoy our quirky little inventions; proud of Mr Hill and his hoist or the rotary mower or the black box flight recorder. Is there a pub quiz in Australia where at least one of these three did not feature? Yet it seems that any intellectual endeavour beyond the equivalent of dad pottering in the shed is shrugged off as not being wholly in keeping with our national image. We’re supposed to be laidback and devoted to the<b> philosophy </font></b>of ‘She’ll be right sport.’ We have the joke that there is nothing in Australia that can not be fixed with bailing twine and a wire coat hanger. Or the joke that every conversation on a mobile phone in Australia begins with, “I am on my mobile.” It is easy to get defensive about this sort of thing. Some like to suggest that we have left our cultural cringe behind; that we are no longer the poor white trash of Asia. We are no longer wannabe Brits or Yanks or Europeans; we have a proud culture all our own. It seems ironic that the arty types of the left love nothing better to make this claim of cultural separation while at the same time doing their level best to make us feel guilty about that culture. It would suggest that rather than leaving that cultural cringe behind we have simply developed a new cringe that effectively devalues everything in our own culture. Of course when it suits the left to play along with the idea that we are capable of more than usual, the mainstream media talks up a storm. How as a mature regional power we didn’t demand an apology from the Japanese for sinking one of our hospital ships in World War Two when its wreck was discovered recently. How as a mature regional power we should be challenging the Japanese for killing whales in the Antarctic. This is the ultimate problem; too many within our population are too keen to downplay the achievements within our society. While lefty academics schlep off to Europe to present their belief that Australian society is worse than Nazi Germany or Turkey’s treatment of the Armenians in WW1, we also have an anti-intellectual bias on the Right that comes up with such profound pronouncements such as that “The poor don’t like to read.” Just as we acknowledge that we are pretty good at sports and do well in the arts we need to realise that we are not altogether stupid. Rather than concentrating on the problems, we need to find a way to celebrate what we have achieved. Constantly harping on about the negatives within our society simply makes people switch off from the problem. Our corporate management courses and texts are full of detailed research demonstrating that the most effective methods of managing the workforce are not to constantly focus on the negatives but to make sure that you also celebrate the successes achieved; to balance a negative criticism with a positive outcome. So why is it exactly that so much of our public service announcements and public relations people and our media seem so determined to beat us down with a never-ending stream of negativity?  In truth is there no beauty? I am not in love; but i am open to persuasion. |
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while this piece and the others are very good, and the accompanying pics are quite nice, it is the piece about the dogs that I really like. Would you allow me to pimp your blog and copy it to my section that is indexed for man's best friend. I will give the proper credits. you do not have a private message thingy here and I can not send email as a std member, you can let me know if it is ok in my private message section. while you are there, we are looking for a first couple to take an on line massage...if you guys are interested, just request an appointment in the scheduling blog as a comment. If you go to the testamonials, you can read a couple of the ones by some of the readers that have already had theirs...
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