by cameron | Apr 21, 2007 | Australian politics, Christianity, Melbourne
I’m scanning the headlines this morning and see this one on News.com.au: “Priest claims praying ‘pointless’“. You just know that’s going to get my attention, right? I thought to myself “I can’t wait to show this to Father Bob!”
You should have heard me laugh when I opened it and read:
“SOUTH Melbourne priest Bob Maguire says church leaders across Australia can pray for rain “until they go black in the face” but it won’t solve the water crisis.”
I love it when Bob says what he really thinks and bucks the establishment.
This week’s episode of The Father Bob Show on TPN should be fun. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about our “duty of care” to the indigenous population of Australia and I want to talk to Bob about it.
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I have decided that I am a racist. And it bothers me deeply.
Let me explain. A racist isn’t just someone who thinks other races are inferior to one’s own. I’m not that kind of racist. A racist is also someone who values another race less than one’s own. And based on my growing understanding of the situation that the indigenous population of this country is in, combined with how little I have personally done about it, I have decided that I must have valued their lives less than I should. And I think that makes me a racist. And I’m going to change.
200 years ago, European Christians, mostly from Great Britain, came to Australia. They invaded the country. Committed an act of mass genocide. Stole the entire continent from its traditional owners. They took children from their families, as recently as 40 years ago, thrusting them into Christian educational institutions.
What reparations has the United Kingdom made? What reparations has Christianity made? What reparations have *I* made?
Me? What did *I* do to them?
Nothing directly. But I am profiting off of what was done to them.
What duty of care do the people of European descent in this country have to the descendants of the aboriginals who were treated so abhorrently?
It doesn’t matter if our direct ancestors weren’t involved. WE are still profiting from that theft. The asset that was stolen from the indigenous population, this land, is our greatest source of wealth and prosperity.
If scientists found a living dodo specimen, wouldn’t we all feel a duty of care for it, even though our direct ancestors may not have been the ones who wiped out the rest of the dodo population?
Why then don’t we feel the same duty of care for an entire race?
Saying ‘it was 200 years ago’ isn’t a justification. Only 60 years ago, the international community gave the Jewish people an entire country which hadn’t been theirs for thousands of years. That’s a precedent for reparations.
Let’s say that when Napoleon annexed Italy in 1796 it had stayed under French control until now. Do you think the international community would be telling France to give Italy back to the Italians? 200 years isn’t a long time.
What if Japan had successfully invaded Australia during WWII. What if they have murdered the majority of Australians, taken their land, their homes, their crops. What reparations do you think we would be demanding today? Would we be satisfied with an annual stipend and access to education? Would we be saying “well that was your parents, not the current generation, so nothing can be done to turn back the clock?”
West Germany paid reparations to Israel for the Holocaust. What is the statute of limitations on genocide?
The Australian Aboriginal people lived here for 40,000 – 75,000 years before the Christian invasion and genocide. It is estimated that there could have been 750,000 – 1,000,000 of them at that time. By the early 20th century the indigenous population had declined to between 50,000 and 90,000. Today there are less that 500,000 descendants.
A friend of mine, Andrew Mullins, put it to me this way a couple of years ago:
“What if scientists discovered a population of humans living deep in the jungles of the Amazon who had been around for 40,000 years? How do you think they would treat them? They would wrap them up in cotton wool and treat them with the utmost respect.”
He opened my eyes to something, I am embarrassed to admit, that I hadn’t given much thought to. It is my belief that the media, the government, and the education system in this country, in fact ALL of us in this country, have willfully and knowingly obfuscated and belittled the issue of our responsibility to the indigenous peoples of this country.
Now – giving back the land, moving 22 million people out of Australia, is obviously impossible. But what, then, do we do? I am increasingly uncomfortable with the general opinion I hear from other white people in this country that “we give them money and they get unequaled access to opportunities – what more do they want?”.
We cannot wash our hands of this.
Russell Buckley asked me recently:
“What are we doing today that our descendants will look back on in disbelief and ask themselves how on earth we could have done that, thinking it was normal, or certainly harmless?”
I think perhaps our minimal concern over our duty of care to the Aboriginal peoples of Australia is one of those things.
by cameron | Apr 19, 2007 | Christianity, Melbourne, Uncategorized
How’s this for a cool way to enter the office each day?
Apparently this is the the Headquarters of Red Bull in London. Pretty brilliant huh. See more images here. (via PureProfile’s blog).
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Yesterday I had the privilege of listening to Phillip Goodman speak at the offices of E&Y in Melbourne. Goodman is the owner of clothing manufacturer/retailer Rivers. Wow. What a story. He talked for 30 or 40 minutes about how he started and built the company. Totally brilliant story. I invited him onto G’Day World as a guest for our “Melbourne’s Leaders” series but he declined. Apparently he avoids the press and prefers to stay under the radar, which I kind of understand. But if you ever get a chance to hear him speak, grab it. I can’t begin to tell you how many terrific anecdotes this guy has. It inspired me for the rest of the day.
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Yesterday I listened to Thomas Friedman’s recent talk at POPtech about “why this isn’t your parent’s energy crisis”. It’s brilliant. He explains how the USA is funding BOTH sides of the “War On Terrorism” by continuing to buy ever-larger energy purchases from countries in the Middle East who then donate large chunks of the money to Islamic fundamentalist organisations who, in turn, attack the US and US interests. He suggests that the only way to break the back of this addiction is to move as quickly as possible to green, renewable sources of energy.
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This image of Cho Seung-Hui from the video he sent to NBC is pretty interesting. Anyone else see a John Woo homage? I also love Cho’s rationale for his killing rampage:
“Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ to inspire generation of the weak and the defenceless people.”
How many times have I said here that Christianity was a violent religion that inspired (even justified) violence? The fact that the media is carrying this quote from Cho and everyone just accepts his rationale is interesting in itself.
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.â€
Matthew 10
But you have to admire the resolve of the NRA in situations like this. Despite the rest of the world thinking the US are completely frakking NUTS for allowing the amount of guns they have on the street, the NRA obviously enough photos of US Congressmen and women engaged in sexual congress with furry mammals that they just breeze through situations like this.
Did you see that they are actually GIVING guns away this week in Virginia?
They are calling it the “Bloomberg Gun GiveAway”. On Thursday two gun shops in the state of Virginia will stage a prize draw. Anyone spending more than $100 in either Bob Moates’ stores or Old Dominion Guns and Tackle will be entered, and the first prize a free handgun or rifle worth $900.
(link)
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by cameron | Apr 14, 2007 | environment, Melbourne, Uncategorized
I had the fortune last night to be invited to Peter Ellyard’s 70th birthday party at SOS, a sustainable and ethical restaurant at Melbourne Central with an amazing view over the old Melbourne Museum. I’m guessing there were about 100 people there from different sides of Peter’s life – his family, colleagues and friends. It’s was a terrific night and the tributes to Peter were all heart-warming (even mine). I had a series of engaging and vibrant discussions with a group of intelligent, articulate people from various walks of life I consider new friends, including Lauren (a Rhodes scholar), Felix (a self-described “70-year-old French Jew” who spent 30 years living in a kibbutz in Israel), Felix’s wife Shoshanna who is a philosopher/artist/educator who successfully fought off several of us who wanted to debunk the documentary she recently watched on memories transmitted through heart transplants, Ralph, a surgeon, his wife Patsy, an editor, and many others. My good mate Anthony, the guy who introduced me to Peter, was there, as was Diane, the masseuse at the Como Building in South Yarra who apparently originally introduced Peter to AJ and, coincidentally, has massaged all three of us at one point in time (separately, I might add) over the years.
ANYWAY… many of the tributes during the evening talked about Peter’s overwhelming generosity to everyone in his life. I’ve certainly been touched by this in the couple of months I’ve known him. He seems to operate on the principle that the more you give of yourself, the more will come back to you.
It reminded me instantly of a section in Buckminster Fuller’s book “Critical Path” which I was reading earlier in the day. Fuller described this principle, which I’ve learned to think of over the years as “The Principle of Reciprocity” as “precession”. He defined “precession” as “the effect of bodies in motion on other bodies in motion”. Precession was his answer to his own question “How do you obtain the money to live with and to acquire the materials and tools with which to work?”. This was the beginning of his mission when he was effectively bankrupt. His examination of the world around him lead him to believe that bodies in motion exert right-angle effects on other bodies around them. For example, the gravitational effect one planet has on another is at right-angles to the direction of motion of the planet (okay, so my simplistic understanding of the general theory of relativity would suggest that it’s actually the other way around… the warping of space-time that the mass of body A has causes body B to travel in a certain directional orbit around it… but let’s leave that aside for the time being, okay?). Drop a stone in a still pond and the concentric rings spread out at ninety degrees to the motion of the stone.
Fuller theorized that while most humans had, historically speaking, spent most of their energy trying to selfishly earn a living for themselves, some of them had, inadvertently, helped “nature” progress by making huge leaps in the standard of human civilization. These advances were “side effects” of the primary objective of being selfish.
He wrote:
“Therefore, what humans called the side effects of their conscious drives in fact produced that main ecological effects of generalized technological regeneration. I therefore assumed that what humanity rated as “side effects” are nature’s main effects. I adopted the prescessional “side effects” as my prime objective.”
What if, instead of working with the objective of your own comfort, you worked purely for the betterment of the human race? Would, perhaps, your own comfort be taken care of by “nature” in some sort of principle of reciprocity?
Fuller wrote:
“”Since nature was clearly intent on making humans successful in support of the integrity of eternally regenerative Universe, it seemed clear that is I undertook ever more humanly favorable physical-environment-producing artifact developments that in fact did improve the chances of all humanity’s successful development, it was quite possible that nature would support my efforts, efforts, provided I were choosing the successively most efficient technical means of so doing. Nature was clearly supporting all her intercomplementary ecological regenerative tasks – ergo, I must so commit myself and must depend upon nature providing the physical means of realization of my invented environment-advantaging artifacts. I noted that nature did not require hydrogen to “earn a living” before allowing hydrogen to behave in the unique manner in which it does. Nature does not require that any of its intercomplementing members “earn a living”.”
Now I don’t want to sound all “The Secret” on you, but there does seem to me to be a principle that, put simply, “if you do good things, good things happen to you”. Karma without the reincarnation. From the moment I started TPN, I had this feeling that this was an important mission. I’ve always felt like I had a purpose. And, that if I did it properly, worked hard, was focused, disciplined, and did it with integrity, that “good things would happen”.
I don’t expect miracles. I don’t expect things will always fall into my lap. But I do believe (not very scientific of me, i know) that if I pursue the right vision, diligently, honestly, and work my ass off, that perhaps I am merely fulfilling the purpose the Universe has for me. Now, again, I’m not suggesting that the Universe is “intelligent” or that there is some sort of mystical “higher power” that “has a plan” for me.
But… humans are made from atoms. Atoms obey the laws of physics and chemistry. Could you say that an atom of oxygen, connected to two atoms of hydrogen, has the purpose of being water? At the moment in time when you observe it as a water molecule, isn’t that it’s purpose? And up a level, on a macro scale, what is the purpose of that molecule of water? To make a cell function? To provide life-giving nutrients to an animal or plant? And that plant, what is its purpose? To feed me?
In the great chain of “purpose”, with every component of the Universe fulfilling its individual task, am I not merely a bunch of atoms, each of them obeying the laws of physics and chemistry? Am I, then, not also obeying the laws of physics and chemistry? Perhaps I, like the oxygen atom, have a role to play, determined, not by some mystical being, but by the laws of physics and chemistry.
Peter Ellyard is fulfilling his role, as mentor and futurist and leader. As he has done that diligently over his lifetime, he has obviously been rewarded in a variety of ways.
If I fulfill my purpose, which I see today as being a cog in the human evolution machine, dragging us an inch closer to the realization of our potential as a species, perhaps the Universe will continue to rise up and support my efforts, naturally and effortlessly?
by cameron | Apr 7, 2007 | Christianity, Melbourne, science, science vs religion
I hadn’t planned to post anything about Easter this year but my neighbour David sent me a link to this article in The Age today written by Melbourne “literary critic” Peter Craven and it’s annoyed me. Craven has written a pretty bleary counter-revisionist attempt to convince us that the Christian mythology behind Easter actually has some validity and should be honoured. For someone who is self-described as “blisteringly arrogant” , this is a shabby piece of pious nonsense. Reading this article, you’d think that Craven must be nearing death and suddenly feeling like he has to do some major sucking up to his imaginary God to account for a lifetime of past sins.
As I wrote back to David:
I don’t see anything mysterious or wonderful about continuing a 2000 year old myth. I find it primitive and scary that so many people in the 21st century still feel the need to worship supranatural beings. I do agree with Craven though that kids should be taught about human mythology in school, but I’d love to see ALL human mythology taught. Kids should be taught the Christian heritage behind easter, but should also be taught the original reason for a celebration at the spring equinox, to celebrate the fertility gods that ancient humans believed brought new life, new crops. I think that if more people had an unbiased and comprehensive education in human mythologies they would recognize that Christianity is a mish-mash of many older mythologies,
some judaic, some “pagan”. Unfortunately the catholic church did too good a job wiping out the memory of those older mythologies during the dark ages so 1500 years later they aren’t understood by most people. All most people in the West have known is the christ myth which has value, no doubt, but should be seen in context to the entire body of human mythology.
Let’s teach the kids, from a very young age, the stories of Ishtar and Isis and Tlazolteotl (the eater of filth!) and, my favourite, Aphrodite.
Let’s not be sexist either. We should teach them about the blokes – Ba’al and Adonis and Marduk and Mithras (who was born of a virgin on December 25 with shepherds in attendance… 100 years before Christ) and Osiris.
Try finding a book for primary school kids which tells those stories at your local bookstore.
Now, let’s get back to the travesty of this Peter Craven article in The Age.
He writes:
“And with all the hideous barbarities of Western civilisation that made Nazis of us all, you can’t go very far in the civilisation stakes without recognising the power and the glory of the Easter story and what has been made of it.”
NAZIS?!! WTF?
“It may be that we live in a post-Christian age, it may be that the Enlightenment worked wonders to deepen the mercy that is enjoined on Christians, but our civilisation will lose its heart and mind — you might say it would lose its soul — if it turns its back on the miracle and mystery of the Easter story.”
Actually Peter I think abandoning the worship of imaginary deities and learning to accept rational thinking is the only way we can consider our society “civilized”. Any people that worship imaginary deities must be considered, at least in part, woefully primitive. The “civilized” parts of our society have nothing to do with imaginary deities. They can be considered the benefits of rational minds. Let’s not forget that Christianity forced the dark ages on the human race. They deliberately destroyed the great works of human antiquity. The science and philosophical works of ancient Greece and Rome were nearly all destroyed by small-minded Christian leaders. The “heart and mind” of the human race was obliterated and forced into a period of darkness which it finally struggled out from underneath only hundreds of years later.
“It is a story resonant with the gravest tragedy in the world, but it ends (that’s what those Easter eggs are all about) in light and triumph and love.”
No, Peter, the eggs and the rabbits are both ancient fertility symbols which were being used to celebrate the Spring Equinox in ancient times. Like most things in Christianity, this was borrowed/stolen from older human mythologies, probably to make it slightly easier to force the new religion down the throats of the pagans.
“Whether we like it or not, the story of Christ’s death on the Friday we call Good runs through all our dreams. It’s there in the greatest architecture we know, it’s animate in the great paintings of the Renaissance and a constant point of reference in our greatest poetry and drama, even in Samuel Beckett, who says he saw the world extinguished though he never saw it lit.”
Peter’s education is obviously sorely lacking. Greatest architecture? What about… The Cheops Pyramid? The Colosseum? The Aztec Cholula pyramid? The Eiffel Tower? The Sydney Opera House?
Poetry… 1001 Arabian Nights? The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?
Drama… The Illiad? The Odyssey? Wuthering Heights??
Anyway… I could go on but I’m bored.
I agree with Craven that “the Easter Story is graphic, stark, mesmerising”. Like much of the Judeo/Christian bible, it’s a terrifying look at human (and deist) depravity.
Let it sit where it should with the rest of ancient human literature. A reminder of where we came from. A lesson on how thousands of years of oppression and bloodshed were justified.
And let’s move on to a brighter future.
by cameron | Apr 2, 2007 | Australian media, Melbourne
One of the things I noticed while reading the B and T Digital Media magazine is that out of the top 40 list, I seem to be the only person who actually MAKES digital media. The rest of the list seem to be from agencies, managers at large media companies, etc.
I think Melbourne’s Online Digital Media community needs to get together for a drink and so, Mr Speaker, I would like to propose a new meetup event: MODM.
Register for MODM 1.
I’m also looking for some folks to join me at the midnight screening of 300 this Wednesday night at the Sun Theatre in Yarraville.
Yeah, I’m feeling sociable this week. Don’t get used to it.
by cameron | Apr 2, 2007 | Melbourne, TPN
A question for all you uni students.
How do we promote TPN around universities? How do we get the word out?
As I never attended university (but I did DRINK in them a lot, back in the days of 88 – 89 when my last band, The Rhythm Pigs, used to rehearse at Trinity College at Melbourne Uni), so I don’t really know much about what goes on in them fancy-pants higher learnin’ institutions, apart from group orgies and meth-fueled tree huggin’ by the hippy types.
I figure, though, that uni students are a big target market for the stuff we do (would you agree?) and that we should spend some energy figuring out how to promote TPN across the campuses of the world.
Any bright ideas?
