Elements to understand a society:
- Analyse how people treat each other
- Note predominant values, that is, common attitudes
- Compare actions to words
- Determine the cause of discrepancies
- Know the history of the culture
- Contrast with a very different culture
- Run for the hills
Australia has long had a veil of white over it. We have a distinct history and location in the world both figuratively and literally. The culture here, like the continent, is evolving and changing yet there are one or two qualities which are surviving the environmental changes.
From the 1820s and until the 1990s, Australia was predominantly white with a good selection of small immigrants, especially Greek in Melbourne and South East Asian in western Sydney, with most larger places having a China Town. Aboriginal people had been radically dispersed over the continent by Christian churches. Through the 80s and into the 90s, there was a growing social awareness of Aboriginal culture with thanks to the Mabo case which finally went through the supreme court in 1992. Since then, however, Australian culture has shifted.
Where we used to treat each other equally and operate fairly independently, we now talk down to each other and tell each other what to do. Reflected in newsertainment, social media, with government messages and on public transport, there is a strong parenting theme which never used to be present. I daily observe and experience a stream of recommendations and orders concerning my behaviour from multiple sources.
Australia has been a strong supporter of immigration over the past few decades with many areas of each city becoming immigrant enclaves. The shop signs are in foreign languages and the people wear clothing from their own cultures. In other areas, Pride and Aboriginal flags are sprinkled about the place, and it yet others, there are only white people. There is no integration or assimilation, but another version of segregation is emerging.
I developed a theory about Australian culture which I keep to myself, until the conversation calls for it, but is as follows:
- We are a culture of denial.
Between 1776 and the 1950s, the immigrants who came here travelled by boat and a very long way. This explains why pre-Internet Australian English contains many sailing words and phrases, and why mateship was a core of white Australian social cohesion. Doing the right thing and having a fair go were moral principles essential for surviving the voyage. From this journey we also gained sea chanties as the basis for our common national music such as Waltzing Matilda. As we deny our history, we do not teach our kids these facts.
Contrasting Aboriginal society, until the 1840s when most the white genocides of Indigenous peoples were completed, their society was founded on minimal environmental impact developed over tens of thousands of years and refined through repeated glaciations. Resource management and genetic viability informed social practices. Learning how to live was less important than learning how to die and what is left for the following generation. As we deny their history, we do not teach our kids these facts.
Contrasting Japanese society, Japan was a sustainable economy for centuries. Education was 99% and morality informed social discourse. Criminals had their impropriety tattooed on their foreheads. Refining technology and manners informed behaviour and honouring the elderly and the dead anchor these people in time and space. The wheel was banned ensuring labour and production were kept sustainable. Fulfilling one’s duty to the family, the community and, from the 1910s the nation, guided one’s life. As we deny their culture, we do not teach our kids these facts.
So, in Australian society, we used to treat each other as mates upon whom we knew we would need to rely. Indigenous peoples used to treat each other as people upon whom they relied. The Japanese people treat each other, including their children, as people they rely on. Now, however, white Australians treat each other as errant children who are too stupid to know how to behave and who need to be told what to do.
What changed?
Just as with TUSA, we have a culture of litigation but the number of cases per head is greater than in the states. This litigation culture evolved over the past 40 years as a way to get a lot of money quick. Australian law, as of 1992, is also inherently broken: the Supreme Court of Australia, paradoxically, ruled that native title negates crown title, meaning they do not have the legal power to end their legal power. This demonstrates the core void of responsibility in Australian society. And the government at the time used this to make money.
The rise of neoliberalism and commercialism in the 1990s moved Australian politics away from our society of mateship i.e. social welfare into the American dog-eat-dog society of capitalistic opportunism. Media conglomerates and fossil fuel companies found common interests with the then-current politicians who also wanted more money. Australia’s low population and massive resources ensure easy pickings. The Internet became a vast torrent of American cultural values and first-hand experience of their worldview. We deny our history and our present so we do not teach these facts to our kids. We don’t even know these facts ourselves.
Several times over the past few years, just for shits and giggles, I’ve popped the question, ‘What is Australian culture?’ to other Australians. Unlike the Japanese who seem to think Australians are friendly and easy going, the Australians I’ve asked invariably say, ‘We don’t have a culture.’ Sometimes they add, ‘We’re just a bunch of convicts.’
This denialism and ignorance ensures we remain incredibly vulnerable to manipulation by anyone with social power. The way denialism is woven into our political, professional and personal lives affects a void into which any agent can insert themselves. Denialism ensures we take no responsibility and that we project responsibility onto anything else and everyone else.
This is an incredibly reactive and immature psychology, to live in a society of parent-child: telling each other what to do whilst denying our own ignorance.
A D R A N 