Welcome to Hegemony!

Oh dear! The cacophony of endless screaming, ranting, and raving is the clearest indication yet that we are lost, perhaps irredeemably. The funniest part of the whole situation is that those who bleat the loudest fail utterly to recognise the bind we find ourselves in.

The International Energy Agency estimates last year’s carbon emissions to have achieved record growth to become the highest historical output. Before we say good work team, it is worth taking a breath, trying to compose ourselves, pausing to consider the discourse on Carbon in light of this historic achievement.

Madame Blanchett, wonderful as she may be, is not capable of conjuring the symbolic shift which could potentially predicate any reversal in socio-historical direction. Likewise, Mr Caton should probably stick with Maccas. Indeed, the very point to which I allude here is the fundamental failure of discourse and symbolism surrounding the climate change issue to engage with the heart of the matter: climate change is not a problem, it’s a symptom.

Despite the wealth of wonderful arguments and counterarguments which detail how we should collectively extract ourselves from the mire, very few, if any, engage with the reality that the time for opposition, implying a dialectic understanding of historical progress, is long past. There is nothing left to do except ignore the empty void at the heart of global hegemony or opt out altogether and try somehow to abandon modernity.

The progressive argument that we can somehow find a nice moderation of our current excessive existence is as intellectually bankrupt as the conservative game of chicken that demands we wait til big polluters such as China and India change first.

In Australia, a nation whose current terms of trade and material prosperity is predicated on growing emissions in nations such as China and India, there is no big Other. That is, there is no idea or imagined social form which might replace satellite suburbs, carbon intensive economies, and materialist lifestyles.

The boring litany of political babble, which now even former-politicians themselves have the gall to try to pin on the media, is evidence that the symbolic order is increasingly beyond the reach of our efforts.

Each desperate effort to craft a political discourse leaves the current government looking more inept. Concurrently, the opposition repeats its own mantras, just as a Lama might: convinced that the intensity of ritual effort will bring substance to their empty words.

It is the congruence of such empty gestures that exemplifies the extent of contemporary power arrangements. All of the old oppositions have fallen in upon themselves: there is nothing to counter the onslaught of global capital: exchanges of all forms run rampant, to the dismay and awe of onlookers, who are increasingly unable to comprehend any purpose behind the activity.

Restraint and opposition have been abolished by the successes of the global order. Thus it is clearly ordained which path the entire world must follow: it is well known to us, so much so that we scarcely notice it anymore; the moronic march towards increasing prosperity and comfort.

Even as the inherent destructiveness at the heart of global power becomes apparent, no-one caught up in the bind of modernity is capable of advocating a credible symbolic re-organisation other than climate inspired Armageddon. Perhaps this is in fact, at some level, what we all long for anyway…

the Colonial

Performing Reconcilliation

Performance matters, particularly in politics. There can be little guessing whom Mr. Baillieu is currently trying to impress. He is playing the big man in that fine traditional role: beating up the little and the powerless.

The latest string of announcements has populist conservative written all over it. First threatening to override the council to block an injecting room and now opting out of recognising the indigenous owners of this land.

Interestingly both of these examples play first and foremost to the idiot electorate. Both are mindless and counterproductive moves. However, they stand to enhance Baillieu’s standing with people who like power and like to see it performed.

We should consider his performance, newcomer that he is, against one of the world’s greatest political stayers, our queen and sovereign: Regina Elizabeth II, currently in the republic of Ireland on the first British sovereign visit since independence.

Ireland was Britain’s first colonial project. Addressing hundreds of years of oppression the Queen has managed the encounter well. In many ways rather than some grand notion such as reconciliation I feel we should direct our efforts towards better encounters. It is in this sense she has addressed the history of British oppression and Irish counter violence with sophistication, and with restraint.

It is restraint that strikes me as being fundamental to the power and the believability of the Queen’s performance. While the visit would never have been seen as anything short as symbolic of the British position on Ireland and the Troubles, it could have been played any which way.

She could have made a stilted march through Ireland as empty gesture, or conjured profuse and over-emotional nightmare where the signs and symbols of suffering could be totally appropriated for the establishment’s own use. Instead a fragile balance has been struck between recognition and remembrance, and a conviction that those practices are in the past and a different future beckons.

This political performance would be well studied in Australia. It is increasingly evident that the political stars are aligning against the marginalised in this country. Bereft of ideas and pandering to the imagined moronic mass, politicians of all stripes and at all levels are looking for easy targets: welfare recipients, asylum seekers, injecting rooms, and of course overly PC reconciliation.

While I don’t have a problem with Baillieu’s assertion that there is no need for a mandatory welcome to country or recognition of traditional owners, this move could have been announced with a strong commitment to maintain the gesture despite its now non-mandatory status.

Failing to do so sent a clear signal about how the conservative government views such issues. Moreover, it is stunning that in a state with so many obvious problems that this is an issue with which the government chooses to gain some media limelight. It is deeply troubling that so recently in office, this government is already conceding that it has no idea.

the Colonial

Related News

Interesting story here about online news and who accesses it. Increasingly important area yet difficult to research.

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/navigating_news_online

Soiled Nappy

The depth of knowledge that you or I possess relies on the consumption of local news and current affairs. From a barrister residing in inner city Melbourne to perhaps a plumber from Frankston, the Australian news landscape should provide thorough analysis for everyone. Well the landscape is changing Ladies and Gentlemen and there is a massive crater emerging amongst the tranquil natural formations. The observable ignorance of many Australians is worrying. This said we cannot blame people for burying their heads in the suffocating sand of Who Weekly and MX Magazine when their heads are slapped with ill conceived journalism the moment they raise their cranium to smell an Age Newspaper Rose. The problem is not just confined to print, television current affairs has caught an unwanted virus with the Bolt Report a good example of the throbbing, red welt inflicting journalism’s crown jewels.

The problem stems from a panic within the industry. The heart palpitation that journalism is becoming insignificant, that it is being strangled of life by a 40075.16 km (the earth’s circumference) long boa constrictor, the internet. People can get anything online; news, gossip, video, opinion, penis enlargements and an update of what Ashton Kutcher had for breakfast. It is a veritable room of coloured balls enveloping spasmodic minded cosmopolitans hungry for quality information. Each coloured ball signifies an atom of information, just enough to entertain someone, not enough to inform them. There are examples of decent online journalism; Crikey! The Huffington Post, MediaWeek, the New York Times and dare I say WikiLeaks? Let’s leave that chestnut uncracked. The problem with these journalistic sites is that they are lost like a soiled nappy within the coloured balls of information; they are hard to find. One cannot go to a newsagent and find a selection of these sights, they must be found through word of mouth or analysing ‘top 100 news blogs’ lists. Google is not a newsagent, it is a search engine. If you pay enough money and do enough research, when someone searches for ‘news’ you can have your site pop up that involves; “News on how you can pierce your own eyelid”. Finding thorough journalism on the internet is difficult and is too often a difficulty the public refrain from tackling. This is an unknown and uncertain environment for informed journalism. Questions are raised as to how to compete in such an environment and how long standing business models should be amended to address new competition. Media that relies on traditional journalism is like a raft at sea, no longer moored to the land it once knew.

Smart phones and the I-pad have made this situation worse. People now have portable access to the internet matching the traditional newspapers only trump card, portability. Tech heads and simply heads are reading news on the go, yet now it’s free. They also have access to many news sites within one piece of technology. They can flick from The Age to The Herald Sun to The Australian all within two tram stops. Video is also accessible so instead of watching 7:30 the public will watch a video bloggers summary of anything controversial that may have been telecast across the current affairs landscape, Abbot’s stuttering to an alleged Hey Dad sexual assault. The public receives a restricted perspective that stunts the growth of personal knowledge. The internet combined with this technology delivers information quickly, portably and succinctly. Detail and thoroughness are not key aspects to such a platform, just enough of a hook to get a reader to click on a story.
So what is traditional journalism to do? How can we ensure quality journalism survives and sails its raft to solid ground.

Such a question takes my mind back to the famous boxing bout in Zaire, Africa, The Rumble in the Jungle. George Foreman was the current heavyweight world champion and had to defend his title against a resurgent former world champ, Muhammad Ali. Foreman had a powerful punch and was feared for his sheer physical dominance. Ali had skill, talent and speed. Although I could recount the whole build up to the fight and its events, I feel it would simply be for my own pleasure rather than for yours. The point is that Ali didn’t attempt to match Foreman for strength, power or size. He stuck to his own strengths, speed, agility and tact and won the fight.

Does boxing have anything to do with the current state of journalism, yes, yes it does, and this is not to be questioned. Instead of Australian current affairs and print media attempting to match the online world strength for strength, they must concentrate on their own. The Age or other newspapers in the same vain are not pretty or even remotely attractive when they attempt to capture the strategy of the online world by offering colourful pages, more society and entertainment news and a more compact format. The Bolt Report’s use of Michael Kroger, Mark Latham and of course Bolt makes more of a case for increased funding for mental health than for quality journalism. Content is king. The strengths of traditional journalism are thorough investigation, quality writing; analysis and of course the crossword. These must not be sacrificed in the name of competing against “new media” and online information. Content is what makes people watch current affairs shows and makes them open up a newspaper, not artificial colour. If traditional journalistic providers continue with the strategy they are at the moment, they will lose the fight and we will all be poorer for it. So to win the economic fight for survival traditional journalism must stick to quality content and avoid sinking to the level of colourful mediocrity.