2011 November » unsane

15 years

Nov 272011

This is a pseudo transcript of the speech I’d worked on in advance of our anniversary party last night. However, since some people had to arrive and leave early, and some didn’t arrive until late, the timing was never quite right to tap a glass and demand everyone’s attention.

But here’s what I would have said…

A few thanks to start with – first off, thankyou to everyone for coming. Some people measure their lives by the number of possessions they accumulate. We’ve been lucky enough to realise that the only true way to measure your life is by the depth of the friendships you build – the impact you have on others, and the impact they have on you, and the memories you build. Measuring that way, and looking around at everyone here, our lives are incredibly rich and lucky.

A few specific thanks – Pete and George of course, for the tips and words of advice on running a big gathering successfully, and the loan of the additional furniture. Tom and Neil for helping out before everyone arrived. Siobhán, Kim and Chris for making such big trips to get here – Siobhán from Sydney, Kimma from the Central Coast, and Chris from Auckland. Of course, the biggest special thanks has to go to Darren for the monumental effort he put in building this party, preparing so much food, and as always being the charming host. (Of course, I’m the grumpy host, but you all expected that, right?)

This month marks Darren and my 15th anniversary. Working out when the anniversary was has always been a bit of a challenge for us. We met online, you see, and at the time I was living in Perth, on secondment, and Darren was living on the Central Coast. I knew that my secondment would be ending soon and figured I wanted to try out this notion of a relationship when I returned to Newcastle, and advertised on Pinkboard, a gay dating/hookup website that behaved more like a bulletin board service than what you’d think of these days.

Only two people responded to my (OK, excessively wordy) posting. One was someone I’d met previously at Uni, who I knew for a multiple of reasons I didn’t want to go near, and the other was this rather charming guy who wrote quite eloquently and I pretty much immediately responded to.

So remember, this was 1996, not 2011, so we’re not talking Scruff or Grindr or a plethora of other current mobile phone technologies – this was email. The emails went back and forth a dozen or more times, and photos were exchanged. We seemed relatively happy with ourselves. I honestly can’t remember what photo of myself I sent Darren, but Darren sent me this lovely studio black and white portrait shot of him a friend had taken earlier in that year.

After the dozen or so emails, phone numbers were exchanged and – thankfully this was before so many of my neuroses and anxieties developed – one afternoon, Perth time, I called Darren. I still remember his first words – “Hang on, I’m running up the stairs with bags of groceries”. I then heard lots of thumping and bumping and keys in doors and bags being hurriedly thrown down before I got a “hello”.

But with his deep and mellifluous phone voice, I was rather hooked.

We spent another two weeks chatting to each other on the phone pretty much daily, before Darren announced – there wasn’t really a request for permission, much as it was couched as such – that he was flying over to meet me, because he couldn’t wait for me to return.

So, one Friday evening I caught a taxi out to Perth airport and met Darren at arrivals after his 5 hour flight.

Imagine my surprise when he turned out to be a ranga!

That was something that years later would be the source of some amusement. You see, Darren kept on using those black and white studio photo for years on various chat sites, but as our move to Melbourne became more likely he finally started using the bear chat sites more regularly and finally got around to updating his photo there.

To a colour one.

And one day he said to me “I don’t understand. I went months without getting a message, and now all these bears are chasing me!”

At that point I managed to do an eyeroll worthy of some of our more recent friends and said “Your previous photos were black and white. The bears can finally see you’re a ranga.”

But I digress.

We had a whirlwind weekend in Perth, which started with that taxi ride back to my apartment. We were sitting in the back touching hands and being slightly doe-eyed, and the taxi driver at the end of trip said gruffly but kindly “Have a nice weekend. I think you will.”

After five months of secondment in Perth, it was actually the first weekend I took off. I didn’t think about or look at work once, but having not taken any weekends off before, I had no idea what sort of touristy stuff to do, so we simply hopped on a ferry to go from South Perth to the CBD each day and wander around. Music shops! Shoe shops! Cafés! It was the high life of tourist attractions.

(I’ve since been told that probably was the high life of tourist attractions in Perth, but that’s another story, to be told another time.)

There was much happiness in that weekend, as well as a heated discussion. I was at that point a bigoted and somewhat rabid fanboy for Linux/Unix, and I was having none of Darren’s “the Mac is a great platform” shit. I proclaimed Apple would be dead within 2 years (Jobs had only recently returned) and the “final war of computing” would be waged between Linux and Windows.

I was, you see, a blithering idiot.

But we agreed to disagree on that one (and Darren subsequently converted me, as you would all be aware), and the weekend ended in barely repressed tears as I took Darren back to the airport and waved goodbye to him on a red-eye flight out of Perth on Sunday night.

About a month later, with us still communicating every day, I flew back to Sydney, and Darren picked me up from the airport. That was to turn out to be the first of many airport pickups, but he drove me back to Newcastle and without it really being all that discussed, moved in. He was still renting on the central coast, but living with me in Newcastle.

It’s all those events that made tracking our anniversary difficult – was it when we first started talking, was it when we met, was it when he picked me up from the airport, was it when he started renting with me, was it … well, you get the picture. So actually finding the plane ticket was the saving grace, giving us an anniversary date we could focus on.

Darren and I spent most of those first fifteen years together living in and around Newcastle and the Central Coast. We made some great friends there, but as time went on we realised that what had started as a wonderful comfort zone was becoming a bit of a rut. In our usual hive-mind way of dealing with such big decisions, we both danced around the notion of a big move – OK, Darren more up front than me, since I was also somewhat of a hermit, you see – until what had been percolating in our subconscious group-think suddenly became a real decision. Hobart or Auckland, we thought? Hobart would be great for the weather, we knew, but probably the same minimalist social life as the Coast. Auckland would be nice for me for work, but likely a one-way move, and we weren’t really thinking that we needed to leave Australia. One day though we both realised the city we were looking for was Melbourne.

We’d been aware of the bear scene for years, of course – we’re both geeky in various ways and are almost permanently connected to the net in some way or another, so there was no way for us not to be connected. But living on the coast, we’d not really ever been able to engage in the Sydney bear scene. On the other hand, when we made that first tentative decision to explore the possibility that we might be able to move to Melbourne, and reached out via bear411 and bearwww to the Melbourne bear community, we found a large group of men who were friendly, welcoming and above all, kind.

In October 2010, we visited Melbourne for a weekend and let George and Pete in on our plan to move while they did something no-one had ever been able to do to us before – dragged us to a “gay bar”: The Laird. Yes, that’s right, never been to any other gay bar before, and haven’t yet been anywhere else.

Flying out of Melbourne that weekend was the most difficult thing we’d done in ages. We weren’t going home, we were leaving home. Our original plans to move in early 2013 became mid 2012 then late 2011 then suddenly we were decided on June 2011. As it happened of course we moved down just as Southern Hibearnation was on. Even in the middle of the biggest bear event of the year down here, all of you made us feel so completely at home and welcome that we knew within just a few days of moving that it was the best choice we’d ever made, and we’d never unmake it.

So here we stand, in front of so many fantastic friends – some older, many newer, and we know where our next 15 years together will be spent. Here, amongst you all. (But not in a creepy stalker way, OK? Trust me.)

And I just want to end on a quote from the highly sage Bilbo Baggins…

…today is my eleventy-first birthday!

No, wait, that’s not it.

…I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

No, wait! That’s not it, either.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Yes, that’s the one. Thankyou, all.

The sixth sense

Data, Life No Responses »

Nov 182011

There’s a lot of crackpots and charlatans out there that’ll tell you they have extra-sensory perception. What skeptics seem to invariably find with such people is they’re either outright frauds, or they’re just very good at reading people. (As someone such as Derren Brown tries to point out.)

Unlike all those crackpots and charlatans though, I really do have a sixth sense.It’s called the internet.

(Image sourced from Wikipedia.)

Laugh if you want, scoff if you will, but net connectivity does, once you’ve been using it long enough become like another sense. After all, it lets you instantly communicate with people in every corner of the globe; it lets you find out information almost irrespective of whether it’s of immense importance of the tiniest of minutia, and finally, it lets you conduct your business, regardless of where it needs to be done, from wherever else in the world you are at the time.

That sounds like telepathy, omniscience and out of body respectively.

On those grounds, why wouldn’t you call the net a sixth sense?

We’re at an interesting point in time where a vast majority of the sum of human knowledge sits at our fingertips, indexed and ready for us to search. Never has there been so much information so readily available to so many. And, as my colleagues in storage will attest to, that just continues to grow. The amount of data generated and stored yearly increases at rates which are truly staggering, as shown by this infographic.

With that sort of information at our fingertips, you’d be forgiven for briefly indulging in a narcissistic appreciation of Hamlet’s soliloquy:

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
Reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving
how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel!
in apprehension how like a god!

Now, pulling back from godlike delusions of grandeur, when you think of the interconnectivity offered by the internet, and the vast information potential it offers, that it can become as integrated into the faculties as any of the other senses. Sure, it relies on the other senses, but that’s not unusual though. For instance, taste and smell are inextricably linked; losing your sense of smell, even briefly, significantly impacts your sense of taste.

Never is the gulf between net-as-a-sense and five-senses-only more profound then when talking to someone who doesn’t have internet access at all. To them, breaking news is something they either see on a TV newsflash or radio broadcast. But that can be anywhere from 15 minutes to 8 hours since the news hit Twitter. (A classic example is how Twitter can now spread news of an Earthquake, out from the epicentre, faster than the shock waves.) It’s equally obvious with news surrounding people in the public eye: I got a text message from a relative saying “Did you know Steve Jobs died?” probably 4 hours after his death. That was practically old news by then, since I’d seen the news break on Twitter within minutes of it being announced. I probably would have known sooner but I was between travelling for work at the time.

In the Peter F. Hamilton Commonwealth series, there’s an enhanced version of the net called the unisphere, and everyone has direct neural connectivity to it, allowing extensive access to the sum of human knowledge.

Hamilton may be a science fiction writer, but even I as a humble Gen-Xer who happens to be strongly net-connected can see that the future lays in that direction. However, it’s not scary. It’s a new era for perception and connectivity. For over a decade now even modestly unimaginative people have been predicting a pseudo hive-mind level of connectivity thanks to the net, and with each year that passes, it becomes increasingly impossible to deny.

It’s the sixth sense.

A fair go for everyone!

Equal Rights, Morality, Politics No Responses »

Nov 172011

Australia, where we believe in a fair go for everyone!

Well, unless you want to get married to someone of the same sex.

Australia, where we believe in a fair go for all heterosexuals! (GLBTI are second classers.)

Well, unless you’re an indigenous Australian under the auspice of the Northern Territory Intervention.

Australia, where we believe in a fair go for all non-indigenous heterosexuals! (GLBTI and the Indigenous are second classers.)

Well, unless you’re an asylum seeker.

Australia, where we believe in a fair go for all non-indigineous heterosexuals that arrive in a way approved by A Current Affair! (GBLTI, Indigenous and asylum seekers are second classers.)

Well, unless you’re protesting corporate greed or personal freedom.

Australia, where we believe in a fair go for all non-indigineous heterosexuals that arrive in a way approved by A Current Affair and only protest about articles of religious faith! (GBLT, Indigenous, asylum seekers and left-wing protestors are second classers.)

Well, unless you come from a non-marginal electorate.

Australia, where we believe in a fair go for all non-indigineous heterosexuals that arrive in a way approved by A Current Affair and only protest about articles of religious faith, while residing in a marginal electorate! (GBLT, Indigenous, asylum seekers, left wing protestors and those living in non-marginal electorates are second-classers.)

How long can we keep up this farce that Australia is really about a fair go for everyone?

But it’s traditional

Equal Rights, Politics No Responses »

Nov 162011

Imagine a society where we only did things if they had been traditionally done.

…if we go back 50 years in Australia, the indigenous population were not allowed to vote; that was 1967.
…if we go back 50 years in Australia, people were still being executed for crimes. Technically that wasn’t stopped until 2010, though the last execution was 1967.
…if we go back 50 years in the United States, segregation was still legal; that was not repealed until 1964.
…if we go back 100 years in Britain, women were still not allowed to vote; that was 1928.
…if we go back 200 years in the United States, people were still kept as slaves; it wasn’t until the civil war ended in 1865 that change happened there.
…if we go back 500 years in England, the monarchy was still largely absolute; a constitutional monarchy wasn’t enacted until 1689.

The simple fact of the matter is that if we go back far enough, there’s always a tradition to justify some level of bigotry. Conservatives cling blindly to tradition and shout histrionically about the “thin end of the wedge” when it comes to abandoning traditions – yet when we stop for a moment, society and human development has been defined by dropping traditions that are no longer appropriate.

If you want to look at groups of people that cling mindlessly to tradition above all else, check out the Amish or the Exclusive Brethren. People who decided that they’d had enough ‘advancement’, and now won’t use any technology past a particular point. To be fair, the Amish are probably more honest in what they do, since they try their best to isolate their communities so they’re not actively participating. The Exclusive Brethren on the other hand are hypocritical in their beliefs – they refuse, for instance, to use computers, but are happy to directly employ the services of people who do, etc.

It’s time we stop letting people cite ‘tradition’ as a way of ending an argument. When you think about it, the “it’s traditional” argument is about as logically accurate and syntactically complete as the lazy “because why” argument.

So when someone tells you that marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman, the real response is: “Is that the best you can come up with? Give me a real reason.”

What’s a choice?

Equal Rights, Politics No Responses »

Nov 152011

Sometimes it’s confusing as to what you can choose, and what you have no say in, and I thought I might set out some examples to help bring a little enlightenment to this. Here goes…

Something you don’t get a choice about:

Your sexuality: Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual. You are what you are, and fighting it just makes you unwell.

Here’s some things that people can choose to do:

Discriminate
Bully
Have a bigoted world view
Be hypocritical
Harass
Intimidate
Use people and their lives as pawns in political games
Suck up to bigots just because they’re in marginal electorates
Ignore polls when the results don’t suit their world view
Choose to be a sheep, rather than to lead by example

You see, all too often, people think those of us who aren’t heterosexual are seeking special treatment.

All we want to do is balance the scales. Is that too much to ask for?

Frankly, having to keep asking for fundamental human rights is getting pretty tiresome, and we’re not going to shut-up, nor are we going to go away. And if the bigots and the bastards trying to keep us down think that the response to “softly, softly” campaign is to shout louder to drown us out … they’re in for a surprise.

We don’t want to tip the scales. We don’t want special rights. Just equal rights.

Don’t think for a moment that it’s a choice. The only choice that’s being made in this entire affair is to continue to deny us those rights.

Rejecting hate

Life 1 Response »

Nov 152011

While edging towards the notion that I probably have some obscure form of synaesthesia based on word visualisation, I’ve known for some time that different words have a powerful effect on me. Not in some magical or quasi-spiritual sense, but in a way that simply places strong limits on how I use them.

For instance, I used to be very free and easy with using the word hate. “I hate aniseed flavour”, or “I hate people that cut me off in traffic”, or “I hate that person” … it was actually a word that I commonly dropped without much consideration to it.

But on a re-reading of Covenant (Steven Donaldson), I abruptly found myself being very careful about using hate as a pejorative, because hate switched in my head and I suddenly had an image associated with it, and it wasn’t a nice one.

In Covenant, a fantasy series, there’s a race of creatures called Ur-Viles. As you may imagine from their name, for the most part they play a negative role, at least in the first three books, and they have a peculiar form of magic. In order to attack, a group of them would assemble into a wedge, and a ‘loremaster’ at the very apex of the wedge would have a black bowl, and they’d channel their power in through that loremaster and fill the bowl with vitriol. A viscous black almost tar-like liquid, that was practically acidic in nature.

So on a re-read of Covenant, I envisaged that bowl of vitriol as actually being a bowl of hate. And now, for me, every time I think of the word hate I think of a bowl of nigh-overflowing vitriol in physical form.

It’s not a pleasant image.

And so I stopped using hate. If you talk to me, even on subjects that I’m passionate about you’ll find hate is a word I’ll largely shy away from. Random and brief things that used to result in me saying “hate” now normally end up getting referred to as annoyances. Things that I intensely dislike are typically expressed as loathing. For me, loathe is almost an emotionally neutral word – it allows me to express a strong disappreciation or dislike for something, without the emotional, vitriolic overtone of hate.

Personally, I think I’m better off for it. I know there’s whole legions of books written as to the degree that language and thought influence each other, but I can simply say that I’ve been far less judgemental of things since I stopped using the word hate. Stopping myself from using the word made me much more careful about using the thought, and vice versa. Net result – it’s very, very rare for me to ever hate anything or anyone any more. It’s equally why I rail against hate speech so much. I’m not just hearing or reading the words, I’m seeing them laced with vitriol. Those words rise up out of bowls of acid, spreading their poison to the reader or the listener, corrupting the minds of the people mouthing them, and taking a little from the world each time they’re used.

I know I’m better off without that.

Same-sex marriage: countering the arguments

Equal Rights, Life, Morality 6 Responses »

Nov 132011

There’s a plethora of standard arguments used as to why same-sex marriage shouldn’t be permitted. I want to quickly run them over with a bit of logic:

Marriage is traditionally between a man and a woman. Actually, same-sex marriage was practiced in many parts of society, and indeed even the Roman Catholic church, ending within that institution around the 16th century. Not only that, there’s a lot of other things that have been traditional over the years, but they’ve been abandoned. If you look in particular at the current rights of women, not many of those are traditional if we go back to the timeframe when marriage became about a man and a woman.
Homosexuality is unnatural. Actually, homosexual behaviour has been documented in hundreds of species – mammalian, avian, etc. On the other hand, homophobia has only been documented in one species – the human species. Which trait seems unnatural now?
Homosexuals can’t have children, and marriage is about procreation. Given the planet’s population has topped 7 billion and is already dangerously unsustainable, it’s morally unjustifiable to argue for only allowing relationships that see procreation occur. What’s more, I’m yet to encounter evidence of any government that forces infertile couples to get divorced, or prevents older people who are past child bearing age from getting married.
The bible is against homosexuality. The bible is against a lot of things, many of which are done without hesitation by christians on a daily basis. Eating shellfish, wearing artificial fabrics, working on Sundays, etc. You can’t cherry pick.
We live in a Christian society. Actually, we don’t. Christianity is the major religion in Australia, but it’s not the governing religion. Other faiths are permitted, as are atheists and agnostics. In fact, the legal protection of the unbelief of atheists in itself should be sufficient cause to prevent any religious argument against same-sex marriage from being permitted.
Gays and lesbians are seeking special rights and treatment. Actually, we just want equal rights. We don’t want special rights. We believe everyone should be treated the same.
Permitting same-sex marriages is the “thin end of the wedge”. This is the deep-bigot argument that by allowing same-sex couples to get married society will be eventually forced to allow adult-children marriages or adult-animal marriages. This is ridiculous. Neither of those behaviours represent consensual acts and are viewed as repugnant by the majority of society. Homosexuality does not fall into that category.
It’s just a sheet of paper. Why does it matter? If it’s just a sheet of paper, let’s not let anyone get married, and require everyone already married to get divorced. What, that’s unfair? Yeah, that’s what we’ve been saying.
Same sex marriages will lead to polygamous marriages. Um, so what? As long as it’s consensual and loving, why does it matter how many people are in a marriage? Society spends way too much time obsessing about what consenting adults get up to between one another.

I know there’s other common arguments out there. Feel free to fire them at me, I bet I can shoot them down just as quickly.

Must See Sci-Fi Movies

Entertainment, Science Fiction 2 Responses »

Nov 122011

To say I’m a big Science Fiction fan is a bit of an understatement. I’ve watched a huge amount of it in the course of my life, and I’ll undoubtedly continue to do so over the rest of my life. The simple fact, I think, is that for the most part, Science Fiction is about hope. Hope not necessarily for a better future, but for a future, and in a world rapidly that’s rapidly populating, facing massive climate change and economic madness, without even thinking about lunatics with weapons of mass destruction, a genre that entertains the idea of a future is pretty appealing.

I am somewhat particular in what I watch when it comes to Science Fiction though. Unlike 99% of the geek world, for instance, I think that all six Star Wars movies are amongst the most pathetically written tripe that’s ever raped our eyes and ears through the big screen. Well, particularly the 3 prequel movies.

That being said, there are definitely some Science Fiction movies that I think everyone should see. This of course is not a definitive list, it’s just my list.

Forbidden Planet

Anyone who has read my blog has probably seen me say “Monsters of the Id!” from time to time. If you want to see the movie that started this meme, and a movie with depth way out of its time (the 1950s), then book yourself a good couple of hours on the couch to watch this one.

Dreamship Surprise

This gem from Germany was released in 2004, and despite being a comedy science fiction movie, and a gay movie as well, it’s a hilarious romp through space and time. It also has fantastic musical numbers:

Alien

OK, I’m not one myself for horror movies, and Alien most definitely falls into the classic horror category, but it’s also a brilliant piece of Science Fiction writing. It showed the world what an amazing actress Sigourney Weaver was, and started a whole universe of imagination.

Pleasantville

Now, some might say that Pleasantville isn’t technically science fiction, but I say – any movie about people being sucked into an alternate reality TV world sounds pretty much like science fiction to me! It’s a real heart-tugger too, looking at discrimination, conformity and the 50′s in a whole new colour. Take the time to watch this one, you really won’t be disappointed.

Pitch Black

OK, I’ll admit that I have a real thing for Vin Diesel. If they made a movie with him wearing just his underpants while reciting prime numbers for two hours, I’d not only go and see it but I’d be queueing for the Blu Ray – mainly thanks to his voice. Pitch Black in many ways owes its genre to Alien, but it was also a great modern take on the monster-alien style movie. Not all monsters are aliens though, and Pitch Black certainly explored that aspect of humanity.

Donnie Darko

I loved this movie so much that I bought it for my brother for a xmas present, and for years now it’s haunted me because every time the topic of the movie comes up he’s convinced I gave it to him as a great practical joke. He didn’t take the time to watch it seriously, and I bet he talked all the way through it, too. That being said, if you take the time to watch Donnie Darko properly, you’ll be blown away.

Sunshine

I’m not normally one for pseudo-apocalyptic movies, but I went into Sunshine known absolutely nothing about the movie, and walked out thinking it was the best science fiction movie I’d seen in probably a decade. To me, it still stands the test of time. Like all great science fiction movies, it’s not about vast space battles and futuristic technology – it’s about the human condition in a world just slightly removed from our own.

The Fifth Element

OK, like Vin Diesel, I also have a bit of a thing for Bruce Willis, and that’s undoubtedly what drew me to this movie originally. However, a breed apart from most science fiction, this movie manages to blend humour with an apocalyptic style story, as well as a love story, while still being thoroughly entertaining. It also has an amazing piece of original opera that’ll leave you with goosebumps.

Other contenders

Undoubtedly, there’s other contenders for me. I’d be reluctant to finish this off without recommending the most recent Star Trek movie, where the entire franchise was effectively rebooted. Star Trek for me had become so sterile and prissy that it was a welcome change, and allowed me to be interested in that story universe again. Equally, I’m a sucker for Michael Shanks and Stargate in general, so for me a must-see movie would be Stargate The Ark of Truth, but only after you’ve watched all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1. Similarly, I’d say you should most definitely watch Serenity, but only after you’ve watched Firefly.

Have I missed out some movies? Undoubtedly. But make sure you watch those ones!

What is this, a welfare state?

Equal Rights, Life, Mental health, Morality 3 Responses »

Nov 112011

It’s long been acknowledged that an unfortunate national trait in Australia is “tall poppy syndrome”; that’s where if someone becomes popular, or successful, it’s almost seen as a bad thing. This can lead to savage personal attacks on celebrities, politicians, etc., for no other real reason than “they’re more successful than I”.

Unfortunately, a growing trait that is less discussed is the “kick a poor bastard while he’s down” one. This is a festering, pestilent rancorous trait that comes from the bogan attitudes spewed with vitriolic disdain from shock jocks, imitation current affairs shows, and tabloid journalism.

I hate to sound crass, but it’s effectively about the Americanisation of Australia’s social welfare system. It spews from the notion of a fair go for everyone means everyone pulls their weight, which sounds logical, until you realise that it’s a trojan horse for rolling back welfare advances as an appeal to narcissistic bogan greed and problem simplification.

It appeals to dark and selfish thoughts like:

I pay my taxes, I don’t want to support bludgers.

Why should someone get paid for not working?

The radio and TV tells me that people fake injuries all the time.

If I can’t see an injury it mustn’t be serious.

Everyone should be required to contribute.

People who are out of work should do any work they can get in preference to benefits.

Immigrants shouldn’t get benefits.

And here’s what really gets my goat: it’s a betrayal of core, human, moral values. It’s a betrayal of us cooperatively forming a better society by helping everyone reach their potential, and ensuring those who need the most help get it.

It’s an affirmation of that insidious stockmarket attitude of the 80′s, “Greed is good”.

In simple, it’s about creating a mean society. A society where paranoia and suspicion take priority over respect and pity. Yes, pity. Pity is not a swear word. Pity doesn’t mean infinite handouts or molly-coddling, but it does mean sympathy. If we let the idiots and the greedy dominate the welfare argument, we become a society without sympathy.

When we become too mean, people suffer. Penny-wise, pound-foolish as the saying goes – bitching and scrimping and demanding money be kept away from bludgers, a degeneration of welfare harms and hinders rather than helps. In “Even conservatives say the dole is too low“:

“THE right-wing economist handpicked by former prime minister John Howard to set the minimum wage has declared the dole is too low and warned that giving people so little to survive on is causing desperation and depression.”

(Misha Schubert, The Age, 16 October 2011.)

The dole, as it currently stands in Australia, according to the above article, is $245 a week. Advocates, including that economist cited above, are arguing for a $50 a week increase, which will be a bottom line impact of around $1 billion AU per year on our budget. However, that’s still less than the current $375 per week for the disability pension, or $590 per week as the minimum wage. How many of those people who run around screaming about dole bludgers, for instance, could happily survive on $245 per week? We’re told, by the way, in that article:

“When your living standards are going down like that, people get desperate and depressed. The system is out of kilter. And if they stay on it long enough, they get depression and then they’re moved on to the DSP [disability support pension]“.

In other words, treat people mean enough and it’ll come back and bite you on the arse.

Tellingly, the simple truth about the inequity of welfare payments and potential increases was summed up with the following:

“If you start to build up the case [for a $50 per week dole increase], if you can get someone like me on side, you can just tell the shock jocks to piss off. They’d spend $245 on a meal. And the thing about that is you can confront them. Most people would say, gosh, that can’t be right, it’s so low.”

Actually, most people when confronted with that sort of truth – $245 a week – wouldn’t settle for “gosh”.

Yet, elements of the media are obsessed with spoon feeding the ignorant with stories that increase their ratings by providing people with an excuse for self-aggrandising feelings of what they feel is righteous anger. Dole bludgers, welfare cheats. People claiming depression yet they’re filmed outside in a park smiling. People claiming serious injuries but they’re shown carrying a shopping bag.

Sadly, we’ve seen the logical conclusion to this, where one of Australia’s supposed “current affairs” programmes exposed a person who had been supposedly doing dodgy VCR repairs, hounded him … and he committed suicide. Supposedly such little things are food for fodder for the masses; we’re told these are the “important” issues.

Except, they’re not. People doing bad repairs? People cheating welfare? These aren’t the “real” issues. If current affairs programmes were serious about their work they’d spend time documenting and investigating institutions that have been covering up child abuse for decades. But you see, those institutions have lawyers, and what Australians typically see as current affairs programmes are actually just bully shows. And bullies don’t like picking on anyone who can give them a bloody nose back.

Yet, I digress.

Someone reading this, who disagrees with me, is likely to be champing at the bit to point out that there are welfare cheats and there are people who claim to have injuries but don’t really, etc.

And I’d fully agree with them. If you take any system at all that is designed to work as a safety net, then I, as a non-gambling man, would lay odds that someone will find a loop hole and abuse it. Systems are there to be used, but they’re also going to be abused.

The mean spirited approach to welfare consists of the following ‘logic’:

People abuse welfare.
To prevent people abusing welfare we’ll:

Minimise the amount of money paid;
Maximise the effort of the people claiming welfare to get that welfare;
Assume that everyone claiming welfare is potentially cheating.

It’s actually contrary to our entire justice system – innocent until proven guilty – for welfare, you’re guilty until proven innocent.

My simple response to the issue of welfare cheats is this: so what?

Acknowledging that a safety net is going to be abused doesn’t mean giving people free reign to abuse it. It means simply accepting that no matter what is done, someone will find a loop hole. So we have better checks in place, and appropriate punishments for cheats, but we don’t continually accuse the innocent, when they’re already down on their luck and struggling, of being guilty.

Now, what right do I have to say this?

Well, I’m a high tax payer. I’m in the highest tax bracket in Australia, and I have been for several years now. My yearly tax contribution is considerably more than the entire income of someone on a minimum wage for a year. So I, as a high paying tax payer am saying: open the system up, and treat people with the respect they deserve.

For what it’s worth, I’ve received this mean spirited treatment first hand. In 2006, the company I was working for collapsed in a screaming heap. Administrators were called in and all staff were laid off on the spot. From the time the shit hit the fan in a visible way to the time that I lost my job, there were around 3 business days warning.

Having just spent 3+ years working 80 hour weeks in a combined manager/engineer role, having invested so much of myself in my role, with profound feelings of anxiety and panic, I walked into a centrelink office after travelling home from being laid off … and was treated like a sack of shit by some po-faced front-desk worker who felt her job was to be cerberus to the government’s coffers. Someone who took all the effort in the world to point out why I wouldn’t get anything to start with because I didn’t have the right paperwork from the administrators to prove that I wasn’t cheating.

I was unemployed for 4 weeks, and in that time got one payment from centrelink. One measly payment that wasn’t even the full dole amount.

That’s not welfare, that’s public blood sport.

So when I hear someone mouthing shite from tabloid journalism, shock jocks or supposed ‘current affairs’ programmes about how people are defrauding the welfare system, that they’re all cheaters and liars and don’t deserve a cent of that person’s taxpayer money, guess what I think?

You poor bastard: I hope you never need to use welfare.

Australia is meant to be about mateship and helping people when they’re down, but the attacks on the welfare system are a direct attack on that spirit. If you want to see where Australia is headed, have a look at America: those poor bastards can’t even get universal healthcare in place, because people selfishly say “why is it my problem if my neighbour – or worse, someone I don’t even know – gets sick?” Those poor bastards lose their jobs and are given a timeframe to get a new job or they become cast off by the system.

[For follow up reading, I suggest you look at "Paula's Benefits" over at Bipolar Bear's Blog].

Liberty and equality

Equal Rights, Life, Morality No Responses »

Nov 102011

The great French thinker, Voltaire, is famously quoted as saying:

“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

This has shaped a great deal of Western democracies, either directly or subtly, and it undoubtedly has its place.

But it’s time to revisit the notion that this is a representation of a static ideal, and start to have a long hard look at what it also enshrines: hate speech.

You see, I’m effectively told periodically that I’m a bigot. You might think this means that I hate a particular group of people, or I’m a misogynist, but no, it’s because I refuse to accept a place for hate speech.

In order to be truly enlightened, it seems, I must be happy to let people get away with poisoned words and attitudes.

In my particular instance, many in society seem to have this blinkered view that it’s OK to argue against GBLTI rights, because of tradition. Traditionally same-sex couples have not been allowed to marry since the 16th century, and therefore traditionally it’s still OK to argue against it.

That, quite frankly, is just one layer of abstraction away from “the bible says marriage is between a man and a woman”. Well, there’s a lot of things the bible says marriage is about, and most people who tout that argument don’t have a clue. But Betty Bowers does. In short, when we look at what the bible says a marriage should be about, it stands apart as an example of aberrant and immoral behaviour in a way few other documents do.

But returning to tradition. People want and cling to their traditions. But selectively. The traditional view, for instance, espoused by the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is that marriage is between a man and a woman. Yet by those same traditions, she’s a whore, because she’s living in sin with her partner without having married him. What’s more, if we go back to that 16th century tradition, then she shouldn’t be in politics at all, because women had no rights to such lofty ambitions beyond motherhood, sewing, writing and the occasional writing of great novels. How traditional is she?

Want to bring those traditions forward a bit? Say to the 1970s? OK, well according to Pope Ratzinger, that’s when traditionally pedophilia was not seen as an issue:

“In the 1970s, pedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children … It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

Are any of you traditionalists for the reinstitution of that tradition? I know I’m not. Tradition is a dangerous word. It has its place, but it should not be an excuse in and of itself.*

We’re told that because such beliefs are traditional we should accept that many people who hold them are just ignorant, and shouldn’t be lumped in with all the ‘haters’.

But what are they doing? Even if we accept for a moment that they are being ignorant, their ignorant mouthing of bad attitudes still constitutes hate speech. Sure, we have murder and manslaughter charges in society, but either way they still reflect that someone died. Does it really matter if its first degree hate speech or second degree hate speech when the net result is the same? Do people get off scott free when it can be proven they committed manslaughter instead of murder?

Coming out of a store about 9 months ago now, I was carrying a case of cider. A man was walking into the store with his son, who was under 10 years old. The son asked “Dad, what’s cider?” To which the father replied “It’s sort of like beer, but only girls and fags drink it.”

What logical reason should I have had to let that go? In one statement the father had deliberately conveyed his bigoted attitude to his son, which would undoubtedly have either started to or continued to set the behavioural pattern of inappropriate social behaviour. So I turned and said, “Excuse me, I prefer to be called gay“.

I don’t know whether he thought I was out of earshot, or whether he thought I’d find it amusing, but what he didn’t find amusing was having a 6 foot tall, large and angry guy with a mohawk and tattoos not only (a) come out as gay in front of him and his son, but (b) unashamedly do so.

We don’t fight bigotry by continuously turning the other cheek or accepting that people have a right to say what they want. We fight it by pushing back.

Australia does not have free speech laws, and while we have laws that are quite liberal and permissive of people saying what they want to say, they draw the line at hate speech.

And so do I.

A right to free speech is not a right to espouse bigoted views, regardless of they were developed.

–
* Apparently, nothing is good or bad in itself according to the catholic church, unless you’re talking about condoms or homosexuality. At that point though, you’re the spawn of satan and evil incarnate. It’s interesting that a church can have a notion of mortal sin - unforgivable acts – but then run around and say there’s no good or evil.

Older Entries

unsane